# What is *worldbuilding* for?



## pemerton

The thread title really says it all. But here's some context to explain why I'm asking that question.

In classic D&D, _the dungeon_ was a type of puzzle. The players had to map it, by declaring moves (literally) for their PCs. The players, using their PCs as vehicles, had to learn what was in there: this was about inventory - having enough torches, 10' poles, etc - and about game moves too - searching for secret doors, checking ceilings and floors, and so on. And finally, the players had to try and loot it while either avoiding or defeating the monsters guarding the treasures and wandering around the place - this is what the combat mechanics were for.

The game is something of a cross between a wargame and a complex refereed maze. And *worldbuilding* is all about making the maze. I get that.

But most contemporary D&D isn't played in the spirit of classic D&D: the players aren't trying to map a maze; when it comes to searching, perception and the like there is often an emphasis on PC skills (perception checks) rather than player game moves; there is no clear win condition like there used to be (ie getting the gold and thereby accruing XP).

In the classic game, alignment (and related aspects of character motivation) become components in, and establish the parameters of, the puzzle: if I find a prisoner in the dungeon, should I be rescuing her/him (after all, my PC is lawful and so I might suffer a GM-imposed penalty if I leave a helpless person behind)? Or is s/he really a succubus or medusa in disguise, trying to take advantage of my lawful foibles? This is one reason why divination items like wands of enemy detection, ESP medallions and the like are so prominent in classic D&D - they're "game components" which, once obtained, allow a clever player to make better moves and so increase his/her chance of winning the game. And their function relies upon the GM having already written the dungeon, and having already decided what the truth is about the prisoner.

But in most contemporary play, character motivations (and alignment etc) aren't treated purely instrumentally in that waym as puzzle components and parameters. I'm expected to develop my character, and to care about his/her motivations, for their own sake. This is part of the standard picture of what it is to be a good RPGer.

So, given these difference between typical contemporary play and "classic" play, what is world building for?

And here's a final thought, in spoiler blocksbecause it's a little bit tangential:[sblock]In this blog post, Luke Crane has interesting (and very enthusiastic) things to say about playing Moldvay Basic. He also asserts that "the beautiful economy of Moldvay's basic rules are rapidly undermined by the poorly implemented ideas of the Expert set." I think at least part of what he has in mind there is that Expert-style wilderness adventuring doesn't establish the same clear framework for play. There is no clear maze, and so no clear parameters for establishing puzzles to solve in avoiding or defeating the monsters while getting the gold.

I see this contrast, between Basic and Expert - dungeon crawling compared to wilderness exploration - as raising the same question as this thread: what is world building _for_ once we're no longer playing a dungeon crawling, puzzle-solving game?[/sblock]


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## redrick

I'm not sure that I agree with this definition of "world building." World building is about the broader canvas. It's the backdrop behind your in-game action. The items in world building aren't necessarily expected to be interacted with, at least not directly, but they bridge and surround the material that players (and their characters) do interact with.

Classic dungeon design isn't world building. It's set design. When I pull out my graph paper and my room key, almost everything I put down is something the PCs could interact with in some way. I'm laying out the elements PCs will run into so that I have "a plan" and am ready for them when they do. When I fill in the names of towns on my Kingdom map, not so much. That's more to provide a greater sense of consistency for the places my NPCs come from, the broader events happening in the world.

Classic dungeons have world building too, because there are artifacts and altars to gods and references to places and things beyond the immediate scope of the adventure. They're just nice in that they allow the DM to limit that world-building, because dungeons are a closed set. The PCs can only go in the direction the map allows. The only thing in the dungeon is what the PCs can haul in and what the DM put there.

Thinking about this brought me to the Village of Hommlet. The Village of Hommlet is realized with a level of detail beyond any other town I've ever used. Every character has a home with a floorplan and a place they store their valuables. Is this Gygax's pedantic approach to worldbuilding? The village should feel alive, so let's plot out every detail so the DM can evoke a broader, living setting? Or was it just another form of set design? Gygax expected his players to explore the houses and look under the floorboards for treasure. What role does that kind of set design have in modern play? I've never played Hommlet, but reading the adventure, my instinct is to "use" all those damn houses and villagers. I feel like there are as many pages dedicated to them as there are to the moat-house.


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## MarkB

Please can you define what you mean by "worldbuilding"? Because I know what I think it means, and I've never considered it to be a maze-building tool. If we're not working from a common definition of what it is, I don't think we'll get very far in discussing what it's for.

Also, you're presenting a contrast between 'contemporary' and 'classic' gameplay, but are you asking what worldbuilding means in the contemporary context, or the classical one - or both?


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## Nagol

For me, the primary purpose is to provide for exploratory aspects to play. Those aspects might be a map of a physical location with dangers and rewards.  It might be fraught social relationships where interaction can lead to help or hindrance.  It might be the actual way magic works that an insightful player can learn to take advantage of.  It may be a world ripe with hidden factions vying for different seemingly inscrutable goals.  It is an aspect of play I and most of my players enjoy.

A strong secondary purpose is to provide a framework I can be reasonably confident does not favour one player over another and to limit the extent my biases are expressed in the world.  The world building may be biased because I build most of it myself (the rest I steal and file off the serial numbers), but it has the advantage of review and sober second thought.


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## pemerton

Nagol said:


> For me, the primary purpose is to provide for exploratory aspects to play. Those aspects might be a map of a physical location with dangers and rewards.  It might be fraught social relationships where interaction can lead to help or hindrance.  It might be the actual way magic works that an insightful player can learn to take advantage of.  It may be a world ripe with hidden factions vying for different seemingly inscrutable goals.  It is an aspect of play I and most of my players enjoy.
> 
> A strong secondary purpose is to provide a framework I can be reasonably confident does not favour one player over another



Can I push a bit more on this. Eg what is the exploration _for_?

Is it to establish "win" conditions (or tools that can be used to win?) - that is in the neighbourhood of the classic maze/puzzle solving, but how do you deal with the issue that Luke Crane implies (in the bit above that I sblocked), that once you leave the dungeon context the parameters and situation are so loose that the players can't make clear choices or reach their own clear solutions?

Or is it for its own sake? In which case "favouring one player over another" might mean writing a world/backstory that player A will enjoy learning about more than player B.

I worry this post has come out a bit more tendentiously than was intended (!), but the pushing is meant to be friendly/analytic, not hostile.


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## pemerton

MarkB said:


> Please can you define what you mean by "worldbuilding"?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Also, you're presenting a contrast between 'contemporary' and 'classic' gameplay, but are you asking what worldbuilding means in the contemporary context, or the classical one - or both?



I'm talking about the GM writing up the setting. Most RPGs posit some sort of setting - an imaginary place in which the PCs live, and where their adventures occur. That's the "world". [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s post gives examples - maps and other details of places; descriptions of personages; etc.

Because it's a fictional world, it has to be authored/written. When the GM does that in advance, that's "worldbuilding". Or, if you prefer, "setting design". But I see "worldbuilding" used more often, so I chose that word.

I'm pretty sure I know what that setting design is for in classic Gygaxian dungeoneering - it creates the maze/puzzle that the players have to "solve" (by mapping it; by cleverly raiding it; by looting it; all without having their PCs die, and rather accruing XP and hence being able to tackle harder dungeon levels). But in the OP I posit that this style of play is comparatively rare these days; so what is setting design for _now_?



redrick said:


> I'm not sure that I agree with this definition of "world building."



OK, but that seems a mere quibble. I think you've worked out what I have in mind, and I'm curious as to what the point of _that_ is.



redrick said:


> Classic dungeon design isn't world building. It's set design. When I pull out my graph paper and my room key, almost everything I put down is something the PCs could interact with in some way. I'm laying out the elements PCs will run into so that I have "a plan" and am ready for them when they do. When I fill in the names of towns on my Kingdom map, not so much. That's more to provide a greater sense of consistency for the places my NPCs come from, the broader events happening in the world.
> 
> Classic dungeons have world building too, because there are artifacts and altars to gods and references to places and things beyond the immediate scope of the adventure. They're just nice in that they allow the DM to limit that world-building, because dungeons are a closed set. The PCs can only go in the direction the map allows. The only thing in the dungeon is what the PCs can haul in and what the DM put there.



So, what's all this for? Eg why not just have a list of names on a sheet of paper, rather than a kingdom map? Why write down all those room keys in advance? Why specify the gods and altars in advance?

More generally, what is the benefit, for RPGing, of the GM working out in advance of play what elements the PCs will run into and (directly or indirectly) interact with?



redrick said:


> Thinking about this brought me to the Village of Hommlet.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Is this Gygax's pedantic approach to worldbuilding? The village should feel alive, so let's plot out every detail so the DM can evoke a broader, living setting? Or was it just another form of set design? Gygax expected his players to explore the houses and look under the floorboards for treasure.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I've never played Hommlet, but reading the adventure, my instinct is to "use" all those damn houses and villagers. I feel like there are as many pages dedicated to them as there are to the moat-house.



I don't know the answer to these questions. It strikes me as possible that Gygax carried over a technique that made sense when desiging the dungeon for play (map and key) onto a different context (the village as an element of backstory and more "abstract" setting) without noticing that it didn't necessarily make sense in that latter context.

Or maybe he wanted to be prepared for a group of players ready to loot the village, because he thought _they_ would bring their play expectations about dungeoneering into the new context of the village.

But in any event, that would be one example of what I have called "world building": the GM (by choosing to use this module) has established a whole lot of stuff about the setting in advance of play - the village layout, inhabitants, their dispositions and possessions, etc. Why do this? (Assuming that it's not just meant to be another dungeon.)


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## Bawylie

World building is for exploration & discovery 


-Brad


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## 1of3

> So, given these difference between typical contemporary play and "classic" play, what is world building for?




The confusion over your choice of "world-building" is that making a dungeon would not normally be considered that. World-building is a separate activity. Like www.orionsarm.com. That's world-building. Making up a universe that works by consistent rules, their places, societies, histories etc. But you are right, that isn't really the point. 

To understand what role this world/background/setting plays, we first need a model for RPGs that fit both varieties you describe. A common base to build on.

An RPG is a game where people develop a story or narrative primarily by talking.
A rule in a game is says what the people may or should do.
Therefore in an RPG a rule says what people should talk about.

Setting then is a rule. You should talk about elements defined in the setting. You should not contradict them.

But that doesn't really answer your question. Because your question isn't really about settings or world-building or whatever. You are asking about the goal of playing. In what you call "classical" (your scare quotation marks), the players' goal is looting the dungeon as best you can without dying. 

The question you imply is: What is the goal, when we do not play in the dungeon? - But frankly, that question cannot be answered, except for: Anything else. A game of Vampire focussing on intrigue, will have a very different overall goal than one focussing on personal horror. And that is only a single game. Also note, that Vampire has very specific rules on how to set up a city.

So you might ask: What tools do different games provide to set up the setting or scenario and what goals does that suggest. But we can't discuss this very well in general.


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## Jhaelen

That's a curious use of the term 'worldbuilding'. Before reading the OP, I'd have answered "to entertain the GM".

Actually, the answer may be the same, even though 'dungeon design' is closer to what you're trying to describe.

One thing I really liked about the 'mega-dungeon' module "The Eyes of the Stone Thief" for 13th Age is that it doesn't have fixed maps.
I.e. the authors clearly understand that the way RPGs are played have changed. The GM can arrange the described locations in whatever way makes sense for her and the kind of story she's trying to tell.
And since you get the perfect excuse of the dungeon being alive, you can even re-arrange everything when the PCs enter it for a second (and a third, and ...) time!

The real focus of the module are the many factions (and 13th Age icons) and their varied motivations for getting involved with the Stone Thief dungeon.


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## pemerton

1of3 said:


> An RPG is a game where people develop a story or narrative primarily by talking.
> A rule in a game is says what the people may or should do.
> Therefore in an RPG a rule says what people should talk about.
> 
> Setting then is a rule. You should talk about elements defined in the setting. You should not contradict them.
> 
> But that doesn't really answer your question. Because your question isn't really about settings or world-building or whatever. You are asking about the goal of playing.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> So you might ask: What tools do different games provide to set up the setting or scenario and what goals does that suggest. But we can't discuss this very well in general.



I am not asking what you say I am asking.

I have already posited one (broad, but I think recognisable) goal of (non-classical) RPGing in my OP:



			
				the OP said:
			
		

> I'm expected to develop my character, and to care about his/her motivations, for their own sake. This is part of the standard picture of what it is to be a good RPGer.


In a game with a goal along those lines, ie where the goal isn't to beat the dungeon but rather to express/develop my character and find out what s/he does and becomes, _what is the point of pre-authored setting_?

EDIT:
You also do suggest one answer to my question: the point of pre-authored setting is to establish a scenario. There's probably more to be said about that.


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## pemerton

Bawylie said:


> World building is for exploration & discovery



When you say _discovery_, do you mean that the players discover what the GM has written?


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## howandwhy99

I know I've been saying things like the OP does about old school D&D for years. But it's nice to read others saying it too. 

In early D&D the game didn't stop being a game when the rules were hidden behind a screen: the seminal moment of the hobby's creation. What D&D became was the world's first hidden design game. Just like most every computer game, D&D automated a game design players play to beat the game. Where every objective accomplished was a legitimate game success because the rewards were balanced within the design. 

What Arneson and Gary did was to fully realize all that extensive wargaming theory and design mechanics could be simplified, pre-drawn and pre-calculated during game preparation to allow for nearly everything imaginable to be gamed. Sure, not actually everything, but everything structurally coherent and expressible. And it would still remain a satisfyingly fair game as the referees would track the playing of it behind the screen.

In old school D&D all of the rules are about the operation of the design. Most of that could be called world behavior. So "world building" is actually game designing in D&D. In our current improv storytelling hobby "world building" is treated like the term's place in narrative culture instead. Here are a few ideas I've heard:
1. For shared narrative continuity.
2. To maintain a coherent setting for a group improvised story.
3. Group creation eases the burden and allows more voices in setting making.

---------
To your aside:
"Everything in D&D is a maze". In other words there is no outside the mechanical design if you are playing D&D. Wilderness exploration is one form of game play, but traditionally at a different time and distance scale than most others. Whatever moves great distances still has to navigate the paths upon the wilderness game board. What happens in wilderness play is longer term mechanics come to the forefront and shorter term ones tend to abstract into the background (like combat rules when navigating the dungeon). To be clear, long term mechanics like food and water consumption, sleep, and fatigue are still applied during during every moment of the game. But they are at the forefront and commonly arising during long term wilderness treks. Just as many days of combat and traipsing through a dungeon will incur long term travel effects if no rest is taken. 

Hommlet, BTW, is also dungeon design. It is simply the Lawful dungeon. You can try and kill the monsters there and take their treasure too.


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> In classic D&D, _the dungeon_ was a type of puzzle. The players had to map it, by declaring moves (literally) for their PCs. The players, using their PCs as vehicles, had to learn what was in there: this was about inventory - having enough torches, 10' poles, etc - and about game moves too - searching for secret doors, checking ceilings and floors, and so on. And finally, the players had to try and loot it while either avoiding or defeating the monsters guarding the treasures and wandering around the place - this is what the combat mechanics were for.
> 
> The game is something of a cross between a wargame and a complex refereed maze. And *worldbuilding* is all about making the maze. I get that.



I'm not quite sure you do.

Worldbuilding is about making the universe and world and kingdom in which the maze is located; and about making the history of how these things (and maybe the maze, too) came to be what they are, and about making the cultures and peoples and creatures and climates and terrain that a PC encounters en route to the maze.

By the time you get down to designing the dungeon maze itself you've already done 99% of the work. (or, if using a pre-fab setting e.g. Greyhawk, had 99% of it done for you)



> But most contemporary D&D isn't played in the spirit of classic D&D: the players aren't trying to map a maze; when it comes to searching, perception and the like there is often an emphasis on PC skills (perception checks) rather than player game moves; there is no clear win condition like there used to be (ie getting the gold and thereby accruing XP).
> 
> In the classic game, alignment (and related aspects of character motivation) become components in, and establish the parameters of, the puzzle: if I find a prisoner in the dungeon, should I be rescuing her/him (after all, my PC is lawful and so I might suffer a GM-imposed penalty if I leave a helpless person behind)? Or is s/he really a succubus or medusa in disguise, trying to take advantage of my lawful foibles? This is one reason why divination items like wands of enemy detection, ESP medallions and the like are so prominent in classic D&D - they're "game components" which, once obtained, allow a clever player to make better moves and so increase his/her chance of winning the game. And their function relies upon the GM having already written the dungeon, and having already decided what the truth is about the prisoner.



Cool stories, bro, but nothing to do with worldbuilding.  These are more related to game-mechanic-rules system building, which most worldbuilding doesn't really care about except as regards nailing down the setting's vague historical era (medieval, modern, far future, etc.).



> I'm expected to develop my character, and to care about his/her motivations, for their own sake. This is part of the standard picture of what it is to be a good RPGer.



Again this has almost nothing to do with worldbuilding.  Character building, maybe, but that's yet another different thing; and again its only real interaction with worldbuilding is the world's intended historical era defining what the character can be and-or do.

Worldbuilding gives you the stage on which you play out all this character development.



> So, given these difference between typical contemporary play and "classic" play, what is world building for?



It gives the game a backdrop, a history, a sense of continuity and consistency and place.



> And here's a final thought: In this blog post, Luke Crane has interesting (and very enthusiastic) things to say about playing Moldvay Basic. He also asserts that "the beautiful economy of Moldvay's basic rules are rapidly undermined by the poorly implemented ideas of the Expert set." I think at least part of what he has in mind there is that Expert-style wilderness adventuring doesn't establish the same clear framework for play. There is no clear maze, and so no clear parameters for establishing puzzles to solve in avoiding or defeating the monsters while getting the gold.
> 
> I see this contrast, between Basic and Expert - dungeon crawling compared to wilderness exploration - as raising the same question as this thread: what is world building _for_ once we're no longer playing a dungeon crawling, puzzle-solving game?



Without worldbuilding you have no wilderness to explore, nor seas to sail across, nor kingdoms to live in or to overthrow.  You have no history, no deities (which kinda screws over any Clerics in the game!), no moons or weather or cities or kings.  You have no raiding Vikings to the north, no cultured Romans, no desert marauders, no pleasant Hobbit-filled valleys, no Elven woods.

All you have is...nothing.

Lan-"and worst of all you have no monsters to kill so you can take their stuff"-efan


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## MarkB

pemerton said:


> I'm talking about the GM writing up the setting. Most RPGs posit some sort of setting - an imaginary place in which the PCs live, and where their adventures occur. That's the "world". [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s post gives examples - maps and other details of places; descriptions of personages; etc.
> 
> Because it's a fictional world, it has to be authored/written. When the GM does that in advance, that's "worldbuilding". Or, if you prefer, "setting design". But I see "worldbuilding" used more often, so I chose that word.
> 
> I'm pretty sure I know what that setting design is for in classic Gygaxian dungeoneering - it creates the maze/puzzle that the players have to "solve" (by mapping it; by cleverly raiding it; by looting it; all without having their PCs die, and rather accruing XP and hence being able to tackle harder dungeon levels). But in the OP I posit that this style of play is comparatively rare these days; so what is setting design for _now_?




Yeah, those are definitely two completely different things that you're trying to conflate into the same term. Worldbuilding has nothing to do with the physical structure of the dungeon, or the rules about how to solve or survive it. Worldbuilding is about how that dungeon came to be there, why the people who are currently occupying it are doing what they're doing, and what's important enough about it that someone pointed a group of adventurers at it and told them to go deal with it.

To me, "worldbuilding" as a term has two usages in common practice. For the DM, during game set-up, it's about establishing the world and setting within which the adventure takes place - who lives there, what are their motivations, what are the major current conflicts and sources of contention. It's not even about defining specific NPCs - it's about defining the societies and cultures in which they live.

And for the players, in-game, "worldbuilding" means those moments when the DM spins that extra information into their descriptions and dialogue, giving the players a glimpse of that wider setting and a sense of having a coherent world around them.

And that's what it's there for in modern settings - to give the players a sense of the place their characters live within, a framework within which they can build upon their character's motivations and beliefs, establish connections, and discover and determine what they care about and want to achieve.


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## Sadras

Jhaelen said:


> That's a curious use of the term 'worldbuilding'. Before reading the OP, I'd have answered "to entertain the GM."




I was, perhaps cheekily, thinking that exact same thing. And I'd be answering as a DM


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## Nagol

pemerton said:


> Can I push a bit more on this. Eg what is the exploration _for_?
> 
> Is it to establish "win" conditions (or tools that can be used to win?) - that is in the neighbourhood of the classic maze/puzzle solving, but how do you deal with the issue that Luke Crane implies (in the bit above that I sblocked), that once you leave the dungeon context the parameters and situation are so loose that the players can't make clear choices or reach their own clear solutions?
> 
> Or is it for its own sake? In which case "favouring one player over another" might mean writing a world/backstory that player A will enjoy learning about more than player B.
> 
> I worry this post has come out a bit more tendentiously than was intended (!), but the pushing is meant to be friendly/analytic, not hostile.




I would say it is meant to provide potential resources and hindrances.  

Exploration play and thus world-building covers many dimensions.  The most obvious set are three dimensional -- the walls and contents of an isolated environment like a dungeon.  World-building best serves exploration play when the time investment is made across the same dimensions the PCs can perceive and affect.  So the physical world surrounding them, the social and spiritual worlds they can interact with, etc.

If the world is larger and less constrained then the world-building needs to be as well though it can set at a lower resolution the longer it will take information to reach the PCs or for PC action to affect that part of the world.  

In my view, exploration play works best when the players have the agency to set goals and act upon them, proactive in other words.  It tends to be a difficult mode to develop when the PCs are expected to be highly reactive in play.  The more reactive the PCs get, the smaller the world-building can be.  If the PCs don't have the ability to take advantage of the world then it is at best foreshadowing and at worst a tool for the application of GM force when things aren't going as he expects.

World-building for its own sake can serve two personal goals: (1) defined environments for later inspiration on campaign adventures and opening situations and (2) fulfilling a desire to write fiction.  I don't do much of the second.

Favouring one over the other doesn't refer to player enjoyment ratios.  It's more about making certain any player is not favoured more than any other in taking advantage of in-game resources and being affected by in-game hindrances.  In effect, it helps me limit player charisma and personal relationship from affecting the game world.


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## pemerton

Jhaelen said:


> That's a curious use of the term 'worldbuilding'. Before reading the OP, I'd have answered "to entertain the GM".
> 
> Actually, the answer may be the same, even though 'dungeon design' is closer to what you're trying to describe.



I think your second sentence is true at least sometimes.



Jhaelen said:


> One thing I really liked about the 'mega-dungeon' module "The Eyes of the Stone Thief" for 13th Age is that it doesn't have fixed maps.
> I.e. the authors clearly understand that the way RPGs are played have changed. The GM can arrange the described locations in whatever way makes sense for her and the kind of story she's trying to tell.



That doesn't sound like worlbuilding, because it's not establishing a truth about the setting in advance of play. It's prep, but not worldbuilding. (Though the "living dungeon" conceit does blur the lines a bit.)


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> It gives the game a backdrop, a history, a sense of continuity and consistency and place.
> 
> Without worldbuilding you have no wilderness to explore, nor seas to sail across, nor kingdoms to live in or to overthrow.  You have no history, no deities (which kinda screws over any Clerics in the game!), no moons or weather or cities or kings.  You have no raiding Vikings to the north, no cultured Romans, no desert marauders, no pleasant Hobbit-filled valleys, no Elven woods.



But this clearly isn't true - you can have a game with any or all of those things without the GM writing up some fiction in advance.



MarkB said:


> And that's what it's there for in modern settings - to give the players a sense of the place their characters live within, a framework within which they can build upon their character's motivations and beliefs, establish connections, and discover and determine what they care about and want to achieve.



Are you able to say more about how you see the GM's work on the setting in advance of play feeding through to give the players that sense?


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## pemerton

Nagol said:


> exploration play works best when the players have the agency to set goals and act upon them, proactive in other words.  It tends to be a difficult mode to develop when the PCs are expected to be highly reactive in play.  The more reactive the PCs get, the smaller the world-building can be.  If the PCs don't have the ability to take advantage of the world then it is at best foreshadowing and at worst a tool for the application of GM force when things aren't going as he expects.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Favouring one over the other doesn't refer to player enjoyment ratios.  It's more about making certain any player is not favoured more than any other in taking advantage of in-game resources and being affected by in-game hindrances.



If the world that is being built is big or complex, then it probably has forces at work that the players (and their PCs) don't know about. How does the presence of those forces affect, or interact with, player proactivity, and the use of world elements as tools to achieve player goals for the game?


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## 1of3

pemerton said:


> ​In a game with a goal along those lines, ie where the goal isn't to beat the dungeon but rather to express/develop my character and find out what s/he does and becomes, _what is the point of pre-authored setting_?




Thank you. Now I see.

In that case setting can provide these:
- Create save metaphors. Discussing racism might not be to everyones taste. Discrimination against mutants (cf. X-Men) can help.
- Allow for exploration of fantastic situation. How is it to be a dragon rider? What if gods walked the earth? How does that change my character's outlook?
- Start everyone of with certain situation. The Last War ended two years ago. These were the factions...

Note that for the goal you just named you don't need that much setting. You don't need several hundred years of history.


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## Nagol

pemerton said:


> If the world that is being built is big or complex, then it probably has forces at work that the players (and their PCs) don't know about. How does the presence of those forces affect, or interact with, player proactivity, and the use of world elements as tools to achieve player goals for the game?




My current primary game is like that.  The PCs are federal agents tasked with investigating and dealing with anomalous events.  They have discovered at least four potent covert factions, a few particularly powerful individuals, and less organized groups with specific agendas.

Initially, the discovery of those forces comes as a surprise much like a trick or trap in a dungeon.  Once initial contact is made, the players try to make sense of the force with respect to things already known in the world.  The reveal may be a help or hindrance to the current PC plans, though most often it acts as a hindrance since it is an unexpected and hence they are unprepared.  The PCs need to react to the reveal.

Later on, depending on the PCs relationship and how their current goals align with these outside interests, they can be help, hindrance, or not a consideration.  The PCs can begin to proactively plan for their presence but still need to react when these forces engage unexpectedly.

Here's a modest example.  The PCs have encountered Harry Konaklowski, a reporter for the tabloids doing effectively monster-of-the-week stories several times (he is modeled after the original _Kolchak the Night Stalker_ TV series).  The first time, he was a bit of a nuisance.  His motto "The people have a right to know!" conflicted with the group's desire for a low-key investigation.  Since then in no particular order, he has helped the group (he knew what they were about to face and came prepared with the material to deal with it himself), hindered the group (he was investigating a subject the PCs we're trying to keep secret at least twice), and been somewhere between almost helpful and a pain in the rear the rest of the time their paths have crossed.  Much of the time Harry isn't a consideration because he hasn't heard of what they're investigating until it's complete.  They do keep an eye on his column to see what he is writing about and have discussed feeding him stories to rile up other factions.  A least one player thought there might be more to Harry than meets the eye and ran deeper background checks to see if he represents another faction or power group.

The best elements are ones the players may sense in the world before confrontation.  They emit "ripples in space-time"; their existence affects the game world in ways the players may perceive and the actual reveal of the force resolves otherwise inconsistent features of the world. 

"A medusa!  That's why there were so many polished marble pebbles along the path!"
"She's a shape changer! That's why no one has seen her at the parties!"
"I knew Albert and Bob hated each other.  That's the only way Cheryl's actions made sense!"


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## pemerton

Nagol said:


> Here's a modest example.  The PCs have encountered Harry Konaklowski, a reporter for the tabloids doing effectively monster-of-the-week stories several times (he is modeled after the original _Kolchak the Night Stalker_ TV series).  The first time, he was a bit of a nuisance.  His motto "The people have a right to know!" conflicted with the group's desire for a low-key investigation.  Since then in no particular order, he has helped the group (he knew what they were about to face and came prepared with the material to deal with it himself), hindered the group (he was investigating a subject the PCs we're trying to keep secret at least twice), and been somewhere between almost helpful and a pain in the rear the rest of the time their paths have crossed.  Much of the time Harry isn't a consideration because he hasn't heard of what they're investigating until it's complete.  They do keep an eye on his column to see what he is writing about and have discussed feeding him stories to rile up other factions.  A least one player thought there might be more to Harry than meets the eye and ran deeper background checks to see if he represents another faction or power group.



Is all this stuff determined simply by GM authorial fiat? Or is there a system that underpins it (eg like the patron encounter system in Classic Traveller)?

And - to try and stick to my own thread topic - are these facts about Harry authored in advance by the GM (which is at the heart of my notion of *worldbuilding*)? Or are they established in some other fashion (eg as part of the process of action resolution)?


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## Nagol

pemerton said:


> Is all this stuff determined simply by GM authorial fiat? Or is there a system that underpins it (eg like the patron encounter system in Classic Traveller)?




They could be established by fiat.  I tend to build small mechanical systems to help determine engagement, agenda, and success in achieving goals outside the party's view.  I find it easier to have some outcome-based resolution systems to rely on when updating the current situation.



> And - to try and stick to my own thread topic - are these facts about Harry authored in advance by the GM (which is at the heart of my notion of *worldbuilding*)? Or are they established in some other fashion (eg as part of the process of action resolution)?




Harry's appearance, background, and motivations were authored (I wanted a pretty straight rip-off of Kolchak).  His involvement at the start of a situation is authored as part of my situation construction: where he is, what he knows, what he wants to do next.  Depending on the situation, I may have created a trajectory to evolve the situation in the absence of player input.  Outside that course, his actions and reactions depend in a large part  on PC action.  Persistent information (his health status, his attitude toward the PCs as a group and individually, his possessions, what knowledge he's gained, any obligations or favours he's earned) are tracked and should affect any future appearance.

When the PCs first encountered him, he was working on an investigation peripheral to the PCs primary mission.  The PCs stumbled onto clues pointing to his monster, but couldn't figure out how those tied in with what they were working on (it did, but the puzzle was quite large and they had few pieces at that time).  Harry completed his investigation and took care of the problem without the PCs direct involvement as they took a direct course for their own investigation.  Although they knew he was the reporter sniffing around and getting underfoot with their investigation, I don't think any of the players ever worked out he was responsible for the arson that destroyed potential evidence (i.e. killed the creature they didn't know was there).  His later appearances have shown him to have greater depths, but they've never asked about that first mission.


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## redrick

pemerton said:


> So, what's all this for? Eg why not just have a list of names on a sheet of paper, rather than a kingdom map? Why write down all those room keys in advance? Why specify the gods and altars in advance?
> 
> More generally, what is the benefit, for RPGing, of the GM working out in advance of play what elements the PCs will run into and (directly or indirectly) interact with?
> 
> I don't know the answer to these questions. It strikes me as possible that Gygax carried over a technique that made sense when desiging the dungeon for play (map and key) onto a different context (the village as an element of backstory and more "abstract" setting) without noticing that it didn't necessarily make sense in that latter context.
> 
> Or maybe he wanted to be prepared for a group of players ready to loot the village, because he thought _they_ would bring their play expectations about dungeoneering into the new context of the village.
> 
> But in any event, that would be one example of what I have called "world building": the GM (by choosing to use this module) has established a whole lot of stuff about the setting in advance of play - the village layout, inhabitants, their dispositions and possessions, etc. Why do this? (Assuming that it's not just meant to be another dungeon.)




It's a pretty broad question that hits on a lot of different areas of design and prep, which is why I quibble about the definition.

When I design adventure areas, my goals are:
* Provide consistency, both story-wise (who are those altars to?) and geography-wise (how did we go down to flights of stairs and end up on the roof?). I can improv a small, tightly contained adventure area (say a bungalow), but I might get lost trying to build a more complex setting on the fly.
* Originality and quality. Improv falls back a lot on tried and true tropes. By designing something ahead of time, I can get ideas through research on Wikipedia, roll on random tables, steal ideas and settings from published adventures in my collection, and, most importantly, discard the bad ideas that pop into my head in favor of the better ideas that come later.
* Maintain a world that extends beyond the immediate POV of the PCs. I want PCs to feel like the main characters, but I don't want it to feel like the world is constantly being ordered around them. I want a world where there is something different behind Door #1, Door #2 and Door #3 and I know what that is without knowing what the players are going to do.

There are other occasional concerns, like wanting to use a pretty map that is drawn ahead of time, which was a big driver when I played on Roll20 with line-of-sight and fog of war, but less so now when I mostly just draw stuff out for the players on sheets of blank letter paper.

But design should also be flexible. Ideally, I want to be able to seamlessly mix my pre-determined elements with elements that arise at the table, because the players can take me in directions that I would never have gone with my graph paper, room keys and wikipedia entries, and I want to be prepared to go in those directions. So, for instance, I would never prep a town the way Gygax prepped Hommlet. I might have one or two houses laid out, and then I might have a list of a few other "note-worthy" NPCs with their role and possibly one or two other descriptions, and then I'd allow the rest to fill in as the adventure progressed. My understanding is that this is more or less the standard approach to RPG adventure prep these days.


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## Caliban

Worldbuilding: Creating a world that I, as the DM, find interesting.  I then set up adventures within that world.  

Adventure design: Creating encounters and plot lines that the players find interesting and challenging.  

Dungeon design: creating a dungeon layout that may focus more on puzzles and combat rather than story or plot.  May have little or no relationship to the outside world the dungeon is placed in.  Or it may be intimately intertwined with aspects of world building or the current storyline. 


Different group prefer to focus on different aspects.


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## Bawylie

pemerton said:


> When you say _discovery_, do you mean that the players discover what the GM has written?




I’m not sure how to answer that. In a very narrow, literal sense, the answer is necessarily “yes.” 

I think that’s too reductive though, so the good and proper answer is “no, not really.”


-Brad


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## Ovinomancer

This is a return to previous attempts by [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] to delve the difference between DM driven vs player driven gameplay.  Essentially, he's driving at the difference between a DM authored adventure where the game elements are prewritten by the DM and the players explore what the DM has created vs nothing except a thematic setting is presented to the players, and they author the game elements as play progresses.  Think classic D&D vs Burning Wheel.

This is a new tack, but he's used 'worldbuilding' before, in a different context, to indicate the DM driven playstyle -- ie, things the DM writes down that the player then discover.  As I recall, pemerton strongly dislikes this playstyle, as he doesn't want to try to figure out what the DM has made, but would rather create the fiction through his own gameplay.  As I also recall, his use of unique definitions for things caused quite a bit of confusion as to what was being talked about.  However, I've already seen him angling towards DM driven vs. Player driven discussion in his responses.

To address the OP, however, I agree strongly with a few posts already made that making the dungeon isn't world building, it's adventure design.  Worldbuilding is that part where you establish the basic rules and assumptions for play such that dungeons to be explored and treasure to be gained and monsters to be defeated are a thing that this game will do.  If I start a game with the assumptions in place that this is a rural area of a magical medieval kingdom and that goblins are a major threat, then that's the worldbuilding.  The game can then progress from there either in a more DM authored or player authored way.  In a more DM authored game, the DM would create dungeons, or factions, or whathave you for the players to interact with inside that built world.  For a player driven game, the players would engage those thematic elements of the built world and structure their narrative control attempts within those terms -- ie, their game 'moves' would leverage magical medieval rural themes and goblin themes, or, at least, they would not counter those themes too strongly.  

Worldbuilding is the part where you set the stage and determine the themes and the basic assumptions of play.  It can be vague or detailed, as desired for the style of play desired, but it's required for any gameplay to occur.  It is also NOT drawing out a dungeon maze. That leans on the built world, and becomes part of it, but it doesn't matter who writes it (players or DM).  As gameplay progresses, all new things are added to the built world -- worldbuilding is a continuous process.  But, at first, it's the starting assumptions of play.


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## MarkB

Ovinomancer said:


> This is a return to previous attempts by [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] to delve the difference between DM driven vs player driven gameplay.  Essentially, he's driving at the difference between a DM authored adventure where the game elements are prewritten by the DM and the players explore what the DM has created vs nothing except a thematic setting is presented to the players, and they author the game elements as play progresses.  Think classic D&D vs Burning Wheel.
> 
> This is a new tack, but he's used 'worldbuilding' before, in a different context, to indicate the DM driven playstyle -- ie, things the DM writes down that the player then discover.  As I recall, pemerton strongly dislikes this playstyle, as he doesn't want to try to figure out what the DM has made, but would rather create the fiction through his own gameplay.  As I also recall, his use of unique definitions for things caused quite a bit of confusion as to what was being talked about.  However, I've already seen him angling towards DM driven vs. Player driven discussion in his responses.



To me, that's all tangential to the what and even the why of worldbuilding. Whether it happens before the game, in the head and/or notes of the DM, before the game as a collaborative effort between the DM and players, or during the game either by the DM, or collaboratively, or using a formalised system of worldbuilding such as random percentile tables, none of that changes what it is - it's worldbuilding, establishing the precepts of the setting.

And it doesn't change why it matters - no matter who establishes these elements, the purpose of it is to establish a sense of place within which the players can define and develop their characters' roles and motivations, and the DM can do the same for the major NPCs.


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## Ovinomancer

MarkB said:


> To me, that's all tangential to the what and even the why of worldbuilding. Whether it happens before the game, in the head and/or notes of the DM, before the game as a collaborative effort between the DM and players, or during the game either by the DM, or collaboratively, or using a formalised system of worldbuilding such as random percentile tables, none of that changes what it is - it's worldbuilding, establishing the precepts of the setting.
> 
> And it doesn't change why it matters - no matter who establishes these elements, the purpose of it is to establish a sense of place within which the players can define and develop their characters' roles and motivations, and the DM can do the same for the major NPCs.




Right... didn't I say pretty much that in the two paragraphs you didn't include in the quote?  Perhaps your intent wasn't to appear to disagree with me?


----------



## Nagol

Ovinomancer said:


> <snip>
> 
> To address the OP, however, I agree strongly with a few posts already made that making the dungeon isn't world building, it's adventure design.  Worldbuilding is that part where you establish the basic rules and assumptions for play such that dungeons to be explored and treasure to be gained and monsters to be defeated are a thing that this game will do.  If I start a game with the assumptions in place that this is a rural area of a magical medieval kingdom and that goblins are a major threat, then that's the worldbuilding.  The game can then progress from there either in a more DM authored or player authored way.  In a more DM authored game, the DM would create dungeons, or factions, or whathave you for the players to interact with inside that built world.  For a player driven game, the players would engage those thematic elements of the built world and structure their narrative control attempts within those terms -- ie, their game 'moves' would leverage magical medieval rural themes and goblin themes, or, at least, they would not counter those themes too strongly.
> 
> Worldbuilding is the part where you set the stage and determine the themes and the basic assumptions of play.  It can be vague or detailed, as desired for the style of play desired, but it's required for any gameplay to occur.  It is also NOT drawing out a dungeon maze. That leans on the built world, and becomes part of it, but it doesn't matter who writes it (players or DM).  As gameplay progresses, all new things are added to the built world -- worldbuilding is a continuous process.  But, at first, it's the starting assumptions of play.





I tend to disagree.  It is entirely possible the whole of the explorable world is a single dungeon.  Indeed there are games with that premise.  In that case, I'd like to think you'd agree that the dungeon design is world-building.  World-building occurs whenever an element is added that potentially affects more than a single locale.  The king of a realm may reside in a dungeon equivalent.  Defining the king's personality, motivations, and capabilities is world-building even if he is placed at a specific locale.  

I think the line between locale construction and world-building is an artificial one.  The locale exists inside the world and needs to conform to any precepts already established.  Its design may suggest new precepts to be added to the world.  Determining that the cult of <fill in the blank> always has at least three separate entrances for all major buildings is world-building even if the decision comes about because of the design of the first building as part of a locale.  

That said, I agree every wall and door placement in a locale is not world-building.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Nagol said:


> I tend to disagree.  It is entirely possible the whole of the explorable world is a single dungeon.  Indeed there are games with that premise.  In that case, I'd like to think you'd agree that the dungeon design is world-building.  World-building occurs whenever an element is added that potentially affects more than a single locale.  The king of a realm may reside in a dungeon equivalent.  Defining the king's personality, motivations, and capabilities is world-building even if he is placed at a specific locale.
> 
> I think the line between locale construction and world-building is an artificial one.  The locale exists inside the world and needs to conform to any precepts already established.  Its design may suggest new precepts to be added to the world.  Determining that the cult of <fill in the blank> always has at least three separate entrances for all major buildings is world-building even if the decision comes about because of the design of the first building as part of a locale.
> 
> That said, I agree every wall and door placement in a locale is not world-building.




No, I would not agree that the design of the differing parts (or the whole) of the dungeon is the worldbuilding.  It may be so, but is not necessarily so.  To me, the world building started in the development of the premise that the entirety of the explorable world is this dungeon and the necessary co-assumptions this entails.  The actual windings of the dungeon are details based on that premise, and could be authored prior to play (DM driven) or during play (player driven).

Now, I will stipulate that once those details of the dungeon are established, they become part of the worldbuilding -- ie, they are now established parts of the world that future play is expected to respect.  But, when you build the world sized dungeon, you've already decided on the premise that the world is the dungeon.  I would go so far as to say this holds even if your reverse the creation process -- if you built a dungeon and then decided that it was the world, the world building aspects as presented to your players is that the entire explorable world is a dungeon.  That's the hook the game turns on, to mix metaphors.


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## pemerton

Nagol said:


> Depending on the situation, I may have created a trajectory to evolve the situation in the absence of player input.



How do the players learn this? In my mind, I'm linking this to the Luke Crane comment I sblocked in the OP, and to the role of divination.

When the "world" is very confined (both in fictional terms - making relevant fictional positioning fairly easy to achieve - and in corresponding mechanical terms, eg the ranges are short enough for Locate Object and other divination effects to work) then there are clear player moves available to learn stuff like this, and therefore use it as a "tool" for their goals.

But in a much more open-ended world, how do you manage this? Personally, I see this as one of the big challenges in GMing; my own response tends to be to dial back the "worldbuilding" and to generate the content as needed - so knowledge skills, interrogation skill, divination abilities, and the like in my game tend to be devices for forcing GM narration rather than obtaining access to GM notes.



Nagol said:


> When the PCs first encountered him, he was working on an investigation peripheral to the PCs primary mission.  The PCs stumbled onto clues pointing to his monster, but couldn't figure out how those tied in with what they were working on (it did, but the puzzle was quite large and they had few pieces at that time).  Harry completed his investigation and took care of the problem without the PCs direct involvement as they took a direct course for their own investigation.  Although they knew he was the reporter sniffing around and getting underfoot with their investigation, I don't think any of the players ever worked out he was responsible for the arson that destroyed potential evidence (i.e. killed the creature they didn't know was there).  His later appearances have shown him to have greater depths, but they've never asked about that first mission.



This bit is very interesting.

If I rephrase it in terms of play, rather than in in-fiction terms, then it looks like: GM narrates some stuff to players that includes fictional elements with hints of relevance to the players' current concerns with the fiction; the players (correctly, if I've got it right) infer that the GM has in mind some genuine connection beneath/behind those hints, but can't discern them (and don't make the moves, in terms of fictional positioning, that would trigger more narration).

The GM then establishes some additional fiction without telling the players ("Harry completes his investigation") and this triggers a change in the fiction accessible to the players for their purposes ("the arson that destroyed potential evidence"). This is the bit I'm especially intrigued by, because it relates back to your earlier remarks about GM force, and fairness; and also to issues of "scope" in the fiction. How did you decide to change the fictional situation in this way, with this (minor?) adverse consequence for the players?


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> But this clearly isn't true - you can have a game with any or all of those things without the GM writing up some fiction in advance.



If there's no game world for the PCs to inhabit then when you go to characterize and-or play those PCs you're doing so in a vacuum.  It's the DM's job to describe what the PCs already know, and see now, and learn later; meaning the DM is going to have a game world or setting in mind even if she hasn't made notes on any of it. Having it pre-designed even if just in broad strokes makes the describing so much easier.

Particularly at the start of the campaign when the players in theory know much less about the game world than their PCs do (canon lawyers for pre-fab settings notwithstanding) the DM has a lot of describing to do and as a side effect of that description is going to drop the PCs into a particular setting be it a steamy jungle, a city based on ancient Athens, a snowy Viking camp, or a pleasant sunny farm village.  You'd probably call this railroading, but how else can it work?

Of course, that's just the start; if the PCs in the Viking camp immediately decide to go someplace warmer then the DM has to react to that. (one hopes she has a broad-strokes regional or continental map showing areas beyond a short radius around the camp!)



> Are you able to say more about how you see the GM's work on the setting in advance of play feeding through to give the players that sense?



   [MENTION=40176]MarkB[/MENTION] might see it differently, but for my part it's much easier to figure out a character's motivations, beliefs, goals, etc. when there's a culture (or cultures) and common history to fit into.  If, say, the setting history shows that our starting town was devastated by a war ten years ago and since rebuilt, that's going to influence my character and what she thinks; and probably influence other characters as well.

But if the starting history shows no such war it's not our place as players to just add it in.  We have no right to, as world design is not in our purview.

And if there's no pre-designed history then what's the point?  What happened before our PCs became PCs?  What major events shaped their lives? (it should be obvious but I'd better mention: the DM sets the event but the player chooses what influence it had on her character, if any).

Lanefan


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## pemerton

redrick said:


> Maintain a world that extends beyond the immediate POV of the PCs. I want PCs to feel like the main characters, but I don't want it to feel like the world is constantly being ordered around them. I want a world where there is something different behind Door #1, Door #2 and Door #3 and I know what that is without knowing what the players are going to do.



This was the part of your reply that especially stood out to me.

I don't know if you've read [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s post just upthread of yours, which I've replied to just upthread of this post. You'll see that I've honed in on a particular episode of play that Nagol describes, that seems like it might be an instance of what you describe in the passage of yours I've quoted. I've asked Nagol some questions about that; if you have any thoughts that are relevant to those questions I've asked, I'd be keen to read them.



redrick said:


> My understanding is that this is more or less the standard approach to RPG adventure prep these days.



I don't really know what the contemporary standard is. I tend to prepare authors, perhaps locations, and ideas for vignettes, that I think might be interesting to use in the game.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> ... tend to be devices for forcing GM narration rather than obtaining access to GM notes.



And this is what I just don't get: from the player side, what's the difference?  The players/PCs are obtaining access to new information; why does it matter in the slightest on the player side what its metagame source might be?

Either way, the DM is going to narrate the hopefully-informative results of whatever the PCs have tried to divinate.  Whether from notes or from top-of-mind that narration in theory should be and sound the same, though IME stuff made up on the fly can involve a lot more humming and hawing on the DM's part if she's caught off guard.

Where the notes come in useful is from the DM side.  You've done the work ahead of time thus making it much easier to be consistent and clear with your narrations, and thus during the actual play you can focus on the here and now - action resolution, rules questions, playing NPCs and monsters, stuff like that.  This is where canned adventure modules come in handy - much of the pre-work is often also done for you.  And I'm all about the lazy. 

Ideally, though unfortunately wa-a-ay less often than I'd like, by the time I get behind the screen I've got things to the point where I can sit back and enjoy the entertainment.

=========

Thinking about it another way: I'm starting to realize you see your role in your game as much more of an actual participant - a player - than I do.  You want to share in the unexpected plot twists, and be surprised at how the story goes.  You don't want any spoilers, as it were; and you want your own game world to organically unfold around you just as if you were a player.

Conversely I'm not there to play in my own game (other than via NPCs), I'm there to provide a game* for my players to play in; and if I want to be a player I need to find another game under a different DM in order to do so.  In my own game I already know all the spoilers, as such is my place and my job, and I know how the story might go at least for the time being.  I don't know how it *will* go - the PCs can certainly surprise me with what they do, and when that happens I have to react accordingly.  But that reaction is as a neutral arbiter, not as a fellow player.

* - 'provide a game' includes pre-designing the world (maps, history, cultures), pre-designing and tweaking the rules (mostly homebrew these days) and then providing access to them, coming up with a possible storyline or three, and usually hosting.

Lan-"I can have cake, or I can eat cake, but I can't do both"-efan


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## pemerton

Bawylie said:


> I’m not sure how to answer that. In a very narrow, literal sense, the answer is necessarily “yes.”
> 
> I think that’s too reductive though, so the good and proper answer is “no, not really.”



Are you able to elaborate?

An example of what I'm thinking of, but it may not be applicable to you: in my RPGing, a player's successful use of a PC's knowledge skill is often a trigger for GM narration. Sometimes (in some systems moreso than other - eg Cortex+ and Burning Wheel moreso than Traveller) it isinstead be a trigger for player narration.

An example of the former: the PCs are in what seems to be a ruined temple, and a player asks "Can I recognise what god was worshipped here?" A successful check can trigger the response "Yes, it was so-and-so." That might be made up on the spot by the GM; or it might be the GM reading from notes. If it's made up, it's not really worldbuilding in the sense I'm talking about, though it might draw on that worldbuilding (eg maybe there's already an established list of gods for the gameworld, like the list in the front of the 4e PHB).

A different example of the former: the PCs are in the temple, and a player asks "Are there any signs of Orcus worship here?" A successful check can trigger the resopnse "Yes, yes there are" not as a reading of notes, but as an affirmation by the GM of the player's suggetion for introduction of fictional content. That's not worldbuiling in my sense - the fictio is clearly being established in the course of play, in a back-and-forth between players and GM.

An example of player content introduction: "Haven't I heard that all the temples of Isis have secret doors under the altar? I look around for the one here." If the check succeeds, the player's content introduction becomes part of the gameworld; if the check fails, the GM is free to do something else (eg if using "fail forward" techniques, to twist the player's intention in some fashion that is adverse to the PC's desires).

But there are probalby other forms of GM-player dynamics around worldbuilding and establishing the content of the fiction that I've not covered above.


----------



## MarkB

Ovinomancer said:


> Right... didn't I say pretty much that in the two paragraphs you didn't include in the quote?  Perhaps your intent wasn't to appear to disagree with me?




I wasn't aware of giving that appearance. I was elaborating upon your point, not disagreeing with it.


----------



## pemerton

Nagol said:


> I tend to disagree.  It is entirely possible the whole of the explorable world is a single dungeon.



Yes - this is the basic premise of Moldvay Basic.



Nagol said:


> I think the line between locale construction and world-building is an artificial one.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> That said, I agree every wall and door placement in a locale is not world-building.



WIthout wanting to quibble too much over definitions, I want to extend your critique of artificial distinctions all the way! Establishing that the world was shaped by great migrations (as per the first few pages of the World of Greyhawk folio), and establishing that the front door of the dungeon is made of adamantine, are both acts of authoring the fiction. They establish setting - the world in which the PCs have their adventures.

To summarise it in a way that is probabaly open to myriad counter-examples, I think that _nouns_ = worldbuilding, establishing a setting. Once you also get a verb that takes a PC as its object - then you have _situation_. If the verb is very big and the subject noun tends to drop out of sight then you can get RPGing where setting really becomes just colour and backdrop (and doesn't do the work you identified upthread, of providing tools for the players to use in their RPGing). I'm not thinking of a D&D example off-hand - maybe arena-oriented play? - but I think The Dying Earth RPG probably tends towards this, and I would say that Cortex+ Heroic does also, though maybe not quite as much as The Dying Earth.


----------



## Bawylie

I’d include those elements as part of World-building, absolutely. There’s also the things your players show interest in, the stuff their characters like, and the out-of-game signals they send about what they’d be keen on. Those things also inform World building. I take note of these interests and try to incorporate them for the players. Sometimes it’s not about the world itself at all, but a thematic exploration. And sometimes it’s general backdrop stuff that doesn’t have much to do with the adventure at all. And sometimes it’s like the examples you’ve given where the players’ input might affect what’s discovered during play.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> If there's no game world for the PCs to inhabit then when you go to characterize and-or play those PCs you're doing so in a vacuum.  It's the DM's job to describe what the PCs already know, and see now, and learn later; meaning the DM is going to have a game world or setting in mind even if she hasn't made notes on any of it. Having it pre-designed even if just in broad strokes makes the describing so much easier.
> 
> Particularly at the start of the campaign when the players in theory know much less about the game world than their PCs do (canon lawyers for pre-fab settings notwithstanding) the DM has a lot of describing to do and as a side effect of that description is going to drop the PCs into a particular setting be it a steamy jungle, a city based on ancient Athens, a snowy Viking camp, or a pleasant sunny farm village.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> it's much easier to figure out a character's motivations, beliefs, goals, etc. when there's a culture (or cultures) and common history to fit into.  If, say, the setting history shows that our starting town was devastated by a war ten years ago and since rebuilt, that's going to influence my character and what she thinks; and probably influence other characters as well.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> And if there's no pre-designed history then what's the point?  What happened before our PCs became PCs?  What major events shaped their lives?



The player could write all this - in my BW game, the player of the mage PC established that he "came of age" living in a hilltop tower with his older brother (the player emailed a picture of a ruined Indian castle/tower as the model he was working with - in game terms, I suggested it would be in the Abor-Alz) when they were attacked by orcs. It was in trying to call down a mighty storm of lightning that his brother was instead possessed by a demon. The PC mage had to flee, and had spent the next 14 years as a wandering rogue wizard.

Or the group could work it out together (that's how my Cortex+ Heroic game started). Or everyone might read a loose pre0fab setting description and then go from there - that's how my main 4e game started, and it's been the players of particular PCs as much as me who have elaborated on what the Raven Queen is all about, what the empire of Nerath was about, what is at stake in the conflict between gods and primordials, etc.



Lanefan said:


> You'd probably call this railroading, but how else can it work?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But if the starting history shows no such war it's not our place as players to just add it in.  We have no right to, as world design is not in our purview.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> it should be obvious but I'd better mention: the DM sets the event but the player chooses what influence it had on her character, if any



Well, I've given some examples of how else it can work. Of course they're not available if you allocate functions in the way you describe - but one way of thinking about the question in the OP is, _why allocate functions that way_? I'm interested in answers to that question.


----------



## redrick

pemerton said:


> This was the part of your reply that especially stood out to me.
> 
> I don't know if you've read  [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s post just upthread of yours, which I've replied to just upthread of this post. You'll see that I've honed in on a particular episode of play that Nagol describes, that seems like it might be an instance of what you describe in the passage of yours I've quoted. I've asked Nagol some questions about that; if you have any thoughts that are relevant to those questions I've asked, I'd be keen to read them.
> 
> I don't really know what the contemporary standard is. I tend to prepare authors, perhaps locations, and ideas for vignettes, that I think might be interesting to use in the game.




Yes, I read [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s situation upthread. It's a little different from what I'm talking about, primarily because it involves more work on the part of the DM! In Nagol's case, they are describing a situation where a piece of the DM's fiction is acting autonomously (from the players) and, in certain situations, takes actions behind the curtain that have consequences that might pop up in player view later. I certainly like to think about the actions my major NPCs are taking when the PCs aren't looking, but, for practical reasons, it tends to be pretty limited to the scope of immediate adventures and is more about NPCs reacting to the actions of PCs.

In my case, I'm thinking more about some of the static presumptions of a setting. What I am trying to avoid is the feeling of things being _too convenient_, because everything that players encounter has been created/put there off the top of the GM's head and in response to their actions. I want some sense that, for instance, the journal is in the drawer in the bedroom, because that is where the journal is. Not because that is where the PCs looked.

The converse of this is that, without care, things become far too _inconvenient,_ and we wouldn't want that either. I consider that to be one of the balance points that I walk as a DM. A world that feels like it existed before the PCs showed up, but also a world that is able to adapt to the needs of an entertaining session. I'd never want a session where, "Door #1 led to the successful completion of the quest. Door #2 led to a delightful though tangential side mission, which might have gotten you all killed. But you chose door #, which, and I'll show you where I wrote this in my notes, led to an endless series of winding passages and empty rooms where _absolutely nothing will ever happen_. And that's all the time we have for today."


----------



## Nagol

pemerton said:


> How do the players learn this? In my mind, I'm linking this to the Luke Crane comment I sblocked in the OP, and to the role of divination.




The players only learn about the default trajectory if they do nothing to affect it.  Its primary purpose is to make scene-framing on the fly easier.  That and the game system in play has mechanics for a type of divination all PCs can attempt that can gather information up to a week in the future so having a base understanding of how things are likely to unfold without interference can be valuable when the player avail themselves of the option.



> When the "world" is very confined (both in fictional terms - making relevant fictional positioning fairly easy to achieve - and in corresponding mechanical terms, eg the ranges are short enough for Locate Object and other divination effects to work) then there are clear player moves available to learn stuff like this, and therefore use it as a "tool" for their goals.
> 
> But in a much more open-ended world, how do you manage this? Personally, I see this as one of the big challenges in GMing; my own response tends to be to dial back the "worldbuilding" and to generate the content as needed - so knowledge skills, interrogation skill, divination abilities, and the like in my game tend to be devices for forcing GM narration rather than obtaining access to GM notes.




Hmm.  This is harder to answer.  I manage it... because I always have.  One of the tools I use is a campaign project timeline which contains the start, end, and pivotal times of different plots/events.  Those in the past are set.  Those i the future are the current expectation barring player interference.  As time passes, expectations turn into history and may become known to the group.  As the players attempt to influence the world, the expectations may change.  If a question pops for which I do not have a concrete answer, I typically turn to dice to resolve the issue.  I make note of the result (and any new world-building decisions required to determine the probability distribution) and that becomes the game reality.  The players may or may not realize I've used dice for the purpose, but they know the result is now concrete in the game world.



> This bit is very interesting.
> 
> If I rephrase it in terms of play, rather than in in-fiction terms, then it looks like: GM narrates some stuff to players that includes fictional elements with hints of relevance to the players' current concerns with the fiction; the players (correctly, if I've got it right) infer that the GM has in mind some genuine connection beneath/behind those hints, but can't discern them (and don't make the moves, in terms of fictional positioning, that would trigger more narration).




I narrate the scene as the PCs experience it.  Mostly, the stuff I include must need be somewhat relevant -- things the PCs will notice, things the players have indicated they are specifically looking for, or things the PC abilities suggest are incongruous.  The players decide how to react to the situation described, the environment reacts to the PC actions and that back and forth continues until the situation is exhausted (and I frame a new starting situation), the players change the scene (by leaving or explicitly waiting until something new happens), or something untoward happens (like the default trajectory of the situation indicates _something_ should happen).



> The GM then establishes some additional fiction without telling the players ("Harry completes his investigation") and this triggers a change in the fiction accessible to the players for their purposes ("the arson that destroyed potential evidence"). This is the bit I'm especially intrigued by, because it relates back to your earlier remarks about GM force, and fairness; and also to issues of "scope" in the fiction. How did you decide to change the fictional situation in this way, with this (minor?) adverse consequence for the players?




The players heard of the fire and the PCs rushed to the barn.  They considered it a destruction of potential evidence; I think they concluded some conspiracists destroyed the barn to protect themselves and their plot.

In this case, when the situation was being developed, Harry was placed at the scene investigating.  I built an arc for Harry's investigation, pre-rolled his abilities, and worked out where and when his confrontation would take place.  The PCs could have interfered at any point -- by helping Harry, by kicking him off the property until their investigation was complete, by exploring that site themselves when or before Harry does, by inviting Harry to dinner, by giving him a new story to pursue, or any other gambit the players decided to pursue.

The players prioritized their investigation in a way that placed the barn further in the future than Harry's event.  They chose to avoid Harry and minimize their interactions with him (they were trying to be discreet and didn't want to draw the attention of a reporter) so his trajectory continued unchanged.  Their choice had consequence.  In this case, it was a consequence that was unexpected with limited foreshadowing, but not all things that can happen are well known to the people they happen to beforehand.


----------



## Sunseeker

My wife tells me that art is meaning-making.

I see worldbuilding as an art.

So I guess in that context, world-building is giving meaning to your adventure.


----------



## Manbearcat

pemerton said:


> The thread title really says it all. But here's some context to explain why I'm asking that question.
> 
> In classic D&D, _the dungeon_ was a type of puzzle. The players had to map it, by declaring moves (literally) for their PCs. The players, using their PCs as vehicles, had to learn what was in there: this was about inventory - having enough torches, 10' poles, etc - and about game moves too - searching for secret doors, checking ceilings and floors, and so on. And finally, the players had to try and loot it while either avoiding or defeating the monsters guarding the treasures and wandering around the place - this is what the combat mechanics were for.
> 
> The game is something of a cross between a wargame and a complex refereed maze. And *worldbuilding* is all about making the maze. I get that.




That is where I'm going to start but I'm going to say a few more things.  Here are three types of "worldbuilding" (in quotations here because two of them will be cases of pre-built worlds):

*Moldvay Basic *

The creation of a dungeon (coming up with a setting, a theme, and then the map, the puzzles and stocking the whole with everything from treasures to denizens to fauna/furniture) is tightly integrated with the rules.  You've got the movement rules that make specific assumptions about setting premise (it will be dank, dark, and require constant effort to orient and search) which interface with the Exploration phase which interfaces with the map and key (the layout and how its stocked) which interfaces with Wandering Monsters/light sources and other time sensitive resources, which interfaces with Reaction.

The whole of the game's mechanics is tightly (beautifully) integrated with the worldbuilding.  Crane's Torchbearer is inspired by it (therefore shares much of the same procedurally and premise/theme-wise along with its Burning Wheel influence)

*Blades in the Dark*

This is veeeeeeeeeeeery mechanically weighty system and built world (though agile and extraordinarily user friendly at the same time).  You've got a pre-built setting that hooks amazingly deeply into the game's premise (a gang of ruthless scoundrels at the bottom of the power ladder in a city akin to a post-apoc + supernaturally-charged England at the beginning of the 20th century, scratching and clawing against all odds to climb it) both mechanically and in terms of situation framing (conflict-charged off the charts...a powderkeg with a lit fuse).  All of the game's (very many) mechanics for advancement (for both singular PCs and the Gang as an organism) and setbacks are amazingly integrated with each other, with the game's procedure setup (Free Play to develop the intel/plan for the next Score > Score > Downtime/Fallout) and amazingly integrated with the built world (our "worldbuilding" here if only any of us had the time or ability to develop such a setting and system machinery so wedded).
*
D&D 4e and Dogs in the Vineyard*

You have a base setting/cosmology with a conflict-charged premise.  4e has Points of Light or good/civilization on the brink + the Dawn War and all of its fallout.  For Dogs you have a supernaturally charged Wild West that never ways where God's Watchdogs mete out justice and take care of the Faith (therefore the faithful) against the malignance of sin and soul-corrupting influence. These hook directly into the conflicts inherent to each game's premise and individual PC build flags.  For 4e you have Background/Race/Class/Paragon Path/Epic Destiny/Quests for 4e.  For Dogs you have the general Background system which includes Traits ("I used to break horses with my pa" or "I can't see a damn thing without these spectacles on") and Relationships ("My older brother is my hero" or "I see foul sorcery, I kill the man wieldin' it") and the player-authored kicker for an Initiation conflict that will further shape the character.  GM-side you've got the baked-in premise of a conflict-charged setting in both and the procedures for creating and mechanically resolving conflict-charged scenes and evolving the fiction in 4e the Town creation procedures (more abstract, but akin to Moldvay and Torchbearer dungeon creation), the conflict resolution mechanics, and the tight GMing instruction of Vincent Baker (say yes or roll the dice and escalate, escalate, escalate, etc) in Dogs.

Neverwinter and Dark Sun are pre-built settings for 4e that do a great job of doing the work that Duskvol does for Blades in the Dark and showing how all of this stuff should work in concert.



Where worldbuilding can (not does, but certainly is quite vulnerable to it) become degenerate is when (a) it isn't integrated in any functional/coherent way with the game system's machinery/procedures, or (b) there isn't a baked-in, clear, conflict-charged premise that is hooked directly into and hooks PC build flags, or (c) it is a "precious" thing for the GM who, because it is, refuses to "kill their darling" (or allow it to be killed - eg manifestly altered in a fundamental way) because their primary enjoyment is showing off the output of their blood/sweat/tears/talent.  (C) also happens with metaplot.

Note that (c) is irrelevant when you have players who are actually looking for a passive, setting/metaplot-tourism experience (of which there are a great many).  In that case, it is not only not degenerate...its a necessity.  Problems arise when the players aren't looking for a passive, 3-course meal of setting/metaplot tourism but the GM's compromised because of their investment in their built world/metaplot (in themselves and their vision really).


----------



## pemerton

shidaku said:


> My wife tells me that art is meaning-making.
> 
> I see worldbuilding as an art.
> 
> So I guess in that context, world-building is giving meaning to your adventure.



So are the players the audience for the GM's worldbuilding?


----------



## Caliban

pemerton said:


> So are the players the audience for the GM's worldbuilding?




I'm curious - what is your agenda here?  The biased way you are phrasing your questions sounds like you are trying to build a case for something.   

i.e. The term "audience" in this context denotes passivity, rather than players taking an active part in the game.   

Why do you make this assumption about the players?  It's certainly not implied by any of the answers you have received.


----------



## innerdude

Here's my take, @_*pemerton*_ --- 

Interestingly, I think worldbuilding is actually ONLY relevant in the context of _playing a character_, in the sense that you care about the character's motivations, drives, the history that shaped that character to be the way he or she is now. It's only when you come out of the dungeon and start looking around that  it even matters---if you're the type of player that actually wants to  place his or her character into some kind of setting context. 

If you don't care about any of those things, I don't know that worldbuilding is truly all that relevant. And classic "Gygaxian" D&D seems to agree with this. As long as your character/player is head down, delving deep into the dungeon, none of that fiction-y, character backstory context matters much. It's purely about meeting the challenge in front of you. My secondary group has been playing D&D 5 using Curse of Strahd  straight by the book. It's strictly beer and pretzels, puzzles and  combat. And the last time I played with that group, it was possibly the  worst D&D game I've played in my life. No context. No life. No real  explanation for anything. "This is the stuff that's here, you're the  player, go pull those levers because I'm the GM and I put them there."

I've just started playing Assassin's Creed 2 again, since I never managed to finish it the first time around. I think about how much time and energy the developers put into creating the fictional cities that exist in Ezio's world. How much of the fun of Assassin's Creed 2 is tied to the emotional stakes set in the worldbuilding around Ezio's family, the politics of the time, and the "NPCs"? Take away the back story and setting, and it's not much more than a game about climbing buildings and killing people and taking their stuff . . . gee, that sounds familiar . . . .

The real question is, how much backstory is necessary to create high enough emotional stakes to make gameplay interesting? Some people only want the minimum amount possible and no more. Some want considerably more than that. 

The best RPG groups I've ever played in were in settings where the players had an immediate, familiar connection to the world. 

Character only matters when there's a context for the character to matter _in_. Worldbuilding is about creating that context.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> But this clearly isn't true - you can have a game with any or all of those things without the GM writing up some fiction in advance.




Whether you do it in advance or at the table surely it doesn't make a difference about the importance of world building?

To be clear, this is what you claimed was not true.



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> So, given these difference between typical contemporary play and "classic" play, what is world building for?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It gives the game a backdrop, a history, a sense of continuity and consistency and place.
Click to expand...


----------



## Lanefan

Caliban said:


> I'm curious - what is your agenda here?  The biased way you are phrasing your questions sounds like you are trying to build a case for something.
> 
> i.e. The term "audience" in this context denotes passivity, rather than players taking an active part in the game.
> 
> Why do you make this assumption about the players?  It's certainly not implied by any of the answers you have received.




 [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] does the same thing here, a few posts later:



			
				Manbearcat said:
			
		

> Where worldbuilding can (not does, but certainly is quite vulnerable to it) become degenerate is when (a) it isn't integrated in any functional/coherent way with the game system's machinery/procedures, or (b) there isn't a baked-in, clear, conflict-charged premise that is hooked directly into and hooks PC build flags, or (c) it is a "precious" thing for the GM who, because it is, refuses to "kill their darling" (or allow it to be killed - eg manifestly altered in a fundamental way) because their primary enjoyment is showing off the output of their blood/sweat/tears/talent. (C) also happens with metaplot.
> 
> Note that (c) is irrelevant when you have players who are actually looking for a passive, setting/metaplot-tourism experience (of which there are a great many). In that case, it is not only not degenerate...its a necessity. Problems arise when the players aren't looking for a passive, 3-course meal of setting/metaplot tourism but the GM's compromised because of their investment in their built world/metaplot (in themselves and their vision really).



Lots here in these two short paragraphs. 

Worldbuilding does not become degenerate (though I'll ask what you mean by 'degenerate' while I'm here) under either of your clauses a) or b) above.  In fact, it can be (and maybe should be) somewhat neutrally done as far in isolation of these things as possible...unless, of course, you want the entirety of the game world to revolve around the PCs and what they think or do; a rather ludicrous proposition if one wants to maintain any kind of realism and-or believability.

Your clause c) is valid to this extent: once the puck drops the DM has to be aware that her game world and elements within it are at risk from what the PCs might do to them through their actions.

As for your second paragraph...where to begin?

Part of the joy of the game for me as a player during the early-mid parts of a campaign is exploring a new game world to find what's in it.  I don't want to be building it because a) as a player I expect that to have already been done by the DM, and b) because it's not my place as a player to be building the DM's world.  I also somewhat expect the DM will have some stories and-or plots and-or serious twists in mind to run in this world of hers; I'll go along with these until-unless something else in the game world or story catches my/the table's interest, at which point we'll go there instead and the DM will have to react.

What I will be doing along the way is two things: a) probably killing off a series of poor unfortunate PCs that get stuck with having me as their player, and b) giving the most entertaining and (I hope) interesting personalities and characterizations I can to the few of my PCs that survive.  Because that's part of my job as a player: to create characters that can use the stage (i.e. game world/setting) I've been given...and while I'm at it, chew its scenery to the bone. 

You somewhat derisively call this "passive setting/metaplot tourism"; to which I should probably take some slight offense as to me it's simply how the game is played, end of story.  The DM makes the world and entertains us with it, we the players make the characters and entertain the DM with those.

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Caliban said:


> The biased way you are phrasing your questions sounds like you are trying to build a case for something.



Bias?

  [MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION] described world building as art. Presumably, it is the GM's art and the GM's meaning given to the adventure. Art (typically) has an audience. I'm asking if the players are that audience? If the answer is no - eg the audience for worldbuilding is the GM - then how does worldbuiling relate to RPGing at all?

  [MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION] also used an adjective - _your_ - which is ambiguous between singular and plural. _Whose adventure does worldbuilding give meaning to?_ I am imagining that the answer is _the GM's adventure_. If I'm wrong, shidaku can correct me.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> Whether you do it in advance or at the table surely it doesn't make a difference about the importance of world building?



Well, as I intended the term in the OP fiction created at the table is _not_ worldbuilding. Worldbuilding, as I've used it, is establishing a setting, and setting material, in advance of play. ( [MENTION=6776133]Bawylie[/MENTION] used the term in a broader sense not too far upthread. That's fine; I think I got he was saying clearly enough. But [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] was not using it in that broad sense, I don't think, of _any way of establishing the setting_.)



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ... tend to be devices for forcing GM narration rather than obtaining access to GM notes
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And this is what I just don't get: from the player side, what's the difference?  The players/PCs are obtaining access to new information; why does it matter in the slightest on the player side what its metagame source might be?
> 
> Either way, the DM is going to narrate the hopefully-informative results of whatever the PCs have tried to divinate.  Whether from notes or from top-of-mind that narration in theory should be and sound the same
Click to expand...


I don't see any reason to suppose it should sound the same it all.

Think of it this way - preparing a speech is very different from having a conversation. No one would suggest that engaging in conversation is just like writing a speech but in real time!

Likewise in RPGing. A GM who narrates content as part of a conversation with the players about the shared fiction their PCs find themselves inhabiting is doing something very different from a GM who tells the players something that the GM made up all by him-/herself some time earlier.



Lanefan said:


> You've done the work ahead of time thus making it much easier to be consistent and clear with your narrations, and thus during the actual play you can focus on the here and now - action resolution, rules questions, playing NPCs and monsters, stuff like that.



I have doubts about this contrast. A big part of playing a NPC or monster is giving voice to his/her/its personality, personal backstory, motivations, etc. To focus on playing the NPC or monster _is _to focus on establishing those things, and what they mean in the current situation. So I don't see how thinking about those things is any sort of _distraction_ from playing that character.



Lanefan said:


> you see your role in your game as much more of an actual participant - a player - than I do.  You want to share in the unexpected plot twists, and be surprised at how the story goes.  You don't want any spoilers, as it were; and you want your own game world to organically unfold around you just as if you were a player.



Well, this is (more or less) what Dungeonworld means when it says "play to find out". Although the process for the GM is very different for the players, because they occupy different roles in the conversation that makes up the game with different sorts of authority over the shared fiction, over framing, etc.

But that is not an answer to the question "what is worldbuilding for". It's an account of how play proceeds with less, or no, worldbuilding. It's main relevance to this thread is that the answer to the question "what is worldbuilding for" is not _otherwise RPGing can't take place_.



Lanefan said:


> I'm not there to play in my own game (other than via NPCs), I'm there to provide a game* for my players to play in
> 
> <snip>
> 
> In my own game I already know all the spoilers, as such is my place and my job, and I know how the story might go at least for the time being.  I don't know how it *will* go - the PCs can certainly surprise me with what they do, and when that happens I have to react accordingly.  But that reaction is as a neutral arbiter, not as a fellow player.
> 
> * - 'provide a game' includes pre-designing the world (maps, history, cultures), pre-designing and tweaking the rules (mostly homebrew these days) and then providing access to them, coming up with a possible storyline or three, and usually hosting.



OK, but what does it mean to "provide a game - with predesigned world, maps, history, cultures, possible storylines - for my players to play in"?

The language you use, that I've quoted, is metaphor. (Contrast: if you provide a swimming pool for your friends to swim in, that is literal, not metaphorical.) To answer [MENTION=284]Caliban[/MENTION], the main agenda of this thread is to dispense with metaphor and try to get some descriptions of actual social practices, and their rationale.

For instance, "providing history and cultures for your players" presumably means telling them _these sorts of characters are permitted; these other sorts aren't_. It might mean, if a player declares an action "I search the room for a copy of the missing map", replying "You find nothing" without rolling the dice (or perhaps pretending to make a check but in fact stipulating the answer regardless of the roll), because you have written down, in advance, the contents of the room and they don't include a map.

What is that sort of stuff for?


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> Well, as I intended the term in the OP fiction created at the table is _not_ worldbuilding. Worldbuilding, as I've used it, is establishing a setting, and setting material, in advance of play.




I don't agree with that assessment of the word, mostly because I as DM have had to 'world build' on the spot during play given that players ask for information I might not have prepared or even thought about regarding the setting. So for me worldbuilding is a continuous process.


----------



## pemerton

innerdude said:


> Interestingly, I think worldbuilding is actually ONLY relevant in the context of _playing a character_, in the sense that you care about the character's motivations, drives, the history that shaped that character to be the way he or she is now. It's only when you come out of the dungeon and start looking around that  it even matters---if you're the type of player that actually wants to  place his or her character into some kind of setting context.
> 
> If you don't care about any of those things, I don't know that worldbuilding is truly all that relevant. And classic "Gygaxian" D&D seems to agree with this. As long as your character/player is head down, delving deep into the dungeon, none of that fiction-y, character backstory context matters much.



Well, I'm including writing up the dungeon as an instance of worldbuilding. It's part of the (imaginary) world, after all, and is "built" by the GM. 



innerdude said:


> The real question is, how much backstory is necessary to create high enough emotional stakes to make gameplay interesting?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Character only matters when there's a context for the character to matter _in_. Worldbuilding is about creating that context.



The answer to the first question is surely "it depends"..

I've played interesting sessions of Marvel Heroic RP and Cortex+ Fantasy Hack where the backstory was pretty basic. It's all about _these characters_, _here and now_, _doing this thing_ eg Nightcrawler, Ice Man and War Machine go out to a bar in DC, and chat up some women who happen (it turns out) to be the B.A.D. Girls trying to extract Stark intelligence from Rhodey; in the ensuing action (mostly emotional/mental conflict) Nightcrawler seduces one of them, while War Machine leaves another hanging from the top of the Washington Monument until Bobby builds some ice steps so she can get down - and then, at the dramatic moment when everyone coalesces at the Smithsonian to try and steal the Stark shuttle on display, rides in on an ice slide and carries her off into the sunset.

It's not exactly great literature, even by the standards of Marvel; the characters are shallow and broad-brush in their depictions, and the backstory is the barest of geographic and established character tropes (eg Rhodes works for Stark Industries, and evil people want to steal Stark's clever inventions). But it was fun enough as a RPG session.

I would think of other campaigns that I run as having a bit more depth, but even then the emotional stakes can be established by one or two key details: thinking back 20+ years ago to a Rolemaster game, one of the players established (at PC creation) that his wizard character was from a little village outside Greyhawk (Five Oaks) and had been tutored by a powerful mage who was on the run from enemies and lived in a hollow tree outside the village. That mentor, and his tree, were the focus of a number of episodes of play (the PCs seeking help; the mentor disappearing; etc - all the stuff you'd expect) - but it didn't depend on knowing who the mentor's enemies were, let alone mapping out that hollow tree.

I don't know if you disagree with any of the above - maybe you think it's an elaboration of your point? I'd be interested to learn. I think it does put some pressure on your claim about context being necessary for a character to matter. I don't think that has to be true. And I think people can very quickly identify with a character if that character is portrayed with a degree of vividness (in RPGing, that can mean tapping into recognised and enjoyable tropes rather than great acting, obviously), even if the context is pretty thin, and suggested mostly by the portrayal of the character.

That's not to say there's anything wrong with rich context. But I don't think it's essential.

When there is context underpinning a character, how do you see participant roles relating to that? Eg if the character is meant to matter to X, and the worldbuilding is done by Y, is that a problem? Or not?


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> I don't agree with that assessment of the word, mostly because I as DM have had to 'world build' on the spot during play given that players ask for information I might not have prepared or even thought about regarding the setting. So for me worldbuilding is a continuous process.



OK, but (if you want to) you can still answer the question I asked in the OP. Just rephrase it as "Many GMs establish significant amounts of setting information in advance of play. What is that for?"


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> OK, but (if you want to) you can still answer the question I asked in the OP. Just rephrase it as "Many GMs establish significant amounts of setting information in advance of play. What is that for?"




Besides all the myriad of other reasons provided by posters above, *the table doesn't waste precious play time on worldbuilding*.

For example, if I as DM establish a map, the setting calendar, the seasons, where various settlements lie on a map, the general terrain and distance between these settlements, then it will be easy to work out the length of time required to travel from one settlement to another when a player asks me. I could then work out the date of arrival and what that would mean, the number of random encounters I could perhaps roll for and the weather patterns and how that would affect travel - instead of trying to work this all out at the table wasting precious real time. 
Add a little backstory and some setting lore to the above details and you have B10, one of your favourite modules (as you have stated many times on this forum).

Now with your roleplaying style method none of that may really be important, so nothing may need to be pre-established. Instead you create a skill challenge for the party's journey.
Failure in the skill challenge might mean the party experienced bad weather, was waylaid by a goblin scouting party, fatigue set in due to disturbed sleep, horse lost a shoe or twisted its ankle, the party got lost, or did not stop the BBEG ritual in time...etc

And that is fine. 

*EDIT: *Slightly off-topic, I have to ask why you like B10 so much given your roleplaying style, if you don't necessarily use the established story and you 'ignore' pretty much all the other worldbuilding information provided in the module in favour of the skill challenge mechanic?
Speaking for myself, I think the module is great specifically for the world-building information provided.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I don't see any reason to suppose it should sound the same it all.
> 
> Think of it this way - preparing a speech is very different from having a conversation. No one would suggest that engaging in conversation is just like writing a speech but in real time!
> 
> Likewise in RPGing. A GM who narrates content as part of a conversation with the players about the shared fiction their PCs find themselves inhabiting is doing something very different from a GM who tells the players something that the GM made up all by him-/herself some time earlier.



Yet to the players it should sound the same.  Rarely if ever does a DM read directly from prepared notes - about the only times I ever see it happen are when a canned module tells the DM to read some exposition.

Boxed descriptions in a canned module are different: the DM should use those where provided to ensure all the relevant info comes across...and then describe areas that don't have boxed descriptions (e.g. from a homebrew module) using much the same terminology and presentation.



> I have doubts about this contrast. A big part of playing a NPC or monster is giving voice to his/her/its personality, personal backstory, motivations, etc. To focus on playing the NPC or monster _is _to focus on establishing those things, and what they mean in the current situation. So I don't see how thinking about those things is any sort of _distraction_ from playing that character.



Focusing on the NPC's stuff is easier if I don't also have to worry about what the dimensions are of the rooms adjacent that haven't been explored yet and whether they'll fit together properly; I have a map for that.



> Well, this is (more or less) what Dungeonworld means when it says "play to find out".



Fine and excellent advice for the players in any RPG - but not for the GM.  The GM shouldn't be playing to find out (if that's her goal she should become a player and let someone else GM), the GM should be providing the stage and scene and background and world in which the players can play to find out.



> But that is not an answer to the question "what is worldbuilding for". It's an account of how play proceeds with less, or no, worldbuilding. It's main relevance to this thread is that the answer to the question "what is worldbuilding for" is not _otherwise RPGing can't take place_.



RPGing can take place, but on a blank stage with no established history or anything else.



> OK, but what does it mean to "provide a game - with predesigned world, maps, history, cultures, possible storylines - for my players to play in"?
> 
> The language you use, that I've quoted, is metaphor. (Contrast: if you provide a swimming pool for your friends to swim in, that is literal, not metaphorical.)



No, it's also literal.  The maps, the history write-ups, the culture write-ups, the pantheons - provided you accept something that's online as being real then they're all every bit as real as that swimming pool.  Failing that, all I'd need to do is print 'em all out on to real paper to make 'em real.


> To answer [MENTION=284]Caliban[/MENTION], the main agenda of this thread is to dispense with metaphor and try to get some descriptions of actual social practices, and their rationale.
> 
> For instance, "providing history and cultures for your players" presumably means telling them _these sorts of characters are permitted; these other sorts aren't_.



Acceptable DM practice, though more a result of worldbuilding than an integral part of it.



> It might mean, if a player declares an action "I search the room for a copy of the missing map", replying "You find nothing" without rolling the dice (or perhaps pretending to make a check but in fact stipulating the answer regardless of the roll), because you have written down, in advance, the contents of the room and they don't include a map.
> 
> What is that sort of stuff for?



Because I've already neutrally determined in advance that the map is somewhere else.  I know where it is, and I know that in this case there's ultimately only two possible outcomes: they'll sooner or later find it, or they won't.  If they find it, great: they can take it back to their sponsor and get paid for it, or they can try following it on their own, or whatever.  If they don't find it, great: they can return to their sponsor empty-handed, or they can blow him off and go elsewhere, or they can try making a fake map, or whatever.

Somebody declaring they're searching for a given thing and banging off a natural 20 on a search check doesn't mean squat if that given thing isn't there to find.  Example: a party's exploring an old castle looking for the Crown of Axenos, which was last rumoured - correctly, as it turns out - to be here somewhere.  I-as-DM have mapped out and populated the castle with a variety of monsters and hazards, and I've put the Crown behind a heavily-trapped secret door off an otherwise innocuous chamber in the first level below ground (it was hidden there by the last occupants of this place, now dead these several decades).  When the party's upstairs in the great hall, however, they can search for the Crown all they like - it ain't there, and so they're not going to find it no matter what they try or how well they roll.

This is simple realism - you can't find what's not there.  This idea of "say yes or roll the dice" kicks this to the curb, as now all they need to do in a game-mechanics sense is keep rolling (there's obviously doubt involved, so roll the dice) until they hit a 20 and the Crown will appear regardless of where they are as long as they're somewhere in or near the castle.  I find this ridiculous.

Lan-"what I'm not sure of with 'say yes or roll the dice' is whether it means the DM is afraid of just saying flat 'no' or the players are unprepared or unwilling to hear it"-efan


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> Well, I'm including writing up the dungeon as an instance of worldbuilding. It's part of the (imaginary) world, after all, and is "built" by the GM.
> 
> The answer to the first question is surely "it depends"..
> 
> I've played interesting sessions of Marvel Heroic RP and Cortex+ Fantasy Hack where the backstory was pretty basic. It's all about _these characters_, _here and now_, _doing this thing_ eg Nightcrawler, Ice Man and War Machine go out to a bar in DC, and chat up some women who happen (it turns out) to be the B.A.D. Girls trying to extract Stark intelligence from Rhodey; in the ensuing action (mostly emotional/mental conflict) Nightcrawler seduces one of them, while War Machine leaves another hanging from the top of the Washington Monument until Bobby builds some ice steps so she can get down - and then, at the dramatic moment when everyone coalesces at the Smithsonian to try and steal the Stark shuttle on display, rides in on an ice slide and carries her off into the sunset.
> 
> It's not exactly great literature, even by the standards of Marvel; the characters are shallow and broad-brush in their depictions, and the backstory is the barest of geographic and established character tropes (eg Rhodes works for Stark Industries, and evil people want to steal Stark's clever inventions). But it was fun enough as a RPG session.
> 
> I would think of other campaigns that I run as having a bit more depth, but even then the emotional stakes can be established by one or two key details: thinking back 20+ years ago to a Rolemaster game, one of the players established (at PC creation) that his wizard character was from a little village outside Greyhawk (Five Oaks) and had been tutored by a powerful mage who was on the run from enemies and lived in a hollow tree outside the village. That mentor, and his tree, were the focus of a number of episodes of play (the PCs seeking help; the mentor disappearing; etc - all the stuff you'd expect) - but it didn't depend on knowing who the mentor's enemies were, let alone mapping out that hollow tree.
> 
> I don't know if you disagree with any of the above - maybe you think it's an elaboration of your point? I'd be interested to learn. I think it does put some pressure on your claim about context being necessary for a character to matter. I don't think that has to be true. And I think people can very quickly identify with a character if that character is portrayed with a degree of vividness (in RPGing, that can mean tapping into recognised and enjoyable tropes rather than great acting, obviously), even if the context is pretty thin, and suggested mostly by the portrayal of the character.
> 
> That's not to say there's anything wrong with rich context. But I don't think it's essential.
> 
> When there is context underpinning a character, how do you see participant roles relating to that? Eg if the character is meant to matter to X, and the worldbuilding is done by Y, is that a problem? Or not?



I may get back to answer your questions, but for know I want to point out a massive hole in your theory:  your Marvel game example had a immense amount of worldbuilding, not a little.  You leveraged the entire ouevre of Marvel, which, in turn, leverages the real world.  You had Stark, B,A,D,, Washington DC, the Washington monument, the Smithsonian, bars, streets, buildings, a cast reservoir of bystanders, etc, all as predefined and established pays off ther fiction.  The world you actually played in had almost everything predefined and leveragable by both the GM and the players.

Your second example ignores that Greyhawk was used as a world and only focuses on the tree created by a player.  Sure, the tree is important, but you already leveraged the vast work and world of Greyhawk before the tree was even introduced, yet you seem to dismiss this act of worldbuilding as trivial.  It is not.


----------



## Manbearcat

@_*Lanefan*_

Don’t have a ton of time so I’ll keep this as brief as possible and hopefully it conveys what I’m getting at.

Let us say you have a table of 4 players to play a game.  You ask them what they signed up for. 

2 say something like:

“I like to use strategy and teamwork to overcome the obstacles of the game world.”

Another says something like:

“Yeah, me too and I like to see where the story goes as we overcome those obstacles and make choices that we care about.”

The last player says something like:

“Yeah, that all sounds good.  Whatever.”

Let us say that their wishes are a very good representation for what the game says on the tin.  Now consider the following:

Travel through a hex of N terrain is supposed to take X Exploration Interval per mile travelled.  One of the first 2 has a rationed ability (maybe once per day) to facilitate halving that Exploration Interval X and also allows the group information/resources Y and to avoid encounters of the Z variety during that interval. 

But the GM either (a) has scaled their hexes nebulously rather than precisely (encoding ad-hoc ruling which allows for fudging for or against the player) or (b) has scaled their hexes really disproportionately (which renders null the player’s decision-point regarding distance/time and game mechanics completely).

This is because the GM has prioritized all of this other stuff in their worldbuilding and either didn’t have the time or inclination to have their world interface properly with game mechanics or (worse still for these players), doing so would disallow the GM to make rulings which would allow them to introduce content that they, themselves, are interested in.  The player thought they would have been able to aid the group by circumventing both time and an encounter due to deploying this resource.  Nope, they didn’t cross anywhere near as much as they all thought and now they have to camp in hostile areas because of it (which is basically a block by the GM to stall or to introduce content that the GM is interested in playing out at the table).  This player specifically, and all the players generally, now know that they can’t rely on precise information from the GM/map to make Exploration decisions (which they signed up for) so subsequent decision-points are going to involve a proportionate measure of insecurity and dissatisfaction.

So the structure of worldbuillding for both the game and the players assumes one thing…but the GM’s worldbuilding methodology and prioritization _degenerates_ into having an entirely different quality that facilitates the GM’s ends and negatively impacts the players’/game’s expectations.


----------



## Caliban

pemerton said:


> Bias?




Yup.  Bias.  



> [MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION] described world building as art. Presumably, it is the GM's art and the GM's meaning given to the adventure. Art (typically) has an audience. I'm asking if the players are that audience? If the answer is no - eg the audience for worldbuilding is the GM - then how does worldbuiling relate to RPGing at all?
> 
> [MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION] also used an adjective - _your_ - which is ambiguous between singular and plural. _Whose adventure does worldbuilding give meaning to?_ I am imagining that the answer is _the GM's adventure_. If I'm wrong, shidaku can correct me.




And I'm getting the impression from your posts that you think this is somehow a bad thing.  It sounds like you think GM's shouldn't engage in "worldbuilding".


----------



## darkbard

Lanefan said:


> The GM shouldn't be playing to find out (if that's her goal she should become a player and let someone else GM), the GM should be providing the stage and scene and background and world in which the players can play to find out.




By now I think anyone who has followed any thread in which you've participated over the last year or two (at least) is quite clear on how you feel about this. 

But why you continue to try to shout down those who insist other possibilities exist, indeed that whole RPG systems exist _precisely so that the GM can play to find out along with the PCs_, and that attempting to play in this style is "doing it wrong" is completely beyond me!

Got it: not for you. But please stop insisting that those who feel otherwise are heretics to be castigated.


----------



## Sunseeker

pemerton said:


> Bias?
> 
> [MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION] described world building as art. Presumably, it is the GM's art and the GM's meaning given to the adventure. Art (typically) has an audience. I'm asking if the players are that audience? If the answer is no - eg the audience for worldbuilding is the GM - then how does worldbuiling relate to RPGing at all?
> 
> [MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION] also used an adjective - _your_ - which is ambiguous between singular and plural. _Whose adventure does worldbuilding give meaning to?_ I am imagining that the answer is _the GM's adventure_. If I'm wrong, shidaku can correct me.




The audience would be the players yes.  And the "adventure" refers to both what the audience (players) partake of, and what is available within the game.  Like art, not all outcomes will be the same.


----------



## MarkB

pemerton said:


> For instance, "providing history and cultures for your players" presumably means telling them _these sorts of characters are permitted; these other sorts aren't_. It might mean, if a player declares an action "I search the room for a copy of the missing map", replying "You find nothing" without rolling the dice (or perhaps pretending to make a check but in fact stipulating the answer regardless of the roll), because you have written down, in advance, the contents of the room and they don't include a map.
> 
> What is that sort of stuff for?



Well, for one thing, it can make players' choices feel meaningful, and reward them for smart play. If you already know where the NPC has hidden his map, and the PCs use deduction based upon what you've told them of him and his residence to narrow it down to the most likely location, they'll gain a sense of achievement if their deduction is correct.

If finding the map is basically just a matter of searching each room in turn until the DM's "is the map hidden here?" roll hits a high enough total, then they're basically just playing a slot machine and hoping they'll hit the jackpot before they run out of tokens (in this case, rooms). Their choices don't matter, because those choices didn't dictate the outcome.


----------



## redrick

If I were going to play a game where 90% of worldbuilding was handled collaboratively with the players, I would rather do that in the context of a specific game, preferably with mechanics and guidance on how to handle that collaboration, particularly with regards to conflict between players on how the world should look. "Classic" RPGs handle this conflict with clearly defined purviews for the different participants. (As a player, I and I alone control my PC, and you, the DM, control the world and and its not my place to tell you how many bars there are in Baldur's Gate.) Dramatically shifting the responsibilities of worldbuilding could be cool, but it requires a big shift in expectations. If the experiment were a success, I could see bringing those techniques back into a more traditional RPG, but I wouldn't want to start there.


----------



## innerdude

Ovinomancer said:


> I may get back to answer your questions, but for now I want to point out a massive hole in your theory:  your Marvel game example had an immense amount of worldbuilding, not a little.  You leveraged the entire ouevre of Marvel, which, in turn, leverages the real world.  You had Stark, B,A,D,, Washington DC, the Washington monument, the Smithsonian, bars, streets, buildings, a cast reservoir of bystanders, etc, all as predefined and established pays off ther fiction.  The world you actually played in had almost everything predefined and leveragable by both the GM and the players.
> 
> Your second example ignores that Greyhawk was used as a world and only focuses on the tree created by a player.  Sure, the tree is important, but you already leveraged the vast work and world of Greyhawk before the tree was even introduced, yet you seem to dismiss this act of worldbuilding as trivial.  It is not.




I was going to comment on exactly this. 

Be careful, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] , not to mistake "world building" as "just the stuff I, the GM, have to make up in my head." One of the powerful effects of using known settings is that you can sidestep so much of the need to explain to players just what the world is and what lives within it contextually. They already know.

Many settings use real-world cultural analogues for this reason exactly---if I want the players to be immersed in a place that's highly compatible with 18th century France, I'm going to say, "picture 18th century France," and the players immediately _get it_. It's powdered wigs and fighting with rapiers and muskets, with orchestral string music playing at the royal ball. I don't have to "worldbuild" any of that context/milieu, it's already there. 

In my experience, the best RPGs I've played in have leveraged this heavily, because as [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] mentions, doing this creates instantly accessible cues for the players without the GM having to do a ton of work. It's much easier for players to "plug in" to the world and its basic expectations.


----------



## Aenghus

I see world-building in a variety of contexts, including a bunch of non-RPG contexts. Model villages, towns, cities by themselves or as part of a diorama. Fictional places where the peoples, cultures, politics, architecture etc may be explored in a variety of detail levels. One element of fantasy and science fiction stories is the world-building. Then there's the world -building in RPGs, both deliberately written setting material and the snowball effect of successful products for a setting that seize the customers interest, that may influence and change future products in that setting.

After all, there's more than one method of world-building. From an abstract point of view, we have top down development, where the overarching themes and conflicts within the world are detailed, countries and peoples, and then the creator fills in details - cities, towns, villages etc, while ideally being consistent with the established background and major plots.

But there's also the bottom-up method, where you start small, with one dungeon, or settlement and detail that, probably with the agreement or understanding that the players will keep their PCs in that small setting at the start. The idea is that slowly the detailed world expands, in a relatively organic way.

I suspect many people use a hybrid approach, where they have some idea of the overall world, but prioritise detailing the elements relevant to the current game. It's definitely normal to have some sort of world map and synopsis history at a minimum.

The detail level and and degree of zoom in can vary a lot. Few people would expect every single peasant in a setting to be detailed, for instance, but some would expect details on the heads of major factions in a setting, while still others might expect the names of a number of npcs at the top of each faction and some notes on internal politics. 

Consistency is another spectrum, IMO I've seen DMs care about this a lot more than players on average, and not always in a rational way. I've seen more than one referee tantrum when players don't appreciate the setting, logical fallacies are exposed in their world-building, or the players actively try to vandalise the setting.

Abstract world-building can be a goal unto itself, and may not need players. When there are players the referee need to balance the jollies they get from world-building and the needs of the players, who on average will be less invested in that world-building, sometimes a lot less.

IMO in prepared, high detail worlds, the players ideally will enjoy exploration of the intricacies of the setting, and the high detail helps ensure that there are discoveries to make and information to impart.

Some players feel claustrophobic about high-detail settings, whether it's because they have their own plans which the setting details can invalidate or make implausible, or just because they get in the way of their game style eg roleplay-heavy, beer & pretzels, hack and slack etc etc.


----------



## Grog-Orcman01

*Mythipalagia*

Hey guys, this is a really cool forum, me and my team are working on a really cool world known as mythipalagia. It’s a really great fantasy world that we plan to work on for a long time. If anyone has any ideas for us, we have a subreddit that you can comment in and give us suggestions, it would really help, and I’m sure that you’ll like our fantasy world. Here’s the link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Mythipalagia/


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> The thread title really says it all. But here's some context to explain why I'm asking that question.
> 
> In classic D&D, _the dungeon_ was a type of puzzle. The players had to map it, by declaring moves (literally) for their PCs. The players, using their PCs as vehicles, had to learn what was in there: this was about inventory - having enough torches, 10' poles, etc - and about game moves too - searching for secret doors, checking ceilings and floors, and so on. And finally, the players had to try and loot it while either avoiding or defeating the monsters guarding the treasures and wandering around the place - this is what the combat mechanics were for.
> 
> The game is something of a cross between a wargame and a complex refereed maze. And *worldbuilding* is all about making the maze. I get that.
> 
> But most contemporary D&D isn't played in the spirit of classic D&D: the players aren't trying to map a maze; when it comes to searching, perception and the like there is often an emphasis on PC skills (perception checks) rather than player game moves; there is no clear win condition like there used to be (ie getting the gold and thereby accruing XP).
> 
> In the classic game, alignment (and related aspects of character motivation) become components in, and establish the parameters of, the puzzle: if I find a prisoner in the dungeon, should I be rescuing her/him (after all, my PC is lawful and so I might suffer a GM-imposed penalty if I leave a helpless person behind)? Or is s/he really a succubus or medusa in disguise, trying to take advantage of my lawful foibles? This is one reason why divination items like wands of enemy detection, ESP medallions and the like are so prominent in classic D&D - they're "game components" which, once obtained, allow a clever player to make better moves and so increase his/her chance of winning the game. And their function relies upon the GM having already written the dungeon, and having already decided what the truth is about the prisoner.
> 
> But in most contemporary play, character motivations (and alignment etc) aren't treated purely instrumentally in that waym as puzzle components and parameters. I'm expected to develop my character, and to care about his/her motivations, for their own sake. This is part of the standard picture of what it is to be a good RPGer.
> 
> So, given these difference between typical contemporary play and "classic" play, what is world building for?
> 
> And here's a final thought, in spoiler blocksbecause it's a little bit tangential:[sblock]In this blog post, Luke Crane has interesting (and very enthusiastic) things to say about playing Moldvay Basic. He also asserts that "the beautiful economy of Moldvay's basic rules are rapidly undermined by the poorly implemented ideas of the Expert set." I think at least part of what he has in mind there is that Expert-style wilderness adventuring doesn't establish the same clear framework for play. There is no clear maze, and so no clear parameters for establishing puzzles to solve in avoiding or defeating the monsters while getting the gold.
> 
> I see this contrast, between Basic and Expert - dungeon crawling compared to wilderness exploration - as raising the same question as this thread: what is world building _for_ once we're no longer playing a dungeon crawling, puzzle-solving game?[/sblock]




You differentiate between a dungeon puzzle and non-dungeon puzzle. You seem to be ok or at least understand the need to 'world building' a dungeon but not world-building beyond that? Why is that?

The intrigue of a faction filled-city with a who-done-it theme is not a puzzle-solving game?

Using an old map to journey through the dangerous Altan Tepes mountains is not similar enough to you to dungeon crawling (but on a much larger scale)?

Rightly you say alignment is built into the puzzle of the AD&D dungeon game, but you seemingly dismiss it if one is slaughtering/torturing dryads in a quest to find the Tree of Life? Do you assume, for most tables, there will be no consequences in the latter example?  

Players are not necessarily mapping a maze in a non-dungeon game, but they are establishing connections/relationships between themselves and others, discovering how widespread the evil organisation is, exploring an underwater lake, or traversing the open seas searching for that elusive island...etc

With regards to player moves - 
Old School: I search for secret doors by doing x? Roll a Die
5e DMG page 236-237 under the heading The Middle Path


			
				DMG said:
			
		

> Many DMs find that using a combination of the two approaches works best....(snip)...you can encourage a player to strike a balance between relying on their bonuses and abilities and paying attention to the game and immersing themselves in the world.




As you can see Old School style of play is not all together removed. It is actually listed as one of the options (Ignoring the Dice) along with the most preferred style, The Middle Path.

As for dungeon inventory you listed the 10 foot pole and torches. 
Wilderness/urban inventory includes horses and 5e tools (disguise kit, gaming sets, navigators tools, healers kit, vehicles). The equipment list didn't suddenly disappear after Basic.

Sure gaming styles have evolved, but worldbuilding is important now as it was then (dungeon or no dungeon), whether you establish it before or during play.


----------



## billd91

Lanefan said:


> I'm not quite sure you do.
> 
> Worldbuilding is about making the universe and world and kingdom in which the maze is located; and about making the history of how these things (and maybe the maze, too) came to be what they are, and about making the cultures and peoples and creatures and climates and terrain that a PC encounters en route to the maze.
> 
> By the time you get down to designing the dungeon maze itself you've already done 99% of the work. (or, if using a pre-fab setting e.g. Greyhawk, had 99% of it done for you)




I think it depends on where you start. You could certainly start with a dungeon without the rest of the world. As you developed that, you'd be engaging in world building - just at a very specific end of it. Does it include a dragon in it? Then you've established that dragons are in the world. Gargoyles? Then you've established gargoyles are part of the world. It may be a very sketchy build to the world, but it's a build - everything added is now part of the built world. 

It's mainly a question of which direction the build is happening - is a comprehensive top-down build, or piecemeal bottom-up build? Both can be worldbuilding, just in different style and scope.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> You differentiate between a dungeon puzzle and non-dungeon puzzle. You seem to be ok or at least understand the need to 'world building' a dungeon but not world-building beyond that? Why is that?
> 
> The intrigue of a faction filled-city with a who-done-it theme is not a puzzle-solving game?



Well, I offered some reasons for thinking they might be different, and tried to bring these out further in the discussion with [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION].

In a dungeon, the parameters of the puzzle are very confined. There is a maze. The maze has "nodes" (rooms) whose contents are largely static until the players interact with them (in the fiction, this means opening doors, dealing with inhabitants, taking loot, etc). This means that players can solve the puzzle over time by first scouting and divining; then raiding; using different equipment load-outs, spell load-outs, etc for each stage. (Gygax gives detailed advice about this in the final section of his PHB before the appendices.)

Once the setting changes to something like a wilderness or a city, the parameters change dramatically if the setting is going to be even remotely verisimilitudinous. So techniques that worked in the dungeon context - obtaining information by way of sheer fictional positioning and free roleplay ("We open the door and look in" "We lift the lid of the chest" "How many goblins can we see through the peephole?") - become far less feasible. The players become far more dependent on the GM to dispense information (eg in the form of rumours; encounters and interactions with various city inhabitants; etc). Call of Cthulhu adventures, for instance, aren't puzzle-solving like classic D&D. They're much closer to the GM telling the players a story. (Which isn't necessarily a bad thing - I quite enjoy CoC one-shots with a good GM - but it's a different thing.)



Sadras said:


> Using an old map to journey through the dangerous Altan Tepes mountains is not similar enough to you to dungeon crawling (but on a much larger scale)?



Well, the point of the thread is (in part) to ask whether it is? If you think it is, tell me about it!

I find it a bit hard to imagine how it would work - it _seems_ like the GM would map the mountains, then draw the "old map", then arrange for the PCs to find the old map, and then the players would delcare (as actions) that they follow the map - but maybe that's not what you have in mind. Eg maybe the map is the puzzle, and once it's been deciphered the actual journey through the mountains is a matter of a minute or two of narration.


----------



## pemerton

Aenghus said:


> I see world-building in a variety of contexts, including a bunch of non-RPG contexts. Model villages, towns, cities by themselves or as part of a diorama. Fictional places where the peoples, cultures, politics, architecture etc may be explored in a variety of detail levels. One element of fantasy and science fiction stories is the world-building.



These are extremely different things.

A model railroad is a physical artefact. I can "explore" it by looking at it, noticing the intricacies of the track network, seeing if there are configurations of signals and vehicle movements that will engender collisions, etc.

But a fantasy or sci-fi story is not a physical artefact (the book itself is, obviously, but the story is not the book - it's the abstract object "encoded" by the words which are physically expressed by the type in the book). And I can't "explore" it other than by reading it, or having it read to me.

In RPGing, the players don't (generally) just sit down and read a book (be it a novel, or a fictional encyclopedia) written by the GM. There is a back-and-forth of conversation, and at certain points the GM tells the players stuff about the setting. In many games, some of that stuff is read by the GM from notes (or recited from memory; that difference isn't important at present, I don't think).

Also, in many circumstances, when the players canvass or declare actions for their PCs, the GM will adjudicate by reference to those same notes  - eg "We go to the shop to ask that guy we met there yesterday" "Sorry, when you get there you see the shop has been burned down" - the GM doesn't decied the shop has been burned down as an outcome of the action resolution (eg the player failed a "Talk to contact in shop" test) but rather has notes that say that, on such-and-such a day, or triggered by such-and-such an event, the shop will burn down. 

That is an example of the GM using the fiction that s/he has prepared in advance to determine the outcome of a player action declaration.

In classic D&D, where the fiction in quetion is the dungeon map and key, these sorts of events give the players the information they need to help solve the puzzle ("I look behind the tapestry to see if there is a secret door there" - the GM consults notes, reples (with no check) "No, there's not"). But what do they do in non-puzzle solving play? Or in play in which the "puzzle" is not, in practical terms, solvable by the players.

(For more on that last point, see my reply just upthread to [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION].)


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## pemerton

Caliban said:


> Yup.  Bias.
> 
> And I'm getting the impression from your posts that you think this is somehow a bad thing.  It sounds like you think GM's shouldn't engage in "worldbuilding".



Well, shidaku seemed to get the point of my post - thanks shidaku!



shidaku said:


> The audience would be the players yes.  And the "adventure" refers to both what the audience (players) partake of, and what is available within the game.  Like art, not all outcomes will be the same.



Can you elaborate on this?

Here's a way that I'm thinking about it, but it may not be the same as you:

If I have to model the RPG session to art, I'm thinking of it as somewhere between an AV installation and a happening. So the audience's role in observing/experiencing the artwork is also, in some fashion, constitutive of the art event itself. Linking that to worldbuiling, how do you see the audience/player role changing the artwork itself (ie the built world?)



MarkB said:


> Well, for one thing, it can make players' choices feel meaningful, and reward them for smart play. If you already know where the NPC has hidden his map, and the PCs use deduction based upon what you've told them of him and his residence to narrow it down to the most likely location, they'll gain a sense of achievement if their deduction is correct.
> 
> If finding the map is basically just a matter of searching each room in turn until the DM's "is the map hidden here?" roll hits a high enough total, then they're basically just playing a slot machine and hoping they'll hit the jackpot before they run out of tokens (in this case, rooms). Their choices don't matter, because those choices didn't dictate the outcome.



When I started reading your post, I thought you were using "meaningful in a similar way to shidaku - but then you go on to talk about "smart play", which seems to be what I called "puzzle solving" in the OP.

In my posts upthread of this one, I've explained a bit my thoughts on the challenges of running a puzzle game outside the context of a dungeon. Any thoughts on that would be very welcome!

(Btw way, I don't know of any RPG that works by way of the players (via their PCs) "searching each room in turn until the DM's "is the map hidden here?" roll hits a high enough total" - do you have an example in mind?)


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## billd91

pemerton said:


> In classic D&D, where the fiction in quetion is the dungeon map and key, these sorts of events give the players the information they need to help solve the puzzle ("I look behind the tapestry to see if there is a secret door there" - the GM consults notes, reples (with no check) "No, there's not"). But what do they do in non-puzzle solving play? Or in play in which the "puzzle" is not, in practical terms, solvable by the players.




In many ways, they do the same thing, it’s just the puzzle is a little different, less constrictive, and possibly more complex. Instead of a relatively simple puzzle of doping out the best way to maximize treasure within a single dungeon, they might be working on visiting all of the adventuring sites in the region, foiling the impending invasion of the orcsish legion, stopping the predation of a wicked dragon, or just visiting interesting places. I don’t see those as unsolvable, but then I don’t really buy into describing RPG gaming, even limited to dungeon crawls, as puzzles to solve. Unless the puzzle is figuring out how to have fun pretending to be a halfling Paladin or half-orc summoner.


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## pemerton

redrick said:


> If I were going to play a game where 90% of worldbuilding was handled collaboratively with the players, I would rather do that in the context of a specific game, preferably with mechanics and guidance on how to handle that collaboration, particularly with regards to conflict between players on how the world should look. "Classic" RPGs handle this conflict with clearly defined purviews for the different participants. (As a player, I and I alone control my PC, and you, the DM, control the world and and its not my place to tell you how many bars there are in Baldur's Gate.)



I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "handling worldbuilding collaboratively with the players".

I don't know of any game in which the player is simply authorised to tell the GM how many bars there are in Baldur's Gate, but part of the context for this is a lack of context for the suggestion ie I'm not able to think of a context in which action declaration by a player for his/her PCs would entail determining how many bars there are in Baldur's Gate (eg if, in the game, there is a trivia contest on, it seems unlikely that the actual answer to the question would matter, and so it seems unlikely that anything would be at stake in the player rather than the GM deciding on what that number is.) 

I do know, though, of a game where the player can delcare a Bars-wise check for his/her PC to find a particular bar, or to recall the famous bars of Baldur's Gate - if the check succeeds, the players declaration succeeds; if it fails, the GM is entitled to establish some fact about bars in Baldur's Gate that will thwart the player's intention in declaring that action. That game is Burning Wheel.

I also know of a game in which a player can declare a Streetwise check to find a speak-easy or an illegal casino, and if the check succeeds then the PC finds what s/he is looking for - that game is Classic Traveller (at least in its 1977 version).

And I also know of a game in which a player can spend a resource (fate point, from memory) to have his/her PC recall the existence and location of a friendly bar - that game is Mongoose OGL Conan.

Even AD&D has at least two contexts in which a player can, by engaging an approriate player-facing mechanic/system, bring about certain elements of the setting:

The first is the development of a stronghold: from Gygax's DMG (p 93):

Assume that the player in question decides that he will set up a stronghold about 100 miles from a border town, choosing an area of wooded hills as the general site. He then asks you if there is a place where he can build a small concentric castle on a high bluff overlooking a river. Unless this is totally foreign to the area, you inform him that he can do so.​
Here we see the player enjoying authority to establish minor points of geographic detail, provided it is not "totally foreign" to the established fiction about the campaign world.

The second is a paladin class feature. From the DMG (p 18):

When the paladin reaches 4th or higher level, he or she will eventually call for a warhorse (as detailed in the PLAYERS HANDBOOK). It will magically appear, but not in actual physical form. The paladin will magically “see” his or her faithful destrier in whatever locale it is currently
in, and it is thereafter up to the paladin to journey to the place and gain the steed. As a rule of thumb, this journey will not be beyond 7 days ride, and gaining the mount will not be an impossible task. The creature might be wild and necessitate capturing, or it might be guarded by an evil fighter of the same level as the paladin, and the latter will then have to overcome the former in mortal combat in order to win the warhorse. In short, the gaining of the destrier is a task of some small difficulty which will take a number of days, possibly 2 or more weeks, and will certainly test the mettle of the paladin. Once captured or won, the warhorse knows its role and relationship to the paladin​
Here we see that the player has the authority to require the GM to introduce certain elements into the gameworld (ie the existence of a magical steed, destined to be the faithful servant of the paladin who calls for it, in a circumstance that will impose some not-isurmountable challenge to the paladin in obtaining it).

The examples from Traveller and AD&D also show that the allocation of roles that you attribute to "classic" RPGs is not as straightforward as is sometimes suggested. I think it's true of classic dungeon-exploration D&D. But once you get to other aspects of D&D, like stronghold development and a paladin's warhorse, the picture changes. And Traveller makes it pretty clear, and not just in its rules for Streetwise skill, that the players are expected to contriburte to establishing elements and details of the setting (eg when a world is rolled, and its properties seem strange, the players as well as the referee are expected to help make sense of the overall picture - see Classic Traveller, Book 3).


----------



## pemerton

billd91 said:


> In many ways, they do the same thing, it’s just the puzzle is a little different, less constrictive, and possibly more complex. Instead of a relatively simple puzzle of doping out the best way to maximize treasure within a single dungeon, they might be working on visiting all of the adventuring sites in the region, foiling the impending invasion of the orcsish legion, stopping the predation of a wicked dragon, or just visiting interesting places.



The last of these doesn't sound like a puzzle at all. As for the others, as I posted not far upthread (in response to [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] and [MENTION=40176]MarkB[/MENTION]), I'm curious about how the puzzle-solving works, when there are so many (imaginary) elements in play which can introduce parameters to the puzzle to which the players have no access (in practical terms).



billd91 said:


> I don’t see those as unsolvable, but then I don’t really buy into describing RPG gaming, even limited to dungeon crawls, as puzzles to solve. Unless the puzzle is figuring out how to have fun pretending to be a halfling Paladin or half-orc summoner.



Right. As the OP said, I think puzzle-solving play is not so common in contemporary RPGing. Given that it's not, then, what is worldbuilding for?


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## Sunseeker

pemerton said:


> Well, shidaku seemed to get the point of my post - thanks shidaku!
> 
> Can you elaborate on this?
> 
> Here's a way that I'm thinking about it, but it may not be the same as you:
> 
> If I have to model the RPG session to art, I'm thinking of it as somewhere between an AV installation and a happening. So the audience's role in observing/experiencing the artwork is also, in some fashion, constitutive of the art event itself. Linking that to worldbuiling, how do you see the audience/player role changing the artwork itself (ie the built world?)




It's not so much that they alter the art, but they alter the perception of it.  I mean yes some tables fundamentally _change_ the world the campaign takes place in...but really that was part of the art to being with, the ability to change what exists within it.  There are some worlds where this is not a fundamental aspect of the art and play is more akin to a choose-your-own-adventure story, there are pre-written "holes" that the players are expected to fill.  In other campaigns the players are a "new variable" capable of changing up the existing dynamic written into the campaign.  

The "art" of the built world is either designed with the players ability to change the world, or it isn't.  The latter can range anywhere from something more akin to an art viewing to a choose-your-own-adventure.  

When you walk away from looking at some art, you come away with certain thoughts.  If someone viewed the art with you, you may come away with different thoughts.  That's what I'm getting at here.


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## pemerton

innerdude said:


> Be careful, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] , not to mistake "world building" as "just the stuff I, the GM, have to make up in my head." One of the powerful effects of using known settings is that you can sidestep so much of the need to explain to players just what the world is and what lives within it contextually. They already know.
> 
> Many settings use real-world cultural analogues for this reason exactly---if I want the players to be immersed in a place that's highly compatible with 18th century France, I'm going to say, "picture 18th century France," and the players immediately _get it_. It's powdered wigs and fighting with rapiers and muskets, with orchestral string music playing at the royal ball. I don't have to "worldbuild" any of that context/milieu, it's already there.



Well, in the OP and a few posts that followed it, I tried to make clear what I mean by worldbuilding - namely, establishing setting information in advance of play.

Telling the players "Imagine an 18th century salon" doesn't, on its face, sound like an instance of that. It sounds like it's happening in the course of actual play, and is inviting them to draw upon some commonly understood tropes and references. It's not that different fromm saying "The NPC is wearing a long-sleeved dress and carrying a cutlass."



Ovinomancer said:


> your Marvel game example had a immense amount of worldbuilding, not a little.  You leveraged the entire ouevre of Marvel, which, in turn, leverages the real world.  You had Stark, B,A,D,, Washington DC, the Washington monument, the Smithsonian, bars, streets, buildings, a cast reservoir of bystanders, etc, all as predefined and established pays off ther fiction.  The world you actually played in had almost everything predefined and leveragable by both the GM and the players.



Well, obviously you can mean by "worldbuilding" whatever you want (within the parameters of meaningful conversation in Enlgish), but in the OP and subsequent posts I tried to explain what I had in mind.

Saying, "Let's play Marvel Heroic" isn't worldbuilding - it's pitching a game. And when we're discussing how to introduce NIghcrawler into the situation (it was already established that Bobby and War Machine were in DC), and Nightcrawler's player suggests "I phone Bobby, telling him I'm coming to see him in DC, and suggest we meet in a bar" that's not worldbuiling either, in the sense of the GM establishing setting elements in advance. The player (who doesn't read comics) has read Nightcrawler's sheet, sees that he's a roguish romantic type, and so naturally suggests an outing to a bar.

I have never heard of B.A.D. except in the context of some "datafile" descriptions in the back of my copy of MHRP Civil War. When the players decided they were going to a bar, I flipped through the (several) pages of characters at the back of the book, noticed Asp (she comes early in the alphabetical listing) as someone who might be suitable for meeting in a bar, and then threw in the other B.A.D. characters that are referenced in Asp's description.

As far as relying on my (rather sketchy) knowledge of DC - the Washington Monument, the Capitol Dome (which also came up in the game), and the Smithsonian aren't elements of any worldbuilding. They're actual places which some of the players (not me) have visited, and which we all have some basic familiarity with from images on TV and in movies. They're in the same category as [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION]'s reference to 18th century France.



Ovinomancer said:


> Your second example ignores that Greyhawk was used as a world and only focuses on the tree created by a player.  Sure, the tree is important, but you already leveraged the vast work and world of Greyhawk before the tree was even introduced



In what way? Showing someone (the player) a map with a little village on it called Five Oak isn't "leveragign the vast work" of anything. It's leveraging a single map and place name. There's no description of any powerful recluse wizards in the GH City boxed set description of Five Oak.



Sadras said:


> Besides all the myriad of other reasons provided by posters above, *the table doesn't waste precious play time on worldbuilding*.
> 
> For example, if I as DM establish a map, the setting calendar, the seasons, where various settlements lie on a map, the general terrain and distance between these settlements, then it will be easy to work out the length of time required to travel from one settlement to another when a player asks me. I could then work out the date of arrival and what that would mean, the number of random encounters I could perhaps roll for and the weather patterns and how that would affect travel - instead of trying to work this all out at the table wasting precious real time.



Would the players generally have access to all that information - the distance, the weather patterns, the frequency of encounter, etc?

If they do, then it creates a puzzle of a sort, provided the parameters and possibilities aren't so complex and open-ended that trying to optimise a response is impossible.

If the players don't know that stuff, so it's really just a tool for the GM telling them some stuff about what happens to the players' characters, then it seems maybe like a device for the GM to keep his/her storytelling consistent (similar to how REH wrote himself an essay on "The Hyborian Age" to help him manage the backstory for his Conan stories).



Sadras said:


> Add a little backstory and some setting lore to the above details and you have B10, one of your favourite modules (as you have stated many times on this forum).
> 
> <snip>
> 
> *I have to ask why you like B10 so much given your roleplaying style, if you don't necessarily use the established story and you 'ignore' pretty much all the other worldbuilding information provided in the module in favour of the skill challenge mechanic?
> Speaking for myself, I think the module is great specifically for the world-building information provided.*



*I like Night's Dark Terror because it has some very nice vignettes - the river attack; the goblin assault; the little dungeon under the hillock; the island with the statue the elves want back. It also has a good evil organisation - the Iron Ring.

I think the stuff with the Hutakaans is not very interesting, and in my game the "ancient civilisation" I used was minotaurs (drawing on elements of H2 Thunderspire Labyrinth).

When I used the module, I made a lot of the backstory known to the players. So the player of the cleric of Kord knew that there was an evil organisation of Bane-ites called The Iron Ring. The player of the dwarf, who already established elements of backstory about dwarven culture/civilisation, knew that before the dwarves the minotaurs lived in and under the mountains, and tutored the dwarves in many arts (this "dependent" status of the dwarves, elaborating both on ideas the player had come up with and the idea of dwarves as slaves of the giants, was a recurrent theme for most of Heroic tier; at Paragon tier the dwarf PC broke out of it through a series of events, and it ceased to be a part of the game). And I told the players that their PCs had to have some reason to be ready to fight goblins - and at least one of them, who had played the module 20-something years ago, knew why this was (not to mention the cover somewhat giving it away!).

For the whole of our 30-level 4e game, the mortal world has never expanded beyond the inside cover map of the module (the underdark is beneath the mountains) - and the only two (above ground) cities the PCs have interacted with have been Kelven and Threshold (which has combined stuff from B10 with stuff from the 3E module Speaker in Dreams with stuff from the Dungeon module Heathen). That map, with mountains, swamps, hills, plains, forests, cities, ruins, etc, is another thing I like about the module.

So what was it all for? The setting established a way of contextualising, for our particular game, the broader historical/cosmological backstory in the 4e PHB; gave a sense of place for events to unfold in; and gave us some NPCs and organisations as elements of our game. The only bit that was interestingly secret from the PCs was Golthar: at first he was just a yellow-robed mage who was referred to by other NPCs as the PCs interacted with them; then a figure they saw flying away from the goblin/hobgoblin ruined city base before they assaulted it; and then when they arrrived in Threshold, they learned that (under the name Paldemar) he was the advisor to the Baron. (I can't recall when I made up that last bit; probably a couple of weeks before running that session, as part of the prep for it.)

Personally, I find in RPGing that there is a big difference between using setting material to establish a common ground among the game participants, and as part of the fleshing out of character details; and using it as an element in adjudication of action resolution. Ie these are very different answers to the questio "What is worldbuilding for?"*


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## pemerton

shidaku said:


> It's not so much that they alter the art, but they alter the perception of it.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> When you walk away from looking at some art, you come away with certain thoughts.  If someone viewed the art with you, you may come away with different thoughts.  That's what I'm getting at here.



Understood, I think. This means that the GM is playing a _very_ big role - s/he is the artist, and the players the (crtically engaged) audience.



shidaku said:


> I mean yes some tables fundamentally _change_ the world the campaign takes place in...but really that was part of the art to being with, the ability to change what exists within it.  There are some worlds where this is not a fundamental aspect of the art and play is more akin to a choose-your-own-adventure story, there are pre-written "holes" that the players are expected to fill.  In other campaigns the players are a "new variable" capable of changing up the existing dynamic written into the campaign.
> 
> The "art" of the built world is either designed with the players ability to change the world, or it isn't.  The latter can range anywhere from something more akin to an art viewing to a choose-your-own-adventure.



This is very clear, thank you. I'm interested to see what others think of it (eg [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION], [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION], [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION], [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], [MENTION=6777696]redrick[/MENTION]).


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## Caliban

World building has almost nothing to do with "puzzle solving play".  That's adventure/dungeon design.  

Worldbuilding is simply that - building the world that the PC's adventure in.   The gods, the cultures, the races, geopolitical relations, secret organizations vying for power, forgotten tombs and mad liches, etc, etc.  A world plus problems for PC's to solve and monsters to fight. 

Or it can just be a small village the PC's start in and a few threats for them to deal with, with the rest of the world being created as the PC's level up and explore.  

Or the world building can be rather limited as the DM uses a pre-written campaign (taking advantage of someone else's world building efforts) and inserts their own adventure scenarios into it. 

Any of these approaches work for worldbuilding - it's mainly up to the DM and their personal preference.   Some of us really like creating worlds and societies (usually with an interesting premise or twist) and working out how everything fits together.  Some of us just want to create a dungeon and have some interesting combats. 

I can't speak for @_*redrick*_, but in my experience most of the "collaborative worldbuilding with players" comes from their backstories when they create their characters, before the campaign starts.   I give them the basics of the campaign world, they give me their character background (if they feel like making one), and I fit that into the world (or rarely - if they make something that really doesn't fit - I tell them to go back to the drawing board).  

My current campaign - a new player decided he wanted to have a character with a Native American themed background, with his tribe living in a forest.   I picked an area of the continent that I didn't have any specific plans for, and that is now "Verdania, Land of the Forest People" with a history that goes back a thousand years.  Or will when I finish writing it.   Another player gave me a background where his character befriended a goddess (despite being told the gods had been distant and remote for centuries) and became her favored follower, gained a unique mithral sword with stats better than the PHB version and defeated a dragon.  All before his 3rd level character started play.   I explained that his character was prone to hallucinations and had recently escaped from a local madhouse before joining the party.   

My campaign has a region or bit of history that was specifically created because of the background of each of the player characters (except for the delusional one).   If the campaign runs long enough, each of those regions will have a plot line that directly ties into the character's background.   So far I've had plots directly tied two of the PC's and dropped hints of things to come for the others.   Plus the usual monster fights and side quests, and an overall campaign storyline.

None of that world building is strictly necessary or even needed.  But it's something I enjoy doing - it's the main reason I run my own game.  And so far, my players appreciate it - having a sense of connection to the world outside the dungeon gives them a sense of investment in their characters beyond just upping a few numbers on their character sheet and getting a new piece of loot (although loot is definitely appreciated).


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> The GM shouldn't be playing to find out (if that's her goal she should become a player and let someone else GM), the GM should be providing the stage and scene and background and world in which the players can play to find out.



Why? As [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] has said, this is a statement of personal preference presented as if it has universal normative force. What's the basis for that univ



Lanefan said:


> No, it's also literal.  The maps, the history write-ups, the culture write-ups, the pantheons - provided you accept something that's online as being real then they're all every bit as real as that swimming pool.



They're not real, they're imaginary.

What's real is the text. But you're not inviting your players to take your text and edit it or rewrite it or write a sequel to it. When you talk about the history, culture etc as elements of play, you're clearly referring to the fiction that they express. That that is so is illustrated by the following from your post:



Lanefan said:


> I've already neutrally determined in advance that the map is somewhere else.  I know where it is, and I know that in this case there's ultimately only two possible outcomes: they'll sooner or later find it, or they won't.  If they find it, great: they can take it back to their sponsor and get paid for it, or they can try following it on their own, or whatever.  If they don't find it, great: they can return to their sponsor empty-handed, or they can blow him off and go elsewhere, or they can try making a fake map, or whatever.
> 
> Somebody declaring they're searching for a given thing and banging off a natural 20 on a search check doesn't mean squat if that given thing isn't there to find.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> This is simple realism - you can't find what's not there.  This idea of "say yes or roll the dice" kicks this to the curb, as now all they need to do in a game-mechanics sense is keep rolling (there's obviously doubt involved, so roll the dice) until they hit a 20 and the Crown will appear regardless of where they are as long as they're somewhere in or near the castle.  I find this ridiculous.



Let's put to one side that you're assuming, here (i) that the players have unlimited retries (even in AD&D there are all sorts of limits on retries - for many thief abilities, for trying to open magically locked doors, for bending bars, for listening at doors), and (ii) that the consequence of failure will permit a retry (as opposed to be, say, that they search and it's not there to be found).

The whole idea of "there being nothing there to find", of the GM "knowing" this in advance, and of it being "unrealistic" for it to be otherwise, is again metaphor at best, nonsense at worst. Consider, for instance, an author who stages a competition to determine some feature of the sequel - the readers get to vote on whether the first novel's protagonist will live or die. The idea that this is "unreaslistic", because either the hero dies or s/he doesn't, is obviously absurd - nothing is true about the hero until it is written.

I've already mentioned the example of Great Expectations, where Dickens rewrote the ending on the advice of his editor/publisher - that's an instance of the same phenomenon.

If the GM decides whether or not the map is there by using some technique in which the players participate, it's no different from what my imaginary author is doing, or what Dickens did. You may or may not want to establish your RPGing fiction in that fashion, but it's clearly not impossible, and certainly not unrealistic - it's something that has actually happened in the history of fiction-writing, and among RPGers.


----------



## pemerton

Caliban said:


> None of that world building is strictly necessary or even needed.  But it's something I enjoy doing - it's the main reason I run my own game.  And so far, my players appreciate it - having a sense of connection to the world outside the dungeon gives them a sense of investment in their characters beyond just upping a few numbers on their character sheet and getting a new piece of loot



Is it important that the _GM_ do it for the players to have this sense?


----------



## Caliban

pemerton said:


> Is it important that the _GM_ do it for the players to have this sense?




What is the purpose of this question?


----------



## pemerton

Caliban said:


> What is the purpose of this question?



To learn your answer to it.

For instance, [MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION] upthread hast talked about the GM as artist and the players as audience. Is there a similar idea going on in your comments about how the players get a certain sense from the worldbuilding? Could they get the same sense by authoring their own backstory for their PCs, or not?


----------



## Caliban

pemerton said:


> To learn your answer to it.




I already answered it. Why are you asking it again?


----------



## pemerton

Caliban said:


> I already answered it. Why are you asking it again?



Because, in your post, you said that the players get a certain sense - I would describe it as a certain sort of character _depth_, though I don't think that's a word you actually used - you characterised it by contrast to a PC sheet as a set of numbers, which I take to be a certain sort of _shallowness_, and referred to _connection _and _investment_, which seem to me like elements of depth, or - if you prefer - _richness_.

You described this being achieved by the GM making certain decisions - eg "I picked an area of the continent that I didn't have any specific plans for, and that is now "Verdania, Land of the Forest People" with a history that goes back a thousand years."

I am asking if you think your players could achieve the same sense if they made the relevant decisions, rather than the GM - eg the player writes the thousand-year history of Verdania, Land of the Forest People. Your earlier post doesn't answer that question.

You do imply that you want to exercise a veto-power over player backstories for PC, with this example:



Caliban said:


> Another player gave me a background where his character befriended a goddess (despite being told the gods had been distant and remote for centuries) and became her favored follower, gained a unique mithral sword with stats better than the PHB version and defeated a dragon. All before his 3rd level character started play. I explained that his character was prone to hallucinations and had recently escaped from a local madhouse before joining the party.



But that doesn't seem to be an example of establishing the sense of PC depth that you go on to describe.

If you don't want to answer my question, of course that's your prerogative. But I think it is relevant to the thread topic. Eg if the answer is "No", then that clearly identifies one thing that GM worldbuilding is for, namely, a device to let players (your players at least, maybe others if your players aren't unique) get that sense of character depth.


----------



## Caliban

You know this is a game and not a creative writing assignment for the players, right?  

You are making the assumption that a) the players WANT to write that much stuff about things that don't directly affect their character (i.e. a thousand year history for a country in my campaign world), and b) that the purpose of the game is for the players to create the world. 

I can tell you for a fact that not every player wants to write an extensive background (or any background at all).  And that's fine, if they don't enjoy it they shouldn't be forced to do it or made to feel lacking because of it.  Some players really don't care about "depth" or "richness" - they want loot and combat. Others want to be part of a story and influence the world.  

I stated why I do it the way I do in my original post and you ignored it.   I do all this because *I find it enjoyable*.  I enjoy world building.  Otherwise I wouldn't do it.  The game is not just about the players - the DM gets to have fun too.   In this case - it's *MY CAMPAIGN*.  I created the world and the players get to explore it.  They may give me ideas for new areas to flesh out, but ultimately it is my creation and I have the final say on anything that affects the world.  They control their characters, I control the world.  They influence the world through the actions of their characters and through the parts of their backstories that I choose to incorporate into the game.  Together we tell a story.

My enjoyment comes from creating the world and having them experience it.  Their enjoyment comes from exploring it, watching their characters grow and become part of that world, and of course, killing monsters and taking their stuff.  Because this is still a game, everything else is just a bonus.


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## MarkB

pemerton said:


> (Btw way, I don't know of any RPG that works by way of the players (via their PCs) "searching each room in turn until the DM's "is the map hidden here?" roll hits a high enough total" - do you have an example in mind?)




I was working from your example, of rolling the dice to determine whether the map is, in fact, in the location the PC is searching, rather than establishing that fact in advance. If you do that, then all they need to do in order to find the map is to keep visiting locations and declaring a search until your "is the map here?" check comes up with a success.



pemerton said:


> Well, in the OP and a few posts that followed it, I tried to make clear what I mean by worldbuilding - namely, establishing setting information in advance of play.
> 
> Telling the players "Imagine an 18th century salon" doesn't, on its face, sound like an instance of that. It sounds like it's happening in the course of actual play, and is inviting them to draw upon some commonly understood tropes and references. It's not that different fromm saying "The NPC is wearing a long-sleeved dress and carrying a cutlass."
> 
> Well, obviously you can mean by "worldbuilding" whatever you want (within the parameters of meaningful conversation in Enlgish), but in the OP and subsequent posts I tried to explain what I had in mind.



Establishing general setting information in advance of (or during) play is worldbuilding _regardless of who does it_. If you use an established setting, or a contemporary setting, or a real-world historical setting, then you are using a setting in which a great deal of the worldbuilding has already been done for you - but it's still worldbuilding.

If your question is "what is the purpose of the DM doing pre-game prep work?" that's fine, you can ask that question - but stop berating people for using the term worldbuilding in its actual meaning rather than what you think it means.


----------



## pemerton

MarkB said:


> I was working from your example, of rolling the dice to determine whether the map is, in fact, in the location the PC is searching, rather than establishing that fact in advance. If you do that, then all they need to do in order to find the map is to keep visiting locations and declaring a search until your "is the map here?" check comes up with a success.



I don't think so. It depends on other things, like (i) rules about retries (many systems don't permit retries - there are plenty of examples in AD&D, for instance), and (ii) how the failure is narrated (eg to give one possible example - "As you look into the cache and see the map in there, a sudden gust carries a spark from your torch, and the map ignites!"). 



MarkB said:


> Establishing general setting information in advance of (or during) play is worldbuilding _regardless of who does it_. If you use an established setting, or a contemporary setting, or a real-world historical setting, then you are using a setting in which a great deal of the worldbuilding has already been done for you - but it's still worldbuilding.
> 
> If your question is "what is the purpose of the DM doing pre-game prep work?" that's fine, you can ask that question - but stop berating people for using the term worldbuilding in its actual meaning rather than what you think it means.



I hadn't intended to berate. But I'm trying to ask about a technique - not simply "Why do we have setting in our RPGs?" but "What is a certain way of establishing that setting - ie where the GM authors significant elements of it in advance - _for_?"

I feel I was clear enough, between the original post and clarifications that followed it, that a number of posters have offered answers to that question. (And I offered an answer myself, in the context of classic Gygaxian D&D, but went on to express doubts that that particular function is so salient in contemporary D&D play. Some posters have offered doubts about those doubts - eg [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] - which seem to me to be highly relevant to the thread topic.)


----------



## Mercurius

I read the first page, skimmed the second and last, so forgive me if I am repeating some of what has already been said. I get the sense that some have touched upon what I want to say, but perhaps not in the way I want to say it.

I'm going to use the analogy of fantasy fiction. I know that RPGs are a different medium, but there are similarities and we can at least use one as analogy for the other.

I think one of the main reasons that Tolkien's Middle-earth remains the_ example par excellence_ of fantasy worlds and world building is the *depth* it provides - and not just awkward, amateurish or rushed depth, as if it was created with a "Fantasy World Generator." It is lovingly crafted but, most of all, gives the sense of _aliveness,_ and that for everything the reader encounters, there is a story behind it. It seems, _feels_, as if Middle-earth exists independent of the books set in it.

Many fantasy worlds come across like the set of an old spaghetti Western; you may not see it, but you know the buildings are just one wall with supports - sort of like in _Blazing Saddles._ Everything seems paper-thin and, to some extent, contrived. 

Perhaps the most important difference between fiction and RPGs, in this context at least, is that in RPGs the players are--to varying degrees--co-authors of the story. They have agency, even if they play in a non-pemertonian railroad campaign. It is just a matter of degree. So where there are just supports behind the wall, the players can fill that in with their own ideas. But I think it could be argued that it doesn't seem as real when I, as a player, am thinking it up - vs. when the DM is. In a similar fashion, as a player I much more enjoy discovering a magic item than buying one in a shop. Discovering it has an extra sense of _magic _to it, because I don't have all the control. 

What @_*pemerton*_ seems to be questioning is the probably more common approach of creating a setting--of some degree of depth--before hand, or using a setting like the Forgotten Realms, in which there is much less "primal flux." There is always some, always Terra Incognita, and even if there isn't much, it is intrinsic to the game that the DM can make the setting their own.

But @_*pemerton*_ doesn't seem to like the idea that the DM has superior or overriding authorship over the players. I haven't posted much in the last year or two, but this is the same underlying agenda he's been pushing for years. Nothing wrong with that, but he (you) does seem to be advocating for it as the Right Way to Play D&D. But to me this comes down to campaign group preference, and a diversity of possible ways of playing.

Who knows, maybe 10 years from now the Pemerton Approach will be dominant way of playing D&D. We'll all be looking back at the Dark Ages of railroady adventure paths, pre-made settings, and DM hegemony. But I personally hope that the future will continue to open up new paths, and that a plethora of styles will be played and honored.

But to go back to the original question. I think the reason for world-building is primarily *to provide depth and a sense of meaning, realness and context to game play.*


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I don't think so. It depends on other things, like (i) rules about retries (many systems don't permit retries - there are plenty of examples in AD&D, for instance),



Going the other way, in a game that has a take-20 mechanic all they need to do is search every room using take-20 and they'll find the map right where the DM put it.

As for retries, 1e doesn't like them but some other systems are fine with them.



> and (ii) how the failure is narrated (eg to give one possible example - "As you look into the cache and see the map in there, a sudden gust carries a spark from your torch, and the map ignites!").



That's not a failure, in my view.  It's a success (they were trying to find the map, they found the map, therefore success) with a DM-forced complication.

Failure narration in this example always has to somewhere include "you don't find the map".  It's black and white: you either find the map (success), or you don't (failure).

Now it's of course possible to succeed in finding the map and still have further headaches to deal with e.g. "yes you've found it (success) - you can see where it is - but it's embedded in the wall behind 6" of glassteel.  Now what do you do?"

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> They're not real, they're imaginary.
> 
> What's real is the text. But you're not inviting your players to take your text and edit it or rewrite it or write a sequel to it.



No, I'm providing it (the original point) for them to read...or not, as they choose.


> When you talk about the history, culture etc as elements of play, you're clearly referring to the fiction that they express. That that is so is illustrated by the following from your post:
> 
> Let's put to one side that you're assuming, here (i) that the players have unlimited retries (even in AD&D there are all sorts of limits on retries - for many thief abilities, for trying to open magically locked doors, for bending bars, for listening at doors), and (ii) that the consequence of failure will permit a retry (as opposed to be, say, that they search and it's not there to be found).
> 
> The whole idea of "there being nothing there to find", of the GM "knowing" this in advance, and of it being "unrealistic" for it to be otherwise, is again metaphor at best, nonsense at worst. Consider, for instance, an author who stages a competition to determine some feature of the sequel - the readers get to vote on whether the first novel's protagonist will live or die. The idea that this is "unreaslistic", because either the hero dies or s/he doesn't, is obviously absurd - nothing is true about the hero until it is written.



I'm not quite sure what you're on about here, but if nothing is true about the hero until it is written then by extension nothing is true about my game world until it is written...but guess what?  It's written.  In more or less very broad strokes, to be sure, but it's still written.

The main difference is that everyone can, if they wish, read the whole novel and find out what becomes of the hero; where in an RPG the players have to - to use your phrase - play to find out what becomes of their own characters.

Another way to look at it: the game world's story has been going on for ages before the PCs show up in it.  Then (in most games, I think) the PCs show up, make some major differences to some major things (this is the played campaign(s)), then drift away when the campaign ends and the world keeps on keeping on.



> I've already mentioned the example of Great Expectations, where Dickens rewrote the ending on the advice of his editor/publisher - that's an instance of the same phenomenon.



Dickens didn't have several players breathing down his neck wanting him to keep his story consistent and still run his game on Saturday.


----------



## Jacob Lewis

Worldbuidling - Huh! 

What is it good for? 

Absolutely nothing!

Good god, ya'll!!


----------



## Jester David

pemerton said:


> On classic D&D, _the dungeon_ was a type of puzzle. The players had to map it, by declaring moves (literally) for their PCs. The players, using their PCs as vehicles, had to learn what was in there: this was about inventory - having enough torches, 10' poles, etc - and about game moves too - searching for secret doors, checking ceilings and floors, and so on. And finally, the players had to try and loot it while either avoiding or defeating the monsters guarding the treasures and wandering around the place - this is what the combat mechanics were for.
> 
> The game is something of a cross between a wargame and a complex refereed maze. And *worldbuilding* is all about making the maze. I get that.
> 
> But most contemporary D&D isn't played in the spirit of classic D&D: the players aren't trying to map a maze; when it comes to searching, perception and the like there is often an emphasis on PC skills (perception checks) rather than player game moves; there is no clear win condition like there used to be (ie getting the gold and thereby accruing XP).
> 
> In the classic game, alignment (and related aspects of character motivation) become components in, and establish the parameters of, the puzzle: if I find a prisoner in the dungeon, should I be rescuing her/him (after all, my PC is lawful and so I might suffer a GM-imposed penalty if I leave a helpless person behind)? Or is s/he really a succubus or medusa in disguise, trying to take advantage of my lawful foibles? This is one reason why divination items like wands of enemy detection, ESP medallions and the like are so prominent in classic D&D - they're "game components" which, once obtained, allow a clever player to make better moves and so increase his/her chance of winning the game. And their function relies upon the GM having already written the dungeon, and having already decided what the truth is about the prisoner.
> 
> But in most contemporary play, character motivations (and alignment etc) aren't treated purely instrumentally in that waym as puzzle components and parameters. I'm expected to develop my character, and to care about his/her motivations, for their own sake. This is part of the standard picture of what it is to be a good RPGer.
> 
> So, given these difference between typical contemporary play and "classic" play, what is world building for?



You say "And *worldbuilding* is all about making the maze", but it's not. "Worldbuilding" refers to the act of creating an imaginary world. Like "roleplaying" it's a term that predates "RPGs" and "D&D". We know the first source, the December 1820 issue of the _Edinburgh Review_. Making fantasy worlds has long been a part of fantasy fiction, which long predates the hobby. 

Keep in mind that the "classic D&D" you describe where the world is the dungeon never really existed. 
The first game Gary Gygax played was in Dave Arneson's Blackmoor game. And a month after Gary himself began working on the playtest rules of what would become D&D he expanded out of the dungeon into the City of Greyhawk so the players would have a location to sell their gold and treasure. 
Worldbuilding as a location of fantasy RPGs pre-dates _Dungeons & Dragons _by two full years. 

While the early part of the game focused on dungeons, that was as much because it was the easiest way to design plots and hazards. Adventure design was in its infancy. But very quickly other products like _T1 Village of Hommlet _or _The Keep on the Borderlands_ were released, which much attention on the setting and the people. Given Gary wrote and put  _The Keep on the Borderlands_ in his Basic Set for new players, it sure looks like he intended people to consider the region above the dungeon and interact with NPCs.


----------



## darkbard

Lanefan said:


> That's not a failure, in my view.  It's a success (they were trying to find the map, they found the map, therefore success) with a DM-forced complication.
> 
> Failure narration in this example *always has to* somewhere include "you don't find the map".  It's black and white: you either find the map (success), or you don't (failure).




I do not understand why you choose to live in such an absolutist world. Are you not familiar with the concept of "fail forward," a component of many, many games and even embraced by 4E D&D?

Other options exist for other other players in other games (or, potentially, even with the game systems you prefer). Yet you persist in demanding only the "Lanefan method" is even viable! How can someone have an honest debate with you if you refuse to acknowledge other ways of doing something exist, even if they're not for you?


----------



## darkbard

Mercurius said:


> But @_*pemerton*_ doesn't seem to like the idea that the DM has superior or overriding authorship over the players. I haven't posted much in the last year or two, but this is the same underlying agenda he's been pushing for years. Nothing wrong with that, but he (you) does seem to be advocating for it as the Right Way to Play D&D. But to me this comes down to campaign group preference, and a diversity of possible ways of playing.




I'm sure [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] doesn't need me (or anyone) to defend him, but I think you may be misreading the tone of his posts. While he certainly _advocates_ for a certain style of play on the regular, I've never seen him declare another form of gaming as wrong (that seems to be [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] 's approach). Yes, he's articulated many times what his preferences are, but that's very different from mandating how others should play in order for it to be the "Right Way to Play D&D."


----------



## Nagol

pemerton said:


> I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "handling worldbuilding collaboratively with the players".
> 
> I don't know of any game in which the player is simply authorised to tell the GM how many bars there are in Baldur's Gate,




A player of Fate can do that with a declaration though it would be an odd choice of aspect to assign.




> but part of the context for this is a lack of context for the suggestion ie I'm not able to think of a context in which action declaration by a player for his/her PCs would entail determining how many bars there are in Baldur's Gate (eg if, in the game, there is a trivia contest on, it seems unlikely that the actual answer to the question would matter, and so it seems unlikely that anything would be at stake in the player rather than the GM deciding on what that number is.)
> <snip>




See the movie _The World's End_ for a case where it matters.


----------



## Nagol

pemerton said:


> The last of these doesn't sound like a puzzle at all. As for the others, as I posted not far upthread (in response to [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] and [MENTION=40176]MarkB[/MENTION]), I'm curious about how the puzzle-solving works, when there are so many (imaginary) elements in play which can introduce parameters to the puzzle to which the players have no access (in practical terms).
> 
> Right. As the OP said, I think puzzle-solving play is not so common in contemporary RPGing. Given that it's not, then, what is worldbuilding for?




To provide constraints for the players to hitch their creativity to.  To provide a fence limiting the active region for player action.  To provide levers the players can choose to pull (or not) .  To provide resources engaged players can take advantage of.  To provide canvas where the players can see the consequences of the meaningful actions writ large.  To provide cues about genre-appropriate action.  To provide a backdrop of themes and common tropes.

Can some or all of this stuff be provided without backstory?  Sure.  Does world-building via backstory give a different feel to the campaign and offer a different experience for the players?  Absolutely.


----------



## Aenghus

pemerton said:


> These are extremely different things.




I disagree, as I think your definition of "world-building" is far too narrow. To me, world-building is an umbrella term that embraces multitudes, any building or creation of elements of a fictional world is potentially "world-building", whether that's architecture, language, history, geography, economics, technology, religion, philosphy etc. People can and have pursued such activities for their own sake long before RPGs. In some cases these works can attract a fan base who become invested in the fictional world. Some of these people may in turn attempt to add detail to the fictional world themselves.

Adding depth to a fictional world can involve almost anything, as producing a self-consistent world is vastly difficult. It's impossible to detail everything, which is why viewer buy-in is important

Now, "RPG world-building" is world-building specificially in the context of RPGs, and I think the qualifier is needed precisely because there are many examples of fictional world-building unconnected with RPGs.



> A model railroad is a physical artefact. I can "explore" it by looking at it, noticing the intricacies of the track network, seeing if there are configurations of signals and vehicle movements that will engender collisions, etc.
> 
> But a fantasy or sci-fi story is not a physical artefact (the book itself is, obviously, but the story is not the book - it's the abstract object "encoded" by the words which are physically expressed by the type in the book). And I can't "explore" it other than by reading it, or having it read to me.




I left out some of my thoughts on this topic in my last post. An actual model intended to represent a fictional place, well-built, can illustrate a lot to viewers - Architecture of the buildings, settlement design, climate, geography, population, defenses, agriculture, religion, iconography, justice, etc etc

Often the creator will add fictional detail to the model, coming up with fictional inhabitants for the buildings, relationships, language, history, etc. The diorama could be frozen in time, expand in a piecemeal fashion with the addition of trees, buildings and other landmarks, or jump ahead in time with major changes.

In any case, the urge to create is essential to what I see as "world-building", and it can be a solo pursuit, a collaboration, or involve passive consumers, or secondary contributors.




> In RPGing, the players don't (generally) just sit down and read a book (be it a novel, or a fictional encyclopedia) written by the GM. There is a back-and-forth of conversation, and at certain points the GM tells the players stuff about the setting. In many games, some of that stuff is read by the GM from notes (or recited from memory; that difference isn't important at present, I don't think).




The more variant detail, different to the real world, has gone into a game world setting, the more work that players have to put into to attain a mastery of the setting. A minority of players, such as myself, enjoy reading settings and rulebooks comprehensively to get a feel for the game.

As you say, most players don't do that prep work, so a standard way of introducing a world is to create relatively clueless PCs and slowly reveal the world to them in play. This also has the advantage of letting the referee start running the game with limited knowledge of the setting, and learn in play alongside the players. 

Which brings us to canon and "fidelity to setting". Some players are highly invested in the game running as described in the setting material, others don't sweat the small stuff and are content with a "good-enough" setting, while still others don't care at all about the setting and want the freedom to do whatever they want without being constrained by a setting.



> Also, in many circumstances, when the players canvass or declare actions for their PCs, the GM will adjudicate by reference to those same notes  - eg "We go to the shop to ask that guy we met there yesterday" "Sorry, when you get there you see the shop has been burned down" - the GM doesn't decided the shop has been burned down as an outcome of the action resolution (eg the player failed a "Talk to contact in shop" test) but rather has notes that say that, on such-and-such a day, or triggered by such-and-such an event, the shop will burn down.
> 
> That is an example of the GM using the fiction that s/he has prepared in advance to determine the outcome of a player action declaration.
> 
> In classic D&D, where the fiction in question is the dungeon map and key, these sorts of events give the players the information they need to help solve the puzzle ("I look behind the tapestry to see if there is a secret door there" - the GM consults notes, replies (with no check) "No, there's not"). But what do they do in non-puzzle solving play? Or in play in which the "puzzle" is not, in practical terms, solvable by the players.




To be honest, "Puzzle-solving" always annoyed me from the earliest days, as in it's original presentations it was a test of the player rather than the character, and I found timed puzzles stressful and annoying, especially when in the early days getting them wrong often led to character death. I can see for people who like them they can add an extra element to a module. I particularly disliked the puzzles that involved serious pixel-bitching or depended on local knowledge or slang that wasn't available to us the players.

As the idea of roleplaying, separation of player and character and metagaming evolved in RPGs, I gained a second reason to dislike player-facing puzzles. Translating them to pc-facing challenges can often lose the puzzle aspect others can enjoy, and turn the challenge into a mere dice-rolling exercise.

In my games I avoid puzzles for these reasons, and prefer to present the players with real decision points, some of which are pre-plotted, others of which are improvised. "Real" in that either failure of the task itself is possible, or that failure can be mitigated by some personal sacrifice by one or more of the PCs.

I found searching constantly for traps and secret doors, a necessity in many old school games, a soul-destroying exercise in paranoia, and have a lot less of this in the games I run.

While I have voluminous knowledge of the setting I use, I don't go into heavy details on the plans of the PCs antagonists, keeping a hazy overplan of the campaign, but keeping it flexible enough that I can move elements around in reaction to the players actions and events in the gameworld.


----------



## Lanefan

darkbard said:


> I do not understand why you choose to live in such an absolutist world. Are you not familiar with the concept of "fail forward," a component of many, many games and even embraced by 4E D&D?



Familiar with the concept?  Yes.  Enamoured with the concept?  Not really.

There's two* mechanical ways of arriving at a narration** of what is in effect a partial success e.g. you find the map but it's behind 6" of glassteel, or you find it but immediately set it on fire by accident.  One is fail-forward, where in effect a failure is often mitigated into a partial success.  The other is (and if anyone has a better term for this, I'm all ears) more like succeed-backward, where it's a success that's mitigated by other circumstances rather than a failure - which remains a flat failure.  Of these I prefer the second approach as - and again I can't think of the best term for this - it in effect makes the game a bit "harder".

And why is this good?  Because without some failure and frustration now and then to measure the successes against the successes become ho-hum, and then become expected.

* - well, probably way more than two; but here my point is to highlight the difference between just these two options
** - this narration could be from the DM's pre-done notes, or made up on the fly, or whatever - here the method doesn't matter



> Other options exist for other other players in other games (or, potentially, even with the game systems you prefer). Yet you persist in demanding only the "Lanefan method" is even viable! How can someone have an honest debate with you if you refuse to acknowledge other ways of doing something exist, even if they're not for you?



And from your next post:


> I'm sure @pemerton doesn't need me (or anyone) to defend him, but I think you may be misreading the tone of his posts. While he certainly advocates for a certain style of play on the regular, I've never seen him declare another form of gaming as wrong (that seems to be @Lanefan 's approach). Yes, he's articulated many times what his preferences are, but that's very different from mandating how others should play in order for it to be the "Right Way to Play D&D."



Er...your bias is showing. 

I don't demand the "Lanefan method" (whatever that is), but when I see my and many others' style of gaming being slighted - and some posters here are very good at slighting something and implying it's wrong without actually coming out and saying so - then yes, I'm going to push back.

Me, I'm not that diplomatic.  Within the quite reasonable constraints of forum rules and etiquette I try to just say what I mean.  That said, I'd far prefer to be having these discussions and arguments face to face over a beer or three in the pub: way more fun! 

Lan-"and the pub option would be way more efficient, too - this whole thread, for example, would have taken about 2 pints worth of time"-efan


----------



## Lanefan

Aenghus said:


> As the idea of roleplaying, separation of player and character and metagaming evolved in RPGs, I gained a second reason to dislike player-facing puzzles. Translating them to pc-facing challenges can often lose the puzzle aspect others can enjoy, and turn the challenge into a mere dice-rolling exercise.



Some puzzles are like this, to be sure.  The one I hit most often is the unmappable maze of twisty little passages where there's no functional way to give the players anything to work with on the table (have you ever tried mapping a plate of spaghetti?).

Others, however, can still be solved in-character, sometimes via the players actually acting out with more-or-less makeshift props what their PCs are doing as regards the puzzle.

A not-so-twisty maze, for example, can be solved by the players (in character) mapping it out.  A code or cipher can be written out on the game board or a piece of paper and solved by the players in character.  A four-lever puzzle can be solved in character by putting four objects on the table and getting the players to use them to show you what their characters are doing with the levers.

What this sort of thing does is allows the players to remain in character while in effect bringing the game world into the real world (via the props) for a moment so they can interact with it.  But note that doing this forces you to take the actual real-world time to solve the puzzle (thus real-world and game-world time pass equally during this process), rather than bundling it into a few die rolls.  It's also possible the players will fail to solve the puzzle, in which case their frustration simply mirrors that of their characters.



> I found searching constantly for traps and secret doors, a necessity in many old school games, a soul-destroying exercise in paranoia, and have a lot less of this in the games I run.



The searching can get tedious sometimes, no doubt there; but put yourself in your character's shoes for a moment: while in a hostile area e.g. a dungeon or enemy territory it's not paranoia, it's reality - the world really is out to get you. 



> While I have voluminous knowledge of the setting I use, I don't go into heavy details on the plans of the PCs antagonists, keeping a hazy overplan of the campaign, but keeping it flexible enough that I can move elements around in reaction to the players actions and events in the gameworld.



More or less what I also do, in the end.  The only difference (and it may not even be a difference, but you don't mention it) is that I also have a reasonably good idea of what would happen going forward if the PCs weren't around to change it.

Lanefan


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## pogre

I'm in Lanefan's and Caliban's camps when it comes to D&D. Honestly, possibly with the exception of 4e, this view of worldbuilding and play are very nearly built in. Pemerton made some excellent posts about how the 1e material allows players' input, but those are mostly exceptions.

At my table, players have very different expectations about what level of creative input is expected of them dependent on whether we are playing my 5e D&D campaign or our _Ars Magica_ campaign. Myself and many of my players enjoy both styles. I have players I don't even invite anymore to certain games that require significant player creative input. That's not fun to them - they mostly want lots of action. I love having them at certain games and they are fun and entertaining players. They just enjoy killing monsters and taking stuff.

tldr: I imagine I would have a great time playing at Pemerton's and Lanefan's respective tables.


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## Lanefan

pogre said:


> I imagine I would have a great time playing at Pemerton's and Lanefan's respective tables.



You'd be welcome any time, though I realize it'd be a fair schlepp to get from Illinois to here each week for the games.


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## pemerton

Mercurius said:


> What @_*pemerton*_ seems to be questioning is the probably more common approach of creating a setting--of some degree of depth--before hand, or using a setting like the Forgotten Realms, in which there is much less "primal flux." There is always some, always Terra Incognita, and even if there isn't much, it is intrinsic to the game that the DM can make the setting their own.
> 
> But @_*pemerton*_ doesn't seem to like the idea that the DM has superior or overriding authorship over the players. I haven't posted much in the last year or two, but this is the same underlying agenda he's been pushing for years. Nothing wrong with that, but he (you) does seem to be advocating for it as the Right Way to Play D&D.



Two things.

(1) THis isn't a D&D thread. It's a general RPG thread in the general RPG forum.

(2) The OP doesn't advocate anything. It asks what worldbuilding is for. Some answers have been provided. I'm intrested in what yours is. 



Mercurius said:


> I think the reason for world-building is primarily *to provide depth and a sense of meaning, realness and context to game play.*



Does this depend on the GM doing it? Or can it also be achieved by the players doing it?



Mercurius said:


> Perhaps the most important difference between fiction and RPGs, in this context at least, is that in RPGs the players are--to varying degrees--co-authors of the story. They have agency, even if they play in a non-pemertonian railroad campaign.



Although it's not direcgtly on-topic, I'm also curious as to what sort of "non-pemertonian" campaign you classify as a railroad.



Lanefan said:


> if nothing is true about the hero until it is written then by extension nothing is true about my game world until it is written...but guess what?  It's written.  In more or less very broad strokes, to be sure, but it's still written.
> 
> The main difference is that everyone can, if they wish, read the whole novel and find out what becomes of the hero; where in an RPG the players have to - to use your phrase - play to find out what becomes of their own characters.



OK, but when they play, are you saying that they learn what the GM has decided will happen to their PCs? Eg they're goinhg to learng that their PCs _can't_ find the map in the study (because the GM already decided it's somewhere else).


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## Sebastrd

pemerton said:


> Does this depend on the GM doing it? Or can it also be achieved by the players doing it?




If the players are doing it, what exactly is the GM supposed to be doing?

You've already answered your own question upthread. Worldbuilding is a device for the GM to keep his/her storytelling consistent.


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## pemerton

pogre said:


> At my table, players have very different expectations about what level of creative input is expected of them dependent on whether we are playing my 5e D&D campaign or our _Ars Magica_ campaign.



That makes sense. At my table, the players recognise that Burning Wheel imposes different demands on a player from (say) Cortex+ Heroic.



Nagol said:


> A player of Fate can do that with a declaration though it would be an odd choice of aspect to assign.



I agree.

I'm not saying it could _never _come up or be relevant. But I don't think it's a core case of player generated content in RPGing.



Jester David said:


> very quickly other products like _T1 Village of Hommlet _or _The Keep on the Borderlands_ were released, which much attention on the setting and the people. Given Gary wrote and put  _The Keep on the Borderlands_ in his Basic Set for new players, it sure looks like he intended people to consider the region above the dungeon and interact with NPCs.



NPCs don't _contrast_ with dungeons - they're present in dungeons as much as elsewhere.

The wilderness in B2 is not a departure from dungeon design, though - it's really an instance of it (confined in exploratory/spacial terms, with encounters established and placed on the map in advance). And the Keep is also primarily a source of puzzle-type encounters (eg the Priest in the tavenr).

T1 is a different sort of case which was discussed a bit upthread. It's not clear to me what Gygax intended to be done with the Village (as opposed to the Moat House, where I think the intended use is quite clear).



Lanefan said:


> Going the other way, in a game that has a take-20 mechanic all they need to do is search every room using take-20 and they'll find the map right where the DM put it.
> 
> As for retries, 1e doesn't like them but some other systems are fine with them.



Yes. Different mechanics generate different play experiences. I don't think that's controversial. My point is that, when you assert "If the players can find the map in the study on a high enough check, therefore there is no obstacle to them finding it because they can just keep checking" you are making assumptions about the permissibility of retries that aren't true in many RPGs.

The next step is to realise that games which permit the players to generate content by way of checks probablyi have ways of managing retries. (Eg Burning Wheel has a "let it ride" rule. In Cortex+ Heroic, the Doom Pool grows over time and once it has at least 2d12 in it the GM can spend those dice to end the scene. 4e has no formal "no retries" rule, but at one point Stephen Radley-McFarland posted a blog on the WotC site suggesting that such a rule would be a good addition to the system.



Lanefan said:


> That's not a failure, in my view.  It's a success (they were trying to find the map, they found the map, therefore success) with a DM-forced complication.
> 
> Failure narration in this example always has to somewhere include "you don't find the map".  It's black and white: you either find the map (success), or you don't (failure).
> 
> Now it's of course possible to succeed in finding the map and still have further headaches to deal with e.g. "yes you've found it (success) - you can see where it is - but it's embedded in the wall behind 6" of glassteel.  Now what do you do?"



Well, here's pne way to think about it.

Suppose the PCs have been tasked by some other being, _tell me where the map is_! Then finding the map in an unbreakable case; or finding it and then setting it alight, it a success. The PCs (and their players) have what they want, namely, knowledge of the map's location.

But suppose - as I was assuming in my example - that the PC's want the map so they can use it to get somewhere else. Then learning the location of the map but failing to gain the desired information is a failure.

This is why you can't adjudicate in a "say 'yes' or roll the dice", "fail forward" manner without knowing the intention that lies behind the task. Hence why the basic maxim for action resolution in Burning Wheel is "intent and task". And hence why, in 4e, the DMG advises the GM adjudicating an action declaration in a skill challenge, to get clear on what a player is trying to achieve by using a particular skill in the challenge (see pp 74, 75).



Lanefan said:


> There's two* mechanical ways of arriving at a narration** of what is in effect a partial success e.g. you find the map but it's behind 6" of glassteel, or you find it but immediately set it on fire by accident.  One is fail-forward, where in effect a failure is often mitigated into a partial success.  The other is (and if anyone has a better term for this, I'm all ears) more like succeed-backward, where it's a success that's mitigated by other circumstances rather than a failure - which remains a flat failure.  Of these I prefer the second approach as - and again I can't think of the best term for this - it in effect makes the game a bit "harder".
> 
> And why is this good?  Because without some failure and frustration now and then to measure the successes against the successes become ho-hum, and then become expected.



Huh? Failuore will result from failed checks. You don't need to turn successful checks into failures as well!



Lanefan said:


> I don't demand the "Lanefan method" (whatever that is), but when I see my and many others' style of gaming being slighted - and some posters here are very good at slighting something and implying it's wrong without actually coming out and saying so - then yes, I'm going to push back.



I didn't slight anything. I asked "What is worldbuilding for?" If the answer is, it's for X, but there seem to be other ways of achieving X, then it's natural to ask - so why achieve X _that way_ rather than some other way.

I should also note that you're rather fond of telling me that my game is "Schroedinger's world", that PCs never/rarely fail and hence the play is very easy, etc. I've never taken it that these are intended to be compliments! If you think I'm wrong in supposing that some of your worldbuilding is a way of imposing the GM's vision of the game onto play, then tell me why I'm wrong. If you think I'm right about that (eg [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION] seems to, as best I can tell), and think that's a good thing and hence one of the things that worldbuilding is for, tell me why it's good.

If _asking the question_ is per se a slight - well, I don't get that at all.


----------



## pemerton

Sebastrd said:


> You've already answered your own question upthread. Worldbuilding is a device for the GM to keep his/her storytelling consistent.



That's not my answer - I use other methods to maintain consistency. (Eg a mixture of memory and note-taking as play occurs.)



Sebastrd said:


> If the players are doing it, what exactly is the GM supposed to be doing?



Well, that might depend on the game.

In BW, Cortex+ and 4e, the GM frames scenes and narrates consequences. And when NPCs/monsters need to make action declarations in the context of action resolution, the GM makes those.

In Classic Traveller, all of the above is true, but the narration of consequences is often less important (because in many cases the resolution mechanics dictate particular consequences). And the GM has the responsibility for overseeing the dice-rolling processes for introducing content (encounter rolls, world generation, etc) which are a big part of that system. (But not a part of BW or Cortex+ Heroic at all, and at best optional in 4e and not used by me.)


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## pemerton

[MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]

Ron Edwars has a couple of interesting posts about the role of ingame time in play:

Metagame time . . . refers to time-lapse among really-played scenes: can someone get to the castle before someone else kills the king; can someone fly across Detroit before someone else detonates the Mind Bomb. Metagame time isn't "played," but its management is a central issue for scene-framing and the outcome of the session as a whole.

in-game time . .  is a causal constraint . . . it constrains metagame time. In-game time at the fine-grained level (rounds, seconds, actions, movement rates) sets incontrovertible, foundation material for making judgments about hours, days, cross-town movment, and who gets where in what order. I recommend anyone who's interested to the text of DC Heroes for some of the most explicit text available on this issue throughout the book.

[An example of adjudicating in this fashion - ie prioritising in-game time as a constraint on "metagame time" and hence scene-framing and the possibilities for action declaration]:

The time to traverse town with super-running is deemed insufficient to arrive at the scene, with reference to distance and actions at the scene, such that the villain's bomb does blow up the city. (The rules for DC Heroes specifically dictate that this be the appropriate way to GM such a scene).​
Would this be one possible example of your idea of world-building setting constraints and providing levers?


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## Sebastrd

pemerton said:


> In BW, Cortex+ and 4e, the GM frames scenes and narrates consequences.




Then let's discuss this in terms of 4E. We'll assume, since it seems to be your preferred method, that the GM has accomplished zero worldbuilding. How do you frame the opening scene?


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## Jester David

pemerton said:


> The wilderness in B2 is not a departure from dungeon design, though - it's really an instance of it (confined in exploratory/spacial terms, with encounters established and placed on the map in advance). And the Keep is also primarily a source of puzzle-type encounters (eg the Priest in the tavern).



I'm not sure what your point is.

Are the first four years of published D&D modules somehow more important than the 35+ years that came after? 
Are the modules that Gygax decided to publish somehow more important than how he ran his games? Gygax himself created a vast world beyond the dungeons, only a fraction of which we saw in the Greyhawk folio, as Gygax declined to share his campaign's secrets in favour of letting DMs create their own. 

I'm not convinced Gygax or the original modules placed that much stock in "solving puzzles". Early modules really seemed to encourage creative thought. Problems were presented and it was up to the players to device a solution. Some possible solutions were codified, but I doubt someone as imaginative as Gygas would limit himself to such hard options. 
But that's tangential to the world. The two concepts have zero relation. Regardless of the nature of the puzzles and problems of the original few levels of the dungeon, there still needed to be a world above the dungeon for the players to sell their treasure. Otherwise.. what was the point?


----------



## Mercurius

pemerton said:


> .
> 
> (1) THis isn't a D&D thread. It's a general RPG thread in the general RPG forum.




Uh, sure, but you were referencing "classic D&D" in the original post. But no matter.



pemerton said:


> (2) The OP doesn't advocate anything. It asks what worldbuilding is for. Some answers have been provided. I'm intrested in what yours is.
> 
> Does this depend on the GM doing it? Or can it also be achieved by the players doing it?




I'm not just talking about this thread. But again, no matter. Instead, I'll reply to your question (which I kind of already did, but....no matter).

No, it does not _depend_ upon the GM doing it. It depends upon what you want to accomplish, as well as what the spoken and unspoken agreements are. 

Most campaigns I've played in or heard of have the agreement that the GM does the "behind scenes" production work, sets the stage, and the players act within it but don't do much "production" other than through character creation and, perhaps, coming up with their own backstory--usually within parameters given by the GM.

There are, obviously, other ways to play, other agreements, other approaches.

But let's look at the second question--that is, "can it also be achieved by the players doing it?" 

Yes, it can be achieved. But having the players do it has a rather different result than if the GM does it. I'm not saying it is a better or worse result, just different. And from my experience, the expectations and even desires of most players is that they do not have much say in building the world in which they interact. The general assumption I see most often is that players show up to interact in a world and story of the GM's design, or at least one that the GM has bought and read.

I see a spectrum. On one side is a novel. You read the novel, which is pre-written with a singular story that the reader cannot diverge from. It is, in a sense, a complete "railroad" in that you (the reader) cannot change the course of the story. On the other side of the spectrum is a blank slate; you can to do whatever you want, sort of like Harold and his purple crayon (if you remember the children's book). 

Between the two poles are variations from choose-your-own-adventure, adventure paths, classic D&D modules, hex-crawls, etc. In a way it is how _power_ is distributed among the participants. In a novel the author has complete power (although if you are a writer you might protest at this and say that sometimes the story just takes control and writes itself, but that's another discussion). In the _tabula rasa_ approach, it is distributed equally among the participants (I think the RPG _Universalis_ follows this model?).

What I hear you advocating for continuously is an approach more towards tabula rasa than the vast majority of D&D players. Would you agree?

And what I have seen you do continuously over years, time and time again, is pose different ways of subtly (or not so subtly) challenging the "main bloc" of D&D campaigns.

Don't get me wrong: I see nothing wrong with that, just as I see nothing wrong with your approach. Viva la difference. 

Now would you agree that the "GM authority" and "co-creative player" approaches have different strengths and weaknesses, possibilities and limitations? And what if we use world-building as a context?

I would argue that the GM authority approach to world building offers certain distinct advantages over the co-creative player approach (just as it may have certain disadvantages), and I'll use the novel analogy to illustrate. When I read a novel I don't want to know how it ends. I like the feeling that I am entering a story that is new and fresh, that I don't know about before hand. Furthermore, I am entering the imagination of another human being.

On the other hand, when I am writing my own stories, I also often don't know how it is going to end - but I am within my own imaginative space, so I have some control in how it is formed and unfolds. I would argue that there is a kind of quasi-mystical quality to the imagination that i won't go into here, but only mention it because I don't think it is simply a matter of combining pre-existing parts in a mechanistic and rational process, but can almost be akin to "channeling." See, for instance, Coleridge's views on the imagination. But still, it is _my_ imagination, _my_ story, and unlike a novel that I'm reading, I can do whatever the blank I want with it.

But when I join a campaign with the assumption of GM authority, I get to enjoy the pleasure of entering another's imagination; something another has created. I _do_ have some authority in that world, but similar authority as you or I have in the real world: I cannot magically decide what is around that next corner in the road like in a lucid dream; it is already there, pre-made. You and I are interacting (presumably) with an already-existing environment. And that limitation creates a certain kind of dramatic tension.

To be honest, I have never played in a co-creative RPG like you describe, but would love to give it a shot. But I have written a novel, and of course read many novels, so I imagine that the feeling of difference between co-creative playing and GM authority is somewhat similar to the difference between writing a novel (or co-writing a novel) and reading a novel. 

So the point of world-building, in this context, is similar to the point of creating a setting for a novel: it provides a context for story, and a space for the reader (or player) to explore and enjoy. And the key is that it is a truly _Otherworld,_ unlike one's own imagination. Actually, I think we could argue that the _sense of adventure_ requires at least a good amount of feeling of _otherworldliness_ - that we are leaving the familiar, known, and even controlled, and venturing forth into territory that is alien to us. 

The point of world-building is to make that otherworldliness come alive, to be a living, unknown and uncertain context for the players to explore.


----------



## pemerton

Jester David said:


> I'm not sure what your point is.
> 
> Are the first four years of published D&D modules somehow more important than the 35+ years that came after?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I'm not convinced Gygax or the original modules placed that much stock in "solving puzzles". Early modules really seemed to encourage creative thought. Problems were presented and it was up to the players to device a solution. Some possible solutions were codified, but I doubt someone as imaginative as Gygas would limit himself to such hard options.



You're reading "solving puzzle" more narrowly than I intended it.

Don't think _crossword_. Think _here's a garden rake, a pot of glue and some silver foil - how would you use that to cross this 6' wide trench_? The solutions are open-ended; but a big part of play is coming up with solutions - in the form of manipulating the fiction (by way of equipment and spells, as well as clever ideas for using whatever it is the GM describes).

As to whether this is more important than subsequent D&D - I didn't say that, and didn't intend to imply it. What I said in the OP (and have reiterated a bit since) is that I think it's very clear what the GM's notes are for in that kind of play. They establish the framing for the "puzzle" (which includes the maze of the dungeon itself) and establish its parameters. Their finitude is a very important part of this - ie the dungeon is _not_ a "living, breathing" world _in the context of a particular episode of play_.

You can see this pretty clearly in Gygax's advice to players in his PHB (from pp 107, 109):

First get in touch with all those who will be included in the adventure, or if all are not available, at least talk to the better players so that you will be able to set an objective for the adventure. Whether the purpose is so simple as to discover a flight of stairs to the next lowest unexplored level or so difficult as to find and destroy on altar to an alien god, some firm obiective should be established and then adhered to as strongly as possible. . . .

A word about mapping is in order. A map is very important because it helps assure that the party will be able to return to the surface. Minor
mistakes are not very important. It makes no difference if there is a 20' error somewhere as long as the chart allows the group to find its way out! As it is possible that one copy of the party's map might be destroyed by mishap or monster, the double map is a good plan whenever possible - although some players have sufficiently trained recall so as to be able to find their way back with but small difficulty, and these individuals are a great boon to the group. . . .

Avoid unnecessary encounters. This advice usually means the difference between success and failure when it is followed intelligently. Your party
has an objective, and wondering monsters are something which stand between them and it. The easiest way to overcome such difficulties is to
avoid the interposing or trailing creature if at all possible.  . . . Run first and ask questions later. In the same vein, shun encounters with creatures found to be dwelling permanently in the dungeon (as far as you can tell, that is) unless such creatures are part of the set objective or the monster stands between the group and the goal it has set out to gain. Do not be sidetracked. A good referee will have many ways to distract an expedition, many things to draw attention, but ignore them if at all possible. The mappers must note all such things, and another expedition might be in order another day to investigate or destroy something or some monster, but always stay with what was planned if at all possible, and wait for another day to handle the other matters.​
This advice becomes pointless if the dungeon is changing dramatically in the timescale of PC expeditions - as under those circumstances the map becomes relatively pointless, notes as to future targets for expeditions become unhelpful, etc. A group can't follow Gygax's advice, for instance, if they can't reasonably rely upon the permanent dweller still being there when, in next week's session, they implement their new plan of going to find out what sort of treasure it might be guarding; and the, the week after that, implement their plan of going and obtaining said treasure.

As expectations about the nature and scope of the gameworld change - as we get games like Runequest that emphasise verisimiltude over the artificial environment of the Gygaxian dungeon, as we get modules like Dragonlance, as we get settings like the Forgotten Realms - the setting is clearly no longer playing the sort of role Gygax envisages in the passages I've quoted. It's not a "maze" for the players to unravel and a set of problems for them to solve (with a principal focus on loot identification and extraction).

This thread is asking - given that it's _not_ those things, _what is it for_?


----------



## pemerton

Sebastrd said:


> We'll assume, since it seems to be your preferred method, that the GM has accomplished zero worldbuilding. How do you frame the opening scene?



Well, I can answer give two answers to this question.

Here's one: I told the players that I wanted to GM a game set in the default 4e setting, as it is described in the 4e PHB (mostly in the entries for the races and the gods, but with various bits also implied in some of the class descriptions).

I also told each player that (i) I wanted them to identify one loyalty for their PC; (ii) I wanted them to come up with a reason for their PC to be ready to fight goblins; and (iii) that, being D&D, we were going to be starting in a tavern. The reason for (ii) was that I wanted to use B10 Night's Dark Terror, which seemed like it had some nice encounter ideas that would work well in 4e, one of which is defending a homestead from a goblin attack. The reason for (iii) I hope is self-evident.

The PCs came up with various ideas for their PCs. One was a dwarf from the mountain dwarfholds, and - as the player explained - a dwarf does not come of age until s/he kills a goblin. But this particular dwarf had never killed a goblin. Despite serving in the dwarven army for longer than most other dwarves, he had always been in the wrong place at the wrong time whenever the goblins attacked (on leave, on kitchen duty or, as one of the other players suggested with the intention of ribbing him, on latrine duty). So he had set out to find himself a goblin to fight - and had ended up at a tavern in Kelven favoured by dwarves.

Another was a half-elven warlock. The player decided that this character had had two formative experiences prior to day 1 of the campaign: (1) he had been wandering in the forest when he received a vision of Corellon (who was his patron as a fey pact warlock); (2) when he came back to his village, it had been wiped out by raiding goblins. Having headed off to Kelven to look for work and/or guidance, he found himself at a tavern that served the find dwarven beers for which he had a certain preference.

A third was a middle-aged human mage. The player came up with the name of this mage's home city - Entekash. But Entekash was no more, having been razed by hordes of humanoids (inlcuding goblins, it seemed, although this particular player was pretty relaxed in his backstory as far as the difference between goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, gnolls etc was concerned). The mage, Malstaph, was a devotee of the Raven Queen (I can't remember if that had been true before Entekash's fall, or whether he had turned to the Raven Queen as a response to the destruction of his home). Entekash's suriving populuation was scattered. And so he found himself at a tavern in Kelven.

(There were several other PCs - two also Raven Queen devotees, plus a cleric and a paladin of Kord - but the one's I've described are the ones I recall best, with the richest backstory.)

This was all worked out before the first session, and mabye during the course of it. I showed the players the map on the inside cover of B10, so they could see where Kelven was, where the forest was that elf-y types could come from, where the mountains were, etc. Becaue I had ideas about the western mountains, as suggested by parts of the module, I told the dwarf player that he was from the eastern mountains. Entekash, we agreed, was further north and east of those mountains, a trading city that had been wiped out as the humanoids spread and the old Nerathi trade routes dried up.

With it being established, already, that the PCs were in the tavern, we did a bit of free roleplaying so they could meet one another - some of this in character, some of it out of character as people told one another about their PCs - and then I described a man entering the tavern and striking up a conversation with (as best I recall) the mage. This NPC was Stephen from B10. He was looking for some recruits for a fairly straightforward droving job (I think - its' been a while - and in any event it's just a plot device, and obviously so). He had known the mage's uncle - I can't remember whether it was me or the player who introduced the uncle into the situation, but this was a way of establishing some trust betwen the patron and one of the PCs, thus making the plot device work.

The PCs then set off by boat, and the first encounter was with Iron Ring raiders attacking their boat on the river - I had established the Iron Ring as a Bane-ite organisation, which provided some context in relation to the two Kord worshippers. And things went from there.

The other answer is from a subsequent campaign, whose first session is written up as an actual play post here. In this case, the agree setting was not default 4e, but Dark Sun. In an email I sent some stuff to the players about psionics and defiling, plus the basic ideas of the setting: sword & sandals, sword & planet, gladiators, city states, sorcerer kings, evil templars, etc.

We made PCs and chose themes together. One of the PCs was an eladrin bard (who I had said counted as psionic rather than arcane) with wizard multiclass (and had spent a background option to be a preserver - I had already said that I was not using the WotC versions "preserving for free"). He was an envoy trying to meet with the veiled alliance.

Another PC was a half-giant barbarian wilder gladiator.

I asked each player to come up with a "kicker" - ie a starting situation for their PC - which would fit into the idea of starting in Tyr following the overthrow of the sorcerer king. One player asked "How much after?" and the barbarian player decided his kicker was that, _as he was about to behead his opponent in the arena, earning the adulation of the crowd, the cries of revolution and the death of the tyrant suddenly broke out, and  so he was deprived of his moment of glory_.  So that established the timeline - the campaign begins at the moment of the tyrant's death - and also the location - at least that PC was in the arena.

The eladrin player's kicker was that, as he about to meet his Veiled Alliance contact - the secret signal having been given and acknowledged - the contact dropped dead just feet away from him. I set this in the arena, and - together with the kicker for a third PC - it established further context for the opening scene. (They ended up killing some templars and escaping from the arena as rebel fugitives.)

Another player who couldn't join us to the second session also played an eladrin, but wrote into his backstory that he had been taken by the templars at a young age and turned into a thrall assassin - and it was he who had killed the Veiled Alliance contact! This provided material that was a main focus for the next couple of sessions.

What I think both examples have in common is that the initial establishment of the setting is relatively light touch, based on a few key sources that the players have been pointed to, and with the group coming up with ideas (the players, naturally enough, focusing on their PCs) which are melded together (with the GM, I think unsurprisingly, taking the lead in this melding). I have no idea whether in canonical Dark Sun the eladrin send envoys to the Veiled Alliance, and whether the templars create thrall assassins from young waifs (I christened them "Shadow Templars") - just as with the map from B10 which became our Nerath, we're using the setting as a source of ideas and themes and tropes which we'll then build on in actual play.

EDIT: to give another illustration of that last point - when the shadow templar PC, having now repented of his wrongdoing when he saw the devastation caused to his fellow eladrin, led the PCs to his safe house so they could hide from the templars hunting them, we didn't resolve this by consulting established Dark Sun lore about templar safe houses in Tyr. We pulled out the map, and I explained the different "quarters" including the slumm-y one where an assassin was likely to have his safe house, and then we used  a Streetwise skill check to determine whether the PCs got there safely. The check was a success, which established that they did indeed find their way safely to his safehouse, which (in virtue of the successful check) was not immediately swarmed by templars -  which itself suggests new fiction, like that only his Shadow Templar handler knows where his safehouse is, and so they won't be attacked there until the handler learns that his thrall has turned, and then gets a team together to assault them.


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## chaochou

It's worth noting that there are games which feature collective, collaborative world-building. And which do so as part of play, giving players a central role in creating the terrain - geographic, political, social and economic - that will underlie events.

Diaspora, the sci-fi version of Fate, starts Chapter 2 like this (p13):

_The first session of a Diaspora campaign is used to create the setting and the characters. This is intended as a full group activity - Diaspora is not a game that rewards lonely character creation and lonely setting design. Rather, this is a game that rewards social interaction to create co-operatively._

It goes on to note that _during world-building the group need not have decided who will referee_. Each person has _full narrative authority over the elements they create_. And it gives a procedure for developing solar systems, with dice rolls for stats, free description, and aspects. Everyone is describing to each other what they create as they do so, completely transparently. After this the players are fully able to create dramatic characters who are invested in the tensions, problems and struggles they've just created in the universe.

What does this tell us about Diaspora? Well, it tells us it's not a game about discovering the hidden content of the GMs notes. It's not a game in which a GM contrives a 'plot' and players are expected to reverse engineer reasons to follow that plot. It's not a game where action resolution outcomes can be revised to conform with the GM's notion of an pre-existent 'reality'.

It also tells us that the universe in Diaspora does not consist of the little bit that the players have discovered and the submerged iceberg of material the referee keeps secret. Everyone starts out knowing all that is known, and both players and referee set out together to discover all the things that are not yet known, focused around what happens to the characters as they pursue their own agendas.

Collective world-building can be used to great effect in any similar game where the players generate the themes and key conflicts which will drive play as part of character creation. Apocalypse World and Burning Wheel both shift in this direction without the explicit procedures of Fate.


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## pemerton

Mercurius said:


> Most campaigns I've played in or heard of have the agreement that the GM does the "behind scenes" production work, sets the stage, and the players act within it but don't do much "production" other than through character creation and, perhaps, coming up with their own backstory--usually within parameters given by the GM.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But having the players do it has a rather different result than if the GM does it. I'm not saying it is a better or worse result, just different. And from my experience, the expectations and even desires of most players is that they do not have much say in building the world in which they interact. The general assumption I see most often is that players show up to interact in a world and story of the GM's design, or at least one that the GM has bought and read.
> 
> I see a spectrum. On one side is a novel. You read the novel, which is pre-written with a singular story that the reader cannot diverge from. It is, in a sense, a complete "railroad" in that you (the reader) cannot change the course of the story. On the other side of the spectrum is a blank slate; you can to do whatever you want, sort of like Harold and his purple crayon (if you remember the children's book).
> 
> Between the two poles are variations from choose-your-own-adventure, adventure paths, classic D&D modules, hex-crawls, etc. In a way it is how _power_ is distributed among the participants.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Now would you agree that the "GM authority" and "co-creative player" approaches have different strengths and weaknesses, possibilities and limitations? And what if we use world-building as a context?
> 
> I would argue that the GM authority approach to world building offers certain distinct advantages over the co-creative player approach (just as it may have certain disadvantages), and I'll use the novel analogy to illustrate. When I read a novel I don't want to know how it ends. I like the feeling that I am entering a story that is new and fresh, that I don't know about before hand. Furthermore, I am entering the imagination of another human being.
> 
> On the other hand, when I am writing my own stories, I also often don't know how it is going to end - but I am within my own imaginative space, so I have some control in how it is formed and unfolds.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But when I join a campaign with the assumption of GM authority, I get to enjoy the pleasure of entering another's imagination; something another has created. I _do_ have some authority in that world, but similar authority as you or I have in the real world: I cannot magically decide what is around that next corner in the road like in a lucid dream; it is already there, pre-made.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> So the point of world-building, in this context, is similar to the point of creating a setting for a novel: it provides a context for story, and a space for the reader (or player) to explore and enjoy.



So the point of worldbuilding is for the GM to present the players with the product of his/her imagination?

EDIT: For what's it worth, I don't find the notion of "strengths and weaknesses" that helpful in this context.

If the point of GM worldbuilding is for the GM to present the players with the product of his/her imagination, then I think it's easier just to identify that - _that's what it's for_ - then to frame that as a _strength_, as if it's instrumental to some other goal (what would that other goal be?).

You also seem to be saying that the point of the _GM_ doing the worldbuiling is to ensure a certain sort of passivityi/non-creation on the party of the players. But you talk about the players "interacting" with the world. Given that that's metaphor, are you able to make it more literal? Eg should we think of action declaration by a player for a PC as something like a _suggestion_ to the GM to change or develop the fiction in a certain way?


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## pemerton

chaochou said:


> _during world-building the group need not have decided who will referee_.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Collective world-building can be used to great effect in any similar game where the players generate the themes and key conflicts which will drive play as part of character creation. Apocalypse World and Burning Wheel both shift in this direction without the explicit procedures of Fate.



This is interesting. I think a Traveller game could be kicked off in the way you describe for Diaspora. The only bit of world generation tha the books assume will involve GM secrets from the players is the presence (or otherwise) of branches of the Psionics Institute; but the whole psionics "module" can fairly easily be ignored.

Burning Wheel, as written, assumes a referee from the start who will do the work of - or, at least, take the lead in - integrating all the players' ideas for their PCs, their relationships, etc into a cohesive whole. I think changing it in the way you describe would be interesting, and feasible - but definitely a departure from what the rules present as the default.

I think it's interesting, as a bit of game design history, that Traveller is - as presented - more flexible in this way than BW, despite being 25-odd years older. It's curious that the Traveller approach to "worldbuilding" didn't seem to become more mainstream.


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## Nagol

pemerton said:


> @_*Nagol*_
> 
> Ron Edwars has a couple of interesting posts about the role of ingame time in play:Metagame time . . . refers to time-lapse among really-played scenes: can someone get to the castle before someone else kills the king; can someone fly across Detroit before someone else detonates the Mind Bomb. Metagame time isn't "played," but its management is a central issue for scene-framing and the outcome of the session as a whole.
> 
> in-game time . .  is a causal constraint . . . it constrains metagame time. In-game time at the fine-grained level (rounds, seconds, actions, movement rates) sets incontrovertible, foundation material for making judgments about hours, days, cross-town movment, and who gets where in what order. I recommend anyone who's interested to the text of DC Heroes for some of the most explicit text available on this issue throughout the book.​



​

I think this is somewhat backward.  In-game time is constrained by meta-game time.  If I know, for example, that the game expects set-piece combats that will take more than an hour to resolve but I'm playing at lunch hour then I can't have more than a single battle even though less than a minute of game time has passed.  Additionally, a group may decide to have a half-hour discussion over the value of a particular tactic in the space of a single character's combat move.  In-game time offers no constraint to the meta-game time.  Meta-game constraints affect all elements in-game.

In most games, in-game time, like time we experience, is a causal constraint.  you won't see effect before cause.  But, that's not particularly meaningful.  Breaking that causality is limited to specific genres like Gumshoe's _Timewatch_ game.

Many games play with the notion of time is foundational and even more tables adopt this approach in games that nominally treat time as a concrete constraint.  More cinematic styles presume in-game time is more like a canvas for drama than a constraint: the ships can reach the BBEG guy before the attack starts, defusing the bomb will complete with one second to spare, etc,  _Tales of the Floating Vagabond_ explicitly calls this out with the shtick "Just-in-time Drive" where the PC will always arrive... just in time.  



> [An example of adjudicating in this fashion - ie prioritising in-game time as a constraint on "metagame time" and hence scene-framing and the possibilities for action declaration]:
> 
> The time to traverse town with super-running is deemed insufficient to arrive at the scene, with reference to distance and actions at the scene, such that the villain's bomb does blow up the city. (The rules for DC Heroes specifically dictate that this be the appropriate way to GM such a scene).






> Would this be one possible example of your idea of world-building setting constraints and providing levers?




It depends on context.  If player choices led to the point where the PCs are out of position sufficiently that they can't thwart the villain's plan then it is certainly a world-setting constraint.  It's not really a lever in the sense I was meaning though.

Levers are those instabilities constructed into the game world that, once detected by the players, the PCs can try to use to change the current circumstances.  A few examples follow:


Beneath the castle in a forgotten room is a summoning circle containing a demon bound for a century or more.  If freed, she will attempt to destroy the conjurer's heirs.
The queen is having a torrid affair with the king's most powerful and most trusted knight.  Exposure of the infidelity will banish that knight from the realm at a minimum.  If the PCs discover the adultery, do they expose it or help cover it up?
The kingdom is currently ruled by a Steward even though there is a known heir to the throne.  The heir doesn't want the position, but can be persuaded to make the claim if he is convinced that is the only way to save the kingdom.  Do the PCs try to install the heir?
The king is strong.  The king's brother is known to be ambitious but cowardly.  He would never attempt to seize control from his brother, but if the king was held for ransom...
The people are restive.  The king's authority is granted by the jagged crown he wears at court.  If that were stolen...
There is a book that provides a first-hand account of the formation of the major religion.  It differs from the official history and lends support to a major heretical splinter.  Do the PCs keep it hidden or expose its contents?
There is a device that can be used to make a desolate region fertile.  It destroys all constructs already present though.  Do the PCs use it and where?


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## chaochou

pemerton said:


> Burning Wheel, as written, assumes a referee from the start who will do the work of - or, at least, take the lead in - integrating all the players' ideas for their PCs, their relationships, etc into a cohesive whole. I think changing it in the way you describe would be interesting, and feasible - but definitely a departure from what the rules present as the default.




You've probably run it more recently than me 

But my memory is that the books don't offer a lot of detail on exactly how play starts. In other words, they don't say: _As GM you create and own the world and everything in it_

They say something more like: Sit down as a group and discuss what the game's going to be. Are you going to be a bunch of criminals in a big city, or hardened adventurers delving into forgotten ruins?

I don't remember BW explaining step-by-step how you get from that initial idea (let's call it the theme), to having enough explicit detail about the setting to write character beliefs. But, I think it's clear from _actual play_ that it doesn't involve secret GM setting creation. Instead you start with the theme and have a conversation, until the back and forth of ideas and suggestions coalesces into an opening situation.



pemerton said:


> I think it's interesting, as a bit of game design history, that Traveller is - as presented - more flexible in this way than BW, despite being 25-odd years older. It's curious that the Traveller approach to "worldbuilding" didn't seem to become more mainstream.




I've said it before - Traveller is the one game of its era I admire more and more with each passing year. It's a superb piece of game design, years ahead of its time, with equally wonderful and evocative graphic design.


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## pemerton

chaochou said:


> But my memory is that the books don't offer a lot of detail on exactly how play starts. In other words, they don't say: _As GM you create and own the world and everything in it_
> 
> They say something more like: Sit down as a group and discuss what the game's going to be. Are you going to be a bunch of criminals in a big city, or hardened adventurers delving into forgotten ruins?
> 
> I don't remember BW explaining step-by-step how you get from that initial idea (let's call it the theme), to having enough explicit detail about the setting to write character beliefs. But, I think it's clear from _actual play_ that it doesn't involve secret GM setting creation.



You're right about that - no secret settting creation. But the GM is expected to bring the "big picture", and to use that as a basis for the pitch - with the players then expanding/adapting/modifying.

One example given is that the GM pitches a "magic has left the land" campaign, and one player wants to play "the last mage" - and it encourages the GM to say yes (especially if another PC is the brother of the last mage, and a priest who has to spill a living mage's blood on the land to restore it!).

That's the sort of thing I'm getting at when I say that the book expects - by default, at least - that the GM will play an _integrating_ role vis-a-vis player beliefs, relationships, backstories etc.

The Adventure Burner gives more detail on how Luke et al approach it (and recommend approaching it). It emphasises tropes and "big picture" over detail, because the detail needs to get filled in as part of action resolution and scene framing in the course of actual play.

The main departure from the AB advice in my own BW game is that we use a pre-prepared map (Greyhawk). That said, the portion of the map we're using is the middle bit - which has GH city, a big lake/inland sea to the north, forest to the south-west, a wild coast with pirate-prone waters to the south, desert with ancient tribes across the bay and then hills to the north of that (ie east of GH). So basically every fantasy trope can be handled within that bit of the map - which is why I chose that rather than (say) Keoland or the Great Kingdom. (I assume it's deliberate on Gygax's part to have designed this bit of the map this way.)

But the map's not secret - when we need to work something out in terms of the map (eg how far is it to X, and what does that suggest about the difficult of the required Orienteering or whatever check), I pull it out and we all look at it and work out what's going on.

To relate this back to the thread topic: a number of posters have talked about the role of backstory in providing depth/context. It seems to do that better if shared rather than secret.

I wonder what different approaches groups take to sharing the map, the cosmology, etc.


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## chaochou

pemerton said:


> One example given is that the GM pitches a "magic has left the land" campaign, and one player wants to play "the last mage" - and it encourages the GM to say yes (especially if another PC is the brother of the last mage, and a priest who has to spill a living mage's blood on the land to restore it!).




Yes - exactly. This is a perfect illustration of the 'conversation' in action which takes an initial idea (magic has gone) and develops it through the introduction of characters to create a situation with drama and conflict.



pemerton said:


> I wonder what different approaches groups take to sharing the map, the cosmology, etc.




I usually have a big, blank artist's pad in the centre of the table - A1 or A2 size - and a load of coloured markers. It starts with everyone adding their ideas to a map until we have enough of a sketch to begin play, but it quickly becomes more than that. It's really the campaign book. So as things get narrated (by whoever) they get added - places on the map, features, names, npcs, factions, rumours, sketches of equipment... new maps get drawn on other pages, combat scenes get fleshed out in corners, names and notes get scribbled.

So, while it nearly always starts as a map, in time it grows across the pages into a central library of 'knowledge' about the current game, as well as the collective memory of events and characters.

It's a method that's worked well for me for more than a decade. It has the added benefit that you end up with almost a scrapbook of the campaign, something shared which everyone has put their marks on.


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## Sebastrd

pemerton said:


> What I think both examples have in common is that the initial establishment of the setting is relatively light touch, based on a few key sources that the players have been pointed to, and with the group coming up with ideas (the players, naturally enough, focusing on their PCs) which are melded together (with the GM, I think unsurprisingly, taking the lead in this melding). I have no idea whether in canonical Dark Sun the eladrin send envoys to the Veiled Alliance, and whether the templars create thrall assassins from young waifs (I christened them "Shadow Templars") - just as with the map from B10 which became our Nerath, we're using the setting as a source of ideas and themes and tropes which we'll then build on in actual play.




In both of your examples, you accomplish a minute amount of general worldbuilding before play begins, allow your players to add some of the specifics, and then jointly accomplish the rest during actual play. Does that about sum it up?

The default in D&D and in most campaigns is that the DM accomplishes the worldbuilding with little, if any, input from the players before play actually begins. If I understand th point of this thread, you're wondering why games default to GM-centric worldbuilding prior to play instead of player-centric worldbuilding during the course of the game.

Assuming I'm correct, the answer is, "Relatively few players desire to engage in the worldbuilding exercise, so that task falls to the GM. Developing the world _during play_ is a rare talent, so most GMs do their worldbuilding beforehand." 

Personally, I view the campaign setting and NPCs as the GM's "characters". I "roll" them up just as a player rolls his/her PC, I give them traits and motivations, then I let them loose in the game. I consider my worldbuilding notes the world's character sheet. I refer to those notes when I have questions about how situations might unfold.

Most of the players I've GM'd for over the years enjoy exploration. They want to find out what's around the next corner or what's in the next dungeon room. They enjoy the thrill of discovery. They can't get that kind of fun if _they're deciding_ what's around the next corner or what's in the next dungeon room.


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## Sadras

pemerton said:


> In a dungeon, the parameters of the puzzle are very confined.




Do you imagine the maze is populated or is just filled with doors to open, chairs to sit on and chest lids to open? So a dungeon is just a dungeon is just a dungeon, the non-player characters are about as animate as stone tiles and do not offer any story, rumours or intrigue in your adventures?



> Once the settingSo techniques that worked in the dungeon context - obtaining information by way of sheer fictional positioning and free roleplay ("We open the door and look in" "We lift the lid of the chest" "How many goblins can we see through the peephole?") - become far less feasible. The players become *far more dependent on the GM to dispense information* (eg in the form of rumours; encounters and interactions with various city inhabitants; etc).




What a strange thing to say (bolded part). Who dispenses information when a character opens a door, lifts the lid of a chest or peeps through a peephole? 



> I find it a bit hard to imagine how it would work - it _seems_ like the GM would map the mountains, then draw the "old map", then arrange for the PCs to find the old map, and then the players would delcare (as actions) that they follow the map - but maybe that's not what you have in mind. Eg maybe the map is the puzzle, and once it's been deciphered the actual journey through the mountains is a matter of a minute or two of narration.




Perhaps the player characters have a choice of travelling as passengers on a barge, alone on horseback or guards as part of a travelling caravan as they have to be discreet for story reasons. Perhaps they have to take the fastest possible route due to x or they desire to take the safest route. The goblins tracks split, some continue along the river, but a small contingent is now heading towards the mountains... These examples are similar in fashion to your typical T-junction decisions in a dungeon.

Perhaps they encounter a sea vessel in flames, a recently attacked caravan or a wounded horse = your typical dungeon prisoner. Do they now assist? 

Also empty rooms in a dungeon - can just be the minute or two narrations of a journey from A to B.

Where you see differences, I see similarities.



> Saying, "Let's play Marvel Heroic" isn't worldbuilding - it's pitching a game.




Let's play in Mystara isn't worldbuilding it's pitching a game despite the fact that this setting has a unique cosmos with its own planes and includes specific races and concepts and excludes others. Is that how you see it? 

Does Marvel Heroic include any DC character? (I've never played the game, so I'm asking)



> In what way? Showing someone (the player) a map with a little village on it called Five Oak isn't "leveragign the vast work" of anything. It's leveraging a single map and place name. There's no description of any powerful recluse wizards in the GH City boxed set description of Five Oak.




I see, so in your personalised definition of worldbuilding introducing a 'map with names' is not worldbuilding. So worldbuilding depends on the extent of the worldbuilding. So 1 map is fine, 3 is borderline but 5+ is definitely worldbuilding?
I like how you decide on the limits of what is worldbuilding depending on the amount of setting content introduced. 

So 1 map is not worldbuilding. Got it!
In a probably 5+ year old thread ago you mentioned that because the paladin in 1e may summon his mount in a quest = 'forced content' injected by player  somehow 1e was very much about player injected content. In that instance 1 example was all it took and was indeed needed to satsify your 'player content push' which is your preferred style of play.
Now when people argue that using a map is worldbuilding (by your own words *establishing setting information in advance of play*) you change the parameters and say hang-on 1 example (map and a few names) is not enough to call me out on my worldbuilding. 

Can you honestly not see, how one might look at this and call your entire thread polony?


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## Manbearcat

Sadras said:


> Do you imagine the maze is populated or is just filled with doors to open, chairs to sit on and chest lids to open? So a dungeon is just a dungeon is just a dungeon, the non-player characters are about as animate as stone tiles and do not offer any story, rumours or intrigue in your adventures?




 [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] doesn't run dungeons in his games (in the classical sense).  When I run dungeon crawl games, I'm either using Moldvay Basic or Torchbearer anymore (very sparingly AD&D).  

So I've got the dungeon stocked with NPCs/Monsters, Traps, Puzzles, Secret Doors, Stairs, Chutes, etc etc.  You roll a d6 per denizens in a particular room that should be in earshot of some racket nearby.  If a 1 comes up (or 2 in the case of demihuman or creature with keen hearing), they hear it and check it out.  Then you roll Reaction and find out what the dice say happens and go from there to either a social encounter, a combat encounter, or a chase (pretty much exhaustively).  Same thing applies for Wandering Monsters.  If its time to check for Wandering Monsters, you make your roll, if yes then you roll on your table to find out what comes up.  Then you roll Reaction again and go from there.  

The place is "alive" insofar as the dice says it is and I get to find out just how alive it is rather than deciding by fiat.  My role is in creating the dungeon setting, the theme, stocking it, and then playing the obstacles (monsters included) to the adventurer's treasure hunt as they come up.  In the stocking there may be intel or circumstance in there that relates to lower levels of the dungeon or future dungeon prospects that the PCs can divine/deliberate over when they go back to town with whatever spoils they've pulled out.


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## Manbearcat

pemerton said:


> This is very clear, thank you. I'm interested to see what others think of it (eg [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION], [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION], [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION], [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION], [MENTION=6777696]redrick[/MENTION]).




I think that statement and several others creates a composite sketch (while not everyone will agree with each part, there is probably broad agreement on the whole) of something like the following:

1)  The setting is the GMs.

2)  The GM world-builds because it is a fun enterprise for them unto itself (an art).

3)  The GM uses that pre-built world to determine off-screen events in some fashion, typically fiat-by-(some form of)extrapolation.

4)  The GM uses that pre-built world to determine if a player's declared action is feasible at all (reserved right to veto power).

5)  The GM uses that pre-built world to determine how a player's declared action is impacted when it is feasible and dice need to be rolled (impact on action resolution machinery).

6)  The GM uses that pre-built world to help them in determining how the impacted setting evolves post-action-resolution.

These seem to be less broadly agreed upon, but there is plenty of support (either explicit or implied):

7)  The GM uses their pre-built-world-related metaplot (or vision of narrative if not so concrete) during action resolution adjudication to determine if veto ("no") will provide a better (more interesting?) story outcome or "roll the dice" will provide a better (more interesting?) story outcome.

8)  If the GM allows for "roll the dice", they can subordinate the results of action resolution (secretly) if they feel it makes for a better (more interesting?) story outcome.

9)  The players role is to explore the art (of the GM's built world and related metaplot), appreciate the art, and take-up the plot hooks therein at their discretion (the "choose-you-own-adventure" invocation).  Now "their (player) discretion" will invariably bump up against (4), (7), and (8) above.  When it does, it seems to me that the general consensus of D&D players on ENWorld amounts to "its the GM's game/table, any player is perfectly free to find another game/table."


----------



## Aenghus

Manbearcat said:


> I think that statement and several others creates a composite sketch (while not everyone will agree with each part, there is probably broad agreement on the whole) of something like the following:
> 
> 1)  The setting is the GMs.
> 
> 2)  The GM world-builds because it is a fun enterprise for them unto itself (an art).
> 
> 3)  The GM uses that pre-built world to determine off-screen events in some fashion, typically fiat-by-(some form of)extrapolation.
> 
> 4)  The GM uses that pre-built world to determine if a player's declared action is feasible at all (reserved right to veto power).
> 
> 5)  The GM uses that pre-built world to determine how a player's declared action is impacted when it is feasible and dice need to be rolled (impact on action resolution machinery).
> 
> 6)  The GM uses that pre-built world to help them in determining how the impacted setting evolves post-action-resolution.
> 
> These seem to be less broadly agreed upon, but there is plenty of support (either explicit or implied):
> 
> 7)  The GM uses their pre-built-world-related metaplot (or vision of narrative if not so concrete) during action resolution adjudication to determine if veto ("no") will provide a better (more interesting?) story outcome or "roll the dice" will provide a better (more interesting?) story outcome.
> 
> 8)  If the GM allows for "roll the dice", they can subordinate the results of action resolution (secretly) if they feel it makes for a better (more interesting?) story outcome.
> 
> 9)  The players role is to explore the art (of the GM's built world and related metaplot), appreciate the art, and take-up the plot hooks therein at their discretion (the "choose-you-own-adventure" invocation).  Now "their (player) discretion" will invariably bump up against (4), (7), and (8) above.  When it does, it seems to me that the general consensus of D&D players on ENWorld amounts to "its the GM's game/table, any player is perfectly free to find another game/table."




This isn't the 1970's or 1980's, I think most games allow at least some appropriate discussion of issues that players have with the game, and immediate expulsion for daring to question the referee is much rarer nowadays. The average age of players has gone up, and most players expect to be treated with a modicum of respect. I see a lot less "bad" behavior in established groups than I did years ago when everyone was younger and more emotional. Even in cases where expulsion of a player from a game is on the cards, the player concerned often figures out themselves that they aren't a good fit for a particular game table , and leaves of their own accord.

Obviously, organised play games with strangers and con games would be different, and arguably require a firmer hand, but I don't play those any more.


----------



## Manbearcat

Aenghus said:


> This isn't the 1970's or 1980's, I think most games allow at least some appropriate discussion of issues that players have with the game, and immediate expulsion for daring to question the referee is much rarer nowadays. The average age of players has gone up, and most players expect to be treated with a modicum of respect. I see a lot less "bad" behavior in established groups than I did years ago when everyone was younger and more emotional. Even in cases where expulsion of a player from a game is on the cards, the player concerned often figures out themselves that they aren't a good fit for a particular game table , and leaves of their own accord.
> 
> Obviously, organised play games with strangers and con games would be different, and arguably require a firmer hand, but I don't play those any more.




How do you think table disputes related to refereeing are thought of with respect to the majority of posters on ENWorld though?   My sense from posting here the last (nearly) 6 years (and lurking intermittently from its inception to 06) is that my takeaway above is pretty representative (and you've seen a nearly identical arrangement of words to that effect in this thread);  Ultimately, its the GMs game/table...if you don't like it, you're more than welcome to find another.  Disagree?


----------



## Aenghus

Manbearcat said:


> How do you think table disputes related to refereeing are thought of with respect to the majority of posters on ENWorld though?   My sense from posting here the last (nearly) 6 years (and lurking intermittently from its inception to 06) is that my takeaway above is pretty representative (and you've seen a nearly identical arrangement of words to that effect in this thread);  Ultimately, its the GMs game/table...if you don't like it, you're more than welcome to find another.  Disagree?




The devil's in the details. I agree in a conventional referee-based game that the referee is responsible for keeping the game moving and quickly resolving or tabling for later player appeals re adjudication. In such a game they are ultimately responsible for asking a a player to leave if they don't fit in.

It's just that your writeup would also fit the worst intolerant excesses of the old-school viking hatted DM who is totally incapable of accepting even the mildest criticism and ejects players on a whim.

How Ultimately is ultimately? What sort of behavior is sufficient to be voted off the island? This is something it's hard to get a feeling for, especially when I get the (possibly mistaken) impression some posters talk a hard line but are more lenient in practice.


----------



## MarkB

Manbearcat said:


> I think that statement and several others creates a composite sketch (while not everyone will agree with each part, there is probably broad agreement on the whole) of something like the following:
> 
> 1)  The setting is the GMs.
> 
> 2)  The GM world-builds because it is a fun enterprise for them unto itself (an art).
> 
> 3)  The GM uses that pre-built world to determine off-screen events in some fashion, typically fiat-by-(some form of)extrapolation.
> 
> 4)  The GM uses that pre-built world to determine if a player's declared action is feasible at all (reserved right to veto power).
> 
> 5)  The GM uses that pre-built world to determine how a player's declared action is impacted when it is feasible and dice need to be rolled (impact on action resolution machinery).
> 
> 6)  The GM uses that pre-built world to help them in determining how the impacted setting evolves post-action-resolution.
> 
> These seem to be less broadly agreed upon, but there is plenty of support (either explicit or implied):
> 
> 7)  The GM uses their pre-built-world-related metaplot (or vision of narrative if not so concrete) during action resolution adjudication to determine if veto ("no") will provide a better (more interesting?) story outcome or "roll the dice" will provide a better (more interesting?) story outcome.
> 
> 8)  If the GM allows for "roll the dice", they can subordinate the results of action resolution (secretly) if they feel it makes for a better (more interesting?) story outcome.
> 
> 9)  The players role is to explore the art (of the GM's built world and related metaplot), appreciate the art, and take-up the plot hooks therein at their discretion (the "choose-you-own-adventure" invocation).  Now "their (player) discretion" will invariably bump up against (4), (7), and (8) above.  When it does, it seems to me that the general consensus of D&D players on ENWorld amounts to "its the GM's game/table, any player is perfectly free to find another game/table."




That's all very GM-oriented. For me, the main use for world-building is to establish a common background framework within which the players _and_ the GM can frame the fictional elements of their specific characters. Having that framework be GM-authored in advance has the advantage of allowing a greater degree of consistency between each participant's concepts, which in turn allows the group's experience of the fiction to feel deeper and more coherent, whilst having the disadvantage of potentially blocking off some choices.


----------



## Manbearcat

[MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION]

I'm not expressing what I think about these things and I'm not asking what you (personally) think about these things.

I'm expressing my opinion of the prevailing winds of this thread specifically and ENWorld generally.

What is your opinion on the ENWorld's collective (as it is currently constituted) regarding these things?


----------



## Aenghus

Manbearcat said:


> [MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION]
> 
> I'm not expressing what I think about these things and I'm not asking what you (personally) think about these things.
> 
> I'm expressing my opinion of the prevailing winds of this thread specifically and ENWorld generally.
> 
> What is your opinion on the ENWorld's collective (as it is currently constituted) regarding these things?




Look, I'm on the autism spectrum and have difficulty determining people's opinions when face to face with them, let alone some posts on the internet. Something about being asked to interpret other people makes me very uncomfortable, given that I've got it wrong in the past.

I also find it very difficult to reconcile people saying one thing and doing another, something that happens a lot.

So I'm not going to answer your question. I hope you can accept that and that I have my reasons.


----------



## Manbearcat

Aenghus said:


> Look, I'm on the autism spectrum and have difficulty determining people's opinions when face to face with them, let alone some posts on the internet. Something about being asked to interpret other people makes me very uncomfortable, given that I've got it wrong in the past.
> 
> I also find it very difficult to reconcile people saying one thing and doing another, something that happens a lot.
> 
> So I'm not going to answer your question. I hope you can accept that and that I have my reasons.




Hokey doke!  No worries 



MarkB said:


> That's all very GM-oriented. For me, the main use for world-building is to establish a common background framework within which the players _and_ the GM can frame the fictional elements of their specific characters. Having that framework be GM-authored in advance has the advantage of allowing a greater degree of consistency between each participant's concepts, which in turn allows the group's experience of the fiction to feel deeper and more coherent, whilst having the disadvantage of potentially blocking off some choices.




My intent was for what you've written here to be folded into my post's "fiat-by-(some form of)extrapolation" and "determining veto and impact on action resolution machinery" and "explore the GM's art and appreciate it" .  In the course of that, the opinion (by those that have it) is that "a common background framework <is established>" and "the group's experience of the fiction <feels> deeper and more coherent".


----------



## Mercurius

pemerton said:


> So the point of worldbuilding is for the GM to present the players with the product of his/her imagination?




No, not really. Let's go back to my summation in the last post I wrote:

_So the point of world-building, in this context, is similar to the point of creating a setting for a novel: it provides a context for story, and a space for the reader (or player) to explore and enjoy._

"Providing context for story and a space for the (players) to explore and enjoy" is not the same as the GM "present(ing) the players with the product of his/her imagination." 

The main difference is the _purpose_ (or point). In your phrasing, the purpose is centered on the GM and his or her presentation; it is about the GM, in other words, as--to use a Tolkienian term--sub-creator. And to be honest, our phrasing has a kind of pejorative implication to it, that is "GM as narcissist: .

In my phrasing, the purpose is centered on the play itself--both GM and players--for the _point_ of worldbuilding is to *provide context for game play (or story) - and for enjoyment*, which of course is the most important point of all, for if there is no enjoyment then there are no participants!



pemerton said:


> EDIT: For what's it worth, I don't find the notion of "strengths and weaknesses" that helpful in this context.




OK, why? A hammer has strengths and weaknesses that depend upon context - that is, what you want to use it for. In the context of which we speak different approaches to world-building could have strengths and weaknesses depending upon the effect you want to manifest and the agreement of the gaming group. If everyone except the GM wants a more co-creative experience, but the GM mostly wants to present their brilliant creation, then there are weaknesses to his approach given the context. Of course maybe we don't need to frame this as strengths/weaknesses, and more as _contextual appropriateness._



pemerton said:


> If the point of GM worldbuilding is for the GM to present the players with the product of his/her imagination, then I think it's easier just to identify that - _that's what it's for_ - then to frame that as a _strength_, as if it's instrumental to some other goal (what would that other goal be?).




Sure, but that's not what I'm saying the point of world-building is, so this is a moot point.



pemerton said:


> You also seem to be saying that the point of the _GM_ doing the worldbuiling is to ensure a certain sort of passivityi/non-creation on the party of the players. But you talk about the players "interacting" with the world. Given that that's metaphor, are you able to make it more literal? Eg should we think of action declaration by a player for a PC as something like a _suggestion_ to the GM to change or develop the fiction in a certain way?




Again, this is not at all what I'm saying and I'm a bit baffled by why you'd think this. It is not about "ensuring passivity." It is about enabling a certain kind of immersion into otherworldliness, mystery, and uncertainty that I find is better facilitated by the GM being the primary creator and authority on the world.

This doesn't mean that it isn't possible to accomplish those things in a co-creative approach; it really depends upon the situation, game, and perhaps most of all, the individuals concerned.

I think we're talking about two different approaches based upon different underlying assumptions about the roles and power of the GM and players. One approach assumes that the GM is omnipotent, and the player's relationship to the world is akin to our own relationship to our world; the players--through their avatars, the characters, have agency but not the capacity to alter reality (at least as far as we know!). The other approach, yours, is that the GM and PCs are all co-creators and _are_ able to alter and form reality, although to what degree remains unclear, and I suppose there is variability depending upon the group.

Would you agree with that?

It also seems to me that you see one approach as inherently superior (the latter), or at least you don't see any positive benefits to the former, that the latter can do everything that the former can and more. To this I would disagree.

But there's an underlying factor here that we're dancing around, and that is the matter of power, and related factors such as certainty, control, etc. I am reminded of how in video games, if you don't like the result you can always try again, or save the game at a certain point and keep going until you make it through. Or I think of the (quite good) film _About Time_ in which the protagonist has the ability to go back in time, change his actions, and then go back to his present and thereby live in an altered reality.

I see nothing wrong with this as a game experience. But it _does_ radically change the overall feeling of the story environment for the players. Let's say my PC finds a chest, opens it, and then the DM says "pick any magic item from the DMG that is worth 50,000 GP or less." That's pretty fun but...something is lost. A sense of mystery, uncertainty, and I would say immersion.

In other words, in this case at least, player co-creative empowerment comes at a cost. And for _my_ preferred D&D experience, at least, it is not a cost worth paying. If I'm playing Diaspora or Universalis, then hell yes, let's do it.


----------



## Mercurius

Manbearcat said:


> I think that statement and several others creates a composite sketch (while not everyone will agree with each part, there is probably broad agreement on the whole) of something like the following:
> 
> 1)  The setting is the GMs...._SNIP....
> _
> 9)  The players role is to explore the art (of the GM's built world and related metaplot), appreciate the art, and take-up the plot hooks therein at their discretion (the "choose-you-own-adventure" invocation).  Now "their (player) discretion" will invariably bump up against (4), (7), and (8) above.  When it does, it seems to me that the general consensus of D&D players on ENWorld amounts to "its the GM's game/table, any player is perfectly free to find another game/table."





Hmm. What you're doing here is reducing a wide range into a rather narrow, extreme caricature that is, I'm guessing, not the norm for the "ENWorld Collective" (whatever that is). 

I also see you positing two factions: One is the minority, of which you and pemerton and others are part of, and the other is the majority, that includes everyone else (sort of like Star Wars ). I just don't see it as so bifurcated or black-and-white. It is a spectrum.


----------



## Manbearcat

Mercurius said:


> Hmm. What you're doing here is reducing a wide range into a rather narrow, extreme caricature that is, I'm guessing, not the norm for the "ENWorld Collective" (whatever that is).
> 
> I also see you positing two factions: One is the minority, of which you and pemerton and others are part of, and the other is the majority, that includes everyone else (sort of like Star Wars ). I just don't see it as so bifurcated or black-and-white. It is a spectrum.




No I'm not.  

At all.

Not even remotely what you're describing.  

You see in this very thread people explicitly citing the game/the table/the setting...as the GMs...and I'm describing what I'm reading in order to depict it...you see the same things time in and time out on ENWorld in various threads like this and in threads about PC optimization...and you see rallying around that position either with a deluge of xp or significant cited agreement reinforcing it  or nearly uniform lack of protesting of that position (and I'm pretty sure you're well aware that people vociferously and incessantly protest that which they disagree with on these boards!), implying at least tepid agreement (bare minimum)...hence the reasonable view that it is ENWorld consensus"!

And I'm somehow reducing <whatever> to a caricature?

Please, Mercurius.

If there is one thing this board struggles with, it is analysis that aims to distill games, procedures, and GMing ethos down to first principles and the implication of those principles on design and play (unless it is something where mutual dislike roundly unites!).  I'll take distilling information so we can get to something usable over the opacity of the status quo (which is what I feel people want for whatever reason).  Even if the distillation isn't perfect (eg, you feel its a caricature...which is ????-inducing to myself, but ok), we can work to make it better and more clear (preferably with examination of play excerpts, but again, people are very resistant to posting those for whatever reason!).  With that, people can better understand different play paradigms, games, GMing principles/techniques and how to enrich, expand, or contract their own RPG experience.


----------



## MarkB

Manbearcat said:


> My intent was for what you've written here to be folded into my post's "fiat-by-(some form of)extrapolation" and "determining veto and impact on action resolution machinery" and "explore the GM's art and appreciate it" .  In the course of that, the opinion (by those that have it) is that "a common background framework <is established>" and "the group's experience of the fiction <feels> deeper and more coherent".




Yeah, that's not the same thing at all. The intent is not to explore and appreciate the GM's art - it is to utilise the background information as a tool, a general backdrop against which to collectively create something new, coherent and mutually entertaining.

The provision of a single vision for the general background and history does not preclude active creativity in actual play - in some cases it can encourage it, by providing a useful foundation upon which to build.


----------



## Mercurius

@_*Manbearcat*_, are you happier if I replace "caricature" with "over-simplistic reductionism?" I mean, it is rather similar, but perhaps the latter better expresses at what I perceive in your post.

Anyhow, you are positing a false entity that you entitle the "ENWorld Collective." Now maybe there _is_ a status quote, and shared assumptions that are _vaguely_ aligned with your nine points, but what I see you doing is taking a relatively extreme end of it and saying the entire collective operates within that narrow range. I simply don't think this is the case. 

Imagine this scenario: that you somehow got a large enough cross-section of ENWorld members to read your nine points and respond to them, adjusting them to how they actually play the game. I imagine that a large percentage would diverge, some quite substantially. I don't even think your nine points are the median; I think they are representative of the deep end of the swimming pool, so to speak. This is a useful device (strawman) to poke holes in, but it evades the actual truth of probably most peoples' experience.

For example, I would guess that most GMs don't follow your 2nd point in the way you frame it (and the way pemerton is pushing, as he and I discussed). World-building isn't _only_ about the GM having fun. Some GMs do it as a hobby unto itself, but even then most that I have encountered see that as a separate, if overlapping endeavor (That said, I imagine that there is a relatively small minority that do as you say).

Everything follows from that false (OK, _questionable_) assumption, and is tainted by its implications. 

Another point of example--and I could probably give some for each of your points--is #8. Just because a GM _can_ use fiat doesn't mean he or she does with any frequency. It is a kind of wild card that can be used in case of "catastrophic failure," or even simply when the GM feels like the overall game experience would be enhanced by a little nudge here or there. Each GM has a different take on what that means, and thus when to use it. You and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] seem to take a kind of purist approach that any such usage--even if in potential--inherently taints the whole experience, like arsenic in a glass of water. To each their own, I guess, but know that for many (most?), the existence of GM fiat has no negative impact on the game experience, and is actually used as a way to enhance it.


----------



## Sadras

Manbearcat said:


> @_*pemerton*_ doesn't run dungeons in his games (in the classical sense).




That is abundantly clear to _all_ within the thread, but Pemerton IS talking about comparing the worldbuilding of classical dungeons with the worldbuilding of the wilderness. Once again I ask, I assume the classical dungeon is populated with sentient creatures and not only doors to open, chair to sit on and chest lids to open?

Would you say ToEE is a classical dungeon? Because within that module there are plenty of NPCs which with DM fiat will allow for the story to unfold in as many ways as an urban mystery or a wilderness exploration adventure.

EDIT: Because it does sound like what Pemerton should be asking is, _Is worldbuilding only useful for non-animate objects?_ or something to that effect.


----------



## Lanefan

MarkB said:


> Yeah, that's not the same thing at all. The intent is not to explore and appreciate the GM's art - it is to utilise the background information as a tool, a general backdrop against which to collectively create something new, coherent and mutually entertaining.



Yeah, pretty much this in a nutshell.

And, appreciation of the GM's art - as with any art - lies only in the eyes of the viewer...which in nearly all cases is the players but can also at times be the GM herself.

Further, "appreciation", as in recognition, isn't always positive: it can involve admiration, sure, but it can also involve criticism and-or dislike.  Why do I say this?  Because every time I design a world, no matter how pleased I might be with a lot of it, something about it ends up annoying me to no end once it's been played for a while...but I can't change it because the run of play has already baked it in. (in my current world it's the geography - various key places are just too bloody far apart to be practical in non-high-level play. Grrrr...stupid Lanefan...bad Lanefan...)



> The provision of a single vision for the general background and history does not preclude active creativity in actual play - in some cases it can encourage it, by providing a useful foundation upon which to build.



And this, too. 

Lan-"largely stepping back for the day and letting others fight the good fight"-efan


----------



## pemerton

Sebastrd said:


> In both of your examples, you accomplish a minute amount of general worldbuilding before play begins, allow your players to add some of the specifics, and then jointly accomplish the rest during actual play. Does that about sum it up?



I guess so, yep.



Sebastrd said:


> The default in D&D and in most campaigns is that the DM accomplishes the worldbuilding with little, if any, input from the players before play actually begins. If I understand th point of this thread, you're wondering why games default to GM-centric worldbuilding prior to play instead of player-centric worldbuilding during the course of the game.



Sort of - I'm really asking what that GM-centric, prior-to-play worldbuilding is for? As in, what purpose does it serve in the context of RPGing? The main answer (though not the only one) seems to be the the point is for the GM to present something to the players (@shidaku likened it to an artwork) which they then draw on to contextualise/deepen their experience of the game: something like a creator-audience relationship.



Sebastrd said:


> Assuming I'm correct, the answer is, "Relatively few players desire to engage in the worldbuilding exercise, so that task falls to the GM. Developing the world _during play_ is a rare talent, so most GMs do their worldbuilding beforehand."



I personally have doubts about the "rare talent" claim, but that's tangential - this idea of "someone has to do it, and that's the GM" is another one that has come up in this thread, though I think your's is probably the clearest statement of it!



Sebastrd said:


> Most of the players I've GM'd for over the years enjoy exploration. They want to find out what's around the next corner or what's in the next dungeon room. They enjoy the thrill of discovery. They can't get that kind of fun if _they're deciding_ what's around the next corner or what's in the next dungeon room.



I've never played an RPG where the players make that sort of decision. (OGL Conan allows for it, via its Fate point rules, but I've never played OGL Conan.) In thie systems I play, a player can _hope_ that something is around the next corner, but it is action resolution mechanics that will determine whether or not that hope is rewarded.

One thing I've been trying to do in this thread is talk about RPGing literally rather than using metaphors. So when you refer to players "exploring" or "discovering", that seems like a metaphor (given that in reality there is no dungeon, no corner etc - there's some fiction written by the GM). So "exploring" literally means something like - the players declare certain actions for their PCs (eg "I look more closely at the statue") and this acts as a trigger, in the context of the gameplay, for the GM to then tell the player something. Assuming the GM has worldbuilt in advance, the GM's telling will be a reading or a paraphrasing from his/her notes.



Sebastrd said:


> Personally, I view the campaign setting and NPCs as the GM's "characters". I "roll" them up just as a player rolls his/her PC, I give them traits and motivations, then I let them loose in the game. I consider my worldbuilding notes the world's character sheet. I refer to those notes when I have questions about how situations might unfold.



This is an interesting one. There are certainly aspects of the gameworld in my games that I would think of as "my characters".

But this then leads to questions about action resolution. Normally, a GM can't just declare that (say) his/her NPC beats a PC in a sprint. The action resolution rules have to be consulted (eg maybe there's an opposed check; maybe the character with the higher Speed score wins - whatever it is that the rules of the game dictate).

But what, then, if the PC is looking for the special map in the study, while the GM (playing the gameworld as his/her character) thinks that it's more likely really hidden in the bread bin in the kitchen. In the way I run my game, the action resolution mechanics have to be consulted (in BW it wouldn't be an opposed check; the player would have to beat a static, contextually-determined difficulty; in Cortex+ Heroic it would be an opposed check, but against the Doom Pool rather than a NPC; in 4e it might be part of a skill challenge, which generally involves static DCs).

But I think a lot of GMs (eg [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] in this thread) would assume that the GM's "character" just wins in this context. Ie the GM gets to decide where the map is, and thus that the PC can't find it in the study if it's not there, _independently_ of the action resolution mechanics.

Do you have any thoughts on why some aspects of the GM's world (eg hidden maps) are treated differently, from the point of view of resolution, from how other aspects (eg sprinting NPCs) are treated? What is that difference for?


----------



## MarkB

pemerton said:


> One thing I've been trying to do in this thread is talk about RPGing literally rather than using metaphors. So when you refer to players "exploring" or "discovering", that seems like a metaphor (given that in reality there is no dungeon, no corner etc - there's some fiction written by the GM). So "exploring" literally means something like - the players declare certain actions for their PCs (eg "I look more closely at the statue") and this acts as a trigger, in the context of the gameplay, for the GM to then tell the player something. Assuming the GM has worldbuilt in advance, the GM's telling will be a reading or a paraphrasing from his/her notes.



That is not a metaphor, it's a metagame. Similar concepts, but distinct. And when we're talking about the subject of shared fictional worlds, especially when trying to convey game-mechanical choices in more universally-understood terms, it's almost impossible to entirely divest our discussions of such symbolic terminology.



> This is an interesting one. There are certainly aspects of the gameworld in my games that I would think of as "my characters".
> 
> But this then leads to questions about action resolution. Normally, a GM can't just declare that (say) his/her NPC beats a PC in a sprint. The action resolution rules have to be consulted (eg maybe there's an opposed check; maybe the character with the higher Speed score wins - whatever it is that the rules of the game dictate).
> 
> But what, then, if the PC is looking for the special map in the study, while the GM (playing the gameworld as his/her character) thinks that it's more likely really hidden in the bread bin in the kitchen. In the way I run my game, the action resolution mechanics have to be consulted (in BW it wouldn't be an opposed check; the player would have to beat a static, contextually-determined difficulty; in Cortex+ Heroic it would be an opposed check, but against the Doom Pool rather than a NPC; in 4e it might be part of a skill challenge, which generally involves static DCs).
> 
> But I think a lot of GMs (eg [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] in this thread) would assume that the GM's "character" just wins in this context. Ie the GM gets to decide where the map is, and thus that the PC can't find it in the study if it's not there, _independently_ of the action resolution mechanics.
> 
> Do you have any thoughts on why some aspects of the GM's world (eg hidden maps) are treated differently, from the point of view of resolution, from how other aspects (eg sprinting NPCs) are treated? What is that difference for?




In this particular case, I think it's largely for being easier to conceptualise. If both the players and GM are attempting to suspend their disbelief and engage with the game-world as a fictional construct, then being able to conceptualise it as a stable construct is easier on the mind than viewing it as an amorphous probability-space. Resolving PC-vs-NPC actions in real-time through dice rolls feels fine, because you're seeing how their actions play out as they occur. But conceptualising something that, within the game's fiction, would already have happened as being unresolved until the players interact with it can be a tough sell psychologically - mostly to the GM, but in some cases also to the players.

That's not true for all GMs, and there's definitely a spectrum there, but for many, it's where their comfort zone lies. It's certainly the way I prefer to run something like D&D, and whilst I'm a lot more flexible in collaborative world-building and situation resolution when running something like Fate Core, it's still not where I feel most comfortable.


----------



## Sebastrd

pemerton said:


> Do you have any thoughts on why some aspects of the GM's world (eg hidden maps) are treated differently, from the point of view of resolution, from how other aspects (eg sprinting NPCs) are treated? What is that difference for?




I can only tell you how I run things in my game. If I have already placed the hidden map in my world, and I know where it is, the players will only find it in that place no matter what the dice say. They can't just roll to make it appear where they are looking. If, on the other hand, I have not placed any such map in the world, but the players deduce that one might exist and search for it, I very well may reward their engagement/creativity/initiative by simply let them find it. In that sense, they've created the map.

I also use the 5E variant rule that allows a player to spend an Inspiration Point (which I give liberally and allow players to give to each other) to generate a new part of the world that never existed. My players generally use it for "divine intervention" type effects. The only caveat is that the effect they create has to make sense in the context of the game world. For example, they couldn't use Inspiration to negate a critical hit or heal a PC, but they have used Inspiration to determine that a known NPC arrives in time to use an actual in-game mechanic to negate a critical hit or to heal a PC. They've also used Inspiration to create an NPC druid who imparted needed information and served as a temporary guide.


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## pemerton

MarkB said:


> That's all very GM-oriented. For me, the main use for world-building is to establish a common background framework within which the players _and_ the GM can frame the fictional elements of their specific characters. Having that framework be GM-authored in advance has the advantage of allowing a greater degree of consistency between each participant's concepts, which in turn allows the group's experience of the fiction to feel deeper and more coherent, whilst having the disadvantage of potentially blocking off some choices.



What's your approach to, or view of, the GM _sharing_ this information?

I think the more it's shared, the closer we're getting to something like the Diaspora approach, or maybe the Burning Wheel approach,  [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] and I have discussed upthread. Whereas if the setting info remains privy to the GM, then it's a bit less clear to me how it provides a common framework or ensures consistency. (Unless we're talking about GM vetoes - but that seems to be the bit of  [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s post that you were wanting to depart from?)

EDIT: I found your other related post as I worked through the thread:



MarkB said:


> The intent is not to explore and appreciate the GM's art - it is to utilise the background information as a tool, a general backdrop against which to collectively create something new, coherent and mutually entertaining.



This, again, seems to lead to questions about how the information is shared/disseminated. Especially if we're looking at somes sort of approach that goes beyond GM vetoes.


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## Jester David

Just ran a session today. 5e. Generally a more sandbox game. I try not to create heavy plots but I do throw out seeds that the players can latch onto and decide to turn into plots. But my players do like a little guidance now and then, so I'm slipping in _Tomb of Annihilation_ as a big "heroic deed of legend". 

The players spent the first third of the session slowly making their way overland to the location where the tomb is located, a distant lost city. But I'm placing the tomb in my homebrew campaign setting, which is loosely a kitchen sink world and heavily detailed. But the players' chosen route just happened to pass alongside a gnomish vault. (Think a _Fallout_ franchise vault.) I hadn't planned that and had very few ideas for the vault. So I planned to just let the players walk passed and use it as a dash of world flavour. Like passing giant statues in _Lord of the Rings_, having it too sealed up to enter. 
But my players fixated on it and really wanted in. Because treasure. And they managed to magic a solution. 

So they entered. 
I pulled some details of the location out of my ass. Gave it some flavour and tied it into the "plot" of _Tomb of Annihilation_ by having one of the leaders suffering the Death Curse. There was a fight with some kobolds, some exploration, and a huge moment of character growth as a PC had erased memories restored. Which allowed me to point them in the direction the plot needed them to go, preventing random wandering and wasting of time in exploration. 
This random side-quest incidental encounter, which only occurred because I threw a random point on a map and never detailed it, suddenly fixed a gap in the plot. 
Worldbuilding! 


So, what is worldbuilding? Really, it's creating the setting. Which can be as big as making a huge sprawling campaign setting for the players to place dozens of campaigns in. Or it can be as small as just keeping the continuity of people and locations in a campaign: selling treasure to the same merchant, sleeping in the same inn between trips in the dungeon, befriending a local drunk at the tavern. 
They can even be entirely confined to the dungeon. Say the party has a random encounter with an evil dwarf who manages to survive and escape the PCs. If that dwarf shows up later, that generates continuity. That's worldbuilding right there. 

I don't see worldbuilding as unrelated to "classical" D&D play or design. Lots of early modules had monsters that moved from place to place, having a certain percentage of a chance of being found in one location. And there was discussion in a few of guards being replaced if the PCs killed the previous guards and left. Or monsters that call for reinforcements or run away. All that creates the illusion of a living world. It's as much worldbuilding as creating a backstory, kingdom, and detailed world to place the modular dungeon in.


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## pemerton

Mercurius said:


> _So the point of world-building, in this context, is similar to the point of creating a setting for a novel: it provides a context for story, and a space for the reader (or player) to explore and enjoy._
> 
> "Providing context for story and a space for the (players) to explore and enjoy" is not the same as the GM "present(ing) the players with the product of his/her imagination."
> 
> The main difference is the _purpose_ (or point).
> 
> <snip>
> 
> In my phrasing, the purpose is centered on the play itself--both GM and players--for the _point_ of worldbuilding is to *provide context for game play (or story)*



*But am I correct in understanding that this is to be achieved by the GM presenting to the players certain products of his/her imagination?

I offered the paraphrase to which you are responding in response to your explanation that it matters, in an important fashion, that it is the GM and not the players who do the worldbuidling. If we just centre on the play itself - both GM and players - why would it matter that it is the GM rather than the players who do it?



Mercurius said:



			this is not at all what I'm saying and I'm a bit baffled by why you'd think this. It is not about "ensuring passivity." It is about enabling a certain kind of immersion into otherworldliness, mystery, and uncertainty that I find is better facilitated by the GM being the primary creator and authority on the world.
		
Click to expand...


I guess I'm trying to understand why having someone else do it facilitates the immersion.

To pick a concrete example: the player can decide that his PC has a brother who was possessed by a balrog; or the GM can decide that. The player can decide that his PC's immediate goal is to obtain an item that might help free someone (namely, his brother) from balrog possession; or the GM can decide that (eg by having a patron approach the PCs in a tavern and ask them to find such an item).

I'm not sure why this is all more immersive when it comes from the GM rather than the player - unless the idea is that one can't be immersed in the creations of one's own imagination, which is why I suggested a contrast between activity and passivity. (Not unlike the audience notion that some other posters have used upthread.)



Mercurius said:



			Let's say my PC finds a chest, opens it, and then the DM says "pick any magic item from the DMG that is worth 50,000 GP or less." That's pretty fun but...something is lost. A sense of mystery, uncertainty, and I would say immersion.
		
Click to expand...


Well, I've never run a game like that, or played in one, so I couldn't comment.

The closest I can get is the following: the PCs had trekked across the Bright Desert to a ruined tower. 14 years ago (ie well into backstory territory) that tower had been the home of one PC and his brother, before they had to flee in the face of an orc attack. It was in trying to stop that orc attack that the brother had tried to conjure up a storm of lightning, failed, and thus become possessed by a balrog.

The PC now returned to his tower after 14 years away, and the first thing he did - after the group had some water to drink, and a bit of a rest - was to look to see if a silver-nickel mace that he had been working on 14 years ago was still there. (That particular bit of backstory was authored not long before this episode of play.) So we framed a check - in D&D this might be Perception or Search or Investigation or an INT or WIS check (depending on details of the edition); in BW it is a Scavenging check.

An appropriate difficulty was set, extrapolated from the examples given under the Scavenging skill description. The dice were rolled. The check failed.

So the mace wasn't there (and the player straight away intuied where it would be - "Of course that b*stard GM will have it in the hands of that dark elf whose been harassing us ever since we entered the Abor-Alz"). But they did find something - in the ruins of what had been the brother's private workroom, they found black arrows, cursed to make it harder to heal the wounds they inflict. One of the PCs was very familiar with these arrows, because he carried one around his neck - a token of the death of his captain, which had led him to become a "ronin", leaving the elven lands to travel among the humans and try to find some way to lift his shame and grief at having failed his captain. And so all hell broke lose among the party - the PC has been insisting that his brother became evil because possessed by a balrog, but now it seemed that his brother was a suitable vessel for the balrog because already evil - a creator of black arrows for the orcs to use in their wars against the elves.

That was pretty immersive. I don't think it would have been more immersive if I had been the one to make up all the relevant PC backstory - about the brother, the tower, the orcs, the balrog possession, the mace, the ronin carrying an orcish arrow as a token of the death of his captain. I think it would have been less immersive.



Mercurius said:



			I am reminded of how in video games, if you don't like the result you can always try again, or save the game at a certain point and keep going until you make it through.
		
Click to expand...


I'm not sure what you are saying is reminding you of this. I can't remember if I've posted about retries or not in this thread, but different games have different approaches to retries. As best I understand, for instance, 3E and 5e D&D are very liberal in respect of them. AD&D tends to be rather limited in retries (most thief abilities are limited- the only exception I can think of is climbing walls, though hit point damge from falling might be seen as imposing a de facto limit; listening at doors is limited - after 3 goes the character must wait a turn; and opening magically held doors and bending bars are both limited). Burning Wheel has a "no retries" rule (called "Let it Ride"). During the 4e era, Stephen Radley McFarland posted a blog on the WotC site advocating a similar rule for 4e - my table was already using it.



Mercurius said:



			Anyhow, you are positing a false entity that you entitle the "ENWorld Collective."
		
Click to expand...


Well, all critical analysis (be it of visual arts, film, literature, or even RPGing) requires the making of some generalisations. We group creators and performers into schools and movements, and talk about trajectories of influence and development, even though we know that each creator and performer is an individual, different in some ways from any other.

You, for instance, pick up on [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s point (2) and dispute it - many ENworlders, you say, don't worldbuild as an art/creative outlet.

Well, be that as it may (and there are certainly some in this thread who have embraced it, and no one had repudiated until [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] put it forward as a conjecture), does that really distort the overall thrust of Manbearcat's analsysis? Suppose that we substitute in 2' - the GM worldbuilds because someone has to do it? That leaves (3) through (8) largely undisturbed - the GM is still using his/her world to establish framking and to manage the adjudication of action resolution - and (9) changes only a little bit - instead of the players being expected to appreciate the GM's art, they're expected to appreciate - in a utilitarian sense - the GM's effort, and if they don't think it's very good then they can "put up or shut up".

In other words, if (2) needs modification/correction we can still conjecture that there might be a broad consensus that reflects (3) through (8) plus an appropriately modified (9). Now, if you think that there is no such consensus, what are you pointing to (in this thread, or more generally)?



Mercurius said:



			Now maybe there is a status quote, and shared assumptions that are vaguely aligned with your nine points, but what I see you doing is taking a relatively extreme end of it and saying the entire collective operates within that narrow range. I simply don't think this is the case.
		
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What do you think is extreme about Manbearcat's conjecture? I'm not saying that you're right or wrong about that, as you haven't yet identified what you have in mind.



Mercurius said:



			#8. Just because a GM can use fiat doesn't mean he or she does with any frequency. It is a kind of wild card that can be used in case of "catastrophic failure," or even simply when the GM feels like the overall game experience would be enhanced by a little nudge here or there. Each GM has a different take on what that means, and thus when to use it.
		
Click to expand...


I don't see how this in any way conradicts what [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] has said. It seems to be a straightforward reiteration of his point!

Maybe you think enhancing the overall game experience (your phrase) is different from making for a better/more interesting story outcome (Manbearcat's phrase) - but you haven't explained what that difference is. And at this point I'm not seeing what it is.



Mercurius said:



			for many (most?), the existence of GM fiat has no negative impact on the game experience, and is actually used as a way to enhance it.
		
Click to expand...


That also doesn't seem to contradict anything that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] has said, unless you're suggesting that it contradicts his (9) ie his claim that (4), (7) and (8) will cause tensions with (ie "inevitably bump up against") ideas of player choice or player discretion.

Let's treat "inevitably" as a rhetorical flourish - Manbearcat hasn't posited a time frame for this inevitability, after all - and look at the real claim: namely, that there is a tension between (4), (7) and (8) (ie the GM has various veto/manipulation powers as part of the process of action declaration, used to ensure fidelity to the setting and/or "metaplot" and/or "to enhance the overall experience) and the idea that the players get to choose what their PCs do.

The existence of that tension doesn't mean that people don't enjoy their RPGing. It does mean that RPGing done in this style might exhibit a recurring pattern of issues - eg "problem players" who buck the GM's authority over the fiction; debates about whether or not fudging is permissible; claims that the GM can do whatever s/he wants in relation to action resolution, as long as the players don't know; etc.

If everyone was running games in the way that Luke Crane describes in his BW books there might be recurring topics of discussion and debate, but the ones I've just mentioned would probably not be among them!



Mercurius said:



			I think we're talking about two different approaches based upon different underlying assumptions about the roles and power of the GM and players. One approach assumes that the GM is omnipotent, and the player's relationship to the world is akin to our own relationship to our world; the players--through their avatars, the characters, have agency but not the capacity to alter reality (at least as far as we know!).
		
Click to expand...


I find these metaphors relatively unhelpful for analysis.

My relationship to the real world is a product of various physical and biochemical processes. But no player's action declaration for his/her PC unfolds in virtue of such processes (except the ones going on in his/her head, and the head of the GM; plus the mechanical forces that govern the roll of the dice).

I also have the capacity to alter reality - just now, for instance, I'm making it true that certain words are "typed" on a keyboard and hence appear on a monitor. But when it comes to RPGing, we're not talking about any sort of reality - we're talking about a shared fiction, and the process whereby a group of people agree on what it includes.

This is why I ask if, on your picture of GM-worldbuilding, action declarations should be seen as suggestions to the GM to change or develop the fiction in a certain way? Because if that's not what they are - for instance, if the player has the power to change the shared fiction directly (eg by declaring an action, and then rolling some dice which result in a success) - then it ceases to be true that the GM is omnipotent in respect of the shared fiction.*


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## pemerton

Jester David said:


> So, what is worldbuilding? Really, it's creating the setting.



That's largely what I had in mind in my OP, with one caveat - I was focusing on _the GM_ creating the setting _in advance of play_.



Jester David said:


> I don't see worldbuilding as unrelated to "classical" D&D play or design.



I agree. _The dungeon_ is a paradigm of setting.



Jester David said:


> there was discussion in a few of guards being replaced if the PCs killed the previous guards and left. Or monsters that call for reinforcements or run away. All that creates the illusion of a living world.



Gygax talks about this stuff in his DMG, yes. I can't remember what B2 says about it.

Referring back to some of the points I tried to make in the OP, I think this starts to bump into the limits of effective dungeon play as Gygax himself describes and advocates for in the closing pages (prior to the appendices) of his PHB.

For instance, the advice in those closing pages takes for granted that the PCs can enter the dungeon, engage in scouting, learn stuff about it (including the locations of "placed" or "permanent" dungeon denizens, their treaures, etc) and then leave and come back. So on the scouting foray, the spell load-out is lots of divination magic, the approach to encounters is to evade or parley, etc; whereas when the PCs come back to carry out the assault, the spell load-out is more offensive in nature, and the PCs are ready to beat up on the monster if it doesn't hand over its treasure!

The more the GM runs the dungeon as a "living, breathing world" the less feasible the approach to play just described becomes, because - as a practical matter - it becomes impossible for the players to make rational plans, choose rational spell load outs, realise the fruits of their scouting, etc.

Of course, the relatively static dungeon, whose ecology makes little sense and where dungeon denizens hang out waiting to be raided, is artifical at best and absurd at worst. These pressures of "verisimilitude" seem to have grown over time, and clearly inform Gygax's remarks on how dungeon denizens will respond to raiders; he also (as best I can judge) wants to make planning for, and responding to, denizens' responses _itself_ an element of skilled play. But taken in its natural directions, this move towards verisimilitude creates puzzles/challenges that are, in practical terms, not reliably beatable through skill. Eg if the PCs raid the orcs, and beat up on the orc's ogre friend; and the GM decides that the ogre has a family who will mourn him/her and come to join the orcs to help beat up on these hubristic raiders; well, how can the players reasonably plan for that eventuality?

This is why I think that, once we look at a game like Runequest, or most contemporary D&D games, where the scope of play (in terms of NPCs, geography, locations, etc) is more-or-less boundless, the setting _can't_ be doing the same sort of work it was doing back then. It's not a puzzle/maze for the players to unravel and beat through skillled play. It's something else - to the extent that some consensus is emerging in this thread, it's a source of context/meaning for play; and also a source of tools/resources/"levers" for the players to deploy in their play of their PCs.



Sadras said:


> Do you imagine the maze is populated or is just filled with doors to open, chairs to sit on and chest lids to open? So a dungeon is just a dungeon is just a dungeon, the non-player characters are about as animate as stone tiles and do not offer any story, rumours or intrigue in your adventures?





Sadras said:


> Pemerton IS talking about comparing the worldbuilding of classical dungeons with the worldbuilding of the wilderness. Once again I ask, I assume the classical dungeon is populated with sentient creatures and not only doors to open, chair to sit on and chest lids to open?
> 
> Would you say ToEE is a classical dungeon? Because within that module there are plenty of NPCs which with DM fiat will allow for the story to unfold in as many ways as an urban mystery or a wilderness exploration adventure.
> 
> EDIT: Because it does sound like what Pemerton should be asking is, _Is worldbuilding only useful for non-animate objects?_ or something to that effect.



Hopefully what I have said just above in response to Jester David provides some further clarity here.

Early dungeons had NPCs, but their presentation, motivations etc were extremely narrow compared to even the crasser pulp literature. And, as [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] said, often their reactions were randomly determined (or there might be a note: "attacks anyone wearing the helmet taken from the altar in room 10", but otherwise reactions are random). Thus they are part of the "puzzle" to be dealt with. (I can't comment on ToEE, but what I've said seems true of Lareth the Beautiful in T1, and is true of the NPCs who populate the modules in early White Dwarf magazines, in X2 Castle Amber, in B2 Keep on the Borderland, and other early modules I'm familiar with.)

But as soon as we suppose that the thief who lives in room 6 on the 2nd level can, if the GM thinks it makes sense, call upon his brethren in the Thieves' Guild, the situation becomes on that is so open-ended in its parameters that, as a practical matter, I don't see how players are supposed to map it out (literally and metaphorically) and then beat it in the way that Gygax talks about in his PHB.



Sadras said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> techniques that worked in the dungeon context - obtaining information by way of sheer fictional positioning and free roleplay ("We open the door and look in" "We lift the lid of the chest" "How many goblins can we see through the peephole?") - become far less feasible. The players become *far more dependent on the GM to dispense information* (eg in the form of rumours; encounters and interactions with various city inhabitants; etc).[/qjuote]What a strange thing to say (bolded part). Who dispenses information when a character opens a door, lifts the lid of a chest or peeps through a peephole?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> When the environment is confined in the way a dungeon is, it is relatively easy for the players to declare actions which oblige the GM to give them the information they need.Eg they can declare that their PCs listen at a door, which requires the GM to make a roll, and then the GM has to tell them what, if anything, they hear - of course hearing nothing is no guarantee of anything, as maybe the roll failed or maybe the room has undead or bugbears in it, but make enough checks and you can start to be a bit confident that probably not all of them failed, and the information you do get - ie when the check succeeds, the monsters aren't bugbears, and so the GM tells yo what you hear - is very useful for your dungeon raiding.
> 
> Likewise there is divination magic, from spells, wands, potions, medallions (of ESP), intelligent swords, etc. All of which gives useful information for dungeon raiding.
> 
> Then there are treasure maps which - if the GM follows the standard advice - at least sometimes will give you useful information about the dungeon you're exploring.
> 
> But once the imaginary vista is a whole wilderness, or a city, the idea that the players can get their PCs into the right fictional positioning to declare actions to obtain all the information that is broadly salient to their endeavours becomes unrealisitc. The field of action, the scope of imagined events, just becomes too broad. When I say that the players become dependent upon the GM to dispense information, I'm not talking about the GM's roll in narrating the outcome of action declarations - I'm saying that they depend upon the GM for all the framing in the first place. Eg if they want to inspect a library, _first_ the GM has to decide whether or not there is any library to be inspected, and _then_ has to decide whether or not the library, if there is one, contains any relevant books/scrolls, and [i[then[/I] has to decide what language they are in, and _then_ has to paraphrase what might be hours of reading thousands of words into a few pithy bits of information to narrate to the players. The play dynamics of this are completely different from declaring "I look through the archway - how many orcs do I see?" - where the GM already has a note about how many orcs there are, and just tells the player the number read from those notes. The attempt to obtain relevant information is not mediated through all these GM decisions about the content of the fiction, and how to paraphrase it.
> 
> 
> 
> Sadras said:
> 
> 
> 
> Perhaps the player characters have a choice of travelling as passengers on a barge, alone on horseback or guards as part of a travelling caravan as they have to be discreet for story reasons. Perhaps they have to take the fastest possible route due to x or they desire to take the safest route. The goblins tracks split, some continue along the river, but a small contingent is now heading towards the mountains... These examples are similar in fashion to your typical T-junction decisions in a dungeon.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> "The mountains" is very different from the left rather than the right corridor in a classic dungeon. The latter is mapped. The players can learn it's layout by declaring actions for their PCs (of moving through it), having the GM describe the layout, and drawing a map.
> 
> "The mountains" aren't mapped in anything like the same detail. The players' exploration of the mountains is going to be highly mediated through general GM descriptions, GM choices as to what to make salient and what not, etc. It's a very different thing.
Click to expand...


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## pemerton

Sadras said:


> I see, so in your personalised definition of worldbuilding introducing a 'map with names' is not worldbuilding. So worldbuilding depends on the extent of the worldbuilding. So 1 map is fine, 3 is borderline but 5+ is definitely worldbuilding?



The number of maps has nothing to do with it. This thread asks about the point of GM pre-authored setting. That contrasts with other ways of establishing setting, eg by showing everyone a map at the start of the campaign and saying, "Hey, let's use this."

In practice, there's going to be a limit on how much stuff can be shared. There's also another limit that is relevant if the idea is for setting to emerge through play, rather than be established by someone in advance, namely - you have to leave room for that stuff to emerge!

(A loose analgoue of the issue for classic D&D: the traditional use of wandering monsters isn't really compatible with assuming that every being in the dungeon is fully detailed in advance by the GM. Because if the latter was the case, then where are all those wanderers coming from?)



Sadras said:


> Let's play in Mystara isn't worldbuilding it's pitching a game despite the fact that this setting has a unique cosmos with its own planes and includes specific races and concepts and excludes others. Is that how you see it?



It depends on the details. If "Let's play in Mystara" means "Here's this cool map from the back of my Expert book, and we're only going to have elves, dwarves, halflings and humans" then absolutely - that's pitching a tropes for a game.

If it means "I've got this pile of gazzeteers and stuff full of backstory that you don't know about, and that I will rely on to adjudicate your action resolution, but without telling you" then that's not just pitching tropes - it's pitching a whole playstyle, of GM preauthored worldbuilding that will be used to determine the outcomes of action resolution in the style [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] described a little bit upthread; and in the style that [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION] has described as "omnipotent GM".



Sadras said:


> Does Marvel Heroic include any DC character? (I've never played the game, so I'm asking)



It was published with a licence from Marvel, not DC. So it contains Marvel characters, not DC ones. DC characers would be easy enought to build for it, though I've not tried as I'm not so much into DC as Marvel. (Eg you'd use Hawkeye as your starting point for Green Arrow; Quasar as your starting point for Green Lantern; etc.)


----------



## pemerton

A slight tangent:



Mercurius said:


> A hammer has strengths and weaknesses that depend upon context - that is, what you want to use it for.



Not really. It's a weakness (or flaw) in a hammer that it's handle is brittle, or that it's head is not flat - because that is an obstacle to the hammer serving its core function.

I'm not much of a carpenter, but I can imagine it counting as a weakness in a hammer intended mostly for driving nails into timber that it lacks a claw on the back for pulling out nails. But such a lack is not a weakness in eg a sledge hammer, which is not designed for such use.

It's not any sort of weakness at all in a hammer that it not very good for eating eggs off - and if you ever found yourself in a situation where it was crucial to eat your eggs of _something_ and a hammer was all you had, well you may well be grateful for the hammer as being better than nothing at all!



Mercurius said:


> In the context of which we speak different approaches to world-building could have strengths and weaknesses depending upon the effect you want to manifest and the agreement of the gaming group. If everyone except the GM wants a more co-creative experience, but the GM mostly wants to present their brilliant creation, then there are weaknesses to his approach given the context.



I just find this quite unhelpful and even obscurantist.

If I want to play a no myth game, it makes sense to ask whether the formal approach of FATE-based games, or the more informal approach set out in Burning Wheel, and that I also have used in my 4e game, will work. And you might say of these that each has strengths and weaknesses - the existence of a structure in FATE is probably a strength as such, as in game play structures help mediate expectations and manage or eliminate conflicts - but the output of the structure in FATE might count as a weakness if it leads to "Aspect bingo", whereas the more informal and somewhat organic approach in BW might be seen to produce a more intimate and visceral engagement with the fictional positioning.

Now maybe all the above is wrong about strengths and weaknesses - I've never played FATE, and what I've said is the barest of conjectures - but it makes sense.

But to say that a weakness of the Burning Wheel approach is that it doesn't allow for a GM driven metaplot is just nonsense - like saying that a weakness of a hammer is that it's hard to eat with. No one who wants to run a GM driven metaplot-type game would pick up Burning Wheel and try to use it for that purpose.



Mercurius said:


> Of course maybe we don't need to frame this as strengths/weaknesses, and more as _contextual appropriateness._



Or just _purpose_ or _utility_. Different tools and techniques are useful for different things.


----------



## Caliban

What a strange game.  The only winning move is not to play.


----------



## billd91

pemerton said:


> But once the imaginary vista is a whole wilderness, or a city, the idea that the players can get their PCs into the right fictional positioning to declare actions to obtain all the information that is broadly salient to their endeavours becomes unrealisitc. The field of action, the scope of imagined events, just becomes too broad. When I say that the players become dependent upon the GM to dispense information, I'm not talking about the GM's roll in narrating the outcome of action declarations - I'm saying that they depend upon the GM for all the framing in the first place. Eg if they want to inspect a library, _first_ the GM has to decide whether or not there is any library to be inspected, and _then_ has to decide whether or not the library, if there is one, contains any relevant books/scrolls, and [i[then[/I] has to decide what language they are in, and _then_ has to paraphrase what might be hours of reading thousands of words into a few pithy bits of information to narrate to the players. The play dynamics of this are completely different from declaring "I look through the archway - how many orcs do I see?" - where the GM already has a note about how many orcs there are, and just tells the player the number read from those notes. The attempt to obtain relevant information is not mediated through all these GM decisions about the content of the fiction, and how to paraphrase it.




And how is this really different from the DM placing a library within a dungeon (perhaps a wizard's library or the library of a hidden temple) and defining what it roughly encompasses? How does taking it out of the dungeon really change things? Because it's in reaction to the players saying they're looking for a library and the DM having to define more of it on the fly rather than defining it beforehand? Ultimately, that's not all that different. What is it about taking a situation like that out of the dungeon makes it different? Because there are more variables involved?


----------



## pemerton

billd91 said:


> And how is this really different from the DM placing a library within a dungeon (perhaps a wizard's library or the library of a hidden temple) and defining what it roughly encompasses?



It's not. But that's not the canonical source of information for staging a dungeon raid. In all the discusssions of skilled play published back in the day, libraries figured barely at all - as opposed to divinatinion magic and actual scouting.

Contrast Call of Cthulhu, where libraries _are_ the canonical source of information.

My contention (or, if you prefer, confidently advanced conjecture) is that contemporary settings in RPGs resemble CoC more than the artificial dungeon environment of classic D&D.


----------



## Aenghus

The alternative to heavy worldbuilding is generic fantasy, which is what a lot of people who aren't interesting in worldbuilding, or lack the time for it, resort to. Generic fantasy typically has huge issues with consistency and logic (castles and flying foes, a crazy, anachronistic mix of technologies and politics, terrible geography etc etc), but these issues only bother a  minority of the audience. For one off games and short campaigns there isn't time to impart a complex setting the players aren't already familiar with.

For me the differences between a plot-important library in a dungeon and one a city concern action economy and suspension of disbelief. Dungeons constrain player decision making, and there is a more or less finite set of meaningful actions in the dungeon. Even when an action in the dungeon seems not to accomplish anything, it marks another element off the checklist. 

Whereas in a city there are an infinity of possible actions the players could take, most of which accomplish nothing (arguably). The risk that checking out the library is a waste of playtime is to me higher, because  there are a million stories in the naked fantasy city, and most of them are not relevant to the pcs/ plots (in a conventional prepared game where the plot doesn't follow the PCs).

The more freedom the players have, the harder it is to hook them in, so that everybody including the referee is having fun. I've seen it happen before that a game that worked fine within the confines of the dungeon, (constrained adventure space) falls apart in the wilderness/ city as the players don't notice or ignore the referees hooks and hare after red herrings and the stuff that interests them in the setting, which may not be what interests the referee.


----------



## Jester David

pemerton said:


> That's largely what I had in mind in my OP, with one caveat - I was focusing on _the GM_ creating the setting _in advance of play_.



It's one way, but it's not the only way.
The GM can create the setting wholly before play. They can create chunks of the setting before each session, expanding as needed. They can create the broad strokes and flesh it out during play. They can entirely improvise during play. They can tap the players to add locations and places. Or the whole setting can be collaboratively created at the table by the players. 



pemerton said:


> I agree. _The dungeon_ is a paradigm of setting.



I'd use microcosm. 
It's an environment, which can be part of a larger ecosystem or on it's own. It can be it's own sub-setting or just a quick location. 



pemerton said:


> Gygax talks about this stuff in his DMG, yes. I can't remember what B2 says about it.
> 
> Referring back to some of the points I tried to make in the OP, I think this starts to bump into the limits of effective dungeon play as Gygax himself describes and advocates for in the closing pages (prior to the appendices) of his PHB.
> 
> For instance, the advice in those closing pages takes for granted that the PCs can enter the dungeon, engage in scouting, learn stuff about it (including the locations of "placed" or "permanent" dungeon denizens, their treaures, etc) and then leave and come back. So on the scouting foray, the spell load-out is lots of divination magic, the approach to encounters is to evade or parley, etc; whereas when the PCs come back to carry out the assault, the spell load-out is more offensive in nature, and the PCs are ready to beat up on the monster if it doesn't hand over its treasure!
> 
> The more the GM runs the dungeon as a "living, breathing world" the less feasible the approach to play just described becomes, because - as a practical matter - it becomes impossible for the players to make rational plans, choose rational spell load outs, realise the fruits of their scouting, etc.



I was actually thinking of _Against the Giants_ where there's a random chance certain changes happen. (Plus the added worldbuilding of creating a new threat—the drow—and expanding the backstory of the world with the inclusion of fallen elves and Lolth, which is also textbook worldbuilding.)

Planning is impossible if things are shifting continually. But there's already a chance of uncertainty in random monster encounters, which make planning tricky. By the rules, there's meant to be a chance that plans get derailed due to bad luck. A skilled DM will find a middle ground, having most things feel similar but changing a few details to reflect the actions of the players or passage of time. Some changes due to having a "living world" might be beneficial to the players. 
For example, if they're watching the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief for 3-4 days from a long distance to observe their patters, they might find raiding parties going out for food every third day, after which there's a larger feasts. The PCs might react to that by attacking after the raids when there are fewer hill giants present or following the feats when the residents are bloated and sleepy. There's no advantage in this game to have everyone in the Steading maintain their book position for several days in a row.



pemerton said:


> Of course, the relatively static dungeon, whose ecology makes little sense and where dungeon denizens hang out waiting to be raided, is artifical at best and absurd at worst. These pressures of "verisimilitude" seem to have grown over time, and clearly inform Gygax's remarks on how dungeon denizens will respond to raiders; he also (as best I can judge) wants to make planning for, and responding to, denizens' responses _itself_ an element of skilled play. But taken in its natural directions, this move towards verisimilitude creates puzzles/challenges that are, in practical terms, not reliably beatable through skill.



I think that increase of verisimilitude is just the effect of people having played more. If I take a new player an introduce them to the game, they're not going to think much of verisimilitude, but they're just focused on the new things they can do in the game, playing the game itself. You need to know the confines of the box before you think outside it...
Like monsters sleeping. The modules never account for big NPC monsters sleeping or going to the washroom or the like. They're always found in their throne-room or dining halls. There's no advantage for attacking at noon or midnight. Which is something you'll quickly consider as an experienced player, but might not as a newbie. But the module can't give two complete descriptions of the dungeon for a diurnal and nocturnal attack. 

When Gygax was writing the 1e books in 1976 to 1977, he'd been DMing for 4 to 6 years. I started playing in 1992 when I was 13. I had 6 years of DMing experience in University. Now I have over two decades of experience running and playing D&D. Gygax was a creative guy, but me right now probably knows more 



pemerton said:


> Eg if the PCs raid the orcs, and beat up on the orc's ogre friend; and the GM decides that the ogre has a family who will mourn him/her and come to join the orcs to help beat up on these hubristic raiders; well, how can the players reasonably plan for that eventuality?



That's a pretty absurd example, but it is a fair point.
A better one would be responding to raids by increasing the guards and setting up traps. Which might be unexpected, but isn't unrealistic. And reacting to the unexpected with aplomb is a great demonstration of player skill.



pemerton said:


> This is why I think that, once we look at a game like Runequest, or most contemporary D&D games, where the scope of play (in terms of NPCs, geography, locations, etc) is more-or-less boundless, the setting _can't_ be doing the same sort of work it was doing back then. It's not a puzzle/maze for the players to unravel and beat through skillled play. It's something else - to the extent that some consensus is emerging in this thread, it's a source of context/meaning for play; and also a source of tools/resources/"levers" for the players to deploy in their play of their PCs.



I'm amused by how you keep saying "RuneQuest and modern games" when RuneQuest was first published in 1978 and predates the 1e DMG...

Which also confuses me as I don't see the game system at play here at all. You can play the DM vs Player dungeon crawl skill game with most modern systems. Conversely, many DMs playing OD&D and 1e D&D created expansive setting. Or, like Ed Greenwood, used D&D to play in an already created fantasy setting. The modules of D&D were added into their worlds, existing as locations as part of the larger setting. 
Really, I would argue _that_ was the place of worldbuilding in classic D&D: worldbuilding was creating the setting where you could put the published adventure modules and then build a story around them. That's why sites like Grognardia were so hard on Dragonlance: they had their own story, making it harder for DMs to add those modules to their own world or create their own plots around the dungeon.


----------



## billd91

pemerton said:


> As to whether this is more important than subsequent D&D - I didn't say that, and didn't intend to imply it. What I said in the OP (and have reiterated a bit since) is that I think it's very clear what the GM's notes are for in that kind of play. They establish the framing for the "puzzle" (which includes the maze of the dungeon itself) and establish its parameters. Their finitude is a very important part of this - ie the dungeon is _not_ a "living, breathing" world _in the context of a particular episode of play_.
> 
> 
> <snip>
> 
> This advice becomes pointless if the dungeon is changing dramatically in the timescale of PC expeditions - as under those circumstances the map becomes relatively pointless, notes as to future targets for expeditions become unhelpful, etc. A group can't follow Gygax's advice, for instance, if they can't reasonably rely upon the permanent dweller still being there when, in next week's session, they implement their new plan of going to find out what sort of treasure it might be guarding; and the, the week after that, implement their plan of going and obtaining said treasure.




I think you’re attempting to infer *FAR* too much from this passage of general advice to newish players, particularly when Gygax was also advising DMs to make sure the dungeon denizens react logically the situation as in DMG pages 104-105.


----------



## Mercurius

pemerton said:


> But am I correct in understanding that this is to be achieved by the GM presenting to the players certain products of his/her imagination?




Sure, but you're changing this slightly. Up-thread you were asking if the *point* of world-building was to present the players with the products of the GM's imaginations. I'd say no - at least not most of the time, and when it becomes that it is a rather narcissistic affair, with the GM as self-declared artiste and the players his or her captive audience. There are GMs out there like that, and perhaps _all _or most GMs have a twinge of that (in a similar sense that all/most teachers I've known like to pontificate), but it is more of a spectrum.



pemerton said:


> I offered the paraphrase to which you are responding _in response to_ your explanation that it matters, in an important fashion, that it is the GM and not the players who do the worldbuidling. If we just centre on the play itself - both GM and players - why would it matter that it is the GM rather than the players who do it?




I've addressed this already a couple times. It has to do with "otherness" and issues of power, certainty (or uncertainty), control, etc, and how these things affect play experience. There is a different quality to "otherness" if I (as a player) have more control or power within the setting. 



pemerton said:


> I guess I'm trying to understand why having someone else do it facilitates the immersion.
> 
> To pick a concrete example: the player can decide that his PC has a brother who was possessed by a balrog; or the GM can decide that. The player can decide that his PC's immediate goal is to obtain an item that might help free someone (namely, his brother) from balrog possession; or the GM can decide that (eg by having a patron approach the PCs in a tavern and ask them to find such an item).
> 
> I'm not sure why this is all more immersive when it comes from the GM rather than the player - unless the idea is that one can't be immersed in the creations of one's own imagination, which is why I suggested a contrast between activity and passivity. (Not unlike the _audience_ notion that some other posters have used upthread.)




You'll find no issue with me on this. I think both can be immersive. 

That said, there's a difference between a player saying "I want my character to have a brother possessed by a balrog" and "I want to travel to Brokentop Mountain where the balrog lives." In the first, the player is creating their character's backstory; in the latter, they are dictating what exists in the world. And of course your mace example fits the latter.

Now don't get me wrong: I'm not saying you shouldn't do what you do, using your example of the mace. I just feel that the more the PC's relationship to the setting mirrors our relation to our own world, the more immersive it feels. As a general--but not absolute--rule. 

(This may relate to GNS issues, where you seem to be emphasizing a more gamist approach, and I'm emphasizing a more simulationist-narrativist approach)

Disallowing players from controlling the setting does not make them passive or take away agency, in the same way that if I want brie, I can go to Whole Foods and buy it. But I cannot "roll" to see if it is in my fridge or not. It is either there or it isn't.

Your approach says that a PC can, essentially, roll to see if there is brie in the fridge. This is a kind of meta-approach that I feel detracts from immersion. And that might be the crux of my view: anything that pulls the player out of the character, threatens immersion. This is also why I was one of those folks that found 4E combat--which I enjoyed in and of itself--to be less immersive than other editions.



pemerton said:


> Well, all critical analysis (be it of visual arts, film, literature, or even RPGing) requires the making of some generalisations. We group creators and performers into schools and movements, and talk about trajectories of influence and development, _even though_ we know that each creator and performer is an individual, different in some ways from any other.




I don't have a problem with generalizing in principle, but I find Manbearcat's generalization to be inaccurate and a bit strawmanish. 



pemerton said:


> You, for instance, pick up on @_*Manbearcat*_'s point (2) and dispute it - many ENworlders, you say, don't worldbuild as an art/creative outlet.




Not quite. My point is that whether or not they world-build as a creative outlet in and of itself does not inherently equate with them using the game as a platform to share their product. It is correlation, but not causation. 

This is a common debate tactic: make a generalization, tweak it slightly here and there to make it more extreme than it actually is, then present it in a negative light. That is what I saw in Manbearcat's nine points: a strawman. This pretty much addresses the rest of the specifics that you wrote about his post. I won't respond to each of your points, because my underlying issue with his nine points comes back to this. 

But let's return to the forest rather than lose ourselves in the trees. All of this comes back to the issue of GM authority, how much is too much - and what effect different degrees of authority have on play experience. In this context, it is about world-building. But I see the primary tension between that of GM as creator-storyteller vs. GM as facilitator-referee. You can nitpick the framing or shift the contact, but it always comes back to some variation of that. 

Now add in the meta-game issue which I mentioned above, and I think we come to crux of this debate: issues around GM authority, and what sort of impact meta-gaming has on play experience. Interesting questions!


----------



## pemerton

billd91 said:


> I think you’re attempting to infer *FAR* too much from this passage of general advice to newish players, particularly when Gygax was also advising DMs to make sure the dungeon denizens react logically the situation as in DMG pages 104-105.



As I posted not very far upthread, between the PHB and the DMG you can already see a tension between pressures of gameplay (which require an artificial dungeon environment) and presssures of verisimilitude (which push towards a "living, breathing worlld"). But modules published c 1978 were not "living, breathing worlds" in the modern sense. They didn't have NPCs whose friendships, connections, fields of action etc were remotely realistic. They have NPCs who living in holes in the ground, with no visible economic means of support, and whose response to dungeon raiders depends primarily on a reaction roll. (Consider the hobgoblins in the example of play in Moldvay Basic.)

Without this artificiality, that style of play can't work, as the players can't scout, collect information and then plan and execute raids.



Jester David said:


> I think that increase of verisimilitude is just the effect of people having played more.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> When Gygax was writing the 1e books in 1976 to 1977, he'd been DMing for 4 to 6 years. I started playing in 1992 when I was 13. I had 6 years of DMing experience in University. Now I have over two decades of experience running and playing D&D. Gygax was a creative guy, but me right now probably knows more



I think that's part of it. I also think that the sort of experience RPGers were looking for changed - the original designers and audience were wargamers, who might be expected to tolerate an artificial set-up as part of the context for gameplay.

But as the "story" part of the game looms larger among the player-base, and the PC increasingly is seen not just as a playing piece whereby the player gets to insert him-/herself into the fiction, but an imagined person comparable to a fictional protagonist, those issues of verisimilitude etc loom larger.

I mention Runequest because I think it's the first fantasy RPG to self-consciously make this contrast - _experiencing a fantasy world and story_, rather than playing a wargame - the heart of the play experience. (Compare Tunnels & Trolls, which doubles down on the artificial and absurd elements  of dungeoneering; or Moldvay Basic, which has a foreword about the protagonist slaying the dragon tyrant, and thereby freeing the land, using a sword gifted by a mysteriuois cleric, but the gameplay of which (as presented in the book) doesn't remotely support any such thing.)

So the change is an issue of experience, changing taste, changing membership of the RPG community, etc. The contrast has both temporal dimensions (eg 1976 vs 1986) but also system dimensions (in 1986 there were still people playing T&T as well as RQ and DL) and cutlural dimensions (consider contemorary OSRers, for intance).



Jester David said:


> I'm amused by how you keep saying "RuneQuest and modern games" when RuneQuest was first published in 1978 and predates the 1e DMG...



Well, I did say "or", not "and"!

Like "modernity" as sociologists and historians use it, I'm trying to get to something which has temporal but also cultural, structural etc dimensions.



Jester David said:


> I was actually thinking of _Against the Giants_ where there's a random chance certain changes happen.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Planning is impossible if things are shifting continually. But there's already a chance of uncertainty in random monster encounters, which make planning tricky. By the rules, there's meant to be a chance that plans get derailed due to bad luck. A skilled DM will find a middle ground, having most things feel similar but changing a few details to reflect the actions of the players or passage of time. Some changes due to having a "living world" might be beneficial to the players.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The modules never account for big NPC monsters sleeping or going to the washroom or the like. They're always found in their throne-room or dining halls. There's no advantage for attacking at noon or midnight. Which is something you'll quickly consider as an experienced player, but might not as a newbie. But the module can't give two complete descriptions of the dungeon for a diurnal and nocturnal attack.



Yes, these are exactly the sorts of things I'm talking about - Although I'm not sure what you've got in mind for Against the Giants (I'm fairly familiar with it, and have just had a quick flick through, and couldn't find anything like what you describe - but I have seen it in other modules.)

But Against the Giants does have a perfect example of your point about "sleeping quarters", though with a different fiction: Room 5 of the Fire Giant Hall is Queen Frupy's Chamber, and it has the following text:

Any intruders entering the place will be commanded by Queen Frupy to kneel in her August Presence and state their business, so that she may fairly dispose of their humble requests. Any so foolish as to do so will be sorry, as Frupy will call forth her pets [a pair of giant weasels that are described as being out of sight when the PCs enter the room] and herself strike at the most powerful appearing of the intruders, She will strike at +4 due to her position, do +8 hp of damage . . . and a score of natural 20 on the die indicates she has decapitated the victim of her attack. She will then bellow for her serving maids [8 more giants] to come to her aid.​
From the point of view of a "living, breathing world" this makes absolutely no sense. Given the layout of the place, anyone who arrives in Room 5 has already fought their way through the Grand Hall and probably dispatched the serving maids too. It's only when we treat each room of the dungeon as its own little vignette, with its own internal logic, that Room 5 can be seen as a puzzle/challenge posed by the GM to the players.

On your point about a "middle path", I think you're correct that that is what is intended by Gygax, but my own view is that that middle path is incredibly hard to tread - if all the defenders in a dungeon really act rationally, as (say) the inhabitants of a mediaeval castle might, then the PCs would have to be laying siege, not picking them off room-by-room - and I think the model of gameplay has largely collapsed under the weight of verisimilitude concerns.



Jester David said:


> That's a pretty absurd example



I agree it's absurd; it was actually inspired by an essays from c 1981 by Roger Musson, in which he posits 15 ogres holding a union meeting in the corridor as a technique for a GM to discourage the players from heading into an as-yet unmapped/unstocked section of the dungeon. The example (no sillier than some others given by Musson) illustrates the balance between absurdity and verisimilitude that seems to have been accepted (widely, obviousy not universally) at the time, but I think would be widely rejeted now - the ogres are holding a union meeting (but aren't workers) in a corridor of the dungeon (not in their guidl hall) and don't pursue the adventurers who stumble into them but then turn around (otherwise they don't do the job the GM has put them there for). These are ogres that make no sense except as a device in a megadungeon!



Jester David said:


> I don't see the game system at play here at all. You can play the DM vs Player dungeon crawl skill game with most modern systems. Conversely, many DMs playing OD&D and 1e D&D created expansive setting.



It depends what you mean by "system", I guess.

If the "system" includes reaction rolls, or relationship rules, or wandering monster/random encounter checks; these all matter to the stuff we're talking about.

Then there are advancement rules: contrast XP-for-gp, which establishes a clear measure of player skill, from the rule (very popular among Melbourne D&D players c 1990) that the PCs level up "when the GM feels its appropriate". What does levelling mean in that latter sort of game? It's not a measure of skill at all, but a GM-controlled pacing device. In a "level up when the GM feels like it" game, all of Gygax's advice in his PHB becomes pointless, even if the combat mechanics are the same as they always were.

There are some resolution systems (eg Cortex+ Heroic) which make a skilled-play game of the Gygaxian sort impossible. I ran a "dungeon crawl" fairly recently using a Cortex+ Fantasy Hack, but it wasn't a skilled play game at all. Just to give one example: the PCs had been teleported deep into the dungeon by a Crypt Thing (mechanically, when the PCs confronted the Crypt Thing the Doom Pool had grown to 2d12 and so I spent it to end the scene), and all were subject to a Lost in the Dungeon complication. As they wandered the dungeon looking for a way out, I described them coming into a large room with weird runes/carvings on the wall. One of the players (as his PC) guessed that these carvings might show a way out of the dungeon, and made a check to reduce/eliminate the complication. The check succeeded, and this established that his guess was correct. (Had it failed, some further complication might have been inflicted, or maybe the carvings were really a Symbol of Hopelessness, and the complicaion could have been stepped up to a level that renders the PC incapacitated.)

There's undoubtedly a type of skill being demonstrated by that player - a quick imagination working with established fantasy/dungeon tropes - but it's not the sort of wargaming-type skill that Gygax had in mind when he referred to the "skilled player"!

So I think these changes in game play involves a myriad of factors: expectations and preferences; system elements (action resolution; PC build and advancement; content introduction rules like random encountes and reactions; etc); non-mechanical techniques (how is failure adjudicated? how is fictional positioning established? etc); and probably other stuff I'm not thinking of at the moment.



Jester David said:


> The GM can create the setting wholly before play. They can create chunks of the setting before each session, expanding as needed. They can create the broad strokes and flesh it out during play. They can entirely improvise during play. They can tap the players to add locations and places. Or the whole setting can be collaboratively created at the table by the players.



This is all true. The question the OP was asking is - if the game isn't a classic skilled-play dungeon crawl, then what is worldbuilding of the GM preauthorship variety for?


----------



## pemerton

Aenghus said:


> For me the differences between a plot-important library in a dungeon and one a city concern action economy and suspension of disbelief. Dungeons constrain player decision making, and there is a more or less finite set of meaningful actions in the dungeon. Even when an action in the dungeon seems not to accomplish anything, it marks another element off the checklist.
> 
> Whereas in a city there are an infinity of possible actions the players could take, most of which accomplish nothing (arguably). The risk that checking out the library is a waste of playtime is to me higher, because  there are a million stories in the naked fantasy city, and most of them are not relevant to the pcs/ plots (in a conventional prepared game where the plot doesn't follow the PCs).



Well, this is more-or-less the point that I made in the OP, although approached from a slightly different angle. (Ie of the players trying to resolve the GM's plot; my angle was the players trying to decipher and beat the GM's maze.)



Aenghus said:


> The more freedom the players have, the harder it is to hook them in, so that everybody including the referee is having fun. I've seen it happen before that a game that worked fine within the confines of the dungeon, (constrained adventure space) falls apart in the wilderness/ city as the players don't notice or ignore the referees hooks and hare after red herrings and the stuff that interests them in the setting, which may not be what interests the referee.



This seems to be a pathological instance of GM pre-play authorship of setting.



Aenghus said:


> The alternative to heavy worldbuilding is generic fantasy
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Generic fantasy typically has huge issues with consistency and logic (castles and flying foes, a crazy, anachronistic mix of technologies and politics, terrible geography etc etc)



I don't think this contrast holds. 

I mean, it hardly gets more worldbuilt than FR, but it exhibits all the issues you describe (in a more subtle way, so does JRRT's Middle Earth, especially when it comes to economics); and, conversely, my Cortex+ Fantasy game doesn't involve any heavy worldbuilding, but so far has (I believe) evoked a more-or-less coherent viking/fairy tale world (there are hills, and snow in winter/to the north, and a dungeon with tombs in it, and dark elves further down, and steadings where giants live and keep gian oxen in their barns).


----------



## Jester David

pemerton said:


> As I posted not very far upthread, between the PHB and the DMG you can already see a tension between pressures of gameplay (which require an artificial dungeon environment) and presssures of verisimilitude (which push towards a "living, breathing worlld").



It's almost as if during that year, Gygax increased his experience as a designer and DM by 20%....



pemerton said:


> But modules published c 1978 were not "living, breathing worlds" in the modern sense. They didn't have NPCs whose friendships, connections, fields of action etc were remotely realistic. They have NPCs who living in holes in the ground, with no visible economic means of support, and whose response to dungeon raiders depends primarily on a reaction roll. (Consider the hobgoblins in the example of play in Moldvay Basic.)



Which didn't mean they didn't exist in the games, just that they didn't exist in the published modules. I'm sure that stuff was assumed to be added by the DMs, based on the actions of the player. 



pemerton said:


> Without this artificiality, that style of play can't work, as the players can't scout, collect information and then plan and execute raids.



If that were even remotely true, it would be impossible to execute scouting missions and raids in the real world. Which happen all the time. They just require a little more skill and quick reactions. 

I think the living world is a HUGE strength of tabletop roleplaying games. If someone wants a static world that doesn't change, where they can scout and learn patterns and know their enemies never move, they'll play a video game. That's pretty much what they excel at. Tabletop games are special and unique because they don't have the same pathfinding and limited AI. The DM can make the world more than just a dead, static dungeon. 



pemerton said:


> I think that's part of it. I also think that the sort of experience RPGers were looking for changed - the original designers and audience were wargamers, who might be expected to tolerate an artificial set-up as part of the context for gameplay.



They probably also just didn't know any better, as the game was still new and being made up as they went along.
Gygax's first players were his kids, who tested the game with them, before he brought in his wargamer friends. But even they ventured out of the dungeon eventually. After all, what's the point of treasure if you can't spend it? 

Plus all the stuff that happened in the dungeon that affected the world. Such as when Robert J. Kuntz's Robilar released nine demi-gods held captive under Castle Ravenloft, including Iuz. Meanwhile, Robilar himself became the owner of the Green Dragon Inn and kept his ear on the goings on in the Free City of Greyhawk. Why Gygax's early modules focused on the dungeons his game was by no means confined to that space. 



pemerton said:


> So the change is an issue of experience, changing taste, changing membership of the RPG community, etc. The contrast has both temporal dimensions (eg 1976 vs 1986) but also system dimensions (in 1986 there were still people playing T&T as well as RQ and DL) and cutlural dimensions (consider contemorary OSRers, for intance).



We're not even talking as late as 1986. The change from wargaming to assuming the role of a character and focusing on a larger story was happening in the late '70s. It was an almost immediate transition. I dare to say that once the game hit stores, the majority of new players were likely NOT wargamers. 



pemerton said:


> From the point of view of a "living, breathing world" this makes absolutely no sense. Given the layout of the place, anyone who arrives in Room 5 has already fought their way through the Grand Hall and probably dispatched the serving maids too. It's only when we treat each room of the dungeon as its own little vignette, with its own internal logic, that Room 5 can be seen as a puzzle/challenge posed by the GM to the players.



To me that comes off less as a puzzle/ challenge and more a scripted encounter where enemies respawn. It means the players past actions have little impact—no matter how many giants they killed outside and how many serving maids were slain reinforcements arrive. 
It's only a puzzle if you need to find a way to "solve" the encounter, bypassing the conflict.



pemerton said:


> On your point about a "middle path", I think you're correct that that is what is intended by Gygax, but my own view is that that middle path is incredibly hard to tread - if all the defenders in a dungeon really act rationally, as (say) the inhabitants of a mediaeval castle might, then the PCs would have to be laying siege, not picking them off room-by-room - and I think the model of gameplay has largely collapsed under the weight of verisimilitude concerns.



Not really, it just adds another dynamic: stealth. Having to avoid attracting attention. Quick strikes before the alarm can be raised. Shifting position after possibly being discovered to strike at a different location when guards come. Causing a distraction to pull guards away from their true place to attack. 
It's not a siege. It's a special forces incursion. 



pemerton said:


> If the "system" includes reaction rolls, or relationship rules, or wandering monster/random encounter checks; these all matter to the stuff we're talking about.
> 
> Then there are advancement rules: contrast XP-for-gp, which establishes a clear measure of player skill, from the rule (very popular among Melbourne D&D players c 1990) that the PCs level up "when the GM feels its appropriate". What does levelling mean in that latter sort of game? It's not a measure of skill at all, but a GM-controlled pacing device. In a "level up when the GM feels like it" game, all of Gygax's advice in his PHB becomes pointless, even if the combat mechanics are the same as they always were.
> 
> There are some resolution systems (eg Cortex+ Heroic) which make a skilled-play game of the Gygaxian sort impossible. I ran a "dungeon crawl" fairly recently using a Cortex+ Fantasy Hack, but it wasn't a skilled play game at all. Just to give one example: the PCs had been teleported deep into the dungeon by a Crypt Thing (mechanically, when the PCs confronted the Crypt Thing the Doom Pool had grown to 2d12 and so I spent it to end the scene), and all were subject to a Lost in the Dungeon complication. As they wandered the dungeon looking for a way out, I described them coming into a large room with weird runes/carvings on the wall. One of the players (as his PC) guessed that these carvings might show a way out of the dungeon, and made a check to reduce/eliminate the complication. The check succeeded, and this established that his guess was correct. (Had it failed, some further complication might have been inflicted, or maybe the carvings were really a Symbol of Hopelessness, and the complicaion could have been stepped up to a level that renders the PC incapacitated.)



That's still up to the DM. No matter what system is being played, I'm not going to let the rolls of a character solve a "puzzle" or riddle. I might give a clue, reflecting the character's superiour intelligence compared to the player, and any in world knowledge. But thought is still required. 
(And it's not like Intelligence checks and the like didn't exist in 1st Edition...)



pemerton said:


> There's undoubtedly a type of skill being demonstrated by that player - a quick imagination working with established fantasy/dungeon tropes - but it's not the sort of wargaming-type skill that Gygax had in mind when he referred to the "skilled player"!



It's interesting to think about Gygax's conception of who a player is. He probably had a pretty small pool of players: his middle-aged wargaming buddies and his young kids. Probably a far cry from the high school and college aged kids who were buying the game. 



pemerton said:


> So I think these changes in game play involves a myriad of factors: expectations and preferences; system elements (action resolution; PC build and advancement; content introduction rules like random encountes and reactions; etc); non-mechanical techniques (how is failure adjudicated? how is fictional positioning established? etc); and probably other stuff I'm not thinking of at the moment.



That and the game being played by non-wargamers. Wargaming was a time intensive and expensive hobby that required a dedicated play space (like a sand table) and miniatures, while D&D did not. It was a very, very niche hobby. Once D&D expanded beyond that circle, it's wargaming roots faded. Which likely happened the minute the White Box hit stores and people who knew more about storytelling and writing found the game and realised they could use it to tell tales with their friends. 



pemerton said:


> This is all true. The question the OP was asking is - if the game isn't a classic skilled-play dungeon crawl, then what is worldbuilding of the GM preauthorship variety for?



If the game being played isn't a classic skill-played dungeon craw, then the GM's worldbuilding provides setting and flavour. Description of the environs. Characters for the world. 
The nature of worldbuilding doesn't change at all really. Creating the walls of the dungeon or the provinces of a kingdom are the same thing. If you move through the adventure's plot by advancing from dungeon room to dungeon room or from scene to scene, it's functionally the same.


----------



## pemerton

Mercurius said:


> It has to do with "otherness" and issues of power, certainty (or uncertainty), control, etc
> 
> <snip>
> 
> make a generalization, tweak it slightly here and there to make it more extreme than it actually is, then present it in a negative light. That is what I saw in Manbearcat's nine points: a strawman. This pretty much addresses the rest of the specifics that you wrote about his post. I won't respond to each of your points, because my underlying issue with his nine points comes back to this.
> 
> But let's return to the forest rather than lose ourselves in the trees. All of this comes back to the issue of GM authority



The nine points [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] wrote are an attempt to analyse all the things you refer to here: "power", "uncertainty", "control", "GM authority".

The uncertainty resides on the player side. It results from the GM having control of the backstory, which is not (fully) revealed to the players, but is (i) subject to change at any time by the GM, and (ii) available as a device for the GM to determine that declared actions fail without resort to the standard mechanics (eg set a difficulty, roll the dice).

If you think that's _not_ where the uncertainty resides, then please elaborate.

(Another common source of uncertainy in RPGing: dice rolls. But this don't depend upon GM control over backstory, and so can't be the sort of uncertainty you are saying GM authority is in service of.)



Mercurius said:


> there's a difference between a player saying "I want my character to have a brother possessed by a balrog" and "I want to travel to Brokentop Mountain where the balrog lives." In the first, the player is creating their character's backstory; in the latter, they are dictating what exists in the world.



Doesn't the former establish that the gameworld contains balrogs? And a brother? Why is this significantly different from geography?



Mercurius said:


> There is a different quality to "otherness" if I (as a player) have more control or power within the setting.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I'm not saying you shouldn't do what you do, using your example of the mace. I just feel that the more the PC's relationship to the setting mirrors our relation to our own world, the more immersive it feels.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Disallowing players from controlling the setting does not make them passive or take away agency, in the same way that if I want brie, I can go to Whole Foods and buy it. But I cannot "roll" to see if it is in my fridge or not. It is either there or it isn't.
> 
> Your approach says that a PC can, essentially, roll to see if there is brie in the fridge.



This strikes me as confused.

One part of this apparent confusion is that you assert that the GM has power and control, yet deny that the player is passive or lacks agency. I don't understand how you square that circle.

The PC doesn't make any rolls (unless playing a dice-based gambling game in the fiction - that has been part of my RPGing, but normally is fairly marginal). The player makes a roll. RPGing is replete with players making rolls.

The player also declares an action. This is also very common in RPGing. The player doesn't know whether or not the action will succeed. This is also very common in RPGing. _Something_ determines whether or not the action will succeed.

In Against the Giants, the attempt to find the hidden treasure depends (i) upon fictional positioning (ie the PC has to be in the right bit of the dungeon where the GM's notes record there is some hidden treasure) and (ii) upon a die roll (eg maybe there is a 1 in 6 chancer of finding it, as is the case for the invislbe iron box with the Hammer of Thunderbolts in it in room 21A of G2).

In the mace example, the attempt to find the mace depends (i) upon fictional positioning (ie the PC has to be in the right sort of place for a mace to be found, consistent with genre logic and established backstory - as Luke Crane puts it, on p 262 of the Burning Wheel Revised book, "A player cannot make a stand for beam weaponry in the Duke's toilet") and (ii) upon a die roll.

So where is the difference? Different systems allow different approaches to (ii), but these are largely orthogonal to the present point (eg in Against the Giants, that 1 in 6 roll is unmodified; in BW, the player has many resources to bring to bear; but a 3E player playing an updated version of G2 likewise will have player-side resources available to enhance a Spot check).

The real difference is in (i): what counts as the proper fictional positioning is different in the two approaches. In the first, the GM has sole control and keeps it secret whether or not the fictional positioning is sufficient for the roll to matter. In the second, the GM and player jointly establish the fictional positioniong, and its sufficiency for the roll (if it _is_ sufficient) is known to the player.

(One consequence of this difference, which is a bit orthognal but in my view highly relevant to immersion: in the Against the Giants approach, the player can waste resources trying to succed at stage (ii) although the GM knows that the player has failed at (i) ie the fictional positioning is insufficient. In the mace approach, that can't happen. I think, based on experience, that the first approach breeds cautious play with somewhat detached players; the second breeds engaged play with players whose passions closely mirror those of their PCs.)

Which then brings us to the comparison to buying brie in the real world. That's a nonsense comparison, because the real world is not a fiction.

In the real world, I don't have "fictional positioning". And when I want to buy some brie, I'm not negotiating a fiction with other creative people.

The real world is governed by (complex, perhaps in some respects unknowable) causal processes.

The world of an RPG is _authored._ When a player says, "I look for the mace", this expresses a desire that the fiction contain one element (_PC finds mace_) rather than some other element (eg _PC fails to find mace_). Having the GM unilaterally and secretly deciding that the mace isn't there, and so can't be found no matter how good the roll, isn't like finding a fridge empty of brie. It's one participant affirming his/her conception of the fiction over another's expressed desire in respect of that fiction.

To me, that makes sense if the aim of play is for the players to try to bring their picture of the fiction into conformity with the GM's prior pictue. And that makes sense if it's a maze/puzzle game; but I really don't see any connection between this goal of play and _immersion_.


----------



## Caliban

pemerton said:


> Doesn't the former establish that the gameworld contains balrogs? And a brother? Why is this significantly different from geography?
> 
> This strikes me as confused.




I'm sure it does.  But it's not confusing - you are just confused by it.  There is a difference.



> One part of this apparent confusion is that you assert that the GM has power and control, yet deny that the player is passive or lacks agency. I don't understand how you square that circle.




I find your lack of understanding completely believable.  



> To me, that makes sense if the aim of play is for the players to try to bring their picture of the fiction into conformity with the GM's prior pictue. And that makes sense if it's a maze/puzzle game; but I really don't see any connection between this goal of play and _immersion_.




Something else I find completely plausible.   

Perhaps games like D&D aren't for you.


----------



## Arilyn

There is a knee jerk reaction to the style of play pemerton is describing, as regards to immersion. I often hear the complaint that players contributing to the world, beyond making decisions for their characters, will kill their sense of immersion. I have not found this to be true at all. When it's all going right, it can actually improve immersion. I understand how that might initially seem counter intuitive, but it really does work. I think more players should try it. Playing a variety of games and game styles can only make you a better, more diverse player/GM.


----------



## Caliban

Arilyn said:


> There is a knee jerk reaction to the style of play pemerton is describing, as regards to immersion. I often hear the complaint that players contributing to the world, beyond making decisions for their characters, will kill their sense of immersion. I have not found this to be true at all. When it's all going right, it can actually improve immersion. I understand how that might initially seem counter intuitive, but it really does work. I think more players should try it. Playing a variety of games and game styles can only make you a better, more diverse player/GM.




I don't know.  Based on the evidence presented in this discussion, playing games like that may render you incapable of understanding even basic concepts associated with playing D&D.   

I'm just not sure I want to take that risk.


----------



## Arilyn

Caliban said:


> I don't know.  Based on the evidence presented in this discussion, playing games like that may render you incapable of understanding even basic concepts associated with playing D&D.
> 
> I'm just not sure I want to take that risk.




It doesn't. Really, it won't taint you. I think maybe there is just a large barrier in trying to explain the style, especially if you are steeped in traditional DnD style of play. It's not all that strange or nutty, otherwise all those indie games would have never taken off. It's looking at rpging through a different lens, but it's still roleplaying, and players are still engaged in challenging adventures.


----------



## pemerton

Caliban said:


> Perhaps games like D&D aren't for you.



Well, I've been playing D&D and related games since 1982.

What's not particularly for me is a game like the following:

I do all this because *I find it enjoyable*.  I enjoy world building.  Otherwise I wouldn't do it.  The game is not just about the players - the DM gets to have fun too.   In this case - it's *MY CAMPAIGN*.  I created the world and the players get to explore it.  They may give me ideas for new areas to flesh out, but ultimately it is my creation and I have the final say on anything that affects the world.  They control their characters, I control the world.  They influence the world through the actions of their characters and through the parts of their backstories that I choose to incorporate into the game.  Together we tell a story.

My enjoyment comes from creating the world and having them experience it.  Their enjoyment comes from exploring it, watching their characters grow and become part of that world​
I've never GMed a game in that style, and when I first played in such a game - in 1990 - after a couple of weeks I and the other players "sacked" the GM and started a game in which players made contributions that went beyond "exploring" the GM's fiction (which, non-metaphorically, = the GM telling them stuff that s/he wrote).



Caliban said:


> I find your lack of understanding completely believable.



The only agency I can see in the game that you and [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION] describe is that the players - in the play of their PCs - get to make suggestions to the GM as to what s/he should say next: eg they can say "I look for the map in the study", and the GM may tell them that they find it, or may not, depending on some mix of what is written in the GM's notes, what the GM thinks makes for a good game/good story, and what is rolled in some dice.

Depending on the details of the set-up, the players may also be able to make choices which determine which bit of the notes the GM reads first (eg if they decide their PCs go to the woods, the GM reads out that bit; if they decied their PCs go to the hills, the GM reads out that other bit).

That's not zero agency, but in the context of a game in which a significant goal is the collective generation of a shared fiction, it is rather passive.

It contrasts fairly markedly, for instance, with a game where the GM is not allowed to change what's written in his/her notes, and hence, therefore, in which the players have some chance of unravelling the mystery of those notes (what @howandhwy99 calls "solving the puzzle and the game rules behind the screen"). In that sort of RPGing, action declaration isn't just a suggestion/requet to the GM to narrate some more fiction. It's actually a move in a game.



Caliban said:


> Based on the evidence presented in this discussion, playing games like that may render you incapable of understanding even basic concepts associated with playing D&D.



I've played a lot of D&D. There can be more to D&D than the players taking an imaginary trip through the GM's world and story.

But that is one answer to the question "What is world building for?" To provide the material for the GM to read to the players, which will constitute that imagined trip.


----------



## Caliban

pemerton said:


> Well, I've been playing D&D and related games since 1982.




And you still state that you are confused by and cannot understand relatively basic concepts associated with D&D.   That is indeed unfortunate.  I sincerely hope you figure it out someday. 



> What's not particularly for me is a game like the following:
> 
> I've never GMed a game in that style, and when I first played in such a game - in 1990 - after a couple of weeks I and the other players "sacked" the GM and started a game in which players made contributions that went beyond "exploring" the GM's fiction (which, non-metaphorically, = the GM telling them stuff that s/he wrote).




At least you recognize your limitations and moved onto a different type of game.  I hope you enjoyed it.  



> *The only agency I can see* in the game that you and [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION] describe is that the players - in the play of their PCs - get to make suggestions to the GM as to what s/he should say next: eg they can say "I look for the map in the study", and the GM may tell them that they find it, or may not, depending on some mix of what is written in the GM's notes, what the GM thinks makes for a good game/good story, and what is rolled in some dice.




If you say that is all you are capable of seeing,  I believe you.   It is unfortunate your understanding is so limited, but we all must work with what we have. 



> Depending on the details of the set-up, the players may also be able to make choices which determine which bit of the notes the GM reads first (eg if they decide their PCs go to the woods, the GM reads out that bit; if they decied their PCs go to the hills, the GM reads out that other bit).
> 
> That's not zero agency, but in the context of a game in which a significant goal is the collective generation of a shared fiction, it is rather passive.




In your opinion.  And as you've already pointed out, there is much that confuses you, or that you simply do not understand.  



> It contrasts fairly markedly, for instance, with a game where the GM is not allowed to change what's written in his/her notes, and hence, therefore, in which the players have some chance of unravelling the mystery of those notes (what @howandhwy99 calls "solving the puzzle and the game rules behind the screen"). In that sort of RPGing, action declaration isn't just a suggestion/requet to the GM to narrate some more fiction. It's actually a move in a game.




That is one style of DM'ing and world building, and it can be quite fun.  But it's certainly not the only one.  A variety of playstyles and DM'ing styles can be fun and enjoyable.   You seem to have identified a style you don't enjoy, and that too is fine.  Different people want different things out of the games they play. 

For me, the point is that both the DM and the players enjoy the experience.  Everything else is secondary. 



> I've played a lot of D&D. There can be more to D&D than the players taking an imaginary trip through the GM's world and story.



  Indeed, on that point we agree.  You just seem to be confused about how it can actually work in D&D.   It probably good that you moved on to other games that better suit your needs. 



> But that is one answer to the question "What is world building for?" To provide the material for the GM to read to the players, which will constitute that imagined trip.




That does seem to be the only answer that you don't find confusing.


----------



## Caliban

Arilyn said:


> It doesn't. Really, it won't taint you. I think maybe there is just a large barrier in trying to explain the style, especially if you are steeped in traditional DnD style of play. It's not all that strange or nutty, otherwise all those indie games would have never taken off. It's looking at rpging through a different lens, but it's still roleplaying, and players are still engaged in challenging adventures.




See, now I'm worried that it might negatively impact my ability to recognize humor in written form when I encounter it.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION], in my view much of what you say about the significance of non-wargamers playing D&D, and the effect on widespread/mainstream approaches to play, is uncontroversial. So I'm only replying to those bits of your post where I think I have a meaningful disagreement, or have something to add this is relevant to the thread topic.



Jester David said:


> I think the living world is a HUGE strength of tabletop roleplaying games. If someone wants a static world that doesn't change, where they can scout and learn patterns and know their enemies never move, they'll play a video game. That's pretty much what they excel at.



Well, c 1979 Lewis Pulsipher described the role of the GM in wargame-style D&D as being a "friendly computer with discretion". (I think I'm getting the quote right.)

The difference between a wargame RPG and a video game - which relates to the referee's discretion - is that in a RPG _fictional positioning matters_, and there is no limit on the permissible moves. To give a banal example: if a player deducts the right number of coins from his/her PC sheet, and writes "shovel" on his/her equipment list, then if - later on in play - the GM describes the PCs as arriving in a room with a dirt floor, the player can declare "I use my shovel to dig up the floor and see if anything is buried there!"

That's not feasible in a choose-your-own-adventure book (where the number of permitted moves in each situation is strictly limited by what the author has written, which is in turn limited by page count as well as imagination).

I have basically no familiarity with modern computer games other than having watched some friends play WOW aroudn a decade ago, and having watched some kids play minecraft. So I don't know how powerful modern games are in terms of allowing fictional positioning to be a significant factor in action declaration and resolution. I'm going to guess, however, that humans are still better at that particular aspect of adjudication (even if the computer is obviously better at managing many other aspects of refereeing, like all the arithemtic ones).

Anyway, my point is that a "living, breathing, world" isn't the only attraction of a RPG over a video game, and I think - among the proponents of the wargming style - it was that ability to play on fictional positioning that was the predominant significance of the shared fiction, rather than its character as a "living, breathing world".

As our discussion of dates and styles shows, I think it's hard to put a precise timeframe around changes in typical approaches to RPGing. No doubt Runequest is a significant publication event, but it comes out of a prior culture of play (the West Coast D&Ders, I think, whom Lewis Pulsiher was rather critical off in his essays/articles around that time). A publication event that I see as a paradigm of the shift, though, is the Planescape Module Dead Gods. That is chock full of "living, breath, world"-type stuff; but the ability of the players to actually affect things through action declarations, including the exploitation of their PCs' fictional positioning, is close to zero.

The contrast with White Plume Mountain or Tomb of Horrors - no living, breathing world and backstories that are the barest veneer over a series of gameplay challenges; but in which the opportunities to exploit fictional positioning and make good game moves abound (although in ToH are, in my view, very tedious) - could hardly be starker.



Jester David said:


> To me that comes off less as a puzzle/ challenge and more a scripted encounter where enemies respawn. It means the players past actions have little impact—no matter how many giants they killed outside and how many serving maids were slain reinforcements arrive.
> It's only a puzzle if you need to find a way to "solve" the encounter, bypassing the conflict.



It's a puzle in this sense: the players have to decide whether this is really a social encounter, which they can use to their benefit; or whether it's a combat encounter, in which case kneeling before the queen is almost certainly going to impose some sort of disadvantage (as it turns out it turns her into a vorpal backstabber, but I'm prepared to treat that as a quirk of classic D&D's relative shortage of systematic resolution mechanics).

The puzzle can be solved by such devices as a Wand of Enemy Detection, or a Medallion of ESP, or a Detect Evil or ESP spelll, etc. Or, less mechanically and more fictional positioning based, the PCs might capture and interrogate one of her maid servants - who could tell them about the Queen's pets, and perhaps even her penchant for asking intruders to kneel so she can decapitate them.

This sort of play, which engages the fiction even though the fiction is artificial/inane, is more viable if the scope of the fiction is relatively confined.



Jester David said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Without this artificiality, that style of play can't work, as the players can't scout, collect information and then plan and execute raids.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If that were even remotely true, it would be impossible to execute scouting missions and raids in the real world. Which happen all the time.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> it just adds another dynamic: stealth. Having to avoid attracting attention. Quick strikes before the alarm can be raised
Click to expand...


I think comparisons to reality are unhelpful. In reality, I learn the situation by looking around and scanning with my eyes; by listening carefully; by smelling the air; etc. A couple of weeks ago I went for a walk in some forested hills outside Melbourne. When I heard rustlinging in the bushes, I stopped and looked. On a few occasions I saw birds. On one occasion I could see the foliage moving, but couldn't see what it was that was moving it. On another occasion, I saw an echidna.

Playing a RPG in which my PC is scouting is nothing like this. The way I learn what is going on is by making moves - that is, fictionally positoining my PC, or declaring actions, or both - which then trigger narration from the GM. There is no sensory input independent of the desires of human beings. Generally, there is little narration independent of my desires, as I have to do stuff - make the moves - to trigger the GM's narration.

And the GM's narration will almost inevitably focus on mattes that the GM regards as interesting and/or salient. In the course of a 4-hour wnader through the woods, I spent perhaps 15 or 20 minutes paying attention to the things I had heard rustling - the largest block of that time was spent looking at the echidna, as it's the closest I've ever come to one oustide a zoo. But if the PCs go on a four hour scouting mission, almost no GM is going to spend 20 minutes (or more, if they want to cover all the sensory inputs that I was taking in simultaneously) describing all that stuff, and letting the players decide what to make of it.

The direction, focus and content of play is going to be very significantly shaped by the GM's own narrational priorities, _unless_ there is some other device for circumventing those. 

One device is to put a limit on GM moves; but then we're back to some form of static design, and have lost the "living, breathing" aspect. 

Another device of that sort, which I'm most familiar with is, the skill-challenge style complex resolution system (the earliest explicity version of it that I know is in Maelstrom Storytelling, 1997; it's then found in HeroWars, 2001 (I think); in BW; in 4e; in Cortex+; and surely many other RPGs I'm not so familiar with - does Fate use it?) - where the resolution focuses on the players setting a goal for their PCs, the resolution structure then leads the group through the process of attaining or failing at that goal, with changes in the content of the fiction and in fictional positionig taking place on the way through, and yielding an outcome at the end.

But a distincive requirement of those systems is that they depend upon the details of the fiction - the worldbuilding - not being fully established at the start, because flexibility in respect of this is a necessary element to enable the narrative to be developed as the PCs' fortunes wax and/or wane.

If resolution proceeds, though, in the context of a "square by square"/"hex by hex", wargaming-style scouting by the PCs (as the players' vechicles), and with no limits on GM moves, _and_ with the players only able to get information by making moves that prompts the GM to tell them the stuff that s/he thinks is salient - well, I think this is a very hard puzzle/maze to beat.

Add into the repertoire of GM permitted moves that s/he can (secretly) thwart any player action declaration at any time by (secretly) writing new backstory (which is what [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] were discussing in the context of GM authority over the fiction) - well, then I think it gets even harder.



Jester David said:


> No matter what system is being played, I'm not going to let the rolls of a character solve a "puzzle" or riddle. I might give a clue, reflecting the character's superiour intelligence compared to the player, and any in world knowledge. But thought is still required.



OK. I'm not sure how that relates to my example, though. As I said, in Cortex+ Heroic you can't run a classic dungeon crawl, because the fiction isn't pre-authored in the right way to support that. As in the example I gave, strange runes or carvings aren't a riddle to be solved; they're an element of the fiction that establishes the basis for action declarations like the one I described (ie "They might be a map - let's see [frames check, rolls dice, beats Doom Pool] - yes, they are, we're _here_ and here's how we get to _there_ [rubs Lost in the Dungeon complication of character sheet]").



Jester David said:


> If the game being played isn't a classic skill-played dungeon craw, then the GM's worldbuilding provides setting and flavour. Description of the environs. Characters for the world.
> The nature of worldbuilding doesn't change at all really. Creating the walls of the dungeon or the provinces of a kingdom are the same thing. If you move through the adventure's plot by advancing from dungeon room to dungeon room or from scene to scene, it's functionally the same.



Well, classic dungeon crawling didn't really involve _moving through the adventure's plot_. As we see in Gygax's PHB, the players set an objective for the session (eg finding a staricase to the next level down), and then try to achieve that objective without getting lost in the dungeon, beaten up by monsters, or foolishly lured into trouble by the GM's clever tricks, wandering monsters, etc.

The setting is the framework in which the making and carrying out of these plans happens. Describing it as a maze or puzzle isn't perfect, but is an attempt to convey the idea. (Luke Crane describes it thus: "Since the exploration side of the game is cross between Telephone and Pictionary, I must sit impassive as the players make bad decisions. I want them to win. I want them to solve the puzzles, but if I interfere, I render the whole exercise pointless.")

I think creating the provinces of a kingdom (oustide the contxt of a Diplomacy-type game, where the players play the kingdoms or their rulers) is quite different. Whatever exactly it is for, it's not part of a game that is a cross between Telephone and Pictionary.

I agree with you that setting, in a RPG, contributes _setting and flavour. Description of the environs. Characters for the world_. Is there anything more distinctive or unique to be said about what GM pre-authored setting does (outside the cross-between-Telephone-and-Pictionary context)?


----------



## pemerton

Caliban said:


> A variety of playstyles and DM'ing styles can be fun and enjoyable.



I didn't think that was controversial. I assume that your players enjoy playing in your game, otherwise, why would they?

That doesn't tell me whether or not they're passive, though. As you yourself posted,



Caliban said:


> You know this is a game and not a creative writing assignment for the players, right?
> 
> You are making the assumption that a) the players WANT to write that much stuff about things that don't directly affect their character (i.e. a thousand year history for a country in my campaign world), and b) that the purpose of the game is for the players to create the world.
> 
> I can tell you for a fact that not every player wants to write an extensive background (or any background at all).  And that's fine, if they don't enjoy it they shouldn't be forced to do it or made to feel lacking because of it.  Some players really don't care about "depth" or "richness" - they want loot and combat. Others want to be part of a story and influence the world.



If players want _only_, or primarily loot and combat, then presumably they're happy for the GM to control all of the fiction, and just serve up combats with loots following behind them. (That seems to be how some modules work, eg many of the encounters in, and especially the dungeon at the end of, the 3E adventure Bastion of Broken Souls; the Horned Hold mini-dungeon in the 4e adventure Thunderspire Labyrinth; and plenty of others I've read.)

If players want to "influence the world", then how does that work? Does the GM relinquish control over the setting - in which case it's no longer *His/her campaign*? Or does the player make suggestions, which the GM incorporates or not based on his/her conception of how his/her campaign world works?



Caliban said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There can be more to D&D than the players taking an imaginary trip through the GM's world and story.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Indeed, on that point we agree.  You just seem to be confused about how it can actually work in D&D.
Click to expand...


Well, given that I've done it in D&D I know how it can work.

If you think it can work in a game in which the GM pre-authors the seting, _and _in which the GM is free to change that setting secretly if s/he wants, _and_in which the players only know those bits of the setting that the GM has narrated to them, _and _the GM is free to rely on secret elements of the setting to stipulate that action declarations fail - please tell me what you have in mind.

A concrete example: a player wants to influence the setting by turning one ancient religious faction against another. This is going to depend upon a range of factors - theological/cosmological argument; histories of conflict or condordance between the factions; which leading personalities, both in the past and in the present, are assocated with the factions; etc.

In the real world, a person might start learning all that stuff by going to a reearch library; than interviewing various people; etc. In a RPG in wich the GM is sole author of all those elements of the fiction, the player can only learn that stuff by having the GM provide summaries, short (50 to 100 word) paraphrases of the outcomes of reading books, talking to people, etc. How is the player going to prise that stuff free of the GM's presentation and framing of it so as to actually carry out his/her plan independently of the GM's view about the propsects for its success or failure?


----------



## Caliban

pemerton said:


> I didn't think that was controversial. I assume that your players enjoy playing in your game, otherwise, why would they?
> 
> That doesn't tell me whether or not they're passive, though.




Nor was it intended to.   It's kind of irrelevant to the question of worldbuilding.   If that was something you actually wanted to know about, you should have said so.



> As you yourself posted,




You seem to like repeating stuff I've said back to me.  I find this curious. Do you worry that I've forgotten what I wrote?   Or are you confused by it?



> If players want to "influence the world", then how does that work? Does the GM relinquish control over the setting - in which case it's no longer *His/her campaign*? Or does the player make suggestions, which the GM incorporates or not based on his/her conception of how his/her campaign world works?




I'd tell you, but it's kind of complicated.  You've already encountered several concepts in this discussion that you claim to find confusing or simply don't understand.  I don't want to add to your mental stress. 



> Well, given that I've done it in D&D I know how it can work.



  Perhaps one way it can work.  Given the number of things you've stated that you don't understand or find confusing,  I'm willing to bet there are more ways it can work than you think there are. 



> If you think it can work in a game in which the GM pre-authors the seting, _and _in which the GM is free to change that setting secretly if s/he wants, _and_in which the players only know those bits of the setting that the GM has narrated to them, _and _the GM is free to rely on secret elements of the setting to stipulate that action declarations fail - please tell me what you have in mind.




Eh, like I said.  It's complicated. I'm afraid you would just find it confusing, and I don't want that on my conscience .


----------



## Mercurius

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], I have to make dinner so will try to simmer this down to essentials for now, but I'm also trying to get at the crux rather than spend energy with endless asides and details.

In the campaign style that I'm discussing--I can only speak for myself, but think it is basically representative of "traditional D&D" (not classic)--a PC has just as much agency as you and I have in this world, and even a touch more in that a player gets more of a say in his or her backstory. It is, to use the GNS phrase (although not necessarily in the exact way that Edwards intended), an imaginative _simulation._

Is that understood? It is not less agency, but actually slightly more. So if you'd characterize this style of game play with "player passivity," then I assume you see yourself and human beings in general as inherently passive, because you and I have _less_ agency than a PC in traditional D&D-style game play (unless we're talking about pre-generated players or other tournament-style requirements, but I think that is a different matter - and one of the reasons I never have played tournaments...I want more agency in character creation!).

Based upon what you said in your response, I also assume that you want your gaming experience to _not_ echo the degree of agency you and I have in the real world, but to be something more. Is that correct? In other words, your enjoyment of the RPG experience depends upon you feeling that players have (signficantly) more agency than we do in real life?

Which brings me to the crux of the matter. I already alluded to this above, but in addition to GM authority I think the other major difference in the "Pemertonian style" vs. the "traditional style" is the degree to which meta-gaming is part of the experience. In the traditional style, the GM is the creator and storyteller, and the players are actors within the world. The point is to simulate the experience of real life, but in a shared imaginary space. The player "inhabits" the character (or role), and acts as if they are the character within the setting. Thus _role-playing._

Your approach seems more that of characters as game pawns utilized by the players, who in turn are partially responsible--or at least able to--direct some of the unfolding action in a meta-game sense. This meta-game aspect is, I think, what breaks immersion for me...and it is what broke immersion for me in 4E combat. And I do think the meta-game aspect and (diminished) GM authority correlate to some degree.

More later...


----------



## Sebastrd

pemerton said:


> If players want to "influence the world", then how does that work? Does the GM relinquish control over the setting - in which case it's no longer *His/her campaign*? Or does the player make suggestions, which the GM incorporates or not based on his/her conception of how his/her campaign world works?




You're so cute, Pemerton, with your deliberately obtuse shtick. Clearly, if I have a ball and let you play with it - relinquish control, in other words - its no longer my ball.

I will admit, for the sake of argument, that any GM who declares ownership over the _campaign_ is overstepping. However, I think it's perfectly reasonable for a GM to declare ownership over the campaign _setting_. Many of us put a LOT of effort into developing our campaign settings to include NPCs, geography, situations, maps, motivations, etc. Most players put proportionally less work into the game; they roll up their characters, perhaps include a backstory, and show up with some dice. GMing a simulated living, breathing world in which the players can explore and adventure involves a ton of work. Personally, I spend about the same amount of time developing an adventure as the players spend playing through it. I think I've earned the right to have substantially more say over what exists or can feasibly happen in the setting I created.

I'll also admit that most GMs seem way too possessive about their settings and NPCs. It's immensely important to understand that the setting exists primarily as a vehicle for the players to reach their goals - to be heroes. The villains' primary function is to oppose the players but ultimately fail. The entire campaign world _should_ be a challenge for the players to overcome - assuming they play intelligently, work together, and roll well when it counts. Failure should be an option for them, as well, or their victories will feel hollow.

D&D may have its roots in wargames and mazes full of monsters, traps, and loot; but it has evolved far beyond those. I consider TTRPGs primarily a mechanism for shared storytelling, because that's the one aspect of a TTRPG that cannot be replicated in a book or videogame. Someone has to develop the shared world in which that storytelling takes place, and it usually falls to the GM to do so.

In professional wrestling terms, I view my role as GM as similar to a jobber. My role is to sell the players' moves and amp up the excitement but ultimately lose the match. I'm fine with that role. However, in return, I retain a certain degree of control over the campaign world. It's an arrangement that always works for me and my my table.


----------



## Glenn Fleetwood

The answer here is I thought, self-evident.

However, I reject the idea that the 'classic' game was ever about just dungeons.

I was there at the start... it wasn't even then.

As for world building - the following words and phrases sum up the point of it all;

Verisimilitude / Suspension of Disbelief / Immersion.

Roleplaying is semi-structured storytelling without a fixed plot - one cannot have a story without a setting, nor enjoy a story without being to some extent immersed in it.

Read any good book, or watch a decent film set 'somewhere else'.

Now try to imagine that story with no setting... 

... it doesn't work does it...

The 'world' of the story is in effect one of the characters, and shapes the protagonists and antagonists alike.

Anyway - all of this is pretty obvious. I am not sure why the question arises to be honest.


----------



## Sadras

@_*pemerton*_, when I was a teenager and I got into D&D, the classic dungeon style play with the static monsters was quickly, through my own logic, replaced with a living breathing dungeon world. I cannot imagine that Gygax as an adult didn't dismiss the static dungeon too, all you have to do is look at the ToEE.

What purpose do you think the worldbuilding of The Village of Hommlet (1979) serves?


----------



## Sadras

Mercurius said:


> Which brings me to the crux of the matter. I already alluded to this above, but in addition to GM authority I think the other major difference in the "Pemertonian style" vs. the "traditional style" is the degree to which meta-gaming is part of the experience. In the traditional style, the GM is the creator and storyteller, and the players are actors within the world. The point is to simulate the experience of real life, but in a shared imaginary space. The player "inhabits" the character (or role), and acts as if they are the character within the setting. Thus _role-playing._
> 
> Your approach seems more that of characters as game pawns utilized by the players, who in turn are partially responsible--or at least able to--direct some of the unfolding action in a meta-game sense. This meta-game aspect is, I think, what breaks immersion for me...and it is what broke immersion for me in 4E combat. And I do think the meta-game aspect and (diminished) GM authority correlate to some degree.




*This* pretty much sums it up. 

Hence worldbuilding done by the DM is very much more desirable for that immersive experience when I'm a player. I want to be able to play in the _DM's game/world_ similar to a virtual reality game. If I'm taking off the virtual headgear every other second to decide on the story content (player injected) then I'm continuously breaking immersion for myself. As a player I want to play ONLY!


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> What purpose do you think the worldbuilding of The Village of Hommlet (1979) serves?



As was discussed upthread (somewhere in the first page or two), I don't know.

 [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION] suggested it is just another dungeon. I don't know if that's how Gygax used it or intended it.

It doesn't seem very effective as a living, breathing world, though, because some of those NPCs would deal with the Moathouse pretty handily, wouldn't they?

Are they meant to offer protection to any PC who kills Lareth the Beautiful?

The set-up in B2 seems clearer to me - it creates both a rules framework for keeping the PCs in line when they go back to town (eg mid-level fighters who will beat up lawbreakers) and (with the priest in the tavern) establishes some additional social puzzles.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> As was discussed upthread (somewhere in the first page or two), I don't know.
> 
> @_*howandwhy99*_ suggested it is just another dungeon. I don't know if that's how Gygax used it or intended it.




Of course you don't know. 
Because having to admit that the worldbuilding of village is part of the overall puzzle, you would have to concede that urban adventures (as I have been saying) can be puzzles in the classical sense despite the wide range of options they offer a PC.
And you certainly cannot deny its worldbuilding. 



> It doesn't seem very effective as a living, breathing world, though, because some of those NPCs would deal with the Moathouse pretty handily, wouldn't they?




Well I suppose it depends on the DM if he/she roleplays the NPCs in the village as 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional beings.  



> Are they meant to offer protection to any PC who kills Lareth the Beautiful?




Well isn't that up to DM fiat? 

What about B10, which you are more familiar with? It comprises of Wilderness, Urban and Dungeon - what purpose does that worldbuilding serve?


----------



## pemerton

Sebastrd said:


> I consider TTRPGs primarily a mechanism for shared storytelling, because that's the one aspect of a TTRPG that cannot be replicated in a book or videogame. Someone has to develop the shared world in which that storytelling takes place, and it usually falls to the GM to do so.



I'm not sure about the _has to_ - can't the setting be generated in the course of the telling of the story?



Sebastrd said:


> I will admit, for the sake of argument, that any GM who declares ownership over the _campaign_ is overstepping.



Well, that's what the poster to whom I was replying did.

 [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION] also asserted that the GM is omnipotent in respect of the campaign: "One approach assumes that the GM is omnipotent, and the player's relationship to the world is akin to our own relationship to our world."



Sebastrd said:


> I think it's perfectly reasonable for a GM to declare ownership over the campaign _setting_. Many of us put a LOT of effort into developing our campaign settings to include NPCs, geography, situations, maps, motivations, etc. Most players put proportionally less work into the game; they roll up their characters, perhaps include a backstory, and show up with some dice. GMing a simulated living, breathing world in which the players can explore and adventure involves a ton of work.



OK - I didn't think any of this stuff about _effort_ was in dispute. Writing is hard and takes time.

But I'm not sure how that relates to the actual process of play. And the metaphors "exploration" is still in need of cashing out. The way that I "explore" Middle Earth is to read JRRT's books. How does a player explore a GM's world? Not by reading the notes - presumably by delcaring actions for his/her PC which prompt the GM to read or paraphrase elements of his/her notes.



Sebastrd said:


> The villains' primary function is to oppose the players but ultimately fail. The entire campaign world _should_ be a challenge for the players to overcome - assuming they play intelligently, work together, and roll well when it counts. Failure should be an option for them, as well, or their victories will feel hollow.



If the villain doesn't fail, has something gone wrong?

And in what sense is the campaign world a "challenge" for the players to overcome? I'm not asking this rhetorically, or to deny it.

To elaborate - I understand how the Caves of Chaos are a challenge for the players to overcome. And in a slightly oblique sense, I can see how this is true for the trader in the Keep (after all, sensible equipment purchasing decisions is an important part of classic D&D). But I'm not clear how (say) the cleric in a contemporary game who sells the PCs potions on the cheap, or heals their wounds, is a challenge to overcome.

Or the NPC patron who sends them on a mission.

There are lots of parts of a "living, breathing world" that do not on the surface look like challenges to overcome. (In [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s language from upthread, some of them might be "levers" for the players to use, via their PCs. Some might just be flavour.)



Sebastrd said:


> I'll also admit that most GMs seem way too possessive about their settings and NPCs. It's immensely important to understand that the setting exists primarily as a vehicle for the players to reach their goals - to be heroes.



OK, this is the crux of it: how do players form goals and then achieve them. I posited an example not far upthread, about a player trying to have his/her PC influence a religious organisation. I know how that would work in some approaches to play - I'm interested in how it works in an approach to play in which the GM is omnipotent in the way that Mercuruis and others have described.



Mercurius said:


> In the campaign style that I'm discussing--I can only speak for myself, but think it is basically representative of "traditional D&D" (not classic)--a PC has just as much agency as you and I have in this world



And I'm saying that this is unhelpful metaphor. In the world I can pick up a rock and throw it - the only considerations are (i) the existence of a rock, and (ii) the relveant mechanical forces.

In a RPG, for my PC to pick up and throw a rock (iii) requires it to be established, in the shared fiction, that a rock exists  in the vicinity of my PC, and (iv) requires my action declaration, that my PC picks up and throws a rock, to be successful.

Those are completely different processes. Just to give two reasons as to why, (i) is frequently independent of human will, where as (iii) neer is; and (ii) does not require establishing any human consensus, but (iv) does.

Part of my agency, in real life, is that I can throw rocks. But my agency in a RPG is not connected to my ability to throw rocks in any form - as (iii) and (iv) make clear, it's about my capacity to contribute to the establishment of a consensus in relation to some shared fiction.

If the GM is, _in fact_, omnipotent - ie never obliged to have regard to others' desires about the content of the shared fiction - then the player has no agency. I suspect no one actually plays RPGs in which the GM's power is so total, but one doesn't expain the limits on the GM's power, or the GM's obligation to have regard to contributions from other participants, by comparing throwing a rock in the real world to collectively generating a fiction in which a rock gets thrown.



Mercurius said:


> you and I have _less_ agency than a PC in traditional D&D-style game play



I'm not talking about the imaginary agency of an imaginary person - the PC. I'm talking about the actual agency of an actual person - the player - who is engaged in a social, collaborative endeavour, namely, the generation of a shared fiction by dint of playing a RPG with others.



Mercurius said:


> In the traditional style, the GM is the creator and storyteller, and the players are actors within the world.



If the GM is telling a story, and the players are acting, who is wrting their script? If the answer is that they're free to write their own script, then _in what sense_ is the GM telling a story?

If we are going to talk about how RPGing works, and how various approaches work, we need to move beyond seemingly inconsistent generalities to actually analyse the process whereby different participants are empowered, as part of the collective enterprise, to make things "true" in the shared fiction.



Mercurius said:


> The point is to simulate the experience of real life, but in a shared imaginary space. The player "inhabits" the character (or role), and acts as if they are the character within the setting. Thus _role-playing._
> 
> Your approach seems more that of characters as game pawns utilized by the players



Well then you have misperceived.

Here is an excellent summary of the "indie"-style of RPGing, under the heading "The Standard Narrativistic Model":

1. One of the players is a gamemaster whose job it is to keep track of the backstory, frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments (defined in narrativistic theory as moments of in-character action that carry weight as commentary on the game’s premise) by introducing complications.

2. The rest of the players each have their own characters to play. They play their characters according to the advocacy role: the important part is that they naturally allow the character’s interests to come through based on what they imagine of the character’s nature and background. Then they let the other players know in certain terms what the character thinks and wants.

3. The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end.

4. The player’s task in these games is simple advocacy, which is not difficult once you have a firm character. (Chargen is a key consideration in these games, compare them to see how different approaches work.) The GM might have more difficulty, as he needs to be able to reference the backstory, determine complications to introduce into the game, and figure out consequences. Much of the rules systems in these games address these challenges, and in addition the GM might have methodical tools outside the rules, such as pre-prepared relationship maps (helps with backstory), bangs (helps with provoking thematic choice) and pure experience (helps with determining consequences).​
Character-as-pawn is not part of the model. (It is the default for classic dungeoneering, however.)

As for immersion - it hardly gets more immersive than returing to your ruined tower after lo!, these past 14 years, then looking for the mace you left behind only to discover that your brother was evil all along!

If you can only immerse when you the player (ie at the metagame level, not from your PC's perspective) know that whether or not you (as your PC) will find the mace depends in part on what the GM wrote in his/her notes, and that whatever unhappy thing you (as your PC) will learn about your brother depdns upon what the GM wrote in his/her notes, well that's a psychological fact about you.

Personally, I find it easiest to immerse when I'm engaging the situation as my character would - so when I'm playing my Knight of the Iron Tower, riding through the lands that my order once controlled, I look for signs of any members of my order still being about. The GM sets a difficulty for my Circles check, and I roll it - and then the GM tells me what occurs as a result (either I do find a member of my order, if the check succeeds; or something goes wrong, if the check fails). What is relevant to my immersion is the relationship between the imagined situation and my character, as mediated through the gameplay. So when I put together my dice pool and roll, I feel the same hope that my characer does - is there a fellow knight somewhere here in the wilderness, to give me succor? Or have the gods forsaken it completely? When the dice fall, I get my answer, just as my character knows whether his hopes are realised or dashed. I'm not all up in the metagame headspace of worrying about how this fiction has come to be authored!


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> If I'm taking off the virtual headgear every other second to decide on the story content (player injected) then I'm continuously breaking immersion for myself. As a player I want to play ONLY!



I don't follow.

You declare, while your PC is in the study, "I look for the map!" The dice are rolled. On a success, you find the map. How does this affect immersion?


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> You declare, while your PC is in the study, "I look for the map!" The dice are rolled. On a success, you find the map. How does this affect immersion?




How do I know I'm looking for a map?

EDIT: We are talking about player generated content (shared worldbuilding with the player) - you cannot seemingly skip that stage in the debate when it doesn't suit you.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> Of course you don't know.
> Because having to admit that the worldbuilding of village is part of the overall puzzle, you would have to concede that urban adventures (as I have been saying) can be puzzles in the classical sense despite the wide range of options they offer a PC.
> And you certainly cannot deny its worldbuilding.



I haven't been approaching this thread as a competition. I'm not avoiding _admitting_ things. I have a conjecture - that there is a threshold of fictional scope/verisimilitude beyond which a "living, breathing world" is so much a product of GM judgement and presentation, and so cognitively inaccesible in its totality to the players, that it can no longer be the meaningful object of puzzle-solving.

What's the nature of the puzzle you see in T1? I've told you what I think the puzzle is in B2. What is the puzzle in T1?



Sadras said:


> Well I suppose it depends on the DM if he/she roleplays the NPCs in the village as 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional beings.



Doesn't that tend to reinforce my point, though? That the content of the puzzle isn't leanrable by the players in the right way - after all, we don't think that beating a dungeon depends upon the GM roleplaying the walls, pits or otyughs as 3-dimensional beings.



Sadras said:


> What about B10, which you are more familiar with? It comprises of Wilderness, Urban and Dungeon - what purpose does that worldbuilding serve?



As written, it's mostly a puzzle (to beat the goblins and find the Hutakaans). I've not run it as such, but I suspect that if it is run as such it would fall over fairly easily, because some of the clues depend heavily on the PCs interacting in particular ways with particular people/places in ways that depend heavily upon sticking to a particular course of action.

It does try to confine the action in various ways - but what happens if the players decide to try and raid Kelven or Threshold instead of sticking to the intended plot line? Or even just decide to become mercenaries in those towns, leaving the Hutakaans for someone else to investiage?

In the dungeoneering context, those issues don't really arise.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> We are talking about player generated content (shared worldbuilding with the player) - you cannot seemingly skip that stage in the debate when it doesn't suit you.



Well I know what I'm talking about, seeing as I wrote the OP.

I'm asking what GM pre-authored worldbuilding is for. You and  [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION] say that it one thing it does is support immersion, by sparing the player from having to generate content.

I'm making the point that there are many, many RPGs in which the player doesn't have to generate content in the way you and Mercurius don't like, and yet which don't depend upon the GM pre-authoring content. The reason that I know this is because I play such RPGs. (The only RPG I'm personally familiar with that has the feature you and Mercurius object to is OGL Conan, and I've never played it.)



Sadras said:


> How do I know I'm looking for a map?



You declare as your action, for your PC, "I search the study for the map", or something similar.

The GM sets an approriate difficulty, the dice are rolled, they tell us whether or not hopes are realised or dashed. In my experience it's quite immersive, and it doesn't require the player to generate any content beyond his/her PC's desires, and the actions that those desires move him/her to undertake.

EDIT: the basic concept is no different from a wandering monster roll, or a reaction roll.

The PCs walk through dungeon corridors. How do we work out whether or not they meet anything in those corridors? Wandering monster roll. That doesn't depend on pre-authorship. (Except of a wandering monster table.)

The PCs meet a NPC or monster. Is it angry or friendly? Does it attack them or offer them some food? Roll a reaction check! That doesn't depend on pre-authorship. (Except of a reaction table.)

The PCs look for a map in the study? Is there one there? Roll a perceptions/search/etc check! That doesn't depend on pre-authorship either. (Except of a difficulty-of-various-perceptoin-checks table.)


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> As I posted not very far upthread, between the PHB and the DMG you can already see a tension between pressures of gameplay (which require an artificial dungeon environment) and presssures of verisimilitude (which push towards a "living, breathing worlld"). But modules published c 1978 were not "living, breathing worlds" in the modern sense. They didn't have NPCs whose friendships, connections, fields of action etc were remotely realistic. They have NPCs who living in holes in the ground, with no visible economic means of support, and whose response to dungeon raiders depends primarily on a reaction roll. (Consider the hobgoblins in the example of play in Moldvay Basic.)
> 
> Without this artificiality, that style of play can't work, as the players can't scout, collect information and then plan and execute raids.



Balderdash.  They can do all of these things - they just have to realize that the information they're working from was only valid at the time it was obtained and things may well have changed since.

Just like the real world, for all that.



> But as the "story" part of the game looms larger among the player-base, and the PC increasingly is seen not just as a playing piece whereby the player gets to insert him-/herself into the fiction, but an imagined person comparable to a fictional protagonist, those issues of verisimilitude etc loom larger.



Here we agree, although issues of verismiwhatever are better solved by richer, deeper, and more detailed worldbuilding rather than less, or none.



> Yes, these are exactly the sorts of things I'm talking about - Although I'm not sure what you've got in mind for Against the Giants (I'm fairly familiar with it, and have just had a quick flick through, and couldn't find anything like what you describe - but I have seen it in other modules.)
> 
> But Against the Giants does have a perfect example of your point about "sleeping quarters", though with a different fiction: Room 5 of the Fire Giant Hall is Queen Frupy's Chamber, and it has the following text:
> 
> Any intruders entering the place will be commanded by Queen Frupy to kneel in her August Presence and state their business, so that she may fairly dispose of their humble requests. Any so foolish as to do so will be sorry, as Frupy will call forth her pets [a pair of giant weasels that are described as being out of sight when the PCs enter the room] and herself strike at the most powerful appearing of the intruders, She will strike at +4 due to her position, do +8 hp of damage . . . and a score of natural 20 on the die indicates she has decapitated the victim of her attack. She will then bellow for her serving maids [8 more giants] to come to her aid.​
> From the point of view of a "living, breathing world" this makes absolutely no sense. Given the layout of the place, anyone who arrives in Room 5 has already fought their way through the Grand Hall and probably dispatched the serving maids too. It's only when we treat each room of the dungeon as its own little vignette, with its own internal logic, that Room 5 can be seen as a puzzle/challenge posed by the GM to the players.



Canned modules - particularly some of the very early ones - had some rather consistent issues that a DM had to be on her toes to catch and fix.  One was the sort of thing you mention above where monsters a) never move and b) are still assumed to be alive even though the PCs may have already killed them elsewhere (and c: never do anything in reaction to what the PCs have done).  Another was the not-often-correct assumptions that the PCs would a) approach a given room from a particular direction where other options existed, and b) go through the adventure in a particular order.



> On your point about a "middle path", I think you're correct that that is what is intended by Gygax, but my own view is that that middle path is incredibly hard to tread - if all the defenders in a dungeon really act rationally, as (say) the inhabitants of a mediaeval castle might, then the PCs would have to be laying siege, not picking them off room-by-room - and I think the model of gameplay has largely collapsed under the weight of verisimilitude concerns.



Not at all, mon ami.  Instead, what's required sometimes is more patience on the part of the players - and sometimes the DM - to spend the time to pick the occupants off piecemeal* rather than wade in and take 'em all on at once.

* - an example: information gathering and divination have told the PCs there's upwards of 100 Ogres in those caves.  No way in hell the party can take on even 10 or 15 at a time, never mind 100, but they've for some reason committed to doing this and so they find a good vantage point and spend a week watching the entrance.  They see that once or twice a day hunting parties of about 6 well-equipped Ogres come out, usually returning a couple of hours later...and so the PCs start picking off these hunting parties when each gets well clear of the caves, as they (correctly, as it turns out) think dealing with 6 Ogres is within their pay grade.  After the first four or five hunting parties this will start getting tedious for players and DM alike - but from the PCs' perspective it's exactly what they'd most logically do; and this is where the patience comes in.  They can't storm the caves until the number of Ogres inside has been reduced to a way more manageable level, so they act more like a cat in front of a mousehole.

And there'd be developments, of course.  The Ogres are going to notice their hunters aren't coming back (and nor is the food they bring in!) and will send out search parties.  If a search party finds the corpses of a hunting group the alert will go up.  And so on...

Lanefan


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> I haven't been approaching this thread as a competition. I'm not avoiding _admitting_ things. I have a conjecture - that there is a threshold of fictional scope/verisimilitude beyond which a "living, breathing world" is so much a product of GM judgement and presentation, and so cognitively inaccesible in its totality to the players, that it can no longer be the meaningful object of puzzle-solving.




The problem here is, that you seem to have a very narrow definition of puzzle-solving. Columbo and Magnum PI did not puzzle-solve?




> What's the nature of the puzzle you see in T1? I've told you what I think the puzzle is in B2. What is the puzzle in T1?




T1 may offer rumours about the Moathouse and its occupants, about the possible relationship of the 2 merchants in the village to the evil forces beyond, lore about the various ideologies and cults, possible rewards for various tasks/quests...etc




> Doesn't that tend to reinforce my point, though? That the content of the puzzle isn't leanrable by the players in the right way




The _right way_? 




> ...after all, we don't think that beating a dungeon depends upon the GM roleplaying the walls, pits or otyughs as 3-dimensional beings.




Well the DM decides when the goblins will or will not attack, when they will flee, how they will react to torture, what plan the denizens of the dungeon will come up to defeat the ever pressing adventurers, how much information the evil bandit leader will impart....Surely?!! 



> As written, it's mostly a puzzle (to beat the goblins and find the Hutakaans). I've not run it as such, but I suspect that if it is run as such it would fall over fairly easily, because some of the clues depend heavily on the PCs interacting in particular ways with particular people/places in ways that depend heavily upon sticking to a particular course of action.




But that is all I'm saying, the classical dungeon and the later adventures specifically MiBG and LoftCS are puzzles and can be run as such. Certainly many Ravenloft adventures (specifically 2e) that I have seen are puzzles (definitely mysteries) and yes the range of possible actions in those is wider than your typical dungeon but how is worldbuilding less important in those?

How can you create a mystery adventure without lore (worldbuilding)?



> It does try to confine the action in various ways - but what happens if the players decide to try and raid Kelven or Threshold instead of sticking to the intended plot line? Or even just decide to become mercenaries in those towns, leaving the Hutakaans for someone else to investiage?




Okay, this might relate more to the other thread we are discussing (which I haven't yet got back to), but I have to ask. Given that the characters CAN attempt to deviate from the intended plot line, is the gaming style a railroad?


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I'm not sure about the _has to_ - can't the setting be generated in the course of the telling of the story?



Not entirely; as without a setting of some sort going in there's no backdrop to set the scene, as it were.  That's work the DM has to do ahead of time.

Look at B10, for example.  The main map in that thing, backed by what's written in the module, is almost a whole setting unto itself - towns, roads, people, locations, adventure sites, villains, competing factions, side quests, etc.  That work has all been done for you; all you have to do is somehow narrate it to your players.



> [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION] also asserted that the GM is omnipotent in respect of the campaign: "One approach assumes that the GM is omnipotent, and the player's relationship to the world is akin to our own relationship to our world."



I'll back this approach.



> But I'm not sure how that relates to the actual process of play. And the metaphors "exploration" is still in need of cashing out. The way that I "explore" Middle Earth is to read JRRT's books. How does a player explore a GM's world? Not by reading the notes - presumably by delcaring actions for his/her PC which prompt the GM to read or paraphrase elements of his/her notes.



Yes, as the player is in theory exploring the gameworld through the eyes of her PC.



> There are lots of parts of a "living, breathing world" that do not on the surface look like challenges to overcome. (In [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s language from upthread, some of them might be "levers" for the players to use, via their PCs. Some might just be flavour.)



Of course.  And flavour can be subdivided further: flavour that has relevance to the PCs now or later (e.g. each day's weather, relevant whenever the PCs are a) outdoors or able to see outdoors, and b) might somehow be affected by it) and flavour that has no relevance to anything other than to help set the scene (e.g. the DM describing a harbour town the PCs are seeing for the first time might mention there's several dozen ships either docked or anchored-off to augment the atmosphere of this being a busy bustling place, even though the PCs are there for a reason completely unrelated to ships at all).



> OK, this is the crux of it: how do players form goals and then achieve them. I posited an example not far upthread, about a player trying to have his/her PC influence a religious organisation. I know how that would work in some approaches to play - I'm interested in how it works in an approach to play in which the GM is omnipotent in the way that Mercuruis and others have described.



First I'll note that even though it's the player doing the thinking, if she's looking through the eyes of her PC it's the game-world PC setting the game-world goal, not the player.

And, here I can give an in-progress example from one of my own characters in a still-active game.

She is from a Roman-Empire-based culture, and is a fully-accredited citizen of said realm (called Hestia).  Over the course of her rather long and world-spanning adventuring career she's come to realize a lot of distasteful things: that much of the world is in dire need of civilizing, Hestian style; that there's far too many bloody barbarians and monsters out there; and that her own Empire's government (a Senate-run republic at the moment, no Emperor for the last century or so) might not be quite up to the task.  She's done time in the Legions as a staff mage, and has (perhaps outdated) contacts in various parts of the military.

So some years ago (real time) she decided that her goal after her adventuring career was done would be to get herself a seat on the Senate.  But since then she's changed a bit, and come to realize the Senate is but step one: we need to bring the true Empire back, with her or someone like her as Empress.

Realistic?  In character, yes.

Achievable?  Somewhere between no and extremely unlikely, though she has thought of a series of actions that might get her that Senate seat...she just needs to get the rest of the PCs (both active and inactive - a total of about 30 of them) to go along with her plan.  And good luck with that - she's not that well liked and for good in-character reason: she's the only true Lawful in a quite Chaotic group.  (just my luck - the one time I play a really Lawful character is the time most of the rest of 'em decide to play Chaotics!)

But she's set a goal, and it has nothing to do with anything that's come up in play so far...well, other than a while back her ambition was set back a few steps when a party she was on the fringes of unintentionally destroyed part of Hestia City (cf. Rome) by flying an indestructible buried airship straight up through whatever was above... >facepalm< ...

And note that what she's doing is all based on the gameworld the DM has given us.  She's not inventing Hestia, or the Senate, or the Legions - she-as-character (and thus I-as-player) is just taking what's there and working with it.



> And I'm saying that this is unhelpful metaphor. In the world I can pick up a rock and throw it - the only considerations are (i) the existence of a rock, and (ii) the relveant mechanical forces.
> 
> In a RPG, for my PC to pick up and throw a rock (iii) requires it to be established, in the shared fiction, that a rock exists  in the vicinity of my PC, and (iv) requires my action declaration, that my PC picks up and throws a rock, to be successful.



i and iii are exactly the same: the person who wants to throw a rock has to first find one.  

iv in the game world has a direct reflection in the real world: an un-numbered step wherein you-as-you make your own internal action declaration by deciding to throw a rock.  

ii in the real world has to be reflected by another un-numbered element: the game mechanics of whatever dice need to be rolled (if any) to see where/how far the rock goes and what if anything of relevance it might hit.



> Part of my agency, in real life, is that I can throw rocks. But my agency in a RPG is not connected to my ability to throw rocks in any form - as (iii) and (iv) make clear, it's about my capacity to contribute to the establishment of a consensus in relation to some shared fiction.



Your agency as meta-player, perhaps.  But your agency as PC is directly connected to the PC's ability to throw rocks.



> If the GM is, _in fact_, omnipotent - ie never obliged to have regard to others' desires about the content of the shared fiction - then the player has no agency.



I disagree: unless the DM is a complete asshat (and for the purposes of these discussions let's ignore those, shall we) the player's agency comes not from meta-concerns but from what her PC does and the choices that PC makes, often in concert with the rest of the party.  If the party decides to leave town going south to the seaport instead of east to the mountains or west to where the Orcs are raiding then you've collectively exercised agency over the story to come; and if the DM hasn't designed the seaport yet (or even given it a second thought other than mentioning it in passing) your agency has forced her to do this also.

In other words, it's not so much player agency as PC agency.

But if you want meta-player agency over the actual design of the world and what's in it: no.  That's not a player's place unless the DM specifically allows it (and for minor stuff, IME most do).



> I'm not talking about the imaginary agency of an imaginary person - the PC.



But I am, because it's through that agency that the player gets her own agency. 


> I'm talking about the actual agency of an actual person - the player - who is engaged in a social, collaborative endeavour, namely, the generation of a shared fiction by dint of playing a RPG with others.



In other words, you're talking meta where I'm talking in-character.  OK.

Meta: it's the DM's world to design as she likes. End of story, drop the mike.
In-character: it's the PC's right to - within the rules of the system in use - do anything he or she wants both to and within the game world including make a complete mess of it. (see above example re destroying part of Hestia City)



> If the GM is telling a story, and the players are acting, who is wrting their script? If the answer is that they're free to write their own script, then _in what sense_ is the GM telling a story?



If nothing else, the DM is providing the stage and scenery; the specifics of which will by default go a long way towards determining the type of story that gets told, if not necessarily any specifics of such.



> As for immersion - it hardly gets more immersive than returing to your ruined tower after lo!, these past 14 years, then looking for the mace you left behind only to discover that your brother was evil all along!



Except I'm not discovering that.  I as player have known it all along, as I wrote it into my goals and backstory way back at char-gen!  Not much of a reveal...



> If you can only immerse when you the player (ie at the metagame level, not from your PC's perspective) know that whether or not you (as your PC) will find the mace depends in part on what the GM wrote in his/her notes, and that whatever unhappy thing you (as your PC) will learn about your brother depdns upon what the GM wrote in his/her notes, well that's a psychological fact about you.



What, that I don't want to be spoilered?  Come on, man!



> When the dice fall, I get my answer, just as my character knows whether his hopes are realised or dashed. I'm not all up in the metagame headspace of worrying about how this fiction has come to be authored!



Given how many times you've posted how you so dislike fiction coming from pre-determined notes and-or being pre-authored by the DM I really have to challenge that last sentence.

I think you worry about this more than anyone else I've ever encountered.

Lanefan


----------



## Jester David

pemerton said:


> I have basically no familiarity with modern computer games other than having watched some friends play WOW aroudn a decade ago, and having watched some kids play minecraft. So I don't know how powerful modern games are in terms of allowing fictional positioning to be a significant factor in action declaration and resolution. I'm going to guess, however, that humans are still better at that particular aspect of adjudication (even if the computer is obviously better at managing many other aspects of refereeing, like all the arithemtic ones).
> 
> Anyway, my point is that a "living, breathing, world" isn't the only attraction of a RPG over a video game, and I think - among the proponents of the wargming style - it was that ability to play on fictional positioning that was the predominant significance of the shared fiction, rather than its character as a "living, breathing world".



Playing modern RPG games like _Fallout _or _Skyrim_ is interesting in that regard because you do have more tools at your disposal: stealth, magic, or weaponry. Often you can eliminate threats from a distance with a ranged weapon. But, most important for this conversation, the NPCs have schedules: they get up, go to their work, and then go to bed occasionally stopping at other places for a time. If you want to rob the town store, it's easiest to go a night, pick the lock (because it locks after dark) and steal everything not nailed down. 

The world is dramatically more living and organic than anything in an early static D&D module. 



pemerton said:


> As our discussion of dates and styles shows, I think it's hard to put a precise timeframe around changes in typical approaches to RPGing. No doubt Runequest is a significant publication event, but it comes out of a prior culture of play (the West Coast D&Ders, I think, whom Lewis Pulsiher was rather critical off in his essays/articles around that time).



I imagine the difference between West and East Coast D&D is the spacial difference between the source game. The more the game itself played "Telephone" when passing from gamer-to-gamer across the country, the less it resembled a wargame and the more people made it their own. More people playing the game how they wanted and less playing it how Gygax expected them to play. 
But I imagine that distinction was short lived, and after a couple years of introducing the game, the East Coast gamers likely adopted some West Coast design ideas. 

At the time, the distinction likely seemed large and the division pronounced, as RPG gaming was still so new, and everyone was bringing in their own ideas and desires. That that was such a short period of history in the game, measured in years or potentially even just months, compared to the overall 40+ years the game has now been in existence. 

And while RuneQuest was a significant event, it was by no means alone. There was no shortage of games released at the time which were basically D&D with a slightly different rules tweak. Different rules for attacking, using a percentile die, a different way of tracking health. Which were, generally speaking, shifting rules away from legacy wargaming rules that existed in D&D.



pemerton said:


> It's a puzle in this sense: the players have to decide whether this is really a social encounter, which they can use to their benefit; or whether it's a combat encounter, in which case kneeling before the queen is almost certainly going to impose some sort of disadvantage (as it turns out it turns her into a vorpal backstabber, but I'm prepared to treat that as a quirk of classic D&D's relative shortage of systematic resolution mechanics).
> 
> The puzzle can be solved by such devices as a Wand of Enemy Detection, or a Medallion of ESP, or a Detect Evil or ESP spelll, etc. Or, less mechanically and more fictional positioning based, the PCs might capture and interrogate one of her maid servants - who could tell them about the Queen's pets, and perhaps even her penchant for asking intruders to kneel so she can decapitate them.
> 
> This sort of play, which engages the fiction even though the fiction is artificial/inane, is more viable if the scope of the fiction is relatively confined.



Not really. That sort of "puzzle" can happen in a localized and confined room of a dungeon or in a giant player sandbox as they encounter an ambassador to a neighbouring kingdom or meet the Queen's royal advisory or even just bump into a pie merchant with curiously large and cheap pies. 



pemerton said:


> I think comparisons to reality are unhelpful. In reality, I learn the situation by looking around and scanning with my eyes; by listening carefully; by smelling the air; etc. A couple of weeks ago I went for a walk in some forested hills outside Melbourne. When I heard rustlinging in the bushes, I stopped and looked. On a few occasions I saw birds. On one occasion I could see the foliage moving, but couldn't see what it was that was moving it. On another occasion, I saw an echidna.
> 
> Playing a RPG in which my PC is scouting is nothing like this. The way I learn what is going on is by making moves - that is, fictionally positoining my PC, or declaring actions, or both - which then trigger narration from the GM. There is no sensory input independent of the desires of human beings. Generally, there is little narration independent of my desires, as I have to do stuff - make the moves - to trigger the GM's narration.
> 
> And the GM's narration will almost inevitably focus on mattes that the GM regards as interesting and/or salient. In the course of a 4-hour wnader through the woods, I spent perhaps 15 or 20 minutes paying attention to the things I had heard rustling - the largest block of that time was spent looking at the echidna, as it's the closest I've ever come to one oustide a zoo. But if the PCs go on a four hour scouting mission, almost no GM is going to spend 20 minutes (or more, if they want to cover all the sensory inputs that I was taking in simultaneously) describing all that stuff, and letting the players decide what to make of it.



The point of invoking the real world is that people do what you say is impossible all the time in the real world. It just becomes less of a certainty and more of a gamble. More skill is required to anticipate the likely variables and overcome them. 

If you really think your players are unable to handle the idea of a world that changes slightly with their enemies going to sleep and not remaining in the exact same place 24/7 until encountered by the PCs... you need to find smarter players. Or you need to stop going so easy on them. 



pemerton said:


> Well, classic dungeon crawling didn't really involve _moving through the adventure's plot_. As we see in Gygax's PHB, the players set an objective for the session (eg finding a staricase to the next level down), and then try to achieve that objective without getting lost in the dungeon, beaten up by monsters, or foolishly lured into trouble by the GM's clever tricks, wandering monsters, etc.
> 
> The setting is the framework in which the making and carrying out of these plans happens. Describing it as a maze or puzzle isn't perfect, but is an attempt to convey the idea.



The catch being, not everyone played dungeon crawls just as dungeon crawls in a complete vacuum where nothing exists outside the dungeon, save as one-shots with disposable characters. And not everyone played the classic dungeon crawls in a way that didn't advance the plot. To many, the appeal of the classic modules was being able to add a plot. 
And even then, very early modules, like _Against the Giants_ began to include plot, with a narrative that ran through and led to the next story. 

What you're describing as "classic dungeon crawling" really matches closest to tournament play. Which is pretty niche. 



pemerton said:


> (Luke Crane describes it thus: "Since the exploration side of the game is cross between Telephone and Pictionary, I must sit impassive as the players make bad decisions. I want them to win. I want them to solve the puzzles, but if I interfere, I render the whole exercise pointless.")
> 
> I think creating the provinces of a kingdom (oustide the contxt of a Diplomacy-type game, where the players play the kingdoms or their rulers) is quite different. Whatever exactly it is for, it's not part of a game that is a cross between Telephone and Pictionary.



Not really.... The game is still driven entirely by the DM telling the players what is going on, which the players interpret through a personal lens. And there are still what you describe as puzzles: encounters where you are uncertain if someone is hostile or friendly. 

Okay, here's the thing about plot... dungeons are a plot. Each room in a dungeon is a scene. And encounter or moment where something happens. The dungeon map is basically a flowchart of the plot that's missing arrows dictating the direction. You can chart the plot by drawing a line through the dungeon, telling the story of that dungeon.
If you take the plot of an entirely narrative adventure (say, a murder mystery) and make a flowchart, denoting every scene or encounter with a box, you can chart the variable paths to concluding the adventure. (Which is useful for ensuring there's no plot chockpoint where there's only a single route to the solution.) That plot flowchart... is basically the same as a dungeon map. The difference is instead of moving from room to room you're moving from scene to scene, with each scene having its own puzzle and challenge, be it roleplaying or character skill or player skill. 

On a functional/ structural design level, there's zero difference between a site-based adventure and a story-based adventure. The difference is largely a flavour one. And a mental distinction because they can _feel_ different. 
Given, structurally, there is no difference between the two types of adventure, that also means there's no difference is other aspects of the game tangential to the flowchart. Such as worldbuilding, which is there to provide context for the adventure and continuity for events that happened before, during, and after the adventure.


----------



## Nagol

Jester David said:


> <snip>
> 
> On a functional/ structural design level, there's zero difference between a site-based adventure and a story-based adventure. The difference is largely a flavour one. And a mental distinction because they can _feel_ different.
> Given, structurally, there is no difference between the two types of adventure, that also means there's no difference is other aspects of the game tangential to the flowchart. Such as worldbuilding, which is there to provide context for the adventure and continuity for events that happened before, during, and after the adventure.




While I agree with almost everything else, I don't agree with the functional equivalence.  The difference is similar between to the difference between a spatial dimension and the time dimension: the narrative chart will typically have arrows that require one-way transit.   You can confront the butler after finding the brandy, but you won't get a scene to discover the brandy after confronting the butler.

The spatial map will more often have links without dependencies (in fact, multiple paths are desirable - the linear approach is less appreciated).  You can explore rooms in A-B-C-D order or you can explore in B-D-C-A order.  The narrative graph will typically funnel to one or more end states.  The spatial graph typically won't.


----------



## Sebastrd

pemerton said:


> I'm not sure about the _has to_ - can't the setting be generated in the course of the telling of the story?




Sure it can. However, in my experience, a setting generated prior to play is much richer than one generated on the fly - whether it's the GM or the players doing the generating.



pemerton said:


> How does a player explore a GM's world? Not by reading the notes - presumably by delcaring actions for his/her PC which prompt the GM to read or paraphrase elements of his/her notes.




Sure. If the player/PC wants to know what's down that road, they declare their action of walking down that road. The GM then describes what's at the end of the road - whether that's pregenerated or decided in the moment. If the player decides what's down that road, are they really discovering anything? I'd argue they're creating, not exploring. And, in that case, what is the role of the GM? Are they simply there to adjudicate dice roles?



pemerton said:


> If the villain doesn't fail, has something gone wrong?




In the sense that villain failure is shorthand for the PCs achieving their goals, yes. Either the players messed up or the dice did not fall in their favor. It's up to the PCs, assuming they're still alive, to come up with a new plan and try again - keeping in mind that their failure likely altered the world in some way.



pemerton said:


> And in what sense is the campaign world a "challenge" for the players to overcome? I'm not asking this rhetorically, or to deny it.
> 
> To elaborate - I understand how the Caves of Chaos are a challenge for the players to overcome. And in a slightly oblique sense, I can see how this is true for the trader in the Keep (after all, sensible equipment purchasing decisions is an important part of classic D&D). But I'm not clear how (say) the cleric in a contemporary game who sells the PCs potions on the cheap, or heals their wounds, is a challenge to overcome.
> 
> Or the NPC patron who sends them on a mission.
> 
> There are lots of parts of a "living, breathing world" that do not on the surface look like challenges to overcome. (In [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s language from upthread, some of them might be "levers" for the players to use, via their PCs. Some might just be flavour.)
> 
> OK, this is the crux of it: how do players form goals and then achieve them. I posited an example not far upthread, about a player trying to have his/her PC influence a religious organisation. I know how that would work in some approaches to play - I'm interested in how it works in an approach to play in which the GM is omnipotent in the way that Mercuruis and others have described.




The setting is a challenge to overcome in the sense that the setting, at start of play, possesses a status quo as determined by the GM. A well-written setting will progress beyond that status quo in a particular direction without input from the PCs. The challenge lies in the player's desire to alter that status quo based on the goals and aspirations of their PCs. The example you described is a long-term and potentially world-altering goal. The very first step would be to convince the rest of the players and the GM to a pursue a campaign with that theme. Let's assume that all of the players and I, as the GM, agree to play that campaign.

I would work with the player to develop those religious organizations and the world in which they exist based on the player's assumptions. In some cases, I'd deliberately subvert the player's assumptions to keep things interesting and challenging. We'd play out the scenario, and I would use that predetermined setting information to inform my adjudication of the players' actions and the consequences thereof.



pemerton said:


> If the GM is telling a story, and the players are acting, who is wrting their script? If the answer is that they're free to write their own script, then _in what sense_ is the GM telling a story?




It is a wrong question, Mr. Pemerton. You seem to have this black or white view of the situation: either the GM is telling the story or the players are. Neither are correct. The GM and the players are collaborating to tell the story as a team. The players declare actions and the GM determines how the world reacts.

How is the GM to determine how the world reacts without first determining the nature of the world? Assuming we agree that determination must take place, why do you care whether it is done preemptively or in play?


----------



## Aenghus

Jester David said:


> Okay, here's the thing about plot... dungeons are a plot. Each room in a dungeon is a scene. And encounter or moment where something happens. The dungeon map is basically a flowchart of the plot that's missing arrows dictating the direction. You can chart the plot by drawing a line through the dungeon, telling the story of that dungeon.
> If you take the plot of an entirely narrative adventure (say, a murder mystery) and make a flowchart, denoting every scene or encounter with a box, you can chart the variable paths to concluding the adventure. (Which is useful for ensuring there's no plot chockpoint where there's only a single route to the solution.) That plot flowchart... is basically the same as a dungeon map. The difference is instead of moving from room to room you're moving from scene to scene, with each scene having its own puzzle and challenge, be it roleplaying or character skill or player skill.
> 
> On a functional/ structural design level, there's zero difference between a site-based adventure and a story-based adventure. The difference is largely a flavour one. And a mental distinction because they can _feel_ different.
> Given, structurally, there is no difference between the two types of adventure, that also means there's no difference is other aspects of the game tangential to the flowchart. Such as worldbuilding, which is there to provide context for the adventure and continuity for events that happened before, during, and after the adventure.




What you say can be true from a referee point of view, but I don't think it's necessarily true from a player perspective.

A dungeon plot has physical  walls and junctions to enforce decision points, and the only way for the players to reject the plot is to leave the dungeon (assuming that's possible). 

A story-based adventure can be designed on paper by the referee, but it often lacks physical walls to keep the players on track, meaning that it's much easier for the players to wander away from the plot, deliberately or accidentally. Pushing the players back on track, by whatever means,  can be more noticeable in an open world scenario, and can be seen as railroading. Adventures that are ostensibly open world, where the players have the agency to walk away from the plot, are more difficult to run unless the players voluntarily commit to staying within the confines of the plot. The alternatives are things like railroading, moving scenery, or trusting to luck and/or skill, or letting go of the plot and leaving the players wander.


----------



## Jester David

Nagol said:


> While I agree with almost everything else, I don't agree with the functional equivalence.  The difference is similar between to the difference between a spatial dimension and the time dimension: the narrative chart will typically have arrows that require one-way transit.   You can confront the butler after finding the brandy, but you won't get a scene to discover the brandy after confronting the butler.
> 
> The spatial map will more often have links without dependencies (in fact, multiple paths are desirable - the linear approach is less appreciated).  You can explore rooms in A-B-C-D order or you can explore in B-D-C-A order.  The narrative graph will typically funnel to one or more end states.  The spatial graph typically won't.



Now, we are talking about a stripped down foundational level. The skeletal framework of the story, when you pull away everything but the basics of scene-scene-scene. The stuff built atop adds a wealth of complexity that changes the dynamics. 

With that in mind, a spatial map can totally have dependencies. Finding a locked door and then finding a key is functionally the same as seeing the butler but not finding the brandy. And just like you can skip the brandy scene by confronting the butler early, you can skip the key scene by picking the lock or casting _knock_. 

And, yes, the big difference is that you can't go backwards in a plot like you can in a dungeon. Kinda… often in a story you can return to a location or individual and resume a scene. Which is both creating a new scene but also carrying on where a prior scene ended. It's functionally the same thing as returning to a room and represented in the flowchart not by a new box but an arrow going back to an old box. 




Aenghus said:


> What you say can be true from a referee point of view, but I don't think it's necessarily true from a player perspective.



Right. But that's an illusion. To the players, there is only a single path: the one they took. They may not explore all the choices in a mystery anymore than they may discover every secret treasure room in a dungeon. 



Aenghus said:


> A dungeon plot has physical  walls and junctions to enforce decision points, and the only way for the players to reject the plot is to leave the dungeon (assuming that's possible).
> 
> A story-based adventure can be designed on paper by the referee, but it often lacks physical walls to keep the players on track, meaning that it's much easier for the players to wander away from the plot, deliberately or accidentally. Pushing the players back on track, by whatever means,  can be more noticeable in an open world scenario, and be seen as railroading. Adventures that are ostensibly open world, where the players have the agency to walk away from the plot, are more difficult to run unless the players voluntarily commit to staying within the confines of the plot. The alternatives are things like railroading, moving scenery, or trusting to luck and/or skill, or letting go of the plot and leaving the players wander.



A plot lacks physical walls, but it has virtual ones. Scenes are enclosed in the location they take place, effectively bounded by the walls of the stage. And while you could theoretically go anywhere, often times your choices are effectively limited by the realistic options that get you to your goal. 

As for the railroading aspect, if they wander off the rails, they're still creating a scene. You effectively add a new box or two to the chart, hoping to bridge them back into the main story seamlessly. (Again, assuming the players *want* to be in the plot and aren't trying to escape…)
While the above seems unlikely in a dungeon, it's actually rather not. You can get a similar effect with teleportation, shaping stone, becoming ethereal, polymorphing into badgers and digging through the walls, and the like. Situations where the players skip over one set of rooms for another. When the cosmetic elements are stripped away, the flow chart pattern remains.


----------



## innerdude

So, I think there's several trains of thought scattered throughout all the responses that answer @_*pemerton*_'s original question, "What is worldbuilding for?"


To add immersive flavor -- to spur players' imaginations a little more deeply into the shared fiction. 
To provide story "hooks," whether done as pure "sandbox" or based on clues from characters' builds/background. 
To create a fictional space where character motivations have real stakes -- i.e., the group social contract agrees that they want something more than just being "heads-down in the dungeon" all the time. 
To give the GM the opportunity to plan certain challenges ahead of time to maximize the challenge, tension, and impact. 
To allow the GM a creative opportunity that is different from being a player within the campaign. 

There could be more, but these seem to be a condensed summary of the primary points.

I think your question, @_*pemerton*_, really boils down to----"Does pre-rendered worldbuilding actually serve any of these interests and the overall fun/enjoyment of the group, or are there more effective methods for doing the same thing?"

I've got to be honest, I have a really hard time with a pure "no myth" approach to pen-and-paper RPGs. I wholeheartedly embrace the Dungeon World ethos of "create fronts, not plots." I wholeheartedly believe in the concept of scene framing and fictional positioning, and "play to see what happens." In the past eight years of GM-ing, I've never once pre-determined an encounter outcome. I've tried very much to use "say yes or roll the dice" as a primary component of my GM-ing style. 

And I still can't completely get behind the idea that worldbuilding isn't a necessary component of a "good" RPG campaign, because I've played in games where there was none, and they absolutely SUCKED SUCKED SUCKED----they were the suckiest campaigns that ever sucked.

I've also played campaigns where the GM simply couldn't let go of his pre-built storyline, and when players "went off the rails," he basically lost interest in GM-ing. We'd get 6-8 sessions in, and suddenly he'd be saying, "Eh, I'm bored with this, let's start something new." For a GM who is unwilling to embrace scene framing / "say yes or roll the dice" principles, this is actually probably the "best case scenario," as at least he or she never forces the players to follow the plot rails willy nilly.

The worst case scenario is boring "plot tourism" campaigns. This was how I felt around 40% of the way through the last Savage Worlds Shaintar campaign in which I was a player. At that point I was no longer interested in what the GM was dispensing, but had no choice to get off the rails. Eventually I sort of just accepted it and still managed to have some fun, but its conclusion was far less satisfying than I wanted it to be or it could have been.

But having now actually managed to GM two highly successful fantasy campaigns, one in Pathfinder and one in Savage Worlds, using the general principles I've outlined, I'm totally comfortable with the idea that you can find a middle ground between doing worldbuilding while still allowing player freedom, improvisation, and not being married to any particular narrative outcome.


----------



## Mercurius

pemerton said:


> And I'm saying that this is unhelpful metaphor. In the world I can pick up a rock and throw it - the only considerations are (i) the existence of a rock, and (ii) the relveant mechanical forces.
> 
> In a RPG, for my PC to pick up and throw a rock (iii) requires it to be established, in the shared fiction, that a rock exists  in the vicinity of my PC, and (iv) requires my action declaration, that my PC picks up and throws a rock, to be successful.
> 
> Those are completely different processes. Just to give two reasons as to why, (i) is frequently independent of human will, where as (iii) neer is; and (ii) does not require establishing any human consensus, but (iv) does.
> 
> Part of my agency, in real life, is that I can throw rocks. But my agency in a RPG is not connected to my ability to throw rocks in any form - as (iii) and (iv) make clear, it's about my capacity to contribute to the establishment of a consensus in relation to some shared fiction.




Aside from that I don't see how the processes are "completely" different, the main difference between your approach and the "traditional" approach (for lack of a better term), seems to be the degree to which the player has power over whether the rock exists, where it is, etc, and also the degree to which the GM _doesn't_ have power, yes?

In the traditional approach, the player declares what action he or she wants to take, and the GM decides how resolution will occur in whatever fashion he or she deems appropriate given the situation (that is, uses judgement), and the player resolves the action through either doing it ("I pick up the rock"), rolling dice, etc. But it seems that in your approach, one or both of two things is true: 1) the player has more power over whether the rock is there, and where it is, and 2) the GM has less power over the same, and/or is constrained by the rules.



pemerton said:


> If the GM is, _in fact_, omnipotent - ie never obliged to have regard to others' desires about the content of the shared fiction - then the player has no agency.




OK, main problem here is that you seem to take issue with the very idea of the GM as "omnipotent," as if that means he or she is inherently tyrannical. It seems that you are an "RPG Libertarian" ;-). I would argue that one of a GM's main obligations is "others' desires about the content of the shared fiction." The power of the GM is held in check by the degree to which the players enjoy the game experience, so if a GM wants to continuing GMing, then they won't (or shouldn't) abuse their power.

A player only has no agency if the GM exercises their omnipotence in every moment - that is, simply tells a story. Then it ceases to be an RPG and becomes story-time, albeit in second person narration.



pemerton said:


> I suspect no one actually plays RPGs in which the GM's power is so total, but one doesn't expain the limits on the GM's power, or the GM's obligation to have regard to contributions from other participants, by comparing throwing a rock in the real world to collectively generating a fiction in which a rock gets thrown.




I think you're missing the point re: such analogies; they aren't about "explaining the limits of GM power" but explaining player agency. A player's agency in the fictional world is roughly the same as our agency in the real world, and even slightly more so, as I explained. The difference, though, is that in the fictional world, there's a GM - who is akin to a hypothetical supreme being in our world.

Or a better way to put it, I think, is that *the GM "play's" the setting as a kind of conscious, interactive entity.* In other words, the GM _is_ the setting, and the setting _is_ the GM, just as the GM is _all_ NPCs.



pemerton said:


> If the GM is telling a story, and the players are acting, who is wrting their script? If the answer is that they're free to write their own script, then _in what sense_ is the GM telling a story?




Responsively. The "script" is co-created, improvised, along certain guidelines which vary in terms of how strongly they are adhered to (this is where "railroading" comes in). 



pemerton said:


> Here is an excellent summary of the "indie"-style of RPGing, under the heading "The Standard Narrativistic Model":




All of which could be applied to a number of approaches - not just "indie." In other words, I don't see how that description applies to indie and not traditional. Again, to me it is more useful to think of this on a spectrum rather than as binary (e.g. indie vs. traditional).



pemerton said:


> Character-as-pawn is not part of the model. (It is the default for classic dungeoneering, however.)




I stand corrected. 



pemerton said:


> As for immersion - it hardly gets more immersive than returing to your ruined tower after lo!, these past 14 years, then looking for the mace you left behind only to discover that your brother was evil all along!




Sure. Where I think we are differing, or at least explaining two different styles along the spectrum, is the degree to which the player has power in deciding/determining whether the mace is there, without having previously said they placed it there within either their backstory or game play. 



pemerton said:


> If you can only immerse when you the player (ie at the metagame level, not from your PC's perspective) know that whether or not you (as your PC) will find the mace depends in part on what the GM wrote in his/her notes, and that whatever unhappy thing you (as your PC) will learn about your brother depdns upon what the GM wrote in his/her notes, well that's a psychological fact about you.




That's not really what I'm saying, and I think you know this. You continue to push the "traditional" view into a kind of absolutist GM dictatorship...I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't think anyone is arguing for that. 

I think whether my PC finds the mace depends upon any number of factors: 1) Is it there as part of backstory? 2) Did I place it there in game play? 3) Did some NPC, via the GM's choice, find it and take it? 

If none of the above applies and I ask the GM to retroactively place it there, then it is up to the GM's judgement to both i) decide whether he or she will allow that as a possibility, and ii) decide on how to determine whether it is there or not, whether through just saying "Sure, why not?" Or a dice roll, or somesuch. 

What the "traditional approach" does _not_ generally include is the player saying "The mace is there because I want it to be, because this is a collaborative game and I have co-creative agency, goshdarnit!" Again, nothing wrong with that, and it is certainly a valid way of playing, but it isn't the traditional approach, and is also what I feel like diminishes immersion.

(And yes, I realize I'm being an instant of my own complaint by making your approach more extreme than it actually is).

The crucial difference is--and I think what you take issue with as a general rule--the role of GM as final arbiter. 



pemerton said:


> Personally, I find it easiest to immerse when I'm engaging the situation as my character would - so when I'm playing my Knight of the Iron Tower, riding through the lands that my order once controlled, I look for signs of any members of my order still being about. The GM sets a difficulty for my Circles check, and I roll it - and then the GM tells me what occurs as a result (either I do find a member of my order, if the check succeeds; or something goes wrong, if the check fails). What is relevant to my immersion is the relationship between the imagined situation and my character, as mediated through the gameplay. So when I put together my dice pool and roll, I feel the same hope that my characer does - is there a fellow knight somewhere here in the wilderness, to give me succor? Or have the gods forsaken it completely? When the dice fall, I get my answer, just as my character knows whether his hopes are realised or dashed. I'm not all up in the metagame headspace of worrying about how this fiction has come to be authored!




Great, and more power to you. I'm not saying your approach is wrong or inherently less immersive, and it obviously works for you.

Remember, this thread started with you asking a question which seemed to imply that certain traditional approaches to world-building were lacking in some way, or pointless, or about GM authority, or reducing player agency, etc etc. 

These sorts of conversations can be interesting if we are able to see how different styles can work, and even may be more efficient in producing certain results, but start getting edgy when pejorative implications start arising, or at least are being perceived. It does seem like you are in several ongoing conversations which have elements of such -for-tatting, on both sides of the "aisle."

So what do you think? Where to go from here? If we go back to the original question, what are you left wondering, asking, wanting to talk about?


----------



## Lanefan

Aenghus said:


> A story-based adventure can be designed on paper by the referee, but it often lacks physical walls to keep the players on track, meaning that it's much easier for the players to wander away from the plot, deliberately or accidentally.



Which leaves the DM pretty much two options.

This is one:


> Pushing the players back on track, by whatever means




And the other is to hit the curveball the players have pitched, and play out whatever and wherever their wanderings take them to.  Sometimes (actually surprisingly often IME) a new or modified story will soon suggest itself, other times you-as-DM might have to come up with something; and most times it's a combination of both: a story idea suggests itself through what the players have done and-or where thier interests seem to lie, and then the DM fleshes it out and expands it into something that'll keep the game going for a while.



> Adventures that are ostensibly open world, where the players have the agency to walk away from the plot, are more difficult to run unless the players voluntarily commit to staying within the confines of the plot. The alternatives are things like railroading, moving scenery, or trusting to luck and/or skill, or letting go of the plot and leaving the players wander.



All of this is quite true.

The ideal, of course, is that the players voluntarily stay on plot _because they find said plot/story interesting and-or engaging enough to want to play it out_.  Which means that in a DM-driven game it's squarely on the DM to come up with a plot/story good enough to capture the interest and imagination of her players, if this is going to work.

EDIT to add: another aspect of this is that if a story doesn't seem to be capturing the interest of the players (and gawds know I've had my share of these!) it's usually pretty easy to find a way to drop that story or shunt it into the background and replace it with something else, or a side trek.

Lan-"sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't"-efan


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> They can do all of these things - they just have to realize that the information they're working from was only valid at the time it was obtained and things may well have changed since.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> And there'd be developments, of course.  The Ogres are going to notice their hunters aren't coming back (and nor is the food they bring in!) and will send out search parties.  If a search party finds the corpses of a hunting group the alert will go up.  And so on...



A lot of the action here seems to be in the "And so on . . ."

That seems to depende very heavily on GM decision-making to which the players don't have even in-principle cognitive access.



Sadras said:


> The problem here is, that you seem to have a very narrow definition of puzzle-solving. Columbo and Magnum PI did not puzzle-solve?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But that is all I'm saying, the classical dungeon and the later adventures specifically MiBG and LoftCS are puzzles and can be run as such. Certainly many Ravenloft adventures (specifically 2e) that I have seen are puzzles (definitely mysteries) and yes the range of possible actions in those is wider than your typical dungeon but how is worldbuilding less important in those?
> 
> How can you create a mystery adventure without lore (worldbuilding)?



OK, that's helps - I think we are using puzzle-solving in slightly different ways.

I'll try to elaborate on what I'm getting at - it may or may not work!

When I say the classic dungeon is a puzzle/maze for the players to solve and beat, I'm not meaning that it's like a Call of Cthulhu mystery. The players aren't trying to gather clues to lead the to a conclusion. Rather, it's a collection of good stuff (treasure) that can't be gained except by (i) winning some combats (against wandering monsters who can't be avoided, or against placed monsters), and (ii) avoiding/outwitting/etc various tricks/traps that get in the way of that (like secret doors, misleading architectural features, stuff that looks like treasure but is really cursed, etc).

So, unlike (say) a murder mystery, there's no single goal - there are lots of sources of treasure in the dungeon - and there's no single solution - there can be many ways to beat the monsters, to avoid the traps, to work out how to turn the teleport portal into a help rather than a hindrance, etc.

But the situation is relatively static over retries, so that the players can learn and improve. To the extent that the situation is not static, its path of evolution is itself knowable and can be turned into a component of a solution.

A rotating room where the number of turns corresponds to the number of times the PCs have passed through a certain door would be an example of this. But a room where the number of turns corresponds to the number of creatures that have passed through a certain door, where that number is something the GM works out secretly for him-/herself wouldn't be knowable in the right sense - from the players's point of view it would just be random.

The reason I doubt that a world/setting with a large and verisimilitudinous scope can provide a maze/puzzle in the same way is that nearly all the situations are evolving rather than static, and nearly all are evolving essentially in accordancde with GM fiat/extrapolation that is not knowable to the players - like [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s "And so on . . ." - the players can't control or manipulate that. All they can do is take rather generic steps like concealing their camp and mounting a watch. Whether there are 5 or 20 ogres after them; whether the ogres are searching in the spot where the PCs are hiding; whether the ogres have tracker dogs with them or not; whether the ogres include a shaman-type who can cast Augury; etc - all these things are important parameters of the situation which are entirely under GM control (assuming a GM-worldbuilding approach) and which the players don't know and can't effectively learn in a way that makes it exploitable/manipulable information.



Sadras said:


> T1 may offer rumours about the Moathouse and its occupants, about the possible relationship of the 2 merchants in the village to the evil forces beyond, lore about the various ideologies and cults, possible rewards for various tasks/quests...etc



Understood. What puzzles me about T1 (and I've just pulled out my copy to have a re-look at it) is the 9 or so pages devoted to spelling out its contents like a dungeon. Eg what is the point, in the play of the game, of being told (p 11 of my copy) that the Chief Priest's chamber is no. 14 on the amp of the church of St Cuthbert, and that there is a secret compartment under the mantlepiece with a 10000 gp jewelled neck ornament inside it?

Is this really a dungeon, that the players are going to explore and loot? That seems completely unrealistic for 1st level PCs, given the level of some of the NPCs. But if the Chief Priest is intended to figure as a NPC quest giver, or as an element of backstory, then by all means tell us that he wears a magnificent neck ornament with a bejewelled cudgel hanging from it, but we don't need to know about his secret compartment, do we?



Sadras said:


> Okay, this might relate more to the other thread we are discussing (which I haven't yet got back to), but I have to ask. Given that the characters CAN attempt to deviate from the intended plot line, is the gaming style a railroad?



Well, different people have different views as to what counts as a railroad.

An interesting discussion came up in this thread, which I had started to get some ideas on the current situation in my Classic Traveller game.

When [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] started suggesting some ideas about how the players might try and infiltrate and take the NPC starship, [MENTION=2518]Derren[/MENTION] replied by explaining why - given various elements of the GM-authored backstory that he was imputing (not based on anything I'd said about my game, but based on his own intuitions, I think, plus maybe some 1980s Traveller sourcebooks) - chaochou's ideas wouldn't work.

Derren kept saying that the players should look for more information. chaochou and I made the point that, in the context of a RPG, "looking for more information" means, in effect, making moves that will trigger the GM to read out/paraphrase/make up more backstory. And the point of this seemed as Derren was calling for it seemed to be, in effect, to channel the players towards Derren-as-GM's preferred resolution of the situation. (Ie finding the "right" answer for how to defeat the NPC conspiracy.)

chaochou described this as a railroad, on the basis that the GM has already conceived of a correct series of outcomes, and the players can't succeed unless they go along with that preconception. The fact that the players can declare other actions is ultimately neither here nor there, given that those actions will fail (if Derren is GM) because Derren has already come up with, or is making up as he goes along, backstory which explains why they are impossible. I agree with chaochou on this.

One exampe that was discussed in that thread: chaochou suggested the PCs fake a mayday in their starship, as the pretext for getting aboard the NPC ship in a non-suspicious way. Derren said that this would never work, due to naval/scout protocols, etc, etc. chaochou responded "Well, maybe the NPC captain was himself generously rescued as a young spacehand, and so has a disposition to respond sympathetically and very proactively to mayday signals." Derren retorted that the PCs couldn't know that, and should have to do more research (ie trigger the GM telling them more backstory) in order to learn it.

My view is that what Derren is describing is at odds with the game as written (I'm using Classic Traveller 1977, in a 1978 printing, but adapting a few elements of the weapons table and starship construction and misjump rules from the 1980 revised edition). The game as written has a reaction table - so if the players (as their PCs) fake a mayday, the way we learn what the NPC captain does is to roll on the reaction table. If the captain is surprisingly enthusiastic (given that he's a naval or scout officer on a covert mission), well then that must mean that some conjecture along chaochou's lines is correct - there is something about the captain that makes him unexpectedly sympathetic to spacefarers in trouble. Conversely, if the reaction is hostile then Derren is correct - he is following protocols about not risking his ship by allowing strangers on board.

That's my own view as to what makes a game not a railroad - that the action declarations of the players can change the significant outcomes. And as the example shows, I think it depends upon leaving significant parts of the backstory open-ended until the action is resolved, so that it can be fleshed out and given content that makes sense of the results of resolution.

And to head off an anticipated retort from Lanefan - obviously backstory that has been established in play is established. So if the NPC captain is someone whom the PCs have already dealt with and made an enemy of, then the mayday plan is unlikely to work (assuming that the captain knows it is the PCs sending the distress call). I'm talking about the introduction of a new element (in this case, the NPC captain), into the fiction.

Also, upthread I asked about how the players (via their PCs) could go about instigating conflict in a religious sect - not meaning "How could the PCs do this in the fiction?" but "How could the players do this at the table?" One way would be Derren's approach - the players declare lots of "moves" that trigger the referee telling them stuff from his/her backtory, until the "right" solution emerges - or perhaps they learn that it can't be done. I would think of that as a railroad.

The other way would be the approach that I prefer, and that chaochou seems to prefer: the players declare actions (like searching through the libraries to find accounts of theological disputes; or taking particular individuals to dinner to sow rumours of discord; etc) and if these succeed (based on the standard resolution procedures - if a game doesn't have these, then obviously my method can't work!) then the PCs learn about the disputes, get the rumours circulating, etc and achieve their goal of causing rifts in the sect.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> A lot of the action here seems to be in the "And so on . . ."
> 
> That seems to depende very heavily on GM decision-making to which the players don't have even in-principle cognitive access.



Again reflecting reality, where in most non-trivial situations while you might be able to vaguely anticipate what'll happen next you can never be sure.

Using the 100-Ogres example again, while you-as-PCs might well anticipate they'll send out search parties once their hunter groups fail to return it's always possible the Ogres will somehow have another means of knowing what's happened, causing them to do something unexpected like flee the area or attack the PCs en masse.  Just like it'd work if it was real....which is what we're after, isn't it?



> The reason I doubt that a world/setting with a large and verisimilitudinous scope can provide a maze/puzzle in the same way is that nearly all the situations are evolving rather than static, and nearly all are evolving essentially in accordancde with GM fiat/extrapolation that is not knowable to the players - like [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s "And so on . . ." - the players can't control or manipulate that. All they can do is take rather generic steps like concealing their camp and mounting a watch. Whether there are 5 or 20 ogres after them; whether the ogres are searching in the spot where the PCs are hiding; whether the ogres have tracker dogs with them or not; whether the ogres include a shaman-type who can cast Augury; etc - all these things are important parameters of the situation which are entirely under GM control (assuming a GM-worldbuilding approach) and which the players don't know and can't effectively learn in a way that makes it exploitable/manipulable information.



I wouldn't go so far as to flat-out say the PCs can't learn this info, only that their likelihood of doing so would be more or less small.  Further, there's also a possibility that information gathered may be inaccurate or misinterpreted.

For example: the PCs' foreknowledge might correctly include that the Ogres have a spellcaster among them.  Knowing that Ogres aren't generally the brightest of creatures which makes it extremely unlikely that any caster would be a Wizard type, their logical assumption is that it's a Shaman or even Cleric of some sort.  What the PCs don't know is that while the Ogres have a well-known and fearsome chieftain their de facto leader-from-behind is actually an Ogre Mage who pretty much never leaves the caves.

As for the tracking dogs: if the PCs spent several days observing the caves it's always possible they saw a dog or two now and then coming and going with the hunting groups and from this may or may not be able to deduce that a) the dogs can track and-or hunt, and b) they are obedient to the Ogres.



> Understood. What puzzles me about T1 (and I've just pulled out my copy to have a re-look at it) is the 9 or so pages devoted to spelling out its contents like a dungeon. Eg what is the point, in the play of the game, of being told (p 11 of my copy) that the Chief Priest's chamber is no. 14 on the amp of the church of St Cuthbert, and that there is a secret compartment under the mantlepiece with a 10000 gp jewelled neck ornament inside it?
> 
> Is this really a dungeon, that the players are going to explore and loot? That seems completely unrealistic for 1st level PCs, given the level of some of the NPCs. But if the Chief Priest is intended to figure as a NPC quest giver, or as an element of backstory, then by all means tell us that he wears a magnificent neck ornament with a bejewelled cudgel hanging from it, but we don't need to know about his secret compartment, do we?



Sure we (as DMs) do.  It tells us where this treasure is kept when the Chief Priest is asleep, for example, or when he sees a situation coming in which he might risk losing it.

Just because he's giving a quest doesn't mean the PCs aren't going to try and kill him for his stuff, or sneak back and try to rob him later.

I actually like this in a module - it's an attempt to account for a "what if this happens?", which is something many canned modules (from all editions) are quite poor at.



> And to head off an anticipated retort from Lanefan - obviously backstory that has been established in play is established.



On this particular point I think we've already found agreement.

The disagreement lies with backstory that has not yet come up in, or somehow affected, the run of play.



> Also, upthread I asked about how the players (via their PCs) could go about instigating conflict in a religious sect - not meaning "How could the PCs do this in the fiction?" but "How could the players do this at the table?" One way would be Derren's approach - the players declare lots of "moves" that trigger the referee telling them stuff from his/her backtory, until the "right" solution emerges - or perhaps they learn that it can't be done. I would think of that as a railroad.
> 
> The other way would be the approach that I prefer, and that chaochou seems to prefer: the players declare actions (like searching through the libraries to find accounts of theological disputes; or taking particular individuals to dinner to sow rumours of discord; etc) and if these succeed (based on the standard resolution procedures - if a game doesn't have these, then obviously my method can't work!) then the PCs learn about the disputes, get the rumours circulating, etc and achieve their goal of causing rifts in the sect.



Still think this second method is in effect the players somewhat railroading the DM through their action declarations, particularly if there's no doubt involved and the DM is thus obliged to say yes.

Lanefan


----------



## MarkB

pemerton said:


> Also, upthread I asked about how the players (via their PCs) could go about instigating conflict in a religious sect - not meaning "How could the PCs do this in the fiction?" but "How could the players do this at the table?" One way would be Derren's approach - the players declare lots of "moves" that trigger the referee telling them stuff from his/her backtory, until the "right" solution emerges - or perhaps they learn that it can't be done. I would think of that as a railroad.
> 
> The other way would be the approach that I prefer, and that chaochou seems to prefer: the players declare actions (like searching through the libraries to find accounts of theological disputes; or taking particular individuals to dinner to sow rumours of discord; etc) and if these succeed (based on the standard resolution procedures - if a game doesn't have these, then obviously my method can't work!) then the PCs learn about the disputes, get the rumours circulating, etc and achieve their goal of causing rifts in the sect.



If every possible approach the PCs take to a problem turns out to be the 'right' one, providing they get successful rolls, then they're never truly making meaningful decisions for their characters. If the sect morphs into one that can be undermined through rumours, or destabilised via bribes, or shattered through religious disputes, depending upon which approach the players take, _and they know this_, that greatly impacts the immersiveness of that gameworld.

I get that you don't see it that way, but for many of us, knowing that there is a right approach (or a number of them) and finding ways to achieve it is a rewarding feeling in itself. Making the solution fit the situation, rather than vice-versa, is basic puzzle-solving, and doing so successfully is an achievement. It also allows us to more completely place ourselves in the mindset of the character, rather than the person playing the character.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> How can you create a mystery adventure without lore (worldbuilding)?



Sorry, I didn't answer this in my earlier reply to your post.

A mystery needs facts, agreed. But those facts don't have to be secret facts written by the GM in advance. This actual play post from several years ago now describes how I ran a mystery scenario in my 4e game. The only secret bit of content I had settled on in advance was that the wizard whose manor they were exploring had gone made with the strain of the gnoll invasion of Nerath and killed all his apprentices. The broader backstory (the timelines, the gnoll invastion of Nerath, etc) was all known by the players already (having been established in earlier episodes of play). The details (eg what, exactly, caused the conflict between mage and apprentices) and the clues (eg some invisible ink on a scroll) were all established during the course of play, as the players took various steps (making checks, using rituals) to trigger GM narration and to confirm their various hypotheses.

From the point of view of establishing the setting, the most important thing was the freeing of the apprentice - she turned out to have an interesting descendant, and herself became the bronze lich Osterneth.

I would say that that session was at the GM-heavier end of the spectrum of my play, in terms of the degree of content contributed by the GM as prompted by player triggers (the checks and rituals mentioned above and in the actual play post). I would say that it was not a strict railroad, though, for three reasons: (i) the players were able to establish some (overall relatively minor) outcomes in relation to the clues (like the invisible ink); (ii) the details of the mystery itself fed into the thematic concerns that the players had established for the game and for their PCs (in this case, both the fall of Nerath and the Raven Queen); (iii) the most important outcome - ie the freeing of the apprentice - was an outcome that was introduced by the players (the module doesn't contemplate it, and I hadn't thought about it in advance).

And there was no point that I can recall during the session where an action declaration fail. For example, I didn't declare it impossible to free the apprentice from the mirror, and when the PCs talked to her we resolved this via a skill challenge; I didn't declare it impossible to find something hidden and interesting on the scroll, although I had no notes about any such thing in advance; I didn't declare it impossible to keep the library from being wrecked by the fighting within it, although from memory I don't think their checks to save it all succeeded; etc.


----------



## Mercurius

Hey [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], I have a question for you - that came to mind from a question you asked [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] above: _"can't the setting be generated in the course of the telling of the story?"_

Let's turn that around. Can't the setting be modified and adapted from a starting template (created by the GM) through the course of the telling of the story? In a sense, a kind of "world-building GM fiat?" If it is all behind the GM's screen (proverbially speaking), what's the harm?

In other words, let's say the players present ideas about the setting that the GM likes and thinks augment the campaign in some way, even though they might be different than what he or she has in his/her campaign notes (to use your phrasing). Do you see any issue with the GM doing this sort of thing?

The setting, as I see it, is not set in stone until some aspect of it is revealed or experienced by the PCs, at which point _that_ aspect (and only that aspect) *is* set in stone, at least for the most part. If the PCs encounter blue-skinned elves then there are blue-skinned elves and the GM can't really take it back without damaging verisimilitude and thus immersion, unless of course he or she comes up with some explanatory factor (their skin was died because they had a blueberry orgy). 

Thus the GM's role as "illusionist" - making the setting real and immersive. Isn't that the point of world-building, to go back to the OP? And whatever it takes to do so?


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION], again I'm responding only to the bits where I think we have a difference of opinion that is worth exploring in the context of this thread.



Jester David said:


> That sort of "puzzle" can happen in a localized and confined room of a dungeon or in a giant player sandbox as they encounter an ambassador to a neighbouring kingdom or meet the Queen's royal advisory or even just bump into a pie merchant with curiously large and cheap pies.



I'm going to stick to the ambassador/queen example, not because the pie merchant one is irrelevant but I have no idea at this stage how to think about it or where to go with it.

In G3, crucial to the whole rationale and playability of the Queen Frupy episode is that the players have a relatively clear pathway to congitive access to what is going on. Some of this is metagame and independent of the actual episode of play - they know that this is a D&D dungeon, that it's inhabitants are probably hostile to the PCs, etc; but also that dungeons often have quirky inhabitants, that there are NPC reaction tables, etc. Some of it is connected to the actual play of the game - their are serving maids whom they can capture and interrogate in a relatively discrete episdoe of interaction (because of the convention that dungeon inhabitants, by default, stick to their rooms); they have scyring devices they can use on the Queen; etc.

In the "living, breathing" example all this breaks down. The metagame conventions are absent. The discrete moments of encounter, in which information might be gathered without huge knock on effects to other aspects of the situation of which the players are ignorant, is lost. The availability of scrying devices may well be absent (eg in D&D these _still_ tend to have ranges for use that make sense only in dungeoneering play).

This came up in a thread on these boards a few years ago now. (I don't have the link; [MENTION=6794638]MA[/MENTION]nbeaarcat may, as he started an online game in response to it.) Can the PCs persuade the chamberlain to introduce them to the king. The general view of the proponents of a "living, breathing world" was that this was almost inconceivable - the king wouldn't have an audience with just anyone; the chamberlain would have defences agaist scrying and mind control; etc. Now whether the details of those views is correct or not is secondary; the main point is that all these questions have to settled by the GM (either in notes, or - for this sort of thing - more likely on the fly by a mixture of extrapolation and intuition). So the players are no longer engaging with a puzzle that they know is there, and whose parematers they either know, or can relatively easily establish by way of action declarations whose consequences are broadly forseeable. Ratther, the players are utterly dependent on the GM's view of the situation, and choices about what to tell them about it.

That's a real difference.



Jester David said:


> The game is still driven entirely by the DM telling the players what is going on, which the players interpret through a personal lens.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> here's the thing about plot... dungeons are a plot. Each room in a dungeon is a scene. And encounter or moment where something happens.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The dungeon map is basically a flowchart of the plot



I think this is the one point on which I agree with [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION] - a classic dungeon isn't a plot, and the rooms aren't scenes.

A classic dungeon is closer to a gameboard, although it is not identical to one because - unlike, say, a chess or monopoly board - it also establishes content for a shared fiction, and hence fictional positioning.

But the way in which a classic dungeon resembles a gameboard is that it establishes clear parameters for player moves - "We walk down the corridor until we come to a corner or doorway" - and also clear parameters for the GM's descriptions to the players - so that when the GM says "OK, you proceed for 60' and then come to a T-intersection", the GM isn't just making that up but is reading it from the pre-prepared dungeon map. And there are conventions at work here: the referee tells the players the real distances, even though we might wonder, in the fiction, how good the PCs' ability to estimate those woudl be; and the map is a physical artefact that the players use to help play the game, although it is also has an imaginary correlate which we suppose one of the PCs to be producing in the fiction.

When the players enter a room, the GM frames a scene. Likewise when the PCs move down the corridor, the GM frames a scene - I just provided an example, in which the scene is _having proceeded down the passage for 60', you're now at a T-intersection_.

But the room is not itself a scene. We can easily imagine that the first time the PCs come to a room, the scene framing is like this "OK, having succesffuly forced the door open, you see a rectangular room, 20' x 10', with a chest in the middle. What do you do?" And then the second time, some time later in the session or a subsequent session, the PCs might return to the same room and the scene is like this: "OK, you think you've shaken off the pursuing goblins, and you come to the 20' x 10' room that you were heading for by following your map. The chest is still open as you left it, and the false bottom is still removed, and you can see the ladder descending down a narrow shaft about 40' or so."

Those are two different scenes - occurring at different times, with different things at stake, and posing different challenges to the players and their PCs - but both occur in the same room, which (in the GM's notes) might be written up as _20' x 10' rectangle, with a single entrance; there is a chest in the middle of the room, unlocked, with a false bottom concealing a shaft and ladder descending to the second level_.

I recognise that various dungeon designers, both amateur and professional, have designed dungeons on a different principle, in which the rooms are scenes in a plot, rather than elements of a gameboard on which the players make their moves; one can see hints of this in Hickman's Pharoah adventures, for intance, and it's become more common since then. 

And that is broadly how I run "dungeons" (ie interior encounters) in my 4e game.

But that is a departure from the design principles of something like B2, not a continuation of them.



Jester David said:


> The point of invoking the real world is that people do what you say is impossible all the time in the real world. It just becomes less of a certainty and more of a gamble.



I'm not ignorant of the fact that people in the real world sometimes succeed in scouting out or learning about dynamic situations.

My point is that, in the real world this involves actual causal processes which are not the same as those that take place in a RPG.

I'll give an example in a field I know well. If I want to learn -in detail (eg for teaching purposes) - what the law is on some particular point, I read hundreds or thousands of pages of primary material; perhaps expert commentary as well; apply interpretive and reasoning methods that I've spent a couple of decades working on; and come up with an understanding. Sometimes that understanding differs from that of some, even all, of the expert commentators (who themselves don't always agree).

In a RPG, if I say that my character wants to run a legal argument (this came up in my 4e campaign), the GM is not going to show me hundreds or thousands of pages of law books for me to read. Nor any expert commentary. The GM is going to give me a 50 to 100 word paraphrase. My only cognitive access to the shared fiction of the gameworld's legal system will be that paraphrase.

And if, having heard that paraphrase, I want to then actually mount my legal argument, the GM (playing the rival NPC lawyer) is not goiing to engage me in hours of dicussion, and then spend hours (playing the magistrate) in arriving at a decision as to what is the correct answer to this quesiton of law.

In RPGing, the question is - is my vision of the fiction, in which a briefly sketched (say, 100 or so words) legal argument is suffiient to persuade a magistrate of the justice of my case, going to prevail? Or is an alternative vision, in which my argument fails, going to prevail? And the actual causal process at work here is not a process of legal reasoning and argumentation; it's a process of collectively establishing a shared vision of the fiction.

It has almost nothing in common with arguing the law (or scouting out an enemy position; or throwing a rock) in real life. It has a lot in common with other processes of establishing shared fictions, like cops and robbers, freeform wargaming, improv acting, etc. Which is not to say that it's identical to them - there are significant differences, both around role allocation and around procedures for establishing changes in the fiction - but those are at least helpful starting points for analysis.

No one tries to explain the agency of a kid playing cops and robbers by comparing it to the agency of a bank robber carrying a tommy gun. They do it by discussing _who gets to decide_ whether an (imaginary) shot hit or missed. This is the same starting point from which we can understand agency in RPGing.



Jester David said:


> More skill is required to anticipate the likely variables and overcome them.



Who gets to decide if the skill was enough? In the real world _no one has to decide this_. Scouting in the real world is not an episode of writing a fiction.

But in RPGing, someone absolutely has to decide this. Because imaginary people scouting out an imaginary location absolutely is an episode of writing a fiction. In classic dungeoneering, the process whereby this is decided is tolerably clear, becaue the parameters of the shared fiction are very narrow, and the metagame conventions that reinforce those parameters are relatively robust. Players know that, in interrogating Queen Frupy's serving maids, they don't have to worry that they've accidentally upset a powerful wizard who will use some high level spell to crash the whole dungeon in on them.

But in a living, breathing world situation, for all the players know that could be an element of the situation.



Lanefan said:


> the player is in theory exploring the gameworld through the eyes of her PC.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> i and iii are exactly the same: the person who wants to throw a rock has to first find one.
> 
> iv in the game world has a direct reflection in the real world: an un-numbered step wherein you-as-you make your own internal action declaration by deciding to throw a rock.
> 
> ii in the real world has to be reflected by another un-numbered element: the game mechanics of whatever dice need to be rolled (if any) to see where/how far the rock goes and what if anything of relevance it might hit.
> 
> Your agency as meta-player, perhaps.  But your agency as PC is directly connected to the PC's ability to throw rocks.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> unless the DM is a complete asshat (and for the purposes of these discussions let's ignore those, shall we) the player's agency comes not from meta-concerns but from what her PC does and the choices that PC makes, often in concert with the rest of the party.  If the party decides to leave town going south to the seaport instead of east to the mountains or west to where the Orcs are raiding then you've collectively exercised agency over the story to come; and if the DM hasn't designed the seaport yet (or even given it a second thought other than mentioning it in passing) your agency has forced her to do this also.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> In other words, it's not so much player agency as PC agency.



Seeing a rock on the ground, picking it up and throwing it has almost _nothing_ in common, as a human activity, with sitting around with my friends and getting everyone to agree that, in a fiction we are collectively establishing, the imaginary "me" is picking up and throwing a rock.

Or to put it another way, I might be an excellent shot putter and yet a poor RPGer; or conversely might be excellent at playing a PC who throws rocks and yet a terrible shot putter.

As far as agency is concerned, I have close to zero interest in the degree of (imaginary) agency my PC - an imaginary person - has. Eg in my BW game, one of the PCs has spent many sessions subject to a domination effect from a dark naga. The PCs has almost know agency. But the player has ample agency, because - having written Beliefs for his character that reflect the fact of his domination - he gets to choose how to play his character, makes action declarations (eg to find a ewer in the room to catch the spilled blood of the possessed mage so he can take it back to his naga master), etc.

In your example of the players deciding that their PCs head to the ocean - is the GM freed to decide that there's no seaport? that the orcs hav sacked and destroyed it before the PCs get there? that there are no boats available for charter? that a blizzard sets in, stopping the PCs from getting there?

And suppose the PCs get there, who decides what interesting things are going on there which the players might then engage with? The players, or the GM? If the GM, in what sense are the players _exercising agency over the story to come_, other than establishing that it will happen in a seaport rather than some mountains?

To me, that is a very weak form of agency. Its weakness is evident in some other things you have posted:



Lanefan said:


> flavour can be subdivided further: flavour that has relevance to the PCs now or later (e.g. each day's weather, relevant whenever the PCs are a) outdoors or able to see outdoors, and b) might somehow be affected by it) and flavour that has no relevance to anything other than to help set the scene (e.g. the DM describing a harbour town the PCs are seeing for the first time might mention there's several dozen ships either docked or anchored-off to augment the atmosphere of this being a busy bustling place, even though the PCs are there for a reason completely unrelated to ships at all).



Who decides what is relevant? The players, or the GM? Why is the weather relevant and not just scene-setting, yet the number of ships in the harbour scene-setting and not relevant?

What if one of the players asks (in the voice of his/her PC), "Is one of the ships a merchant vessel from my homeland? Maybe it brings news, or even a parcel for me!"? Who gets to decide whether this is "relevant" - and hence the player gets to participate in a story over which s/he has exercised at least some agency, by kicking it off - or irrelevant.

As best I can tell, your answer is _the GM_. As seems to be borne out by the following:



Lanefan said:


> here I can give an in-progress example from one of my own characters in a still-active game.
> 
> She is from a Roman-Empire-based culture, and is a fully-accredited citizen of said realm (called Hestia).  Over the course of her rather long and world-spanning adventuring career she's come to realize a lot of distasteful things: that much of the world is in dire need of civilizing, Hestian style; that there's far too many bloody barbarians and monsters out there; and that her own Empire's government (a Senate-run republic at the moment, no Emperor for the last century or so) might not be quite up to the task.  She's done time in the Legions as a staff mage, and has (perhaps outdated) contacts in various parts of the military.
> 
> So some years ago (real time) she decided that her goal after her adventuring career was done would be to get herself a seat on the Senate.  But since then she's changed a bit, and come to realize the Senate is but step one: we need to bring the true Empire back, with her or someone like her as Empress.
> 
> Realistic?  In character, yes.
> 
> Achievable?  Somewhere between no and extremely unlikely, though she has thought of a series of actions that might get her that Senate seat...she just needs to get the rest of the PCs (both active and inactive - a total of about 30 of them) to go along with her plan.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But she's set a goal, and it has nothing to do with anything that's come up in play so far



It seems that your character's ambition could instead be to establish a cattle farm on the hills overlooking the city of Hestia, and yet nothing about the campaign would really have changed. If I am getting that right, I woudn't really consider that an example of _exercising agency over the story_.



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> As for immersion - it hardly gets more immersive than returing to your ruined tower after lo!, these past 14 years, then looking for the mace you left behind only to discover that your brother was evil all along!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Except I'm not discovering that.  I as player have known it all along, as I wrote it into my goals and backstory
Click to expand...


No. I didn't say that the discovery was the existence of the tower, or the existence of the brother.

I said the discovery was the _return_ to the tower - which was the outcome of various episodes of action resolution following the PCs being marooned in the Bright Desert as the outcome of a failed social challenge; and the discovery that the brother was evil all along, which was learned following a failed check upon the return to the tower.

Those things - the return, and the characer of the brother - weren't pre-authored at all. From the player's perspective, the return was a success; the discovery about the brother a failure. From the PC's point of view, the discovery about the brother was nothing short of gutting.



MarkB said:


> If every possible approach the PCs take to a problem turns out to be the 'right' one, providing they get successful rolls, then they're never truly making meaningful decisions for their characters.



That doesn't seem right at all.

Consider a typical random encounter in a fairly generic module - say, the PCs are travelling through the steppes, and the GM rolls up a nomad encounter. The GM tells the players "As you ride along, on the horizon you see a relatively large group of people, mounted and heading towards you."

The players could choose any of the following options without stepping outside the sphere of 1st ed AD&D action resolution mechanics: they could choose to fight the nomads; they could choose to try and talk to the nomads; they could choose to avoid the nomads.

Any of the above could turn out to be the "right" choice, or the "wrong" choice, depending on dice rolls. If the PCs fight, and roll well, they can earn XP and treasure. If they roll poorly, of course, they might suffer loss of treasure or other resources (eg because they end up having to negoiate a truce, or they have to drink some potions to win the fight, or whatever). If some nomads escape, this may lead to penalties on future reaction checks with nomad encounters, but that will only be a problem if some more of those are rolled.

If the PCs talk, and roll well, they may befriend the nomads and get information. (But perhaps they could have got that anyway, through Speak with Dead.) If the PCs talk, and roll poorly, the situation may turn into a fight they didn't want or they may have to try and evade.

If the PCs try and evade, again whether that works out for them or not may depend on dice rolls. Eg if they try and evade, and the GM's reaction roll suggests that the nomads pursue, and the evasion roll turns out poorly, then the PCs may end up having to fight the nomads but suffering GM-imposed penalties from fatigue (Gygax's DMG leaves such penalties as a matter for GM discretion, although ideas can probably be adapted from the rules for forced marching).

I don't think it therefore follows that the choice to fight, to talk or to evade is meaningless. It's a tactical choice, with implications. It's a strategic choice _within the context of the fiction_, as it helps shape the parameters for future interaction with nomads. And it's a significant choice at the more metagame level as well, as it says something about the players and their characters that they prefer to fight (honourably? from ambush?) or talk or hide.



MarkB said:


> If the sect morphs into one that can be undermined through rumours, or destabilised via bribes, or shattered through religious disputes, depending upon which approach the players take, _and they know this_, that greatly impacts the immersiveness of that gameworld.



Are you saying this from experience or conjecture?

Unless the players are self-deluded, they know that the "truth" about the sect is established by authorship. They know that someone has to engage in that authorship at some point - that (unlike a sect in the real world) the "truth" about the sect is not the result of actual social and historical processes but rather is the result of someone performing a feat of imagination.

It seems to me that only players very obsessed with the metagame processes - ie unimmersed players - would spend their time at the table worrying about when and how the authorship took place, and in response to what sorts of triggers. In my experience, players who find their PCs and the situation engaging get much more interested in trying to develop a clear picture of the unfolding fiction, thinking about ways that they might interact with it, worrying about the consequences if they poke the bear too hard and provoke unhappy responses, etc.



MarkB said:


> for many of us, knowing that there is a right approach (or a number of them) and finding ways to achieve it is a rewarding feeling in itself. Making the solution fit the situation, rather than vice-versa, is basic puzzle-solving, and doing so successfully is an achievement.



Part of my contention in the OP is that, once we have a situation like the sect - or the NPC starship in the Traveller thread that I linked to in the post you quoted - there is no _right approach_ other than the GM's opinion, typically worked out on the fly, as to what it should be. This is because it is simply inconceivable (for instance) that a GM actually has notes that tell us everything about every mayday procedure for every possible circumstance, and has notes that tell us about the personality of every NPC captain and how likely s/he is to stick to some or other interpretation of those procedures, and has an effective mechanic or system for integrating all that stuff into a consistent resolution framework.

As I posted in that other thread and in the post you quoted - in this context, _gathering more information_ is just a metaphor for _declaring actions that will lead the GM to more fiction_. That's one part of RPGing, but not in my view the most fun or most immersive. A game that is basically _that_, until eventually the players do the thing that triggers the GM to give the bit of information that will be crucial - and then implementing that solution - doesn't strike me as very gripping. As I think I posted upthread, the first time I encountered this style of RPGing was in 1990. The scenario was a defence of a city from a kobold infiltration/attack. After a couple of sessions we (the players, as our PCs) had captured a kobold and tried to interrogate it - we wanted to learn the location of the kobold headquarters so we could try and infilitrate or assualt it. The GM decalred (clearly on the spot, and without regard to such considerations as the kobolds have low to average intelligence) that the kobold was (for reasons of low intelligence) unable to answer our questions, or draw a map, or show on a map where the headquarters might be. In other words, gathering intelligence from prisoners was not a right solution in the GM's view of the gameworld, and so we had to keep on waiting for the GM to feed us the information that (or the module writer) had prepared.

That was not immersive at all. The mindset of my character was one of incredulity that the kobold couldn't tell us the path whereby it entered the city; the mindset of me, as a player, was that the GM was not interested in having regard to player input into his game. We sacked the GM and started a new game.



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> When the dice fall, I get my answer, just as my character knows whether his hopes are realised or dashed. I'm not all up in the metagame headspace of worrying about how this fiction has come to be authored!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Given how many times you've posted how you so dislike fiction coming from pre-determined notes and-or being pre-authored by the DM I really have to challenge that last sentence.
> 
> I think you worry about this more than anyone else I've ever encountered.
Click to expand...


When I'm posting I'm not playing. When I'm playing, I want to live my character. Of course I can't do that if the GM has already decided what is going to happen (eg, in my example, whether or not there is a knight for me to meet). Then my character's hope would just be a charade from the outset, and I'd be playing a different character. I could have built that character had I wanted to, but I didn't.

I once GMed a game where one player's goal for his PC (Xialath) was to become a magistrate of his city (Rel Astra). That was a recurring focus of play. At first it all went downhill - because the player had built his character without meditation skill (favouring social and perception) skils, he coudn't keep up with the other wizard character's power point recovery. So he used his social skills to make contact with a drug seller and started relying on a highly addictive drug - Hugar - to enhance his power point recovery. Unfortunately for him he became addicted, and spent more and more of his money on Hugar, and was unable to meet his rent when it fell due and so lost his city compound.

After further misadentures, he came to a point where he had to make a choice: a fellow PC had decided to throw in his lot with Vecna (in this campaign, a mage who had been a noble in the Suel Empire, had spent a long time asleep, and had been woken by the PCs and now had is his goal to restore that empire, using the Great Kingdom as his vehicle). He was therefore getting ready to help Vecna conquer Rel Astra for the Great Kingdom, from which the city had broken away centuries before. Would Xialath help him? If so, the successful invaders would ensure that he was awarded a magistracy. Xialath agreed, and so sold out his city to the invaders in return for a position. (He later redeemed himself in some other ways, but that's not relevant for present purposes).

Xialath's player was immersed.

In my experience, both as a player and a GM, I have never encountered a player who feels _less_ immersed and _less_ engaged because the events of the game focus on the players' goals and concerns for his/her PC, rather than just on the GM's view of what it is worthwile establishing a shared fiction about.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> without a setting of some sort going in there's no backdrop to set the scene, as it were.  That's work the DM has to do ahead of time.



Well, guess what: I started a Traveller game without preparing a setting ahead of time!

Here's how it happened.

The players rolled up their PCs (two each; 9 were actually commenced, for 4 players, because one didn't survive the PC gen process).

Then I rolled up a starting world. It was high tech (Starport class A - ie the best possible; Tech Level 16, which is close to the highest possible) but low pop (single digit thousands of inhabitants), and had no bases, and no government and very low law level. One of the PCs  had medical skill, so it seemed likely he was working in a hospital - but with low pop and hi tech, that probably meant overseeing the activities of medbots. Another of the PCs was a noble with gambling skill, and a yacht, who had also just scraped a survival roll resulting in mustering out. So that player suggested that there was a casino, where he had won his yacht, as a result of which the previous owners had broken both his legs, hence (i) his near-failed survival check, and (ii) his familiarity with the medic PC. The same player also suggetsed that the world was obviously a gas giant moon. It then seemed clear that the population was probably rich visitors staying in hotels etc to gamble at the casino . . . and we extrapolated further from there to establish how the other PCs, given their abilities and their service histories, had ended up on this world that I dubbed Ardour-3.

Those PCs had plenty of depth and backstory for starting PCs, and a good sense of their place in the world that we had started to flesh out.



Lanefan said:


> Look at B10, for example.  The main map in that thing, backed by what's written in the module, is almost a whole setting unto itself - towns, roads, people, locations, adventure sites, villains, competing factions, side quests, etc.  That work has all been done for you; all you have to do is somehow narrate it to your players.



I showed them. It took a few minutes.


----------



## pemerton

Aenghus said:


> Adventures that are ostensibly open world, where the players have the agency to walk away from the plot, are more difficult to run unless the players voluntarily commit to staying within the confines of the plot. The alternatives are things like railroading, moving scenery, or trusting to luck and/or skill, or letting go of the plot and leaving the players wander.



Those are not the only atlernatives.

A well-established alternative is the one I posted upthread (in replay to [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION]), put forward in summary form (but in no sense invented) by Eero Tuovinen.

Instead of the GM hoping to hook the players and keep them on the rails of plot, the players build PCs with "hooks" for the GM and the GM etablishes situations that speak to those player-evinced flags. It doesn't depend upon luck, nor upon any particular skill (I started GMing in this fashion as a teenager in the second half of the 80s; the player hooks, on that occasion, were provided by the Oriental Adventures character generation process). But nor does it involve the players "wandering". If the GM is doing his/her job properly, then play will be rather focused (I mean, it may or may not traverse a wide geographic scope, but whether or not it does will be a secondary matter).



Lanefan said:


> The ideal, of course, is that the players voluntarily stay on plot _because they find said plot/story interesting and-or engaging enough to want to play it out_.  Which means that in a DM-driven game it's squarely on the DM to come up with a plot/story good enough to capture the interest and imagination of her players, if this is going to work.



Again, a completely function alternative is for the referee to abandon the pre-conceived plot/story and instead focus on the player signals as to what they find interesting!



Lanefan said:


> Still think this second method is in effect the players somewhat railroading the DM through their action declarations, particularly if there's no doubt involved and the DM is thus obliged to say yes.



I don't understand what you mean by "If there's no doubt involved"?

If something significant is at stake - _Is the mace I left behind still here_? - then the dice are rollled. If nothing is at stake (eg _do the angels, whom we'ver befriend by lifting the curse on them, show us to the reliquary_?), then the referee says "yes".

It's not a very complicated technique.


----------



## pemerton

Sebastrd said:


> in my experience, a setting generated prior to play is much richer than one generated on the fly - whether it's the GM or the players doing the generating.



OK, in this respect our experiences differ.

That's not to say that anyone's pre-authored setting was not rich, but rather to say that I'm pretty happy with the setting that emerges out of my gameplay. Here's an illustrative example, which has some discussion of how the setting was established during the play of the session. (I had mapped the Mausoleum in advance and written up some stats for the hazards and the inhabitants - 4e likes maps and stats, and if these are going to have any intricacy they do need to be prepped in advance - whether in a module, or a Monster Manual, or by oneself; and I'd written a riddle for my sphinx; but all the details of the murals, statues, visions etc were established during play, relying on a mixture of imagination and the prior events of play).



Sebastrd said:


> If the player decides what's down that road, are they really discovering anything?



This keeps recurring in this thread - a misleading characterisation of action resolution procedures - and I don't get it, as I've described them many times.

So to repeat (again): consider a completely ordinary encounter with a randomly encountered creature in a bog-standard D&D game. The players ask "Does it look friendly, or not?" The GM rolls on the reaction tabloe, and then answers as appropriate.

The attitude of the creature was not pre-authored. The need to _decide_ what it's attitude is is triggered by the player asking the question in response to the GM's initial framing of the situation. We could analyse it like this: the GM's initial framing of the situation tells the players that their PCs encounter a creature. But that framing is missing some point of detail that the player cares about, namely, the apparent attitude of the creature. So the player asks about that detail, and the referee then rolls to determine it. The result of that roll enriches the framing of the situation - perhaps in a way tha the player was hoping for (if the creature is friendly, one assumes - unless the player is looking for an excuse to start a fight!), perhaps not.

This model of introducing fictional content is generalisable. Not only is it generalisable, but there are oodles of games, inlcuding D&D 4e, which generalise it! (For the clearest 4e example, see the example of skill challenge resolution presented in the Essentials Rules Compendium.)

So, in the example of the PCs travelling down the road - presumably they are looking for something. (If they're just walking from pre-established A to pre-established B, with nothing at stake in the journey per se, then let's just call it done - "say 'yes'" - and move on!) The player asks, "OK, we've travelled out into the wilderness, is there any sign of the <whatever it is that the PCs are looking for>?" A check is made, and if it succeeds the GM answer yes (with whatever detail or embellishment is appropriate, given the group's shared understanding of the situation, of what is acceptable GM gloss on a success, etc); if it fails, the GM answers no, and imposes some suitably adverse consequence - "Your wandering is taxing you, and you're nearly out of food, and you _still_ haven't found it - what do you do?"

That is not the players deciding what's down the road; it's the players declaring actions for their PCs, on the basis of a good knowledge of what their PCs care about, and the GM adjudicating the outcomes of those action declarations in accordance with "say 'yes' or roll the dice" plus "fail forward" for the adverse consequence.

(Without "fail forward", you need some other technique for dealing with retries. I had to deal with this fairly recently in my Traveller game, because it doesn't use "fail forward", and instead mostly manages retries either through it's rules for the passage of time - so if you're in your starship your life support only lasts for so many days, and so with one chance to fix the engines per day, you only get so many tries before the PCs all asphyxiate - or through a flat-out "no retries" rule. But it's mechanics for overland exploration don't have a no retries rule _and_ don't have time constraints like starship activities do, and hence are - in my view - the weakest part of the ruleset, as they easily lead - I can report from experience - to rather boring play with dice being rolled although nothing significant is at stake.)



Sebastrd said:


> It is a wrong question, Mr. Pemerton. You seem to have this black or white view of the situation: either the GM is telling the story or the players are. Neither are correct.



Well, tell that to [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION]. He was the one who said that it is the GM's story, and the players are actors - and it was that contention that I was responding to.



Sebastrd said:


> I would work with the player to develop those religious organizations and the world in which they exist based on the player's assumptions. In some cases, I'd deliberately subvert the player's assumptions to keep things interesting and challenging. We'd play out the scenario, and I would use that predetermined setting information to inform my adjudication of the players' actions and the consequences thereof.



Well, I guess all the action is in the words "We'd play out the scenario." I was wondering how, in actual practice, this would work. Eg what sorts of actions might be declared, and how would they be adjudicated?



Sebastrd said:


> The players declare actions and the GM determines how the world reacts.
> 
> How is the GM to determine how the world reacts without first determining the nature of the world? Assuming we agree that determination must take place, why do you care whether it is done preemptively or in play?



If the GM determines "how the world reacts", that seems to make the content of the story rather heavily dependent on the GM's decisions. The players can make it true that, in the fiction, some person tried to do this thing (eg tried to pick up a rock and throw it; tried to find some information about a cult's theology in a library); but that seems to be about it.

An alternative approach, as I've sketched above, is to use the action resolution mechanics to determine what happens when a player declares an action for his/her PC (which might include the rather "passive" action of trying to ascertain whether a person seems friendly or hostile).

As to why I care about how it is done, see my post not far upthread of this one: as a player, I want to play my character, not someone else's conception of my character; and as a GM (which is my more typical situation) I want to enjoy seeing my friends play their characters, and find out who they are and what they do. I don't want to read/tell them stuff that I already made up. The actual play post that I linked to in this post above should give you an illustration of what I mean by that.


----------



## pemerton

innerdude said:


> So, I think there's several trains of thought scattered throughout all the responses that answer @_*pemerton*_'s original question, "What is worldbuilding for?"
> 
> 
> To add immersive flavor -- to spur players' imaginations a little more deeply into the shared fiction.
> To provide story "hooks," whether done as pure "sandbox" or based on clues from characters' builds/background.
> To create a fictional space where character motivations have real stakes -- i.e., the group social contract agrees that they want something more than just being "heads-down in the dungeon" all the time.
> To give the GM the opportunity to plan certain challenges ahead of time to maximize the challenge, tension, and impact.
> To allow the GM a creative opportunity that is different from being a player within the campaign.
> 
> There could be more, but these seem to be a condensed summary of the primary points.
> 
> I think your question, @_*pemerton*_, really boils down to----"Does pre-rendered worldbuilding actually serve any of these interests and the overall fun/enjoyment of the group, or are there more effective methods for doing the same thing?"
> 
> I've got to be honest, I have a really hard time with a pure "no myth" approach to pen-and-paper RPGs.



Your paraphrase of my question is more pointed than the one I asked - I asked "what is it for", not "why not drop it for these other methods"! But I'm certainly all for exploring consequences of using some techniques rather than others.

Of your five points, (i) to (iiI) clearly can be accomplished, pretty easily, in other ways than having the GM do it in advance of play. Eg players can write their own backstory for PCs, and establish their own goals with stakes implicit in them. I think I've given plenty of examples in the thread, plus links to actual play posts that provide further illustrations. So I think the putative contrast of _GM builds a dungeon_ or else it _heads-down in the dungeon_ is not an actual contrast: I haven't run a campaign that could be described as "heads-down in the dungeon) since about 1985.

Of course if the players don't want to contribute to (i), (ii) or (iii) but nevertheless want a camaign with those sorts of elements, the GM will have to do it: presumably these are players who don't object to the GM decding what the campaign will be about, determing all the major outcomes, etc. (I assume this is the target audience for APs.)

Your (v) has been affirmed strongly by some posters in this thread. Clearly it can't be achieved by having someone other than the GM do it.

Your (iv) is interesting, and I don't think anyone else in the thread has stated it as clearly as you do. It relates in part to "no myth".

No myth is not "no prep". _No myth_ is, at it's heart, _no secret backstory_. That is, no manipulation of the fiction "behind the scenes" by the GM to generate particular outcomes, and no reliance upon unrevealed backstory to block action declarations independently of the resolution mechanics. Another way to put it: there is no _secret_ fictional positioning in virtue of which delcared actions can nevertheless fail because the framing conditions weren't right.

I preppped for my Traveller campaign - I had some NPCs pregenerated (though I didn't use any in the first session) and I had some worlds pregenerated (and I used three of them in the first session). But those worlds didn't become part of the shared fiction until they were introduced in the course of play. And I didn't use any of them as the starting world - that was something I wanted to roll in front of the players, thereby subjecting myself to the same discipline that they'd had to in generating their PCs.

A shared sense of genre and/or "big picture" is also not at odds with the spirit of No Myth. Showing the players a map, or an illustration, or saying "I want to run a default 4e game - the race and god descriptions will show you what I mean" is consistent with the spirit of No Myth. That stuff is all part of the shared understanding of what the game will be about, what it's tropes will be, etc.

This stuff also feeds directly into your (iv) - it's not a coincidence that I frame my players into a situation where they are dealing with an assault on the Mausoleum of the Raven Queen! The stuff established by means of (i), (ii) and (iii) - both at the campaign's start, and over a number of years of play - means that I have plenty of material to help me prepare challenges, to come up with ideas for things that will push my players hard.

My interest is in outcomes. Local outcomes, whose main context is the particular episode in that session - what do the PCs see when they look around the Mausoleum? Are their cartouches from which they can learn the Raven Queen's origina name? And bigger outcomes, whose context is the whole campaign - do the PCs join with Jenna to try and defeat the Raven Queen, or help Kas defend her Mausoleum, or do they oppose both? As it turns out, they stopped Jenna and so, for the moment, helped the Raven Queen. But it could have gone the other way. And the biggest outcome of all is lurking there too - is the Dusk War coming, or not? Within the fiction, there's an answer to that question, as it's a cosmological fact. But at the table, we don't know yet because it hasn't been played to its resolution.

This is what I think is at the heart of "no myth" or "play to find out".



innerdude said:


> I'm totally comfortable with the idea that you can find a middle ground between doing worldbuilding while still allowing player freedom, improvisation, and not being married to any particular narrative outcome.



And so I guess I would ask - was it _important_ that (i) to (iii) be done by you rather than the players, or was that just happenstance? Was (v) important for you? - in which csae, presumably, there was no other way to get it. And with regard to (iv), what was the role of unrevealed backstory in shaping adjudication of action declarations?


----------



## Mercurius

pemerton said:


> Well, tell that to [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION]. He was the one who said that it is the GM's story, and the players are actors - and it was that contention that I was responding to.




Hmm, you called? 

Well, you just made it black-and-white again, and a bit oversimplistic. I'm not sure what else I can say because you seem dead-set on ignoring nuance and continuing to hammer against the dreaded strawman of GM Hegemony that prevents player's from having any real agency.

The story is created through the interaction between the GM's framing and the player's choices and actions. The GM presents a context, environment, and possible choices, and the players choose what they want to do given that context, environment, and possible choices - or they may find a completely different way that the GM did not account for, and the GM responds accordingly to the internal logic of the campaign world.

Within this approach there is great possible variance between ad hoc improvisation (sandbox) and metaplot (story arc). The commonality in every variation is that the players have agency to make choices that are available to their characters within the gameworld, and the GM "roleplays" the world itself, and also acts as adjudicator.

It is _both_ the GM's _and_ the players' story. Again, the GM is the world and everything in it _except_ the PCs. 

I remain unclear why this means players have no agency, or in what way this makes the whole thing the GM's story alone.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION], there are some point where I think you have mis-spoken, or seem not to understand some RPG techniques.



Mercurius said:


> A player's agency in the fictional world is roughly the same as our agency in the real world, and even slightly more so, as I explained. The difference, though, is that in the fictional world, there's a GM - who is akin to a hypothetical supreme being in our world.



The player has no agency in the fictional world, any more than you have the power to punch Sherlock Holmes in the nose.

The PC has agency in the fictional world, but it's fictional ie imaginary agency and so, as I explained to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] not too far upthread is orthogonal to issues of railroading etc. (A PC might be enlaved by some other being, yet the player have unfettered autonomy, because the player determines the details of what the enslaving being asks of the PC.)

And the player may or may not have agency in the real world, in the playing of the game, depending on his/her capacity to change the state of the shared fiction. But the process of doing that does not resemble throwing rocks or climbing walls in the real world - it resembles playing cops and robbers, or writing a story with some friends, or improv acting, though is not identical to any of those.

As I said, if a kid complains that the fellow players of cops and robbers aren't being fair, no one thinks we address their agency by comparing it to the agency of a real bank robber shooting a real tommy gun. We ask about who is getting to decide whether a shot hits and whether a hit kills, and how that decision-making power is being exercised. These are the same sorts of questions one can ask about a RPG.



Mercurius said:


> Aside from that I don't see how the processes are "completely" different, the main difference between your approach and the "traditional" approach (for lack of a better term), seems to be the degree to which the player has power over whether the rock exists, where it is, etc, and also the degree to which the GM _doesn't_ have power, yes?
> 
> In the traditional approach, the player declares what action he or she wants to take, and the GM decides how resolution will occur in whatever fashion he or she deems appropriate given the situation (that is, uses judgement), and the player resolves the action through either doing it ("I pick up the rock"), rolling dice, etc. But it seems that in your approach, one or both of two things is true: 1) the player has more power over whether the rock is there, and where it is, and 2) the GM has less power over the same, and/or is constrained by the rules.



I don't know of any tabletop RPG where a player makes it true, in the fiction, that his/her PC has picked up a rock by actually doing it, ie actually picking up a rock.

The player generally states an intended action - "I pick up a rock" - and then the table (perhaps just the GM, or maybe the GM as first among equals) accepts that this has happened, or alternatively some sort of mechanical process is called for (most often rolling a dice, but not always - eg if the action is "I buy a shovel", then in BW a dice roll may be required (a Resources check), but in D&D the mechancial process is to reduce the number in the treasure box on the PC sheet by the amount indicated by the GM).

But all action declaration in a RPG depends upon the fictional positioning of the PC - you can't say "I pick up a rock" and hope to have that action declaration succeed if your PC is not in the vicinity of some rocks; you can't say "I buy a shovel" and hope to have that action declaration succeed if your PC is not in the vicinity of some friendly purveyors of shovels; etc.

In a game run on the basis of GM pre-authorship with secret elements of the gameworld, it is possible for a player to _think_ that the fictional positioning is appropriate for declaring some action, but in fact it is not. So the player declares the action, and perhaps the GM even allows the dice to be rolled (or rolls them behind the screen), but the check will always fail (and thus the fiction not develop in the way that the player wants) because _in fact_ the fictional positioning was not apposite.

Now, there are borderline cases here, because "secrecy" is a matter of degree. To give a simple example, a combat encounter that starts with an invisible opponent among the visible ones will produce a moment in which the fictional positioniong turns out to be different from what a player understood it to be - eg (in some editions of D&D) s/he will declare some movement and then suffer an opportunity attack that s/he wasn't expecting. The 4e DMG's skill challenge example has a comparable non-combat example: anyone who tries to bully the duke automatically incurs a failure in the attempt to persuade him.

My own view is that if the secret is (i) within the ascertainable scope of the situation as presented to the players, and (ii) is salient within the context of gameplay, and (iii) is not overwhelming in its impact on the situation, then it's fair game. The two examples I've given satisfy (i) - you can find the invisible foe through various means including Perception checks; you can learn the duke's personality through an Insight check.

My reason for caring about (ii) - salience - is because, in practical gameplay terms, this is a major consideration for knowability. The players need to have at least some general sense of what they are expected to be looking for. I think the combat example satisfies (ii) for a default D&D game - we all know that invisible foes go with the territory. The skill challenge example is, in my view, more contentious in respect of (ii) and would depend upon how the campaign, as actually played, has presented personalities _and_ has treated bullying as a method of persuading them.

My reason for caring about (iiI) is that, if the secret is overwhelming and the players don't learn it, then the game has a feel of "rocks fall, everybody dies". I think that is fair game in classic dungeoneering - ToH is full of it - but I personally don't care for classic dungeoneering as a playstyle, and hence include (iii) as a desideratum. Both the examples I gave satisfy (iii) - a skill challenge isn't lost with a single failure; and one invisilbe foe (who is otherwise part of a fairly desinged encounter) isn't going to lead, in iteslf, to a TPK.

As well as _secret_ backstory, there can simply be unestablilshed backstory. Is there a rock nearby? Is the mace inthe tower? Will the captain of the starship respond sympathetically to a mayday call, even if that means going against strict security procedures? (That last one is from the Traveller thread I referenced a bit earlier in this thread.)

For this, I favour three possible approaches.

(1) If it's obviously inappropriate given genre and established backstory (eg Luke Crane's example of beam weapons in the Duke's toilet) then the answer is no. I would also extend this to low/no stakes distractions - "we search the bodies for loot". In my 4e game I'll often just say "They've got nothing valuable", rather than waste time on what is essentially a distraction - loot is on a "timer" (treasure parcels), and if I've got interesting ideas for how those parcels can come into play, I'm not intersted in spending time on paragon-tier PCs looting hobgoblins. (Contrast our BW game, where Resources is a vital stat constantly under pressure, and the search for loot might generate a high-stakes Scavenging check.)

(2) If the player is looking for some enrichment of the framing to help support some other action declaration (eg S/he wants his/her PC to climb the compound wall - are there any trees nearby? S/he wants his her PC to throw a pebble at the bedroom window to wake the sleeper inside - is there a pebble lying on the ground nearby?) then I would say yes.

(3) If the question itself is high stakes - _I need to catch the spilled blood of the mage for my master - is there a ewer in the room_?; _I've returned to my abandoned tower - is my mace still here_?; _I'm reading the scroll setting out the cult's theology - are there any hidden marks or writing_? - then it's time to roll the dice.

The only sense in which this gives the player the power to determine whether or not a rock exists is that (i) the player has the power to declare an action ("I look for a rock, so I can pick it up and throw it"), and (ii) the GM uses one of the above techniques to determine whether or not a rock is there to be picked up.

In other words, "Say 'yes' or roll the dice" is a _GM-side technique_, not a player side technique. (Contrast Fate Points in OGL Conan, which are a player side resource that permits the player to simply declare that a rock exists. I've never run or played in a game that uses such a mechanic myself; Cortex+ Heroic is the closest I've come, and it's not the same as that.)



Mercurius said:


> Or a better way to put it, I think, is that *the GM "play's" the setting as a kind of conscious, interactive entity.* In other words, the GM _is_ the setting, and the setting _is_ the GM, just as the GM is _all_ NPCs.



I discussed this upthread.

It is generally accepted that, if a PC races and NPC, the outcome should be determined by the mechanics (maybe opposed Speed checks; mabye the one with the highest Quickness score wins; depending on what the particular game dictates). It's generally accepted that the GM can't (reasonably) just fiat that his/her NPC wins the race.

So consider a PC who hopes to find the map in the study; or the mace in the tower; or the pebble on the road. That can also be settled via action resolution (as I've described above in this post) - how is the GM deciding, by fiat, that there's no map or mace or pebble there, any different from fiating that the NPC wins the race?

As a GM, I've got not doubt that I play the "gameworld" as something with which the players (via their PCs) interact. I just don't assert fiat powers to make my guy always win!



Mercurius said:


> main problem here is that you seem to take issue with the very idea of the GM as "omnipotent," as if that means he or she is inherently tyrannical.



No. It's the omnipotence I personally don't enjoy (either as player or GM).

Consider the example of the mace.

If the GM is omnipotent, then when the player says "I search the tower for the mace" then either;

(1) I say no (because that's what my notes say; that's what I feel like; I don't want my player's character to have a mace; whatever). That's personally not how I want to run a game - I regard it as railroading.

(2) I say yes. Where's the fun in that? Now the game is essentially about GM largesse, and every time something is up for grabs in the ficiton I'm the one who has to decide it. That's of zero interest to me also.

(3) I roll some dice. That's what I had to do in my Traveller game the other day, when the PCs were trying to find an alien artefact on sale at a market on a world whose inhabitants have mixed human/alien ancestry. I think it's better than (1) or (2), but is a little bit like playing the game with myself rather than my friends. (Unfortunately, Traveller doesn't have an obviously better mechanic - though in our game I have the players roll the reaction rolls for NPCs, so they're more like influence checks, and in retrospect I probably should have improvised something similar on this occasion.)

(4) The player rolls some dice, therefore (i) having a basic investment in the game play, and (ii) being in a position to bring player-side resources to bear. I like this best.



Mercurius said:


> A player only has no agency if the GM exercises their omnipotence in every moment - that is, simply tells a story.



Well, in politics this is up for grabs - historically the objection to monarchy hasn't just been that some monarchs are tyrants, but that _every_ occasion of monarchy is a possible occasion of tyranny, which leaves those subject to it fundamentally unfree.

In RPGing, though, it's more prosaic than that. If the GM is ominpotent than decision making is either (1) or (2) immediately above, and I've explained why I don't care for either of them.



Mercurius said:


> Where I think we are differing, or at least explaining two different styles along the spectrum, is the degree to which the player has power in deciding/determining whether the mace is there, without having previously said they placed it there within either their backstory or game play.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I think whether my PC finds the mace depends upon any number of factors: 1) Is it there as part of backstory? 2) Did I place it there in game play? 3) Did some NPC, via the GM's choice, find it and take it?
> 
> If none of the above applies and I ask the GM to retroactively place it there, then it is up to the GM's judgement to both i) decide whether he or she will allow that as a possibility, and ii) decide on how to determine whether it is there or not, whether through just saying "Sure, why not?" Or a dice roll, or somesuch.
> 
> What the "traditional approach" does _not_ generally include is the player saying "The mace is there because I want it to be, because this is a collaborative game and I have co-creative agency, goshdarnit!"



As I keep repeating, I have never played a RPG that resembles the "collaborative game" you describe. What RPGs do you have in mind in describing it?

I've described upthread how the mace example was resolved. The player had written into his PC's backstory that he had been working on the mace before leaving his tower. The PC arrived at the tower. It had not been established in play whether or not the mace was there. The player declared an action (of searching for it), which was resolved. It failed. Hence the PC didn't find the mace; rather, he found something that revealed to him a horrible truth about his brother.

As it turned out, the mace had been taken by a NPC (the dark elf). But that was determined (by me, the GM) as a consequence of the failed check, not an input into it.

Your (3) - the GM fiats that it's not there - or your "sure, why not" are both approches that I don't like for the reasons I've stated. And I've also explained why I find it more immersive, both as player and GM, to have the player rather than the GM declare the action and roll the dice.



Mercurius said:


> Can't the setting be modified and adapted from a starting template (created by the GM) through the course of the telling of the story? In a sense, a kind of "world-building GM fiat?" If it is all behind the GM's screen (proverbially speaking), what's the harm?
> 
> In other words, let's say the players present ideas about the setting that the GM likes and thinks augment the campaign in some way, even though they might be different than what he or she has in his/her campaign notes (to use your phrasing). Do you see any issue with the GM doing this sort of thing?
> 
> The setting, as I see it, is not set in stone until some aspect of it is revealed or experienced by the PCs, at which point _that_ aspect (and only that aspect) *is* set in stone, at least for the most part.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Thus the GM's role as "illusionist" - making the setting real and immersive. Isn't that the point of world-building, to go back to the OP? And whatever it takes to do so?



If others like this sort of game, then go for it. I think I've explained why I don't like it.

As a GM, I have no interest in being an "illusionist" who decides all outcomes by fiat, treating player action declarations merely as suggestions.

As a player, I want to play my characer as I envision him/her, not the GM's interpretation of my character and his/her situation.



Mercurius said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Here is an excellent summary of the "indie"-style of RPGing, under the heading "The Standard Narrativistic Model"
> 
> 
> 
> 
> All of which could be applied to a number of approaches - not just "indie." In other words, I don't see how that description applies to indie and not traditional.
Click to expand...


If you're serious about this, then I strongly encourage you to re-read what Eero Tuovinen has written (which I quoted).

In what you call the "traditional" model: the PCs aren't designed with built in hooks or drives or motivations (other than the most basic - we want loot and XP); the GM does not frame scenes that prompt choices driven by those motivations (eg look at [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s post, where in years of play the fact that his PC hopes to be a Senator has never been a principal focus of the game); and the GM does not narrate consequences in a way the leads naturally and inevitably into further scenes of that kind. Many posters on these boards, including [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] who is posting in this thread, not only design adventures independently of knowing what PCs the players will be playing, but advocate that as the best way to run a game: that may be standard for the "traditional" model, but is completely antithetical to what Eero Tuovinen is talking about.

Likewise, many posters on these boards (none yet in this thread, I think) assert that it is "contried" or "artificial" for the GM to deliberately frame situations so that they pull on the PC backstories; indeed, many GMs (again, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is a professed example) regard player-author backstory as a completley optinal consideration for the GM.

And "traditional" modules are full of fetch quests, "rescue the princess"-type episodes which are simply a series of dungeon challenges with a McGuffin at the end; etc. All this is the complete opposite of the Standard Narrativistic Model.

Look at an AP - with the villains pre-established, all the major scenes sketched out in advance, the climax already written - and then actually imagine playing a game in the way Tuovinen describes it: the _players_ deciding what will be important to their PCs, the GM using those hooks to frame situations and guide the adjudication of consequences, and then ask yourself how could an AP be used in that game? It couldn't. You may be able to take ideas or little vignettes from it (that's how I use modules) but you couldn't "run the AP", because that woudl require knowing all the consequences in advance, and hence all the motivations and choices and the outcomes of those choices in advance; which can't be done.


----------



## pemerton

Mercurius said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If the GM is telling a story, and the players are acting, who is wrting their script? If the answer is that they're free to write their own script, then in what sense is the GM telling a story?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Responsively. The "script" is co-created, improvised, along certain guidelines which vary in terms of how strongly they are adhered to (this is where "railroading" comes in).
Click to expand...




Mercurius said:


> The story is created through the interaction between the GM's framing and the player's choices and actions. The GM presents a context, environment, and possible choices, and the players choose what they want to do given that context, environment, and possible choices - or they may find a completely different way that the GM did not account for, and the GM responds accordingly to the internal logic of the campaign world.



The key question is, how does that interaction take place?

Is it by the players making suggstions to the GM? That is what you seemed to imply in your description of "illusionist" GMing upthread, and is also what I take away from your suggestion that the GM tells a story in response to player input.

Is it by the players negotiating with the GM? That is how kids play cops and robbers - mutual negotiation. At a certain point it makes a distinctive GM role redundant.

Is it by action resolution mechanics? In my view, this is part of what makes RPGing distinctive, and different from other ways of a group generating a shared fiction together. In historical terms, it's also the key legacy from wargames.

If action resolution is never binding on the GM (either because s/he can veto it, or secretly establish fictional positioning that leads to it failing), then action declaration, in practice, becomes the making of suggestions to the GM by the players. Which seems to make it the GM's story, but taking suggestions from friends.

If action resolution is binding on the GM, then it's simply misleading to say it's the GM's story. The GM brings something to the table - some element of setting, say, like the study in the house where the PCs (and their players) are hoping to find the map - and the players bring something to the table - their PCs who decide to search the study in the hope of finding the map there - and then we learn what the story is by rolling the dice and adjudcating the outcome.


----------



## Mercurius

Pemerton, there is just too much to reply to and a lot of it getting to be quite redundant, so I'll try to tease out some points...I keep wanting to simmer this down but it seems to be rather difficult!



pemerton said:


> @_*Mercurius*_, there are some point where I think you have mis-spoken, or seem not to understand some RPG techniques.
> 
> The player has no agency in the fictional world, any more than you have the power to punch Sherlock Holmes in the unose.




You are correct: I misspoke. I meant to say the PC has agency, in that the player is acting through and as the character and cannot act within the narrative without the character as "avatar."



pemerton said:


> _Lots of stuff about rocks_



_


_Sorry, pemerton, the noise just outweighs the signal here. I fear that your dissertation is a case in which more is less. What exactly are you trying to say? I can't determine how what you are saying is unique to indie-style play, or opposed to traditional style - except the more glaringly extreme version of it that you continue to prop up, which doesn't represent the vast majority of traditional campaigns I've played in. Again, it is a spectrum. I'm going to keep hammering that home, because you seem to want to make this black and white.



pemerton said:


> It is generally accepted that, if a PC races and NPC, the outcome should be determined by the mechanics (maybe opposed Speed checks; mabye the one with the highest Quickness score wins; depending on what the particular game dictates). It's generally accepted that the GM can't (reasonably) just fiat that his/her NPC wins the race.




I would say the GM better have a very good reason for doing so.



pemerton said:


> So consider a PC who hopes to find the map in the study; or the mace in the tower; or the pebble on the road. That can also be settled via action resolution (as I've described above in this post) - how is the GM deciding, by fiat, that there's no map or mace or pebble there, any different from fiating that the NPC wins the race?
> 
> As a GM, I've got not doubt that I play the "gameworld" as something with which the players (via their PCs) interact. I just don't assert fiat powers to make my guy always win!




And who does? Only abusive, power-mongering GMs. Sure, they exist, but it isn't intrinsic to traditional play. I have played with such GMs, but not in a long time - and they were always in their early 20s or younger. 

I mean, I just don't get the "GM vs. Players" mentality. I don't see RPGs as a competitive sport, at least not D&D. But it also just seems silly, considering that the GM can always win if he or she really wants to. 

As a GM, the only way I "win" is if everyone at the table has a good time. Isn't that the bottom line?



pemerton said:


> Well, in politics this is up for grabs - historically the objection to monarchy hasn't just been that some monarchs are tyrants, but that _every_ occasion of monarchy is a possible occasion of tyranny, which leaves those subject to it fundamentally unfree.




Ahh, so I was right about the "RPG libertarianism"...or shall we say classical liberalism? This is the heart of your view, I think, which is a political one.

Maybe in the end you simply take your RPGing more seriously than I do. For me it is not a political matter, it is about having fun. 

Now don't get me wrong: there are other contexts in life in which I am more stringent to certain ideological principles. But not in RPGs, and I'm guessing this is because you are more serious and dedicated to your gaming than I am. I'm not saying that as a judgement on either of us, but I do think it matters in terms of understanding how we are coming at this discussion from different perspectives, and perhaps "granularity of concern." 



pemerton said:


> In RPGing, though, it's more prosaic than that. If the GM is ominpotent than decision making is either (1) or (2) immediately above, and I've explained why I don't care for either of them.




But this is simply not true. As you yourself said, the choice could be 1, 2, 3, or 4...why is it now only 1 or 2? What changed?

I think the GM decides, as adjudicator, which method best applies given the situation and campaign assumptions. Where you and I disagree is on how much power the GM should have to decide which way to resolve an action; you seem to think it necessary for there to be external limits and rules put on the GM, whereas I don't. 

Actually, in this regard, I am probably far more laissez-faire than you...I say, let the market decide! Meaning, if the GM abuses his or her power, the players can leave. Why do I feel this way? Because if a GM is such a person that _needs _external limits in order not to abuse power, then that is the type of person I don't really want to game with to begin with! Just as if I'm a GM and my players insist that I have external limitations put on me as the GM, there's a level of mistrust that I will find off-putting. 

So for me there's a "sacred agreement" of trust between GM and players. I'm not sure I want to play in a game where that isn't there.



pemerton said:


> As a GM, I have no interest in being an "illusionist" who decides all outcomes by fiat, treating player action declarations merely as suggestions.




_Again, _who is talking about "*all *outcomes by fiat" or "treating player action declarations *merely* as suggestions?" Maybe someone else, but not I.



pemerton said:


> As a player, I want to play my characer as I envision him/her, not the GM's interpretation of my character and his/her situation.




Agreed! 



pemerton said:


> In what you call the "traditional" model: the PCs aren't designed with built in hooks or drives or motivations (other than the most basic - we want loot and XP); the GM does not frame scenes that prompt choices driven by those motivations (eg look at @_*Lanefan*_'s post, where in years of play the fact that his PC hopes to be a Senator has never been a principal focus of the game); and the GM does not narrate consequences in a way the leads naturally and inevitably into further scenes of that kind. Many posters on these boards, including @_*Lanefan*_ who is posting in this thread, not only design adventures independently of knowing what PCs the players will be playing, but advocate that as the best way to run a game: that may be standard for the "traditional" model, but is completely antithetical to what Eero Tuovinen is talking about.




Again, you're reducing a spectrum to a single caricatured strawman. This is why I don't find "indie" vs. "traditional" to be all that useful (even though I'm guilty of using it), or at least only worthwhile as a study in abstract contrasts. It is a *spectrum*, with infinite variation between. 

The reason I don't think you see this is that you seem to be somewhat of a purist: there is a clear line that you don't cross, but the problem is that anything on the other side is muddled and therefore "dirty," and all in the same category because it doesn't adhere to indie puritanism. You seem to want everything spelled out before hand, everything defined. 



pemerton said:


> Likewise, many posters on these boards (none yet in this thread, I think) assert that it is "contried" or "artificial" for the GM to deliberately frame situations so that they pull on the PC backstories; indeed, many GMs (again, @_*Lanefan*_ is a professed example) regard player-author backstory as a completley optinal consideration for the GM.




Again, I mix this sort of thing in. If this is really the case, as a GM I'm somewhere between you and Lanefan (although I'm not convinced that Lanefan or many on these boards are as extreme as you describe...but I could be wrong).



pemerton said:


> And "traditional" modules are full of fetch quests, "rescue the princess"-type episodes which are simply a series of dungeon challenges with a McGuffin at the end; etc. All this is the complete opposite of the Standard Narrativistic Model.




Yes, and that's the framework upon which every single campaign will vary from on a spectrum, from "by the book" to "how the heck did we get here?" I've always seen modules as basic themes that can--but don't have to be--improvised from. That's the beauty of them, of pre-published settings, of anything published: You can do whatever you want with them. As the GM, you can make them your own.


----------



## Mercurius

pemerton said:


> The key question is, how does that interaction take place?
> 
> Is it by the players making suggstions to the GM? ...
> 
> Is it by the players negotiating with the GM? ...
> 
> Is it by action resolution mechanics? ...




Why not all three and (perhaps) more? It is a mix, a soup, and depends upon context.

The GM's toolbox is varied and deep. I wouldn't want to limit it to one type of tool, or one right way to use the tools.

In the end, the game experience is--for me--about the enjoyment of everyone at the table. This is something we haven't really talked about: GM as entertainer, or at least host. I take that role very seriously and feel that it is my duty, as GM, to do my best to create an enjoyable experience for everyone at the table. And yes, this usually includes incorporating elements of backstory, but it also sometimes means using fiat--judiciously, sparingly--if I feel that it would serve the greater good.

This does _not_ mean always judging a dice roll that would lead to a character death, or TPKO. It really depends upon the situation, and what my _gut_* says. 

(*I'm fairly certainly you won't like that ;-))


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION]

If the GM has the inherent power to veto/filter/manipulate, then it is inherent that the GM is not bound by action resolution. _Having regard to it when you're not inclined to overturn it_ is not a mode of being bound.

This then relevant to your question "Why not (1) through (4)?" (3) and (4) aren't avaiable to an omnipotent GM, because they only make sense if the GM is bound.

An omnipotent GM can, of course, make a dice roll or call for one from the player: but as s/he has the power to disregard/override it, it is nothing more than a suggestion, an additional factor that s/he might consider.

This is why I don't like it as a GMing method: when I'm GMing I want to _find out_ what happens; not to take suggestions, consider input, and the _decide_ what happens. The way I do this is by following the rules for action resolution.

You say that only an abusive GM would decide that "my guy wins" without action resolution: but in fact that is exactly what is happening every time a player looks for a map in the study (or a mace in the tower, or whatever) and the GM says "no, it's not there" on the basis of his/her notes. This is the GM playing his/her study (tower; world in general) as a "character" who is not subject to action resolution and always gets to win over player action declarations.

The point is obvious for races between PCs and NPCs. My point is that it is equally the case for any other situation in which the player is declaring an action for his/her PC in the hope of success.


----------



## pemerton

Manbearcat said:


> 9)  The players role is to explore the art (of the GM's built world and related metaplot), appreciate the art, and take-up the plot hooks therein at their discretion (the "choose-you-own-adventure" invocation).  Now "their (player) discretion" will invariably bump up against (4), (7), and (8) above.  When it does, it seems to me that the general consensus of D&D players on ENWorld amounts to "its the GM's game/table, any player is perfectly free to find another game/table."





Mercurius said:


> Actually, in this regard, I am probably far more laissez-faire than you...I say, let the market decide! Meaning, if the GM abuses his or her power, the players can leave. Why do I feel this way? Because if a GM is such a person that _needs _external limits in order not to abuse power, then that is the type of person I don't really want to game with to begin with!



Mercurius, what you say _appears_ to be an instance of the general consensus that Manbearcat posited in his point (9).

In any event, as I think I have posted upthread, I am predominanty a GM. I stumbled onto the "standard narrativistic model" as a GM, not a player. As I just posted, I favour it because it means I'm not making decisions about what happens, but instead am finding out along with everyone else at the table.

The concept of "trust" has little or nothing to do with it, other than that I've always trusted my players to come up with interesting PCs and to make interesting action declarations when confronted with the situations that I frame them into.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> The PC has agency in the fictional world, but it's fictional ie imaginary agency and so, as I explained to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] not too far upthread is orthogonal to issues of railroading etc. (A PC might be enlaved by some other being, yet the player have unfettered autonomy, because the player determines the details of what the enslaving being asks of the PC.)



Huh?

How in blazes does the player of a PC who is enslaved by some other being get to in any way determine the details of what the enslaving being asks it to do?  That has to come from the enslaver, doesn't it?

The only options an enslaved PC has are to do what it is told to do and do it well, or do what it is told to do but intentionally do it poorly or somehow corrupt the work, or to not do what it's told and resist.



> And the player may or may not have agency in the real world, in the playing of the game, depending on his/her capacity to change the state of the shared fiction. But the process of doing that does not resemble throwing rocks or climbing walls in the real world - it resembles playing cops and robbers, or writing a story with some friends, or improv acting, though is not identical to any of those.
> 
> I don't know of any tabletop RPG where a player makes it true, in the fiction, that his/her PC has picked up a rock by actually doing it, ie actually picking up a rock.



Tabletop no, but what about LARP?  In a LARP you would in fact pick up a rock...

And from there it's an easy step to try and bring the LARP ideals to the tabletop; in that you do everything in character as far as possible except for the actual action and movement bits.  The main difference is that in a LARP you can bend down and pick up the rock you see where at a table you have to ask the DM whether there's a rock handy.  Seems simple enough to me. 



> But all action declaration in a RPG depends upon the fictional positioning of the PC - you can't say "I pick up a rock" and hope to have that action declaration succeed if your PC is not in the vicinity of some rocks; you can't say "I buy a shovel" and hope to have that action declaration succeed if your PC is not in the vicinity of some friendly purveyors of shovels; etc.
> 
> In a game run on the basis of GM pre-authorship with secret elements of the gameworld, it is possible for a player to _think_ that the fictional positioning is appropriate for declaring some action, but in fact it is not. So the player declares the action, and perhaps the GM even allows the dice to be rolled (or rolls them behind the screen), but the check will always fail (and thus the fiction not develop in the way that the player wants) because _in fact_ the fictional positioning was not apposite.



 Depending on the situation, that could be on the DM for not providing enough detail in narration; or it could be on the player for making assumptions about the situation instead of asking for clarification and-or more details first.

Also, there is nothing that ever says the fiction has to develop in the way that the player (and PC) wants - and this is my beef with "say yes or roll the dice" when in a say-yes (i.e. no meaningful stakes) situation: the DM is forced by the rules to say yes to something even though for reasons of internal gameworld consistency or plot development she doesn't want to.  In other words, she's railroaded.

When in roll-the-dice mode, she's railroaded by the dice.



> My reason for caring about (iiI) is that, if the secret is overwhelming and the players don't learn it, then the game has a feel of "rocks fall, everybody dies".



Or they just don't learn it and the game goes on without their knowing it. 



> I think that is fair game in classic dungeoneering - ToH is full of it - but I personally don't care for classic dungeoneering as a playstyle, and hence include (iii) as a desideratum. Both the examples I gave satisfy (iii) - a skill challenge isn't lost with a single failure; and one invisilbe foe (who is otherwise part of a fairly desinged encounter) isn't going to lead, in iteslf, to a TPK.



One invisible foe who can remain invisible while attacking (e.g. is under Improved Invisibility) can, if lucky, TPK a party.

And whether or not you in particular care for classic dungeoneering, it's still a major part of the overall game and thus not to be so easily dismissed.



> As well as _secret_ backstory, there can simply be unestablilshed backstory. Is there a rock nearby? Is the mace inthe tower? Will the captain of the starship respond sympathetically to a mayday call, even if that means going against strict security procedures? (That last one is from the Traveller thread I referenced a bit earlier in this thread.)
> 
> For this, I favour three possible approaches.
> 
> (1) If it's obviously inappropriate given genre and established backstory (eg Luke Crane's example of beam weapons in the Duke's toilet) then the answer is no. I would also extend this to low/no stakes distractions - "we search the bodies for loot". In my 4e game I'll often just say "They've got nothing valuable", rather than waste time on what is essentially a distraction - loot is on a "timer" (treasure parcels), and if I've got interesting ideas for how those parcels can come into play, I'm not intersted in spending time on paragon-tier PCs looting hobgoblins.



Even though in the 4e modules I've run the foes often do carry interesting stuff in the form of their in-use weapons or armour* that's not listed under their treasure but still has value.  The modules (and the rules?  not sure on this) seem to think this all disappears somehow when the foe dies or is defeated.  Doesn't make sense, and blows away believability. (remember: I come from a gaming ethos where every shred of treasure we can carry out comes with us**, so yeah, I'd be looting those bodies every time even just for their weapons)

* - I can dig up examples if needed.
** - even though we don't use the xp-for-g.p. rule and haven't since before I started playing.



> (2) If the player is looking for some enrichment of the framing to help support some other action declaration (eg S/he wants his/her PC to climb the compound wall - are there any trees nearby? S/he wants his her PC to throw a pebble at the bedroom window to wake the sleeper inside - is there a pebble lying on the ground nearby?) then I would say yes.



For the pebble, sure.

For the tree, if I knew ahead of time whether there's a tree there or not I'd narrate that; if I didn't, I'd roll.  Reason for this is that the presence/absense of a tree is far more important than that of a pebble in that a tree can be climbed (as in the example), set on fire as a distraction, used as a hiding place, etc.



> In other words, "Say 'yes' or roll the dice" is a _GM-side technique_, not a player side technique.



Fine, but in that case the DM should be doing the rolling.



> It is generally accepted that, if a PC races and NPC, the outcome should be determined by the mechanics (maybe opposed Speed checks; mabye the one with the highest Quickness score wins; depending on what the particular game dictates). It's generally accepted that the GM can't (reasonably) just fiat that his/her NPC wins the race.
> 
> So consider a PC who hopes to find the map in the study; or the mace in the tower; or the pebble on the road. That can also be settled via action resolution (as I've described above in this post) - how is the GM deciding, by fiat, that there's no map or mace or pebble there, any different from fiating that the NPC wins the race?



Yes it is different.

A race between a PC and an NPC involves a non-static opponent and an in-doubt outcome...the same as if they were fighting each other rather than racing only the rules for fighting are many orders of magnitude more detailed.  This needs dice.

A search for a map or a mace involves something static - the map or mace is where it is and the only doubt about the outcome is whether anyone finds it or not.  This can be done via meaningless dice rolled by the DM or by simple narration; except in the room where the item actually is in which case the dice roll isn't meaningless and the DM narrates to what it says (unless the item is obvious e.g. the mace is mounted over the fireplace, in which case the DM just narrates that).



> No. It's the omnipotence I personally don't enjoy (either as player or GM).
> 
> Consider the example of the mace.
> 
> If the GM is omnipotent, then when the player says "I search the tower for the mace" then either;
> 
> (1) I say no (1 -because that's what my notes say; 2 - that's what I feel like; 3 - I don't want my player's character to have a mace; whatever). That's personally not how I want to run a game - I regard it as railroading.



I've taken the liberty of inserting numbers in the quote just above, to break it out.

1 is perfectly valid.  The notes/module/plan/ says the mace isn't here and thus it isn't going to be found here.  This is not railroading in the commonly-accepted sense of the term, no matter how many times you want to say that it is.

2 and 3 are arguably railroading by any standard but more importantly are certainly examples of a DM playing in bad faith whether she's using prepared notes or not.  Omnipotent power brings with it a responsibility to use it in good faith.



> (2) I say yes. Where's the fun in that? Now the game is essentially about GM largesse, and every time something is up for grabs in the ficiton I'm the one who has to decide it. That's of zero interest to me also.



Ditto.  Monty Haul, here we come. 



> (3) I roll some dice. That's what I had to do in my Traveller game the other day, when the PCs were trying to find an alien artefact on sale at a market on a world whose inhabitants have mixed human/alien ancestry. I think it's better than (1) or (2), but is a little bit like playing the game with myself rather than my friends. (Unfortunately, Traveller doesn't have an obviously better mechanic - though in our game I have the players roll the reaction rolls for NPCs, so they're more like influence checks, and in retrospect I probably should have improvised something similar on this occasion.)



If in doubt here and dice need to be rolled you as DM should be rolling them, because...



> (4) The player rolls some dice, therefore (i) having a basic investment in the game play, and (ii) being in a position to bring player-side resources to bear. I like this best.



...if the player rolls and fails she knows she failed because of her own incompetence rather than being in the more realistic situation of doubt whether that was the cause or whether there's in fact nothing here to be found.  It gives the player (and thus the PC) knowledge she shouldn't have.



> As a player, I want to play my characer as I envision him/her,



Nothing can stop you doing this except a truly asshat DM.



> not the GM's interpretation of my character and his/her situation.



You get to play and interpret your character but it's the DM's job to present the situation your character might find itself in.



> In what you call the "traditional" model: the PCs aren't designed with built in hooks or drives or motivations (other than the most basic - we want loot and XP); the GM does not frame scenes that prompt choices driven by those motivations (eg look at [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s post, where in years of play the fact that his PC hopes to be a Senator has never been a principal focus of the game);



And in all fairness nor should it.  There's 5 other players in that game, why should I be the special snowflake?

Now if in character I can talk the rest of 'em into going along with what I have in mind (this'll be a bit down the road, we're up to our ears in backlogged tasks and unfinished business right now) then OK, we're on.  But it's on me to persuade them, not on the DM to proactively insert it.

And if I do manage to somehow persuade them into this the DM's (and some of our own) very elaborate plots within plots we've been working through for years are all probably going to go out the window.  That said, I know from experience that he's quite capable of hitting the curveball. 



> and the GM does not narrate consequences in a way the leads naturally and inevitably into further scenes of that kind. Many posters on these boards, including [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] who is posting in this thread, not only design adventures independently of knowing what PCs the players will be playing, but advocate that as the best way to run a game: that may be standard for the "traditional" model, but is completely antithetical to what Eero Tuovinen is talking about.



Traditional's where it's at, baby! 



> Likewise, many posters on these boards (none yet in this thread, I think) assert that it is "contried" or "artificial" for the GM to deliberately frame situations so that they pull on the PC backstories; indeed, many GMs (again, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is a professed example) regard player-author backstory as a completley optinal consideration for the GM.



Of course, as I know some players (often including me) can't be bothered to do 'em.

The whole bit with the Senate ambition came about during play - it was never in her backstory.  In fact, she's one of those many characters for whom I didn't even bother figuring out her history until she'd survived a few adventures and looked like she was going to stick around awhile.



> Look at an AP - with the villains pre-established, all the major scenes sketched out in advance, the climax already written - and then actually imagine playing a game in the way Tuovinen describes it: the _players_ deciding what will be important to their PCs, the GM using those hooks to frame situations and guide the adjudication of consequences, and then ask yourself how could an AP be used in that game? It couldn't. You may be able to take ideas or little vignettes from it (that's how I use modules) but you couldn't "run the AP", because that woudl require knowing all the consequences in advance, and hence all the motivations and choices and the outcomes of those choices in advance; which can't be done.



Yes, hard APs are somewhat intended to be railroady but most of the time all involved know going in what they've signed up for and are cool with it.

Lan-"I've baked homebrew APs into bigger campaigns as what amount to multi-adventure story arcs but have never run one stand-alone"-efan


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Huh?
> 
> How in blazes does the player of a PC who is enslaved by some other being get to in any way determine the details of what the enslaving being asks it to do?  That has to come from the enslaver, doesn't it?
> 
> The only options an enslaved PC has are to do what it is told to do and do it well, or do what it is told to do but intentionally do it poorly or somehow corrupt the work, or to not do what it's told and resist.



I'll just reply to this for the moment.

I gave an example upthread. One of the PCs in my Burning Wheel game is subject to Force of Will (approximately equal to Domination, in D&D terms) from a dark naga. He has been since his second session.

The player wrote a Belief about serving his master (maybe with a more detailed than that - I haven't got the PC sheet in front of me), and since then has been pursuing that belief. The player plays the game just like everyone else, with exactly the same degree of agency in declaring actions for his PC and finding out what happens.

It's not that complicated!

EDIT: OK, I'll also respond to the comment about _doubt_.

You say it's in doubt as to who will win the race, but not as to where the map is. But the only reason that it's in doubt as to who wins the race is because no one has written that bit of the story yet. The location of the map could just as easily be unwritten. Similarly, the outcome of the race could just as easily be written - there are modules, for instance, that specify that certain NPCs escape or survive no matter what actions the players declare.

So why does the GM get to decide that the map is here rather than there, without need to subject that to the rigours of action resolution? I'm not saying there's no answer, but it can't be _because the GM has decided_. That's just begging the question.


----------



## Sebastrd

pemerton said:


> This is why I don't like it as a GMing method: when I'm GMing I want to _find out_ what happens; not to take suggestions, consider input, and the _decide_ what happens. The way I do this is by following the rules for action resolution.




Congrats. You're free to play the way you enjoy. That doesn't make your way the "right"way, but it seems that was the entire purpose of this thread - and we all knew it.

Your inability to understand why I prefer to play a different way has no bearing on the validity of that playstyle. Happy gaming.


----------



## Caliban

Sebastrd said:


> Congrats. You're free to play the way you enjoy. That doesn't make your way the "right"way, but it seems that was the entire purpose of this thread - and we all knew it.
> 
> Your inability to understand why I prefer to play a different way has no bearing on the validity of that playstyle. Happy gaming.




They sound kind of like someone who is tired of GM'ing and wants to play, but doesn't trust anyone else to GM for them, so they want a game were the GM just handles rules adjudications then gets out of the way while the players all describe how cool their characters are and how they are going to succeed (in a cool fashion) at whatever it is they have decided they are doing.  

Which can certainly work if everyone is on the same page, but if they aren't it sounds like the game could suffer from conflicting versions of reality as presented by different players. 

Kind of (but not exactly) like the difference between a single author creating a consistent setting for their stories, and a bunch of writers creating a shared universe, but being unable to agree on exactly what is allowed in the setting...and them being forced to put all their characters in the same stories anyway.  So you have Jimmie Grimdark the brooding paladin with a dark past,  Jennifer DDisaster the busty enchantress who has never found a situation she can't seduce her way out of, and Timmy "Solid Naga" Jones - who has an assault rifle and can find ammunition by breaking crates and barrels.  For reasons.  (Kind of went off on a tangent there...)

Or not.  What do I know.


----------



## Sebastrd

Caliban said:


> They sound kind of like someone who is tired of GM'ing and wants to play, but doesn't trust anyone else to GM for them, so they want a game were the GM just handles rules adjudications then gets out of the way while the players all describe how cool their characters are and how they are going to succeed (in a cool fashion) at whatever it is they have decided they are doing.




I got the exact same impression.


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## Krachek

The Worldbuilding is an additional value to RPG and war game.
You can always stay on the micro level. The battlefield or the dungeon level.
But over time, players want more immersive feelings. 
The worldbuilding was very brief 30 years ago, but now in 2018 people want just more.
The players want more background for their characters and an more precise description of the 'rest of the world'.


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## darkbard

Caliban said:


> They sound kind of like someone who is tired of GM'ing and wants to play, but doesn't trust anyone else to GM for them, so they want a game were the GM just handles rules adjudications then gets out of the way while the players all describe how cool their characters are and how they are going to succeed (in a cool fashion) at whatever it is they have decided they are doing.




Wow! Why the nastiness, folks?  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] begins threads to explore theory and gameplay that he's interested in. You have no obligation to join in the conversation if you find his ideas distatasteful. 

Despite the occasionally contentious topic, pemerton's tone remains measured, sometimes in the face of considerable pushback. There's really no need for the ad hominem attacks.


----------



## Caliban

darkbard said:


> Wow! Why the nastiness, folks?  @_*pemerton*_ begins threads to explore theory and gameplay that he's interested in. You have no obligation to join in the conversation if you find his ideas distatasteful.
> 
> Despite the occasionally contentious topic, pemerton's tone remains measured, sometimes in the face of considerable pushback. There's really no need for the ad hominem attacks.



That was in no way an ad hominem attack, or even "nasty" and I'm offended that you would misrepresent it as such.

Please don't try to create drama where it doesn't exist.


----------



## Mercurius

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION]
> 
> If the GM has the inherent power to veto/filter/manipulate, then it is inherent that the GM is not bound by action resolution. _Having regard to it when you're not inclined to overturn it_ is not a mode of being bound.
> 
> This then relevant to your question "Why not (1) through (4)?" (3) and (4) aren't avaiable to an omnipotent GM, because they only make sense if the GM is bound.
> 
> An omnipotent GM can, of course, make a dice roll or call for one from the player: but as s/he has the power to disregard/override it, it is nothing more than a suggestion, an additional factor that s/he might consider.
> 
> This is why I don't like it as a GMing method: when I'm GMing I want to _find out_ what happens; not to take suggestions, consider input, and the _decide_ what happens. The way I do this is by following the rules for action resolution.
> 
> You say that only an abusive GM would decide that "my guy wins" without action resolution: but in fact that is exactly what is happening every time a player looks for a map in the study (or a mace in the tower, or whatever) and the GM says "no, it's not there" on the basis of his/her notes. This is the GM playing his/her study (tower; world in general) as a "character" who is not subject to action resolution and always gets to win over player action declarations.
> 
> The point is obvious for races between PCs and NPCs. My point is that it is equally the case for any other situation in which the player is declaring an action for his/her PC in the hope of success.




Pemerton, this is why I see you as a bit of a purist: you don't seem to make any differentiation between GMing that uses fiat very sparingly, vs. frequent use.

You seemingly use it 0% of the time. I use it <5% of the time, maybe 1-2%. Do you see a difference between that and someone who uses it liberally, say 20+% of the time?

Again, fiat is -- at least when I'm GMing -- simply a kind of failsafe that I will only use if I feel that it would greatly improve the play experience or campaign. I'll give you an example - not a real example, but the type of situation where I will fiat.

I often resorted to some kind of fiat in 4E combat, when it got "grindy." Even when we become proficient at it, reduced monster HP, etc, there was invariably a point in which the outcome of the combat was 99.99999% certain: the monster was going to die. Let's say the monster has 33 HP left and a rogue does a rather dramatic sneak attack and does 29 HP of damage...I would often call that a kill shot.

Another example: There's about an hour before the end of a session, but there are several rooms before the PCs get to the room with the treasure and/or big bad guy. I might have one or two of those in-between rooms cease to exist, because I think the game experience would be better served by reaching the final room before the session ended.

Or what about rolling random encounters - if I roll something that I think would be boring or tedious or detract from the game experience, I might roll again or choose something. Similarly with treasure. If I'm rolling treasure in a chest (because rolling for treasure is fun), and I roll a halberd +2 and no player is proficient in halberd, I might change that to something that a player can happily use.

And yes, all options are available to an omnipotent GM: it just requires judgement and self-discipline. I understand why you feel the way you feel, but I also don't experience the need for that kind of purity in my game, or that it detracts from it in any way.

Like you, I enjoy "finding out" what happens next - but that doesn't require being 100% pure about every single action resolution. I'm happy with 95% purity .


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I'll just reply to this for the moment.
> 
> I gave an example upthread. One of the PCs in my Burning Wheel game is subject to Force of Will (approximately equal to Domination, in D&D terms) from a dark naga. He has been since his second session.
> 
> The player wrote a Belief about serving his master (maybe with a more detailed than that - I haven't got the PC sheet in front of me), and since then has been pursuing that belief. The player plays the game just like everyone else, with exactly the same degree of agency in declaring actions for his PC and finding out what happens.



Is the naga in consistent communication with the PC?  If yes, then in theory the PC would be receiving instruction now and then (if not constantly) as to how to react to or initiate developments and would be forced by the Force of Will to obey.  If no, then the enslavement is irrelevant and - after writing the appropriate Belief on the character sheet - both the player and PC can proceed pretty much as they would otherwise normally do.

Also, when you said enslavement I was thinking of an actual slave-master situation as in Roman times.  Magical domination takes away any option other than full obedience - the victim (if under constant instruction) becomes little more than an automaton, and if not will still act on what it's been told to do when the chance arises.  Kind of like the Imperius curse in Harry Potter.



> EDIT: OK, I'll also respond to the comment about _doubt_.
> 
> You say it's in doubt as to who will win the race, but not as to where the map is. But the only reason that it's in doubt as to who wins the race is because no one has written that bit of the story yet.



An analogy, though not the greatest, might be that the race is an opposed check where the search is a passive check.



> The location of the map could just as easily be unwritten.



It could, though if the map holds any great importance its location should be noted somewhere.

I think of things like this as - again for lack of a better term - hard-coded.  The map's in the desk drawer in room 14.



> Similarly, the outcome of the race could just as easily be written - there are modules, for instance, that specify that certain NPCs escape or survive no matter what actions the players declare.



Yeah, I've never been a big fan of that sort of thing either (Dragonlance DL1-DL12, if memory serves, is rife with examples of this throughout).  It's certainly possible to give NPCs all kinds of out clauses and escape strategies, but for my part if the dice say the NPC dies now then dead it is; and any plans I may have had for it in the future go down the drain.  It's just another type of curveball.



> So why does the GM get to decide that the map is here rather than there, without need to subject that to the rigours of action resolution? I'm not saying there's no answer, but it can't be _because the GM has decided_. That's just begging the question.



Why does the DM get to decide?  Because it's the DM's job to set things in place within the dungeon and gameworld - this is part of what makes a DM's role different from that of a player.

An analogy is perhaps a Christmas present or an Easter egg.  Somebody has to have wrapped/hidden it, and thus already know what's inside or where it is; and that somebody is analagous to a DM setting up the game world for the players to discover.

Also, the very term "action resolution" is here a bit misleading.  Yes a PC has declared an action, and that action gets resolved...but the resolution of that action only applies to the PC and her immediate surrounds, not to anything static within the rest of the game world.  Thus, "successfully" searching for the map in room 11 shouldn't have the map suddenly move there from room 14 - instead, all it accomplishes is to determine that the map is not in room 11.  You allow action resolution to affect the game world itself, which as a side effect makes the game world unrealistically malleable - more like a dream world than a real one - where things move around to suit the action resolution.  (and yes, they move around - unless you posit the map never existed anywhere in the game world before being found, which is even more unrealistic)

For consistency, realism, and believability it works better the other way around, where the action resolutions are bound by the constructed world / setting / dungeon.

Lanefan


----------



## Aenghus

Lanefan said:


> Is the naga in consistent communication with the PC?  If yes, then in theory the PC would be receiving instruction now and then (if not constantly) as to how to react to or initiate developments and would be forced by the Force of Will to obey.  If no, then the enslavement is irrelevant and - after writing the appropriate Belief on the character sheet - both the player and PC can proceed pretty much as they would otherwise normally do.
> 
> Also, when you said enslavement I was thinking of an actual slave-master situation as in Roman times.  Magical domination takes away any option other than full obedience - the victim (if under constant instruction) becomes little more than an automaton, and if not will still act on what it's been told to do when the chance arises.  Kind of like the Imperius curse in Harry Potter.




Well, in a particular game it depends what the priorities are and how the magic works in that setting. 

A RPG is at the one and the same time a bunch of PCs in a gameworld and a bunch of people sitting down and socialising. The relative importance of these activities varies from group to group and day to day.

One thing I'm very sensitive to is imposed changes on a PC that could make them no longer satisfying to their player. I'm talking about mid to long term changes here, not short term ones - it's reasonable to expect a player to put up with a short-term condition such as an injury or mind whammy.The one thing that players have nominal control of even in conventional games is their PC - anything that potentially messes up that PC long-term is an issue to consider carefully. Long term mind control of a PC definitely has the potential to be problematic, depending on how it works.(crippling injuries were the other issue that could make a PC unfun or unplayable in the eyes of their player. In the majority of RPGs I've been in the players can retire characters on request, though the referee may try to persuade them  not to. 

I've seen a number of referees make promises to players that PC issues were temporary over the years, and in some cases these promises were broken.


Some systems of magic are absolute and deterministic, but can be run differently, and there are magic systems which are considerably more ambiguous and amenable to negotiation. If the mind control effectively makes the PC an NPC, then forcing the player to keep playing the character seems cruel and unusual punishment.

However, if the priority in the game is that the player keeps playing that PC, that means the mind control has to be tolerable and the PC still playable.Seeing as the game magic is entirely fictional and doesn't exist, it can work any way that group wants it to work. Consistency that makes the participants miserable is arguably foolish and counterproductive.


----------



## pemerton

Sebastrd said:


> Congrats. You're free to play the way you enjoy. That doesn't make your way the "right"way, but it seems that was the entire purpose of this thread - and we all knew it.
> 
> Your inability to understand why I prefer to play a different way has no bearing on the validity of that playstyle. Happy gaming.



Three things:

(1) I've never talked about a "right way" to play. I started a thread with a question: some posters answered it (@Nagol, [MENTION=284]Caliban[/MENTION], etc). Some other posters - [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION], [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] - asserted or implied that by asking the question I was insulting them. To be frank, that's on them, not on me. If they don't want to answer the question "what is GM worldbuiling for", or think that the answer is so self-evident that to ask the question is to commit some RPG faux pas, well, no one is forcing them to post in the thread.

(2) What makes you think I don't understand why you prefer to play a different way? When I say "This is why I don't like such-and-such", what makes you think I'm telling you why you shouldn't like it?

(3) I've replied with courtesy and honesty to all your posts in this thread, and have not attacked you or your preferences (unless you consider me explaining why my preference are different an attack -  in which case see (1) and (2) above). I'm a little surprised that you don't seem capable of doing the same.


----------



## pemerton

Sebastrd said:


> I got the exact same impression.



You could just ask. I'm still here.


----------



## pemerton

First, as I've mentioned you in another recent post - I do want to thank you for the courtesy of your posts in this thread.



Mercurius said:


> fiat is -- at least when I'm GMing -- simply a kind of failsafe that I will only use if I feel that it would greatly improve the play experience or campaign. I'll give you an example - not a real example, but the type of situation where I will fiat.
> 
> I often resorted to some kind of fiat in 4E combat, when it got "grindy." Even when we become proficient at it, reduced monster HP, etc, there was invariably a point in which the outcome of the combat was 99.99999% certain: the monster was going to die. Let's say the monster has 33 HP left and a rogue does a rather dramatic sneak attack and does 29 HP of damage...I would often call that a kill shot.
> 
> Another example: There's about an hour before the end of a session, but there are several rooms before the PCs get to the room with the treasure and/or big bad guy. I might have one or two of those in-between rooms cease to exist, because I think the game experience would be better served by reaching the final room before the session ended.



I see important differences here that I don't think you do. I think that is probably connected to other ways that we talk about RPGing.

Deciding to give the players a win is a form of saying "yes". It's therefore not the sort of GM veto I am expressing a dislike for. Personally I don't do it in my 4e combat - if the monster has 4 hp left (or even better, 1 hp left) and therefore gets another turn, I like to taunt the players about that. That is because my own preference is to "say 'yes'" only when the stakes are not low, and as I experience the play of 4e, once the combat mechanics have been invoked, the stakes are not low.

If I were to say "yes" in this way, then I would tell the players. Part of what I see as distinguishing "say 'yes' or roll the dice" from illusionistic GMing is that the GM doesn't conceal his/her methods from the players.

The example of the rooms is to me quite different, as it does not involve action resolution at all. That is all GM framing. In a classic dungeon crawl game, rewriting the map like that would be a species of cheating. In my own games, given that they are not classic dungeon crawl games, there is no map in the relevant sense and I frame scenes as we go along. So what you describe is completely unremarkable to me.

Neither is an example of using secret backstory to block a declared action, which is what I was referring to in the post you quoted when I talked about _the GM being bound by action resolution_. And said that deciding that the map isn't in the study _ndependelty of action resolution _is no different from deciding that the NPC wins the race _independently of action resolution_.



Mercurius said:


> what about rolling random encounters - if I roll something that I think would be boring or tedious or detract from the game experience, I might roll again or choose something. Similarly with treasure.



Neither of these is an example of action resolution. They are both examples of content introduction.

Gygax talks about this in his DMG - I quoted the passages, and discussed them, in another recent thread (it is on the last page of the "What is XP worth?" thread). He expressly contrasts (though without using this terminology) rolls to introduce content (like wandering monsters, or finding a secret door that leads to an exciting part of the dungeon) with action resolution rolls that resolve a conflict (like fighting wandering monsters, or escaping fromm them, or being killed by a monster), and encourages GMs to manage the first set but not to interfere with the second set (except perhaps to mitigate the long term, but not the short term, consequences of a well-played PC being dropped to zero hp), as that would be "contrary to the major precepts of the game."

In most of my GMing I don't use random content introduction, as it seems to serve no useful purpose: in accordance with the "standard narrativistic model" I introduce content that will speak to the concerns/motivations/thematic drives of the PCs (as evinced by their build and play).

In my Traveller game I do use random content introduction, because that is a big part of Traveller. The most recent example was the roll to encounter a starship while leaving a system. I had one of the players make the roll. It turned up a pirate cruiser; I interpreted that in a way that made it fit into the ongoing action of the game (ie a vessel connected to the bioweapons conspiracy that that PCs are investigating and (perhaps) trying to thwart).

All this is orthogonal to my reasons for no liking "omnipotent" GMing, which is about how pre-authored content is used to constrain action declarations, not about how content for new scenes/situations is established.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Why does the DM get to decide?  Because it's the DM's job to set things in place within the dungeon and gameworld - this is part of what makes a DM's role different from that of a player.



OK, then let's go back to the OP - it asks, _what is this allocation of responsibility to the GM for_?

In Cortex+, the roll to find the map _is_ an opposed check (against the Doom Pool - if the player succeeds, a Map To XYZ asset is created; if the player fails, then maybe the Doom Pool steps up, or the PC suffers emotional stress in frustation at not finding the map, or whatever other consequence flows from the mechanics of resolution plus the imagnation of the GM). In BW, it is what you call a "passive check" but against a difficulty set by the GM in accordance with the skill descriptions; but that mechanical difference doesn't mean that the GM gets to make the passive check fail automatically just because s/he thought it would be better for the map to be somewhere other than the study.

In other words, (i) there is not only one model for RPG mechanics, and (ii) even when the mechanics are similar (both D&D and BW use checks against a difficulty), that doesn't tell us why it is the GM's job to do the stuff you say.

To be clear: I'm not asserting that there is no answer to the question. But answers that don't take account of the range of ways RPGing works will (necessarily) be incomplete. I mean, obviously setting provides depth - but it doesn't _have_ to be GM authored to do that (witness the various examples I've posted upthread). So a more complete answer adds information eg [MENTION=284]Caliban[/MENTION] says that many players don't want to contribute to establishing the backstory, so someone else has to do it; [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION] says that he wants the GM to tell him the backstory as part of his process of immersion (to me that seems very similar to being told a story by the GM - I think Mercurius queries that characterisation, but from my point of view I'm still working out why, and also why it's considered pejorative - I went to the pictures recently, and had a story told to me, and that doesn't make me feel offended).

 [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION] gave some different reasons: GM worldbuilding establishes levers/tools for the players. It makes sense that someone else has to do this, in that being able to just deem your own tools into existence seems a bit cheat-y. To me, that speaks to a style of play much closer to classic dungeoneering, though mabye Nagol would not agree with that.



Lanefan said:


> Also, the very term "action resolution" is here a bit misleading.  Yes a PC has declared an action, and that action gets resolved...but the resolution of that action only applies to the PC and her immediate surrounds, not to anything static within the rest of the game world.



Why? And which game are you talking about?

In Classic Traveller (1977 version), the rules set throws required on a player's Streetwise check for a PC to find a shady official willing to sell permits/licences at a good price. That is an action resolution that is not confined to the PC and his/her immediate surrounds. If successful, it estblishes that said official exists and is willing (everything else being equal) to sell permits on the side. (Not all of Classic Traveller is like that - the rules for finding the Psionics Institute specify a GM-side roll to establish its presence on a world; then a player-side roll to find it, which can succeed only if the GM's roll turned out right. The rules don't discuss why pisonics is handled differently from Streetwise, but I think the idea is that the GM is expected to gatekeep psionics to a high degree, whereas finding officials to sell permits is a central part of play.)

In AD&D, a paladin can call for a warhorse which then obliged the GM (per Gygax's DMG) to create a whole backstory and "side quest" around the lcoation of that horse, and the mission the paladin has to complete in order to win it.

There is no in-principle reason why finding a map can't be treated in the same way as the above examples; so if it is not being treated that way, why? (I've offered a conjecture as to the different treatment of psionics in Traveller, just above; but why does the GM need to gatekeep the location of the McGuffin?)




Lanefan said:


> For consistency, realism, and believability it works better the other way around, where the action resolutions are bound by the constructed world / setting / dungeon.



As I've explained, I don't find _these_ reasons very convincing. There is nothing unrealistic about the map being in the study. (It's not like finding beam weapons in the Duke's toilet!) If no prior contrary backstory has been established, then it's not inconsistent with anything.

If the GM hadn't decided, in advance, where the map was - maybe she hadn't got around to it; maybe she left all her notes on the train by accident on the way to the session, and so is doing her best to remember them but has forgotten the bit about the map - then something would have to be made up on the spot. That happens _all the time_ in RPGing. It doen't make games less realistic or believable.

Instead of the GM just making it up, or rolling some dice secretly, it can be made consequent on the player's roll - as Traveller does for dodgy officials and Streetwise checks. That doesn't make the Traveller gameworld unrealistic or unbelievable.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Is the naga in consistent communication with the PC?  If yes, then in theory the PC would be receiving instruction now and then (if not constantly) as to how to react to or initiate developments and would be forced by the Force of Will to obey.



The spell says "The words of the mage become thoughts - as if the victim had formulated them himself". Whether the naga has the power to send words over distances is a little bit up for grabs - it has sent dreams, and also has a Whispering Wind ability, but in any event is a primeval magical being.

The real point here (which is, I think, a bit different from what [MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION] has said) is that once the player has formulated a Belief for his PC that reflects the command from the naga to bring it the (NPC) mage so that it can spill said mage's blood in sacrifice to the spirits, that's enough. I don't need to tell the player what his PC is told to do. He can play his PC, including having regard to his Belief, and we have a game in which one PC is the thrall of the dark naga.

It's still the player playing his character, with full agency. (Ie making action declarations that he wants to make, which are resolved in the same way as every other action declaration, etc.)


----------



## Mercurius

pemerton said:


> First, as I've mentioned you in another recent post - I do want to thank you for the courtesy of your posts in this thread.




Sure, no problem .



pemerton said:


> I see important differences here that I don't think you do. I think that is probably connected to other ways that we talk about RPGing.




It may also be a matter of granularity - that some of the things that bother you, or the differentiations you make, just aren't an issue for me. But I hear what you are saying about content introduction vs. action resolution, and how GM fiat refers more to the latter than the former.




pemerton said:


> If I were to say "yes" in this way, then I would tell the players. Part of what I see as distinguishing "say 'yes' or roll the dice" from illusionistic GMing is that the GM doesn't conceal his/her methods from the players.




This is at the core of where we differ. I don't see illusionistic GMing as a problem, just part of the nature of the job, whereas you seem to have an ideological issue with it.

Actually, I see part of the skill of being a GM is maintaining the illusion - the illusion being that of what is in front of and behind the screen. I don't share dice rolls, monster HP, etc, because all of that is meta-game information that the characters wouldn't know. I might say the monster looks in bad shape, etc, but almost never "it has 4 HP left."



pemerton said:


> All this is orthogonal to my reasons for no liking "omnipotent" GMing, which is about how pre-authored content is used to constrain action declarations, not about how content for new scenes/situations is established.




Well again, for me "pre-authored content" is rarely if ever set in stone. I always try to be responsive to the situation. I can and will adapt and change pre-authored content.


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## Manbearcat

pemerton said:


> The nine points [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] wrote are an attempt to analyse all the things you refer to here: "power", "uncertainty", "control", "GM authority".
> 
> The uncertainty resides on the player side. It results from the GM having control of the backstory, which is not (fully) revealed to the players, but is (i) subject to change at any time by the GM, and (ii) available as a device for the GM to determine that declared actions fail without resort to the standard mechanics (eg set a difficulty, roll the dice).
> 
> If you think that's _not_ where the uncertainty resides, then please elaborate.
> 
> (Another common source of uncertainy in RPGing: dice rolls. But this don't depend upon GM control over backstory, and so can't be the sort of uncertainty you are saying GM authority is in service of.)




Couple comments on the (apparently) Strawmanish nature of my 9 points below:



> 1) The setting is the GMs.
> 
> 2) The GM world-builds because it is a fun enterprise for them unto itself (an art).
> 
> 3) The GM uses that pre-built world to determine off-screen events in some fashion, typically fiat-by-(some form of)extrapolation.
> 
> 4) The GM uses that pre-built world to determine if a player's declared action is feasible at all (reserved right to veto power).
> 
> 5) The GM uses that pre-built world to determine how a player's declared action is impacted when it is feasible and dice need to be rolled (impact on action resolution machinery).
> 
> 6) The GM uses that pre-built world to help them in determining how the impacted setting evolves post-action-resolution.
> 
> These seem to be less broadly agreed upon, but there is plenty of support (either explicit or implied):
> 
> 7) The GM uses their pre-built-world-related metaplot (or vision of narrative if not so concrete) during action resolution adjudication to determine if veto ("no") will provide a better (more interesting?) story outcome or "roll the dice" will provide a better (more interesting?) story outcome.
> 
> 8) If the GM allows for "roll the dice", they can subordinate the results of action resolution (secretly) if they feel it makes for a better (more interesting?) story outcome.
> 
> 9) The players role is to explore the art (of the GM's built world and related metaplot), appreciate the art, and take-up the plot hooks therein at their discretion (the "choose-you-own-adventure" invocation). Now "their (player) discretion" will invariably bump up against (4), (7), and (8) above. When it does, it seems to me that the general consensus of D&D players on ENWorld amounts to "its the GM's game/table, any player is perfectly free to find another game/table."




- This was a request to comment directly on a commenter's statement that world-building by the GM was an art, was something they appreciated as a creative enterprise in and of itself, and that (one of the primary) roles of players is to explore and appreciate that effort and/or engage in a choose-your-own adventure approach to RPGIng based on that worldbuilding.

- This come on the heels of (after and before further) aggressive commentary by a GM stating that THE SETTING IS MINE (and other related commentary).  This was not rebuked and this sentiment has been reiterated in other forms in this thread by other commenters and throughout ENWorld's many threads (again, especially in threads that decry players for optimization).

- Finally, only 1-6 I state appears to be broadly agreed upon.  I'm still baffled how that is remotely contentious.  7-9 is where the conversation is to be had (and people need to comment on where they stand on it), but 1-6 is as benign as it gets.



Comments relating directly to your above post and to your comments about our short one-off we ran in 4e.  

I can't find your mention regarding it, but I know I saw you invoked it.  I want to say it was one of the Linear Fighters, Quadratic Wizards threads of yore!  I believe that (as relates to this thread), the pair of contentions you, I, and others were making were the following:

* In D&D systems with (a) Vancian casters with Enchantment spells (especially with prolific spell load-outs) and (b) noncombat action resolution governed by a process sim (internal causality rather than genre logic) task resolution (rather than conflict resolution), Wizards/spellcasters are going to be inevitably dominate noncombat action resolution.

* The only way this doesn't take place is for GMs to either (a) preemptively protect crucial plot-points/NPCs by pulling out the classic (eye-roll-inducing to any hardened, long term player) blocks (secret backstory) or (b) make up and deploy those blocks on the spot when its clear their carefully sewn plot efforts are about to be undone by a few key spell power-plays.  

* Limited backstory/malleable setting (the only thing that is firm is what has been established in play), nerfed Vancian Casting (in both breadth and potency), and conflict resolution mechanics that are governed by genre logic are a functional way to deal with these issues.

Our efforts showed a pretty orthodox example of how an obstinate chamberlain who is denying access to the king can have his efforts upturned dramatically without:

a)  Spellcasters dominating the action.

b)  Immersion being shattered (in fact, when your conception of your archetype is realized in play by your deft action declarations meeting successful action resolution, I would say that is a big + for immersion!).

c)  Firm backstory having to be the reference point for the GM's role in adjudicating action resolution and evolving the fiction afterward.


----------



## billd91

pemerton said:


> In Classic Traveller (1977 version), the rules set throws required on a player's Streetwise check for a PC to find a shady official willing to sell permits/licences at a good price. That is an action resolution that is not confined to the PC and his/her immediate surrounds. If successful, it estblishes that said official exists and is willing (everything else being equal) to sell permits on the side. (Not all of Classic Traveller is like that - the rules for finding the Psionics Institute specify a GM-side roll to establish its presence on a world; then a player-side roll to find it, which can succeed only if the GM's roll turned out right. The rules don't discuss why pisonics is handled differently from Streetwise, but I think the idea is that the GM is expected to gatekeep psionics to a high degree, whereas finding officials to sell permits is a central part of play.)




Or... the game itself worldbuilds that there's *always* some shady official willing to sell permits/licenses under the table and the roll is simply to find him - the locally confined action resolution. 

It's a matter of perspective. If you are predisposed to see something as a nail, then it's a nail. I get the impression you're predisposed to interpret game mechanics in your particular way and thus see the successful streetwise roll as establishing that there is such a shady official and setting some worldbuilding variable.


----------



## pemerton

Mercurius said:


> for me "pre-authored content" is rarely if ever set in stone. I always try to be responsive to the situation. I can and will adapt and change pre-authored content.



It may be time for another distinction, which I made in a reply to [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] somewhere upthread.

Not all worldbuilding is prep. Eg if the GM draws a map of the whole gameworld, but the campaign takes place only in one little geographic segment of it, then that is not prep for play.

And not all prep is worldbuilding. If you make notes of (say) 10 encounters you think might be fun to run, but you work out what to do with them, how to sequence them etc in the course of play then you didn't build a world, in the sense of establish - in advance of play - content of the shared fiction which then feeds into action resolution.

This is why a "no myth" game isn't the same thing as a "no prep" game (though in some systems could be run that way - of systems I know, Cortex+ can be run with no or virtually no prep; 4e, on the other hand, requires someone (either me or the designers) to write up all those stat blocks in advance).


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## billd91

pemerton said:


> And not all prep is worldbuilding. If you make notes of (say) 10 encounters you think might be fun to run, but you work out what to do with them, how to sequence them etc in the course of play then you didn't build a world, in the sense of establish - in advance of play - content of the shared fiction which then feeds into action resolution.




Nah, prepping encounters is world-building. Are any of them creatures you've never used before? If so, by using them you've made them part of the world. Do they have independent motivations other than being sacks of hit points for the PCs to whack? Then you're world building. They may be no more significant in the grand scheme of things than the annoying tuft of weeds pushing its way up through the crack in my driveway - but they're still world-building contributions.

These would have to be the most non-connected, repetitive, generic encounters for worldbuilding to not be involved.


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## Manbearcat

pemerton said:


> Three things:
> 
> (1) I've never talked about a "right way" to play. I started a thread with a question: some posters answered it (@Nagol, [MENTION=284]Caliban[/MENTION], etc). Some other posters - [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION], [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] - asserted or implied that by asking the question I was insulting them. To be frank, that's on them, not on me. If they don't want to answer the question "what is GM worldbuiling for", or think that the answer is so self-evident that to ask the question is to commit some RPG faux pas, well, no one is forcing them to post in the thread.
> 
> (2) What makes you think I don't understand why you prefer to play a different way? When I say "This is why I don't like such-and-such", what makes you think I'm telling you why you shouldn't like it?
> 
> (3) I've replied with courtesy and honesty to all your posts in this thread, and have not attacked you or your preferences (unless you consider me explaining why my preference are different an attack -  in which case see (1) and (2) above). I'm a little surprised that you don't seem capable of doing the same.




You have replied with courtesy and honesty.  I don't feel like we've gotten anywhere, but you've spilled a lot of virtual ink trying to deconstruct a component of GMing.  You're not a snarky person. 
Some people don't like your methodology, but their sense that it is disingenuous are completely off and its really obnoxious that long time posters who exchanged with you for many years (on the other side of conversations, but so what) are ok with people acting like jerks (passive-aggressive or outright) to you.  

The cowardly anonymity of the internet.  People don't behave like that in real life.  If they do it with any frequency, they inevitably do it to the wrong people at some point and they adapt really quickly such that they're mindful of their manners in the future.

So good on you for putting up with this crap.


----------



## pemerton

Manbearcat said:


> This was a request to comment directly on a commenter's statement that world-building by the GM was an art, was something they appreciated as a creative enterprise in and of itself, and that (one of the primary) roles of players is to explore and appreciate that effort and/or engage in a choose-your-own adventure approach to RPGIng based on that worldbuilding.
> 
> - This come on the heels of (after and before further) aggressive commentary by a GM stating that THE SETTING IS MINE (and other related commentary).  This was not rebuked and this sentiment has been reiterated in other forms in this thread by other commenters and throughout ENWorld's many threads (again, especially in threads that decry players for optimization).



And as (I think) the one who requested the comment - thank you, it was interesting! For what it's worth, I find your analysis pretty plausible, though - as I posted upthread following [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION]'s post - I think that there may be subsitutable values of your (2) (eg "Someone's got to do it!") which then feed through, in pretty straightforward ways, into your other points without fundamental effects on them.



Manbearcat said:


> I want to say it was one of the Linear Fighters, Quadratic Wizards threads of yore!



That sounds right. 



Manbearcat said:


> I believe that (as relates to this thread), the pair of contentions you, I, and others were making were the following:
> 
> * In D&D systems with (a) Vancian casters with Enchantment spells (especially with prolific spell load-outs) and (b) noncombat action resolution governed by a process sim (internal causality rather than genre logic) task resolution (rather than conflict resolution), Wizards/spellcasters are going to be inevitably dominate noncombat action resolution.
> 
> * The only way this doesn't take place is for GMs to either (a) preemptively protect crucial plot-points/NPCs by pulling out the classic (eye-roll-inducing to any hardened, long term player) blocks (secret backstory) or (b) make up and deploy those blocks on the spot when its clear their carefully sewn plot efforts are about to be undone by a few key spell power-plays.



To me, this illustrates a further aspect of the contrast between classic/Gygaxian play, and "contemporary" play, that I drew in the OP.

First, and just to clear some underbrush, it's pretty apparent that - back in those dungeoneering day - Charm Person was much closer to what we would now think of as a Dominate effect. You can see that in examples of play; in discussions of the merits of using Charm Monster to control a troll or an ochre jelly and get it to fight for you; etct.

When Charm is run like that in that context, it is strong but not necessarily broken. An ogre (the best you can get with Charm Person) is clearly better than a hired mercenary, but not immeasurably better. And to try and get the ogre charmed you do have to take the risk of being clubbed by it if it makes the save (in AD&D, that chance is about 1 in 3).

Likewise, charming a NPC you meet in the dungeon might get you information about the next few rooms, or even a good tip on some juicy treasure; but it is not (either literally or metaphorically) going to give you the keys to the kingdom.

But as soon as the scope of gameplay changes into the "living, breathing world" - so that there are 0-level merchants (who fail their saves vs Charm 90% of the time) with inventories in the 1000s of gps; and chamberlains and kings; and intricate plots to disrupt if only you can talk to the right person and learn what s/he knows - then 1st level Charm Person becomes a game breaker! The context in which it was balanced is lost, and so either (i) we get rid of it, or (ii) we radically reimagine the mecanics of how it works.

D&D has been doing the latter systematically for about 30 years, although it took 4e and 5e to really square that circle. Which brings me to . . .



Manbearcat said:


> * Limited backstory/malleable setting (the only thing that is firm is what has been established in play), nerfed Vancian Casting (in both breadth and potency), and conflict resolution mechanics that are governed by genre logic are a functional way to deal with these issues.
> 
> Our efforts showed a pretty orthodox example of how an obstinate chamberlain who is denying access to the king can have his efforts upturned dramatically without:
> 
> a)  Spellcasters dominating the action.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> c)  Firm backstory having to be the reference point for the GM's role in adjudicating action resolution and evolving the fiction afterward.



If Charm Person and its ilk are integrated with generic resolution mechanics (in 5e, it gives advantage on check; in 4e, the Suggestion cantrip allows Arcana in lieu of Diplomacy) then they stop being auto-win buttons.

But then the generic resolution mechanics need to support social resolution, and here I think there is no real substitute for some form of robust confilct resolution mechanic (even reaction rolls can be a good start on this), which - in turn - needs limited backstory to work (so the motivations can be narrated in that explain the result of the mechanics).

If there is not that limited backstory then magic is apt to dominate again, as the established motivations will be used to block ordinary atempts at social interaction, and only magic with its special pleading - "It's mind control and so can change the NPC's motivations" - will have a chance.



Manbearcat said:


> when your conception of your archetype is realized in play by your deft action declarations meeting successful action resolution, I would say that is a big + for immersion!



Agreed.


----------



## pemerton

billd91 said:


> Or... the game itself worldbuilds that there's *always* some shady official willing to sell permits/licenses under the table and the roll is simply to find him - the locally confined action resolution.



The game establishing default setting expectations isn't worldbuilding in the sense that the OP asks about. It woudl be interesting to ask what is the point of the D&D equipment list, for instance, but the OP wasn't asking that.

But also, in Classic Traveller it's quite possible that the resaon the character can't find an official willing to issue permits for cash is because _there is not such official_ in that place. The rules don't specify either way. (Again, I stress the contrast with the Psionics Institute rules.)


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## billd91

pemerton said:


> The game establishing default setting expectations isn't worldbuilding in the sense that the OP asks about. It woudl be interesting to ask what is the point of the D&D equipment list, for instance, but the OP wasn't asking that.
> 
> But also, in Classic Traveller it's quite possible that the resaon the character can't find an official willing to issue permits for cash is because _there is not such official_ in that place. The rules don't specify either way. (Again, I stress the contrast with the Psionics Institute rules.)




Yes, and (again) I stress the predisposition you have to seeing it that way while others may not. (Hey, if you're going to repeat yourself so soon after your previous post, so am I.)

I'd also point out that the contrast with the Psionics Institute rules is because the institutes are specifically not only intended to not always be present (unlike corrupt officials) but are intended to be rare - a significant element of Traveller world-building given the assumption that most Traveller campaigns are in Imperium space and not Zhodani space.


----------



## pemerton

billd91 said:


> I'd also point out that the contrast with the Psionics Institute rules is because the institutes are specifically not only intended to not always be present (unlike corrupt officials) but are intended to be rare - a significant element of Traveller world-building given the assumption that most Traveller campaigns are in Imperium space and not Zhodani space.



The Psionics Institute rule was written in 1977, before Imperium and Zhodani space were published as settings for the game.

The rareness seems pretty obviously about GM gatekeeping over a complex and potentially undesired rules module.


----------



## pemerton

billd91 said:


> Nah, prepping encounters is world-building. Are any of them creatures you've never used before? If so, by using them you've made them part of the world.



Prepping an encounter isn't the same thing as using it. I've got a couple of worlds on my list of Traveller worlds that haven't appeared in play yet, and may never do so. I generated one in the course of working through the world gen system, and I think I got the other one by writing up a world I was reading about in some sci-fi book in Traveller terms. They're both on the list just in case.

And if the preparation consists of a dragon in its cave, and the setting is already established as a standard D&D one, that's not worldbuilding either (given that standard D&D settings contain dragons and caves, and caves with dragons in them).

Some prep may be worldbuilding. But not all is.



billd91 said:


> Do they have independent motivations other than being sacks of hit points for the PCs to whack? Then you're world building.



Again, the motivation may be established in play. The notes may be ideas - "memo to self" - that don't actually get used. Etc.

It is possible to come up with ideas (mechanical ideas, thematic ideas, story ideas) without making it true that those are part of a shared fiction (the gameworld).


----------



## Lanefan

Aenghus said:


> Well, in a particular game it depends what the priorities are and how the magic works in that setting.



True.



> One thing I'm very sensitive to is imposed changes on a PC that could make them no longer satisfying to their player. I'm talking about mid to long term changes here, not short term ones - it's reasonable to expect a player to put up with a short-term condition such as an injury or mind whammy.The one thing that players have nominal control of even in conventional games is their PC - anything that potentially messes up that PC long-term is an issue to consider carefully. Long term mind control of a PC definitely has the potential to be problematic, depending on how it works.(crippling injuries were the other issue that could make a PC unfun or unplayable in the eyes of their player. In the majority of RPGs I've been in the players can retire characters on request, though the referee may try to persuade them  not to.



Permanent death kinda makes a character unplayable too; and in all these cases it is (or most certainly should be) possible to retire that character and bring in another one. (though in the case of a dominated character which has been instructed to remain in the party...yeah, that's a tough one; though IME some players would quite happily play it as directed if it came to that)



> Some systems of magic are absolute and deterministic, but can be run differently, and there are magic systems which are considerably more ambiguous and amenable to negotiation. If the mind control effectively makes the PC an NPC, then forcing the player to keep playing the character seems cruel and unusual punishment.



Again true.  The problem here is that if the controlled PC is given over to the DM to play the rest of the players will immediately know something's up, and that's information they shouldn't have.

That said, most domination effects I've ever seen either have a reasonably short duration or require the continued presence of the dominator in order to maintain the effect.  I'm not sure how it works in  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's game, but as the continued presence of a Naga around the party would surely have raised some eyebrows one can only assume the domination effect in his game had a much longer (or permanent?) duration.  
EDIT: posted this before reading post 222 above, wherein he explains how it works in his game.



> However, if the priority in the game is that the player keeps playing that PC, that means the mind control has to be tolerable and the PC still playable.Seeing as the game magic is entirely fictional and doesn't exist, it can work any way that group wants it to work. Consistency that makes the participants miserable is arguably foolish and counterproductive.



Another option is the DM sits down with that PC's player out of session, explains what she has in mind, and tries to get the player to buy in. (my own experience with such things is the player buy-in usually increases in direct proportion to the amount of guano-disturbing they'll be able to do within the party, as it can always be explained away later with "Hey, I was possessed!")


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> (1) I've never talked about a "right way" to play. I started a thread with a question: some posters answered it (@Nagol, [MENTION=284]Caliban[/MENTION], etc). Some other posters - [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION], [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] - asserted or implied that by asking the question I was insulting them. To be frank, that's on them, not on me. If they don't want to answer the question "what is GM worldbuiling for", or think that the answer is so self-evident that to ask the question is to commit some RPG faux pas, well, no one is forcing them to post in the thread.



I'm not at all insulted that you asked the question and am somewhat surprised that you seem to think I am.

I've given my answer to the original question in varying amounts of detail several times over the last 225+ posts.  That it's not the answer you're looking for, or are willing to agree with, isn't my problem.  You asked, I answered.

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> I'm not at all insulted that you asked the question and am somewhat surprised that you seem to think I am.



Upthread you referred to the question as a backhand slight.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> That it's not the answer you're looking for, or are willing to agree with, isn't my problem.



Well, it's an answer the I find puzzling.

You say that it's not reaslistic for the map to be where the player wants it to be if the GM would prefer it to be elsewhere. Which is clearly metagame thinking, because you're reading the causal effect of the player's desire back into the fiction.

But you also say that you don't wnat metagaming, you don't want the player to be thinking about anything outside the perspecive of his/her PC, etc.

And from the perspective of the PC it's not remotely unrealistic that the map should be in the study.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Well, it's an answer the I find puzzling.
> 
> You say that it's not reaslistic for the map to be where the player wants it to be if the GM would prefer it to be elsewhere. Which is clearly metagame thinking, because you're reading the causal effect of the player's desire back into the fiction.



Ah, I think I see where my lack of clarity may be getting in the way here.

Meta-gaming on the player side is always bad.  Metagaming on the GM side is in many cases just part of the job....but with that said, there's desireable DM metagaming and undesireable DM metagaming.

An example of desireable DM metagaming is when the DM uses her knowledge of what's where and how things fit together in the game world to drop clues and hints, and make a mystery out of something.  She could, for example, have had the PCs at some point find a very cryptic map showing (somewhat ironically) where in the castle the map they're looking for is hidden - cryptic enough that when the sought map is found the PCs will look at this other one and say "Ahhh, *that's* what it was trying to show us!".  She can't do anything like this if she doesn't know where the map is going to be found.  She could also eariler have put out some hints and clues that pointed (more or less cryptically) at this castle rather than the other one across the valley (for which she has a different adventure or module all ready to go, knowing there's at least a 50% chance that the PCs are going to head over there and explore it at some point because that's what adventurers do).

An example of undesireable DM metagaming is when the DM changes the next adventure to feature less combat once she sees the players aren't bringing any front-liners to the dance and haven't thought to recruit or hire any.



> But you also say that you don't wnat metagaming, you don't want the player to be thinking about anything outside the perspecive of his/her PC, etc.
> 
> And from the perspective of the PC it's not remotely unrealistic that the map should be in the study.



The map certainly could be in the study - that's why we're looking for it there.  But we've turned the place upside down and given it the most thorough search we can and lo and behold: no map.  So we'll move on to the library and search there; then the drawing room, then the bedrooms...and if those come up dry we'll move on to less likely locations such as the wine cellar or the kitchen.  Long story short, we know it's here somewhere - we just have to find it.

And who knows, on the way to finding the map we might find all kinds of other neat interesting stuff!

Lan-"though experiences tells me one of two things will happen: they'll search for weeks and find nothing, or they'll beeline right for it as soon as they're on site as if they knew where it was all along"-efan


----------



## Nagol

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] so in essence, good meta-gaming enhances the play experience for the group and bad meta-gaming undermines the value of player choices/actions?


----------



## billd91

Lanefan said:


> An example of desireable DM metagaming is when the DM uses her knowledge of what's where and how things fit together in the game world to drop clues and hints, and make a mystery out of something.  She could, for example, have had the PCs at some point find a very cryptic map showing (somewhat ironically) where in the castle the map they're looking for is hidden - cryptic enough that when the sought map is found the PCs will look at this other one and say "Ahhh, *that's* what it was trying to show us!".  She can't do anything like this if she doesn't know where the map is going to be found.  She could also eariler have put out some hints and clues that pointed (more or less cryptically) at this castle rather than the other one across the valley (for which she has a different adventure or module all ready to go, knowing there's at least a 50% chance that the PCs are going to head over there and explore it at some point because that's what adventurers do).




There's also dealing with divination spells like, well, divination and augury. Much easier to adjudicate those if there's something there.



Lanefan said:


> An example of undesireable DM metagaming is when the DM changes the next adventure to feature less combat once she sees the players aren't bringing any front-liners to the dance and haven't thought to recruit or hire any.




I'm not sure I'd agree with this one all the time. The composition of the group as well as the choices they make could be a signal to the GM what kinds of adventure situations to design into the campaign. For example, if everyone's a martial character with little spell-casting, I'm not going to run a campaign for them that virtually requires a spell-caster for success. They're telling me that they don't want that kind of campaign. If they'd rather wade in and have it out mano-a-mano, I'll give it to them. Granted, this is something that should be hashed out at the beginning so I don't invest my time prepping situations that won't be a good fit.

If, however, there's one area or two they keep coming up with a weakness but they otherwise seem to be enjoying the campaign, then the onus is on *them* to adjust to cover their weaknesses.


----------



## howandwhy99

pemerton said:


> I think this is the one point on which I agree with [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION] - a classic dungeon isn't a plot, and the rooms aren't scenes.
> 
> A classic dungeon is closer to a gameboard, although it is not identical to one because - unlike, say, a chess or monopoly board - it also establishes content for a shared fiction, and hence fictional positioning.
> 
> But the way in which a classic dungeon resembles a gameboard is that it establishes clear parameters for player moves - "We walk down the corridor until we come to a corner or doorway" - and also clear parameters for the GM's descriptions to the players - so that when the GM says "OK, you proceed for 60' and then come to a T-intersection", the GM isn't just making that up but is reading it from the pre-prepared dungeon map. And there are conventions at work here: the referee tells the players the real distances, even though we might wonder, in the fiction, how good the PCs' ability to estimate those woudl be; and the map is a physical artefact that the players use to help play the game, although it is also has an imaginary correlate which we suppose one of the PCs to be producing in the fiction.
> 
> When the players enter a room, the GM frames a scene. Likewise when the PCs move down the corridor, the GM frames a scene - I just provided an example, in which the scene is _having proceeded down the passage for 60', you're now at a T-intersection_.
> 
> But the room is not itself a scene. We can easily imagine that the first time the PCs come to a room, the scene framing is like this "OK, having succesffuly forced the door open, you see a rectangular room, 20' x 10', with a chest in the middle. What do you do?" And then the second time, some time later in the session or a subsequent session, the PCs might return to the same room and the scene is like this: "OK, you think you've shaken off the pursuing goblins, and you come to the 20' x 10' room that you were heading for by following your map. The chest is still open as you left it, and the false bottom is still removed, and you can see the ladder descending down a narrow shaft about 40' or so."
> 
> Those are two different scenes - occurring at different times, with different things at stake, and posing different challenges to the players and their PCs - but both occur in the same room, which (in the GM's notes) might be written up as _20' x 10' rectangle, with a single entrance; there is a chest in the middle of the room, unlocked, with a false bottom concealing a shaft and ladder descending to the second level_.
> 
> I recognise that various dungeon designers, both amateur and professional, have designed dungeons on a different principle, in which the rooms are scenes in a plot, rather than elements of a gameboard on which the players make their moves; one can see hints of this in Hickman's Pharoah adventures, for intance, and it's become more common since then.
> 
> And that is broadly how I run "dungeons" (ie interior encounters) in my 4e game.
> 
> But that is a departure from the design principles of something like B2, not a continuation of them.



You've used the mention function for me twice in this thread, so I assume you value my input and aren't just trying to drum up discussion.  However, I've learned from your posting habits in your past threads you typically aren't exploring an idea, but attempt to sway posters' unformed conclusions towards your own particular preferences to determine "facts of the hobby". Or so I suspect given the falsehoods most of the hobby hold to when compared to its first two decades. 

I originally posted because D&D actually used to judge the health of the entire hobby largely upon the practice of this particular form of game designing; by which I don't mean "authoring fictional settings", but the actual play-tested and designer balanced game design components DMs could trust when incorporated into their home campaigns.


----------



## innerdude

Lanefan said:


> I think of things like this as - again for lack of a better term - hard-coded.  The map's in the desk drawer in room 14.
> 
> **Signature snipped from a different post** -->> Lan-"though experiences tells me one of two things will happen: they'll search for weeks and find nothing, or they'll beeline right for it as soon as they're on site as if they knew where it was all along"-efan




So, this is the crux of @_*pemerton*_'s problem with pre-authored backstory, especially the first half of your signature---The PCs searching for weeks of game world time, with the players making a multitude of action declarations that the GM knows to be fruitless beforehand, all to serve the purpose of "maintaining game world fidelity." 

Because by golly, the map's in the desk drawer in Room 14 of Castle Vitruvious. Too bad if those stupid players were too dense to pick up on the relevant clues! If they end up wasting half a gaming session (or more) on their fruitless search, that's the player's problem, not the GM's. Next time those players better be smarter, darn it! Oh, and if the players TOTALLY MESS UP the interaction with the Chancellor that would have given them easy access to Room 14? Too bad for them, so sad!

I'm now in my forties. I'm a working professional with three kids. The players in my group are all in their early thirties and beyond, four of the five with kids of their own. I don't have time to waste---either as a player or GM---in my once-every-two-weeks gaming sessions for the party to go on a fruitless search for a map. 

If the map is crucial to continuing the plot of the game, _then give the party the dang map already_. And likewise, if I'm the GM, the LAST thing I want to do is lead the players around by the nose for a session or two just because they can't seem to figure out where the next "rail" of my plot is supposed to be. 

I wholly respect that your group has a well-established social contract in place, @_*Lanefan*_, that allows for "searching for weeks and finding nothing" to be a valid outcome. And I also realize that this exaggerated example is fairly well addressed in "DM-ing 101" in any number of online blogs and resources.

But the fact is we have to keep re-iterating this because it's still happening out in the real world. Newbie GMs still make these kinds of mistakes. Sometimes even experienced GMs make these kinds of mistakes when they're trying to serve the needs of their intricate metaplot rather than the needs of the player experience. 

For me, I simply do not have the luxury for this kind of thing in my group. If a GM's plot is so set in stone that he or she can't find reasonable options to give this information out, introduce interesting new hooks that relate to the PCs dramatic needs in play, and still keep a reasonably coherent sense for how these pieces fit together, then that's not a group I'm interested in playing in. And yeah, I'm willing to admit that that's a pretty high barrier to entry for a GM.

But the alternative is to waste my time in "GM setting tourist" campaign play, and that's something I will only tolerate to a certain point. Maintaining player interest, pacing, and dramatic tension are now VASTLY more important to me as a player and GM than "game world fidelity."


----------



## Mercurius

Manbearcat said:


> So good on you for putting up with this crap.




So good of you to come into a relatively civil discussion after a long absence and start throwing accusations around and turning it negative.


----------



## Mercurius

pemerton said:


> So a more complete answer adds information eg @_*Caliban*_ says that many players don't want to contribute to establishing the backstory, so someone else has to do it; @_*Mercurius*_ says that he wants the GM to tell him the backstory as part of his process of immersion (to me that seems very similar to being told a story by the GM - I think Mercurius queries that characterisation, but from my point of view I'm still working out why, and also why it's considered pejorative - I went to the pictures recently, and had a story told to me, and that doesn't make me feel offended).




I question this characterization, because it is too black-and-white. The way it works when I run a D&D campaign is that I create a setting, which gives the players a context to create characters in. They create characters, write a background based upon my setting, and there are varying degrees of negotiation and refinement of their background to fit into the setting. They participate in world-building (and creating backstory) to the degree that I, as the DM, feel it is harmonious with the internal consistency and aesthetic of the setting. I am generally pretty flexible about this, but if they say they want to play a character named Daffy of the Duck clan of pond dwarves, then I will exercise GM authority and say no. Why? Because it weakens the setting (i.e. its verisimilitude, internal consistency, aesthetic, etc), which in turn threatens immersion and the overall play experience.

But in general I am quite flexible and want the layer to not only be happy with their character, but write their own background. We will, together, develop a background that "embeds" them within the setting. I am the final arbiter, not because it is "my" setting but because I am responsible for the overall play experience. I am the "gardener," so to speak.



pemerton said:


> It may be time for another distinction, which I made in a reply to @_*innerdude*_ somewhere upthread.
> 
> Not all worldbuilding is prep. Eg if the GM draws a map of the whole gameworld, but the campaign takes place only in one little geographic segment of it, then that is not prep for play.
> 
> And not all prep is worldbuilding. If you make notes of (say) 10 encounters you think might be fun to run, but you work out what to do with them, how to sequence them etc in the course of play then you didn't build a world, in the sense of establish - in advance of play - content of the shared fiction which then feeds into action resolution.
> 
> This is why a "no myth" game isn't the same thing as a "no prep" game (though in some systems could be run that way - of systems I know, Cortex+ can be run with no or virtually no prep; 4e, on the other hand, requires someone (either me or the designers) to write up all those stat blocks in advance).




OK, sure, and...? Just wondering how this relates to the overall conversation.


----------



## Ovinomancer

So, here's my thoughts, based on how this conversation has ranged:  this is really [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] coming back to the concept of "secret backstory" using a different appropriation of terms, redefined into what pemerton wants to get at rather than the broader definition more commonly used.  

Most the rancor in the thread (and a good bit of the confusion) is the appropriate of "worldbuilding", which already has a useful and widely understood definition,.  pemerton has instead defined worldbuilding as that part of the fiction the DM has prewritten and kept secret from the players, which may then mean that player action declarations may fail or succeed due to things not determined by the game mechanics, but instead on this secret truth that DM hasn't revealed.  pemerton greatly prefers a playstyle where such secret knowledge doesn't exist and everything is determine in play.

Is this correct?  Because the rest of this is going to be based on that understanding.  

I have no problem with this as a position -- it's fair, understandable, and I can see the appeal.  I've even played in such games, and enjoyed them.  I also play and run (mostly run these days) games where there is secret backstory.  My current group has at least 2 players that would very much dislike the style of game pemerton (and others) enjoys -- they would very much dislike having to author fiction as part of their action declarations, and would feel that the world was too subject to whim to be enjoyable.  I know this because I've discussed it with them, and tried to play some icebreaker games that go down this path:  Fiasco was, for one of them, a fiasco, he didn't enjoy it at all. I love Fiasco, and all of its fiaconess, but I see their point:  if everything not already nailed down is up for grabs, then it doesn't really matter much.  You can disagree with that, and believe differently, but you need to accept that some, maybe even many, people do think this.  Enough, at least, that the predominate playstyle is secret backstory and not more story now methods.

What doesn't help this discussion is that you (pemerton) keep casting the use of secret backstory in the worst light -- as a tool bluntly wielded by the DM in defiance of his players.  And, you're right, it can be that.  I think that's enough for you to dislike it, but it remains that the vast majority of DMs don't use it that way.  They use it to build a world to be explored, which is what their players are looking for (mine are -- they don't want to make a world through play, they want to play in a made world).  Further, it's not very helpful that you ignore that your chosen method does some fiat negating of actions as well -- you just hand wave that away under the guise of good play.  The ray gun example is on topic, here.  Declaring that you look for a ray gun in the study of a game that has the setting of Greyhawk and the genre conventions of low fantasy sword and sorcery would be negated, and also an example of play that violated the agreed social contract for the game.  Well, using secret backstory in inappropriate ways to confound players is also generally viewed as poor play. Not finding the map in the study is fine, because it's in the library, and the scene that's framed isn't just the study, but the whole mansion, so the map is to be found in the scene, when the fictional positioning is good for map finding.  Much like finding ray guns is good when the fictional positioning and scene framing allows for it (provided that the play has led there).  You have a habit of insisting that things are impossible in your playstyle when, in reality, it's just that such play violates the assumptions of your play.  Well, same goes for the other side:  most of the egregious examples you posit are bad play as well.

The real crux here is to cater to the players.  I'd be fine playing in a story now style game.  One of my DMs essentially ran this style of game behind the curtains as presented it as a secret backstory game.  Essentially, he crafted a great illusion that we, as players, were finding out things he's written down, but this wasn't the truth, he adapted to player action descriptions and responded much more like a story now game than anything more traditional.  He made it up on the fly, for the most part.  But, because of the desires of some of our group, he did a really good job of presenting it as a planned game rather than something he just made up.  That, and we all trusted him to run an entertaining game.

But, I run for a group that enjoys the tactical aspects of D&D combat.  They like the role-playing, too, but all have expressed a sincere desire to play on a grid rather than TotM.  This puts hard limitations on the ability to 'wing it'.  In playing D&D, as you've noted, stats are important.  So is encounter design, lest you have boring combats or combats that are unfair to the players.  Both are fine to have, in moderation (and with good foreshadowing) but too many of either is a problem.  Then you have encounter maps, which are hard to do well on the fly, and the preference that encounter maps encourage dynamic fights, so they have elements that can be utilized by either side:  cover, obscurement, environmental hazards, z-axis elements, etc.  This is all very hard to do and provide in response to player declared actions, on the fly and without prep.  So, I prep a bit.  I build a few maps that I can use, I build a few encounters I can use, etc, etc.  But, to do this usefully, I have to understand how they might fit together in play, so I reference the maps and information I've already generated.  This spirals outward until I have built up a few layers of secret DM knowledge, and this is important because I'm providing information to my players on what possible threats they may encounter in an area so that they can prepare.  A good example from last week's game:  the players decided to explore towards a distant tower-like structure from the outpost they're currently based in.  I had rolled a number of random encounters for the area to prep ahead of time, and, because this area has dangers above what the part can handle, I generated a few higher level encounters as well.  I like the T-Rex encounter so generated, but spriging a T-Rex on a 2nd level party is not nice, so I had the outpost leader tell the group before they headed out to watch out, a large dangerous beast (and I then described a T-Rex) had been seen in the upper grasslands in the direction of the tower-like thing as foreshadowing.  The party then can plan and take precautions if the T-Rex encounter came up.

So, that part of secret backstory is useful to me, because I play and enjoy a game that requires more prep than some others.  I also had the tower mapped out, with encounters, because that's easier for me to do.  Still, this is a guideline for me, and pretty much every encounter in the tower deviated or expanded on notes due to play rather than a slavish adherence to the sketch I made.  The initial room had a barricade that wasn't trapped until a player declared they were checking for traps and failed their check - I added a noisemaker to alert the floor above because of this.  The encounter on the next floor had the NPC they interacted with shift away from my notes to better match the kinds of questions they were asking him -- he was mostly there to maybe become a future resource for the players and to warn them about the encounter on the third floor -- a golem the party had not real hope of defeating without extreme luck.  Still, they went up to investigate the golem and ended up setting it free (it was locked in a warded room) because they were trying to drill a hole through the door to look into the room with the golem and failed another check to recognize the arcane wards on the door.  This caused the wards to fail and the golem to burst out.  

And the entire tower was built the way it was because I have unique magic item rules that need power sources appropriate to what you want to create, and electricity was something that one player in interested in, so this tower marker on the map (I placed it there without any idea what it might become) because a source of lightning energy through the destroyed wizard's lab where the wizard was making flesh golems so the tower has a huge iron spike at the top to attract and channel lightning -- useful to the player for creating magic items based on electricity, as soon as they figure out how to deal with the golem (which they ran away from, btw).

So, yeah, I have to have secret backstory, because I have to have at least a framework to build my prep for games onto -- some concept of how they fit together so that I can provide the necessary foreshadowing to the players so they can effectively plan and engage the world on their terms.  I leave a lot out and figure it out in play, but sometimes things are a certain way because changing that detail means that my prep no longer makes any sense.  So, lets say, the players declare that they're going to investigate the tower because they think it was a storage place for magic weapons, I'm not going to let mechanics or a check validate that -- firstly because magic weapons are personally created and unique to each person (no sharing) as a genre convention, but secondly because would need to do a different set of prep to prepare a tower that has appropriate guardians for a stash of magical weapons (assuming that was a thing, of course).

To sum up:  the amount of needed secret backstory, or DM determining facts outside of play (which I think is a better descriptor of what you're talking about), really does depend somewhat on the game being played.  It depends even more on what the players want.  Not everyone wants to 'find out' during play.  Some want to figure out the DM's puzzle.  You are one of the latter, and that's fine, but you should, by this point and after all of these threads, at least come to a grudging understanding that not everyone is you.

And, finally, I think there's a lot to this about putting trust in the DM's hands.  Many statements you've made over many threads leads me to believe that you just do not want to play in a game where someone other than the dice decides what you can do.  I think you fundamentally do not trust that any DM can provide good enough play over you having control over what gets introduced (and this is true both through you successful action declarations and that the GMs in your preferred playstyle is restricted to narrating failures by engaging your character build hooks).  And, that's absolutely fine.  I've had the unfortunate experience of some pretty bad DMs over time (I was one those, once <shudder>), so I can grok that desire.  I don't share it, but I do understand it.


----------



## Lanefan

innerdude said:


> So, this is the crux of @_*pemerton*_'s problem with pre-authored backstory, especially the first half of your signature---The PCs searching for weeks of game world time, with the players making a multitude of action declarations that the GM knows to be fruitless beforehand, all to serve the purpose of "maintaining game world fidelity."
> 
> Because by golly, the map's in the desk drawer in Room 14 of Castle Vitruvious. Too bad if those stupid players were too dense to pick up on the relevant clues! If they end up wasting half a gaming session (or more) on their fruitless search, that's the player's problem, not the GM's. Next time those players better be smarter, darn it! Oh, and if the players TOTALLY MESS UP the interaction with the Chancellor that would have given them easy access to Room 14? Too bad for them, so sad!



I detect a bit of good-nautred sarcasm in there, but underneath (and not as extreme) yes, you're about right.



> I'm now in my forties. I'm a working professional with three kids. The players in my group are all in their early thirties and beyond, four of the five with kids of their own. I don't have time to waste---either as a player or GM---in my once-every-two-weeks gaming sessions for the party to go on a fruitless search for a map.
> 
> If the map is crucial to continuing the plot of the game, _then give the party the dang map already_.



Ah, there's perhaps the difference.  You see, for my part as long as we're having fun* it doesn't matter what amount of adventuring or "progress" gets done this session, because there'll always be another session...and another after that, repeat ad infinitum.  I see any campaign I enter, be it as player or DM, as something that will go on open-endedly far into the real-world future - thus if the pace of play slows down for a while, then so be it.

* - and yes, fun can include being frustrated sometimes - there's no law against frustrated players / PCs. 



> I wholly respect that your group has a well-established social contract in place, @_*Lanefan*_, that allows for "searching for weeks and finding nothing" to be a valid outcome. And I also realize that this exaggerated example is fairly well addressed in "DM-ing 101" in any number of online blogs and resources.
> 
> But the fact is we have to keep re-iterating this because it's still happening out in the real world. Newbie GMs still make these kinds of mistakes. Sometimes even experienced GMs make these kinds of mistakes



Except I don't think it's a mistake.  I think it's part of presenting a more realistic and immersive situation in which not everything is handed to the PCs and in which sometimes they're flat-out going to fail - just like real life.



> For me, I simply do not have the luxury for this kind of thing in my group. If a GM's plot is so set in stone that he or she can't find reasonable options to give this information out, introduce interesting new hooks that relate to the PCs dramatic needs in play, and still keep a reasonably coherent sense for how these pieces fit together, then that's not a group I'm interested in playing in. And yeah, I'm willing to admit that that's a pretty high barrier to entry for a GM.
> 
> But the alternative is to waste my time in "GM setting tourist" campaign play, and that's something I will only tolerate to a certain point. Maintaining player interest, pacing, and dramatic tension are now VASTLY more important to me as a player and GM than "game world fidelity."



They're tied together, though.  Player interest and game-world fidelity go hand in hand - if the game world is inconsistent or unrealistic the players IME start to treat it as a joke.  Pacing - that's determined by both the players and the DM at different times, and it falls to the slowest common denominator.  To explain: if the players want to dive into the minutae of haggling over mundane equipment prices the DM has to go along with that; conversely if the DM has set up a situation where the PCs have to spend some time investigating and searching then the players have to go along with that.

Lanefan


----------



## Sebastrd

Ovinomancer said:


> So, here's my thoughts, based on how this conversation has ranged....




Great summation, and mirrors both my thoughts and experiences exactly.


----------



## Lanefan

While I've quoted [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] here as the points raised lead nicely into what I want to say, this is mainly for [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] .



Ovinomancer said:


> What doesn't help this discussion is that you (pemerton) keep casting the use of secret backstory in the worst light -- as a tool bluntly wielded by the DM in defiance of his players.



This, along with consistently referencing "Gygaxian play" as if it's something to be avoided at all costs (while, ironically, quoting Gygax when it bolsters his argument), is the foundation for my comment a few pages back about slighting other forms of play.



> The real crux here is to cater to the players.  I'd be fine playing in a story now style game.  One of my DMs essentially ran this style of game behind the curtains as presented it as a secret backstory game.  Essentially, he crafted a great illusion that we, as players, were finding out things he's written down, but this wasn't the truth, he adapted to player action descriptions and responded much more like a story now game than anything more traditional.  He made it up on the fly, for the most part.  But, because of the desires of some of our group, he did a really good job of presenting it as a planned game rather than something he just made up.



This is way cool, and points again to my repeated assertion that with a half-decent DM the players shouldn't be able to tell the difference between prepped content and on-the-fly content. (though my questions then become 1. why are they looking for the difference, and 2. why do they care)



> That, and we all trusted him to run an entertaining game.
> 
> <...>
> 
> And, finally, I think there's a lot to this about putting trust in the DM's hands.  Many statements you've made over many threads leads me to believe that you just do not want to play in a game where someone other than the dice decides what you can do.  I think you fundamentally do not trust that any DM can provide good enough play over you having control over what gets introduced (and this is true both through you successful action declarations and that the GMs in your preferred playstyle is restricted to narrating failures by engaging your character build hooks).  And, that's absolutely fine.  I've had the unfortunate experience of some pretty bad DMs over time (I was one those, once <shudder>), so I can grok that desire.  I don't share it, but I do understand it.



And this.  If you don't trust the DM, what's the point?

When I get on an airplane I trust that the pilot is going to get us into the air and, later, get us back on the ground in one piece at the airport we're supposed to be flying to.

Similarly, when I sit down at a D&D table I trust that the DM is going to present an entertaining game with a consistent (or maybe a better term is reliable?) setting and that - despite occasional moments of unfairness that may be generated from either side of the screen - the game will be fair in an overall sense.  I trust her to have come up with an interesting story or plot or reason for us to go adventuring.  I also trust her to be able to accept that her storyline might be abandoned by the players / PCs in favour of something else that catches our interest (in the airplane analogy, sometimes the passengers choose or change the destination mid-flight), and to be able to run with that (set course for a different airport and keep on flyin').

I'm also aware that no DM is perfect, and mistakes happen on both a small (rule misinterpretation) and large (man this adventure sucks!) scale; and can live with that.  If she realizes and owns up to her mistakes either now or later, even better! 

On the flip side, when I'm the DM I try (and succeed most but by no means all of the time) to be the DM I'd want to have as a player.

Lanefan


----------



## Ovinomancer

Lanefan said:


> While I've quoted [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] here as the points raised lead nicely into what I want to say, this is mainly for   [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] .
> 
> This, along with consistently referencing "Gygaxian play" as if it's something to be avoided at all costs (while, ironically, quoting Gygax when it bolsters his argument), is the foundation for my comment a few pages back about slighting other forms of play.
> 
> This is way cool, and points again to my repeated assertion that with a half-decent DM the players shouldn't be able to tell the difference between prepped content and on-the-fly content. (though my questions then become 1. why are they looking for the difference, and 2. why do they care)
> 
> And this.  If you don't trust the DM, what's the point?
> 
> When I get on an airplane I trust that the pilot is going to get us into the air and, later, get us back on the ground in one piece at the airport we're supposed to be flying to.
> 
> Similarly, when I sit down at a D&D table I trust that the DM is going to present an entertaining game with a consistent (or maybe a better term is reliable?) setting and that - despite occasional moments of unfairness that may be generated from either side of the screen - the game will be fair in an overall sense.  I trust her to have come up with an interesting story or plot or reason for us to go adventuring.  I also trust her to be able to accept that her storyline might be abandoned by the players / PCs in favour of something else that catches our interest (in the airplane analogy, sometimes the passengers choose or change the destination mid-flight), and to be able to run with that (set course for a different airport and keep on flyin').
> 
> I'm also aware that no DM is perfect, and mistakes happen on both a small (rule misinterpretation) and large (man this adventure sucks!) scale; and can live with that.  If she realizes and owns up to her mistakes either now or later, even better!
> 
> On the flip side, when I'm the DM I try (and succeed most but by no means all of the time) to be the DM I'd want to have as a player.
> 
> Lanefan



To be fair to  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], thers lots of reasons to not trust to GM, and his preferred games have less of a GM rather than another player with asymmetrical narrative tools.


----------



## Shasarak

pemerton said:


> But most contemporary D&D isn't played in the spirit of classic D&D




How can you play contemporary DnD in the spirit of classic DnD when the rules have been specifically changed to counter classic DnD play?


----------



## pemerton

billd91 said:


> There's also dealing with divination spells like, well, divination and augury. Much easier to adjudicate those if there's something there.



This is where system matters. Fiat abilities are different from dice roll abilities: they oblige the GM to narrate something, without establshing whether it is a success or failure for the player.

Thus, they're definitely a good fit for puzzle-solving type play.

For a more character-and-theme focused game, I much prefer rolls.



Lanefan said:


> She could, for example, have had the PCs at some point find a very cryptic map showing (somewhat ironically) where in the castle the map they're looking for is hidden - cryptic enough that when the sought map is found the PCs will look at this other one and say "Ahhh, *that's* what it was trying to show us!".
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The map certainly could be in the study - that's why we're looking for it there.  But we've turned the place upside down and given it the most thorough search we can and lo and behold: no map.  So we'll move on to the library and search there; then the drawing room, then the bedrooms...and if those come up dry we'll move on to less likely locations such as the wine cellar or the kitchen.  Long story short, we know it's here somewhere - we just have to find it.
> 
> And who knows, on the way to finding the map we might find all kinds of other neat interesting stuff!



If there are clear win-conditions established by the game - eg collect loot, earn XP, gain levels - and if the players have clear moves that give them access to that stuff, then what you are describing is Gygaxian RPGing.

But once we have GM-seded cryptic maps that only make sense in retrospect; GM-supplied "plot hooks" like maps and the like; a setting to which the players have very limited access relative to its totality, and where the way they access it is so heavily mediated by the GM's decisions about what is or isn't important to narrate; then I'm really surprised that you can see why I regard this as very GM-driven RPGing: the goal of the players is to walk around the "board" and trigger the GM's obligation to tell them stuff.

That may be fun or not - I'm not expressing any judgement on that. I'm just trying to get the analysis clear.


----------



## Caliban

pemerton said:


> That may be fun or not - I'm not expressing any judgement on that.




Oh, you very definitely are. 



> I'm just trying to get the analysis clear.




This...not so much.


----------



## pemerton

innerdude said:


> If the map is crucial to continuing the plot of the game, _then give the party the dang map already_. And likewise, if I'm the GM, the LAST thing I want to do is lead the players around by the nose for a session or two just because they can't seem to figure out where the next "rail" of my plot is supposed to be.



Well, personally the second thing here gives me a reason not to have the first thing - ie a "plot" to which the map (or whatever) is crucial. 



innerdude said:


> If a GM's plot is so set in stone that he or she can't find reasonable options to give this information out, introduce interesting new hooks that relate to the PCs dramatic needs in play, and still keep a reasonably coherent sense for how these pieces fit together, then that's not a group I'm interested in playing in. And yeah, I'm willing to admit that that's a pretty high barrier to entry for a GM.
> 
> But the alternative is to waste my time in "GM setting tourist" campaign play



Where I would disagree with this is about barrier to entry. I actually don't think it's that hard to run a non-preauthored setting game _if that's what the players want_. Provided the players actually buy in (not just in abstract principle, but in the concrete details of their build and play of their PCs) then knowledge of a few trops from comics, TV shows or movies will get even a new GM a long way.

There are some "traps for new players" in at least some RPG systems - eg how do fiat spells fit into a "say 'yes' or roll the dice" game? But these abilities are notorious for causing headaches in other styles too, so it's not like the new "indie" GM is at any special disadvantage!

Of course I agree that if the GM is running "setting tourism" then it's incumbent on him/her to make sure it's a fun tour! (ie if you're going to go omnipotent GM, then go all in!) - two sessions hunting for the next map, or whatever, to get to the next interesting bit, is pretty hard to take.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> consistently referencing "Gygaxian play" as if it's something to be avoided at all costs



I've never said that. One way of reading the OP is as a hymn to Gygaxian play!

I have asked about the utility of carrying assumptions and approachs to play that make sense in Gygaxian play (eg the emphasis on maps) into other styles pf play, but that's not a criticism of Gygaxian play. It's a criticism of needless aping of it in other contexts.

I've said that I don't particularly enjoy Gygaxian play, and also that I'm bad at it both as GM and playerr (and obviously my badness at it and my lack of enjoyment of it may not be unconnected). But I haven't voiced any criticism of it. (Not enjoying something isn't criticising it. I enjoy running. My partner doesn't really care for running. That doesn't mean she thinks I'm a bad, foolish or misguided person for enjoying running.)



Shasarak said:


> How can you play contemporary DnD in the spirit of classic DnD when the rules have been specifically changed to counter classic DnD play?



I'm not sure if the question is meant rhetorically or not?

I think it's very hard to play classic D&D with 4e (though I know some tried, and some of them seem to have succeeded). 3E and 5e are probably a bit more friendly towards it (eg with their action resolution mechanics), although some aspects (Perception and Diplomacy/Persuasion skills) don't help.

And you'd need to reintroduce many of the methods of classic play that these editions tend not to emphasises or even incorporate - obviously in dungeon design (which is about prep/setting design) but also in play procedures (mapping; keeping track of dungeon turns; wandering monsters as an element of generating time-based and noise/activity-based pressure; etc).

Am I talking about the right things in response to your question?


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> I think it's part of presenting a more realistic and immersive situation in which not everything is handed to the PCs and in which sometimes they're flat-out going to fail - just like real life.



Again, this is a red herring. You don't need pre-authored setting for the PCs to fail.

In my 4e game, the PCs found themselves committed to sparing the cleric of Torog that they all wanted to see dead. That was a fail.

They brought ruin upon the duergar stronghold at the hands of Orcus and Pazuzu. That was a fail.

They failed to save all the prisoners of goblins that they were pledged to save - because of their cowardice, one ended up being sacrificed, before their eyes, by a cultist of Yeenoghu. That was a fail.

At least one of them is committed to ensuring that the Raven Queen does not become ruler of the cosmos. Yet nearly every action he takes helps her along that path, and he knows it. That could be a fail too.

In my Cortex+ game, the PCs first attempt to learn the source and nature of the blight falling on the land was a spectacular failure: one of them became rich by looting the drow caverns while leaving the others behind, but they learned nothing about the fate of the land. Some time later, when the two fragments of the party crossed paths again in a village under attack by raiders heralding the coming Ragnarok, they failed to save the village and ended up being left for dead by said raiders, who took all the villagers captive. That was a fail.

In my BW game, the mage PC failed to save his brother from possession by a balrog - instead his brother was assassinated before his eyes. And he then ended up in prison, where he currently still is, without any clear plan for attaining his freedom. That was a series of failures.



Lanefan said:


> if the game world is inconsistent or unrealistic the players IME start to treat it as a joke.



Luckily for me, that's not a problem in my games! - either as GM, or in the ones where I'm a player. (With one exception, back in 1990, when we sacked the GM after a couple of sessions.)



Lanefan said:


> with a half-decent DM the players shouldn't be able to tell the difference between prepped content and on-the-fly content. (though my questions then become 1. why are they looking for the difference, and 2. why do they care)



And why do _you_ care?

And why does it matter if the players can tell? Which obviously they can all the time - if the game's not on rails, and if the outcomes aren't predetermined, then every time some significant thing happens, it's obvious that the GM has to generate new content.

Just thinking of a few examples from my own experience: a player has his/her PC pray for help; the prayer is answered - it seems - by a duergar peering down through a cleft in the cavern sealing, giving the signal for aid - and the PC signals back "the dues will be paid". After the immediate crisis is resolved, the PCs are now heading off in the company of the duergar to the duergar land. New content is needed.

A player decdies that his PC -having been part of a successful defeat of an Orcus cultist infiltration - is going to look for where they came from. The ranger PC helps find and follow tracks and trails, and they find the entrance to a secret lair. Which they go on to explore. New content is needed.

A player (playing his PC) persuades the group to lay-over in orbit about a world, so that his PC can look for signs of alien influence. He decides to do this by examining trinkets for sale in a market. New content is needed.

Etc, etc. New content is needed all the time. Players don't need to be very bright to work out that the new content is coming from somewhere! Maybe the GM pulls out something s/he prepared earlier and slots it in - this is where module maps, module vignettes, monster manuals, etc come in handy - or maybe the GM makes stuff up from scratch - this is where a familiarity with basic genre tropes and devices is useful.

This also reiterates the difference between prep, and (pre-)establishing a setting.



Lanefan said:


> If you don't trust the DM, what's the point?



Trust the GM to do what?

I trust my BW GM to run an interesting game. What's that got to do with the point of worldbuilding? I'm sure if I wanted to play what [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] has called a "setting tourism" game, he could do a good job of that too. But that's not what I play RPGs for.



Lanefan said:


> when I sit down at a D&D table I trust that the DM is going to present an entertaining game with a consistent (or maybe a better term is reliable?) setting and that - despite occasional moments of unfairness that may be generated from either side of the screen - the game will be fair in an overall sense.  I trust her to have come up with an interesting story or plot or reason for us to go adventuring.



OK - when I sit down at the BW table I trust that the GM is going to present an entertaining game with a consistent and reliable setting and that the game will be fair in an overall sense. I trust him to come up with interesting framing that will push me (as my PC) in difficult and surprising directions. Occasionally he might falter - we're all human - but most of the time he delivers.

Our contrasting preferences for RPGing don't really bear on the issue of how much either of us trusts our GMs.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> I run for a group that enjoys the tactical aspects of D&D combat.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> This puts hard limitations on the ability to 'wing it'.  In playing D&D, as you've noted, stats are important.  So is encounter design, lest you have boring combats or combats that are unfair to the players
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Then you have encounter maps, which are hard to do well on the fly, and the preference that encounter maps encourage dynamic fights, so they have elements that can be utilized by either side:  cover, obscurement, environmental hazards, z-axis elements, etc.  This is all very hard to do and provide in response to player declared actions, on the fly and without prep.  So, I prep a bit.



I agree that different systems call for different amounts of prep. 4e is very prep-heavy, for instance, and so I don't run it without my Monster Manuals and other tools handy.

But this sort of prep is (or, at least, can be) distinguished from pre-authoring the setting. Intricate maps create more pressure in that respect, I agree - but (speaking just from my own experience) this is where tried-and-true methods like prepping between sessions come in handy! (Eg the players have their PCs enter the Underdark - now you draw up your Underdark encounter map.)

As to whether encounter maps are _secret_ backstory - more on that below (in this post).



Ovinomancer said:


> One of my DMs essentially ran this style of game behind the curtains as presented it as a secret backstory game.  Essentially, he crafted a great illusion that we, as players, were finding out things he's written down, but this wasn't the truth, he adapted to player action descriptions and responded much more like a story now game than anything more traditional.  He made it up on the fly, for the most part.



OK. As per my reply just upthread to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], I can see that this is a thing but I'm not clear why it's a good thing? (Which is not to say it's a bad thing.)



Ovinomancer said:


> My current group has at least 2 players that would very much dislike the style of game pemerton (and others) enjoys -- they would very much dislike having to author fiction as part of their action declarations, and would feel that the world was too subject to whim to be enjoyable.



I don't know your players. I'm sure you know their tastes.

It's the description that I'm interested in.

How is "I search the study for the map - is it there?" _authoring fiction as part of an action declaration_?

Even if one looks at a mechanic like Circles in Burning Wheel, it can work in different ways, eg:

(1) "The head of my sorcerous cabal is Jabal the Red. I reach out to hin to see what he has to say." - fiction is authored in the action declaration.

(2) "Are there any knights of my order in these parts? I'm looking for signs of them as we travel." - no fiction is authored in the action declaration.​
This is why I take the view that the issue of player authorship of content, and the issue of "secret backstory" as a factor in resolution, are (in general) orthogonal.

A case that illustrates the contrast (and I'm basing this claim in experience) is the use of divination, knowledge skils etc. Consider "I cast object reading: what do I see?" This is a fairly common action declaration in my 4e game. It requires me to make stuff up to tell the players. (To relate this to the idea of prep - the idea that the GM has object reading notes for every item that comes up in the course of play seems absurd to me, and any player who doesn't work out that the GM is making this stuff up must be kidding him-/herself!)

In BW, that's not really a permissible action declaration, or at least is on the borderline - the player really needs at least to signal something about why s/he (as the PC) cares, or what s/he might be hoping to learn. But that's a feature of BW that _depends _upon its approach to backstory, but goes beyond what is merely part of that approach.



Ovinomancer said:


> you (pemerton) keep casting the use of secret backstory in the worst light -- as a tool bluntly wielded by the DM in defiance of his players.  And, you're right, it can be that.  I think that's enough for you to dislike it, but it remains that the vast majority of DMs don't use it that way.  They use it to build a world to be explored, which is what their players are looking for
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Further, it's not very helpful that you ignore that your chosen method does some fiat negating of actions as well -- you just hand wave that away under the guise of good play.  The ray gun example is on topic, here.  Declaring that you look for a ray gun in the study of a game that has the setting of Greyhawk and the genre conventions of low fantasy sword and sorcery would be negated, and also an example of play that violated the agreed social contract for the game.  Well, using secret backstory in inappropriate ways to confound players is also generally viewed as poor play. Not finding the map in the study is fine, because it's in the library, and the scene that's framed isn't just the study, but the whole mansion, so the map is to be found in the scene, when the fictional positioning is good for map finding.



Obviuosly the map example is an example that serves as a simple illustration and a place holder. In real life the context of actual play is everything.

I agree with you that the scope of the scene is important - one way of trying to characterise Gygaxian play would be that the whole dungeon is the scene. (I don't know that that sheds _much_ light, but if one is determined to analyse Gygaxian play in scene-framing terms, that would be one way to do it.) Upthread I posted the following thoughts about secret backstory and resulting "fiat" failure as an aspect of scene scope:



pemerton said:


> all action declaration in a RPG depends upon the fictional positioning of the PC - you can't say "I pick up a rock" and hope to have that action declaration succeed if your PC is not in the vicinity of some rocks; you can't say "I buy a shovel" and hope to have that action declaration succeed if your PC is not in the vicinity of some friendly purveyors of shovels; etc.
> 
> In a game run on the basis of GM pre-authorship with secret elements of the gameworld, it is possible for a player to _think_ that the fictional positioning is appropriate for declaring some action, but in fact it is not. So the player declares the action, and perhaps the GM even allows the dice to be rolled (or rolls them behind the screen), but the check will always fail (and thus the fiction not develop in the way that the player wants) because _in fact_ the fictional positioning was not apposite.
> 
> Now, there are borderline cases here, because "secrecy" is a matter of degree. To give a simple example, a combat encounter that starts with an invisible opponent among the visible ones will produce a moment in which the fictional positioniong turns out to be different from what a player understood it to be - eg (in some editions of D&D) s/he will declare some movement and then suffer an opportunity attack that s/he wasn't expecting. The 4e DMG's skill challenge example has a comparable non-combat example: anyone who tries to bully the duke automatically incurs a failure in the attempt to persuade him.
> 
> My own view is that if the secret is (i) within the ascertainable scope of the situation as presented to the players, and (ii) is salient within the context of gameplay, and (iii) is not overwhelming in its impact on the situation, then it's fair game. The two examples I've given satisfy (i) - you can find the invisible foe through various means including Perception checks; you can learn the duke's personality through an Insight check.
> 
> My reason for caring about (ii) - salience - is because, in practical gameplay terms, this is a major consideration for knowability. The players need to have at least some general sense of what they are expected to be looking for. I think the combat example satisfies (ii) for a default D&D game - we all know that invisible foes go with the territory. The skill challenge example is, in my view, more contentious in respect of (ii) and would depend upon how the campaign, as actually played, has presented personalities _and_ has treated bullying as a method of persuading them.
> 
> My reason for caring about (iiI) is that, if the secret is overwhelming and the players don't learn it, then the game has a feel of "rocks fall, everybody dies". I think that is fair game in classic dungeoneering - ToH is full of it - but I personally don't care for classic dungeoneering as a playstyle, and hence include (iii) as a desideratum. Both the examples I gave satisfy (iii) - a skill challenge isn't lost with a single failure; and one invisilbe foe (who is otherwise part of a fairly designed encounter) isn't going to lead, in iteslf, to a TPK.



I think when the whole mansion is the scene, and the map is hidden in the bread-bin in the kitchen, there may well be a real risk of (ii) failing - both because the breadbins may have no inherent salience to the players as potential map repositories, and because the players are very dependent on the GM presenting the mansion to them by way of narration, and that narration may fail to engender the right sort of salience of breadbins in the kitchen (especially if the GM is worried that drawing attention to the bread bins may give away what s/he is hoping will be a puzzle).

I think there are also risks around (iii) - assuming that this map _matters_ for whatever purpose, then failing to find it may be a "rocks fall"-type roadblock. (As [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] alluded to in his most recent post.)

One way of thinking about the Gumshoe system is that it's really an attempt to circumvent (iii), by making sure that at least the basic clues are handed out automatically once the fictional positioining is more-or-less adequate. Which then removes a lot of the burden of (ii); but obviously also gives the game very much the flavour of "following the GM's story", I think.


----------



## howandwhy99

So I dug up pemerton's penchant for The Big Lie perpetrated by the Forge and his desire for continuing their historical revisionism of RPGs into a "storytelling" hobby.



pemerton said:


> *These three elements of D&D* - it's potential for story, the need for the GM to improvise, the importance of the fiction as an ingredient of play which is not simply algorithmic in its workings - have been there from the beginning. They didn't just spring into existence when White Wolf started publishing in the late 1980s.




As I understand it, the original post in that thread feeds nicely into his current polemics within this thread. Those three quoted elements of his are not just mind-boggling wrong falsehoods, but the continuing censorship and active deletion of the hobby of RPGs. It is simply and in every way false to consider RPGs as originally about improvisational story making or expressing fictional personalities --> two things that have absolutely nothing to do with gaming, role playing, or Dungeons & Dragons.


----------



## pemerton

howandwhy99 said:


> So I dug up pemerton's penchant for The Big Lie perpetrated by the Forge and his desire for continuing their historical revisionism of RPGs into a "storytelling" hobby.



Putting to one side the melodramatics - I'm not censoring anyone with a "big lie" - neither I nor The Forge has ever asserted that RPGs are a "storytelling" hobby.

I do assert that RPGing always involves a shared fiction. "I walk down the corridor and brush away the cobwebs" isn't just a move on a gameboard, because the cobwebs aren't on the gameboard. The "exist" only in the imaginations of the participants.

The fact that RPGs involve shared fictions of this sort is what explains (i) why there is no limit on the possible range of player moves, and (ii) why they're different from boardgames.

I know from past discussions that you seem not to grasp the difference between a fiction - an imagined thing - and a story. But that's on you. The difference isn't very complicated.


----------



## howandwhy99

pemerton said:


> Putting to one side the melodramatics - I'm not censoring anyone with a "big lie" - neither I nor The Forge has ever asserted that RPGs are a "storytelling" hobby.
> 
> I do assert that RPGing always involves a shared fiction. "I walk down the corridor and brush away the cobwebs" isn't just a move on a gameboard, because the cobwebs aren't on the gameboard. The "exist" only in the imaginations of the participants.
> 
> The fact that RPGs involve shared fictions of this sort is what explains (i) why there is no limit on the possible range of player moves, and (ii) why they're different from boardgames.
> 
> I know from past discussions that you seem not to grasp the difference between a fiction - an imagined thing - and a story. But that's on you. The difference isn't very complicated.



Obvious to any game designer who has read the Big Model, it is an intentional falsehood meant to subvert all gaming by treating gaming as the act of improvisational expression, which it is not. Read any actual game design theory for hundreds of years. Gaming is the act of goal seeking in a structural design, whether made by a person or not.

Narrative concepts and terminology are part of a fundamentally different culture which does not coincide with game culture. Yet you continue to perpetrate the lies of The Big Model when you continue to call elements of gaming "fictions" (a narrative term). There is no such thing as an actual fiction, I assume you know this. The theory of narratives is meant to be used pragmatically just as any other. Game elements are structures, mechanical designs which operate together in a single apparatus for the players to game (seek pre-existing goals within). 

Yes, this means the cobwebs have to "be there", at least in the hidden game design the DM has behind the screen, if the players are going to be able to interact with them in any way. Players can believe whatever they choose about the actual hidden design. But it is up to the DM to objectively relate the current configuration when the players' pieces have the ability to discover such things.

To be clear, gaming is a repetitive act where the players can game a design, learn their scores, adjust their play, and improve their ability at the game over time. This is the opposite act of creative improv. It is also at the heart of roleplaying in D&D: mastering the game, demonstrating this by scoring points, going up in level, and being balanced against more difficult game designs.

What appalls me is your attempt to vilify the seminal moment of RPGs as "badwrongfun", when Arneson and Gygax took the massive and nuanced game designs from wargame tables and hid them behind screens. Thus enabling them to track highly detailed and vast game designs which players could game over 100s of hours as they advanced in their personal mastery of the game. By my understanding RPGS and D&D in particular are the first Hidden Design Games in history, and the type of game design almost all computer games follow as well. That Gary recognized that multiple manners of play and mastery were possible in games is something he's still ahead on when it comes to computer game design.

The Forge & the current vein of narrative theory they use (not just a theory at all to them, I propose) is nothing less than Anti-Game Theory. And and it is Anti-D&D. Regardless of whatever the latest brand name owners purvey.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Firstly, I'm now assuming that my summation of your position at the start of my post is agreed to.  You didn't respond to that, but chose to selectively respond to portions of the rest of my post that assumes that to be true, so I'm given to assuming you have no issues with my summation -- ie, that your issue is DM fiat in ruling player action declarations are invalid due to information only known to the DM.



pemerton said:


> I agree that different systems call for different amounts of prep. 4e is very prep-heavy, for instance, and so I don't run it without my Monster Manuals and other tools handy.
> 
> But this sort of prep is (or, at least, can be) distinguished from pre-authoring the setting. Intricate maps create more pressure in that respect, I agree - but (speaking just from my own experience) this is where tried-and-true methods like prepping between sessions come in handy! (Eg the players have their PCs enter the Underdark - now you draw up your Underdark encounter map.)



How can it be distiinguished?  You make this statement that there's a difference between creating an encounter map and pre-authoring setting details but don't actually provide an argument for the difference.  To me, the only difference would be degree, not kind.  For instance, if my pre-authored setting is Washington, DC, then play may occur anywhere within DC, including, possibly, the Monument.  Play won't occur in, say, Timbuktu.  If I build an encounter map of the Monument, though, then I'm saying play will occur in and around the Monument to the extent of my map and not, say, on Peachtree Avenue in Atlanta, GA.  Both are acts of constraining the play and limiting fictional positioning prior to play.  They only really differ in degree.

Or, are you referencing something else and trying to say that making an encounter map of the study, which concretely places walls, floors, furniture, etc., but not okay to place or not place a map in that study prior to play?  In which case I must again ask, what's the difference?  If I have an encounter map that has no couch, and my player wants to interact with a couch... is this not the same kind of pre-authoring a lack of a couch prior to play as the existence of a map in the study?  If not, what's the difference, in your eyes?






> OK. As per my reply just upthread to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], I can see that this is a thing but I'm not clear why it's a good thing? (Which is not to say it's a bad thing.)



Actually, that phrasing is akin to saying that if I cannot show it to be a good thing, then I'm left with only it being a thing or a bad thing.  This is the kind of phrasing that makes people assume a negative outlook on your behalf.

If you accept that this is a thing, and a thing that people enjoy, what's the purpose of your question?  Either you do not accept that this is a thing people enjoy, or you think this thing must be further justified to be a good thing.  I reject that further justification is necessary.

Now, if you want me to prove to you that you should think it's a good thing, prepare to be disappointed.



> How is "I search the study for the map - is it there?" _authoring fiction as part of an action declaration_?
> 
> Even if one looks at a mechanic like Circles in Burning Wheel, it can work in different ways, eg:
> 
> (1) "The head of my sorcerous cabal is Jabal the Red. I reach out to hin to see what he has to say." - fiction is authored in the action declaration.
> 
> (2) "Are there any knights of my order in these parts? I'm looking for signs of them as we travel." - no fiction is authored in the action declaration.​
> This is why I take the view that the issue of player authorship of content, and the issue of "secret backstory" as a factor in resolution, are (in general) orthogonal.




Well, that depends, and forces us to expand the question.  This really boils down into two cases:  the existence of a map has _not _been previously introduced in play and the existence of a map _has_ been previously introduced in play.

1) hasn't been introduced:  in this case, this is creation of content.  It's postulating anew that a map may exist.  In this case, under secret backstory, the DM would reference notes and either validate that, yes, a map exists here or no, a map doesn't exist here based on those notes and any successful checks required.  but, no fiction is authored by the player.

Under no secret backstory conditions, the player has now signaled that they wish to introduce a map, and the DM has to engage this hook and say yes or roll the dice.  If the dice are rolled and successful, then the player has now introduced fiction.  If the dice are unsuccessful, depending on how the DM chooses to use that failure, the map may still be introduced but with a complication, or it may not exist, or even it may exist but be destroyed by the looking.  In most of those cases, the player will author fiction by asking for the map.

2)  If the map has been previously introduced, then the only check is if it's in the study.  In the secret backstory version, the GM checks notes and calls for checks almost exactly like before, with the answer determined exactly like before.  But no fiction is authored by the player.

Under no secret backstory conditions, the DM either says yes or rolls the dice.  Again, if yes or successful roll, the player has introduced that the map is, in fact, in the study.  With a failure, it's up to the DM's choice whether the map exists in the study or not, so the player may still introduce fiction.

Unless I badly misunderstand your style of play, players are expected to include an outcome in their action declaration -- in effect, they provide the fiction to be added in case of a successful action declaration.  This is, as I understand and have experienced, what you're _playing to find out_.

Given all of that, I find your question to be very confusing.





> This is why I take the view that the issue of player authorship of content, and the issue of "secret backstory" as a factor in resolution, are (in general) orthogonal.



How can you say their orthogonal while arguing that secret backstory effectively precludes player authorship of content?  You've said multiple times that secret backstory is used to cause player declarations to fail by fiat.  That's very much impactful to player authorship of fiction, not orthogonal.

Not all player authorship, perhaps, but the introduction of content in play is not orthogonal to the existence of secret backstory, by your own arguments, much less mine.



> A case that illustrates the contrast (and I'm basing this claim in experience) is the use of divination, knowledge skils etc. Consider "I cast object reading: what do I see?" This is a fairly common action declaration in my 4e game. It requires me to make stuff up to tell the players. (To relate this to the idea of prep - the idea that the GM has object reading notes for every item that comes up in the course of play seems absurd to me, and any player who doesn't work out that the GM is making this stuff up must be kidding him-/herself!)
> 
> In BW, that's not really a permissible action declaration, or at least is on the borderline - the player really needs at least to signal something about why s/he (as the PC) cares, or what s/he might be hoping to learn. But that's a feature of BW that _depends _upon its approach to backstory, but goes beyond what is merely part of that approach.



I don't see the contrast you're claiming.  Neither of your examples seem to use secret backstory.  This seems an example of content you, as DM, generate in play in response to player declarations and not anything you're checking your notes for.



> Obviuosly the map example is an example that serves as a simple illustration and a place holder. In real life the context of actual play is everything.
> 
> I agree with you that the scope of the scene is important - one way of trying to characterise Gygaxian play would be that the whole dungeon is the scene. (I don't know that that sheds _much_ light, but if one is determined to analyse Gygaxian play in scene-framing terms, that would be one way to do it.) Upthread I posted the following thoughts about secret backstory and resulting "fiat" failure as an aspect of scene scope:
> 
> I think when the whole mansion is the scene, and the map is hidden in the bread-bin in the kitchen, there may well be a real risk of (ii) failing - both because the breadbins may have no inherent salience to the players as potential map repositories, and because the players are very dependent on the GM presenting the mansion to them by way of narration, and that narration may fail to engender the right sort of salience of breadbins in the kitchen (especially if the GM is worried that drawing attention to the bread bins may give away what s/he is hoping will be a puzzle).
> 
> I think there are also risks around (iii) - assuming that this map _matters_ for whatever purpose, then failing to find it may be a "rocks fall"-type roadblock. (As [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] alluded to in his most recent post.)
> 
> One way of thinking about the Gumshoe system is that it's really an attempt to circumvent (iii), by making sure that at least the basic clues are handed out automatically once the fictional positioining is more-or-less adequate. Which then removes a lot of the burden of (ii); but obviously also gives the game very much the flavour of "following the GM's story", I think.




You establish that fictional positioning for some things, like an invisible opponent, is okay to have not meet the player's perception but other things, like the presence of a map, aren't not.  This seems like special pleading, because those two things are actually very analogous.  They only seem different because you're presenting them in opposite ways -- that the player is looking for a map that isn't there vs the player not looking for an invisible opponent that is.  If we reverse the framing there, then we can have a case were a player is surprised by an map that they weren't looking for and be looking for an invisible opponent that isn't there.  Certainly, if we frame a scene where there's a map on the wall, then there's no issue with the player looking at it.  On the other hand, what do you do with the player that intentionally searches for an invisible opponent that isn't part of your encounter prep?  Do you ask for a check and then provide another opponent?  

I'm now actually very interested in how you would deal with a player declaring they're looking for an invisible opponent that you didn't prep for your 4e game.  This seems directly relatable to the issue of the map in the study, and I'm curious if the answer is the same.

On a personal note, much of this is based on the fact that I do use secret backstory, but not in the way you present.  For instance, I'd never put a map in a breadbox and not make that clear to the players.  What the map shows is what is secret to me, it being in the breadbox and the players guessing where I put it is not something I'd do.  I'd use the map to drive the play, as the players find out there's a map that will help them on whatever their current objective is, but they'll also find out it's in a breadbox, in the study, which belongs to the Dread Invisible Wizard Bob and guarded by DIW Bob's henchthugs.  To me, guessing where to search for a map isn't fun -- it's pixelbitching at the table -- and something I avoid at all costs.  When I build a scenario, I build it with challenging elements and a goal, but not a path to success.  If something is important to move forward, then it's obvious but might be very hard to get to.  Guessing what to do next sucks, but knowing you need to get to that breadbox in DIW Bob's study is cool; it's a challenge you can plan for and engage.  Or, like my players most often do, stock up on healing potions and kick in the door and see what happens.


----------



## Mercurius

howandwhy99 said:


> The Forge & the current vein of narrative theory they use (not just a theory at all to them, I propose) is nothing less than Anti-Game Theory. And and it is Anti-D&D. Regardless of whatever the latest brand name owners purvey.




You seem to be implying that there's a clear right way to play D&D (as a game, with clear objectives of mastery, winning, etc), and a wrong way (as a shared fiction, creative expression, etc).

Isn't the *Right Way to Play D&D* a unique mixture of 40+ years of game design, play, ideas, and personal experiences that each group makes their own? Even if the variance between most groups is only slight, isn't the whole spirit--even letter--of the game to make it your own experience?

Furthermore, regardless of how D&D was played in 1974, isn't it valid to play it in different ways? And can we not look at D&D as a _living tradition_ that has no absolute cap on branchings and variations?


----------



## Arilyn

howandwhy99 said:


> Obvious to any game designer who has read the Big Model, it is an intentional falsehood meant to subvert all gaming by treating gaming as the act of improvisational expression, which it is not. Read any actual game design theory for hundreds of years. Gaming is the act of goal seeking in a structural design, whether made by a person or not.
> 
> Narrative concepts and terminology are part of a fundamentally different culture which does not coincide with game culture. Yet you continue to perpetrate the lies of The Big Model when you continue to call elements of gaming "fictions" (a narrative term). There is no such thing as an actual fiction, I assume you know this. The theory of narratives is meant to be used pragmatically just as any other. Game elements are structures, mechanical designs which operate together in a single apparatus for the players to game (seek pre-existing goals within).
> 
> Yes, this means the cobwebs have to "be there", at least in the hidden game design the DM has behind the screen, if the players are going to be able to interact with them in any way. Players can believe whatever they choose about the actual hidden design. But it is up to the DM to objectively relate the current configuration when the players' pieces have the ability to discover such things.
> 
> To be clear, gaming is a repetitive act where the players can game a design, learn their scores, adjust their play, and improve their ability at the game over time. This is the opposite act of creative improv. It is also at the heart of roleplaying in D&D: mastering the game, demonstrating this by scoring points, going up in level, and being balanced against more difficult game designs.
> 
> What appalls me is your attempt to vilify the seminal moment of RPGs as "badwrongfun", when Arneson and Gygax took the massive and nuanced game designs from wargame tables and hid them behind screens. Thus enabling them to track highly detailed and vast game designs which players could game over 100s of hours as they advanced in their personal mastery of the game. By my understanding RPGS and D&D in particular are the first Hidden Design Games in history, and the type of game design almost all computer games follow as well. That Gary recognized that multiple manners of play and mastery were possible in games is something he's still ahead on when it comes to computer game design.
> 
> The Forge & the current vein of narrative theory they use (not just a theory at all to them, I propose) is nothing less than Anti-Game Theory. And and it is Anti-D&D. Regardless of whatever the latest brand name owners purvey.




You seem to have a lot of built up negative feelings for The Forge...

First of all, you are right about your definition of games being goal seeking in a structured format. But you have to admit that is a very broad definition which includes chess, hockey, hopscotch, board games, role playing games...

How is the narrative approach in rpgs destroying the hobby? The players are still seeking goals, and not always reaching them. The introduction of player driven plots is simply changing the way the games are being played. The ideas from The Forge are just that, different approaches, ideas and game philosophy. If you feel that these ideas are tainting even the latest iteration of DnD, it's because they are popular ideas. The more ways there are to play, the more people will be drawn to the hobby. Look at board games. There is an explosion of interest right now because they have evolved in a myriad of directions.

Even storytelling games are still games, as the players "compete" to drive the story in their preferred directions. 

There is no plot to drag rpgs down into the narrative muck of fiction. Enjoy your game, however you want. This thread is a debate, not a war over the future of the hobby.


----------



## pemerton

howandwhy99 said:


> What appalls me is your attempt to vilify the seminal moment of RPGs as "badwrongfun", when Arneson and Gygax took the massive and nuanced game designs from wargame tables and hid them behind screens.



I have no idea where you suppose I did this. On the first page of the thread, you said



howandwhy99 said:


> I know I've been saying things like the OP does about old school D&D for years. But it's nice to read others saying it too.



You do realise that I wrote the post that you were praising, don't you?


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> How can it be distiinguished?  You make this statement that there's a difference between creating an encounter map and pre-authoring setting details but don't actually provide an argument for the difference.  To me, the only difference would be degree, not kind.



Here's one example of the difference: I turned up to my first Traveller session with four worlds generated (each world takes about 5 minutes; I'd rolled these up in the course of re-familiarising myself with the world generation mechanics).

These weren't elements of the shared fiction; they were notes on a piece of paper.

In the course of the session three of those worlds were introduced into the shared fiction - as a stopover; as a destination; as a further world where a pathogen was known to come from.

The other world is still there on my bit of paper in case I need it. It's not part of the shared fiction.

Here's another example of the difference: I turned up once to a 4e session with my copy of MV2 - Threats to the Nentir Vale. That's prep (all these monsters statted up, with varying degrees of backstory). During the session, one of the PCs started a ritual sucking chaos energy out of a defeated hydra-like fire drake. Something went wrong, and I wanted some creatures to be summoned from the mountains by the out-of-control chaos energy. I flipped through the MV2 and founds mooncalves, which seemed to fit the bill. So now it was established in the shared fiction both that (i) mooncalves exist, and (ii) some of them are here, now.

Here's another example: In my BW game I statted up a dark naga, following the guidelines for creature design in the Monster Burner. I wan't 100% sure how I was going to use it. Then, around the same time, I got a copy of the "Paths of Spite" (then a pdf online; now part of The Codex) and wrote up a dark elf NPC. I wasn't sure how I was going to use that NPC either.

Then the opportunity to use the NPC emerged - as a thorn in the side of the PCs in the context of failed Orienteering checks to reach the waterhole at the foot of the Abor-Alz after trekking across the Bright Desert. And this also then gave some context for the dark naga - as the master of the dark elf, whom the PCs ended up meeting in a cave loosely inspired by B2's caves of chaos.

And another example: for my Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy game I statted up a crypt thing. I knew I wanted to use it, but wasn't sure how. Then one of the players - who was in a dungeon tomb - established a Secret Door asset, which led to a hidden part of the dungeon. That was the perfect opportunity to use my crypt thing.

Those're are instances of prep which don't establish anything about the shared fiction prior to play; but they certainly make my GMing easier.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> Here's one example of the difference: I turned up to my first Traveller session with four worlds generated (each world takes about 5 minutes; I'd rolled these up in the course of re-familiarising myself with the world generation mechanics).
> 
> These weren't elements of the shared fiction; they were notes on a piece of paper.
> 
> In the course of the session three of those worlds were introduced into the shared fiction - as a stopover; as a destination; as a further world where a pathogen was known to come from.
> 
> The other world is still there on my bit of paper in case I need it. It's not part of the shared fiction.




Riiiights... and the encounter map isn't part of the shared fiction until it's introduced.  So far, no difference?


> Here's another example of the difference: I turned up once to a 4e session with my copy of MV2 - Threats to the Nentir Vale. That's prep (all these monsters statted up, with varying degrees of backstory). During the session, one of the PCs started a ritual sucking chaos energy out of a defeated hydra-like fire drake. Something went wrong, and I wanted some creatures to be summoned from the mountains by the out-of-control chaos energy. I flipped through the MV2 and founds mooncalves, which seemed to fit the bill. So now it was established in the shared fiction both that (i) mooncalves exist, and (ii) some of them are here, now.



Uh, huh, and encounter maps aren't part of the shared fiction until they show up, either.  So, that 0 and 2 on differences?


> Here's another example: In my BW game I statted up a dark naga, following the guidelines for creature design in the Monster Burner. I wan't 100% sure how I was going to use it. Then, around the same time, I got a copy of the "Paths of Spite" (then a pdf online; now part of The Codex) and wrote up a dark elf NPC. I wasn't sure how I was going to use that NPC either.
> 
> Then the opportunity to use the NPC emerged - as a thorn in the side of the PCs in the context of failed Orienteering checks to reach the waterhole at the foot of the Abor-Alz after trekking across the Bright Desert. And this also then gave some context for the dark naga - as the master of the dark elf, whom the PCs ended up meeting in a cave loosely inspired by B2's caves of chaos.



Right... again we're saying these things are the same as the encounter map -- pre-authored setting details that aren't part of the shared fiction until they enter play.  I kinda feel like you've missed the point of my question and that would mean that your original statement was in error?



> And another example: for my Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy game I statted up a crypt thing. I knew I wanted to use it, but wasn't sure how. Then one of the players - who was in a dungeon tomb - established a Secret Door asset, which led to a hidden part of the dungeon. That was the perfect opportunity to use my crypt thing.
> 
> Those're are instances of prep which don't establish anything about the shared fiction prior to play; but they certainly make my GMing easier.



And now I'm going with you completely missed what I was asking.  YOU stated that encounter maps were not like pre-authored setting.  When I questioned you on that, you gave me a list of things you prepped.  That's neat, I guess, but how did you think this shows that encounter maps are different from pre-authoring the setting?  Again, you're showing that it's literally a difference of degree, not kind, which was my argument all along.


----------



## darkbard

Here's the difference: these prepped maps/NPCs/etc. are possibile game elements until they are introduced, but they are not handcuffs by which the GM is constrained (preauthored backstory by which the GM is constrained). If they become introduced into play, then they are part of the shared fiction.


----------



## howandwhy99

Mercurius said:


> Isn't the *Right Way to Play D&D* a unique mixture of 40+ years of game design, play, ideas, and personal experiences that each group makes their own? Even if the variance between most groups is only slight, isn't the whole spirit--even letter--of the game to make it your own experience?
> 
> Furthermore, regardless of how D&D was played in 1974, isn't it valid to play it in different ways? And can we not look at D&D as a _living tradition_ that has no absolute cap on branchings and variations?



You make the act of cultural subversion to eradicate of everything in the hobby of RPGs by falsely rewriting its entire history sound positively open-minded. My goodness! Why shouldn't we all engage in collaborative narration and call it gaming? Or the lie "gaming means making choices." 

A hit job is a hit job. What can you remember of the actual D&D hobby now that the BS of "D&D is an improv story making game" has taken over? Do you remember any of it? How roleplaying is the act of scoring points and going up in level. That you only go up in level do to successful game play? I can barely find 1 in a 1000 people who can know the first detail of the RPG hobby. "You mean powergaming?" is there response. It is a veritable mental mindwipe and the murder of a hobby by deliberate whitewashing. "How could the 1990s have been so bitterly divided in RPGs between storyteller / character acting games and all the other games?", "Why was GURPS denied to even be an RPG throughout the 80s?" What has happened is a clear and deliberate act of cultural genocide, as I called it out on this board in... what? 2004? 2005? 



Arilyn said:


> How is the narrative approach in rpgs destroying the hobby?



Are you serious? How is treating a game hobby like it really is about improvising a story and then calling that act "gaming" an act of deliberate destruction? (the _only_ act of gaming if you hold to Edwards "Every game is a Storygame" dogmatism). Calling a crackpot, mostly cribbed, post-structural narrative theory a "Game Theory" is deliberate obfuscation. His is ideological warfare not only against RPGs, but all games and game theory. Story making is the opposite of game play. How much "No one really knows what a game is?" BS can you stand? Or that no "serious" culture of ideas about game design ever existed before the Big Model? And saying that in 2001 as if the whole history of games didn't occur? Or that our hobby, the one requiring more rulebooks than any other in history (perhaps the first hardcover rulebooks?) in order to even play these games has "forever been about improvising stories where no rules are necessary". This is all deliberate lies, not a "new way to play a game".  So-called "1-page RPGs" was another intentional attack upon the gaming hobby in order to eradicate gameplay and supplant it by misnamed improv. Improv is NOT what makes an RPG an RPG. It is what makes something not a game. It is certainly not what made Arneson and Gygax write lengthy books of balanced rulesets when they created RPGs out of wargame theory. The truth is, no referee should ever improvise in a roleplaying game. That's the actual hobby. The mantra of D&D is, "I"m not making it up!"



pemerton said:


> I have no idea where you suppose I did this. On the first page of the thread, you said
> You do realise that I wrote the post that you were praising, don't you?



So you're saying I am not to trust the above assessment by  [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] of you in this thread? That you actually are an advocate for the RPG hobby as truly the hobby of hidden design games? And that this is a good and preferable practice more people should identify as the real hobby of RPGs?


----------



## Ovinomancer

darkbard said:


> Here's the difference: these prepped maps/NPCs/etc. are possibile game elements until they are introduced, but they are not handcuffs by which the GM is constrained (preauthored backstory by which the GM is constrained). If they become introduced into play, then they are part of the shared fiction.



Okay, but please explain how one type of note doesn't constrain the DM but another type does?  Again, this reads like special pleading:  this thing I prep isn't that kind of thing that's prepped, the one that constrains you.

If I have a note that the map is in the study, how is that any more or less constraining than an encounter map of the study?

Not trying to be obtuse here, I really don't understand what the point being made here is.


----------



## Lanefan

Ovinomancer said:


> Okay, but please explain how one type of note doesn't constrain the DM but another type does?  Again, this reads like special pleading:  this thing I prep isn't that kind of thing that's prepped, the one that constrains you.
> 
> If I have a note that the map is in the study, how is that any more or less constraining than an encounter map of the study?



And-or a map of the rest of the castle as well, to show where the study is in relation to all the other rooms...


----------



## pemerton

howandwhy99 said:


> So you're saying I am not to trust the above assessment by  [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] of you in this thread? That you actually are an advocate for the RPG hobby as truly the hobby of hidden design games? And that this is a good and preferable practice more people should identify as the real hobby of RPGs?



As the OP says, there are different approaches to RPGing. Gygaxian D&D is what you call "hidden design" - I personally find the idea of mazes and puzzles more a better way to try to explain the play of it, but that's probably a tangential matter.

I also think that that style of play has been a minority approach in the hobby at least since 1985 or thereabouts, and maybe even before then. There are other ways of RPGing - they were clearly emerging in the late 70s, because Lewis Pulsipher wrote essays explaining why he preferred what you call the "hidden design" approach and what he called the "wargame" approach.

Classic Traveller was published in 1977, Runequest in 1978. I think it's possible to play Glorantha as a type of "hidden design" game, but I suspect it's not that rewarding, and I don't think that is what appealed to people about RQ. They were attracted to what they saw as its narrative power. (Whether or not it is a good system for that is another question.)

I've recently been refereeing Classic Traveller. I don't think it's very-well suited for "hidden design" at all - the mechanics are all on the surface and the players are expected to have read them. I have a few early published modules for Traveller which are essentially mysteries, but without the engaging or plot-twisty character of a good CoC module. I couldn't possibly imagine running them without having pillows and blankets ready for my snoozing players, I can't imagine that audiences c 1980 regarded them as heaps more interesting than I do. If one looks at the adventure seeds published in Supplement 6 76 Patrons, they're clearly push in favour of a story/mystery/plot-twisty game which is not going to work very well as "hidden design" for the reasons I gave in the OP: the parameters are too wide and too variable, and (something you've mentioned in a recent post) the players don't get to do multiple tries to improve their play as they do in dungeoneering RPGing.

So that's my take on signs of divergence from your preferred approach around 40 years ago.

For what it's worth, I personally do not enjoy Gygaxian play, and lack the patience for it either as player or GM. The fact that I enjoy games that are different from what you call "hidden design" games, though, I think has had little influence on the overall destiny of the hobby. I'm not a professional game designer, not a professional referee, and haven't been to a convention for many years. I play with a group of friends in Melbourne, Australia, have done a little bit of PbP with like-minded people on these boards, and post in threads that are read by (perhaps) single digits hundreds of people in a current RPGing community that (I'm tolds) consists of more than 10,000,000 players.


----------



## Aenghus

Ovinomancer said:


> Okay, but please explain how one type of note doesn't constrain the DM but another type does?  Again, this reads like special pleading:  this thing I prep isn't that kind of thing that's prepped, the one that constrains you.
> 
> If I have a note that the map is in the study, how is that any more or less constraining than an encounter map of the study?
> 
> Not trying to be obtuse here, I really don't understand what the point being made here is.




IMO it's not the material itself, it's all about the referee attitude to that material. Some referees feel bound by some or all of their prepared backstory, even the unrevealed material, and may use it for adjudication purposes. Others don't and are willing to modify or throw away prep, even expect to modify and customise the material to the players who end up encountering it. The more fluid the unrevealed material, the less constraining it is and the less likely that player ambitions will be stymied by hidden backstory they may never discover.

Is unrevealed prep totally binding on the referee, somewhat binding, merely guidelines, or entirely expendable? Different referees have different opinions.


----------



## darkbard

Ovinomancer said:


> Okay, but please explain how one type of note doesn't constrain the DM but another type does?  Again, this reads like special pleading:  this thing I prep isn't that kind of thing that's prepped, the one that constrains you.
> 
> If I have a note that the map is in the study, how is that any more or less constraining than an encounter map of the study?
> 
> Not trying to be obtuse here, I really don't understand what the point being made here is.




I'm very pressed for time for the next few days and so don't have time for a fuller response (but didn't want to leave this unaddressed), yet what Aenghus says above are pretty much my thoughts on the matter.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Aenghus said:


> IMO it's not the material itself, it's all about the referee attitude to that material. Some referees feel bound by some or all of their prepared backstory, even the unrevealed material, and may use it for adjudication purposes. Others don't and are willing to modify or throw away prep, even expect to modify and customise the material to the players who end up encountering it. The more fluid the unrevealed material, the less constraining it is and the less likely that player ambitions will be stymied by hidden backstory they may never discover.
> 
> Is unrevealed prep totally binding on the referee, somewhat binding, merely guidelines, or entirely expendable? Different referees have different opinions.



So it's like porn, you know it when you see it?

I don't disagree, but it doesn't answer the question the OP is asking.  I'm trying to understand what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] thinks.


----------



## Ovinomancer

darkbard said:


> I'm very pressed for time for the next few days and so don't have time for a fuller response (but didn't want to leave this unaddressed), yet what Aenghus says above are pretty much my thoughts on the matter.



So, your answer to the OP would be "depends?"


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> As the OP says, there are different approaches to RPGing. Gygaxian D&D is what you call "hidden design" - I personally find the idea of mazes and puzzles more a better way to try to explain the play of it, but that's probably a tangential matter.



OK to here.



> I also think that that style of play has been a minority approach in the hobby at least since 1985 or thereabouts, and maybe even before then. There are other ways of RPGing - they were clearly emerging in the late 70s, because Lewis Pulsipher wrote essays explaining why he preferred what you call the "hidden design" approach and what he called the "wargame" approach.
> 
> Classic Traveller was published in 1977, Runequest in 1978.



They were; and they were niche within the hobby then and - along with many similar systems published since - are niche within the hobby now.

Hidden-design play has been the default (and majority) approach since Day 1.  As evidence one could argue that much of 4e's design was based on a perception that this was/is not the case - and look how well _that_ turned out.

There's two sources of data - neither perfect, but they're all we've got - to back this assertion.  First, the data that's posted on EnWorld now and then regarding what proportion of play comes from which different game systems in whatever online site(s) get surveyed.  Play in hidden-design systems - of which 5e is one and Pathfinder is another - hugely outnumbers play in open-design* systems.

The second data source is not so much what RPG events get run at major cons but how popular they are and-or how easy/hard it is to find a seat in one.  I believe GenCon keeps data on such things; going just from memory Call of Cthulhu and old-school (0-1-2e) D&D are among the hardest to find a spot in, while 4e seats go begging.  But I could be wrong by now - last GenCon for me was 2016 and I've not seen any info from 2017 (haven't even looked for it, to be honest).

* - open-design as a term seems like a good enough opposite to hidden-design for these purposes. 



> So that's my take on signs of divergence from your preferred approach around 40 years ago.



Though I'll not deny for a second that there was divergence almost immediately and that some of that divergence bent toward open-design systems, I'll posit that such divergence then merely established a niche within the hobby; and that - with the exception of a few years when 4e was a big thing and despite your best efforts here - those open-design systems have remained in that niche ever since.



> For what it's worth, I ... haven't been to a convention for many years.



An all-hands con* - e.g. GenCon; I don't know if Australia has an equivalent - is the best place to get a sense of what's going on in both the mainstream and in (some of) the niches.  It can be a serious eye-opener. 

* - in contrast to a single-vendor con e.g. PaizoCon where it's all Paizo all the time and most other games aren't represented much at all.

Lanefan


----------



## Emerikol

I like to think I play the Gygaxian way for the most part when I play.  I admit I haven't played in a while do to a move and a very intense job that uses up most of my mental energy.  

To me, the world is setting information for the "sandbox".  It's like a spotlight that is brightest at it's center point which is where the characters are starting out their adventures.  Things gradually get a little less designed as you get farther from the center of the spotlight.  I also know most of the movers and shakers in the world at this level.  I know high level trade routes etc..

I almost always have all the details at the national level.  I know the Kings, princes, and Emperor's of the campaign setting (which may only be a continent and not an entire world).  I know the counties, wards, towns, and districts of the nation the players are in or if at the edge, I know that nation and the surrounding wildlands.  I know not only the movers and shakers but I know most of the significant people at this level.  I have a good bit of details about the various towns and cities though I may not have an exact map.  I probably do have a high level map at minimum.

Then there is the adventuring area, the true sandbox.  That area I have detailed out in great detail even to the Homlet detail.  I know tons of the people and their backstories.  I know all kinds of villains that threaten life in this place.  I know how trade works and what impacts this area.  My dungeons are built upon all these ideas including the history of the area.  Not every dungeon is an underground closed system but I have those.  They are a lot of fun.  

I see active adventuring as a contest of skill.  The players work together as a team to overcome challenges.  They try to use strategy, discipline, and preparation to avoid disaster.  The rewards are power and money.  The fun of these dungeons is how they are linked to the history and surrounding area.  When you overcome and "win" a dungeon you find out a little bit more about the world.  So I desire players who want to peel the onion so to speak and discover the world and what underlies it.   During non-active campaign time, the players will use their gold and power to influence the world.  This happens more as players progress from lower levels to higher levels.

Just my take.  I don't think my style is at all defunct.  

I must say I'm not really happy at this point with any of the versions of D&D.  5e did a lot of things right though stylistically and moved closer to what I want.  It's still not the game I really want though.  So I've been working on my own.  I could try to hack 5e but I feel it would be just as much work.  I'm sure I will be "informed" by all the roleplaying games I know.


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## Emerikol

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION],
I think that roleplaying is such a broad concept that it has become almost worthless as a description of anything beyond a game where people cooperatively play something fantasy themed.

I'd love better all around definition.  I'd say if you and players are having fun playing the game then you are doing it right.  So we should stop being judgmental.  Who can argue that if one player likes one style and enjoys it more that that style isn't what's best for him or her.   I tire of being told that if I'd just embrace someone elses style that I'd stop liking mine as much.  I think we all have our own tastes.  What is unfortunately is that we often let our own disdain for the other side leak out.  Who really cares what other people are doing?  Perhaps it matters when choosing a roleplaying game to choose one that fits your style well.  I'd say the world is big enough for us all to have a game we like and that fits our needs.  

I fought hard during the development of 5e to sway the designers my way.  I think that is fair for anyone to do.  It's over now though.  The game is out and it ain't changing significantly until 6e.  Maybe never if Mike Mearls is to be believed.  I decided to make my own game and take from 5e as opposed to use 5e and rip out what I don't like.  Whenever you tell people you are playing a houseruled version of 5e you already have problems.  It's far easier to say you are playing a game and here are the rules.  If they resemble 5e that is a coincidence.


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## Emerikol

I find it interesting that both "camps" in this debate seem insistent on proving the other camp is not having fun.  Aren't we all having fun playing?  Why would we continue?  It's clear Pemerton and Lanefan that you both would not enjoy the other's campaign.  My own tastes probably run to Lanefan's style more than Pemerton's but I don't doubt he is enjoying himself.  I think any RPG can be used either way.  

Are you both fighting to have the other's style of play declared wrong?  What is the end game here?


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## Emerikol

Pemerton, I do think you are wrong in saying players have no agency in my style of game.  If the DM is fair and neutral, I see plenty of agency for the players.  They can't change the game world except through the abilities of the characters but that is still agency.  Otherwise you'd have to argue I have no agency in the real world.  It's the same sort of agency and appeals to people who want that style of game.

I also think "classical" D&D as you call it is still a very popular way to play.  It's hardly antiquated.  I don't doubt though that your style has grown significantly from the early days.


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## Arilyn

I think that this thread has been pretty much a standard debate. Pemerton and Lanefan are trying to defend their individual styles, but there is no real hostility. Neither one is claiming that the other one is playing wrong. For the most part, this thread has been civil, and its interesting learning about other people's preferred style of play.

I enjoyed your post, too, Emerikol. It's cool how many different approaches there are to the hobby, and how some players stick to one style, and others enjoy a variety. I don't really like dungeons, and am heavy on narrative. I get pemerton' s style but not exclusively.


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## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> You make this statement that there's a difference between creating an encounter map and pre-authoring setting details but don't actually provide an argument for the difference.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> If I have an encounter map that has no couch, and my player wants to interact with a couch... is this not the same kind of pre-authoring a lack of a couch prior to play as the existence of a map in the study?  If not, what's the difference, in your eyes?



Well, first, there's no use of secret backstory there - the GM has made a decision already about framing. That is to say, when the scene is framed - which in this case consists in, or at least overlaps with, placing the map down on the table, the players can see (from the map) that there's no couch. (Unless invisible furniture is a possiblity. I'm putting that to one side for ease of exposition.) 

Now, what's the context for the player wanting his/her PC to interact with a couch?

If the whole logic of the current trajectory of play is to find some particular couch (or any old couch), then authoring the map with out a couch is like stipulating that the map is in the breadbin and not in the study, and telling the players as much. The GM is saying (in effect), "OK, everyone, this scene does _not_ have the big reveal."

That seems to me really to be a pacing decision. Whether it's a good one or a bad one depends entirely on context. And if a player looks around for _clues_ to the couch - "There's an armchair on the map - is it of a style that is famous for coming in matching sets with couches?" - then previous considerations around the map apply. A GM who makes a deliberate decision to delay the big reveal, and then simply refuses to entertain action declarations that might generate momentum/foreshadowing etc seems to me - in the abstract - to be making poor calls. But it's not an instance of relying on secret backstory to adjudicate action declarations. Everyone can see the map on the table, and if there's no furniture on it well there's no furniture on it! (I think this point also responds to your discussion with [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] and [MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION].)

If the player wants a couch for some more prosaic reason eg because, for whatever reason, s/he wants his/her PC to be able to gain elevation, or to take cover, then the situation is different. Burning Wheel (which doesn't use encounter maps in the D&D/miniatures style) favours "say 'yes'" to this - a player who wants an advantage die, and can set out a plausible context for one, is entitled to it. (There are other reasons in BW, to do with its advancement rules, that mean players don't always scrounge for every die they might be entitled to.)

Cortex+ Heroic makes this an issue of action resolution - the player is trying to establish a Couch For Me To Stand On asset, with the Doom Pool as opposition. If the GM has established that the room is sparsely furnished - eg by way of a Sparsely Furnished Room descriptor - then that can appear in the Doom Pool as part of the opposed roll.

In D&D I think the default approach is that this is up to the GM. D&D is (among other things) a game of resource management. If a player wants an advantage, the GM is entitled, I think - as a convention of D&D play - to say "Find it yourself out of the stuff on your PC sheet plus what I've already given you in my framing." Equally, a GM is entilted to be more generous - "Yes, there's a stool next to the bed that I didn't mark on the map - it will give you about 18" of extra height".

In OGL Conan, one of the resources on a PC sheet can be a fate point, which can be deployed to change the framing. This is direct player authorship which - to very loosely paraphrase the fate point rules - might be used to get some furniture to give you a height advantage, but can't be used to stipulate that the couch you are searching for is in the room.

And again to respond to your discussion with [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] and [MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION] - none of the above involves relying on pre-authored backstory as a secret element of framing/fictional positioning that feeds into the adjudication of action resolutions. If the encounter map has no couch on it, that's not secret. If the player says (speaking as his/her PC) "I jump up onto the couch", the GM (assuming D&D or another RPG with similar rules and conventions) would be correct to say "But there is no couch." That sort of GMing - ie refusing a player suggestion/request for some minor advantage in the situation - may or may not be too viking-helmeted, depending on the particular group. But the GM is not relying on secret backstory. The player can see from the map that the encounter has been framed without couches present.



Ovinomancer said:


> You establish that fictional positioning for some things, like an invisible opponent, is okay to have not meet the player's perception but other things, like the presence of a map, aren't not.  This seems like special pleading, because those two things are actually very analogous.



Well, I set out a number of principles that I think are relevant - knowability within the scene, which includes salience, and impactfulness of the secret element. As I also said, context is everything when it comes to satisfying those principles, but I think the discussion of the map example with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and others helps show why there are many contexts for the map example where they would not be satisfied (especially the third, which is what triggered my digression to Gumshoe).



Ovinomancer said:


> Unless I badly misunderstand your style of play, players are expected to include an outcome in their action declaration -- in effect, they provide the fiction to be added in case of a successful action declaration.



This is a bit puzzling.

All action declaration has to include some sort of outcome, either expressly or implicitly: _I attack the orc_ (hoping to defeat it). _I lookf for secret doors_. Etc.

When the action declaration is _nothing more_ than a request for the GM to provide more framing - "I look around the room - what do I see?" - then different games take different approaches. As I've said, that is fairly common in my 4e game ("I cast Object Reading while picking up the book - what do I see?") On the other hand, in BW it's borderline degenerate.

One reason for the difference is that BW is meant to be a harder-driving game than 4e. Another reason is that BW has mechanics in service of this - it has very few player-side fiat abilities, which means that there always needs to be some implicit consequence for failure, which means that there always have to be stakes, and a request simply for more GM exposition doesn't establish any stakes.



Ovinomancer said:


> If the map has been previously introduced, then the only check is if it's in the study.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> the DM either says yes or rolls the dice.  Again, if yes or successful roll, the player has introduced that the map is, in fact, in the study.



Yes.

This is completely routine in all RPGing.

The player (speaking as his/her PC) says "I want to kill the orc." Currently, it is established that the orc is alive, that the PC is in the vicinity of the orc, and that the PC has some means (eg a loaded crossbow) that is apt to kill the orc.

The GM says, "OK - make an attack roll". The player rolls to hit, rolls for damage, the GM deducts the damage number from the orc's hit point number, that latter number drops to zero or less, and the GM declares "OK, the orc's dead!

At the start of that resolution process, the fiction was _live orc near PC_. Now it's _dead orc near PC_. (Plus, perhaps, _one less bolt in PC's quiver_, if the game has ammo tracking. Maybe other stuff too.)

Or, the player (speaking as his/her PC) says "I want to ask around town, at the usual inns and stuff, if anyone has seen that bandit who ran off before we could capture her around the place." The GM calls for a Streetwise or Gather Information or similar check, and depending on the result narrates some stuff. At the start of that resolution process, the fiction was _PC in town; town has inns and similar places where information might be obtained; a bandit escaped and may have come to town; people may have seen her and be willing to speak about it; those people might be at the inss and like places, or have spoken to people who are there and are willing to pass on what they heard_. At the end of the resolution process, there may be something additional like _Jake the farmer saw the bandit near his haystack, and told the innkeeper about it when he came into town to sell some eggs._

In a typical moment of D&D play, the parameters of the orc example are tighter than those of the rumour example. The framing fiction in the rumour example is much more implicit. But both are, at heart, the player using action resolution to change the state of the fiction: from live orc to dead orc; from ignorant PC to knowledgable PC.

Neither involves the player outright authoring the fiction (contrast the player, in writing PC backstory, talking about his PC's ruined tower, abandoned mace, etc - that's outright authorship): the player expresses a desire about the state of the fiction, and the action resolution rules then determine whether or not that desire becomes true. In conventional D&D play, I think the GM is expected to exercise a fairly strong mediating role in narrating the outcome even on a successful check (eg the GM probably decides whether or not the crossbow bolt shot the orc in the head or the chest). In BW, by contrast, the GM is permitted only to add embellishments (so if the player says, "I shoot the orc in the head", and the dice deliver a success, well that's what happened).

The player asking "Is the map in the study" and then - on a good roll - fiding it there is strictly analogous to the player "introducing" (by way of successful action resolution) that the orc is dead.

Now, if it's controversial that RPGing should include _players expressing desires as to the content of the fiction_, which then become true if action resolution works out a certain way - well, we're back at what I talked about with [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION], namely, player action declarations as, at best, suggestions to the GM as to possible narrations of furure states of the fiction.



Ovinomancer said:


> Under no secret backstory conditions, the player has now signaled that they wish to introduce a map, and the DM has to engage this hook and say yes or roll the dice.  If the dice are rolled and successful, then the player has now introduced fiction.



Well, this takes me back to the two contrasting cases, both of Circles checks that I've seen occur in BW play:

(1) "Jabal the Red is leader of my cabal. I reach out to him to see if he can help us." That is direct authorship of fiction - the cabal is led by Jabal the Red. Then there is a statement of desire - the player wants the fiction to include _Jabal helps the PC who has reached out to him_.

(2) "I wonder if any knights of my order are living around here. As we travel, I keep an eye out for any signs of them." That is a statement of desire - the player wants the fiction to include _As I travel through this area, I see signs of the presence of knights of my order_. But there is no direct authorship of fiction.​
There are (at least) two sorts of _no map yet established as existing or salient in the context of play_ example.

The first: the player says "There's a map. We're going to find it. Is it in the study?" That is like (1) just above. In D&D it would be highly atypical, I think. (Contrast Circles in BW, which expressly permits a player to specify that sort of stuff about friends and contacts, should s/he want to.)

The second: the player says "A map would really help us. Are there any maps in the study?" That is like my (2) above, or like the Streetwise rumour-gathering example a bit further above. RPG players are always hoping to find stuff for their PCs, that is, to change the state of the fiction in some desired fashion. It's no different in resolution structure from the orc example.



Ovinomancer said:


> the existence of a map has _not _been previously introduced in play and the existence of a map _has_ been previously introduced in play.



Well, I've been assuming the latter. Ie it's established that the PCs are hunting for the map. (Perhaps the map doesn't _really _exist - it's like the gold at the end of the rainbow - but at a minimum that hasn't been estabished yet, and the players have reason to think their PCs have some hope of finding it.)

But the examples of (2) above, and of gathering rumours, show thats it's not radically different that it has or hasn't been established. Just as in the rumour example the main thing is not that the GM has already said "There are rumours", but rather than it's implicit in the situation that there may be helpful rumours; so likewise in (2) above it's implicit in the situation that there may be knights of the order about (the adventure isn't happening on the 3rd layer of Carceri) and in the analogous map example, it's implicit in the situation that the study might have maps in it.

This is the difference from the possible existence of beam weaponry in the duke's toilet, which is not implicit in the situation.



Ovinomancer said:


> I'm now actually very interested in how you would deal with a player declaring they're looking for an invisible opponent that you didn't prep for your 4e game.  This seems directly relatable to the issue of the map in the study, and I'm curious if the answer is the same.



Here's one way: say "yes", which means (when they are hoping for no invisible person) assuring them taht there is no invisible person.

Here's another: invite a check, and if it is not very good say "None that you can see." This is standard GM taunting. In Cortex+ Heroic, th GM has to spend resources (ie Doom Pool dice) to introduce new elements into an alread-framed encounter/situation. Not so in 4e, and so that sort of taunting (ie leaving it open whether or not new elements are going to be introudced that are adverse to the PCs) I regard as legitimate. In more prosaic terms, it factors into resource management in the scope of an encounter (eg one of my players likes to try and hold back one big gun because he thinks I always have something else up my sleeve and he wants not to be caught short by it).

Here's two more, one where the player didn't want to see something (but was going to be excited if he did), and one where he did want to:



pemerton said:


> As the PCs continue through the tunnels, I described them coming to a cleft in the floor, and got them to describe how they would cross it. The drow sorcerer indicated that he would first fly over (using 16th level At Will Dominant Winds) and then . . . before he could finish, I launched into my beholder encounter, which I had designed inspired by this image (which is the cover art from Dungeonscape, I think):
> 
> [section]
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> [/section]
> 
> I'm not sure exactly what the artist intended, but to me it looks as if the central beholder is hovering over a chasm, with uneven rocky surfaces leading up to it (archer on one side, flaming sword guy on the other). I drew up my map similiarly, including with the side tunnel (behind the tiefling) which on my version ran down into the chasm, and the columns, stalactites, etc.
> 
> I didn't use four beholders, only 2 - an eye tyrant (MV version) and an eye of flame advanced to 17th level and MM3-ed for damage. And also a 15th level roper from MV, introduced on a whim when the player of the wizard asked, before taking cover behind a column, if it looked suspicious. (Response to result of 28 on the Perception check before adding the +2 bonus for knowing what he is looking for - "Yes, yes it does!")
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The invoker-wizard also came through the gate, in order to Thunderwave some elementals into the lava, but this turned out to expose him to their vicious melee and he, too, got cut down. In desperate straits as he lay on the ground next to his Gate (he was brought back to consciousness via some sort of healing effect), being hacked down by fire archons, he spoke a prayer to Erathis (one of his patron deities). After speaking the prayer, and after the player succeeded at a Hard Religion check, as the PC looked up into the rock cleft high above him, he saw a duergar standing on a ledge looking down. The PC already knew that the duergar revere Erathis (as well as Asmodeus). The duergar gave the Deep Speech hand sign for "I will offer you aid", and the PC replied with the sign for "The dues will be paid". The duergar then dropped a potion vial down to the PC. (I had already decided that I could place a duergar in the cleft if I wanted some sort of 3rd-party intervention into the fight. The successful prayer was the trigger for implementing that prior decision.)





Ovinomancer said:


> that phrasing is akin to saying that if I cannot show it to be a good thing, then I'm left with only it being a thing or a bad thing.



It's not about being able to _show_ it to be a good thing. But you might say a sentence or two about why you find it good or fun, in RPGing, for the GM to trick you into thinking stuff was preauthored that really wasn't.


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## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> Okay, but please explain how one type of note doesn't constrain the DM but another type does?  Again, this reads like special pleading:  this thing I prep isn't that kind of thing that's prepped, the one that constrains you.



I think my longer post (just upthread) explains my analysis pretty clearly. But the short version is: an encounter map I'm carrying around in my backpack ready to whip out if/when needed (or a Monster Manual, or notes about a mysterious benefactor, or whatever) isn't an established element of the shared fiction that is secret from the players and yet that might be a factor in adjudicating the resolution of the actions that they declare for their PCs.

And once the map is on the table, there is no secret. The players may not like the GM's framing (it's boring, it's contrived, whatever) but they can see what action declarations are and are not feasible within that framing. So it's not like  [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION]'s omnipotent GM, who - in principle - enjoys the power to mediate every action declaration through his/her conception (be it prior, or made up on the spot) of what the fiction contains and has room for.


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> They were; and they were niche within the hobby then and - along with many similar systems published since - are niche within the hobby now.



Best of White Dwarf Scenarios (vol 1) has scenarios for three systems: D&D, RQ and Traveller. Volume 2 has scenarios for D&D and Traveller only.

Traveller and RQ were niche _only_ in the sense that they weren't D&D.



Lanefan said:


> Hidden-design play has been the default (and majority) approach since Day 1.



Most contemporary D&D play is not "hidden design" in [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION]'s sense. Just to give one example: in hidden design play the ability to _try again_ is crucial: you can go back into the dungeon and have another go (at mapping and thus unravelling the maze; at working out the solution to the green devil face or the orange mist; etc). But very few contemporary D&D adventures are based around retries like that - they are one-way trips through a series of episodes/scenes.



Emerikol said:


> I do think you are wrong in saying players have no agency in my style of game.



I think that the bigger the "sandbox", and so the more that the players rely on the GM to present them with bits of it, to make bits of it salient, etc; then the less agency they have, because their cognitive access to the materials they need to beat the challenges (related to  [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s comments uptrhead about "levers") becomes dependent on the GM.

Part of the cleverness of the dungeon idea is that the parameters (geography; social relations between NPCs/monsters; the possible subject matter of clues found; etc) are confined, so that the players can learn stuff and reliably act upon it.

Conversely, if, in the fiction, everything is connected to everything, so that pulling on one "string" gives the GM licence to evolve the whole of the fictional situation as s/he thinks appropriate, in ways that aren't even in principle able to be known by the players, then I think the players' agency is considerably reduced.

Because I don't know the details of your game, I'm not making any judgement about agency or otherwise in your game. What I am doing is trying to explain what I think are some practical limits on running what  [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION] has called a "hidden design" game.


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## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> I think there's a lot to this about putting trust in the DM's hands.  Many statements you've made over many threads leads me to believe that you just do not want to play in a game where someone other than the dice decides what you can do.  I think you fundamentally do not trust that any DM can provide good enough play over you having control over what gets introduced



I think the notion of trust is a red herring.

What stands out to me in your post is _you just do not want to play in a game where someone other than the dice decides what you can do_. Now, in the context of RPGing, "someone other than the dice decides what you can do" means _the GM tells you some fiction that s/he made up_. And you are correct that, when I RPG, I don't want the GM just to tell me some fiction that s/he made up. But that has nothing to do with trust.

It's like when I go to the pictures, I don't want a stand-up comedian to come out to the front of the theatre and start telling jokes. If I wanted that, I'd buy tickets to a comedy show, not a movie. That's got nothing to do with trust, and everything to do with the desired leisure-time experience.

The notion of trust is particularly odd in a context where I am predominantly a GM. Are you suggesting I don't trust myself to tell my friend's entertaining stories, so that my preferred GMing style is a sign of self-doutbt? The more prosaic explanation is that "Hey, let's get together to do some RPGing" is not the same as "Hey, let's get together so I can tell you a story."

That's not to say that the GM is unimportant in my preferred approach. The GM manages the bulk of scene-framing and big chunks of consequence narration, plus is the default supplier of whatever generic backstory is needed to move things along. (Robin Law, in Hamlet's Hit Points, calls this "laying pipe" - I think the term is from screen writing. Christopher Kubasik, in his Interactive Tookit essays, called the GM the "Fifth Business" - a term from opera, I gather - because of the GM's role in facilitating the unfolding of the plot by managing all this stuff.)

But that's not the same as deciding what a player's PC can or can't do; which is to say, is not the same as deciding whether or not a players' desire about the content of the fiction gets to come true or not. That's what I see the rules as being for!


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> The thread title really says it all. But here's some context to explain why I'm asking that question.
> 
> In classic D&D, _the dungeon_ was a type of puzzle. The players had to map it, by declaring moves (literally) for their PCs. The players, using their PCs as vehicles, had to learn what was in there: this was about inventory - having enough torches, 10' poles, etc - and about game moves too - searching for secret doors, checking ceilings and floors, and so on. And finally, the players had to try and loot it while either avoiding or defeating the monsters guarding the treasures and wandering around the place - this is what the combat mechanics were for.
> 
> The game is something of a cross between a wargame and a complex refereed maze. And *worldbuilding* is all about making the maze. I get that.
> 
> But most contemporary D&D isn't played in the spirit of classic D&D: the players aren't trying to map a maze; when it comes to searching, perception and the like there is often an emphasis on PC skills (perception checks) rather than player game moves; there is no clear win condition like there used to be (ie getting the gold and thereby accruing XP).
> 
> In the classic game, alignment (and related aspects of character motivation) become components in, and establish the parameters of, the puzzle: if I find a prisoner in the dungeon, should I be rescuing her/him (after all, my PC is lawful and so I might suffer a GM-imposed penalty if I leave a helpless person behind)? Or is s/he really a succubus or medusa in disguise, trying to take advantage of my lawful foibles? This is one reason why divination items like wands of enemy detection, ESP medallions and the like are so prominent in classic D&D - they're "game components" which, once obtained, allow a clever player to make better moves and so increase his/her chance of winning the game. And their function relies upon the GM having already written the dungeon, and having already decided what the truth is about the prisoner.
> 
> But in most contemporary play, character motivations (and alignment etc) aren't treated purely instrumentally in that waym as puzzle components and parameters. I'm expected to develop my character, and to care about his/her motivations, for their own sake. This is part of the standard picture of what it is to be a good RPGer.
> 
> So, given these difference between typical contemporary play and "classic" play, what is world building for?
> 
> And here's a final thought, in spoiler blocksbecause it's a little bit tangential:[sblock]In this blog post, Luke Crane has interesting (and very enthusiastic) things to say about playing Moldvay Basic. He also asserts that "the beautiful economy of Moldvay's basic rules are rapidly undermined by the poorly implemented ideas of the Expert set." I think at least part of what he has in mind there is that Expert-style wilderness adventuring doesn't establish the same clear framework for play. There is no clear maze, and so no clear parameters for establishing puzzles to solve in avoiding or defeating the monsters while getting the gold.
> 
> I see this contrast, between Basic and Expert - dungeon crawling compared to wilderness exploration - as raising the same question as this thread: what is world building _for_ once we're no longer playing a dungeon crawling, puzzle-solving game?[/sblock]




Drats, I let this thread get 10 days ahead of me 

I have no idea what the intervening 284 posts have said, so I'm probably just putting my foot in it, but...

I don't think there's GOT to be anything more to it than sheer fun and interest in doing it. I mean, I've come up with 100 ideas for different places to set a story, but yet as a rule I run most of my D&D games within the same setting that has hosted them since roughly 1976 or so. Granted, its evolved a BIT in 42 years, but the whole point of it is simply the sheer history of it and existing plots, locations, past events that can be referred to. Maybe its just the doing it just to do it. 

Now, from a story telling kind of perspective? In a game where, as we play it today in our groups, there's considerable input from players, shaping of things after the fact, dramatic changes, etc. I mean, I don't consider anything in 'my setting' to be particularly canon unless its been revealed to the characters and played through and become part of an established narrative. Even then we've elected to retcon a few things, or maybe even just 'mythologize' them in a way that fits them better into modern play (since a lot of the early stuff was pretty different from what we do nowadays).

I guess my point is, I'm not sure the old-style world building really serves a central game purpose anymore. There's value in imagining some structure, ala DW's fronts and such, but those are intended to be very loose and nonspecific, so they're only worldbuilding in a pretty different sense from the old time 'flesh out the details of every building in the town' kind of thing.

Its just an exercise, a craft unto itself. I would point to the fact that a vast array of authors, good and bad, have done the same thing, particularly F & SF ones obviously. It is clearly an activity of intellectual interest at the very least.


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## Nagol

pemerton said:


> <snip>
> 
> I think that the bigger the "sandbox", and so the more that the players rely on the GM to present them with bits of it, to make bits of it salient, etc; then the less agency they have, because their cognitive access to the materials they need to beat the challenges (related to  [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s comments uptrhead about "levers") becomes dependent on the GM.
> 
> <snip>




A quibble here, the levers aren't necessarily meant to act as a key for a specific lock.  They aren't designed to be counters to specific challenges, in general.  They exist to wreak change on an apparently stable environment.  A particular lever might be able to help with an obstacle, but that is likely to be more of a side effect.

I don't think player agency is substantially affected the size of the sandbox.  Take a look at a sandbox at the Imperium in Traveller: if the PCs are in system the Spinward Marches, an incident in Hiver Space on the opposite side of the empire may be beyond the PC's reach, but they have the agency to adjust that once they hear of the event.  In a sandbox, if the players are "far" from an area in terms of receiving information or having the reach to respond, _it's a choice they made_.  Agency is not reduced for the reach and information flow the game assumes for the type of PCs in play just because the sandbox is bigger, their ability to react as PCs is only smaller in a relative sense.  By necessity, the information about events from the larger sandbox needs to be condensed during transfer to the players which is why players need to be strongly proactive in a sandbox and signal what they are interested in.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Best of White Dwarf Scenarios (vol 1) has scenarios for three systems: D&D, RQ and Traveller. Volume 2 has scenarios for D&D and Traveller only.
> 
> Traveller and RQ were niche _only_ in the sense that they weren't D&D.



Back in the day I'd see the occasional White Dwarf magazine on a shelf, alongside lots of Dragon magazines that (relatively speaking) sold like hotcakes.

I've met a reasonable number of gamers over the years.  I can't think of any who ever played Traveller for anything more than a one-session try-out, and only one who played any serious RQ.*  I know several who played GURPS for some years - but other than that it's been all [some version of D&D or Pathfinder] all the time.

* - though he singlehandedly tips the balance considerably: his love of RQ got him to the point that he now co-owns Moon Design and Chaosium. 



> Most contemporary D&D play is not "hidden design" in [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION]'s sense. Just to give one example: in hidden design play the ability to _try again_ is crucial: you can go back into the dungeon and have another go (at mapping and thus unravelling the maze; at working out the solution to the green devil face or the orange mist; etc). But very few contemporary D&D adventures are based around retries like that - they are one-way trips through a series of episodes/scenes.



A lot (though fortunately not quite all) of published 4e modules were like that - very linear with few or no choice points, closed loops, or any other reason to care much about the exploration side as you go from one set-piece to the next - but from what I've seen of the 5e adventures they're (with exceptions, of course) generally quite a bit better-designed providing choice points, closed loops, multiple means of access, and some engaging/interesting exploration between the set-pieces.

And when one particular 4e module (which I've run, modified for my game) did manage to present a couple of good chances for some interesting exploration, in each case the author blew it off with a skill challenge.  How boring!



> I think that the bigger the "sandbox", and so the more that the players rely on the GM to present them with bits of it, to make bits of it salient, etc; then the less agency they have, because their cognitive access to the materials they need to beat the challenges (related to  [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s comments uptrhead about "levers") becomes dependent on the GM.



Depends how you define agency.

Agency over the game world itself?  They have very little, and less perhaps as the sandbox gets bigger.  No problem here; as building and narrating the game world are DM jobs.

Agency over the story, and what the PCs do, where they go, what adventures they tackle (or run screaming from - it's a sandbox, after all)?  They have boatloads of it.  The DM is in full react mode most of the time.



> Part of the cleverness of the dungeon idea is that the parameters (geography; social relations between NPCs/monsters; the possible subject matter of clues found; etc) are confined, so that the players can learn stuff and reliably act upon it.



These do make it easier to run contained dungeon modules or adventures, no denying that...but by the same token it's by no means impossible or even all that difficult to run a less-contained or even uncontained module or adventure.  Most adventures have elements of both - the travel to and from the adventure site is not all that "contained", and while it's sort of expected the PCs will go from A to B there's nothing at all sayng they won't go via C D and E and find all sorts of trouble along the way; while the adventure site itself might very well be a contained dungeon.



> Conversely, if, in the fiction, everything is connected to everything, so that pulling on one "string" gives the GM licence to evolve the whole of the fictional situation as s/he thinks appropriate, in ways that aren't even in principle able to be known by the players, then I think the players' agency is considerably reduced.



Hmmm...not so sure about that.

From the perspective of the here-and-now player at the table and PC in the gameworld, she's "pulled a string" and achieved some sort of result or reaction.  All is good, and the game goes on.  Her amount of agency here was, let's call it X.

From the perspective of the DM she's pulled a string that's not only achieved the immediate result observed by the PC and thus narrated, she's set dominoes falling all over the place behind the scenes that she may well never know about...but note this does not in any way change the value of X.  She doesn't have any less agency, nor any more; she just did what she did and the game goes on.  And while it's possible that ramifications of the falling dominoes may affect the PCs at some point now or later, it's also possible they won't.

Let me try an example.

There's skullduggery going on all over the city.  The place is rife with rumours and plots and spies and gossip, and into all this prance the innocent naive low-level PCs looking to spend the spoils of their first real adventure.  They take a room at an inn, and go out for a night on the town.  At some point things go a bit sideways - there's some yelling and pushing and screaming and the party mage ends up having to discreetly charm a local harlot in order to calm the situation down; the charm works, well, like a charm.  The mage now has a new friend, adventurers-plus-new-friend go about their merry evening, and a good time is had by all.  The adventurers, including the mage, pass out around sunrise whereupon the harlot wanders off.

Player side: mage charms harlot who at his invitation joins mage and friends for a night of partying before slipping away a bit after sunrise.  String pulled, result obtained.

DM side: harlot is actually an agent (who, depending on developments, the party may or may not have met later in this capacity) working for the local Duke.  She realized the yelling and pushing was a distraction intended to mask something else, and joined the fray in order to get herself into the scene so she could try to determine what was being masked by the distraction.  She managed to notice two men sneaking into an alley that she knew led to a hidden access to the Duke's manor house, just before being charmed by the mage and taken along for a night of revels.  She didn't report this - in fact, she failed to report at all - and thus the two sneaks get where they're going and none the wiser.  Meanwhile other agents who really can't be spared are sent out to search for the missing one, who none too sober comes in on her own not long after sunrise.  String pulled, dominoes fall.

Ramifications: next morning word gets out of an attempt on the Duke's life during the night by two unknown men.

The PCs might never know of their unintentional involvement in this crime.  Conversely, their mage might suddenly find himself arrested for treason and thrown in jail.

Lan-"I think this scenario could be pulled off in any system where charm spells last a while"-efan


----------



## MarkB

pemerton said:


> The notion of trust is particularly odd in a context where I am predominantly a GM. Are you suggesting I don't trust myself to tell my friend's entertaining stories, so that my preferred GMing style is a sign of self-doutbt? The more prosaic explanation is that "Hey, let's get together to do some RPGing" is not the same as "Hey, let's get together so I can tell you a story."



Those aren't the choices on offer here. A game in which the GM authors the surrounding fiction, and the players only author the actions taken by their own characters, does not have to be "the GM tells the players a story". It can still be a game in which they players' decisions, on behalf of their characters, take events in entirely unexpected directions. Your binary view of these playstyles - that the only alternative to "players drive the surrounding fiction" is "players sit back and have a story told at them" - is at the heart of why no explanation of alternative approaches is good enough for you.

And that's why it's about trust. In order to accept that there is a range of playstyles available, rather than just two, you need to trust that other approaches can be as viable as your own. And I don't think you do.


----------



## pemerton

Nagol said:


> A quibble here, the levers aren't necessarily meant to act as a key for a specific lock.



Not just a quibble.

And yes, I realised this, and hadn't meant to give an impression to the contrary.



Nagol said:


> I don't think player agency is substantially affected the size of the sandbox.  Take a look at a sandbox at the Imperium in Traveller: if the PCs are in system the Spinward Marches, an incident in Hiver Space on the opposite side of the empire may be beyond the PC's reach, but they have the agency to adjust that once they hear of the event.  In a sandbox, if the players are "far" from an area in terms of receiving information or having the reach to respond, _it's a choice they made_.



One relevant consideration here is _what counts as player agency_. But let's skip that for the moment and try to work with some generic notion . . .

In your description, what makes me ask about agency is (i) _once they hear of the event_ - this seems to be a heavy degree of GM mediation - and (ii) _it's a choice they made_ - well yes, but not a choice made relative to the fact that some exciting thing is going to be estabished by the GM as part of the fiction that is (in game terms) far from them and hence is (in play terms ie relative to their ficitonal positioning) outside their current zone of action declaration.


----------



## pemerton

MarkB said:


> Those aren't the choices on offer here. A game in which the GM authors the surrounding fiction, and the players only author the actions taken by their own characters, does not have to be "the GM tells the players a story". It can still be a game in which they players' decisions, on behalf of their characters, take events in entirely unexpected directions.



Suppose this is so - you think it is, I have doubts about the "entirely unexpected" (eg the GM is not going to be surprised by the location of the map) - how does it relate to the point about _trust_? Preferring a different approach isn't a sign of a lack of trust in anyone, any more than wanting to see a movie rather than go the comedy theatre means you don't trust the comedians.



MarkB said:


> In order to accept that there is a range of playstyles available, rather than just two, you need to trust that other approaches can be as viable as your own.



Again, viable for what? I'm not saying that various playstyles aren't viable per se. At the instigation of some other posters I've articulated my preferred approach - how does that mean I don't trust anyone?

Let's suppose that you prefer to run a more GM-driven game (eg the GM decides in advance the solution parameters for key questions like where the map is)? Does that mean you don't trust your players?


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Back in the day I'd see the occasional White Dwarf magazine on a shelf, alongside lots of Dragon magazines that (relatively speaking) sold like hotcakes.



Well, guess what non-TSR game figured most prominently in the old Ares section of Dragon? Traveller.

The idea that RQ and Traveller are "niche" games is ridiculous, unless "niche" means _not D&D_.



Lanefan said:


> from what I've seen of the 5e adventures they're (with exceptions, of course) generally quite a bit better-designed providing choice points, closed loops, multiple means of access, and some engaging/interesting exploration between the set-pieces.



Suppose this is true - that doesn't show that they're replayable in the same way as (say) B2 is replayable - that the players can try again and thus learn (and beat) the "hidden design" (what, upthread, I called the puzzle/maze).



Lanefan said:


> it's by no means impossible or even all that difficult to run a less-contained or even uncontained module or adventure.



No one has assertd that it's hard. I have assertd that the focus of play is being determined by the GM.



Lanefan said:


> From the perspective of the here-and-now player at the table and PC in the gameworld, she's "pulled a string" and achieved some sort of result or reaction.  All is good, and the game goes on.  Her amount of agency here was, let's call it X.
> 
> From the perspective of the DM she's pulled a string that's not only achieved the immediate result observed by the PC and thus narrated, she's set dominoes falling all over the place behind the scenes that she may well never know about...but note this does not in any way change the value of X.  She doesn't have any less agency, nor any more; she just did what she did and the game goes on.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The PCs might never know of their unintentional involvement in this crime.  Conversely, their mage might suddenly find himself arrested for treason and thrown in jail.



It surprise me that you don't see this as Exhibit A in the case that the game is driven by the GM. All the action happened purely in the GM's imagination. The only agency exercised by the player was to force the GM to tell him-/herself a story!


----------



## billd91

pemerton said:


> Suppose this is so - you think it is, I have doubts about the "entirely unexpected" (eg the GM is not going to be surprised by the location of the map) - how does it relate to the point about _trust_? Preferring a different approach isn't a sign of a lack of trust in anyone, any more than wanting to see a movie rather than go the comedy theatre means you don't trust the comedians.
> 
> Again, viable for what? I'm not saying that various playstyles aren't viable per se. At the instigation of some other posters I've articulated my preferred approach - how does that mean I don't trust anyone?
> 
> Let's suppose that you prefer to run a more GM-driven game (eg the GM decides in advance the solution parameters for key questions like where the map is)? Does that mean you don't trust your players?




Clearly, you don't trust that players have any form of agency in any game that has substantive GM backstory and adjudication. You're denying that they do all over the place here and in your response to Lanefan. And you don't really seem to trust us when we say that player do have agency in the games we're running in which we do make use of substantial backstory and adjudication. Your response to MarkB here is fairly dripping with it. "you think it is" makes it very clear that you *don't* believe him or think it's true. It's like you're calling him out but acknowledge he's not technically lying because he seems to believe it's true.


----------



## Nagol

pemerton said:


> Not just a quibble.
> 
> And yes, I realised this, and hadn't meant to give an impression to the contrary.
> 
> One relevant consideration here is _what counts as player agency_. But let's skip that for the moment and try to work with some generic notion . . .
> 
> In your description, what makes me ask about agency is (i) _once they hear of the event_ - this seems to be a heavy degree of GM mediation - and (ii) _it's a choice they made_ - well yes, but not a choice made relative to the fact that some exciting thing is going to be estabished by the GM as part of the fiction that is (in game terms) far from them and hence is (in play terms ie relative to their ficitonal positioning) outside their current zone of action declaration.




To point 1, news takes time to travel, depending on setting trappings.  The Imperium is limited by required physical transport jumps each taking weeks of time.  News from the other side will take months to reach the military and even longer to reach the civilian population.

To point 2, there's exciting things happening everywhere.  Players with PCs based in the Spinward Marches make the choice that exciting things happening near the Zhodani border are more interesting than exciting things happening near Hiver space.  When something newsworthy happens near Hiver Space and the news travels widely enough that the PCs can discover it, the players now have new information to base next choices upon.  Are enough exciting things happening here to hold their attention or is what is happening way over there interesting enough and seems to have enough staying power to warrant the trek to the other side?


----------



## howandwhy99

pemerton said:


> Most contemporary D&D play is not "hidden design" in [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION]'s sense. Just to give one example: in hidden design play the ability to _try again_ is crucial: you can go back into the dungeon and have another go (at mapping and thus unravelling the maze; at working out the solution to the green devil face or the orange mist; etc). But very few contemporary D&D adventures are based around retries like that - they are one-way trips through a series of episodes/scenes.



Obvious to anyone, Subverted D&D is not D&D. Like any act of improv, it isn't even gaming. All actual games are designed for repeat play. Unlike stories which an audience simply consumes and then they go stale like an old joke, games are enabling mechanisms to improve oneself at the behaviors supported by the design and play of the game. In D&D's case, the 4 (3 really) roles players can elect to play. All of which require high degrees of player skill and role mastery to achieve high levels.



> I think that the bigger the "sandbox", and so the more that the players rely on the GM to present them with bits of it, to make bits of it salient, etc; then the less agency they have, because their cognitive access to the materials they need to beat the challenges (related to  [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s comments uptrhead about "levers") becomes dependent on the GM.



Seeing as "agency" is a philosophical term and not an actual thing it really really has nothing whatsoever to do with gaming, much less D&D.

Just like nearly every videogame, D&D is a hidden design the players game. IOW, manipulate in order to achieve objectives within its design. The more elements within the design the more options a player can actually game. They more thay have to account for. The more they have available to engage with. Just like every RPG, a D&D player is utterly without restriction* on their ability to try any action in the game. However, whether or not any of these actually occur in the game almost always has little to do with anyone at the table once the campaign begins.

*I agree there should be table rules for good taste, respecting the environment around the players, and so on.


----------



## MarkB

pemerton said:


> Suppose this is so - you think it is, I have doubts about the "entirely unexpected" (eg the GM is not going to be surprised by the location of the map) - how does it relate to the point about _trust_? Preferring a different approach isn't a sign of a lack of trust in anyone, any more than wanting to see a movie rather than go the comedy theatre means you don't trust the comedians.



But, to extend your metaphor, in starting this thread, you're not merely saying that you're not interested in the comedians - you're declaring that you can't see how _anyone_ might find them appealing, and basically asking us to explain how comedy works. And maybe our efforts to answer you are just as doomed as those of anybody who's ever tried to explain a joke.



> Again, viable for what? I'm not saying that various playstyles aren't viable per se. At the instigation of some other posters I've articulated my preferred approach - how does that mean I don't trust anyone?




By declaring that playstyles other than purely player-driven content amount to "being told a story by the GM" you very much are saying that other playstyles aren't viable as a co-operative play experience. The way you present your opinion suggest that trust is at the core of your issue with those playstyles, but maybe it's something else. I'm not sure what it could be, though.


----------



## Emerikol

pemerton said:


> I think that the bigger the "sandbox", and so the more that the players rely on the GM to present them with bits of it, to make bits of it salient, etc; then the less agency they have, because their cognitive access to the materials they need to beat the challenges (related to  [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION]'s comments uptrhead about "levers") becomes dependent on the GM.




I think we are getting our terms confused.  That is why I said agency in the sense we have agency in the real world.  I can't do anything.  I can only do what I'm humanly capable of.  In a D&D game using the style I prefer, the player is limited to what his character can do.  So he has agency equivalent to what his character would have if such a fictional world really existed.  Or at least that is the goal.

My worlds are very much living worlds.  A dungeon will never stay exactly the same if a group goes in and then returns later.  That doesn't rule out returning in every case though.  If a tribe of orcs is seriously mauled by the group then sure they may flee.  I try to play them a they'd really act.  On the other hand, an ancient tomb discovered by the party which until that moment has sat undiscovered, is not likely to change dramatically unless designed to change or react in some way by its creator.  

I have mellowed a bit on styles.  I believe my style is a great style and I have lots of very satisfied players to testify to it.  I admit I've not played with everyone in the world and honestly I will take your word for it if you tell me your parties are satisfied with your playstyle.  We have a world where people are divided over far more important things which I find completely unfathomable so differences over a playing style seem trivial.  Just play what you like.

I would dispute though that my style has grown unpopular or is fading away.  I think your style is growing and that might give you the appearance of the first statement but I disagree that it infers it.  If I have a good DM, I most definitely enjoy receiving the "fiction" of the world from the DM.  The history, culture, etc...  are all very interesting to me.  As a DM, this part of the game is a labor of love.  I enjoy sharing these elements with the players.  On the flip side the world is waiting to be changed by PC actions.  They will change the world.  

Maybe I'm reading you wrong but it almost seems as if you are "evangelizing" your playstyle because you feel no one would stay with my style if they had a good experience of yours.  Let me assure you that three possible things will result of someone trying your style.  They may reject it outright, they may enjoy it while also enjoying mine and view them as two different sorts of games, they may embrace yours and dump mine.  And a fourth is they may choose some hybrid.  My belief is the player base is full of all types. 

You don't have to destroy our playing style to enjoy yours.  You don't have to mischaracterize our playing style to enjoy yours.  My only beef is when you do that.  You can advocate and enjoy your style and god speed to anyone you convert.   But falsely characterizing others styles is not right.  You don't have to destroy ours to enjoy yours.


----------



## Emerikol

pemerton said:


> No one has assertd that it's hard. I have assertd that the focus of play is being determined by the GM.




I believe that some DM's just create dungeons or buy modules (or run Adventure Paths) and only give a nod to the surrounding world.  Perhaps they even use a store bought campaign setting so they don't have to do much work.

Personally, I've never enjoyed playing in a published campaign setting for that reason.  You are criticizing the simplest and least creative version of our style of play.  A style that is hardly more than a board game in many cases.  That though is a strawman and I believe Gygax's campaign was nothing like this sort of campaign and neither is mine.  

Perhaps we need more categories of playstyles.  I'd call mine a designed world sandbox game with lots of player agency and player skill challenge within the sandbox.  I'd call some of these styles more akin to a cooperative puzzle board game.  You know what?  If they are having fun what is the problem?  Games are about having fun right?

For lack of a better term, I tend to call yours a more story telling style game than a role playing game.  Playing a role to me limits you to what that role can do.  Whereas storytelling is weaving a story cooperatively with the DM and gives you a lot of metagame agency.  And my choice of words is not intended to insult.  Just my attempt to get my head around all the styles going around these days.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

redrick said:


> But design should also be flexible. Ideally, I want to be able to seamlessly mix my pre-determined elements with elements that arise at the table, because the players can take me in directions that I would never have gone with my graph paper, room keys and wikipedia entries, and I want to be prepared to go in those directions. So, for instance, I would never prep a town the way Gygax prepped Hommlet. I might have one or two houses laid out, and then I might have a list of a few other "note-worthy" NPCs with their role and possibly one or two other descriptions, and then I'd allow the rest to fill in as the adventure progressed. My understanding is that this is more or less the standard approach to RPG adventure prep these days.




I know I'm still a week behind... 

One of the things I find interesting about the 'typical style' (if there is such a thing) for laying this kind of stuff out, much like you're outlining here, is that it is STILL very much beholden to the archetypal dungeon room key in some respects. For instance I've rarely, make that pretty much never, seen in a product where there were fully elaborated descriptions of the relationships between things. For example a key of this kind might list several family members living together in a house, but what clan do they belong to? Who is their landlord? Do they have protectors, sponsors, debtors, creditors, friends, enemies? I mean, obviously there's only so much you can do in a fairly brief sketchy town plan kind of a thing, but it always seems to me that the social dimension in particular, but also the economic dimension in most cases, is just lost. We may know, as in Gary's Hommlet exactly the contents of every house, but who's going to stand together with whom? What happens when you kill Fred down the street, doesn't he have a brother? A landlord? Someone must inherit his stuff, want to find out who killed him, etc.

In some sense, I think this 'classic' type of setting design, when it comes to settlements, is entirely inadequate to the type of play that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] seems to be espousing when he asks about the value of worldbuilding. I would say that in terms of his needs these social/cultural/economic details are MUCH MORE IMPORTANT than the trivia about how many coppers are under Farmer Joe's floorboards and what the probability of finding them is (all of which can and probably should in that kind of play be made up as needed anyway). 

Its not that nobody ever thinks about this stuff at all, but its weird how you get these detailed maps of buildings but only at best some incredibly vague idea of who owns them, what their allegiances are, etc.


----------



## Manbearcat

My first post in this thread talked about 3 different types of worldbuilding approaches.  One of which was Blades in the Dark.  Blades' mechanically weighty system and its setting of Duskvol has the following aspects that make the approach here work:

1)  The world is haunted.  Outside of Duskvol's lightning tower perimiter lies the Deathlands and the Void Sea where unspeakable horrors, twisted spirits, and mighty leviathans roam.  This serves to constrain the sandbox (like a dungeon) and interacts with the game's mechanics (for instance, leaving the city to let your *Heat *die down is more dangerous than staying within the lightning barrier!). 

2)  The mechanically deep system is intimately integrated with and synergizes with the setting.  For instance, lets talk about *Heat *(as invoked in 1).

A gang of scoundrels that is attempting to climb the power ladder of the setting (this is a mechanical leaderboard based on tier) is invariably going to attract attention and make enemies.  Rather than just having this handled solely as GM fiat (as an extrapolation from the GM's view of the setting, what has occurred during play, what only the GM is privy to offscreen), Blades systematizes this in the following way:



> BitD 147-148
> 
> *HEAT*
> 
> Anything you do might be witnessed, and there’s always evidence left behind. To reflect this, your crew acquires heat as they commit crimes. After a Score or conflict with an opponent, your crew takes heat according to the nature of the operation:
> 
> <Insert table and augment caveats>




Heat can also be accrued in the midst of an operation as a complication.  

What happens when you have too much Heat?



> BitD 148
> 
> When your heat level reaches 9, you gain a wanted level and clear your heat (any excess heat “rolls over,” so if your heat was 7 and you took 4 heat, you’d reset with 2 heat marked). The higher your wanted level, the more serious the response when law enforcement takes action against you (they’ll send a force of higher quality and scale). Also, your wanted level contributes to the severity of the entanglements that your crew faces after a score. See page 150 for details.




How do you reduce your crew's wanted level?



> BitD 148
> 
> *INCARCERATION *
> 
> The only way to reduce your crew’s wanted level is through incarceration.  When one of your crew members, friends, contacts—or a framed enemy—is convicted and incarcerated for crimes associated with your crew, your wanted level is reduced by 1 and you clear your heat. Incarceration may result from investigation and arrest by the Bluecoats, or because someone turns themselves in and takes the fall for the crew’s crimes.
> 
> <Insert table about Wanted Level and related sentence/fallout and the mechanics to handle this>




This is something I wanted to talk about earlier, so maybe there can be some conversation now.

What is the impact on play holistically and on player decision-points (with respect to short term tactics, long term strategy, opportunity cost eval, cost/benefit analysis) when 1 and 2 aren't in play?  So take the setting outlined above (a haunted world that suffered a supernatural apocalypse...no sunlight...black seas filled with demonic leviathans that must be harvested for their green-glowing ectoplasm which powers the city's most fundamental infrastructure...dark, soggy, smog-choked, cramped, inky canals...like a huanted post-industrial London/Venice/Prague).   You're a gang of scoundrels climbing the power ladder of the city and trying to stay one step ahead of the corrupt Bluecoats (coppers) and the more noble detectives while seizing turf/resources, making alliances, crushing your enemies, fulfilling your vices (which will invariably get you into trouble), and staying low enough on the radar that the real city's powers don't deem you a threat.

What happens if:

(a)  There is nothing punitive outside of the walls of Duskvol or you have the (spellcasting or tech) resources to handle it?

(b)  The power ladder (itself and the gaining and losing of Tier status thereby climbing it) wasn't systematized?

(c)  The mechanics of Heat, Wanted Level, and Incarceration were all non-player facing...or weren't well-integrated (with each other, with the setting, with the rest of the game's play procedures/mechanics)....or weren't existent at all...and left entirely to GM discretion/fiat?

Back to the above:

What is the *impact on play holistically and on player decision-points* (with respect to short term tactics, long term strategy, opportunity cost eval, cost/benefit analysis)


----------



## MarkB

Manbearcat said:


> My first post in this thread talked about 3 different types of worldbuilding approaches.  One of which was Blades in the Dark.  Blades' mechanically weighty system and its setting of Duskvol has the following aspects that make the approach here work:
> 
> 1)  The world is haunted.  Outside of Duskvol's lightning tower perimiter lies the Deathlands and the Void Sea where unspeakable horrors, twisted spirits, and mighty leviathans roam.  This serves to constrain the sandbox (like a dungeon) and interacts with the game's mechanics (for instance, leaving the city to let your *Heat *die down is more dangerous than staying within the lightning barrier!).
> 
> 2)  The mechanically deep system is intimately integrated with and synergizes with the setting.  For instance, lets talk about *Heat *(as invoked in 1).
> 
> <snip>
> 
> This is something I wanted to talk about earlier, so maybe there can be some conversation now.
> 
> What is the impact on play holistically and on player decision-points (with respect to short term tactics, long term strategy, opportunity cost eval, cost/benefit analysis) when 1 and 2 aren't in play?  So take the setting outlined above (a haunted world that suffered a supernatural apocalypse...no sunlight...black seas filled with demonic leviathans that must be harvested for their green-glowing ectoplasm which powers the city's most fundamental infrastructure...dark, soggy, smog-choked, cramped, inky canals...like a huanted post-industrial London/Venice/Prague).   You're a gang of scoundrels climbing the power ladder of the city and trying to stay one step ahead of the corrupt Bluecoats (coppers) and the more noble detectives while seizing turf/resources, making alliances, crushing your enemies, fulfilling your vices (which will invariably get you into trouble), and staying low enough on the radar that the real city's powers don't deem you a threat.
> 
> What happens if:
> 
> (a)  There is nothing punitive outside of the walls of Duskvol or you have the (spellcasting or tech) resources to handle it?
> 
> (b)  The power ladder (itself and the gaining and losing of Tier status thereby climbing it) wasn't systematized?
> 
> (c)  The mechanics of Heat, Wanted Level, and Incarceration were all non-player facing...or weren't well-integrated (with each other, with the setting, with the rest of the game's play procedures/mechanics)....or weren't existent at all...and left entirely to GM discretion/fiat?
> 
> Back to the above:
> 
> What is the *impact on play holistically and on player decision-points* (with respect to short term tactics, long term strategy, opportunity cost eval, cost/benefit analysis)




Well, on the one hand, the GM can look at the PCs' actions in undertaking a particular operation, compare them against the likely competencies of those investigating the after-effects, and make an educated decision about how much the authorities know about them. Also, depending upon the specifics of the particular NPCs involved, some actions might be disproportionately more or less noticeable than might otherwise be expected.

And on the other hand, if the players find their characters under suspicion, they are free to come up with creative options other than "someone goes to jail for this" - bribing or threatening witnesses, tampering with evidence, causing the police's case to fall apart.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> One of the things I find interesting about the 'typical style' (if there is such a thing) for laying this kind of stuff out, much like you're outlining here, is that it is STILL very much beholden to the archetypal dungeon room key in some respects. For instance I've rarely, make that pretty much never, seen in a product where there were fully elaborated descriptions of the relationships between things.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> We may know, as in Gary's Hommlet exactly the contents of every house, but who's going to stand together with whom? What happens when you kill Fred down the street, doesn't he have a brother? A landlord? Someone must inherit his stuff, want to find out who killed him, etc.
> 
> In some sense, I think this 'classic' type of setting design, when it comes to settlements, is entirely inadequate to the type of play that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] seems to be espousing when he asks about the value of worldbuilding. I would say that in terms of his needs these social/cultural/economic details are MUCH MORE IMPORTANT than the trivia about how many coppers are under Farmer Joe's floorboards and what the probability of finding them is (all of which can and probably should in that kind of play be made up as needed anyway).
> 
> Its not that nobody ever thinks about this stuff at all, but its weird how you get these detailed maps of buildings but only at best some incredibly vague idea of who owns them, what their allegiances are, etc.



Interesting post!

I think that in the Hommlet era alignment was meant to carry a lot of this information.

In my 4e game I've relied on religious affiliation to carry a lot of weight (it's a cosmologically-focused game). The three main settlements that have figured in the game have been Threshold/Adakmi, the duergar stronghold, and a githzerai monastery. For the latter two I basically set it up with two main groupings in each - and framed it so that the PCs may themselves have split allegiances across the two factions. For Threshold, I had a power struggle between baron and patriarch (I think that was my own idea, but maybe I got it from B10?); and then introduced some nuance into the baron situation (with the advisor, the niece who was the spitting image of the PCs' friend from the past, etc).

In my Traveller game, when the PCs assaulted the bioweapons conspiracy outpost, I wrote up the NPCs with connections between them (one ex-army guy had been a comrade of the PC army guy; another NPC was the sister of the shuttle pilot the PCs had hired; etc) - nothing very intricate, but it just added a bit of extra depth and complexity to the resolution of the situation.

In other words, I think the difference between _nothing_ and _a little bit_ goes a long way.

I don't have any of the classic RQ modules, but some of them must have tackled this sort of stuff.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Well, guess what non-TSR game figured most prominently in the old Ares section of Dragon? Traveller.
> 
> The idea that RQ and Traveller are "niche" games is ridiculous, unless "niche" means _not D&D_.



Exactly.

With the possible exception of a few years in the mid-90's when 2e was dying with no obvious replacement on the horizon, D&D (including PF) has always been the 800 lb. gorilla in the RPG world and has - despite some vainglorious attempts by various designers over the years - relegated anything and everything else to niche status at best.

Look at it another way: go down to your local FLGS and say you're starting a D&D campaign and are looking for players.  You'll almost certainly get interest, followed by questions relating to edition or version, campaign specifics, houserules, and the like.  But go down to your local FLGS and say you're starting a Burning Wheel campaign and are looking for players and the only question you'll hear is "Burning Wheel? Wtf is that?".



> Suppose this is true - that doesn't show that they're replayable in the same way as (say) B2 is replayable - that the players can try again and thus learn (and beat) the "hidden design" (what, upthread, I called the puzzle/maze).



B2 is something of an outlier in module design, in that its dungeon bits can legitimately be approached piecemeal in a weekend-warrior kind of way.  You take out the Kobold cave, then go back to town.  Next trip you go after the Goblin cave, then go back.  Next trip you take on the Hobgoblins, lather rinse repeat until you've bit by bit taken out all the caves and can then start putting the pieces together.

Most modules - for better or worse - aren't like this.  Take G2, from the same era - it's a single-site dungeon far away from civilization and even though it can be taken on a bit at a time the party doesn't (usually) have the option to return to town and heal up-restock-recruit new PCs between each sortie.  But they can keep trying until they finish, and in that trying are going to be presented with a much more intricate dungeon layout than the simple straight line of rooms/encounters so common in bad early 3rd-party d20 offerings and in official WotC 4e offerings.



> It surprise me that you don't see this as Exhibit A in the case that the game is driven by the GM. All the action happened purely in the GM's imagination. The only agency exercised by the player was to force the GM to tell him-/herself a story!



Of course she did, and that's just my point - the DM has to follow the dominoes (if there are any; obviously there aren't always) in order to see if any of them are likely to impact the PCs later.  In the example I gave the dominoes are certainly going to lead to the PCs hearing about the attempt on the Duke's life and possibly going to lead to complications for one or more PCs should the harlot place blame on them or (mistakenly) associate them with the conspirators.

This domino-following is one of the aspects of city adventuring that makes it harder to DM, or at least DM well, than contained-dungeon adventuring.  Not all DMs are good at it; I know I'm often not.

Lanefan


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> But this clearly isn't true - you can have a game with any or all of those things without the GM writing up some fiction in advance.



Just because you can have a game without world building doesn't mean that what [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] described isn't world building.  It just means that you can improv on both sides of things and play without it.


----------



## pemerton

Nagol said:


> To point 1, news takes time to travel, depending on setting trappings.  The Imperium is limited by required physical transport jumps each taking weeks of time.  News from the other side will take months to reach the military and even longer to reach the civilian population.
> 
> To point 2, there's exciting things happening everywhere.  Players with PCs based in the Spinward Marches make the choice that exciting things happening near the Zhodani border are more interesting than exciting things happening near Hiver space.  When something newsworthy happens near Hiver Space and the news travels widely enough that the PCs can discover it, the players now have new information to base next choices upon.  Are enough exciting things happening here to hold their attention or is what is happening way over there interesting enough and seems to have enough staying power to warrant the trek to the other side?



Again, tihs strikes me as exhibiting the degree of GM control over shared content.

It's the GM who has decided that event X happens in Place A rather than Place B, hence that when the PCs who are in Place B learn of it (which equals _when the GM tells it to them_) it has already (within the context of the fiction) occurred, such that the player's capacity to affect its immediate context - given the setting conventions - is very limited.

It may be that exciting events (again, mostly = stuff that the GM is telling to the players) is happening in Place B, where the fictional positioning of the PCs enables them to make immediate action declarations that affects that stuff. But this exciting stuff is also stuff that was written by the GM.

The players are choosing which bit of the GM's fiction to focus on. If they choose A, there is then an extended process (at least if the travel is being resolved using the standard mechanics) for actually shtifting the field of action from A to B (in the fiction, this is the interstellar travel across the Imperium), where most of the activity on the way will be determined by the GM. (Either directly, or on the back of random encounter rolls.)

The authorial hand of the GM seems to loom very large.



MarkB said:


> in starting this thread, you're not merely saying that you're not interested in the comedians - you're declaring that you can't see how _anyone_ might find them appealin



No I'm not. The question in the thread isn't rhetorical. And some posters have answered it - to reiterate some of those answers:

* Worldbuilding - designing a setting - is a worthwhile artistic and/or intellectual pursuit in itself, that bring pleasure/satisfaction to the GM who engages in it;

* The game can't proceed without setting, and one way to get it is for the GM to write it in advance;

* Some players don't want to write setting, and so the _only_ way to get it is for the GM to write it, and this is easier done in advance;

* Some players want to know that the GM wrote up all the fiction in advance, because that supports their immersion.​
And the OP itself offered one answer - to confront the players with a maze/puzzle (the dungeon) to beat.

The OP also suggested that, as the setting becomes a "living, breathing world" which exists mostly in the mind and notes of the GM, rather than maps and room keys that are - through various, mostly conventionally-established moves - cognitivtely accessible to the players, the maze/puzzle rationale tends to be lost. I think  [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION] doesn't agree with this, which is what our discussion in the thread is currently about (though it's moved on a bit from my starting maze/puzzle way of framing the matter).



MarkB said:


> By declaring that playstyles other than purely player-driven content amount to "being told a story by the GM" you very much are saying that other playstyles aren't viable as a co-operative play experience.



I haven't delared that those playstyles are "being told a story by a GM". I have asserted that certain aspects of play, which are often presented in metaphorical terms ("the player explore the setting") or in in-fiction terms ("the PCs travel from A to B") actually - when we analyse them as the play of a game among actual people sitting around a table - consist of the players triggering the GM reading them stutf.

This is how a typical CoC scenario works, for instance, and most of the Planescape modules I can think of (Infinite Staircase; Dead Gods). It's how the Alexandrian's "node based design" and "three clue rule" work. The GM frames a starting situation, tells the players some stuff about it then the players say "OK, we go to [such-and-such a place]" and that leads the GM to read them more stuff (descriptions of such-and-such a place). And then with that extra information to hand, the players declare "OK, we go and talk to so-and-so" - and then the GM reads them some more stuff, and so on.

The players are making choices that determine the sequence in which the GM reads them the stuff, and determines the precise details. (Eg maybe if the players don't ask a certain question, the NPC doesn't tell them a certain thing.) But all the significant content is being narrated by the GM. And if the players declare a move that the GM didn't anticipate in his/her notes - eg they ask a neighbour what s/he has seen going on next door - then either the GM makes up some more stuff, or the GM doesn't dispense any significant information ("Sorry, I work shifts and only come home to sleep, so I haven't noticed anything").

In my experience, with a GM who is skilled in vibrant descriptions and characterisation, and if the stuff in the notes isn't obvious - so there's interest and/or amusement in learning it - then this can be fun. I've played in convention games that are like this. Personally, though, I prefer it if the style I've described is used to set up the framing of the "big finish" - and so, in a sense, really serves as an extended framing process for the _real_ scene of the game - and then the "big finish" is all about the players making substantive choices. CoC games don't work for this, because the "big finish" is nearly always just "Do or don't we have what we need to stop the cultists". But I've had good experiences in Stormbringer one-shots where, at the moment of crunch, the final action declarations aren't just about "how well can we put the clues together to defeat the culties" but more like "OK, so now we know that what's really going on here is a cult ritual, the question is - do we stop it, or do we join it!" If the scenario designers have done a good job, then different PCs should either start with, or (even better) develop over the course of the "exploration" phase of play, reasons to stop the cultists or join them that are in conflict with one another.

(It's hard to set up a convention game with two such moments of crunch, because the fallout from the big finish isn't predicable at the outset, yet a convention game depends on being able to start each session at a pre-established point.)

I personally don't enjoy a whole campaign which has the general form I've described - the players declare actions for their PCs which are primarily about triggering narration from the GM and then putting those pieces together to stop the ritual/find the McGuffin/etc. The one time I played an extended campaign having this sort of character, the real action of play was in the interaction between the PCs. (I get somewhat of a similar vibe from  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s accounts of actual play.) The GM's narration was really just a backdrop for this. But I don't count this as an example of strong player agency in a GM setting-driven game, as it was completely orthogonal from the GM's setting. (Eg we had fragments of a prophecy, and we spent a lot of time debating them, imagining how we could read various PCs into various roles outlined in the prophecy, etc. I assume that the GM had some conception, in his mind, of what the prophecy meant and how the events of play related to it, but they were absolutely irrelevant to what we players were talking about. We could have done our stuff just as easily if the GM had simply handed us three random prophecies downloaded from a Google search.)



billd91 said:


> Clearly, you don't trust that players have any form of agency in any game that has substantive GM backstory and adjudication. You're denying that they do all over the place here and in your response to Lanefan. And you don't really seem to trust us when we say that player do have agency in the games we're running in which we do make use of substantial backstory and adjudication. Your response to MarkB here is fairly dripping with it. "you think it is" makes it very clear that you *don't* believe him or think it's true. It's like you're calling him out but acknowledge he's not technically lying because he seems to believe it's true.



We're doing analysis here. Trying to dig down into the processes of play is not "calling someone out". I don't think  [MENTION=40176]MarkB[/MENTION] is lying. I do think that the suggestion that I don't trust GMs is (i) false, and (ii) irrelevant - as if the only reason someone would play DungeonWorld rather than 2nd ed AD&D is because they don't trust GMs!

But anyway, on to the issue of agency:

Here is one of my assertions - _if the GM is entitled, at any point in the process of resolution_ to (i) secretly author backstory, or (ii) secrety rewrite backstory, and (iii) to use that secret backstory as if it was part of the fictional positioning so as to (iv) automatically declare an action declaration unsuccessful ("No, the map's not in the study") - then I assert that _every action declaration is simply a suggestion to the GM as to how the fiction might go_. The GM - by deciding how to handle (i) to (iv) above - is actually making the decision as to what the shared fiction shall be.

(Perhaps in your game the GM doesn't enjoy any such entitlement. OK, fine. Then in making the above assertion I'm not saying anything about your game. But clearly there are some games in which the above entitlement is enjoyed by the GM.)

Here is my other main assertion - _if the GM is entitled to uniatereally and secret establish elements of the shared fiction_, which therefore become part of the fictional positioning for action declaration although the players may not know about it, then there is the _potential_ for players to lose agency. In this thread I have explained in detail how I think that classic dungeoncrawling avoids this problem: (i) in that approach to player agency is not about "story" but about _winning_; and (ii) the players have the capacity to learn the secret backstory through their direct engagement with the game without being dependent upon the GM's preconceptions as to what is salient, how elements of the backstory relate, etc - this is because the backstory is very simple and stylised (dungeon maps and rooms, with strong play conventions around these), because there is fiat detection magic, because there is the possibility of repeat attempts at the same dungeon (this is an obvious presupposition of Gygax's advice in his PHB), etc.

I have explained why the "living, breathing world" appears to create problems for (ii) just above: the backstory is not simple and stylised and governed by robust play conventions, but is rich and verisimilitudinous and opaque to the players (look at  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s example not far upthread - the players get involved in a minor street altercation and all these ramifications follow of which they had no knowledge and over which they had no practical control); exposition of information is extremeley dependent on GM opinions as to what is salient (the GM tells you the weapon the NPC carries but not how his/her shirt is tailored; the GM describes the desk in the study but not the paper clips or map pins sitting on it, nor their absence - in real life the degree and nature of clutter on a desk is one of the first things that gives you some clue as to what activity takes place at or near it; etc).

There has been quite a bit of reference, in this thread, to the PCs exploring or discovering the world. Given that the world is a fiction that exists only in the GM's notes, that can only mean that: the players declare actions for their PCs which trigger the GM reading some notes. Typically, the GM has control over which bits of the notes get read (eg suppose the players declare that their PCs break into the NPC's study and rifle through her books and papers: in a GM backstory-driven game it is the GM who will decide what the players learn about the shared fiction as a result of that action). _How can it be otherwise_ in a game in which it is the GM who authors the backstory, and does so in advance of play? I don't regard having the power, as a player, to oblige the GM to read you bits of his/her notes _which s/he gets to choose_ is having much agency. The contrast with dungeoneering is clear here: when a player has his/her PC use a Wand of Metal and Mineral Detection and obliges the GM to inform him/her of stuff in the dungeon neighbourhood, that is all stuff within the player's immediate field of action. It is part of the player unravelling the puzzle of the dungeon and getting ready to make a winning move (ie looting the detected treasure). If the player learns that there's not treasure nearby, that's also helpful: it helps the player work out where more profitable moves might be made. (Like turning over an unhelpful tile in Forbidden Desert - you'd rather get a helpful one, but still you've learned something that helps you make your next move.)

But triggering the GM to read you stuff which correlates to what, in the fiction, some NPC has in her books and papers, is not increasing agency in the same way. Whether or not it pertains to the current field of action is entirely up to the GM. How it might be made use of may well be up to the GM too (eg the players learn that the NPC has a cousin in a town across country who once saw someone with the widget - now they have to make the game moves that will bring it about that their PCs are in the town and talking to the cousin; or will have to find the cousin in the phonebook - and it will be up to the GM whether or not the cousin has a slient number, or has changed his/her name, or whatever; etc).

Here's a third assertion: to kick it off, let's suppose that the map that the players are hoping their PCs will find is known to be etched on a metal plate. And let's consider the following exercise of player agency: the players decide to have their PCs set fire to the house with the study in it, and then to impersonate fire fighters and thereby recover the metal map from the burning house (or maybe from it's ashes).

And let's suppose that this forces the GM to narrate fiction independently of his/her notes - s/he didn't anticipate this, and has no challenges made up aroudn dealing with the fire brigade, searching the ahses of the house, etc.

OK then - I don't regard it as an explanation of how a strong role for GM backstory supports or fosters player agency if _the putative example of agency involves departure from or disregard of the backstory_. And frankly, if the players are allowed to circumvent the mystery of the map in the breadbin by declaring the action of burning the house to the ground, then why not allow them to circumvent it by declaring the action of looking for the map in the study?

So those are my assertions. You think they're wrong. And you have a lot of relevant actual play experience. So why not write up a little play account that exhibits the agency and shows me what I've missed?


----------



## pemerton

Emerikol said:


> I would dispute though that my style has grown unpopular or is fading away.



I don't think it is. I think Gygaxian dungeon crawling, though - of the sort that he talks about in his advice on Successful Adventuring in his PHB - is much less common (at least in proportionate terms) than it was c 1977.



Emerikol said:


> Maybe I'm reading you wrong but it almost seems as if you are "evangelizing" your playstyle



Well, this thread started with the question "What is worldbuilding for (given that we're not doing Gygaxian dungeoneering)?"

The issue of "no myth"-type play only came up because some people said _RPGing needs setting_ and hence _RPGing needs worldbuilding in advance of play_. The first is true; the second, though isn't - because there are well-established RPGing methods that generate setting in other ways.



Emerikol said:


> In a D&D game using the style I prefer, the player is limited to what his character can do.  So he has agency equivalent to what his character would have if such a fictional world really existed.



This was discussed in quite a bit of detail upthread.

I think it is ultimately an uhelpful metaphor.

In the real world, if I want to pick up a rock and throw it, that depends on (i) whether there are any rocks nearby, and (ii) a range of mechanical forces at work in my body, in my hand-rock interaction, in the motion of the rock through the air, etc.

If I am RPGing, and I declare "My guy picks up a rock and throws it", whether or not that action declaration is successful depends on (iii) whether, in the shared ficiton, it is accepted that my PC is close to some rock, and (iv) what the action resolution mechanics say about picking up and throwing nearby rocks.

The issues of agency that have come to the fore in this thread are about (iii) and (iv): who gets to decide whether or not it is true, in the shared fiction, that the PC is near a rock, and (iv) how is action resolution adjudicated.

My contention is that if (iii) is primariy determined by the GM, either ahead of time (in writing his/her notes) or on the spot prior to any action resolution mechanics being invoked, then the GM has a high degree of agency in the game and the players correspondingly less. (Agency isn't always zero sum, but in this context the GM's unilateral power does indicate a reduced degree of power on the part of the players.)

This is also the context for my remarks about the GM reading to the players from his/her notes: if a player says "I look for a rock", then in a GM-pre-authored backstory game that is a trigger for the GM to tell the player something. In my view, triggering the GM to tell you something isn't exercising a high degree of agency over the shared fiction.

Now in some RPG styles player agency over the shared fiction is not a pre-eminent consideration. Eg in Gygaxian dungeoneering, the goal of play is to beat the dungeon, not to express your character by throwing rocks. And so the whole _point_ of play is to learn what is in the GM's notes (ie what the dungeon looks like, where the monsters are, what their treasures are) so you can beat the dungeon by getting the treasure and (often) killing the monsters. In that sort of game, player agency is not about shaping the shared ficiton in any general sense, but about being able to put together the information gained so as to be able to come up with winning plays. To work, it depends on strong play conventions (ie what winning consists in, namely, earning XP; conventions around dungeon design, such as that it is typically if not always feasible to pick the dungeon off room by room; etc).

I think that more contmporary play departs from those play conventions in various ways I've described in the OP and more recently just upthread. So I think the Gygaxian version of player agency probably has less relevance in much contemporary play.

There's clearly a style of play that is quite popular (a lot of people seem to like The Alexandrian on "node based design" and the "three clue rule", for instance) but that - as far as I can tell - involves very little player agency over the shared fiction. My inference from that is that player agency over the shared fiction is not high on a lot of RPGers priorities. They prefer to be told stuff by the GM (normally this is described as "exploration" and "clues") and then put it together to work out the solution (eg who was the murderer? where are the cultists going to hold their ritual? what is the cure that will wake the sleeping prince? where is the McGuffin hidden? etc).

My post not far upthread of this one elaborates on these ideas.


----------



## pemerton

MarkB said:


> if the players find their characters under suspicion, they are free to come up with creative options other than "someone goes to jail for this" - bribing or threatening witnesses, tampering with evidence, causing the police's case to fall apart.



Let's just focus on bribing witnesses.

I know of two main ways to resolve this.

One is: the GM has notes on the witness. (Either literal or notional, in his/her head.) When the players declare their PCs attempt to bribe the witness, the GM relies upon his/her notes to determine a likely response. Perhaps the GM sets a different price - "I'll lie for you, but only if you go and bring me the [XYZ]".

The other is: the GM has some generic rules for the difficulty of bribing people. The players establish their attempt to bribe the witness, and then a check is made. If it succeeds, the witness is bribed; if it fails, the GM decides the consequence - maybe the witness is outraged, maybe the witness asks for a higher price - "I'll lie for you, but only if you go and bring me the [XYZ]".

Classic Traveller is a variant on the second: first a reaction check is made, and a hostile reaction means that no bribery is possible. If the reaction is neutral or favourable, then the bribery check is made based on the difficulty set in accordance with the rules.

On the second approach, the GM is typically going to have to introduce some connecting backstory to help reconcile what is already established in the fiction and the outcome of the check - this can be anything from a cursory "Her eyes light up at your mention of money - she'll lie for you no worries!" to something more elaborate to give context and consequences to a failure (eg the NPC declaims her backstory about her parent who was an incorruptible official and was murdered for it, and that's why she won't take the PCs' dirty money).

I can see the player agency over the content of the shared ficiton in the second method: the players want there to be a bribable NPC, and on a successful check they get what they want.

I have more trouble seeing it in the first method: the players want there to be a bribable NPC, and the GM gets to decide whether or not there is one.

There's also scope to consider how the [XYZ] of the higher price is established - eg in Burning Wheel it would be obligatory for the referee to make that something that the will bring the player either into self-conflict or conflict with another player and that player's PC (so when one of the PCs in my game was dominated by a naga, the task set by the naga was to bring it the mage Joachim so that his blood might be spilled in sacrifice to the spirits; Joachim being the brother of another PC who was trying to save him from possession by a balrog). In some other games XYZ would be something decided by the GM in accordance with his/her priorities and views about the gameworld, rather than by following a player-established cue. That's also relevant to considering the degree of player agency.

EDIT: I've only discussed how a player might make it true, in the fiction, that his/her PC has successfully bribed a witness to lie for him/her. I haven't even got onto the issue of how this might factor into the likelihood of the PC being arrested or convicted.

If that is all resolved via method 1 above, then again I have trouble seeing much player agency.

The only edition of D&D I can think of that really has robust mechanics for resolving a trial is 4e (via the skill challenge rules). Bribing a witness would then be a particular action within the context of that challenge.

In AD&D you might try and resolve it using the reaction/loyalty rules (with the judge as the NPC whose reaction is being checked), with a successful bribing of a witness generating a favourable modifier (or at least the absence of a negative one for someone telling the judge that the PC is a bad person).


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It surprise me that you don't see this as Exhibit A in the case that the game is driven by the GM. All the action happened purely in the GM's imagination. The only agency exercised by the player was to force the GM to tell him-/herself a story!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Of course she did, and that's just my point - the DM has to follow the dominoes (if there are any; obviously there aren't always) in order to see if any of them are likely to impact the PCs later.  In the example I gave the dominoes are certainly going to lead to the PCs hearing about the attempt on the Duke's life and possibly going to lead to complications for one or more PCs should the harlot place blame on them or (mistakenly) associate them with the conspirators.
> 
> This domino-following is one of the aspects of city adventuring that makes it harder to DM, or at least DM well, than contained-dungeon adventuring.  Not all DMs are good at it; I know I'm often not.
Click to expand...


Well, I know (from experience) that there are other ways to referee city adventuring that don't depend on the sort of GMing you describe here.

But in any event, I take it that you accept my point: that what you describe is an instance of a game driven by the GM. The content of the shared fiction is being determined by the GM telling herself a story. What the players are providing are some inputs that - from their point of view - are almost completely random (eg in your example, the players had no meaningful cognitive access to the fact that the scuffle in the street was part of a story the GM was telling herself about a plot against the Duke).


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## Emerikol

I think Pemerton that we are all arguing because we define agency differently.  I agree 100% that player agency over the "shared fiction" or the "campaign setting" is low in my style of game.  The player can choose to affect it though by making choices which really do impact the setting.   In your bribe example above, I'd have defined the NPC well enough to make a fair roll on their chances to get what they want.  It would be unsatisfying for someone like me to just say the guy accepts my bribe.  The pc's though could at that moment choose to kill the guy and assuming they can it happens.  The world changes.  That guy is dead now.

I think dungeons while maybe not strictly Gygaxian as you claim (though I think your idea of Gygaxian dungeons is a bit of a strawman anyway) are still being played today in a skill based way.  The group cooperatively tries to beat the dungeon.  And I'm using dungeon here to represent any adventure the players choose to take up in the sandbox.   I think though Gygax himself would say that if players leave the dungeon that they should not have an expectation that the dungeon is static and does not change as a result of their first foray.  I also am not aware that it is a room by room game.  I'm sure inexperienced players do all sorts of bad things but that is not a criticism of the style.  My monsters are not dumb (unless of course they are in the world) and will rally to the sounds of battle and/or flee when they feel the situation is desperate.

In an attempt to be fair, I usually determine action plans for the monsters ahead of time to prevent me being influenced by how the game is going for the PC's.  So if my action plans put the monsters in a bad way because the PC's are smart they are rewarded.  I don't change the plan out from under their feet.


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## Emerikol

One other thought that is a bit off the track of the previous post.  Our two styles seem so radically different that it's almost like claiming monopoly and squad leader are similar because they are both played on a board with pieces.  

If we assume all styles where the players are having fun are valid styles, what are ways we can help identify games we like or don't like.  I've gone to games where the DM didn't really have the sort of game I was looking for and in the end it was a waste of everyone's time.  

How many styles do you think there are in gaming?  I'd call the Pathfinder Adventure Path style something that is not like my style though the similarities of dungeon activities it might be closer than your style.  I really do want my players to be able to do what they want within the sandbox.  Adventure paths are too railroady to me.  On the other hand your way is too much in another direction that is unsatisfying.


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## Emerikol

pemerton said:


> Well, I know (from experience) that there are other ways to referee city adventuring that don't depend on the sort of GMing you describe here.
> 
> But in any event, I take it that you accept my point: that what you describe is an instance of a game driven by the GM. The content of the shared fiction is being determined by the GM telling herself a story. What the players are providing are some inputs that - from their point of view - are almost completely random (eg in your example, the players had no meaningful cognitive access to the fact that the scuffle in the street was part of a story the GM was telling herself about a plot against the Duke).




Some might call this a living world.  I have a calendar of significant events that are occuring in the sandbox.  Those events keep on happening unless the PC's do something to turn over the cart.  For my players that is verisimilitude.  They want the feeling that the world is living around them and that they are living in it.  

You use terms, and I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that you don't mean to be disparaging, that are disparaging.  We see the job of DM as running the NPCs in the world.  You don't I realize but it doesn't leave the players out.  It sets the backdrop against which the players act.  If someone assassinates the Duke as planned on my calendar, the PC's can follow up or not.  I try to avoid railroading the PCs into the plot unless they want to dive in or are hopeless entangled in it already which usually means they are into it.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I don't think it is. I think Gygaxian dungeon crawling, though - of the sort that he talks about in his advice on Successful Adventuring in his PHB - is much less common (at least in proportionate terms) than it was c 1977.
> 
> Well, this thread started with the question "What is worldbuilding for (given that we're not doing Gygaxian dungeoneering)?"




World building isn't dungeon crawling, though.  World building is building the entire world(or enough of it for an entire setting) as a backdrop for the PCs to adventure in.  They get to explore it, interact with it, add to it within the framework of the world and game rules, and create a mutual story with the DM via those things.  That's what world building is and is for.


----------



## MarkB

pemerton said:


> Let's just focus on bribing witnesses.
> 
> I know of two main ways to resolve this.
> 
> One is: the GM has notes on the witness. (Either literal or notional, in his/her head.) When the players declare their PCs attempt to bribe the witness, the GM relies upon his/her notes to determine a likely response. Perhaps the GM sets a different price - "I'll lie for you, but only if you go and bring me the [XYZ]".
> 
> The other is: the GM has some generic rules for the difficulty of bribing people. The players establish their attempt to bribe the witness, and then a check is made. If it succeeds, the witness is bribed; if it fails, the GM decides the consequence - maybe the witness is outraged, maybe the witness asks for a higher price - "I'll lie for you, but only if you go and bring me the [XYZ]".
> 
> Classic Traveller is a variant on the second: first a reaction check is made, and a hostile reaction means that no bribery is possible. If the reaction is neutral or favourable, then the bribery check is made based on the difficulty set in accordance with the rules.
> 
> On the second approach, the GM is typically going to have to introduce some connecting backstory to help reconcile what is already established in the fiction and the outcome of the check - this can be anything from a cursory "Her eyes light up at your mention of money - she'll lie for you no worries!" to something more elaborate to give context and consequences to a failure (eg the NPC declaims her backstory about her parent who was an incorruptible official and was murdered for it, and that's why she won't take the PCs' dirty money).
> 
> I can see the player agency over the content of the shared ficiton in the second method: the players want there to be a bribable NPC, and on a successful check they get what they want.
> 
> I have more trouble seeing it in the first method: the players want there to be a bribable NPC, and the GM gets to decide whether or not there is one.



What about the other option: That the _character_ wants there to be a bribeable NPC, and the player, exploring the world from the viewpoint of the character, wants to _find out_ whether there is one.

Finding out that there isn't may complicate the PCs' current situation, but it tells the players more about the setting, and further down the line they may find a good use for an NPC that's reliably incorruptible.

To me, playing a specific character rather than the world around them, finding out that the course of action that character is currently exploring turns out to be ineffective doesn't affect my agency. The only thing that affects my agency is being told that my character can't make the attempt.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> I think the notion of trust is a red herring.
> 
> What stands out to me in your post is _you just do not want to play in a game where someone other than the dice decides what you can do_. Now, in the context of RPGing, "someone other than the dice decides what you can do" means _the GM tells you some fiction that s/he made up_. And you are correct that, when I RPG, I don't want the GM just to tell me some fiction that s/he made up. But that has nothing to do with trust.
> 
> It's like when I go to the pictures, I don't want a stand-up comedian to come out to the front of the theatre and start telling jokes. If I wanted that, I'd buy tickets to a comedy show, not a movie. That's got nothing to do with trust, and everything to do with the desired leisure-time experience.
> 
> The notion of trust is particularly odd in a context where I am predominantly a GM. Are you suggesting I don't trust myself to tell my friend's entertaining stories, so that my preferred GMing style is a sign of self-doutbt? The more prosaic explanation is that "Hey, let's get together to do some RPGing" is not the same as "Hey, let's get together so I can tell you a story."
> 
> That's not to say that the GM is unimportant in my preferred approach. The GM manages the bulk of scene-framing and big chunks of consequence narration, plus is the default supplier of whatever generic backstory is needed to move things along. (Robin Law, in Hamlet's Hit Points, calls this "laying pipe" - I think the term is from screen writing. Christopher Kubasik, in his Interactive Tookit essays, called the GM the "Fifth Business" - a term from opera, I gather - because of the GM's role in facilitating the unfolding of the plot by managing all this stuff.)
> 
> But that's not the same as deciding what a player's PC can or can't do; which is to say, is not the same as deciding whether or not a players' desire about the content of the fiction gets to come true or not. That's what I see the rules as being for!




I get that preference, but you seem to couch your arguments from a position where the DM is uses secret knowledge and fiat in ways that benefit the DM's ideas over the players.  When you couch your arguments like that, it's easy to assume that the crux of your problem is worrying that the DM will be unfair in his adjudication of your stated actions.  That's where I was coming from with that.

As for you being the GM, that's not counterindicative at all of having trust issues about the GM being unfair.


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## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> Well, first, there's no use of secret backstory there - the GM has made a decision already about framing. That is to say, when the scene is framed - which in this case consists in, or at least overlaps with, placing the map down on the table, the players can see (from the map) that there's no couch. (Unless invisible furniture is a possiblity. I'm putting that to one side for ease of exposition.)



I disagree that there's no secret backstory.  When that map hits the table, it resolves a number of things immediately that, prior to that, only the DM knew.  If the player declares they open the door to see what's behind it, and you drop down that encounter map, that's secret backstory the DM is telling to the players because they prompted him to reveal it (to phrase it like you do).  

If the player declares that their opening the door to the study (they're announcing they think it's a study, this isn't established yet) and that the door will open on the long axis of the room, but your map has the doors on the short axis...  The reason this doesn't catch is because you have a blind spot to the kinds of prep that you feel are allowable because the system requires some pre-game prep, so it's not even noticed at the table -- it's how that is done.  Encounter time gets encounter map.  It's only when you're shifting to a different detail, one that might be prepped but can be played unprepped, that you're it catches your attention.  But this is really a difference in degree -- the map of the study isn't really different than a "map" of the desk drawer in the study.  It's only different in scale, not in kind.  And, at a certain resolution, you stop accepting that prep is just prep and suddenly it becomes secret DM knowledge.  I don't think you can actually define a line or even a real distinction as to what point prep crosses that line.

For further instance, you've previously denied that you engaged in prep in your Marvel game, despite prepping quite a bit.  Maybe that prep was fast, but it doesn't change the impact on the game -- essentially you built an encounter map of Washington, DC, and then just moved around that map.  And, yes, that was in the open, but as much as an encounter map is in the open once it's introduced into play (and encounter maps may still include many hidden things, like invisible or hiding foes, or traps, etc.).



> Now, what's the context for the player wanting his/her PC to interact with a couch?
> 
> If the whole logic of the current trajectory of play is to find some particular couch (or any old couch), then authoring the map with out a couch is like stipulating that the map is in the breadbin and not in the study, and telling the players as much. The GM is saying (in effect), "OK, everyone, this scene does _not_ have the big reveal."
> 
> That seems to me really to be a pacing decision. Whether it's a good one or a bad one depends entirely on context. And if a player looks around for _clues_ to the couch - "There's an armchair on the map - is it of a style that is famous for coming in matching sets with couches?" - then previous considerations around the map apply. A GM who makes a deliberate decision to delay the big reveal, and then simply refuses to entertain action declarations that might generate momentum/foreshadowing etc seems to me - in the abstract - to be making poor calls. But it's not an instance of relying on secret backstory to adjudicate action declarations. Everyone can see the map on the table, and if there's no furniture on it well there's no furniture on it! (I think this point also responds to your discussion with [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] and [MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION].)
> 
> If the player wants a couch for some more prosaic reason eg because, for whatever reason, s/he wants his/her PC to be able to gain elevation, or to take cover, then the situation is different. Burning Wheel (which doesn't use encounter maps in the D&D/miniatures style) favours "say 'yes'" to this - a player who wants an advantage die, and can set out a plausible context for one, is entitled to it. (There are other reasons in BW, to do with its advancement rules, that mean players don't always scrounge for every die they might be entitled to.)
> 
> Cortex+ Heroic makes this an issue of action resolution - the player is trying to establish a Couch For Me To Stand On asset, with the Doom Pool as opposition. If the GM has established that the room is sparsely furnished - eg by way of a Sparsely Furnished Room descriptor - then that can appear in the Doom Pool as part of the opposed roll.
> 
> In D&D I think the default approach is that this is up to the GM. D&D is (among other things) a game of resource management. If a player wants an advantage, the GM is entitled, I think - as a convention of D&D play - to say "Find it yourself out of the stuff on your PC sheet plus what I've already given you in my framing." Equally, a GM is entilted to be more generous - "Yes, there's a stool next to the bed that I didn't mark on the map - it will give you about 18" of extra height".
> 
> In OGL Conan, one of the resources on a PC sheet can be a fate point, which can be deployed to change the framing. This is direct player authorship which - to very loosely paraphrase the fate point rules - might be used to get some furniture to give you a height advantage, but can't be used to stipulate that the couch you are searching for is in the room.
> 
> And again to respond to your discussion with [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] and [MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION] - none of the above involves relying on pre-authored backstory as a secret element of framing/fictional positioning that feeds into the adjudication of action resolutions. If the encounter map has no couch on it, that's not secret. If the player says (speaking as his/her PC) "I jump up onto the couch", the GM (assuming D&D or another RPG with similar rules and conventions) would be correct to say "But there is no couch." That sort of GMing - ie refusing a player suggestion/request for some minor advantage in the situation - may or may not be too viking-helmeted, depending on the particular group. But the GM is not relying on secret backstory. The player can see from the map that the encounter has been framed without couches present.




The map of the study is secret right up until a player action declaration introduces it by opening the door to the study.  Similarly, the map not being present in the study is secret right up until it's introduced in response to a player declaration.  You're claiming these are different things (and all of your discussion on couches is interesting, but avoids the point of the question with it's digressions into games that eschew such prep as encounter maps), but they aren't.  It may be a matter of scale (degree) but not kind.

To whit, if it is okay to create a map of the study prior to play for the purpose of an encounter, and it is okay to determine that couches play no part in that map, then why is it different to do the same for a map?  



> Well, I set out a number of principles that I think are relevant - knowability within the scene, which includes salience, and impactfulness of the secret element. As I also said, context is everything when it comes to satisfying those principles, but I think the discussion of the map example with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and others helps show why there are many contexts for the map example where they would not be satisfied (especially the third, which is what triggered my digression to Gumshoe).



Let's address this.  An invisible enemy can be knowable in the scene via clues or skill usage, and so can a map.  An invisible enemy can be very salient.  So can a map.  An invisible enemy can be very impactful.  So can a map.

These things you're saying may be different in context can be exactly the same as well.  And yet, I'm absolutely certain that you're okay with an invisible enemy being in a fight as part of DM notes on the encounter, but you're not okay with a DM's notes discussing the existence of a map.  I haven't yet seen you address this difference to any degree.

And that's important because the crux of the discussion is based on what secret notes do.  For you, secret notes are good for encounter prep - and the secret is revealed when that encounter happens due to player declarations -- possibly in ways that surprise or disappoint the players.  But they aren't good for things like a map being present in a specific room because a player asked after than map in that room.  I still don't see a concrete difference between these two things.  I understand a position where you want as much of the game as possible to revolve around player declarations and mechanical resolutions of the same, but you also allow this isn't feasible for everything in those games that do require preparation due to mechanical weightiness.  So, you already are just fine with a spectrum of results, but still shy away from the far end.  And that's perfectly fine -- understand I'm not trying to negate or refute your playstyle at all.  I'm asking these questions because you seem to not see this spectrum but instead see a hard line where things become secret backstory and not to your liking.  I'm hoping that you can actually define that, because, so far, your arguments about secret backstory really do seem vague and dissociated.  Constantly referring to other games where prep isn't a thing to show how those games would handle a question that's based on a prepped map isn't really germane, though.  I know there are games that work that way, and I didn't ask about those.  I asked about how the amount of prep you're okay with differs _in kind_ from the prep you seem to dislike.  Referring to games without prep or that don't prep to the detail of an encounter map don't explore that question at all.



> This is a bit puzzling.
> 
> All action declaration has to include some sort of outcome, either expressly or implicitly: _I attack the orc_ (hoping to defeat it). _I lookf for secret doors_. Etc.
> 
> When the action declaration is _nothing more_ than a request for the GM to provide more framing - "I look around the room - what do I see?" - then different games take different approaches. As I've said, that is fairly common in my 4e game ("I cast Object Reading while picking up the book - what do I see?") On the other hand, in BW it's borderline degenerate.
> 
> One reason for the difference is that BW is meant to be a harder-driving game than 4e. Another reason is that BW has mechanics in service of this - it has very few player-side fiat abilities, which means that there always needs to be some implicit consequence for failure, which means that there always have to be stakes, and a request simply for more GM exposition doesn't establish any stakes.




So, then, you're okay with action declarations that involve the DM telling more story, so long as the DM didn't write any of that story down beforehand?  What if the question is an augury about the study, and your encounter map and notes indicate a dangerous encounter awaits there -- how do you not refer to your notes then?

Again, this seems to only be an issue if the player makes a declaration that is negated by the fictional positioning that is still secret from that player.  But, even there, there are exceptions -- invisible or hiding opponents, auguries on prepped material, etc. -- that imply that there are some such things you're fine with but not others.  I still don't understand where that line is for you.  And it's a challenge to answer the question in the OP against the backdrop of unclear and vague definitions.



> Yes.
> 
> This is completely routine in all RPGing.
> 
> The player (speaking as his/her PC) says "I want to kill the orc." Currently, it is established that the orc is alive, that the PC is in the vicinity of the orc, and that the PC has some means (eg a loaded crossbow) that is apt to kill the orc.
> 
> The GM says, "OK - make an attack roll". The player rolls to hit, rolls for damage, the GM deducts the damage number from the orc's hit point number, that latter number drops to zero or less, and the GM declares "OK, the orc's dead!
> 
> At the start of that resolution process, the fiction was _live orc near PC_. Now it's _dead orc near PC_. (Plus, perhaps, _one less bolt in PC's quiver_, if the game has ammo tracking. Maybe other stuff too.)
> 
> Or, the player (speaking as his/her PC) says "I want to ask around town, at the usual inns and stuff, if anyone has seen that bandit who ran off before we could capture her around the place." The GM calls for a Streetwise or Gather Information or similar check, and depending on the result narrates some stuff. At the start of that resolution process, the fiction was _PC in town; town has inns and similar places where information might be obtained; a bandit escaped and may have come to town; people may have seen her and be willing to speak about it; those people might be at the inss and like places, or have spoken to people who are there and are willing to pass on what they heard_. At the end of the resolution process, there may be something additional like _Jake the farmer saw the bandit near his haystack, and told the innkeeper about it when he came into town to sell some eggs._
> 
> In a typical moment of D&D play, the parameters of the orc example are tighter than those of the rumour example. The framing fiction in the rumour example is much more implicit. But both are, at heart, the player using action resolution to change the state of the fiction: from live orc to dead orc; from ignorant PC to knowledgable PC.
> 
> Neither involves the player outright authoring the fiction (contrast the player, in writing PC backstory, talking about his PC's ruined tower, abandoned mace, etc - that's outright authorship): the player expresses a desire about the state of the fiction, and the action resolution rules then determine whether or not that desire becomes true. In conventional D&D play, I think the GM is expected to exercise a fairly strong mediating role in narrating the outcome even on a successful check (eg the GM probably decides whether or not the crossbow bolt shot the orc in the head or the chest). In BW, by contrast, the GM is permitted only to add embellishments (so if the player says, "I shoot the orc in the head", and the dice deliver a success, well that's what happened).
> 
> The player asking "Is the map in the study" and then - on a good roll - fiding it there is strictly analogous to the player "introducing" (by way of successful action resolution) that the orc is dead.



I think there's a hugely important difference:  the orc is established in the scene, the map's presence in the scene is being introduced by the player.  The orc is manipulated, the map is created.



> Now, if it's controversial that RPGing should include _players expressing desires as to the content of the fiction_, which then become true if action resolution works out a certain way - well, we're back at what I talked about with [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION], namely, player action declarations as, at best, suggestions to the GM as to possible narrations of furure states of the fiction.



I think this is so for all games that have a GM, and many that don't (like Fiasco).  If the player asks for a map in the study and succeeds, that's a suggestion to the GM as to possible narrations -- either the DM says yes, that's exactly how it happens, or he narrates the success in a way that advances the scene.  If the player's check fails, then that's back to the GM as a suggestion on how to narrate that:  a flat failure, denying the player's intent, a middle ground where the map exists but there's a complication, or even to escalate the scene -- as you look for the map, a demon appears stating that you will never see that map because you will be dead!  In that last, the map may still be found if the escalation is dealt with.

So, in all cases, as I understand it, all player action declarations are, at best, suggestions to the GM as to possible narrations of future states of the fiction.



> Well, this takes me back to the two contrasting cases, both of Circles checks that I've seen occur in BW play:
> 
> (1) "Jabal the Red is leader of my cabal. I reach out to him to see if he can help us." That is direct authorship of fiction - the cabal is led by Jabal the Red. Then there is a statement of desire - the player wants the fiction to include _Jabal helps the PC who has reached out to him_.
> 
> (2) "I wonder if any knights of my order are living around here. As we travel, I keep an eye out for any signs of them." That is a statement of desire - the player wants the fiction to include _As I travel through this area, I see signs of the presence of knights of my order_. But there is no direct authorship of fiction.​
> There are (at least) two sorts of _no map yet established as existing or salient in the context of play_ example.
> 
> The first: the player says "There's a map. We're going to find it. Is it in the study?" That is like (1) just above. In D&D it would be highly atypical, I think. (Contrast Circles in BW, which expressly permits a player to specify that sort of stuff about friends and contacts, should s/he want to.)
> 
> The second: the player says "A map would really help us. Are there any maps in the study?" That is like my (2) above, or like the Streetwise rumour-gathering example a bit further above. RPG players are always hoping to find stuff for their PCs, that is, to change the state of the fiction in some desired fashion. It's no different in resolution structure from the orc example.
> 
> Well, I've been assuming the latter. Ie it's established that the PCs are hunting for the map. (Perhaps the map doesn't _really _exist - it's like the gold at the end of the rainbow - but at a minimum that hasn't been estabished yet, and the players have reason to think their PCs have some hope of finding it.)
> 
> But the examples of (2) above, and of gathering rumours, show thats it's not radically different that it has or hasn't been established. Just as in the rumour example the main thing is not that the GM has already said "There are rumours", but rather than it's implicit in the situation that there may be helpful rumours; so likewise in (2) above it's implicit in the situation that there may be knights of the order about (the adventure isn't happening on the 3rd layer of Carceri) and in the analogous map example, it's implicit in the situation that the study might have maps in it.
> 
> This is the difference from the possible existence of beam weaponry in the duke's toilet, which is not implicit in the situation.



The problem with implicit is that it differs between people's understanding of the situation.  Basing your definition of 'okay declarations' as being implicit to the scene runs into the issue of being implicit to whom's interpretation of that scene.

And, this is a point for secret backstory -- if run fairly, it's not implied, it is or isn't.  A map isn't implied in the study, it is or isn't in the study.  This kind of framing doesn't require implicit understanding of what might be acceptable to do here.  A good group can navigate this implicit landscape pretty well, but then a good group can navigate secret backstory pretty well.  A game played well is player well and enjoyable, no matter the conventions in use by the players.



> Here's one way: say "yes", which means (when they are hoping for no invisible person) assuring them taht there is no invisible person.



And if you misunderstood the player and the really did want there to be an invisible opponent (it's happened before in my games)?  Given I actually intended the question to be a player asking for an invisible enemy to be present, this isn't conjecture to throw off your answer.



> Here's another: invite a check, and if it is not very good say "None that you can see." This is standard GM taunting. In Cortex+ Heroic, th GM has to spend resources (ie Doom Pool dice) to introduce new elements into an alread-framed encounter/situation. Not so in 4e, and so that sort of taunting (ie leaving it open whether or not new elements are going to be introudced that are adverse to the PCs) I regard as legitimate. In more prosaic terms, it factors into resource management in the scope of an encounter (eg one of my players likes to try and hold back one big gun because he thinks I always have something else up my sleeve and he wants not to be caught short by it).



And, again, you respond with "this system over here that addresses this kind of thing does it this way".  It's interesting that you answer questions from the point of view of whichever system provides you the most pat answer.

How would you do this in 4e, as that was the context of that question.  It's even explicit in the portion you quoted.



> Here's two more, one where the player didn't want to see something (but was going to be excited if he did), and one where he did want to:




Your first example is... well, to be blunt, it rings all kinds of alarm bells for me.  It's a gotcha, to begin with, with you as DM describing a chasm and then prompting the players for action declarations for how they would cross it.  While not directly declaring player actions for them, that's strongly leading into your hidden beholder.  And that beholder was hidden, I'm assuming, because you did not describe it in the initial framing, and, in fact, only showed it as the players were declaring their prompted actions to cross the chasm.  So, there's secret backstory being introduced to complicate player actions without their ability to detect or know about it.  I thought that's what you've been saying isn't a good thing?

Secondly in that first encounter, it seems to me you perverted the intent of a successful check by a player.  The player was suspicious that a stalagmite might be a roper and didn't want to be caught by it so took the time to see if they could determine if the stalagmite was a roper.  They succeeded, and, in response, you added a roper.  So, a player succeeds in a check to avoid danger, and you reward that by adding danger and then declaring this is good because you let the player see the newly added danger?!  It would seem to me that adding a complication to a successful check is not what you're supposed to do.  As a further aside, 4e encounter math wasn't very forgiving, so adding another threat of similar level to the party was a major change to that encounter, and not something I'd be comfortable doing even on a failed check, much less a successful one.  This is one of the reasons games like D&D usually need encounter prep.

In the second example, how is the duergar not secret DM knowledge in that situation?



> It's not about being able to _show_ it to be a good thing. But you might say a sentence or two about why you find it good or fun, in RPGing, for the GM to trick you into thinking stuff was preauthored that really wasn't.



The better way to phrase that question would be to ask what people like about prep, not ask why prep is a good thing.  Examples:

"Why is the existence of Burning Wheel a good thing?"  vs "What is it you like about Burning Wheel?"  There are implicit things in there.


----------



## innerdude

MarkB said:


> What about the other option: That the _character_ wants there to be a bribeable NPC, and the player, exploring the world from the viewpoint of the character, wants to _find out_ whether there is one.




 @_*pemerton*_'s point still stands, though---the character's ability to find out if there's a bribeable NPC solely depends on the GM's discretion regardless. If the GM decides before hand (i.e., pre-authors the situational backstory) that no bribery is possible, the only difference between the GM just saying outright, "No, there are no bribeable NPCs," and letting the players attempt to make umpteen bribe checks and responding, "Nope, none of the NPCs will respond to your bribe attempts," is that in the second instance, the players have wasted time, effort, and momentum in attempting to do something the GM knew wasn't possible to begin with. 

Which is frankly _worse_, in my opinion, than just stating up front, "No, there are no bribeable NPCs." 

The problem, of course, is that after so many times of the GM saying, "No, you can't do that, because worldbuilding continuity reasons," most players start to tune out. Truthfully I think @_*pemerton*_'s location on the Secret Backstory-to-Worldbuilding continuum is way to the left of mine, but at this level of specificity I don't think he's wrong in saying that the pre-authored backstory is limiting player agency. 

Now, from certain perspectives (I'm pretty sure [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s would be one), there's nothing wrong with forcing the players to go through the exercise anyway, because it's just agreed as a group that there's something materially important about maintaining fictional continuity and fidelity, and forcing the characters (through the players' action declarations) to find that information out for themselves. 

I personally have abandoned this perspective and found it to be entirely liberating as a GM.


----------



## Lylandra

innerdude said:


> The problem, of course, is that after so many times of the GM saying, "No, you can't do that, because worldbuilding continuity reasons," most players start to tune out. Truthfully I think @_*pemerton*_'s location on the Secret Backstory-to-Worldbuilding continuum is way to the left of mine, but at this level of specificity I don't think he's wrong.




But this is only a problem if the players don't know enough about the world before investing in the campaign. For example, I could make a world where all the gods died and my campaign resolved around this premise. Now that'd be a problem for a player who just came with a devout divine-driven cleric character, because obviously there wouldn't be a direct source for his powers. 

For myself, I would have close to zero interest in a campaign without a consequential, logical, living world. One-shots? Sure. But no campaign.


----------



## Ovinomancer

innerdude said:


> @_*pemerton*_'s point still stands, though---the character's ability to find out if there's a bribeable NPC solely depends on the GM's discretion regardless. If the GM decides before hand (i.e., pre-authors the situational backstory) that no bribery is possible, the only difference between the GM just saying outright, "No, there are no bribeable NPCs," and letting the players attempt to make umpteen bribe checks and responding, "Nope, none of the NPCs will respond to your bribe attempts," is that in the second instance, the players have wasted time, effort, and momentum in attempting to do something the GM knew wasn't possible to begin with.
> 
> Which is frankly _worse_, in my opinion, than just stating up front, "No, there are no bribeable NPCs."
> 
> The problem, of course, is that after so many times of the GM saying, "No, you can't do that, because worldbuilding continuity reasons," most players start to tune out. Truthfully I think @_*pemerton*_'s location on the Secret Backstory-to-Worldbuilding continuum is way to the left of mine, but at this level of specificity I don't think he's wrong.



Definitely.  I think that's an expectation divergence between the players and the GM, and that's a problem in any game.  This example only works in secret backstory ganes, though, so there is that.

It does occur to me that the bribing officials in Traveller is a bit of a red herring.  The fix is in there as well, because that rule is built in because there's a omnipresent corrupt bureaucracy that player characters will often have need to engage as part of play.  So the bribing rule is only in that context against that much larger enforced setting and operates as a mechanical relief valve on that constraint.  Fiat rules that deal with fiat setting restrictions aren't necessarily the best examples of things that increase agency.  They preserve agency against setting constraints, but don't increase it.

I think the same about Blades' use of heat, as brought up by [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION].  It's there not as an example of a rule that increases agency, but actually to limit it to make other setting and mechanical pressures relevant.


----------



## innerdude

Ovinomancer said:


> . . . at a certain resolution, you stop accepting that prep is just prep and suddenly it becomes secret DM knowledge. I don't think you can actually define a line or even a real distinction as to what point prep crosses that line.




This is actually a fairly salient point. Even if you accept some of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s postulates---and I'm not saying that anyone has to---as a GM, I'd still want to have some practical line of demarcation that tells me when I've strayed from simple "world building" into "hard-coded pre-authoring." 

The only real thing I've come up with so far is a simple question: 

Does absence of knowledge for this fictional element materially hinder players' ability to make rational, constructive choices for their characters?

If the answer to that question is ever "yes," that would be a solid indicator to me to strongly reconsider its place in the fiction, or to make the existence of that fictional element entirely mutable.


----------



## MarkB

innerdude said:


> @_*pemerton*_'s point still stands, though---the character's ability to find out if there's a bribeable NPC solely depends on the GM's discretion regardless. If the GM decides before hand (i.e., pre-authors the situational backstory) that no bribery is possible, the only difference between the GM just saying outright, "No, there are no bribeable NPCs," and letting the players attempt to make umpteen bribe checks and responding, "Nope, none of the NPCs will respond to your bribe attempts," is that in the second instance, the players have wasted time, effort, and momentum in attempting to do something the GM knew wasn't possible to begin with.
> 
> Which is frankly _worse_, in my opinion, than just stating up front, "No, there are no bribeable NPCs."



I agree that playing it out if there's no possibility of success is pointless.

But my desired action was to find out whether there are any bribeable NPCs. If the DM immediately says "after some investigation, you find that there are no bribeable NPCs", then he hasn't denied my action - he's completed it, and left me with the information I was looking for.

Of course, if the DM lets me play out the enquiry and find out that it's a non-starter, but in the course of the attempt gives me the opportunity to pick up some leads and connections that grant me a better understanding of the situation and open up new options, that might be even better.


----------



## Ovinomancer

innerdude said:


> This is actually a fairly salient point. Even if you accept some of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s postulates---and I'm not saying that anyone has to---as a GM, I'd still want to have some practical line of demarcation that tells me when I've strayed from simple "world building" into "hard-coded pre-authoring."
> 
> The only real thing I've come up with so far is a simple question:
> 
> Does absence of knowledge for this fictional element materially hinder players' ability to make rational, constructive choices for their characters?
> 
> If the answer to that question is ever "yes," that would be a solid indicator to me to strongly reconsider its place in the fiction, or to make the existence of that fictional element entirely mutable.



That's a touch hazy, though, as presence or absence of a map in the study doesn't necessarily impair the player's ability to make meaningful decisions about looking for it.  Failure can be meaningful.  

For example, I only engage mechanics if the outcome is both uncertain and there's a meaningful consequence of failure.  That consequence can be as disengaged from the action as adding time to a wandering monster check or ritual to as direct as the trap going of in the PC's face.  But I do also narrate automatic failure if a declaration doesn't work for the fictional positioning and my special secret notes.  If that happens too often, though, I take a beat to consider what's causing the difference of expectation and adjust.


----------



## Manbearcat

Ovinomancer said:


> Definitely.  I think that's an expectation divergence between the players and the GM, and that's a problem in any game.  This example only works in secret backstory ganes, though, so there is that.
> 
> It does occur to me that the bribing officials in Traveller is a bit of a red herring.  The fix is in there as well, because that rule is built in because there's a omnipresent corrupt bureaucracy that player characters will often have need to engage as part of play.  So the bribing rule is only in that context against that much larger enforced setting and operates as a mechanical relief valve on that constraint.  Fiat rules that deal with fiat setting restrictions aren't necessarily the best examples of things that increase agency.  They preserve agency against setting constraints, but don't increase it.
> 
> I think the same about Blades' use of heat, as brought up by [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION].  It's there not as an example of a rule that increases agency, but actually to limit it to make other setting and mechanical pressures relevant.




Awesome.  Ok.  I was hoping what I was trying to get at made sense.  The second half of your sentence is spot on:



> make other setting and mechanical pressures relevant.




I would change the first part though to "complicates agency" instead of "limit it".  This isn't exactly a 1:1 correlation, but its akin to the Wandering Monster clock in Moldvay Basic as it puts pressure on exploration turns in the micro and the entire dungeon crawl effort in the macro.

How do you feel about that change (limit to complicate)?  

And from there (assuming you agree), do you feel that setting/premise-integrated mechanical elements of play that thematically complicate decision-points and macro approaches to problems/aspirations increase verisimilitude?  

That was what I was trying to get at with that post.  My contention is that Blades in the Dark experience would be a much diminished experience without the feedback loop of Heat/Wanted Level and all its related components.  It brings the setting alive.  It makes the threat of the coppers or corruption amongst the luminaries/power players (especially given the Tier status, and therefore threat level, of those setting Factions) loom over your head at all times.  It brings to bear the stress of desperation, urgency, and things spinning out of control (inherent to a doomsday clock) that should be present at all times for characters in a heist game where gangs of scoundrels are scratching and crawling (each others eyes out) to get out of the muck.

It would also be diminished if those mechanics were opaque/non-player-facing.  Appropriate GM characterization and exposition can only do so much legwork.  Well-integrated, thematically-appropriate mechanics bring the setting alive in a different way.


----------



## Manbearcat

MarkB said:


> Well, on the one hand, the GM can look at the PCs' actions in undertaking a particular operation, compare them against the likely competencies of those investigating the after-effects, and make an educated decision about how much the authorities know about them. Also, depending upon the specifics of the particular NPCs involved, some actions might be disproportionately more or less noticeable than might otherwise be expected.




Agreed.  This is the other way of handling the Heat (and related) feedback loop that I mentioned above (GM extrapolation, rulings not rules where there is no systemization, and related handling of off-screen NPC moves/action).  

What do you think about what I posted to Ovinomancer directly above?



> And on the other hand, if the players find their characters under suspicion, they are free to come up with creative options other than "someone goes to jail for this" - bribing or threatening witnesses, tampering with evidence, causing the police's case to fall apart.




Again, this hooks into what I posted directly above.  

I don't want to extend the Blades rules talk too far (mainly because I just wanted to discuss setting/thematic mechanics integration), but a Blades Crew can do these exact same things through mechanics that are integrated into the setting (and player-facing):

The game has 3 phases (Free Play/Information Gathering to get intel/decide upon a... > Score - this is the primary action > Downtime).  After a Score, you check for Entaglements (roll dice related to Heat and Wanted Level, consult table, go to appropriate scene).  After that scene is resolved, you have Downtime wherein each PC gets 2 activities, one of which is _Reduce Heat. _  You make your Action Roll and we see how that vignette goes.  You could also commit to a Score that reduces it further (using the procedures above) in the way you envision.

Now reducing your Wanted Level outside of Incarceration would involve a Score against a high Tier Faction that is almost surely to be higher Tier than the Crew (you start at 0, getting to 1 isn't so bad...moving beyond that gets much more difficult).  For instance, Scores against the Ink Rakes (Tier 2 journalists, muck-rakers),  Bluecoats (Tier 3 coppers), the Inspectors (Tier 3 independent detectives) are Tier 3, the Whitecrown Citizenry (Tier 4 nobles/elites), the City Council (Tier 5 noble rulers and governers) become increasingly more difficult.  That scaled difficulty means all sorts of scaled danger and fallout (even if things go right).  A Score against a Faction two Tiers above you is apt to go poorly (so you better accrue and pull out all kinds of advantages during Free Play...and you better have a lot of Stress to spend to bail you out of trouble/mitigate complications) and you may very well end up in worse straights than you were to begin with (if you aren't dead or caught/incarcerated/hanged).


----------



## Ovinomancer

Manbearcat said:


> Awesome.  Ok.  I was hoping what I was trying to get at made sense.  The second half of your sentence is spot on:
> 
> 
> 
> I would change the first part though to "complicates agency" instead of "limit it".  This isn't exactly a 1:1 correlation, but its akin to the Wandering Monster clock in Moldvay Basic as it puts pressure on exploration turns in the micro and the entire dungeon crawl effort in the macro.
> 
> How do you feel about that change (limit to complicate)?



It's another tool in the box, and as such can be used well or poorly.  Done well it's excellent and Heat is a great example (full disclosure: Blades is on my 'bucket list' of games).  Sometimes it's lackluster, like with backgrounds and GIFT in 5e (which don't really work without a lot of effort).  Sometimes it's bad.  I haven't played any of the really atrocious systems, but they're out there.



> And from there (assuming you agree), do you feel that setting/premise-integrated mechanical elements of play that thematically complicate decision-points and macro approaches to problems/aspirations increase verisimilitude?



I don't know, because I can't say for certain what's meant by verisimilitude.  It's been overused and abused over the last decades.  So, I can't say I really understand what you're asking by using that term. 

What I will say is that done well, such rules really drive the theme of the game to the forefront.  I'm not sure that's synonymous with verisimilitude (I'm super proud of myself that I've spelled that word twice now without speckcheck!).  




> That was what I was trying to get at with that post.  My contention is that Blades in the Dark experience would be a much diminished experience without the feedback loop of Heat/Wanted Level and all its related components.  It brings the setting alive.  It makes the threat of the coppers or corruption amongst the luminaries/power players (especially given the Tier status, and therefore threat level, of those setting Factions) loom over your head at all times.  It brings to bear the stress of desperation, urgency, and things spinning out of control (inherent to a doomsday clock) that should be present at all times for characters in a heist game where gangs of scoundrels are scratching and crawling (each others eyes out) to get out of the muck.
> 
> It would also be diminished if those mechanics were opaque/non-player-facing.  Appropriate GM characterization and exposition can only do so much legwork.  Well-integrated, thematically-appropriate mechanics bring the setting alive in a different way.



I'm not sure about the diminished bit -- to step away for RPGs for a moment, some video games have done an excellent job of hiding important systems -- you have to play until you figure them out and that significantly adds to the enjoyment.  Now, sometimes those are accidental, and sometimes the designers expect you to consult external sources for assistance, but there still are a few good examples.  I'd actually put Minecraft near the top of that list.

So, instead of diminished, maybe I'd go with much harder to do well.  It would require the DM to be consistent in application of a hidden mechanic, and that's a tough ask.  Tough enough that I guess I'd generally actually agree with your assessment, now that I've thought through the implications of my caveat:  sure, it makes success at the intent harder to the point that the extent of success is diminished.

But, those kinds of things do require buy-in, and they are, sometimes, very apparently mechanical in nature.  I suppose that cuts against some uses of verisimilitude (3!).

Tangentially -- I've long had a list of things that I'd like to modify about 5e (which, given my group, is the current game of choice).  I enjoy 5e as written, but there are little things that either annoy me or that I'd like to see how they'd change play.  However, maintaining a house rule bible is something I just don't really want to do, so I haven't.  Until the game I just started a few months back.  I decided I wanted to stress exploration more, and provide a game where the player's choices on where to go had weight.  I wanted to avoid illusionism and not just move the planned encounters to the fork in the road chosen (not that I do that to begin with, but still, worth mentioning).  However, in one of those 5e things I didn't like, many of the rules in the game actually act to trivialize the travails of travel (sorry).  Spells, for sure, but some class features and even the resting rules.  So, I took a look at the system and tried to make the smallest change for the biggest impact.  Note, my motive for this wasn't that I think the resting rules are realistic or have anything to do with real injury and recovery -- I don't much care and have played many fun sessions with the default rules without a problem -- instead, I wanted to evoke that bit of trepidation in travel.  I wanted the idea of straying from safety to be, well, not safe.  So I slightly changed the resting rules and removed hp recovery from long rests.  I also changed any saves to recover from or resist diseases or other long term effects to be at disadvantage.  I then added a safe rest, which is 24 hours of downtime in a safe place, which restores hp fully and allows saves for recovering normally.  This one change has completely altered how my group plays.  They're still low level, and so they don't have many other resources to trivialize travel and exploration, but they now pay attention to time and plan trips so that they are not out overnight.  It's also made wandering encounters much more impactful on the play (I used Xanthar's tables to populate a region with some monsters -- repeats meant a larger presence -- and then tailored my wandering monster rolls to match what's in an area.  If the party clears a nest or camp, that entry is removed, resulting in safer travel the more they take time to eliminate sources of encounters).  That one small change has made a huge difference in how my players play.  So, I understand your point very well.


----------



## MarkB

Manbearcat said:


> Agreed.  This is the other way of handling the Heat (and related) feedback loop that I mentioned above (GM extrapolation, rulings not rules where there is no systemization, and related handling of off-screen NPC moves/action).
> 
> What do you think about what I posted to Ovinomancer directly above?
> 
> 
> 
> Again, this hooks into what I posted directly above.
> 
> I don't want to extend the Blades rules talk too far (mainly because I just wanted to discuss setting/thematic mechanics integration), but a Blades Crew can do these exact same things through mechanics that are integrated into the setting (and player-facing):
> 
> The game has 3 phases (Free Play/Information Gathering to get intel/decide upon a... > Score - this is the primary action > Downtime).  After a Score, you check for Entaglements (roll dice related to Heat and Wanted Level, consult table, go to appropriate scene).  After that scene is resolved, you have Downtime wherein each PC gets 2 activities, one of which is _Reduce Heat. _  You make your Action Roll and we see how that vignette goes.  You could also commit to a Score that reduces it further (using the procedures above) in the way you envision.
> 
> Now reducing your Wanted Level outside of Incarceration would involve a Score against a high Tier Faction that is almost surely to be higher Tier than the Crew (you start at 0, getting to 1 isn't so bad...moving beyond that gets much more difficult).  For instance, Scores against the Ink Rakes (Tier 2 journalists, muck-rakers),  Bluecoats (Tier 3 coppers), the Inspectors (Tier 3 independent detectives) are Tier 3, the Whitecrown Citizenry (Tier 4 nobles/elites), the City Council (Tier 5 noble rulers and governers) become increasingly more difficult.  That scaled difficulty means all sorts of scaled danger and fallout (even if things go right).  A Score against a Faction two Tiers above you is apt to go poorly (so you better accrue and pull out all kinds of advantages during Free Play...and you better have a lot of Stress to spend to bail you out of trouble/mitigate complications) and you may very well end up in worse straights than you were to begin with (if you aren't dead or caught/incarcerated/hanged).




It sounds like a fine system that I wouldn't mind playing with (so far, my only BitD experience has been a relatively mechanics-lite con game), and the mechanics could do a lot to drive the gameplay.

On the other hand, I don't always want my gameplay to be mechanically driven. Having a quantified, metagame awareness of the level of attention our crew is drawing, and a set of specific game-mechanical levers to pull in order to manage those levels seems like it would tend to make me visualise and treat the gameworld more as a set of game-mechanical elements and less as a living world that my character inhabits. It's something I'd enjoy for a few weeks, rather than something I'd sink into for an extended campaign.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I find it a bit hard to imagine how it would work - it _seems_ like the GM would map the mountains, then draw the "old map", then arrange for the PCs to find the old map, and then the players would delcare (as actions) that they follow the map - but maybe that's not what you have in mind. Eg maybe the map is the puzzle, and once it's been deciphered the actual journey through the mountains is a matter of a minute or two of narration.




Here I must point out, if nobody has already, that Original D&D has a VERY PRECISE answer for this. You break out a copy of the Avalon Hill game _Survival _and you utilize its rules, presumably along with a DM generated map, to play out the character's movements in the Wilderness. Beyond that you utilize the random encounter rules to add a monster dimension to this game of surviving. It really is quite detailed, maybe somewhat less so than the dungeon, but certainly it has a fairly structured dimension to it, as-written.

Now, I agree that once you are outside the Dungeon environment, and particularly when in the Town environment, the game does become more open-ended and the idea that the DM can present some neutrally generated material, as many would espouse, becomes increasingly untenable. In fact the REAL pitfall IME is that the game of D&D never really provided the means to play out the sorts of fantasies that many players envisaged. DMs were increasingly, especially as AD&D evolved, forced to 'fudge things' to try to get that to work, and the discrepancy between the exploration-focused rules and the story-focused table expectations becomes a breaking point. No amount of pre-generated content, pseudo-realism in game systems, or attempts at even-handed refereeing really fixes it. 

But, OD&D, it doesn't really suffer too much there, because of course nobody had much in the way of expectations, the game isn't really that well described, and it really does spell things out pretty thoroughly in terms of a sort of process.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Here I must point out, if nobody has already, that Original D&D has a VERY PRECISE answer for this. You break out a copy of the Avalon Hill game _Survival _and you utilize its rules, presumably along with a DM generated map, to play out the character's movements in the Wilderness. Beyond that you utilize the random encounter rules to add a monster dimension to this game of surviving. It really is quite detailed, maybe somewhat less so than the dungeon, but certainly it has a fairly structured dimension to it, as-written.



In this case, it's not really dungeon-like puzzle solving, though. The PCs have found the old map, which means - presumably - that when playing Outdoor Survival they don't have to make rolls for becoming lost. So it becomes a type of logistics game with wandering monster rolls to spice things up.

And if you have the map, and so know where you're going and how long it's going to take, the logistics seem not very complicated. So it's really just a wandering monster game (which affects the logistics on the margins - "Let's bring a few more mules in case a roc carries one off!").

I don't think it gives wilderness travel the same puzzle/maze-solving dynamic, with the map/scout-then-raid cycle, as the dungeon has.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> In this case, it's not really dungeon-like puzzle solving, though. The PCs have found the old map, which means - presumably - that when playing Outdoor Survival they don't have to make rolls for becoming lost. So it becomes a type of logistics game with wandering monster rolls to spice things up.
> 
> And if you have the map, and so know where you're going and how long it's going to take, the logistics seem not very complicated. So it's really just a wandering monster game (which affects the logistics on the margins - "Let's bring a few more mules in case a roc carries one off!").
> 
> I don't think it gives wilderness travel the same puzzle/maze-solving dynamic, with the map/scout-then-raid cycle, as the dungeon has.




A old map isn't a cure-all for wilderness travel.  The bridge the map takes you to might have long ago collapsed and the party has to figure out how to cross the chasm.  An avalanche may have blocked the pass the map goes through and they have to solve a way across the mountains and back to the proper spot on the side to pick up the trail again.  And so on.  It's often more than just wandering monsters.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> A old map isn't a cure-all for wilderness travel.  The bridge the map takes you to might have long ago collapsed and the party has to figure out how to cross the chasm.  An avalanche may have blocked the pass the map goes through and they have to solve a way across the mountains and back to the proper spot on the side to pick up the trail again.  And so on.  It's often more than just wandering monsters.




And why does having a map prevent being lost?  Heck, I travel for work and there's a number of times I've had turn by turn GPS and _still _taken the wrong turn.  Unfamiliar places are easy to get lost in, even if just temporarily.  A map, to me, would provide a destination and some landmarks.  Getting lost is just as easy (I'm assuming here that the fantasy map isn't turn by turn GPS with every tree marked and encounters listed as delays on the route) with as map as without.  The only difference is that you know that where you're going is important.


----------



## Sunseeker

pemerton said:


> In this case, it's not really dungeon-like puzzle solving, though. The PCs have found the old map, which means - presumably - that when playing Outdoor Survival they don't have to make rolls for becoming lost. So it becomes a type of logistics game with wandering monster rolls to spice things up.
> 
> And if you have the map, and so know where you're going and how long it's going to take, the logistics seem not very complicated. So it's really just a wandering monster game (which affects the logistics on the margins - "Let's bring a few more mules in case a roc carries one off!").
> 
> I don't think it gives wilderness travel the same puzzle/maze-solving dynamic, with the map/scout-then-raid cycle, as the dungeon has.




This really only applies to modern maps, or maps designed with modern sensibilities.  Old-timey maps often measured "distance" in how long it took for someone to get there, which could in some cases, make areas that are very small seem very large.  There wasn't a guy laying down a tape measure from Point A to Point B.  Having a map that says "You are in the Black Forest" doesn't really help much when you're in the middle of the Black Forest.  It's likely that much of the forest's dimensions are gauged from people traveling _around_ it and not through it, and thus much of whatever is inside the forest is unknown.  A major landmark might be marked, but IF the map includes instructions on how to reach it they're going to be something like "Turn left at the giant oak, then travel northish uphill to the waterfall, and then cut across the creek to the east to find Big Rock Rock."  Directions that are very easy to mess up if you misjudge which tree is the "giant oak", if you don't have a compass, if you don't find the right waterfall, or its a dry season and there is no waterfall, or its a wet season and the creek is 15 feet wide.

This actually goes back to one of my BIGGEST complaints about the ranger's ability to "never be lost".  I HATE that ability.  Unless I'm always running "magical lands" if someone's a ranger, it's almost impossible to throw an exploration challenge at them.


----------



## billd91

shidaku said:


> This actually goes back to one of my BIGGEST complaints about the ranger's ability to "never be lost".  I HATE that ability.  Unless I'm always running "magical lands" if someone's a ranger, it's almost impossible to throw an exploration challenge at them.




Isn't that kind of the point of having a ranger around? To minimize exploration problems? Don't get irritated at PCs engaging in good planning and preparation.

And keep in mind that most overland exploration and travel isn't in a single type of terrain. Outside of their favored terrain, rangers can get lost like anybody else.


----------



## Aenghus

billd91 said:


> Isn't that kind of the point of having a ranger around? To minimize exploration problems? Don't get irritated at PCs engaging in good planning and preparation.
> 
> And keep in mind that most overland exploration and travel isn't in a single type of terrain. Outside of their favored terrain, rangers can get lost like anybody else.




There are two main reasons for players investing PC resources in being good at something, reasons that are almost opposites of each other. First, they may want to spend lots of time pursuing this chosen activity in-game and be seen as competent at it. Conversely, they may want to spend as little time in-game as possible on these tasks and invest resources to be sufficiently good at it that it's not a viable challenge. There are probably more complex reasons as well, but the two above are sufficiently opposed that when I see players investing a lot of PC resources in an area, I ask them why, as the answer matters a lot to creating an enjoyable game for them. 

Depending on the style of a game, PC resources such as powers, spells, magic and mundane items such as maps can be seen in a naturalistic way as potentially improving the odds of success if used well, or as plot coupons that allow easy success in a particular problem, but maybe get used up doing so. A bunch of D&D spells and magic items in various editions could work either way, sometimes even in the same game.

That said, if a referee is annoyed with player choices, this is going to affect play. Sometime saying "No" early on can avoid this hassle, and allows a player to bow out early if it this means they are not going to get what they want out of the game.

Trust is never absolute, its something that needs to be constantly renewed and worked on.Talking it for granted is a potential way of losing it.


----------



## Sunseeker

billd91 said:


> Isn't that kind of the point of having a ranger around? To minimize exploration problems? Don't get irritated at PCs engaging in good planning and preparation.



Minimize is not the same as "negate".  The Ranger class feature *NEGATES* the ability to get lost.  I wouldn't mind if it said "You have advantage on checks to avoid getting lost."  Or "You get an special bonus to checks to avoid being lost."  Or "Once per long rest you can make a special check to figure out your position."

That's all GREAT to me.  It creates a resource that players can utilize and need to manage.  But as it is, I can't run a "lost in the woods" adventure unless it's A: magical or B: ranger-free.  Class features should avoid things like "always" and "never".



> And keep in mind that most overland exploration and travel isn't in a single type of terrain. Outside of their favored terrain, rangers can get lost like anybody else.



Sure, but I don't run a lot of "overland travel" type things, at least not until higher level, at which point rangers can pick up new terrains.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> In this case, it's not really dungeon-like puzzle solving, though. The PCs have found the old map, which means - presumably - that when playing Outdoor Survival they don't have to make rolls for becoming lost. So it becomes a type of logistics game with wandering monster rolls to spice things up.
> 
> And if you have the map, and so know where you're going and how long it's going to take, the logistics seem not very complicated. So it's really just a wandering monster game (which affects the logistics on the margins - "Let's bring a few more mules in case a roc carries one off!").
> 
> I don't think it gives wilderness travel the same puzzle/maze-solving dynamic, with the map/scout-then-raid cycle, as the dungeon has.




As others have said, there's still plenty of scope for puzzles, getting lost, etc. In many essential ways wilderness using Survival is very much like dungeon exploration. You start off with at best a dubious map and lots of blank areas and you wander around filling in the map. Each hex you visit has something in it, or maybe its just an empty waste of time with the potential of a random encounter. 

There are differences between the two environments. Wilderness is more 'high risk, high reward' by the rules. You can run into monsters of ANY level, and possibly LOTS of them, but you can also find almost any treasure, entire new dungeons, locations for strongholds, towns, etc. In the dungeon you control risk by what level you try to delve at (level 1 is easy, level 9 has terrible monsters). In the wilderness maybe you can stick near town and its a bit less risky, but by 'RAW' you could find a red dragon anywhere out there! So the game IS different, but it is still D&D. Its just that OD&D has variations on its rules for each environment. I'd say its also expected that if you create a new environment, like a new plane of existence or something, that you'd also have to create the specific rules for it. These general plug in as encounter tables, monster descriptions, etc.


----------



## billd91

shidaku said:


> Minimize is not the same as "negate".  The Ranger class feature *NEGATES* the ability to get lost.  I wouldn't mind if it said "You have advantage on checks to avoid getting lost."  Or "You get an special bonus to checks to avoid being lost."  Or "Once per long rest you can make a special check to figure out your position."
> 
> That's all GREAT to me.  It creates a resource that players can utilize and need to manage.  But as it is, I can't run a "lost in the woods" adventure unless it's A: magical or B: ranger-free.  Class features should avoid things like "always" and "never".




You can count me out on that idea. One of the problems with the 2e ranger was it was full of too many conditional abilities yet it was still stuck on the same XP track as the paladin with its more absolutist abilities. Absolute abilities are a lot easier to administer and plan for on the player side because they're reliable. But because they are absolute, you can plan for them as well.

If you can't run a "lost in the woods" adventure because the ranger has forest as his favored terrain, get them lost in a marsh, or a grassland, or badlands, or the underdark. He's going to max out at 3 terrains, surely you can coax them out to somewhere other than those three.


----------



## pemerton

Emerikol said:


> In an attempt to be fair, I usually determine action plans for the monsters ahead of time to prevent me being influenced by how the game is going for the PC's.  So if my action plans put the monsters in a bad way because the PC's are smart they are rewarded.  I don't change the plan out from under their feet.



To me, that seems very Gygaxian. In his rules for evasion of dungeon encounters, the first step is to check what the GM's notes say.

If the PCs are defeated by the monsters, and the players come back with new PCs - or if the same PCs who escaped/were driven off return - do you stick to the same patterns of behaviour? That seems important for the players to be actually able to learn and so improve their play.



Emerikol said:


> How many styles do you think there are in gaming?  I'd call the Pathfinder Adventure Path style something that is not like my style though the similarities of dungeon activities it might be closer than your style.



Hard question?

In broad terms, I think there are at least four, or mabye three-and-a-half (some of this thread might be about whether that half is really a whole!).

I see Gygaxian dungeoneering/skilled play as a key style. Even if it's less common now (which I still believe it is), it's pretty foundational for D&D, and explains where so many of the rules and received methods come from.

Then there is what I think of as 2nd ed-style play, with very heavy GM control over the fiction and resolution (Gyagx said that fudging an encounter is contrary to the major precepts of the game; 2nd ed encourages it "for the good of the story"). I see the PF AP style as a descendant of this style. CoC is my favourite RPG to play in this style (with an evocative GM, and in modest doses).

Then there is the "indie"/"no myth" style I like. There are variations in this style - eg I tend towards rather strongly scene-framed approaches, whereas eg Dungeon World is a bit structurally looser than that, with the GM decision-making a bit more on the micro-/granular rather than "big picture" side of things. But for the current thread these differences can be glossed over, I think.

Then the "half-style": the one that is Gygaxian in some ways (pre-authored setting, but no fudging) but which has a scope and an approach that therefore makes player learning (through repeat attempts, use of divination resources, etc) hard; and makes the GM's role in choosing what to foreground about the setting much more important than the player's less mediated, more direct engagement with the dungeon map and the dungeon key. I think this is where you and [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION] probably fall (in terms of this thread - I'm not saying this is who you are as RPGers).

I'll go this far in this post: I think this fourth style can tend to slip into a version of the 2nd ed style.

Now just like there are variants in the "indie"-style, there are variants in that 2nd style. I'm running them together because the difference don't loom large for me (given my conception of player agency). Eg in a PF AP the players may be literally on a railroad (first encounter A, then encounter B, then C, etc). Whereas in some others that I'm putting into this category, the players can choose whether they go to A or B or C. From my point of view, though, the choice of A or B or C - if it is still a choice among things to be told by the GM - still makes the game a GM-driven one. The players just trigger which bit of his/her pre-written stuff the GM tells them.

I think the fourth style can tend to slip into the "choose A or B or C" version of the second style. Without the clear structure for learning and "winning" that is there in the dungeon style, it can turn into "trigger the GM telling me stuff".


----------



## pemerton

MarkB said:


> What about the other option: That the _character_ wants there to be a bribeable NPC, and the player, exploring the world from the viewpoint of the character, wants to _find out_ whether there is one..



OK. _Finding out_, here, means getting the GM to tell the player something from his/her notes (either literally, or notionally - s/he makes something up as if it were in his/her notes).

I'm puzzled as to what is controversial in this description of what you have said.



Ovinomancer said:


> you seem to couch your arguments from a position where the DM is uses secret knowledge and fiat in ways that benefit the DM's ideas over the players.



I think it's inherent. Which is not to say it's bad.

Look at MarkB's example. It's inherent in that way of handling the bribery scenario that it is the GM's idea about the presence or absence of a bribeable NPC is favoured in establishing the shared fiction. Because the way the shared fiction is established is by the GM creating it; and the player, in play, learns what it is that the GM has created.



MarkB said:


> I agree that playing it out if there's no possibility of success is pointless.
> 
> But my desired action was to find out whether there are any bribeable NPCs. If the DM immediately says "after some investigation, you find that there are no bribeable NPCs", then he hasn't denied my action - he's completed it, and left me with the information I was looking for.



What's the true action declaration here? Is it "I try to find a bribeable NPC?" (Which might be conveyed by all sorts of actual words at the table.) In that case, it has failed - it's the same as being in the study and failing to find the map.

Is it "I want to learn what the state of the fiction is vis-a-vis birbeable NPCs"? In that case the action has been completed, but I reiterate - how is it unfair or disparaging to say that the whole point of this action delcaration is to get the GM to tell the player some stuff from his/her notes?



MarkB said:


> Of course, if the DM lets me play out the enquiry and find out that it's a non-starter, but in the course of the attempt gives me the opportunity to pick up some leads and connections that grant me a better understanding of the situation and open up new options, that might be even better.



Ditto. _Picking up leads and connections that grant me a better understanding_, here, literally means _having the GM convey to me more stuff about what's in her (actual or notional) notes_.


----------



## pemerton

Emerikol said:


> Some might call this a living world.



Yes, they do.



Emerikol said:


> I have a calendar of significant events that are occuring in the sandbox.  Those events keep on happening unless the PC's do something to turn over the cart.



In [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s example, the players' knowledge of the cart is practically zero, their knowledge that they've pushed it over much the same, and their ability to ascertain and manage the consequences in any sort of proactive manner very close to zero also.

The sequence of play he describes for us is: GM narrates situation; players declare some fairly banal actions to deal with the immediate situation; GM tells herself a whole lot of stuff about the setting and its development; GM narrates another situation for the PCs (eg the Duke's men arrest them for facilitiating the assassination attempt). Where did the players have agency there? As in, where did they get to make meaningful and significant choices about what the game would involved?

All I can see is that they pushed a button of the GM's which was, from their point of view, essentially random; and then the GM told them some more stuff that likewise, from their point of view, was essentially random.



Emerikol said:


> We see the job of DM as running the NPCs in the world.  You don't I realize but it doesn't leave the players out.  It sets the backdrop against which the players act.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I try to avoid railroading the PCs into the plot unless they want to dive in or are hopeless entangled in it already which usually means they are into it.



In Lanefan's example, the player _action_ was to intervene in a fracas about which they knew nothing of its significance or its perpetrators. The PCs acted. But what did the players actually do, in the game? They triggered the GM to work out a whole lot of fiction for herself.

I'm not arguing that this is good or bad, fun or not fun. (I have my preferences; they're not secret; but they're just idiosyncracies about me.) I'm trying to actually identify what the play consists in: who makes what sorts of decisions, what sorts of "game moves", and how do these affect the content of the shared fiction?

In Lanefan's example, all the important moves seem to be made by the GM, and many of them in secret. The players don't seem to have made any meaningful move at all: they didn't have any intention to bring about all the changes that the GM actually made to the fiction in response to their action declarations for their PCs.



Emerikol said:


> For my players that is verisimilitude.  They want the feeling that the world is living around them and that they are living in it.



I don't want to challenge this at all.


----------



## pemerton

Lylandra said:


> For myself, I would have close to zero interest in a campaign without a consequential, logical, living world.



This is equally true for me. But GM pre-authored backstory is not a prerequisite for what you describe.


----------



## Lylandra

pemerton said:


> This is equally true for me. But GM pre-authored backstory is not a prerequisite for what you describe.




Agreed. But considering a homebrew setting, I guess that building your world in advance is way more easier than deciding and making up everything on spot. Especially when you wish to minimize making mistakes, defying your own logic or to avoid the need to retcon.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> I disagree that there's no secret backstory.  When that map hits the table, it resolves a number of things immediately that, prior to that, only the DM knew.



Prior to that, _no one_ knew them to be true of the shared fiction, because the fiction wasn't established.



Ovinomancer said:


> For you, secret notes are good for encounter prep - and the secret is revealed when that encounter happens due to player declarations



This claim is just wrong. The next passage or two will elaborate.



Ovinomancer said:


> If the player declares they open the door to see what's behind it, and you drop down that encounter map, that's secret backstory the DM is telling to the players because they prompted him to reveal it (to phrase it like you do).



It's not secret backstory used to adjudicate an action - exactly as you say, the players are looking for the GM to narrate some more fiction.

But if the player opens the door to find the secret exit, and the GM (with no reference to action resolution mechanics) drops down a map with no exit, then that _is_ secret backstory used to adjudicate an action.

They're different cases.  

A third case, also different, is if the player fails the check - and so opens the door hoping to find (say) a study but instead finds a kitchen. Or a study infested by bookworms (so to check it out involves risking the papers I'm already carrying). Etc.



Ovinomancer said:


> I'm absolutely certain that you're okay with an invisible enemy being in a fight as part of DM notes on the encounter, but you're not okay with a DM's notes discussing the existence of a map.  I haven't yet seen you address this difference to any degree.



I set out three criteria: (i) knowability; (ii) salience; (iii) consequence/impact. The absence of the map from the study and its presence in the breadbin, in my view, tends to fail all three.



Ovinomancer said:


> And if you misunderstood the player and the really did want there to be an invisible opponent (it's happened before in my games)?



Then the GM apologises and sets a DC.

Clarifying intention is an important part of establishing what is at issue in action declaration.

This is how the above cases I've distinguished are identified - eg if the player says "I look behind the door", you need to clarify what their intention is (what do they hope to find? are they just fishing for more narration?) You can ask. (Sometimes I do this.) Often, the play of the game has a momentum, and the situation is charged in such a way that the intention is evident. (And if the GM cocks it up and has to roll back a little bit, well, that can happen to - you do your best to recover the pacing that was lost.)

I also don't understand why you say I didn't answer your question about an invisible opponent from the 4e perspective: I posted an actual play report that deals with two such instances. So those show not just how I would, but how I did handle an action declaration that pertained to an as-yet unobserved (ie invisible) person/creature in the situation whose presence in the situation was not established by prior notes. And you even responded to what I posted, so I'm not sure what your complaint is?



Ovinomancer said:


> In the second example, how is the duergar not secret DM knowledge in that situation?



Because it wasn't an established element in the shared fiction until introduced in response to the player's successful check.

This also illustrates the difference between prep (I came up with the idea to use duergar if extra NPC elements were needed) and authorship (that idea didn't actually generate any shared fiction until the player made a check that - because it succeeded - required me to introduce some element into the situation beneficial to his PC).



Ovinomancer said:


> Your first example is... well, to be blunt, it rings all kinds of alarm bells for me.



Well, I wouldn't do it in a game with strangers, if that's what you mean. Among friends, it was a lot of fun and the player's response was well worth the price of admission!

It's also not strictly a detriment to the player. In 4e - played by the book as that campaign was - the extra creature generates extra XP, so the time and effort spent working out how to deal with it contributes to the progression of the game. The player hasn't lost anything in noticing the roper. (It would be different in some other systems. In those other systems I would therefore make a different GMing choice.)

And notice that it does not involve any secret backstory.



Ovinomancer said:


> 4e encounter math wasn't very forgiving
> 
> <snip>
> 
> This is one of the reasons games like D&D usually need encounter prep.



It's a tangent, but I've got no idea why you think this. I've GMed quite a bit of 4e across all three tiers. At paragon and epic (and really even upper heroic) the maths is extremely forgiving, in the sense that stepping up an encounter from (say) level +2 to level +3 will up the pressure a bit, but is in no way likely to entail a TPK.

In my experience you can chuck all sorts of stuff into a 4e encounter at those levels and the players just dig deeper into their pools of resources.



Ovinomancer said:


> If the player asks for a map in the study and succeeds, that's a suggestion to the GM as to possible narrations -- either the DM says yes, that's exactly how it happens, or he narrates the success in a way that advances the scene.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> So, in all cases, as I understand it, all player action declarations are, at best, suggestions to the GM as to possible narrations of future states of the fiction.



Two things - in some systems it's not a suggestion to the GM as to the content of the fiction: rather, it's part of an action resolution process which, if it succceeds, bring it about that the desired state of affairs is part of the fiction.

The GM can circumvent the action resolution process by "saying 'yes'" - so either the GM accepts the player's view as to what the fiction should be, or the dice are rolled and they tell us if the player's view is to be accepted. The player is not making a mere suggestion which it is up to the GM to accept or not.

Second thing: in BW it is the player's narration that determines the character of success. The GM is permitted, at best, to embellish - and the player is entitled to veto those embellishments if the player regards them as contradicitng the successful intent.



Ovinomancer said:


> If the player declares that their opening the door to the study (they're announcing they think it's a study, this isn't established yet) and that the door will open on the long axis of the room, but your map has the doors on the short axis...  The reason this doesn't catch is because you have a blind spot



Again, what's the case? Are the players conjecturing but don't really care? Then it's simply easier to stick to one's prepared map.

Does the player declare the action because something is at stake (demons can only appear in rooms with the door opening onto the long axis, let's say) then I don't have a blind spot - its exactly the sort of thing I've been talking about (of secret backstory being used to adjudicate action resolution).

Part of running a game in what Eero Tuovinen (per blog lilnked to upthread) calls the "Standard Narrativistic Model" is having a good sense of what is at stake and what isn't. That's a big part of what will make the game work, or fizzle. In my own games, opening doors to see what's behind them is very rarely a part of play. Opening doors as part pf am action declaration to find something behind them is also quite rare.

Those details of geogranpy and architecture don't figure much as more than colour.



Ovinomancer said:


> you've previously denied that you engaged in prep in your Marvel game, despite prepping quite a bit.  Maybe that prep was fast, but it doesn't change the impact on the game -- essentially you built an encounter map of Washington, DC, and then just moved around that map.



There was no map, either actual or implicit. There was a hotel room - mentioned, but no action took place in it.

There was a bar - scene distinctions Dark Bar and Seedy Back Rooms. As it happens, these didn't come into play - the action fairly quickly moved out of the bar. War Machine left Diamondback Stuck on top of the Washington Monument - that didn't need a map. Everyone at the table knew that the Washington Monument is a tall, pointy thing. The player just declared his action ("I interrupt my romantic flight with Diamondback to check out the intruders at the Smithsonian - I'll hang her on the Washington Monument!") and we resolved it. When Bobby Drake's player wanted to freeze the pool at the base of the monument so he could go ice skating, no reference to backstory was necessary - everyone at the table knew that there is a pool there.

Likewise the use of other locations (the Capitol; the Smithsonian) in the game. At one stage, just to check that what I was narrating made sense, I checked with one of the players who has been to DC (I never have, nor looked at a map of it that I can recall).

Establishing the fictional situation by incorporating a real place that everyone knows, and which therefore gets incorproated into the GM's description of events ("You get a radio message - there are intruders in the Smithsonian") and into the players' action declarations ("I teleport to the top of the Capitol") essentially as colour, isn't anything like the GM unilaterally pre-authoring backstory and then secretly (as in, without revealing it) using it as part of the fictional positioning for adjudicating the success of declared actions.



Ovinomancer said:


> you're okay with action declarations that involve the DM telling more story, so long as the DM didn't write any of that story down beforehand?  What if the question is an augury about the study, and your encounter map and notes indicate a dangerous encounter awaits there -- how do you not refer to your notes then?



I generally won't have an encounter map and notes of that sort - ie a series of mapped out, linked locations with a key - so generally it can't come up quite in the way you describe.

But if a player uses an augury to try and get me, as GM, to tell them more stuff than in 4e I'll tell them more stuff. In BW I'll often tell them to better form their action declaration - what exactly are they hoping for? As I said, this sort of "GM narration triggering" is close to degenerate for BW. Not completely - if the scene really is incomplete in its framing, the player can trigger more - but to the extent that it's an attempt to squib, or to push the _GM_ into making the choice instead of the player (eg "Now I know there's something dangerous there, it's easy to turn down so-and-so's request to go there") then the GM is entitled to turn the pressure back onto the player (eg if the player wants an excuse to make it easy for his/her PC to turn down the request, then s/he has to own it).



Ovinomancer said:


> I think there's a hugely important difference:  the orc is established in the scene, the map's presence in the scene is being introduced by the player.  The orc is manipulated, the map is created.



In my view this statement is false, and only gets a semblance of plausibility because the ficitonal is given (metaphorical) reality.

The orc doesn't exist. There are some words about the orc. Then some more words are authored - _the orc is dead_, say.

The map doesn't exist; nor does the study. There are some words about the study. Then some more words are authored - _the study has a map in it_. In the real world, we treat _the death of a thing_ as metaphysically different from _the presence of an object in a place_ for reasons to do with differences in causal processes, constitutive independence, etc (the death supervenes on the thing; the object's existence doesn't supervene on the place, so it might have been elsewhere). 

But none of these reasons pertain to the authoring of fiction. Adding a sentence to the orc's description: it's dead; and adding a sentence to the study's description; it contains a map; are identical causal processes. And in RPGing terms, that means they are structurally equivalent game moves.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> It does occur to me that the bribing officials in Traveller is a bit of a red herring.  The fix is in there as well, because that rule is built in because there's a omnipresent corrupt bureaucracy that player characters will often have need to engage as part of play.  So the bribing rule is only in that context against that much larger enforced setting and operates as a mechanical relief valve on that constraint.  Fiat rules that deal with fiat setting restrictions aren't necessarily the best examples of things that increase agency.  They preserve agency against setting constraints, but don't increase it.



This makes no real sense to me.

It's like saying that combat rules in D&D don't give players any agency - they only preserve agency against the constraint that, by default, a sword thrust in the fiction can be deadly.

All action delcarations presuppose (i) a fiction, and (ii) some way the player wants the fiction to be. (An exception to (ii) is an action delcaration whose purpose is to get the GM to narrate more fiction. But these don't manifest player agency at all, except in the very weak sense of triggering the GM to say more stuff.)

In Traveller there is an implicit setting, which includes officials, and law levels, and the possibility of bribing people. That's (i). And the players can engage with that fiction, and impose their will on it (_this offiical will let us through, because I've bribed her_), by declaring actions and then getting good rolls. That's the player succeeding in relatoin to (ii). That's agency, in the context of the RPG.


----------



## pemerton

Lylandra said:


> Agreed. But considering a homebrew setting, I guess that building your world in advance is way more easier than deciding and making up everything on spot. Especially when you wish to minimize making mistakes, defying your own logic or to avoid the need to retcon.



My view on that is that "it depends" - what sort of details do we care about, who is etablishing them, for what reason, in what play context?

If you want to (eg) maintain an intricate and consistent calendar, that might be so.

If you want the world to be vibrant and engaing, then maybe less so - I personally think there's no substitute for narrating the setting as part of actual play, which is driven by the responses, contributins, enthusiasms (or not) of the players you're playing the game with.


----------



## Sunseeker

billd91 said:


> You can count me out on that idea. One of the problems with the 2e ranger was it was full of too many conditional abilities yet it was still stuck on the same XP track as the paladin with its more absolutist abilities. Absolute abilities are a lot easier to administer and plan for on the player side because they're reliable. But because they are absolute, you can plan for them as well.
> 
> If you can't run a "lost in the woods" adventure because the ranger has forest as his favored terrain, get them lost in a marsh, or a grassland, or badlands, or the underdark. He's going to max out at 3 terrains, surely you can coax them out to somewhere other than those three.




I'd rather _not_ have to re-write my adventure, my quests and my world every time someone picks a ranger.  It is far easier to say the ranger ability grants advantage on such checks than it is to re-write volumes of world-stuff to accommodate them.


----------



## Ovinomancer

billd91 said:


> You can count me out on that idea. One of the problems with the 2e ranger was it was full of too many conditional abilities yet it was still stuck on the same XP track as the paladin with its more absolutist abilities. Absolute abilities are a lot easier to administer and plan for on the player side because they're reliable. But because they are absolute, you can plan for them as well.
> 
> If you can't run a "lost in the woods" adventure because the ranger has forest as his favored terrain, get them lost in a marsh, or a grassland, or badlands, or the underdark. He's going to max out at 3 terrains, surely you can coax them out to somewhere other than those three.




My problem with this ability is that it requires getting lost stories to exist to have any impact -- ie, the ability is pointless if I, as DM, don't push getting lost as a complication in my game.  For it to matter, at all, getting lost needs to be something that's a threat in the game.  At that point, it negates that story in that terrain, so for that to matter and be interesting, I have to push getting lost in other terrains.  Bleh.

Most of the absolute abilities elsewhere in the game deal with things that are commonplace in the basic play -- poison, fear effects, etc., that I don't have to make any special effort to include.

That aside, not being able to get lost doesn't imply that you know where you're going.  You just always know where you are.  If you're exploring a forest, this ability just means the ranger can find places he's been to before or that he has firm description of the location that fits with what he already knows.  There's still plenty of exploration challenges in the forest I can throw at a party with a ranger.

I still don't like that I have to make a specific effort to include getting lost as a threat for that ranger ability to even matter.  I'd much rather have seen a blanket thing like advantage on all INT (Nature) and WIS (Survival) and WIS (Perception) checks in the favored terrain, and that's broad enough to be applicable to a number of stories instead of the more specific and non-core mechanic engaging abilities that did provide to rangers.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> To me, that seems very Gygaxian. In his rules for evasion of dungeon encounters, the first step is to check what the GM's notes say.
> 
> If the PCs are defeated by the monsters, and the players come back with new PCs - or if the same PCs who escaped/were driven off return - do you stick to the same patterns of behaviour? That seems important for the players to be actually able to learn and so improve their play.
> 
> Hard question?
> 
> In broad terms, I think there are at least four, or mabye three-and-a-half (some of this thread might be about whether that half is really a whole!).
> 
> <snip>





Huh.  It seems you already have a very good idea what you think the answer to your question is.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> I think it's inherent. Which is not to say it's bad.
> 
> Look at MarkB's example. It's inherent in that way of handling the bribery scenario that it is the GM's idea about the presence or absence of a bribeable NPC is favoured in establishing the shared fiction. Because the way the shared fiction is established is by the GM creating it; and the player, in play, learns what it is that the GM has created.




When you snip out the full context of a remark and direct your response to an incomplete selection of the idea, it's hard to continue to have a productive discussion.  This an excellent point, where you pulled out a sentence fragment of a very short post and only directed your response to that fragment, which allows you to look like you're responding to the points of the post but, in reality, you're avoiding the full question and only answering a part of it.  This is a favored method of politicians to control a dialog only to those points they're prepared to respond to, but I don't see how it's useful in an honest and open discussion.  Why do you persist in doing this?


----------



## hawkeyefan

So I've been following this thread, and have found it interesting, but I've held off on commenting because I feel like the matter is mostly one of opinion, and it seems most folks are decided how they feel. 

But I do have one question that I don't think has come up...or at least not directly. 

Is it possible to have an RPG game or campaign without worldbuilding? 

What I mean by that is, it seems to me that no matter what setting or system with which you decide to play, there absolutely must be some amount of worldbuilding that happens prior to the start of play. And I mean this in the sense of "worldbuilding" that seems to be hinted at in the OP and throughout the thread, of material pre-authored prior to the start of play. 

I don't see how it is avoidable. It establishes the setting and the options/elements/conditions that will be present in play. Now, this worldbuilding can be done by others (a pre-published adventure or setting) or by the GM....but it must happen to one degree or another. It can be minimal, or very involved, and it can probably be either to a fault. Too little and the game becomes a directionless, pass the conch session where everyone is making up elements on the fly that never cohere into anything substantial or worthwhile. Too much, and it could become the GM reading the players a story (his own or one published by a third party). 

But is there any game that does not involve some level of worldbuilding? If so, how do these games function? If not, then do we consider "worldbuilding" a fundamental aspect of play?


----------



## chaochou

Lanefan said:


> Let me try an example.
> 
> There's skullduggery going on all over the city.  The place is rife with rumours and plots and spies and gossip, and into all this prance the innocent naive low-level PCs looking to spend the spoils of their first real adventure.  They take a room at an inn, and go out for a night on the town.  At some point things go a bit sideways - there's some yelling and pushing and screaming and the party mage ends up having to discreetly charm a local harlot in order to calm the situation down; the charm works, well, like a charm.  The mage now has a new friend, adventurers-plus-new-friend go about their merry evening, and a good time is had by all.  The adventurers, including the mage, pass out around sunrise whereupon the harlot wanders off.
> 
> Player side: mage charms harlot who at his invitation joins mage and friends for a night of partying before slipping away a bit after sunrise.  String pulled, result obtained.
> 
> DM side: harlot is actually an agent (who, depending on developments, the party may or may not have met later in this capacity) working for the local Duke.  She realized the yelling and pushing was a distraction intended to mask something else, and joined the fray in order to get herself into the scene so she could try to determine what was being masked by the distraction.  She managed to notice two men sneaking into an alley that she knew led to a hidden access to the Duke's manor house, just before being charmed by the mage and taken along for a night of revels.  She didn't report this - in fact, she failed to report at all - and thus the two sneaks get where they're going and none the wiser.  Meanwhile other agents who really can't be spared are sent out to search for the missing one, who none too sober comes in on her own not long after sunrise.  String pulled, dominoes fall.
> 
> Ramifications: next morning word gets out of an attempt on the Duke's life during the night by two unknown men.
> 
> The PCs might never know of their unintentional involvement in this crime.  Conversely, their mage might suddenly find himself arrested for treason and thrown in jail.




I really don't understand what such a DM needs players for. They may as well DM for themselves.

What this reveals, probably inadvertently, is completely self-indulgent GMing. It's purely for the GMs entertainment. You admit the PCs know nothing about what's happening. And will probably never know. And if they do 'find out' all they are ever, ever going to 'find out' is what the GM had pre-decided had happened. I get more agency reading a book.

And then you add in a new layer of GM force. The mage may get arrested for treason. And if he does the players get the joys of unravelling the GMs smugly convoluted plot to clear his name.

Was this supposed to be an example of 'player agency'? Is this the GM in 'full on react mode'? I'm genuinely confused by what this example is supposed to demonstrate. But what it actually reveals is quite telling - players as powerless stooges and pawns being exploited to help spice up a GMs solo game.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> Prior to that, _no one_ knew them to be true of the shared fiction, because the fiction wasn't established.



I believe this goes to your final argument about the nature of gameplay versus fiction.  I address that below, but let's say that I find this answer to be special pleading.  



> This claim is just wrong. The next passage or two will elaborate.
> 
> It's not secret backstory used to adjudicate an action - exactly as you say, the players are looking for the GM to narrate some more fiction.
> 
> But if the player opens the door to find the secret exit, and the GM (with no reference to action resolution mechanics) drops down a map with no exit, then that _is_ secret backstory used to adjudicate an action.
> 
> They're different cases.
> 
> A third case, also different, is if the player fails the check - and so opens the door hoping to find (say) a study but instead finds a kitchen. Or a study infested by bookworms (so to check it out involves risking the papers I'm already carrying). Etc.




You keep saying this, but you haven't yet shown me the difference between narrating more fiction and determining action outcomes.  

What is the function difference between 'we open the door to the study' and being greeted with an encounter map and 'we look for a map in the study' and being told there is, in fact, no map?  Both are requests for the DM to narrate more fiction, yes? 

The central conceit here really seems to be revolving around some distinction between an action declaration that you classify as 'asking for more DM fiction' and an action declaration that you classify as 'not asking for more DM fiction.'  You haven't clarified the difference.  To me, it really seems to differ only in the established conceits of the game.  In BW, you don't ask for more fiction, you introduce a desire for specific new fiction and then the DM provides more fiction based on that request, current fiction, established tropes, and mechanics.  In more traditional D&D, you interact with the established fiction to and then the DM provides more fiction based on mechanics, established tropes, and prepared notes.  The difference between these approaches is really if it's expected for the player to request specific new fiction or is expected to interact with the established fiction.  

And that last line really clicked for me jsut now as to what these discussions revolve around.  You're approaching this from the mindset that the player should be requesting new fiction, and therefore the DM denying that request based on pre-determined notes is bad play -- it breaks the expectation that players are to introduce new fiction and DMs are to accept or test that fiction using mechanics.  Since you're looking at this from only that perspective, you will consistently reject arguments that do not adhere to that concept.  Sadly, it seems that you're so wedded to that concept that you cannot even consider not playing that way to be valid, hence the constant creation of threads and posts that keep circling back to this central disagreement. 

Personally, I can play either way.  I see merits to both styles, and drawbacks to both styles.  I prefer to run in the secret backstory mode, as I'm much more comfortable and have much more experience with that playstyle, and my players, on average, prefer it to the other.  Heck, I'm having a hell of a time just trying to get them to shift away from requesting rolls to declaring actions, much less introducing new fiction and rolling with the results.  But, as a player, I have no real preference either way.  My only preference is for a GM that runs an engaging game.

Due to this realization, I'm clipping out the long response to most of the rest of your thread, as it's more of my trying to understand why you don't see the similarity of things.  I will address your final argument, as I find it to be reductive and counterproductive. 



> <snip>
> 
> In my view this statement is false, and only gets a semblance of plausibility because the ficitonal is given (metaphorical) reality.
> 
> The orc doesn't exist. There are some words about the orc. Then some more words are authored - _the orc is dead_, say.
> 
> The map doesn't exist; nor does the study. There are some words about the study. Then some more words are authored - _the study has a map in it_. In the real world, we treat _the death of a thing_ as metaphysically different from _the presence of an object in a place_ for reasons to do with differences in causal processes, constitutive independence, etc (the death supervenes on the thing; the object's existence doesn't supervene on the place, so it might have been elsewhere).
> 
> But none of these reasons pertain to the authoring of fiction. Adding a sentence to the orc's description: it's dead; and adding a sentence to the study's description; it contains a map; are identical causal processes. And in RPGing terms, that means they are structurally equivalent game moves.




I believe that you do not see a functional difference between killing the orc and creating the map in the library. However, I do believe that you see a difference between killing an orc and finding a ray gun in the library.  And, right there, you defeat your own argument.

To delve into this more deeply: You say that the fiction doesn't really exist.  Okay, we'll leave aside the game implications of that statement for now and take it for argumentation.  Since the fiction doesn't exist, then whatever you author into the fiction doesn't matter: it doesn't exist.  Only the act of authoring is a real thing.  So, therefore, all acts of authoring are the same.  This is absurd, and counterproductive to discussion.  If all acts of authoring are the same, then restrictions such as genre appropriateness or fictional positioning don't matter.  You've strongly argued that these do matter, so that means that there is a difference in what is authored into the fiction -- some acts of authoring are preferred to others.  Since those limitations are subjective -- there's not objective reason that genre appropriateness be a deciding limitation -- then it stands to reason that many things can impact what can be authored depending on the subjective choices of the participants.  Following that to it's conclusion, it would seem that, since you yourself argue that there are some limits on authoring and those limits are subjective, that different styles of authoring can exist that serve to limit what can be authored into the fiction.  This means that how the fiction is authored in game is actually based on subjective preferences of the players, and that, depending on those preferences, this can very well be a difference between killing an orc and creating a map in the library.

Returning briefly to the game implications of the fiction not existing -- I find this quasi-nihilist as the very concept of the hobby is creating and interacting withing a shared fiction.  Stating that it's really a game of make believe and so has no impact in the real world is saying that RPGs can't engage our emotions and thoughts in ways that benefit us outside of telling ourselves a story.  There are a number of games out there that are built on the concept of using the fiction as a separation from reality to explore things in reality -- to beat around the bush, so to speak, of emotionally fraught things and find ways to engage them.  This definition also completely disregards LARPing, where there's a mix of reality and fiction ongoing.  Or even SCA, where there's a fictional construct that's entirely played out in the real world.  Your definition of the fiction as not existing is so against so many core tenets of the broader hobby of roleplaying that, as I said, it borders on nihilism.

That wasn't as brief as I expected.


----------



## Ovinomancer

hawkeyefan said:


> So I've been following this thread, and have found it interesting, but I've held off on commenting because I feel like the matter is mostly one of opinion, and it seems most folks are decided how they feel.
> 
> But I do have one question that I don't think has come up...or at least not directly.
> 
> Is it possible to have an RPG game or campaign without worldbuilding?
> 
> What I mean by that is, it seems to me that no matter what setting or system with which you decide to play, there absolutely must be some amount of worldbuilding that happens prior to the start of play. And I mean this in the sense of "worldbuilding" that seems to be hinted at in the OP and throughout the thread, of material pre-authored prior to the start of play.
> 
> I don't see how it is avoidable. It establishes the setting and the options/elements/conditions that will be present in play. Now, this worldbuilding can be done by others (a pre-published adventure or setting) or by the GM....but it must happen to one degree or another. It can be minimal, or very involved, and it can probably be either to a fault. Too little and the game becomes a directionless, pass the conch session where everyone is making up elements on the fly that never cohere into anything substantial or worthwhile. Too much, and it could become the GM reading the players a story (his own or one published by a third party).
> 
> But is there any game that does not involve some level of worldbuilding? If so, how do these games function? If not, then do we consider "worldbuilding" a fundamental aspect of play?




Well, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], for whatever reason, grabs terms that have an established meaning and then imparts a special definition to them that you have to tease out through conversation.  He'll also switch to other terminology mid-stride that means the same thing, seemingly giving back the originally contentious term, but then go back to the original term still using his special definitions.  I don't believe this to be malicious, I really don't think he attaches much importance to the terms used so, to him, it's all what he's talking about.  Frustrating and confusing until you figure out what he's really driving at.

In this thread (and in most threads, honestly) the things he's driving at is DM's using their pre-game created notes to control play during the game.  Some things are okay-ish, like in games like D&D with complex combat rules premaking some encounter maps to have fights on and using the MM is okay because those things are hard to do quickly in play.  But, even there, there's a line where it's hard to figure out when you cross from okay-ish to nopesville for [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION].  Trying to find that line turns out to be frustrating, as you usually figure out there's a massive perception difference between what you're talking about and what he's talking about.  But, the gist is that he thinks player declarations should only be adjudicated by what they declare and the mechanics of the game and never, never ever, by what the DM wrote down in his notes and isn't known to the players.  

Except for invisible things, and beholders in chasms, maybe... again, hard to understand, the ground keeps shifting at the margins.


----------



## billd91

chaochou said:


> I really don't understand what such a DM needs players for. They may as well DM for themselves.
> 
> What this reveals, probably inadvertently, is completely self-indulgent GMing. It's purely for the GMs entertainment. You admit the PCs know nothing about what's happening. And will probably never know. And if they do 'find out' all they are ever, ever going to 'find out' is what the GM had pre-decided had happened. I get more agency reading a book.
> 
> And then you add in a new layer of GM force. The mage may get arrested for treason. And if he does the players get the joys of unravelling the GMs smugly convoluted plot to clear his name.
> 
> Was this supposed to be an example of 'player agency'? Is this the GM in 'full on react mode'? I'm genuinely confused by what this example is supposed to demonstrate. But what it actually reveals is quite telling - players as powerless stooges and pawns being exploited to help spice up a GMs solo game.




Before we climb too high up the badwrongfun bandwagon, the GM does, at times, have to GM for him own enjoyment as well as the players. Thinking through the implications of PC actions is a fun thought-exercise and can really help stimulate ideas for how to connect events and people within the campaign world and enrich the experience for him players. But it also can have a more direct benefit for the players as well even if that isn't immediately realized. They may not know they had a brush with an assassination plot right away, but the GM doesn't know when or how the PCs might circle around in their careers and interact with the same general locale or NPCs again. Seeing how the actions of the PCs have affected the game world beyond their immediate reach can really be satisfying. Plus, the idea of a small action or chance encounter having broader implications is part of the inspiration literature, particularly with projects like the Thieves' World anthology.


----------



## Ovinomancer

chaochou said:


> I really don't understand what such a DM needs players for. They may as well DM for themselves.
> 
> What this reveals, probably inadvertently, is completely self-indulgent GMing. It's purely for the GMs entertainment. You admit the PCs know nothing about what's happening. And will probably never know. And if they do 'find out' all they are ever, ever going to 'find out' is what the GM had pre-decided had happened. I get more agency reading a book.
> 
> And then you add in a new layer of GM force. The mage may get arrested for treason. And if he does the players get the joys of unravelling the GMs smugly convoluted plot to clear his name.
> 
> Was this supposed to be an example of 'player agency'? Is this the GM in 'full on react mode'? I'm genuinely confused by what this example is supposed to demonstrate. But what it actually reveals is quite telling - players as powerless stooges and pawns being exploited to help spice up a GMs solo game.




Yeah... I have to agree that's a bit much.  Not my cuppa.  But, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s players have been at it with him for ages, so clearly they like this kind of thing.

I think there's room for that kind of game next to one that doesn't plan anything and just rolls with what happens in the game.  I prefer a middle ground - I like to have my story beats in the game, but I'm loose with them and adapt those beats to the ones the players bring.  Usually, at the beginning of a game, my beats are loudest, as I'm setting the hooks of the setting into the players and their characters and establishing some concepts.  But, by the end, it's almost all player beats driving the game as we're doing what they want in the setting and I'm only occasionally resounding an earlier beat here or there.  My current game just started.  It's a hexcrawl exploration.  My beats are 'you're from somewhere else and came here unexpectedly through a portal -- why was that?"  and "this world is dangerous, with things from all over, and you're stuck here, you have to find a way to survive."  To those, I set a small fortified hamlet so they can have a home base, populated with with some characters with personality hooks and talents that the players can engage, and set up some immediate tasks that the hamlet needed for safety as tasks for the party.  Now, they're still only 3rd, but their deciding where they want to go based on where they want to explore and what resources they want and what rumors of what's been seen nearby.  For instance, they really wanted to go investigate a stone circle a few miles to the north until the hamlet's sheriiff (for an easy handle, that's not what he is) said that one of his scouts claimed they saw a "Tinnysore Next, whatever that is, up that'away a few weeks ago."  That ended that idea and they're now exploring south.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Ovinomancer said:


> Well, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], for whatever reason, grabs terms that have an established meaning and then imparts a special definition to them that you have to tease out through conversation.  He'll also switch to other terminology mid-stride that means the same thing, seemingly giving back the originally contentious term, but then go back to the original term still using his special definitions.  I don't believe this to be malicious, I really don't think he attaches much importance to the terms used so, to him, it's all what he's talking about.  Frustrating and confusing until you figure out what he's really driving at.
> 
> In this thread (and in most threads, honestly) the things he's driving at is DM's using their pre-game created notes to control play during the game.  Some things are okay-ish, like in games like D&D with complex combat rules premaking some encounter maps to have fights on and using the MM is okay because those things are hard to do quickly in play.  But, even there, there's a line where it's hard to figure out when you cross from okay-ish to nopesville for [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION].  Trying to find that line turns out to be frustrating, as you usually figure out there's a massive perception difference between what you're talking about and what he's talking about.  But, the gist is that he thinks player declarations should only be adjudicated by what they declare and the mechanics of the game and never, never ever, by what the DM wrote down in his notes and isn't known to the players.
> 
> Except for invisible things, and beholders in chasms, maybe... again, hard to understand, the ground keeps shifting at the margins.




Yeah, I got the gist because I've had similar conversations with him before. But the term "worldbuilding" being interchangeable with "secret GM backstory" seems like such a big stretch that I thought there must be more to it....so that's why I asked the question I did. 

Similar to the point you made above....worldbuilding is happening. Every game I can think of includes it to some extent, even if it's just genre limitations or setting details. So since that's the case, then there must be more criteria for the definition Pemerton is working with....and looking at it now, it seems to be that the information is secret. 

I don't think worldbuilding can be limited to only be considered secrets the GM keeps from the players, so the whole OP is flawed. If the question is instead "What is secret GM backstory for?" then to me, that's something entirely different. And even then, a better way to ask would likely be "How can a GM use secret backstory to enhance play?" Wording it in such a way seems more transparent and less adversarial. 

I can understand someone not liking the style of play where the GM has determined many details ahead of time, or does so by fiat throughout the game....but I can also conceive of someone enjoying that kind of play. I use elements of secret backstory in my game quite a bit. There's a meta-story that is in play. However, it's not ubiquitous....I leave plenty of details undecided, and I allow the players to introduce plenty of material, as well. 

These discussions are tough because everyone seems to pay lip service to there being no wrong way to play, but as soon as they say that, they then proceed to point out why your way to play sucks. Not objectively, of course, that would be bad to say, but just in their opinion they'd rather smash their head into your table than sit down at it and play. 

Everyone takes the worst possible version of another playstyle and argues from that point.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> Is it possible to have an RPG game or campaign without worldbuilding?
> 
> What I mean by that is, it seems to me that no matter what setting or system with which you decide to play, there absolutely must be some amount of worldbuilding that happens prior to the start of play. And I mean this in the sense of "worldbuilding" that seems to be hinted at in the OP and throughout the thread, of material pre-authored prior to the start of play.
> 
> I don't see how it is avoidable. It establishes the setting and the options/elements/conditions that will be present in play. Now, this worldbuilding can be done by others (a pre-published adventure or setting) or by the GM....but it must happen to one degree or another.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But is there any game that does not involve some level of worldbuilding? If so, how do these games function? If not, then do we consider "worldbuilding" a fundamental aspect of play?



This has been discussed a bit above.

Here is a report of the first session of my Classic Traveller campaign.

The players rolled up their PCs. This process suggested backstory (eg consider the noble PC whose main skill is Gambling, who was forced to muster out due to a failed survival roll, and who rolled a yacht as a mustering out benfit - the player decided that this meant he had won the yacht gambling, and had then been beaten to within an inch of his life by the people he won it from).

I rolled a starting world. We agreed - based on its properties, and following a player suggestion - that it was a gas giant moon.

I rolled for a patron encounter. It was a scout. This suggested she might know the ex-(dry)navy PC. And we started from there.

I'd rolled up a few worlds and so had their stats with me - I dropped them in as they were needed. That's a case of prep - but the world was established in the course of play.

Of course Traveller has an implied setting (interstellar navy and merchants; the Imperial scout service; widespread use of bladed weapons as well as firearms; etc). But then so does D&D (clerics and paladins; towns with thieves and assassins; wilderness with rangers and druids; and all these people beset by orcs, kobolds, dragons, demons etc).


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> This has been discussed a bit above.
> 
> Here is a report of the first session of my Classic Traveller campaign.
> 
> The players rolled up their PCs. This process suggested backstory (eg consider the noble PC whose main skill is Gambling, who was forced to muster out due to a failed survival roll, and who rolled a yacht as a mustering out benfit - the player decided that this meant he had won the yacht gambling, and had then been beaten to within an inch of his life by the people he won it from).
> 
> I rolled a starting world. We agreed - based on its properties, and following a player suggestion - that it was a gas giant moon.
> 
> I rolled for a patron encounter. It was a scout. This suggested she might know the ex-(dry)navy PC. And we started from there.
> 
> I'd rolled up a few worlds and so had their stats with me - I dropped them in as they were needed. That's a case of prep - but the world was established in the course of play.
> 
> Of course Traveller has an implied setting (interstellar navy and merchants; the Imperial scout service; widespread use of bladed weapons as well as firearms; etc). But then so does D&D (clerics and paladins; towns with thieves and assassins; wilderness with rangers and druids; and all these people beset by orcs, kobolds, dragons, demons etc).
> 
> We




Maybe your post was cut short? Seems like you may have had more to say. 

But what you've listed here are, to me, examples of worldbuilding. It is minimal compared to many games. But even just going with the default assumptions of Traveler is worldbuilding. It's just that other people did the worldbuilding years ago, and you've decided to use that world they built. Then you allowed your players to contribute to the worldbuilding with the gambling backstory bit for his character. You came up with an NPC with possible ties to one PC. Then you chose a world, and some others in case they came up. 

How is this not worldbuilding?


----------



## Ovinomancer

hawkeyefan said:


> Yeah, I got the gist because I've had similar conversations with him before. But the term "worldbuilding" being interchangeable with "secret GM backstory" seems like such a big stretch that I thought there must be more to it....so that's why I asked the question I did.
> 
> Similar to the point you made above....worldbuilding is happening. Every game I can think of includes it to some extent, even if it's just genre limitations or setting details. So since that's the case, then there must be more criteria for the definition Pemerton is working with....and looking at it now, it seems to be that the information is secret.
> 
> I don't think worldbuilding can be limited to only be considered secrets the GM keeps from the players, so the whole OP is flawed. If the question is instead "What is secret GM backstory for?" then to me, that's something entirely different. And even then, a better way to ask would likely be "How can a GM use secret backstory to enhance play?" Wording it in such a way seems more transparent and less adversarial.
> 
> I can understand someone not liking the style of play where the GM has determined many details ahead of time, or does so by fiat throughout the game....but I can also conceive of someone enjoying that kind of play. I use elements of secret backstory in my game quite a bit. There's a meta-story that is in play. However, it's not ubiquitous....I leave plenty of details undecided, and I allow the players to introduce plenty of material, as well.
> 
> These discussions are tough because everyone seems to pay lip service to there being no wrong way to play, but as soon as they say that, they then proceed to point out why your way to play sucks. Not objectively, of course, that would be bad to say, but just in their opinion they'd rather smash their head into your table than sit down at it and play.
> 
> Everyone takes the worst possible version of another playstyle and argues from that point.




Totally agree.  I try to make sure I argue from the point of just advocacy for my preferences and not to show other styles are wrong.  This is difficult sometimes because describing my journey includes me determining something things don't work for me or that I don't prefer them, and that's negative language that triggers defensive responses (understandably).  And then, sometimes, I get tree vision (as opposed to forest vision) on a point.  This happens especially in threads where fisking is more common, as ideas get separated out into elements that then undergo the same transition.  I admit there's been a few times that I've looked back at something and suddenly realized I'm now arguing against an earlier position because of how the details have been taken up.  Lately, I've adopted looking at my post and trying to figure if what I just said was helpful or not.  A large part of my last reply to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] was me boring down on details that really didn't matter and were being argued because they were being argued.  I like to argue, so this is an easy hole to fall into.  

Largely, though, I think that there's a lot of self-identification wrapped up in our hobbies, especially ones that are as personal as RPGs can be.  I used to manage a hobby shop and the three classes of customer I had the most problems with were the train guys, the Napoleonic wargamers, and the RPG players.  Pretty much for the same reasons -- they all had incredibly specific demands for inventory, they didn't accept that I could order in very expensive lots of things without a promise of purchase (you don't go into the hobby business to be rich), and would all try to monopolize time talking about their hobbies to exhaustion.  These were always minefields to negotiate, as you wanted to keep a customer, make a sale, make them happy about the sale, and not spend all day on a small or no sale interaction.  Huh, I had a point when I started this, but now it appears I've just gone off into storyland.  Still, maybe there's something in there that might make someone think or laugh or relate, so I'll just again say that RPGs are something people really identify personally with, and it's hard to extract that when you hear someone say something that sounds like you don't play right.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Ovinomancer said:


> Totally agree.  I try to make sure I argue from the point of just advocacy for my preferences and not to show other styles are wrong.  This is difficult sometimes because describing my journey includes me determining something things don't work for me or that I don't prefer them, and that's negative language that triggers defensive responses (understandably).  And then, sometimes, I get tree vision (as opposed to forest vision) on a point.  This happens especially in threads where fisking is more common, as ideas get separated out into elements that then undergo the same transition.  I admit there's been a few times that I've looked back at something and suddenly realized I'm now arguing against an earlier position because of how the details have been taken up.  Lately, I've adopted looking at my post and trying to figure if what I just said was helpful or not.  A large part of my last reply to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] was me boring down on details that really didn't matter and were being argued because they were being argued.  I like to argue, so this is an easy hole to fall into.
> 
> Largely, though, I think that there's a lot of self-identification wrapped up in our hobbies, especially ones that are as personal as RPGs can be.  I used to manage a hobby shop and the three classes of customer I had the most problems with were the train guys, the Napoleonic wargamers, and the RPG players.  Pretty much for the same reasons -- they all had incredibly specific demands for inventory, they didn't accept that I could order in very expensive lots of things without a promise of purchase (you don't go into the hobby business to be rich), and would all try to monopolize time talking about their hobbies to exhaustion.  These were always minefields to negotiate, as you wanted to keep a customer, make a sale, make them happy about the sale, and not spend all day on a small or no sale interaction.  Huh, I had a point when I started this, but now it appears I've just gone off into storyland.  Still, maybe there's something in there that might make someone think or laugh or relate, so I'll just again say that RPGs are something people really identify personally with, and it's hard to extract that when you hear someone say something that sounds like you don't play right.




Yes, I do it too, sometimes....I didn't mean to exclude myself from my earlier comment. I try not to speak negatively of other peoples' playstyles or preferred GM techniques or what have you....but sometimes it's hard to not sound negative when you're talking about one thing among many that you prefer. The many are implied to be lesser in some way. 

That's a big part of why I held off on commenting in this thread.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> Maybe your post was cut short? Seems like you may have had more to say.
> 
> But what you've listed here are, to me, examples of worldbuilding. It is minimal compared to many games. But even just going with the default assumptions of Traveler is worldbuilding. It's just that other people did the worldbuilding years ago, and you've decided to use that world they built. Then you allowed your players to contribute to the worldbuilding with the gambling backstory bit for his character. You came up with an NPC with possible ties to one PC. Then you chose a world, and some others in case they came up.
> 
> How is this not worldbuilding?



OK, so just to clear some ground - my purpose in starting the thread isn't to work out what "worldbuilding" _really_ means. It's to ask about what a certain technique/method in RPGing might be for. And I think you realise that, so the purpose of this paragraph is just to establish that we're both on that cleared ground.

Now, the technique/method I'm interested in is the following - the description may be rough, but hopefully gets at something recognisable: the GM, in advance of play, establishes certain elements of the shared fiction - "the world" or "the setting". These details may be high level and fairly abstract ("Here's the pantheon"). They may be low level and rather gritty ("Here's a map of your inn room"). These details may or may not be shared with the players in advance of play, but that's a matter for GM discretion as governed by certain conventions (eg if we assume that none of the PCs is blind or in the dark, then there's a convention that the GM will show the players at least a rough map of the area the PCs are in, or describe it them if words are being used rather than pictures).

These details can be used to constrain or even veto player choices at PC generation. (That hasn't been discussed much in this thread, but is frequently discussed on these boards.) And, as has been discussed at some length in this thread, these details may be used _by the GM_ to establish elements of fictional positioning, in the context of action resolution, which are _secret from the players_. The result of this is that a player can declare an action for his/her PC and have it fail _not because of a bad roll_ (this thread has mostly been focused on dice-based action resolution) but because the framing for the declaration - _unbeknownst to the player_ - has _already been established by the GM_ to be such that the action can't succeed.

The recurring example of the last point is the GM's prior determination that the map is in the kitchen (hidden in the bread bins) and not in the study, and hence that an action declaration by a player "I search the study for the map" _cannot_ succeed, in virtue of the GM establishing in advance the content of (that aspedct of) the shared fiction.

A further consequence of the sort of worldbuiling I've just been describing, which is important to me but has received much less attention in this thread than the above point, follows on from the idea of constraints on PC build. When the game begins from this sort of worldbuilding, the focus of play is established by the GM. The "big picture" of the campaign is established by the GM. The local, nitty-gritty moving parts of the ingame situation are established by the GM.

A further thing is that the second and third consequences can feed into one another. So the established but secret elements of backstory which determine - in ways unbeknownst to the players, because while they may know there is secret backstory there they don't know what it is (because it's secret) - whether or not action declarations succeed or fail. So the play of the game, via action declarations, is apt to lead to outcomes that reflect the GM's establishment (in advance) of the key setting elements.

Anyway, that is the sort of worldbuilding I have in mind. I think it's very common. I have played games where it occurs. I read posts about such games nearly every day on ENworld. It's inherent to any AP campaign that it have more-or-less the above character. [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has given multiple examples (both imagined and actual play) which illustrate RPGing in the above fashion.

In the Traveller game I referred to, we started with PC gen tables: I had written up tables that mostly reflected the original ones in Book 1 and Supplement 4, but with an additional line - Special Duty - borrowed from the MegaTraveller tables; and changing a couple of skill entries on the skill roll tables to incorporate (some of) the skills introduced in Books 4, 5, 6 and 7.

And we had a patron encounter table. And world generation tables. And I had a piece of paper with stats for 4 worlds written down (Lyto-7, Byron, Enlil and Ruskin) - their existence as elements of the shared fiction was not established (and in the case of Ruskin still hasn't been - it's there if I need a comfortable, mid-tech world with a bucolic lifestyle and strong immigration restrictions, but so far I haven't).

The nearest recent experience I would compare it to is running a one-off AD&D session where the players rolled up 2nd level PCs and then I used the Appendix A random dungeon generation system to generate a dungeon as they went along.

In both cases, there are tecniques used to establish a setting. In the AD&D case, rolling on the tables tells us what the starting room looks like (there are six to choose from); how long the corridoors are; etc. There are charts for working out whether a room is empty or not, and if it's inhabited, by what. In the Traveller case, I rolled a starting world and the players and I worked out a sketch of it based on the rolls. Instead of the room occupants charts in Appendix A, Traveller has a patron chart, which established this scout in need of assistance as a part of the setting.

Because the player of the noble had already established that he'd won a yacht gambling, but had been hopsitalised as a result - which is how he had met the ex-Navy medic - it made sense that the scout would be needing the PCs' help because her old crew had lost their ship gambling! And because one of the PCs - generated on the diplomat table - was clearly a spy (skill in carousing, interrogation, streetwise, gambling, recruiting, forgery, wheeled vehicles), it made sense that the mission should have a clandestine element to it (although what that was was not established until the player of the spy had his PC seduce the scout, and succeeded in an interrogation roll, which then obliged me to make up some more backstory about the secret element of the job she was offering).

In that example, the setting is not a constraint on PC gen - it follows from it. It is not a constraint on action declaration success - it is generated in response to it. Where details are filled out as part of framing and establishing the situation, the players are contributing together with the GM, and it is this interaction of ideas that generates a setting for the (imaginary) action to occur within.

Another, small but illustrative example: when the PCs stopped off at the world of Lyto-7 on their jump route from the starting world - Ardour-3 - to Byron, the ship owner decided to buy some cargo with the hope that he could sell it on at a profit on Byron. We rolled on the trading tables to determine values etc. But that left the question of what the cargo actually was. The world gen system had determined that the population of Lyto-7 was only a double-digit nubmer of people, and it had no government or law level, but a reasonably high tech level - so clearly it was a research station of some sort. That was my framing. The system had also decreed that the hydrographics of the world were 60%. The player therefore decided the cargo was ambergris (or something similar) collected as a byproduct of the research work being undertaken. Thta's only a modest bit of setting, but again it was not any sort of constraint on action declaration or resolution. Rather, working through those processes, in conjunction with the world gen results, yielded the setting via inputs from both GM and player.

Whether or not you want to call that "worldbuilding", it bears very little resemblance to the phenomenon I have described above. They both establish a setting, a shared fiction, which provides context for play. But the methods of doing that, and the consequences, are almost completely different.

So if you are asserting "RPGing needs setting" then I agree. If you are asserting "RPGing needs situation, and situation brings setting with it" then I agree. But if you are asserting "Because RPGing needs situation to get going, the GM must author some setting in advance, thereby unilaterally establishing some elements of the shared fiction", well then I disagree.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> When you snip out the full context of a remark and direct your response to an incomplete selection of the idea, it's hard to continue to have a productive discussion.  This an excellent point, where you pulled out a sentence fragment of a very short post and only directed your response to that fragment, which allows you to look like you're responding to the points of the post but, in reality, you're avoiding the full question and only answering a part of it.



Here is the full quote:



Ovinomancer said:


> I get that preference, but you seem to couch your arguments from a position where the DM is uses secret knowledge and fiat in ways that benefit the DM's ideas over the players.  When you couch your arguments like that, it's easy to assume that the crux of your problem is worrying that the DM will be unfair in his adjudication of your stated actions.  That's where I was coming from with that.
> 
> As for you being the GM, that's not counterindicative at all of having trust issues about the GM being unfair.


The last sentence is not something I intend to reply to. I'm not interested in analysing my own conjectured self-doubts in this thread. As I've said, a more prosaic explanation for my preferences is available - my pleasure in RPGing does not come from telling my friends stuff that I wrote in response to them making moves for their PCs that oblige me to engage in such tellings.

As for the first bit, you are correct that I "seem to couch [my] arguments from a position where the DM is uses secret knowledge and fiat in ways that benefit the DM's ideas over the players". The reason it seems like that is because it is like that. (I didn't clarify that in my first reply because I assumed it was obvious.) And the reason I couch my arguments (I would prefer to say "analysis", but that's orthogonal) from that position is because that position is correct. Which is what I said was evident in the post from  [MENTION=40176]MarkB[/MENTION]: inherent in the use of secret backstory as a factor in adjudication is that the GM's ideas are given priority in establishing the content of the shared fiction.

I'll respond to the following bit too, though, if you like, though I think it's repetition: a GM may be fair or unfair in saying (on the basis not of action resolution, but of secretly established fictional content) that the map is not in the study where the players have declared that the PCs are searching the study for it. If every other bit of information points to the map being in the study, it's probably unfair. If the PCs have a potion of map detecing with a range that will encompass the whole house (kitchen as well as study) but are not using it, then what the GM is doing is probably fair.

I don't care whether it's fair or not. The reason I don't like it is because I find it uninteresting. When I RPG, I don't want to engage in an activity in which my friends are spending most of their time trying to establish - by way of game moves - the content of my notes. I want to spend the time finding out what adventures befall these characters. that my friends are playing, and part of that is finding out about what sorts of settings they find themselves in, and what things they find and do there.

To give a concrete example: when the PCs decide to visit a market on the low-tech world of Enlil to see if any trinkets on sale there show signs of alien manufacture (the Enlilians have alien as well as human elements to their DNA), I don't want a style of play in which I look up my notes (or the publishers) notes on the world, its marketplaces, their contents, etc. We rolled for it.

(For another market place example from Burning Wheel, which shows a mixture of "saying 'yes'" and dice rolls, see here.)



Ovinomancer said:


> Why do you persist in doing this?



Many of the posts in this thread are quite long - mine included. I am trying to identify the core propositions at issue and address them. That's all. It didn't seem important to me to explain that I'm not talking about or interested in fairness. I was wrong - you did think it important. So I've explained that.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> a better way to ask would likely be "How can a GM use secret backstory to enhance play?" Wording it in such a way seems more transparent and less adversarial.



Well, what if the answer is "There's no way?" Then your wording would be begging the question!

Asking "What is it for" seemed pretty transparent to me. And I've had a number of answers in this thread.

Of course if someone else wants to start a thread with your suggested title they're welcome to. I haven't noticed it in the past 10 years on this site, though. Hence I started mine.


----------



## Lanefan

chaochou said:


> I really don't understand what such a DM needs players for. They may as well DM for themselves.
> 
> What this reveals, probably inadvertently, is completely self-indulgent GMing. It's purely for the GMs entertainment.



Not purely for the DM's entertainment, but if the DM isn't getting something out of it then why would she bother?


> You admit the PCs know nothing about what's happening. And will probably never know. And if they do 'find out' all they are ever, ever going to 'find out' is what the GM had pre-decided had happened. I get more agency reading a book.
> 
> And then you add in a new layer of GM force. The mage may get arrested for treason. And if he does the players get the joys of unravelling the GMs smugly convoluted plot to clear his name.



You say this like it's a bad thing. 

The example I dreamed up isn't the best, I'll be the first to admit that.  What I was trying to do was come up with a situation (which I was making up on the fly as I was typing it) where a PC action _here_ causes ripple effects elsewhere that may later impact the PCs _there_; with an intent to show how a DM has to be able to follow the dominoes if-when they fall due to knock-on effects of PC actions, and tangentially to show how city-adventure DMing can sometimes be bloody difficult.



> Was this supposed to be an example of 'player agency'? Is this the GM in 'full on react mode'?



No to both.  See above.


> But what it actually reveals is quite telling - players as powerless stooges and pawns being exploited to help spice up a GMs solo game.



Should PC actions never have hidden knock-on effects, then?  If they shouldn't, we're back to static adventure design where the monsters wait patiently in their numbered rooms* regardless of the carnage they might be able to hear down the hall; rather than plan a defense or quietly flee or start infighting for control as they know their leader is now dead...

* - and somehow don't starve if the PCs decide to leave the dungeon for a week to heal up or resupply.

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> You keep saying this, but you haven't yet shown me the difference between narrating more fiction and determining action outcomes.
> 
> What is the function difference between 'we open the door to the study' and being greeted with an encounter map and 'we look for a map in the study' and being told there is, in fact, no map?  Both are requests for the DM to narrate more fiction, yes?
> 
> The central conceit here really seems to be revolving around some distinction between an action declaration that you classify as 'asking for more DM fiction' and an action declaration that you classify as 'not asking for more DM fiction.'  You haven't clarified the difference.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> You're approaching this from the mindset that the player should be requesting new fiction, and therefore the DM denying that request based on pre-determined notes is bad play



The last sentence is not correct. The fourth sentence - beginning "the central conceit here" is correct.

In my view the distinction is fundamental. My thinking about it is a mixture of (what I would regard as) common sense informed by experience in RPGing; and Vincent Baker's writings about "boxes, clouds and arrows", ficitonal positioning, and the fundamental act in RPGing (which is _establishing some content in a shared fiction_).



Ovinomancer said:


> This definition also completely disregards LARPing, where there's a mix of reality and fiction ongoing.  Or even SCA



I'd hoped it was clear from the OP that I'm not talking about LARPing, or SCA, or cops and robbers. I'm talking about table top RPGs.

(And to ward of objections from @howandwh99 - I don't think this analysis and account of the "fundamental act" is all that apt for Gygaxian dungeoneering, which in many ways is better analogised to a boardgame. Eg while Gygaxian dungeoneering involves a shared fiction (sorry, howandwhy99) the dungeon map is a real thing, and the players are - among other things - trying to create an accurate duplicate of it by means of their play of the game. But as I said in the OP, this thread takes as a premise that mose contemporary RPGing, including most contemporary D&D play, is not Gygaxian in this sense.

*Sometimes players want the GM to provide them with more fiction.* "What can we see?" "How high is the ceiling?" "How many orcs are there?"

A lot of RPGing involves this, even in a game like Burning Wheel or Cortex+ Heroic. Exploration-focused play (which a lot of D&D involes) is absolutely replete with it.

There's no canonical form of words involved. It might happen without the players asking a question at all - the players say "OK, we open the door" and then the GM just proceeds to tell them what they see beyond it.

There's no canonical requirement of action declaration either, although - if you wanted to - you could analyse most of this sort of play in "say 'yes'" terms: the player asks for more info; the GM either "says 'yes'" and just tells them stuff ("The ceiling is 15' high") or the GM calls on the player to roll the dice ("Make a Perception check!" "Oops - only a 3." "Well, sorry, the orcs are too far away for you to get a proper count - maybe a dozen or so?"). Sometimes the request for info migh generate an automatic "no" unless the player changes the fictional positioning for his/her PC ("Does the DNA of the blood match our sample?" "Are you leaving the field to go back to the lab to find out?" "No." "OK then, you can't tell").

One way to think of a spell like Detect Magic is that it changes the fictional positioning - now this PC can not only see and hear but can sense magical phenomena - and so the GM's obligations to answer requests for information change. But another way to think of such a spell is as a fiat ability, because once it's used (at least in standard D&D) the GM can't call for a dice roll to learn the info but must "say 'yes'" - that is, must tell the player all the magical stuff in the vicinity. (A lot of headaches about divination magic could be reduced, I think, if these two functions were separated - so it enhanced the PC's sensory capabilities, but didn't negate the need for a Perception or Insight or whatever check. That mightn't help with Find Traps or Detect Secret Doors, though.)

Anyway, an example of this phenmenon - providing more fiction - from my Traveller game: the PCs have to make two jumps to the planet Byron (their vessel doesn't have the range to make it in a single jump); when they arrive at Lyto-7 after their first jump, I describe it to them (a mixture of telling them the stats for the world, plus fleshing out some details, like that it's a research station).

Another example: when the PCs are going through the trinkets at the Enlil market, I'd already made a roll to establish that there was an alien trinket on sale. (Traveller is ambiguous on random content generation (eg Psionics Institute) vs content generation coming out of action resolution (eg Streetwise). I went the first way on this occasion, which I'm not sure was the best way but as it hapened no wheels fell off.) So the players, when they ask, "Are there any alien artefacts at the market", have a chance of the answer being "yes". But I didn't just "say 'yes'". The relevant PC has Education 13 (a high score) which we've already established is a doctorate in Xeno-Archaeology. So that establishes, as a matter of fictional positioning, that he might recognise alien trinkets. (The other PCs have no real chance, as they don't have the right fictional positioning. That wasn't controversial at the table.) But I called for a check - it succeeded - and so I described the alien trinket that he noticed for sale.

This is the GM reading/telling the players stuff. Now, I have preferences that this not be done from pre-authored notes. That relates to the third of the consequences of GM-preauthored worldbuilding that I mentioned in my reply to [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] not far upthread; and is also described clearly in Eero Tuovinen's account of the "standard narrativistic model" that I linked to somewhere upthread: I prefer a game which is focused on stuff that the players bring to it (via PC build, evinced thematic/trope/"wouldn't it be cool if . . ." desires, etc). Whereas GM pre-authorship (which eg [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] advocates _should be done_ without knowing anything about what preferences and PCs the players might bring to the game) tends to make the focus one that speaks to the GM.

Relating this to agency: when the game play (at some moment) is predominantly the GM telling the players stuff, then it is the GM who is exercising agency. The fact that that players pressed the button that triggered the GM's narration doesn't change that. But if the GM's narration draws upon, responds to and incorportaes stuff that the players have brought to the game, then the GM's agency is building on their prior exercises of it. Whereas if the GM is telling them stuff that s/he already worked out independently of them, the players' agency is completely absent from that moment of play.

*Action declaration involving intent/stakes*. Sometimes players want to change the state of the fiction through an action declaration. "I rolled a 13 to hit and 10 to damage - is the orc dead?" That's not a request for the GM to tell the player some more information about the fiction. It's a request that the fiction _be a certain way_, namely, that it contain a dead orc.

Likewise "We look for the map in the study - do we find it?" Or (at least in some cases) "We need to escape before they find us - are there any secret doors?"

These situations involve stakes. Often that means conflict (as in the secret door example) but not always (in the map example there's no obvious conflict; but there is something at stake). If the check fails, the players have _lost_. (That is different from the above, where there are no stakes.)

You might say - but didn't the hunt for alien trinkets involve stakes? And the answer would be "yes", which is why I don't think I handled it properly, but Traveller is not quite as robust for this as (say) Burning Wheel or 4e, and I was trying to muddle through using my best intuitions at the time as to the mechanical resources Traveller provides. In future I'd probably use the Streetwise model rather than the Psionics Institute model.

Burning Wheel and Cortex+ Heroic have less exploratory play than conventional D&D, less than Traveller, less than 4e. As I've already posted, in many cases in BW it is degenerate for the player to ask the GM for more information, because that is an attempt to squib, by having the extra information the GM provides be a type of safety valve or an excuse to avoid a hard choice. Hence in BW if the player delcares an object reading type action (eg, from actual play, "Who made the cursed black arrows I found in my brother's room?") then, as GM, I'm entilted and often obliged to get clear on what the player would consider a loss (so in that case, the action declaration, revised in respone to GM pressue is, "I use my object reading to prove that my brother is innocent - someone else made these arrows!" and then when the check _fails_ I'm entitled to say "Sorry, it's bad news . . .").

Because there are no canoncial forms of words, and different games have different mechanics and different conventions, and tables have their own understandings, there are (and obviously there are) no hard and fast rules. Making sense of an action declaration, and responding to it as (i) a request for more fiction, or (ii) a desire to establish more fiction, and then (iii) working out what is at stake and what not, and hence (iv) what might be a fair or unfair framing, is ultimately a GM judgement.

In Cortex+, for intance, finding the map in the study is a fairly straightforward roll to establish an asset. Is there also an acid trap in the same secret hiding place? Well, the GM has to spend Doom Pool dice to make that the case.

In BW, finding the map is more likely to be a fairly hard Scavenging or Study-wise roll. If it succeeds, it would typically be poor GMing to introduce the acid trap.

In 4e, finding the map is probably a move in a skill challenge. Introducing the acid trap is (in my view) quite permissible if the skill challenge is still ongoing; but if finding the map is the _completion_ of the skill challenge then that situation is over, and the immediate adversity confronted by the players has been resolved in their favour; and so the acid trap would typically be (in my view) poor GMing.

You referenced the beholder acutal play example. The travel through the Underdark, at that point, was (I think) being resolved as a skill challenge. I can't recall whether the beholder encounter was framed as it was in response to a failure in the course of that challenge, or not (and the post doesn't say). Either way, in a skill challenge the GM has to continue framing the PCs into adversity until it is complete one way or the other - because if there's no adversity, then there's no fictional context that generates the checks that (mechanically) resolve the challenge. Splitting the party across a chasm, in upper paragon tier 4e, is in my view completely reasonable adversity and within the GM's remit. (Again, contrast Cortex+, where to split the party the GM has to spend resources from the Doom Pool.) Declaring that a PC falls down the pit would, in my view, not be fair framing. That difference is an expression of jugement based in experience running the system. Other groups might form different judgements.

Either way, there is no negation of action declaration by framing the encounter. The drow got across the chasm. And no check to avoid beholders in the underdark had been declared or resolved - that was what the skill challenge was for, and it was still ongoing.



Ovinomancer said:


> You say that the fiction doesn't really exist.  Okay, we'll leave aside the game implications of that statement for now and take it for argumentation.



Obviously the words on paper, the thoughts in players' heads, etc, exist. But the orc, the swords, the study, the map - they are all imaginary. (But see my above remarks about the dungeon map in Gygaxian play - it's a real artefact which, like a board in a boardgame, is a component of play.) 



Ovinomancer said:


> Since the fiction doesn't exist, then whatever you author into the fiction doesn't matter: it doesn't exist.  Only the act of authoring is a real thing.  So, therefore, all acts of authoring are the same.  This is absurd



And I didn't assert it. I said:



pemerton said:


> The orc doesn't exist. There are some words about the orc. Then some more words are authored - _the orc is dead_, say.
> 
> The map doesn't exist; nor does the study. There are some words about the study. Then some more words are authored - _the study has a map in it_.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Adding a sentence to the orc's description: it's dead; and adding a sentence to the study's description; it contains a map; are identical causal processes. And in RPGing terms, that means they are structurally equivalent game moves.



I'll assert it again: adding a sentence to the orc's description, and to the study's descriptoin, are structurally equivalent game moves. They are both acts of authorship that increase the detail about the orc and the study respectively.



Ovinomancer said:


> If all acts of authoring are the same, then restrictions such as genre appropriateness or fictional positioning don't matter.  You've strongly argued that these do matter, so that means that there is a difference in what is authored into the fiction -- some acts of authoring are preferred to others.  Since those limitations are subjective -- there's not objective reason that genre appropriateness be a deciding limitation -- then it stands to reason that many things can impact what can be authored depending on the subjective choices of the participants.



This is all non-sequitur.

I am talking about _adding descriptions to established elements of the fiction_. None of the descriptions I've posited contradict established fiction, depart from genre conceits, or otherwise collide with any basic constraints on good authorship. (Cf the presence of beam weapons in the Duke's toilet.) Those facts about the added descriptions are not "subjective". They are pretty obvious.



Ovinomancer said:


> different styles of authoring can exist that serve to limit what can be authored into the fiction.  This means that how the fiction is authored in game is actually based on subjective preferences of the players, and that, depending on those preferences, this can very well be a difference between killing an orc and creating a map in the library.



But the difference isn't one of structure or metaphysics (contra [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and others who refer to "Schroedinger's map" and the like).

The difference is that some players want the GM's authorship practices to, more-or-less, track the real-world metaphysics of the imagined things. So the GM is to treat the map as an object which does not supervene on it's location in the study; whereas we can use mechanics to determine the death of the orc which do treat that death as supervening on the orc (rather than being some distinct event that the GM is free to author as if it were independent of the causal processes governing the orc).

Ron Edwards invented a name for this preference: purist-for-system simuationism. Some RPGs serve it very well - RQ and RM among them. My point is that it's not a preference that is inherent in having a rich, complex, "living" world. Hence the answer to "what is worldbuilding for" can't be "because otherwise you won't get a rich, complex, "living" world. And the reason for that is the structural equivalence, as acts of authorship, of introducing a new description about the orc and a new description about the map, which permits the latter just as much as the former to be an outcome of, rather than an input into, actiion resolution.



Ovinomancer said:


> Returning briefly to the game implications of the fiction not existing -- I find this quasi-nihilist as the very concept of the hobby is creating and interacting withing a shared fiction.  Stating that it's really a game of make believe and so has no impact in the real world is saying that RPGs can't engage our emotions and thoughts in ways that benefit us outside of telling ourselves a story.



Novels and movies also engage emotions. If I could ever run a RPG session that had the impact of (say) The Quiet American or The Human Factor I'd be immensely proud. That doesn't mean those people and events are real.

It's not nihilist to deny the reality of imaginary things. It's just stating the literal truth.


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> So if you are asserting "RPGing needs setting" then I agree. If you are asserting "RPGing needs situation, and situation brings setting with it" then I agree. But if you are asserting "Because RPGing needs situation to get going, the GM must author some setting in advance, thereby unilaterally establishing some elements of the shared fiction", well then I disagree.



RPGing needs setting, whether presented via situation or some other means.  I think we're all good there.

But where does the setting or situation come from?  Unless I'm mistaken, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] tends to use pre-built settings (Greyhawk; or the map etc. in B-10; or the Traveller universe) and then tweak them to reflect his game's run of play and what arises out of that.  But - and this is the key - a pre-built setting comes with a host of elements of the shared fiction already pre-authored and baked in (the regional maps; or Greyhawk's pantheon; or how long it takes to get from planet A to planet B in Traveller), so the DM doesn't have to produce those.  They're already in place; something I think you tend to overlook in these discussions.

But what of a DM who is writing/designing her setting from scratch and not using a pre-built anything?  She gets to (and has to!) make all those decisions about what elements will be baked in to that setting, and thus to her campaign.  She gets to say, for example, that there's no Drow in her world and put this in her rules guide; meaning that once play starts a player can action-declare "I'm looking for Drow here" until he's blue in the face and he flat-out ain't gonna find any.  She gets to decide what planets are in her Traveller universe and how far apart they are; and what types of ships exist to go from one to another.  Etc.

And she gets to draw the map.

It seems you would deny the homebrewer these options.  Even further, you'd largely deny her the ability to build her own setting at all and instead force her to run a generic-to-type campaign with its setting and parameters evolving through play.  "I'm looking for Drow here" says a player while in some dungeon situation where Drow might appear, followed by a natural 20; and suddenly there's Drow in that game world whether the DM wants them in it or not.  This is what I mean when I say in this sort of system the players end up railroading the DM.

Lan-"looking for Drow is one thing.  Looking for Drizz't specifically is quite another; certain to generate extremely negative consequences the very least of which will be the immediate death of your PC"-efan


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Should PC actions never have hidden knock-on effects, then?  If they shouldn't, we're back to static adventure design where the monsters wait patiently in their numbered rooms* regardless of the carnage they might be able to hear down the hall



Just to respond to this: given that [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] and I are describing a style of play in which _there are no numbered rooms_, how could what you say possibly be true?

If we wanted to actually start to talk about alternatives, we could start with _overt knock-on effects_. And then we could talk about how we determine when these occur; who gets to decide what they are (maybe different participants. depending on other things going on in the game ply); how is such a decision given effect? Etc.


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Unless I'm mistaken, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] tends to use pre-built settings (Greyhawk; or the map etc. in B-10; or the Traveller universe



I've got multiple posts in this thread, plus links to others, which explain the start for the Traveller game.

The "universe" consisted of some PC-gen and world gen rules, and the implicit flavour of those. I dropped some worlds I'd already rolled up into the setting as we needed them.



Lanefan said:


> But what of a DM who is writing/designing her setting from scratch and not using a pre-built anything? She gets to (and has to!) make all those decisions about what elements will be baked in to that setting, and thus to her campaign



No she doesn't have to. Actually _look_ at the example of how my Traveller game started. A D&D game could start exactly the same way, except instead of world generation you could just deem that the game starts in an inn; and instead of the patron table you could use the Appendix C City Encounter table to find out who comes into the tavern to ask the PCs for help.


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> In my view the distinction is fundamental. My thinking about it is a mixture of (what I would regard as) common sense informed by experience in RPGing; and Vincent Baker's writings about "boxes, clouds and arrows", ficitonal positioning, and the fundamental act in RPGing (which is _establishing some content in a shared fiction_).
> 
> I'd hoped it was clear from the OP that I'm not talking about LARPing, or SCA, or cops and robbers. I'm talking about table top RPGs.
> 
> (And to ward of objections from @howandwh99 - I don't think this analysis and account of the "fundamental act" is all that apt for Gygaxian dungeoneering, which in many ways is better analogised to a boardgame. Eg while Gygaxian dungeoneering involves a shared fiction (sorry, howandwhy99) the dungeon map is a real thing, and the players are - among other things - trying to create an accurate duplicate of it by means of their play of the game.



I think you've gone bang over the side on this one. 

"Gygaxian dungeoneering" doesn't fall under your definition of an RPG?

Yikes.



> But as I said in the OP, this thread takes as a premise that mose contemporary RPGing, including most contemporary D&D play, is not Gygaxian in this sense.



 >facepalm<

So this entire thread has been based on a false premise?

No wonder we're getting nowhere.



> It's not nihilist to deny the reality of imaginary things. It's just stating the literal truth.



But it's also not helpful to deny the reality of imaginary things in this case, when one of the keys to any of these discussions is trying to get the imaginary reality to mirror real reality where and how it can.

The world around a PC is that PC's reality; and though both are obviously products of our imagination it's far easier to visualize and discuss them when one looks through the eyes of the PC (searching a study) rather than our own eyes (looking at papers and rolling dice).

Lanefan


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Just to respond to this: given that [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] and I are describing a style of play in which _there are no numbered rooms_, how could what you say possibly be true?



This is what I just can't fathom, and why I refer to Schroedinger's maps. 

Player: "I open the door and look beyond it.  What do I see?"
DM: "What are you looking for?"
Player: "I'll tell you what I'm looking for once you tell me what I'm looking _at_."

Translation: the player can't say what she's looking for until the DM tells her at least the basics of what she can already see.  If the door leads outside to daylight, for example, the answer to "what are you looking for?" is likely to be quite different than if the door leads to a library full of books; or a staircase leading down; or an abandoned larder full of rotting meat and fruit; or a brick wall.

Now a DM can always make this up on the fly, but there's inherent risks involved.  If she decides that behind the door is an old larder full of rotting food the obvious response from the players is "We should have been able to smell that", leading to either a retcon (absolutely unacceptable) or some quick backpedalling by the DM.  Or - _and this is the sort of thing I always end up doing if I try to make stuff like this up on the fly_ - I'll have said earlier when the party was still outside that the structure appears to be about 20' high, but now hours or even sessions later when they enter a room and I'm asked "what do I see" I'll forget what I said before and narrate a 25' high room with a spiral staircase leading up through the ceiling to what looks like another room above!  And quite rightly a player will call me on this; as it's horrible DMing.



> If we wanted to actually start to talk about alternatives, we could start with _overt knock-on effects_. And then we could talk about how we determine when these occur; who gets to decide what they are (maybe different participants. depending on other things going on in the game ply); how is such a decision given effect? Etc.



Overt knock-on effects are just that - overt, meaning obvious - and can (and should) be narrated and-or dealt with at the time.  But I'm talking about covert knock-on effects - things that happen that the PCs (and thus players) don't know about until later, if ever at all.  

A real-life example: someone I used to work with was out driving one afternoon until for no immediately obvious reason he got chased down and pulled over by three cop cars.  Turned out he'd hit a cyclist some miles earlier (no lasting harm done) and someone had caught his plate number.  He never saw the cyclist at the time, never heard any impact, and carried on his way oblivious to the effects of his simple action of turning at an intersection.

Sometimes you don't realize what your actions have caused or led to until much later.  The only way this can be reflected in a game setting is if someone (and by someone I mean the DM) can connect the dots between action A now and result B tomorrow.

Lanefan


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> No she doesn't have to. Actually _look_ at the example of how my Traveller game started. A D&D game could start exactly the same way, except instead of world generation you could just deem that the game starts in an inn; and instead of the patron table you could use the Appendix C City Encounter table to find out who comes into the tavern to ask the PCs for help.



Of course.  But someone (and were I a player, I'll guarantee it'd be me) is almost immediately going to ask the DM what we as PCs know of the local and-or regional geography and culture, if we haven't yet been told such:

- how big is the city / town / village / waystation we're in
- what's its population mix (as in, vague ratio of humans, elves, dwarves, etc.) and how well do they generally get along
- what realm are we in
- who's in charge locally / regionally / nationally
- what's the local culture (as in, is it based on a historical human culture or just generic medieval or are we even in human-held lands at all) and ethos (as in, chaotic gold rush frontier or peaceful placid farm town or orderly military borderpost etc.)
- what local / regional / national history do we need to know about
- what's the general climate / terrain like here (as in, are we in a desert or the arctic or temperate forests or a jungle, etc.; and is it mountainous or flat or hilly or a seacoast etc.)
- etc.

And the DM can make this all up now (difficult) or she can have it determined ahead of time (much easier) - either way, it's all getting baked in here and now.

Lanefan


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## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> My problem with this ability is that it requires getting lost stories to exist to have any impact -- ie, the ability is pointless if I, as DM, don't push getting lost as a complication in my game.  For it to matter, at all, getting lost needs to be something that's a threat in the game.  At that point, it negates that story in that terrain, so for that to matter and be interesting, I have to push getting lost in other terrains.  Bleh.
> 
> Most of the absolute abilities elsewhere in the game deal with things that are commonplace in the basic play -- poison, fear effects, etc., that I don't have to make any special effort to include.
> 
> That aside, not being able to get lost doesn't imply that you know where you're going.  You just always know where you are.  If you're exploring a forest, this ability just means the ranger can find places he's been to before or that he has firm description of the location that fits with what he already knows.  There's still plenty of exploration challenges in the forest I can throw at a party with a ranger.
> 
> I still don't like that I have to make a specific effort to include getting lost as a threat for that ranger ability to even matter.  I'd much rather have seen a blanket thing like advantage on all INT (Nature) and WIS (Survival) and WIS (Perception) checks in the favored terrain, and that's broad enough to be applicable to a number of stories instead of the more specific and non-core mechanic engaging abilities that did provide to rangers.




I think this is a case of the rules of classic D&D getting in the way of playing classic D&D. 

The ranger's 'never get lost' ability was described in a very early article in SR back in 1975 IIRC, definitely in the days of OD&D. In the context of exploratory hexcrawl play governed by the AH: _Survival_ game this was a reasonable ability. It negated the regular 'getting lost' checks which were a significant random hazard of this procedure, and only within a single type of terrain. Gygax imported this class almost verbatim into 1e, but at the same time dropped the use of _Survival_ as a mechanic (and references to any other external rules, like Chainmail). There was a process for getting lost also in 1e, so IN THEORY nothing changed. 

In reality most groups, by the 1e era (say DMG release, so 1979) had started to leave behind the procedural exploration puzzle Gygaxian player skill game paradigm behind. In view of the reality of a lot of play at that time, semi-directed plots with a mixture of GM fiat/fudging, fixed maps/encounters, and some of the original random hazard generation, you are correct. When the story revolves around 'the GM wants to get you lost in the Woods' then the ranger with Woods as a favored terrain is pretty much the sound of the choo choo running out of tracks...

Now, in a game like what I run, said absolute ability would be OK. It would let the player advance the fiction in the direction he's interested in by not getting lost. Truthfully in my own personal game design how it would work is he'd have a class boon, orienteer, and that would let him expend his inspiration point to declare that he is definitely not getting lost right now. He could also simply roll and hope not to get lost, but then he's not really declaring anything, the player is saying in that case "lost, not lost, all good with me, I'll take it how it comes" which is fine. Orienteering can also be used to, say, sub in a Nature check instead of an Endurance check "hey, I use my orienteering to find a way around the nasty cliff so we don't have to climb it".

If in his background the ranger has "Home turf is the Forest of Grinn" then I'd let him leverage that and say "I guide the party unfailingly to a cave entrance at the bottom of the cliff which I know from experience leads up into the caverns we want to explore higher on the mountain." Now he's authoring fiction and relating the new narrative directly to character resources, this is why he built this character the way he did, he wants to be able to do this. Since the GM and players are 'Playing to see what happens' any argument that a 'challenge has been bypassed' is moot, it just isn't part of the agenda. If the players WANT a mechanically and tactically challenging encounter, then that is bound to be provided, assuming I as the DM am doing my job.


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## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> So I've been following this thread, and have found it interesting, but I've held off on commenting because I feel like the matter is mostly one of opinion, and it seems most folks are decided how they feel.
> 
> But I do have one question that I don't think has come up...or at least not directly.
> 
> Is it possible to have an RPG game or campaign without worldbuilding?
> 
> What I mean by that is, it seems to me that no matter what setting or system with which you decide to play, there absolutely must be some amount of worldbuilding that happens prior to the start of play. And I mean this in the sense of "worldbuilding" that seems to be hinted at in the OP and throughout the thread, of material pre-authored prior to the start of play.
> 
> I don't see how it is avoidable. It establishes the setting and the options/elements/conditions that will be present in play. Now, this worldbuilding can be done by others (a pre-published adventure or setting) or by the GM....but it must happen to one degree or another. It can be minimal, or very involved, and it can probably be either to a fault. Too little and the game becomes a directionless, pass the conch session where everyone is making up elements on the fly that never cohere into anything substantial or worthwhile. Too much, and it could become the GM reading the players a story (his own or one published by a third party).
> 
> But is there any game that does not involve some level of worldbuilding? If so, how do these games function? If not, then do we consider "worldbuilding" a fundamental aspect of play?




Here are two examples of play in which nobody at the table did anything akin to worldbuilding, but I want to see if you have some other ideas in terms of what that entails:

1) A group of people sit down to play 1e AD&D. The DM declares, after character generation, that the PCs find themselves in a stone chamber, presumably underground. He proceeds to generate the room using the Appendix in the DMG for random dungeon generation. Play proceeds from there with no content or assumptions having been established beforehand.

2) A group of people sit down to play classic Traveller. Again they generate characters and the GM generates a subsector map and some planetary systems using the tables in the LBBs. Play proceeds entirely by the use of these tables (which provide for generating planetary systems, creatures, NPCs, governments, random ship encounters, the ability to find ships, cargo, and patrons, buy equipment, etc. 

Now, I think that 2 COULD be said to rely on the conceptual framework of an Interstellar Empire, etc inherent in Traveller's implicit setting. Of course this is probably no more worldbuilding than the implicit milieu implied by the available races, classes, and monsters which will appear in the random dungeon, though it has a wider geographical scope. Anyway, I wouldn't exactly call either one 'worldbuilding', yet there's definitely some RPG happening there. Admittedly the players are going to be a little pressed to relate their actions to any larger agenda that a more realized setting would probably facilitate, but depending on how free they are to extrapolate that might not be an impediment at all, it might even be an advantage for some types of player.


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## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> OK, so just to clear some ground - my purpose in starting the thread isn't to work out what "worldbuilding" _really_ means. It's to ask about what a certain technique/method in RPGing might be for. And I think you realise that, so the purpose of this paragraph is just to establish that we're both on that cleared ground.
> 
> Now, the technique/method I'm interested in is the following - the description may be rough, but hopefully gets at something recognisable: the GM, in advance of play, establishes certain elements of the shared fiction - "the world" or "the setting". These details may be high level and fairly abstract ("Here's the pantheon"). They may be low level and rather gritty ("Here's a map of your inn room"). These details may or may not be shared with the players in advance of play, but that's a matter for GM discretion as governed by certain conventions (eg if we assume that none of the PCs is blind or in the dark, then there's a convention that the GM will show the players at least a rough map of the area the PCs are in, or describe it them if words are being used rather than pictures).




Okay, thanks for clarifying. I think what you're describing is pretty common, sure. I don't think that it is inherently bad, and at least in my case, it's not something the GM does alone; my group tends to determine a lot of these details together. 

I think what you're describing falls into the category of worldbuilding, but there are many other things that also fall into that category which don't fit the description. 



pemerton said:


> These details can be used to constrain or even veto player choices at PC generation. (That hasn't been discussed much in this thread, but is frequently discussed on these boards.) And, as has been discussed at some length in this thread, these details may be used _by the GM_ to establish elements of fictional positioning, in the context of action resolution, which are _secret from the players_. The result of this is that a player can declare an action for his/her PC and have it fail _not because of a bad roll_ (this thread has mostly been focused on dice-based action resolution) but because the framing for the declaration - _unbeknownst to the player_ - has _already been established by the GM_ to be such that the action can't succeed.
> 
> The recurring example of the last point is the GM's prior determination that the map is in the kitchen (hidden in the bread bins) and not in the study, and hence that an action declaration by a player "I search the study for the map" _cannot_ succeed, in virtue of the GM establishing in advance the content of (that aspedct of) the shared fiction.




I don't like limiting player choice in character generation. Not unless there is a really compelling reason. And most of the reasons typically offered in such discussions here I would not call compelling. I think the GM should work with the players to try and incorporate whatever ideas they're trying to bring to the table. I see your point how a GM can use his authorship of the setting details to limit player choice, but I don't think it need be so. 

As for the example, I don't know if I entirely agree with your assessment. I understand it, and I can see why you may not like it, but the choice of words you choose to describe it seems off to me. In that scenario, the PC searching the study has not failed. He has successfully searched the study and determined that the map is not there. I don't see this as the Gm preventing the player's success in the way that you seem to. 

I do agree this is a case of the GM's authorship taking priority over the player's attempt to establish world details....but I don't think that is a problem in this case. As I mentioned above, I can see it being a problem in other areas, but details such as the location of an item being searched for seem to me to be safely in the hands of the GM. 

As a GM I'm far more interested in a player contributing to the shared fiction through character actions and relationships and desires, and how all those things can impact worldbulding, rather than in a player trying to author a solution to a problem they are facing. 



pemerton said:


> A further consequence of the sort of worldbuiling I've just been describing, which is important to me but has received much less attention in this thread than the above point, follows on from the idea of constraints on PC build. When the game begins from this sort of worldbuilding, the focus of play is established by the GM. The "big picture" of the campaign is established by the GM. The local, nitty-gritty moving parts of the ingame situation are established by the GM.




So here you mean things like the GM deciding this is going to be a court intrigue based game in a D&D style setting meaning that the player who wanted to be a barbarian is kind of SOL, right? I pretty much agree....I think that any such constraints are probably best established by the group beforehand. Or at the very least, the GM can share his intentions with the players and get their buy in. 




pemerton said:


> A further thing is that the second and third consequences can feed into one another. So the established but secret elements of backstory which determine - in ways unbeknownst to the players, because while they may know there is secret backstory there they don't know what it is (because it's secret) - whether or not action declarations succeed or fail. So the play of the game, via action declarations, is apt to lead to outcomes that reflect the GM's establishment (in advance) of the key setting elements.




This can be the case, sure. The GM can guide things towards the outcomes he wants. Or less severely, he can nudge a bit here and there. Again, I don't think this needs to be the case. And at times, I don't think it's bad when it does happen. 



pemerton said:


> Anyway, that is the sort of worldbuilding I have in mind. I think it's very common. I have played games where it occurs. I read posts about such games nearly every day on ENworld. It's inherent to any AP campaign that it have more-or-less the above character. @_*Lanefan*_ has given multiple examples (both imagined and actual play) which illustrate RPGing in the above fashion.




Sure, it is common. I've played in games like it quite a bit. Most of the games I've played in have had at least some element of it. My current game that I DM certainly does. The difference is that I don't think I as the GM wield my secret knowledge like a club to bash the players with. I establish elements of the games that I think will be compelling. I don't do it simply to thwart my players and any ideas that they may have. 



pemerton said:


> In the Traveller game I referred to, we started with PC gen tables: I had written up tables that mostly reflected the original ones in Book 1 and Supplement 4, but with an additional line - Special Duty - borrowed from the MegaTraveller tables; and changing a couple of skill entries on the skill roll tables to incorporate (some of) the skills introduced in Books 4, 5, 6 and 7.
> 
> And we had a patron encounter table. And world generation tables. And I had a piece of paper with stats for 4 worlds written down (Lyto-7, Byron, Enlil and Ruskin) - their existence as elements of the shared fiction was not established (and in the case of Ruskin still hasn't been - it's there if I need a comfortable, mid-tech world with a bucolic lifestyle and strong immigration restrictions, but so far I haven't).
> 
> The nearest recent experience I would compare it to is running a one-off AD&D session where the players rolled up 2nd level PCs and then I used the Appendix A random dungeon generation system to generate a dungeon as they went along.
> 
> In both cases, there are tecniques used to establish a setting. In the AD&D case, rolling on the tables tells us what the starting room looks like (there are six to choose from); how long the corridoors are; etc. There are charts for working out whether a room is empty or not, and if it's inhabited, by what. In the Traveller case, I rolled a starting world and the players and I worked out a sketch of it based on the rolls. Instead of the room occupants charts in Appendix A, Traveller has a patron chart, which established this scout in need of assistance as a part of the setting.




I'd say that these are techniques to _help_ establish a setting. A small but important distinction, I think. Because the setting is largely decided when you picked a game. Traveller has many elements already determined. Same with AD&D and the random dungeon. Sure, there are big pieces missing that you fill in, and you prefer to fill them in as you go based on how the play has gone...but the bones are already there. 



pemerton said:


> Because the player of the noble had already established that he'd won a yacht gambling, but had been hopsitalised as a result - which is how he had met the ex-Navy medic - it made sense that the scout would be needing the PCs' help because her old crew had lost their ship gambling! And because one of the PCs - generated on the diplomat table - was clearly a spy (skill in carousing, interrogation, streetwise, gambling, recruiting, forgery, wheeled vehicles), it made sense that the mission should have a clandestine element to it (although what that was was not established until the player of the spy had his PC seduce the scout, and succeeded in an interrogation roll, which then obliged me to make up some more backstory about the secret element of the job she was offering).
> 
> In that example, the setting is not a constraint on PC gen - it follows from it. It is not a constraint on action declaration success - it is generated in response to it. Where details are filled out as part of framing and establishing the situation, the players are contributing together with the GM, and it is this interaction of ideas that generates a setting for the (imaginary) action to occur within.




I'm all for character generation determining major elements of the game. I think the setting should help shape the characters, and then the characters should help shape the action. 

I do have a good deal of secret history in my campaign. And yes, the PCs do come across bits of lore here and there that is slowly revealing he big picture. But I don't use this story to force them down specific paths. I generally don't use discovering the secret history the goal of their actions....they generally determine what they're doing and why, and then they learn some crazy things along the way. The players add just as much to the world as I do.

For instance, one player came up with an idea for a Fighter character. This was our first delve into 5E, so he kept the character simple. As we played, he slowly began to develop a history for the character. He had been in a mercenary company prior to joining the party. He'd left because the mercenary company had started to take on contracts that he found to be loathsome. He had befriended one of the other PCs with a military background when they had fought on the same side of a conflict. 

So, totally separate of my pre-conceived GM backstory, the player introduced the idea of this mercenary company. I ran with that and it's become a major part of our campaign. I altered many of my ideas to fit with the idea of this mercenary company. There are similar elements in the campaign from nearly all my players (one player is pretty much along for the ride and is fine with that). It's very collaborative in that sense. 

Do my ideas sometimes trump the players? Perhaps a bit. But I would say their ideas trump mine more often. It's pretty give and take. 



pemerton said:


> Another, small but illustrative example: when the PCs stopped off at the world of Lyto-7 on their jump route from the starting world - Ardour-3 - to Byron, the ship owner decided to buy some cargo with the hope that he could sell it on at a profit on Byron. We rolled on the trading tables to determine values etc. But that left the question of what the cargo actually was. The world gen system had determined that the population of Lyto-7 was only a double-digit nubmer of people, and it had no government or law level, but a reasonably high tech level - so clearly it was a research station of some sort. That was my framing. The system had also decreed that the hydrographics of the world were 60%. The player therefore decided the cargo was ambergris (or something similar) collected as a byproduct of the research work being undertaken. Thta's only a modest bit of setting, but again it was not any sort of constraint on action declaration or resolution. Rather, working through those processes, in conjunction with the world gen results, yielded the setting via inputs from both GM and player.
> 
> Whether or not you want to call that "worldbuilding", it bears very little resemblance to the phenomenon I have described above. They both establish a setting, a shared fiction, which provides context for play. But the methods of doing that, and the consequences, are almost completely different.




Are they? It sounds to me like you used the setting elements that already existed to establish new elements. Planet A is rich in Z, so it makes sense that Z can be found there. A already existed, Z was a common sense call. 

When you comment on the worst version of GM backstory boiling down to the Gm reading a story to the players...is that all that different from the GM reading the results of rolls on random tables to the players? 

I know that's now what you're doing...I expect there is a lot more to it than that, even beyond what you've described. But maybe there is also more to what the GM has done with his secret worldbuilding? Maybe it's not him just reading his story and feeling proud when his players say wow that's cool? 



pemerton said:


> So if you are asserting "RPGing needs setting" then I agree. If you are asserting "RPGing needs situation, and situation brings setting with it" then I agree. But if you are asserting "Because RPGing needs situation to get going, the GM must author some setting in advance, thereby unilaterally establishing some elements of the shared fiction", well then I disagree.




I don't see how some elements of the shared fiction are not established before hand. I feel it is fundamentally required. 

But I do get your contention with the playstyle in general, especially given how you have described it. I think perhaps we agree much more than it may seem. If I had to boil it down to one major difference, I suppose it would be that I don't think the GM having written anything down beforehand means he cannot be flexible, and that his game cannot be collaborative.


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## hawkeyefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Here are two examples of play in which nobody at the table did anything akin to worldbuilding, but I want to see if you have some other ideas in terms of what that entails:
> 
> 1) A group of people sit down to play 1e AD&D. The DM declares, after character generation, that the PCs find themselves in a stone chamber, presumably underground. He proceeds to generate the room using the Appendix in the DMG for random dungeon generation. Play proceeds from there with no content or assumptions having been established beforehand.
> 
> 2) A group of people sit down to play classic Traveller. Again they generate characters and the GM generates a subsector map and some planetary systems using the tables in the LBBs. Play proceeds entirely by the use of these tables (which provide for generating planetary systems, creatures, NPCs, governments, random ship encounters, the ability to find ships, cargo, and patrons, buy equipment, etc.
> 
> Now, I think that 2 COULD be said to rely on the conceptual framework of an Interstellar Empire, etc inherent in Traveller's implicit setting. Of course this is probably no more worldbuilding than the implicit milieu implied by the available races, classes, and monsters which will appear in the random dungeon, though it has a wider geographical scope. Anyway, I wouldn't exactly call either one 'worldbuilding', yet there's definitely some RPG happening there. Admittedly the players are going to be a little pressed to relate their actions to any larger agenda that a more realized setting would probably facilitate, but depending on how free they are to extrapolate that might not be an impediment at all, it might even be an advantage for some types of player.




I think each certainly has some worldbuilding going on(in the more widely applied sense as opposed to Pemerton's more narrow definition in this discussion). Simply choosing the overall setting, and creating PCs has likely forced certain world elements to be established. These may be minimal, but they are there, and some may likely have larger world implications (a cleric character may imply a deity or a pantheon; an alien PC establishes that humans are not alone in the galaxy; etc.). 

Now, in each case, it is very possible that there is no larger story the GM has established, or that is inherent in the setting. So the action of the PCs, and their story, may be entirely undetermined, and may be revealed as they go. I have indeed played games like this, where I have asked the players to establish bits about the characters and the world as we go. 

But I don't know if a true story....any kind of narrative element beyond describing the actions of the PCs....will really emerge unless someone instigates it. very often that seems to be the job of the GM, but it could just as easily be a player. Someone has to do it though....they have to add that one element or take that one action that kind of forces things one way. It could be the reason they're in the dungeon, or it could be the mission statement of their crew, or whatever.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> I believe that you do not see a functional difference between killing the orc and creating the map in the library. However, I do believe that you see a difference between killing an orc and finding a ray gun in the library.  And, right there, you defeat your own argument.
> 
> To delve into this more deeply: You say that the fiction doesn't really exist.  Okay, we'll leave aside the game implications of that statement for now and take it for argumentation.  Since the fiction doesn't exist, then whatever you author into the fiction doesn't matter: it doesn't exist.  Only the act of authoring is a real thing.  So, therefore, all acts of authoring are the same.  This is absurd, and counterproductive to discussion.  If all acts of authoring are the same, then restrictions such as genre appropriateness or fictional positioning don't matter.  You've strongly argued that these do matter, so that means that there is a difference in what is authored into the fiction -- some acts of authoring are preferred to others.  Since those limitations are subjective -- there's not objective reason that genre appropriateness be a deciding limitation -- then it stands to reason that many things can impact what can be authored depending on the subjective choices of the participants.  Following that to it's conclusion, it would seem that, since you yourself argue that there are some limits on authoring and those limits are subjective, that different styles of authoring can exist that serve to limit what can be authored into the fiction.  This means that how the fiction is authored in game is actually based on subjective preferences of the players, and that, depending on those preferences, this can very well be a difference between killing an orc and creating a map in the library.
> 
> Returning briefly to the game implications of the fiction not existing -- I find this quasi-nihilist as the very concept of the hobby is creating and interacting withing a shared fiction.  Stating that it's really a game of make believe and so has no impact in the real world is saying that RPGs can't engage our emotions and thoughts in ways that benefit us outside of telling ourselves a story.  There are a number of games out there that are built on the concept of using the fiction as a separation from reality to explore things in reality -- to beat around the bush, so to speak, of emotionally fraught things and find ways to engage them.  This definition also completely disregards LARPing, where there's a mix of reality and fiction ongoing.  Or even SCA, where there's a fictional construct that's entirely played out in the real world.  Your definition of the fiction as not existing is so against so many core tenets of the broader hobby of roleplaying that, as I said, it borders on nihilism.
> 
> That wasn't as brief as I expected.




Heh, well you are pretty clear 

I think I don't really agree with you. Lets take a game of checkers as an example. Some moves are allowed by the rules of checkers, and some are not, they are invalid. That says nothing about the differences or lack of differences between the ALLOWED moves, and if you allowed more or less types of moves in your checkers game it would change the results of play, but it wouldn't change the nature of the sameness or difference in character of specific allowed moves.

In terms of that sameness or difference, the fact of making a legal move is still the same, regardless of which move it is. It is a move, made by either the red or black player. All such moves equally fulfill the "now the next player makes a legal move" structure of the game. In the same way [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s assertion about the similarity of finding a map or killing an orc is an assertion about the nature of the action in terms of its place within the game. 

I'm pretty sure [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is NOT saying that "there is no difference IN THE FICTION between killing an orc and finding a map." That wasn't what he meant (again at the risk of being the interpreter of Pemerton here). I think what he IS asserting is that when the players simply decide to open a door, without any influence over what is behind it nor knowledge of what is there vs what might lurk behind the other door down the hall, then you can't call the decision 'agency' as, from their point of view, either one might conceal an orc or a map, or nothing, and NONE of them will relate any more or less to the concerns of the players, their goals in play, etc. 

I think this likewise addresses [MENTION=6682826]CH[/MENTION]auchou's observation that a game where the DM simply responds with his narration to each action and the player's simply wander in a hidden knowledge maze is about as interactive as a 'pick your own adventure' book. It does have CHOICE, but without knowledge there's no meaningful player agency, and the game doesn't, except by chance, address the concerns of the players.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> I think you've gone bang over the side on this one.
> 
> "Gygaxian dungeoneering" doesn't fall under your definition of an RPG?



No. I didn't say that. I said that my account of the "fundamental act" of RPGing has a limitation: it doesn't incorporate Gygaxian dungeoneering.

That doesn't mean that Gygaxain dungeoneering is not RPGing. It means my account of the "fundamental act" has a limitation: there is an instance of RPGing of which my account is not true. However, given that the OP expressly asked its question about non-Gygaxian play, that limitation can be set aside. (And imperfect analogy: you can send people to the moon using Newtonian mechanics, even though you know they're not accurate for reasons give by Einstein and others, because you're not doing something where those limitations become significant.)



Lanefan said:


> But it's also not helpful to deny the reality of imaginary things in this case
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The world around a PC is that PC's reality; and though both are obviously products of our imagination it's far easier to visualize and discuss them when one looks through the eyes of the PC (searching a study) rather than our own eyes (looking at papers and rolling dice).



This is just loose metaphor.

I can (perhaps) look at things through your eyes (literally) if some complex bio/electronic rig was attached to your optic nerves and my brain. That would be weird, but if it's not possible that's only because the rig hasn't been invented yet.

But I can't (in any literal sense) look at anything through the eyes of an imaginary person. That's metaphysically impossible. And all that such talk means is that I imagine what that person is seeing.

And this is absolutely crucial to any sensible discussion about RPGing.

The process, in the real world, whereby it turns out that I will or won't find a map in a study, is a terrificially complex causal one - assuming it's a map drawn on paper with ink, it depends upon (i) causal processes that generate plants and minerals; (ii) causal processes whereby humans turn those into paper and ink and a building with a study; (iii) causal processes whereby someone is socialised and educated into some grasp of what cartography is; (iv) causal processes whereby someone is socialised and educatedinto some grasp of what a stuy is; (v) causal proceses whereby a human draws a map; (vi) causal processes whereby a human builds a building with a study in it; (vi) causal processes whereby I come into being and end up in that study; (vii) causal processes (which could involve people, pigeons, the wind, errant letters falling out of a courier's basket, or any other vast range of things) whereby _that_ map ends up in _that_ study for some temporal period that overlaps with my presence there.

The process, in the real world - which is where RPGing takes place - whereby it turns out that my PC will or won't find a map in a study, is overall more simple (though still complex): (i) social processes that bring a group of people together to engage in the collective activity of RPGing; (ii) those processes mentioned in (i) further leading to a consensus among the group that my PC is in a (collectively imagined) study; (iii) my forming the desire to delcare as an action that my PC searches the study; (iv) a continuation of the aformentioned social processes leading to a new concsensus that my PC is in the collectively imagined study having just found a (collectively imagined) map.

And as far as this bit of this thread is concerned, all the action is in (iv): _what is the social process_ whereby we form a consensus that my PC has found a map in the study; or, conversely, form a consensus that s/he is mapless despite have turned the study upside down in her search? That process will have almost nothing in commmon the process that determines whether or not I find a real map in real study. It will be a process for bringing it about that a group of people all agree on the content of their shared imaginings. There are different ways to do that.

If we reach agreement because the GM decides, that's an actual process for establishing consensus. If we reach agreement because the player decides, that's a different process for establishing consensus (and I personally think can make for boring RPGing: the so-called Czege Principle; some people think this is overstated).

If we reach agreement because we agree that, if the coin lands heads the player decides, and if it lands tails the GM decides, and then we toss the coin and stick to our agreement - well, that's a different process again. Replace the coin-toss with a more nuanced way of setting odds for a dice roll, and you have the process I prefer.

None of these is more "realistic" than any other: all are actual processes that can happen in the actual world. My PC's discovery of a map in the study doesn't becomre more realistic because the GM's decision generated the consenus rather than the outcome of a dice roll.



Lanefan said:


> This is what I just can't fathom, and why I refer to Schroedinger's maps.



JRRT _made up_ Lord of the Rings. He didn't receive it handed down on a tablet.

Do you call it "Schroedinger's story"? I assume not. All fiction has a point in time _before which_ it had not yet been authored, and _after which_ it had been authored. Authoring it earlier in time, or later in time, relative to when you share it with someone else, doesn't make it more or less "real".



Lanefan said:


> Now a DM can always make this up on the fly, but there's inherent risks involved.



Well, here are two risks of the GM making up some fiction in advance.

(1) It's not interesting when eventually the GM tells it to the players.

(2) The players were really hoping the fiction would be X, but the GM tells them Y.​
((2) may lead to (1), but can also be its own thing; and (1) can happen even if (2) isn't true.)

There is also something that is certain if the GM makes up some fiction in advance: the content of the shared fiction is a manifesttaion of the GM's agency and authorship, and not the players'.

Everything in life has risks, and has consequences. I don't need protecting against my preferred approach to RPGing!



Lanefan said:


> Overt knock-on effects are just that - overt, meaning obvious - and can (and should) be narrated and-or dealt with at the time.



Why?

If I punch you today, you might throw a rock at me tomorrow. Many overt consequences occur separated in time. And space.

Eg in my BW game, in the first session the PCs made a fool of a servitor called Athog. Many sessions later, when one of the PCs had a misfortune to run into a mugger in an alley, it was Athog. That's an overt consequence.

In my 4e game, when the PCs were 10th level they travelled back in time and rescued a young mage who'd been trapped in a mirror by her mad teacher. Some time later (about six months of play and two or three levels) they learned that she had become a Vecna-worshipping necromancer. Some further time later they learned that she had become an archlich and Vecna's leading exarch (it may be that they didn't learn that until they were 30th level, so probably another 4 years of play later). Those are overt consequences.

Part of being a good GM in a player driven game is keeping track of the pressure points that the players have generated for their PCs, and then bringing them to bear in subsequent framing or subsequent failure narration. That's what is meant when "indie"-type RPGers refer to "going where the action is". This is also how you avoid risks (1) and (2) that I identified.



Lanefan said:


> I'm talking about covert knock-on effects - things that happen that the PCs (and thus players) don't know about until later, if ever at all.



One point of [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION]'s post is this: if the stuff is never known by the players then _how is it part of the gameplay at all_. I mean, a GM can imagine, if s/he wants to, that a PC's horse squashed a bug as the PCs was riding along, and this bug was very precious to the Faerie Queen, who is therefore very mad at the PC. But that GM, in imaging those things, is not playing a RPG with his/her friends. S/he's just me telling herself a story.

Suppose this actually matters to play: the GM decides that the Faerie Queen sends some pixies to kill the PC with their invisible archery.

If the player never gave any indication that s/he wanted to play a game where bugs might be precious; never sought for, or displayed any interest in, any sign that the Faerie Queen was after his/her PC; then we have an utterly GM-driven game. This is a literal case of the GM reading a story to the players - a story about the PC squashing a bug, making the Faerie Queen angry, and therefore being the target of a pixie SWAT team.

That may be a good story, or not. The players may enjoy it, or not. But clearly there is no significant player agency involved in RPGing like that. Which was [MENTION=6682826]CH[/MENTION]achou's main point.



Lanefan said:


> this is the sort of thing I always end up doing if I try to make stuff like this up on the fly[/I] - I'll have said earlier when the party was still outside that the structure appears to be about 20' high, but now hours or even sessions later when they enter a room and I'm asked "what do I see" I'll forget what I said before and narrate a 25' high room with a spiral staircase leading up through the ceiling to what looks like another room above!  And quite rightly a player will call me on this; as it's horrible DMing.



OK. That's a fact about you. I can tell you that it doesn't generalise.

Besides quirks of individual memory, there are techniques that can be used to avoid what you describe here. For instance, by focusing the fiction on stuff that the players are committed to - by _going where the action is_ - you increase the likelihood that details that get established will be salient to all involved. (Eg if it matters to the players how high the structure and ceiling are - let's say they know the map is in a room with a 25' ceiling - then they'll remember that the room didn't have a ceiling that high, and so you'll never get to the point of narrating your 25' ceiling and stiarcase.)

A technique that 4e uses is to use a tier system for escalation of the fiction, which means that the likelihood of replaying the same place is fairly low, for any given place. (It's almost the opposite of 4e in that respect.)

Of course a tried-and-true method that is independent of game systems is to write stuff down. Or to get the players to do so.



Lanefan said:


> If she decides that behind the door is an old larder full of rotting food the obvious response from the players is "We should have been able to smell that", leading to either a retcon (absolutely unacceptable) or some quick backpedalling by the DM.



Four things:

(1) People don't always notice every smell that in principle they might, so the players' claim about his/her PC is not actually true. (Now if it's his/her PC's schtick to have a high Smell/Taste Perception bonus, that's a different story - in one of my RM games one of the players built such a PC, so that he would be able to notice poisons or drugs in his food; and I think we may have had another PC who had a high bonus in this skill to help with cooking. But part of being a good GM is adapting your narration to the salient abilities of the PCs.)

(2) This could happen just as easily if the GM had already written that down in her notes. Writing it down in advance doesn't create some guarantee that you'll (i) remember it before you read it out, nor (ii) that you'll think of all the implications of what you've written down.

(3) There might be some reason why it couldn't be smelled (eg maybe it's a visual illusion).

(4) Retcons happen all the time. I've had GMs tell me that the room is X by Y feet, then realise they've miscounted the squares and correct it. I've had GMs not mention something that should have been obvious, and therefore let us take back action declarations which make no sense in light of the thing that wasn't mentioned at the start. Etc. So you're going to have to tell me more about why _this_ retcon is not acceptable.



Lanefan said:


> one of the keys to any of these discussions is trying to get the imaginary reality to mirror real reality where and how it can.



That's completely orthongal. It's also contentious.

Why is it orthongal? An imaginary reality in which my PC finds a map in the study mirrors reality relatively plausibly (studies are good places to find maps, if there are any to be found in the neighbourhood). It doesn't become _more_ plausible because we agreed on that shared fiction because the GM said so, rather than agreeing on it because of the outcome of a dice roll.

Why is it contentious? D&D does not mirror reality in many places. It has different biology (eg dragons can fly and breathe fire; there are giant arthropods). It has different physics (eg conservation laws don't apply; there are other "planes" of existence). It has different sociology (eg societies are primarily pre-modern in technology yet very often modern in some of their basic attitudes and behavious). It has different economics and ecology (eg large numbers of being that are essentially humans are able to live without, it seems, hunting, gathering, rearing animals or growing crops). Etc.

Yet D&D is the most popular of all RPGs.



Lanefan said:


> Player: "I open the door and look beyond it.  What do I see?"
> DM: "What are you looking for?"
> Player: "I'll tell you what I'm looking for once you tell me what I'm looking _at_."
> 
> Translation: the player can't say what she's looking for until the DM tells her at least the basics of what she can already see.



I wrote a whole essay in reply to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] discussing this. If the game system and conventions of play permit the player to ask the GM to introduce more fiction than s/he can. As I said, this happens fairly often in my 4e game.

If the GM wants to force the player to commit, because that's what the game expects - _why are you looking behind that door? what are you hoping for?_ - then your player who won't commit is simply refusing to play the game. For instance, a player who won't commit simply can't play Burning Wheel as it is written. And is going to have trouble with Cortex+ Heroic also. And will probably come unstuck in 4e skill challenges.

Part of exercising your agency over the fiction, as a player, is to commit. A player can't wait to find out whether or not a blow will be a killing one before rolling an attack die. There's no in principle reason why looking through a door should be different.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Of course.  But someone (and were I a player, I'll guarantee it'd be me) is almost immediately going to ask the DM what we as PCs know of the local and-or regional geography and culture, if we haven't yet been told such:
> 
> - how big is the city / town / village / waystation we're in
> - what's its population mix (as in, vague ratio of humans, elves, dwarves, etc.) and how well do they generally get along
> - what realm are we in
> - who's in charge locally / regionally / nationally
> - what's the local culture (as in, is it based on a historical human culture or just generic medieval or are we even in human-held lands at all) and ethos (as in, chaotic gold rush frontier or peaceful placid farm town or orderly military borderpost etc.)
> - what local / regional / national history do we need to know about
> - what's the general climate / terrain like here (as in, are we in a desert or the arctic or temperate forests or a jungle, etc.; and is it mountainous or flat or hilly or a seacoast etc.)
> - etc.
> 
> And the DM can make this all up now (difficult) or she can have it determined ahead of time (much easier)



Not that difficult. In Traveller you've got population as part of the world gen system (in D&D the PC woudn't know the populatoin - demography didn't exist as a discipline in the mediaeval period - and so it shouldn't come up). You've also got atmosphere and hydographics, which allows you to say something about climate. You've got government type and law levels, and can easily make up the name of a ruler if it comes up.

Another option is, if the player cares so much, to ask her: "Your PC grew up here - who's in charge?"

I mean, this stuff can't be impossible, right, because there are actually people in the real world who are doing it!


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think this is a case of the rules of classic D&D getting in the way of playing classic D&D.
> 
> The ranger's 'never get lost' ability was described in a very early article in SR back in 1975 IIRC, definitely in the days of OD&D. In the context of exploratory hexcrawl play governed by the AH: _Survival_ game this was a reasonable ability. It negated the regular 'getting lost' checks which were a significant random hazard of this procedure, and only within a single type of terrain. Gygax imported this class almost verbatim into 1e, but at the same time dropped the use of _Survival_ as a mechanic (and references to any other external rules, like Chainmail). There was a process for getting lost also in 1e, so IN THEORY nothing changed.
> 
> In reality most groups, by the 1e era (say DMG release, so 1979) had started to leave behind the procedural exploration puzzle Gygaxian player skill game paradigm behind. In view of the reality of a lot of play at that time, semi-directed plots with a mixture of GM fiat/fudging, fixed maps/encounters, and some of the original random hazard generation, you are correct.



Is there a "non" missing in you first sentence - classic rules getting in the way of non-classic play?

In any event, I agree with the rest of what I've quoted - that's what I said in my OP - except for one bit. I looked up my copy of SR v1, no 2, Summer 1975, and there's no mention of the ranger not being able to get lost. I'm 99% sure it's not in the AD&D books either, as I'm not familiar with the ability and I am familiar with those books.

If the ability _did_ exist, though, then your analysis is spot-on.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Since the GM and players are 'Playing to see what happens' any argument that a 'challenge has been bypassed' is moot, it just isn't part of the agenda. If the players WANT a mechanically and tactically challenging encounter, then that is bound to be provided, assuming I as the DM am doing my job.



Absolutely. It's not like I'm going to run out of encounter ideas and so we all have to give up the game!



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Here are two examples of play in which nobody at the table did anything akin to worldbuilding, but I want to see if you have some other ideas in terms of what that entails:
> 
> 1) A group of people sit down to play 1e AD&D. The DM declares, after character generation, that the PCs find themselves in a stone chamber, presumably underground. He proceeds to generate the room using the Appendix in the DMG for random dungeon generation. Play proceeds from there with no content or assumptions having been established beforehand.
> 
> 2) A group of people sit down to play classic Traveller. Again they generate characters and the GM generates a subsector map and some planetary systems using the tables in the LBBs. Play proceeds entirely by the use of these tables (which provide for generating planetary systems, creatures, NPCs, governments, random ship encounters, the ability to find ships, cargo, and patrons, buy equipment, etc.
> 
> Now, I think that 2 COULD be said to rely on the conceptual framework of an Interstellar Empire, etc inherent in Traveller's implicit setting. Of course this is probably no more worldbuilding than the implicit milieu implied by the available races, classes, and monsters which will appear in the random dungeon, though it has a wider geographical scope. Anyway, I wouldn't exactly call either one 'worldbuilding', yet there's definitely some RPG happening there. Admittedly the players are going to be a little pressed to relate their actions to any larger agenda that a more realized setting would probably facilitate, but depending on how free they are to extrapolate that might not be an impediment at all, it might even be an advantage for some types of player.



I gave exactly these two examples upthread (well, in our Traveller game we only rolled up a starting world, and I had four worlds already rolled up that I dropped in when I needed the; but it's pretty close; our AD&D session was just as you describe).

Now I think that Traveller provides resources (the implied setting, the world generation, random patrons, the implied backstory of a randomly rolled lifepath-generated PC) that lead more quickly to a more rich setting than AD&D. (That's one reason why our AD&D was one session whereas Traveller is still going.)

But AD&D isn't devoid of them. In my AD&D session the cleric player took the Know History spell. (I think it's from OA originally, but I had a combined spell list written down.) And the player's backstory for the LN cleric entering the dungeon was to look for ancient scrolls of his order believed to be in the dungeon. So when I rolled up an octagonal but otherwise boring room on the random tables, I spiced it up with narration of some weird runes and the like. And the player had his PC cast Know History, and I made up some more stuff: the PC (and player) learned that the sigils were sigils of Chaos, and that the octagon (and other figures featuring the number 8, like 8 crossed arrows) was a sign of Chaos. The chaotic origins of the dungeon also explained its weird architecture (an inevitable outcome of Appendix A), and suggested that the scrolls of Law that the cleric was looking for must have been taken here as loot or for destruction by the chaotics.

I'll admit it's not going to win a prize, but enough of that sort of stuff and in a few sessions a picture of the world would start to emerge.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I'm pretty sure [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is NOT saying that "there is no difference IN THE FICTION between killing an orc and finding a map." That wasn't what he meant (again at the risk of being the interpreter of Pemerton here). I think what he IS asserting is that when the players simply decide to open a door, without any influence over what is behind it nor knowledge of what is there vs what might lurk behind the other door down the hall, then you can't call the decision 'agency' as, from their point of view, either one might conceal an orc or a map, or nothing, and NONE of them will relate any more or less to the concerns of the players, their goals in play, etc.
> 
> I think this likewise addresses [MENTION=6682826]CH[/MENTION]auchou's observation that a game where the DM simply responds with his narration to each action and the player's simply wander in a hidden knowledge maze is about as interactive as a 'pick your own adventure' book. It does have CHOICE, but without knowledge there's no meaningful player agency, and the game doesn't, except by chance, address the concerns of the players.



Right, that's my point about agency. Triggering the GM to tell you more stuff isn't agency, except in the most mininal sense that it's an alternative to everyone just sitting there silently.

And you're right that I don't think killing an orc is, of necessity, the same thing in the fiction as finding a map. It might be more significant. It might be less significant. Obviously they involve different imagined causal processes.

The reason I say they're structurally equivalent is not just that they're legal moves, but that they're legal moves for the same reason: both add new information to the description in a way that is genre faithful, consistent with already established fiction, salient to the game participants, etc.

People can have any number of reasons for saying that only the GM can make one of those moves. But those reasons can't include anything about what is "realistic", or any allged _necessary_ consequence for resolution methods resulting from the metaphysics of actual maps and actual deaths.

******************************************

 [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION], I'm replying only to those bits of your post where I think I've got something interesting to say in reponse.



hawkeyefan said:


> So here you mean things like the GM deciding this is going to be a court intrigue based game in a D&D style setting meaning that the player who wanted to be a barbarian is kind of SOL, right?
> 
> <snp>
> 
> I don't think I as the GM wield my secret knowledge like a club to bash the players with. I establish elements of the games that I think will be compelling. I don't do it simply to thwart my players and any ideas that they may have.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> When you comment on the worst version of GM backstory boiling down to the Gm reading a story to the players...is that all that different from the GM reading the results of rolls on random tables to the players?



Here I think I just want to say a bit more about how I see things.

By GM control over "big picture" I don't mean so much the setting/genre conventions you raise - I see that as more about reaching group consensus on setting basics (eg my Cortex+ Fantasy game started with a vote for Japan vs vikings, because I'd written pre-gens in a way to deliberately leave either option open). I mean stuff like who the nemesis will be, what the basic trajectory of play will be (eg the final fight will be against Tiamat). Then the nitty-gritty stuff is things like (to go back to an upthread example) whether there are bribeable officials around. So whereever the players look to engage the fiction, they find stuff that's there because the GM put it there. (Your mercenary comany example is more-or-less the opposite of what I'm talking about here.)

APs are obvious examples of what I've just described, but not the only one.

Now, on club-bashing: that's not my issue (at least, if that's similar to "fairness" which [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] raised not too far upthread). The GM can be fair with secret backstory and I stil wouldn't like it. My issue is that it makes the game about what the GM wants it to be about. So it's a concern that's cumulative with the stuff about framing (both big picture framing and "nitty-gritty" framing.

And on random tables - I agree that they are no panacea, and I'm using them in Traveller because without them it wouldn't be Traveller! But I think they're different from pre-authorship, because (i) they don't lock the GM into one track of fiction, so don't cause the same GM-focus issue that pre-authored framing tends to (the players can even help make sense of the random roll, as with the ambergris example), and (ii) because they happen in the course of play, often triggered by player action declarations (eg roll for a starship encouner when you leave the system), they don't generate declaration-blocking/defeating secret backstory, but rather feed into the resolution of the declared action.



hawkeyefan said:


> As for the example, I don't know if I entirely agree with your assessment. I understand it, and I can see why you may not like it, but the choice of words you choose to describe it seems off to me. In that scenario, the PC searching the study has not failed. He has successfully searched the study and determined that the map is not there. I don't see this as the Gm preventing the player's success in the way that you seem to.
> 
> I do agree this is a case of the GM's authorship taking priority over the player's attempt to establish world details....but I don't think that is a problem in this case. As I mentioned above, I can see it being a problem in other areas, but details such as the location of an item being searched for seem to me to be safely in the hands of the GM.
> 
> As a GM I'm far more interested in a player contributing to the shared fiction through character actions and relationships and desires, and how all those things can impact worldbulding, rather than in a player trying to author a solution to a problem they are facing.



I've broken this out because I think it's probably the biggest deal, and has generated the most discussion in the thread.

So first, _the player trying to author a solution to a problem_. If the problem is a charging orc, the player authors (or tries to author) a solution by rolling the combat dice. If the problem is lack of a map, the player authors (or tries to author) a solution by looking for the map in the study and rolling a perception (or whatever is appropriate) check.

As I said to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION], and have just reiterated above to [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], I think these have the same structure as moves in the game. If one is acceptable from the pont of view of abstract principle, so is the other.

Now there can be reasons more particular than abstract principle that someone allows one but not the other. You have reasons for the GM specifying the locations of maps, but not the deaths of orcs. What I'm saying is that I don't see how that reason can be aversion to players authoring solutions to problems, given that (I'm assuming) you are happy with that in the orc case.

As to whether this sort of pre-authorship used to adjudicate action declaration is "thwarting" or not - I discussed this in some long replies to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION].

If the player's Perception/Search/whatever check is for the purpose of triggering the GM to describe what is in the room - to narrate more fiction - then saying "There's no map here" is not thwarting. It's givng the player what s/he wanted in making a good roll.

If the player's Perception check is with the desire that the fiction be along the lines of _my PC finds a map in this study_ then saying, without regard to the results of the check, "There's no map here", _is_ thwarting. Because the fiction does not take the form the player wanted. (It would be like vetoing - overtly or via rolling secretly or whatver - the attack roll on the orc, and just narrating to the player, "It dodges your blow" without actually having regard to the result of the to hit roll.)

If players never declare perception checks (or Streetwise checks to find bribeable officials, or  . . .) hoping that the fiction will be X rather than Y then this won't come up. But equally a game in which the players spend a significant amount of time declaring checks  whose function is to trigger GM narration rather than impose their own will on the fiction are, in my estimation of the situation, being rather passive. They're not really exercising agency.


----------



## pemerton

billd91 said:


> Before we climb too high up the badwrongfun bandwagon, the GM does, at times, have to GM for him own enjoyment as well as the players. Thinking through the implications of PC actions is a fun thought-exercise and can really help stimulate ideas for how to connect events and people within the campaign world and enrich the experience for him players.



In [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s example, the connections are to events and people that have never been salient in play (the assassins, the attempt on the Duke's life) and that the players have no knowledge of, let alone agency in respect of.

I don't really see how this enriches the experience for the players, _unless _the players are looking for the GM, in due course, to tell them some fiction that has little or no connection to actual play. Now the _unless_ is real here - ie I'm not asserting there are no such players - but I don't see that it's unfair to describe this as the GM telling the players a story.



billd91 said:


> But it also can have a more direct benefit for the players as well even if that isn't immediately realized. They may not know they had a brush with an assassination plot right away, but the GM doesn't know when or how the PCs might circle around in their careers and interact with the same general locale or NPCs again. Seeing how the actions of the PCs have affected the game world beyond their immediate reach can really be satisfying.



Satisfying for whom? If the GM, that gets back to [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION]'s point about playing the game without need for players. If the players, then - as I said above - their satisfaction is resulting from the GM telling them a story.

I also think there is a metaphor-induced illusion at work here. In the real world, if I do something, and then later on learn of some suprising consequence it had, there can be a satisfaction in observing my causal power at work.

But in the RPG case that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] describes, the players aren't seeing _their_ causal power at work. They're seeing the GM's power to write fiction at work. Again, it's the satisfaction of being told a story by the GM in which your PC happens to figure.



billd91 said:


> the idea of a small action or chance encounter having broader implications is part of the inspiration literature, particularly with projects like the Thieves' World anthology.



But that doesn't depend at all on the sort of thing [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] talks about.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> Well, here are two risks of the GM making up some fiction in advance.(1) It's not interesting when eventually the GM tells it to the players.
> 
> (2) The players were really hoping the fiction would be X, but the GM tells them Y.​
> ((2) may lead to (1), but can also be its own thing; and (1) can happen even if (2) isn't true.)
> 
> There is also something that is certain if the GM makes up some fiction in advance: the content of the shared fiction is a manifesttaion of the GM's agency and authorship, and not the players'.
> 
> ...(snip)...
> 
> In my 4e game, when the PCs were 10th level they travelled back in time and rescued a young mage who'd been trapped in a mirror by her mad teacher. Some time later (about six months of play and two or three levels) they learned that she had become a Vecna-worshipping necromancer. Some further time later they learned that she had become an archlich and Vecna's leading exarch (it may be that they didn't learn that until they were 30th level, so probably another 4 years of play later). Those are overt consequences.
> 
> Part of being a good GM in a player driven game is keeping track of the pressure points that the players have generated for their PCs, and then bringing them to bear in subsequent framing or subsequent failure narration. That's what is meant when "indie"-type RPGers refer to "going where the action is". This is also how you avoid risks (1) and (2) that I identified.




Doesn't your GM-introduced fiction of the young mage becoming a Vecna-worshipping necro and then an archlich have the same risk of (1) and (2) in your points above?

EDIT: I don't see (1) and (2) as exclusive risks of the GM making up some fiction in advance.


----------



## Caliban

pemerton said:


> I've got multiple posts in this thread, plus links to others, which explain the start for the Traveller game.
> 
> The "universe" consisted of some PC-gen and world gen rules, and the implicit flavour of those. I dropped some worlds I'd already rolled up into the setting as we needed them.




You mean you thwarted player agency by having secret information in the form of pre-generated worlds that would trigger GM narration when the players traveled there -  instead of letting the players impose their will on the fiction by declaring what kind of worlds they wanted to find.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> As for the example, I don't know if I entirely agree with your assessment. I understand it, and I can see why you may not like it, but the choice of words you choose to describe it seems off to me. In that scenario, the PC searching the study has not failed. He has successfully searched the study and determined that the map is not there. I don't see this as the Gm preventing the player's success in the way that you seem to.



Yep.



> As a GM I'm far more interested in a player contributing to the shared fiction through character actions and relationships and desires, *and how all those things can impact worldbulding*, rather than in a player trying to author a solution to a problem they are facing.



 Agreed except for the bolded bit, on which I only partly agree.

Major worldbuilding e.g. where are the continents, how many moons are there, the pantheons, etc. should be left to the DM.
Minor worldbuilding, such as your example of the Fighter's mercenary company below, can be cool when done by a player provided a) that the DM retains veto rights and b) that it doesn't veer into probem-solving
Problem-solving worldbuilding, where a player tries to generate a solution to an in-game challenge by authoring or re-authoring some aspect of the game world, is just another form of either metagaming or cheating depending how/why its done and with what degree of malice.



> So here you mean things like the GM deciding this is going to be a court intrigue based game in a D&D style setting meaning that the player who wanted to be a barbarian is kind of SOL, right? I pretty much agree....I think that any such constraints are probably best established by the group beforehand. Or at the very least, the GM can share his intentions with the players and get their buy in.



I don't know - a berserker in a court-intrigue game could provide all kinds of entertainment and amusement. 

But yes, if something's likely not going to work it's best to say so up front.  That way players can either steer away from it or find a creative way to force it to work.



> Sure, it is common. I've played in games like it quite a bit. Most of the games I've played in have had at least some element of it. My current game that I DM certainly does. The difference is that I don't think I as the GM wield my secret knowledge like a club to bash the players with. I establish elements of the games that I think will be compelling. I don't do it simply to thwart my players and any ideas that they may have.



Exactly.  These elements are in many cases established before I even fully know who the players and-or PCs will be at the time they're encountered.  And because of this there'll be times when something comes off as easier or harder than it otherwise might, simply because of who is trying to deal with it.  For example I might put together an underground adventure with a lot of undead in it...and then the players run a party of Druids (who do better outdoors) and Illusionists (undead are generally immune to illusions) into it.  Conversely, they might take in a group of nothing but high-charisma Clerics who can turn or destroy undead on a relative whim and sail through.



> For instance, one player came up with an idea for a Fighter character. This was our first delve into 5E, so he kept the character simple. As we played, he slowly began to develop a history for the character. He had been in a mercenary company prior to joining the party. He'd left because the mercenary company had started to take on contracts that he found to be loathsome. He had befriended one of the other PCs with a military background when they had fought on the same side of a conflict.
> 
> So, totally separate of my pre-conceived GM backstory, the player introduced the idea of this mercenary company.



This sort of thing, as I said above, can be all kinds of cool as long as the DM retains the right of veto (though in this particular example it's hard to think of any reason to veto it).



> I ran with that and it's become a major part of our campaign. I altered many of my ideas to fit with the idea of this mercenary company.



Now this would be something I may or may not do, depending on circumstances.  Maybe the mercenary company eventually become part of the story's villainy - the party have to go through them to get to whoever's sending them out on these "loathsome contracts", for example.  But the mercenaries - either some individuals or together as a company - would probably rear their ugly heads at some point. 

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> This is just loose metaphor.
> 
> I can (perhaps) look at things through your eyes (literally) if some complex bio/electronic rig was attached to your optic nerves and my brain. That would be weird, but if it's not possible that's only because the rig hasn't been invented yet.
> 
> But I can't (in any literal sense) look at anything through the eyes of an imaginary person. That's metaphysically impossible. And all that such talk means is that I imagine what that person is seeing.



Yes, you imagine what that person is seeing: an alternate (imaginary) reality.  What's so hard about that?



> And this is absolutely crucial to any sensible discussion about RPGing.



Yes, but in the opposite way to that which you intend, I think. 



> The process, in the real world,



...and in the game world... 







> whereby it turns out that I will or won't find a map in a study, is a terrificially complex causal one - assuming it's a map drawn on paper with ink, it depends upon (i) causal processes that generate plants and minerals; (ii) causal processes whereby humans turn those into paper and ink and a building with a study; (iii) causal processes whereby someone is socialised and educated into some grasp of what cartography is; (iv) causal processes whereby someone is socialised and educatedinto some grasp of what a stuy is; (v) causal proceses whereby a human draws a map; (vi) causal processes whereby a human builds a building with a study in it; (vi) causal processes whereby I come into being and end up in that study; (vii) causal processes (which could involve people, pigeons, the wind, errant letters falling out of a courier's basket, or any other vast range of things) whereby _that_ map ends up in _that_ study for some temporal period that overlaps with my presence there.



Exactly the same as what happens in the game world, as seen/known/experienced by the PCs there.



> The process, in the real world - which is where RPGing takes place - whereby it turns out that my PC will or won't find a map in a study, is overall more simple (though still complex): (i) social processes that bring a group of people together to engage in the collective activity of RPGing; (ii) those processes mentioned in (i) further leading to a consensus among the group that my PC is in a (collectively imagined) study; (iii) my forming the desire to delcare as an action that my PC searches the study; (iv) a continuation of the aformentioned social processes leading to a new concsensus that my PC is in the collectively imagined study having just found a (collectively imagined) map.



This describes what goes on for the people at the table but does not at all describe what goes on for the PCs in the game world, which is the basis for what I've been trying to say.



> And as far as this bit of this thread is concerned, all the action is in (iv): _what is the social process_ whereby we form a consensus that my PC has found a map in the study; or, conversely, form a consensus that s/he is mapless despite have turned the study upside down in her search?



After session 0 this social process gets subsumed into the rules and conventions of the game, where said rules detail how the imaginary game-world reality is brought to life.  And for my part the rules and conventions of the game say the map is wherever the DM says it is, and it's up to the PCs to find it.  The DM presents the game world, and the players-as-PCs interact with it as they like.  They could search for the map, they could stop for lunch, they could burn the place down...up to them.  Unless an NPC picks it up and moves it (unlikely, as the PCs have already cleared the place out) the map ain't going anywhere - it is where it is.



> If we reach agreement because the GM decides, that's an actual process for establishing consensus. If we reach agreement because the player decides, that's a different process for establishing consensus (and I personally think can make for boring RPGing: the so-called Czege Principle; some people think this is overstated).
> 
> If we reach agreement because we agree that, if the coin lands heads the player decides, and if it lands tails the GM decides, and then we toss the coin and stick to our agreement - well, that's a different process again. Replace the coin-toss with a more nuanced way of setting odds for a dice roll, and you have the process I prefer.



The problem with the coin-flip model is that it means nothing can be done ahead of time.  You can't foreshadow the map being in the breadbox by having the PCs catch a strange whiff of the smell of baking three days prior if the map's location isn't determined until the search is already underway.  You can't draw out a map of the castle on Friday for your game on Sunday to allow you to better describe it; nor can you plan out the occupants ahead of time.



> JRRT _made up_ Lord of the Rings. He didn't receive it handed down on a tablet.
> 
> Do you call it "Schroedinger's story"? I assume not. All fiction has a point in time _before which_ it had not yet been authored, and _after which_ it had been authored. Authoring it earlier in time, or later in time, relative to when you share it with someone else, doesn't make it more or less "real".



In the case of a novel it sure does; in that if you haven't authored it yet you don't have anything to share with anyone.  That said, LotR really does play out very much like a mid-length D&D campaign; and I bet JRRT had flowcharts and diagrams for who went where and met up with who before he sat down and filled in the details.



> Well, here are two risks of the GM making up some fiction in advance.
> 
> (1) It's not interesting when eventually the GM tells it to the players.
> 
> (2) The players were really hoping the fiction would be X, but the GM tells them Y.​
> ((2) may lead to (1), but can also be its own thing; and (1) can happen even if (2) isn't true.)



 (1) is always a risk no matter who's doing the authoring or when.  (2) - yes, this happens all the time in all types of fiction, not just RPGs; and the reader/player just has to deal with it and move on.  Not everybody likes that Frodo didn't drop the ring into the lava himself, and that he turned at the very last minute.  Not everybody liked that Ned Stark lost his head at the end of book 1 of SoIaF.  And not everybody likes that the BBEG they thought their PCs had just killed was later seen slinking off into the night, very much alive.



> If I punch you today, you might throw a rock at me tomorrow. Many overt consequences occur separated in time. And space.
> 
> Eg in my BW game, in the first session the PCs made a fool of a servitor called Athog. Many sessions later, when one of the PCs had a misfortune to run into a mugger in an alley, it was Athog. That's an overt consequence.



 OK, fair enough.

But by the same token, if you punch me today *I might hire someone else to work you over tomorrow*; and if the someone else is halfway discreet, though you might suspect the connection between yesterday's punch and today's beating you'll never know for sure.  Hell, for all you know it might have come about because of something you did last week, or last year.

(I've bolded the covert knock-on effect here: that I've involved someone else)



> Part of being a good GM in a player driven game is keeping track of the pressure points that the players have generated for their PCs, and then bringing them to bear in subsequent framing or subsequent failure narration. That's what is meant when "indie"-type RPGers refer to "going where the action is". This is also how you avoid risks (1) and (2) that I identified.



I play RPGs to get away from pressure, not add to it. 

This is something I'm finding in the game I play in right now: we've as a party/company been operating at other people's beck and call (e.g. being heroes, solving large-scale problems, preventing disasters, etc.) for so long we've almost forgotten what it means to work for ourselves.  I'm really REALLY looking forward to a time (which at this point appears to be distressingly far in the future) when we can tell the rest of the world to bugger off, and adventure on our own terms for our own purposes and-or gain...or not adventure at all for a while.



> OK. That's a fact about you. I can tell you that it doesn't generalise.
> 
> Besides quirks of individual memory, there are techniques that can be used to avoid what you describe here. For instance, by focusing the fiction on stuff that the players are committed to - by _going where the action is_ - you increase the likelihood that details that get established will be salient to all involved. (Eg if it matters to the players how high the structure and ceiling are - let's say they know the map is in a room with a 25' ceiling - then they'll remember that the room didn't have a ceiling that high, and so you'll never get to the point of narrating your 25' ceiling and stiarcase.)



True; if they know they're looking for a 25' high room they can largely ignore anything with a lower ceiling (though if they don't search those lower rooms for loot they're missing out!).



> A technique that 4e uses is to use a tier system for escalation of the fiction, which means that the likelihood of replaying the same place is fairly low, for any given place. (It's almost the opposite of 4e in that respect.)



I think there's a typo here, as you're saying that 4e is the opposite of 4e. ?



> Of course a tried-and-true method that is independent of game systems is to write stuff down.



Yes.  Ahead of time. 


> Or to get the players to do so.



 The problem with that is writing stuff down in any quantity plays hell with immersion and-or keeping up with what's going on.  My own note-taking during most sessions is minimal at best and nearly non-existent much of the rest of the time - I'm too busy trying to a) run what's already in front of me and b) deal with whatever unexpected stuff the players / PCs are throwing my way.



> (1) People don't always notice every smell that in principle they might, so the players' claim about his/her PC is not actually true. (Now if it's his/her PC's schtick to have a high Smell/Taste Perception bonus, that's a different story - in one of my RM games one of the players built such a PC, so that he would be able to notice poisons or drugs in his food; and I think we may have had another PC who had a high bonus in this skill to help with cooking. But part of being a good GM is adapting your narration to the salient abilities of the PCs.)



All true, though had the rotten-room been defined ahead of time a roll to notice the smell would have been in order, hm?



> (2) This could happen just as easily if the GM had already written that down in her notes. Writing it down in advance doesn't create some guarantee that you'll (i) remember it before you read it out, nor (ii) that you'll think of all the implications of what you've written down.



True; nobody's perfect.  But having it written in advance certainly increases the odds of it being remembered when relevant.



> (3) There might be some reason why it couldn't be smelled (eg maybe it's a visual illusion).



Which again would have to have been pre-planned.



> (4) Retcons happen all the time. I've had GMs tell me that the room is X by Y feet, then realise they've miscounted the squares and correct it. I've had GMs not mention something that should have been obvious, and therefore let us take back action declarations which make no sense in light of the thing that wasn't mentioned at the start. Etc. So you're going to have to tell me more about why _this_ retcon is not acceptable.



With only the rarest of exceptions, no retcon is acceptable.  It's not just this one.

The two examples you give just point to poor DMing.



> That's completely orthongal. It's also contentious.
> 
> Why is it orthongal? An imaginary reality in which my PC finds a map in the study mirrors reality relatively plausibly (studies are good places to find maps, if there are any to be found in the neighbourhood). It doesn't become _more_ plausible because we agreed on that shared fiction because the GM said so, rather than agreeing on it because of the outcome of a dice roll.
> 
> Why is it contentious? D&D does not mirror reality in many places. It has different biology (eg dragons can fly and breathe fire; there are giant arthropods). It has different physics (eg conservation laws don't apply; there are other "planes" of existence). It has different sociology (eg societies are primarily pre-modern in technology yet very often modern in some of their basic attitudes and behavious). It has different economics and ecology (eg large numbers of being that are essentially humans are able to live without, it seems, hunting, gathering, rearing animals or growing crops). Etc.



Yet in the very many ways where it can mirror reality, it should; if only to enhance immersion and give a common easy-to-understand foundation.



> If the GM wants to force the player to commit, because that's what the game expects - _why are you looking behind that door? what are you hoping for?_ - then your player who won't commit is simply refusing to play the game.



Not at all.  They're refusing to help you with your worldbuilding, but in no way refusing to play the game. 


> For instance, a player who won't commit simply can't play Burning Wheel as it is written. And is going to have trouble with Cortex+ Heroic also. And will probably come unstuck in 4e skill challenges.
> 
> Part of exercising your agency over the fiction, as a player, is to commit. A player can't wait to find out whether or not a blow will be a killing one before rolling an attack die. There's no in principle reason why looking through a door should be different.



Sure there is.  Exploration works differently than combat, both in a rules sense and in a thematic sense; and to try and conflate the two is a mistake.

With very few exceptions, combat involves acting and reacting with someone or something that is in turn acting and reacting with you and whose actions can't necessarily be predicted.  Exploration, on the other hand, involves acting with and reacting to something that is usually much more static: the game world.  If I open the door now for the first time I'm in theory going to see exactly the same scene behind it as if I'd first opened it yesterday or if I wait till tomorrow to open it, barring the actions of living creatures or effects of the passage of time.  It's predictable and stable and consistent, from a meta-view: it's a part of the game world.

Thus, it's not my place as a player to author what's behind the door any more than it is my place to author the actions of the orc I'm fighting.  It's my place to open the door and look (i.e. explore) and the DM's place to tell me what I see there.  Otherwise we're into collaborative storytelling, which - while fine in its place - ain't D&D or anything close.

Lan-"once upon a time"-efan


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I also think there is a metaphor-induced illusion at work here. In the real world, if I do something, and then later on learn of some suprising consequence it had, there can be a satisfaction in observing my causal power at work.
> 
> But in the RPG case that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] describes, the players aren't seeing _their_ causal power at work.



No, but the PCs are seeing their causal powers at work.

Again - and how many times do I have to repeat this - *look at these events through the eyes and perception of the PC* rather than through the eyes and perception of the player.

And yes of course the DM has to generate - and then maybe narrate - the fiction that comes between cause A and result B, just like she narrates anything else that happens to or around or in reaction to the PCs.

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Caliban said:


> You mean you thwarted player agency by having secret information in the form of pre-generated worlds that would trigger GM narration when the players traveled there -  instead of letting the players impose their will on the fiction by declaring what kind of worlds they wanted to find.



The players didn't express any such preference (ie there was no player agency at work there). If they had, the process might have been different. See the discussion upthread, in response to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION], of the difference between players looking for more fiction and players wanting a particular content to be part of the fiction.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> No, but the PCs are seeing their causal powers at work.
> 
> Again - and how many times do I have to repeat this - *look at these events through the eyes and perception of the PC* rather than through the eyes and perception of the player.



This makes no sense. When I play a game I'm not asking if some imaginary person is having a good time. I'm asking if I'm having a good time.

The GM can sit there and tell me how cheerful and satisfied my PC feels because of ABC in the fiction - my PC did this, and it had consequences XYZ. That's not going to make me cheerful or satisfied!


----------



## Caliban

pemerton said:


> *This makes no sense.* When I play a game I'm not asking if some imaginary person is having a good time. I'm asking if I'm having a good time.
> 
> The GM can sit there and tell me how cheerful and satisfied my PC feels because of ABC in the fiction - my PC did this, and it had consequences XYZ. That's not going to make me cheerful or satisfied!




Yeah, now I'm pretty sure you are just trolling people.  No one is this dense.


----------



## Morrus

Caliban said:


> Yeah, now I'm pretty sure you are just trolling people.  No one is this dense.




Do not call people names, please.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> Doesn't your GM-introduced fiction of the young mage becoming a Vecna-worshipping necro and then an archlich have the same risk of (1) and (2) in your points above?



In the sense that mistakes are possible, yes.

But which is more likely to produce a successful conversation between friends: you writing a script in advance that you stick to over coffee? Or you saying stuff to your friend that actually respond to what s/he is saying, you sense of his/her mood and interest, etc?

It's the same principle in this case.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think this is a case of the rules of classic D&D getting in the way of playing classic D&D.
> 
> The ranger's 'never get lost' ability was described in a very early article in SR back in 1975 IIRC, definitely in the days of OD&D. In the context of exploratory hexcrawl play governed by the AH: _Survival_ game this was a reasonable ability. It negated the regular 'getting lost' checks which were a significant random hazard of this procedure, and only within a single type of terrain. Gygax imported this class almost verbatim into 1e, but at the same time dropped the use of _Survival_ as a mechanic (and references to any other external rules, like Chainmail). There was a process for getting lost also in 1e, so IN THEORY nothing changed.
> 
> In reality most groups, by the 1e era (say DMG release, so 1979) had started to leave behind the procedural exploration puzzle Gygaxian player skill game paradigm behind. In view of the reality of a lot of play at that time, semi-directed plots with a mixture of GM fiat/fudging, fixed maps/encounters, and some of the original random hazard generation, you are correct. When the story revolves around 'the GM wants to get you lost in the Woods' then the ranger with Woods as a favored terrain is pretty much the sound of the choo choo running out of tracks...
> 
> Now, in a game like what I run, said absolute ability would be OK. It would let the player advance the fiction in the direction he's interested in by not getting lost. Truthfully in my own personal game design how it would work is he'd have a class boon, orienteer, and that would let him expend his inspiration point to declare that he is definitely not getting lost right now. He could also simply roll and hope not to get lost, but then he's not really declaring anything, the player is saying in that case "lost, not lost, all good with me, I'll take it how it comes" which is fine. Orienteering can also be used to, say, sub in a Nature check instead of an Endurance check "hey, I use my orienteering to find a way around the nasty cliff so we don't have to climb it".
> 
> If in his background the ranger has "Home turf is the Forest of Grinn" then I'd let him leverage that and say "I guide the party unfailingly to a cave entrance at the bottom of the cliff which I know from experience leads up into the caverns we want to explore higher on the mountain." Now he's authoring fiction and relating the new narrative directly to character resources, this is why he built this character the way he did, he wants to be able to do this. Since the GM and players are 'Playing to see what happens' any argument that a 'challenge has been bypassed' is moot, it just isn't part of the agenda. If the players WANT a mechanically and tactically challenging encounter, then that is bound to be provided, assuming I as the DM am doing my job.




I don't think we materially disagree on anything here.  My complaint was primarily that the ability as presented means that I have to make getting lost a threat for it to have value.  As you note, I'd much rather have an ability that's more broad, even if fiat-y, so that there are more things for it to apply to.

Strangely, I'm much less concerned about background abilities like you list, because those are negotiated with the players and point at things the player wants to care about.  Negotiated as in the player and the DM collaborate to make sure the elements referenced are germaine to the setting and focus of play.  If it's a court intrigue game, it doesn't really fit well as it will see limited use, for example.  I obviously don't agree with [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] that you cannot limit the setting prior to play and thereby constraint player character creation choices, but I do think it's bad form to dictate such without player buy-in.  For me, the process is mostly "here's a concept I'd like to run" and they buy-in or propose something else.


----------



## Sebastrd

pemerton said:


> This is the GM reading/telling the players stuff. Now, I have preferences that this not be done from pre-authored notes. That relates to the third of the consequences of GM-preauthored worldbuilding that I mentioned in my reply to [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] not far upthread; and is also described clearly in Eero Tuovinen's account of the "standard narrativistic model" that I linked to somewhere upthread: I prefer a game which is focused on stuff that the players bring to it (via PC build, evinced thematic/trope/"wouldn't it be cool if . . ." desires, etc). Whereas GM pre-authorship (which eg [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] advocates _should be done_ without knowing anything about what preferences and PCs the players might bring to the game) tends to make the focus one that speaks to the GM.




Why can't it be both? Honestly, I think that both you and Lanefan, by virtue of adhering to one specific style of worldbuilding, are unnecessarily constraining yourselves.

My method is to start with a premise, likely an overarching theme and an antagonist, and "pre-author" the general situation and starting area as is appropriate to my homebrew setting. I'll then summarize all of that in a handout I give to my players to assist in character generation; it gives them context for backstory and some ideas for NPC connections. The key here, though, is that the players are not necessarily constrained by it. They are free to add to it and generate new content.

When play begins, I'll have some mapped locations, timeline of events, and the antagonist's resources all "pre-authored". During play the PCs will interact with those places, disrupt the timeline, and erode those resources. However, we are not constrained by any of it. I can, and often do, alter it during play in response to the PCs actions, player suggestions, and players' use of Inspiration Points. I always have veto power, but I only exercise it to keep things believable and consistent in the context of the setting. (For example, I wouldn't allow a player to decide there was a lightsaber in the ogre's backpack.)

"Pre-authored", secret backstory does not have to be a straight-jacket that limits the GM _or_ the players. It's simply a tool in the toolbox that is useful in some situations - like for GMs that have difficulty generating believable, cohesive setting information on the fly.



As an aside: My players have as much agency as they are willing to exercise. I will occasionally ask them to generate content, especially in response to their request for that specific content, and many players will balk at that. You have to keep in mind that the vast majority of players are weaned on D&D, and D&D does not train players to generate content. It has no action resolution mechanics that specifically ask players to create. D&D players, by and large, expect content generation to fall under the purview of the DM.

One possible, and maybe even likely, answer to your OP is, "Because in D&D that's the way it has always been, and most tables don't know any different."


----------



## Ovinomancer

Firstly, thanks for engaging the concepts I tried to explain.  That's very welcome.







AbdulAlhazred said:


> Heh, well you are pretty clear
> 
> I think I don't really agree with you. Lets take a game of checkers as an example. Some moves are allowed by the rules of checkers, and some are not, they are invalid. That says nothing about the differences or lack of differences between the ALLOWED moves, and if you allowed more or less types of moves in your checkers game it would change the results of play, but it wouldn't change the nature of the sameness or difference in character of specific allowed moves.
> 
> In terms of that sameness or difference, the fact of making a legal move is still the same, regardless of which move it is. It is a move, made by either the red or black player. All such moves equally fulfill the "now the next player makes a legal move" structure of the game. In the same way  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s assertion about the similarity of finding a map or killing an orc is an assertion about the nature of the action in terms of its place within the game.
> 
> I'm pretty sure  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is NOT saying that "there is no difference IN THE FICTION between killing an orc and finding a map." That wasn't what he meant (again at the risk of being the interpreter of Pemerton here). I think what he IS asserting is that when the players simply decide to open a door, without any influence over what is behind it nor knowledge of what is there vs what might lurk behind the other door down the hall, then you can't call the decision 'agency' as, from their point of view, either one might conceal an orc or a map, or nothing, and NONE of them will relate any more or less to the concerns of the players, their goals in play, etc.
> 
> I think this likewise addresses [MENTION=6682826]CH[/MENTION]auchou's observation that a game where the DM simply responds with his narration to each action and the player's simply wander in a hidden knowledge maze is about as interactive as a 'pick your own adventure' book. It does have CHOICE, but without knowledge there's no meaningful player agency, and the game doesn't, except by chance, address the concerns of the players.




Okay, I see that I went a bit to general and maybe skipped a few steps, because you're talking a bit past the point I was making and why [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s argument fails.  Let me expand a bit using what you referenced, as boardgames are a fantastic metaphor to explain the thinking.

Firstly, the claim was that fiction doesn't exist -- it's not a real thing, it's imaginary, and, as such, it's really only the act of authoring that fiction that's a real thing.  This is important because [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s argument revolves around authoring.  To relate this to boardgames, it would be like saying that the rules of a boardgame don't exist, the are not real things.  The only thing that is real is making moves in the game, because you don't rule, you make moves.  

 [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] goes on to use the framework above -- that authoring fiction is the only real thing, to say that therefore authoring one fiction is equivalent to authoring different fiction -- they're the same act, and, and here's where he skips a number of steps, therefore changing the fictional orc to dead is the same as saying there's a map in the study.  However, the steps he skips are the rules applied to how it's okay to author fiction.  For [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s examples, those rules are that the authoring adheres to the established fiction, that it adheres to the pre-defined genre logic, and that it adheres to the concepts that it should always revolve what certain authors want over other authors (this last being player action declarations vs DM fiat).  To relate back to boardgames, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] wants to say that both moving your pawn one space forward is just as legal as moving your knight in an 2x1 L.  What he skips is that this is true in the game of chess, but not in the game of checkers -- that you can play different games with different rules and that those rules are subjective and not objective things -- they are imaginary restraints on allowable moves, just as the conventions of an RPG are imaginary restraints on how authoring occurs.

For some reason [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] misses this crucial point to his own argument -- that it's the subjective restrictions on what's allowable that determine the usefulness and legality of moves.  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] so loves a certain set of games that he applies the rules of those games to other games and becomes confused when confronted with games that use different rules.  In a way, it's like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] really loves his chess, and when confronted with the move of jumping in checkers, which has the same board, the same number of pieces, the same general concept as chess, stops and asks, "What's jumping for?"  When explained, he says, "but that's doesn't make any sense, why should I have to wait until the opponent moves into a space where I can take his piece, and why does that mean I have to move past him.  What should be happening is that I can move my pieces according to their unique abilities and take whatever piece I want, so long as it's withing my abilities, by moving into their space?"  He's applying a different game's rules.

When this is pointed out, he then retreats to the argument that the rules are fictional constructs and don't really exist, it's the moves that matter and that moving your pawn forward 1 is just as legal as moving your knight in an L.  He, again, applies the rules of the game he prefers when he presents this argument, which defeats his argument because it hinges on his preferred rules and doesn't allow for other rules to be equally valid.

As far as agency, yes, your example is largely devoid of agency. The decision to regarding the door being only to open it or not, and the results being being told what's behind the door or doing nothing is an example of very low agency.  I think, for this reason, it's a bad example, as what's happening is that people are bringing in larger assumption sets of their playspace and not understanding that that those assumptions aren't universal.  For example, in a style where there's a set dungeon, and set encounters, then opening that door is a part of a larger agency to engage that dungeon in the order you wish, and you might have many tools to bring to bear on your decision making on how to do that.  In that context, opening that door might be very fraught with agency due to things you've already found or that your very low on resources and opening a new door may bring salvation or ruin.  On the other hand, if the game you're playing is one that centers on things the players have indicated are of interest to them and on situations that engage those with stakes, then, sure, that door might just be set dressing and the players shoudn't even be faced with a choice to open it or not -- it's not the crux of the scene.  Or maybe it is, but because of things brought to the table.

The point of that example is to show that opening a door as a move in a game is something that, absent any other rules or conceits, is hard to evaluate.  It's really the rules you bring to the situation, those completely fictional rules, that turn opening a door into something loaded with agency or trivial and banal.  If you only look at the door from one point of view, you'll only see the value of it from that point of view.  Someone else may have a completely different opinion of that door and the impact of opening it.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Sebastrd said:


> Why can't it be both? Honestly, I think that both you and Lanefan, by virtue of adhering to one specific style of worldbuilding, are unnecessarily constraining yourselves.
> 
> My method is to start with a premise, likely an overarching theme and an antagonist, and "pre-author" the general situation and starting area as is appropriate to my homebrew setting. I'll then summarize all of that in a handout I give to my players to assist in character generation; it gives them context for backstory and some ideas for NPC connections. The key here, though, is that the players are not necessarily constrained by it. They are free to add to it and generate new content.
> 
> When play begins, I'll have some mapped locations, timeline of events, and the antagonist's resources all "pre-authored". During play the PCs will interact with those places, disrupt the timeline, and erode those resources. However, we are not constrained by any of it. I can, and often do, alter it during play in response to the PCs actions, player suggestions, and players' use of Inspiration Points. I always have veto power, but I only exercise it to keep things believable and consistent in the context of the setting. (For example, I wouldn't allow a player to decide there was a lightsaber in the ogre's backpack.)
> 
> "Pre-authored", secret backstory does not have to be a straight-jacket that limits the GM _or_ the players. It's simply a tool in the toolbox that is useful in some situations - like for GMs that have difficulty generating believable, cohesive setting information on the fly.
> 
> 
> 
> As an aside: My players have as much agency as they are willing to exercise. I will occasionally ask them to generate content, especially in response to their request for that specific content, and many players will balk at that. You have to keep in mind that the vast majority of players are weaned on D&D, and D&D does not train players to generate content. It has no action resolution mechanics that specifically ask players to create. D&D players, by and large, expect content generation to fall under the purview of the DM.
> 
> One possible, and maybe even likely, answer to your OP is, "Because in D&D that's the way it has always been, and most tables don't know any different."




I have the same issue with players being shy about generating content, and, to me, it appears to be a fear that such generation will be turned against them in some unexpected way.  Essentially, they worry that if they present something that they now have a stake in, that the DM will abuse that stake and use it to punish them.  I've noticed a high correlation between players that balk at providing content when prompted to be the same that generate character backstories devoid of any hooks -- orphan, loner, no ties to anything, etc.  That said, I don't think this is necessarily bad.  By doing this, that player is indicating that they don't want emotional attachment to things -- that they want to play a game in a space that doesn't threaten their emotional states.  Sometimes this is because they've been subjected to bad DMs that do abuse their hooks, other times it's because that's not what their looking for in their leisure activities.

And that kind of player is fine.  I have one (maybe two) in my current game:  they don't want things to be about them and things they've indicated they like.  They don't want drama in game about things they've come to care about that the other players or the DM might endanger.  They don't like feeling like they don't have control over their content.  I always take anything they provide as something I don't threaten without permission.  If I get my one player to actually not be an orphan, then his parents in game are only a source of positive things -- they're never kidnapped or threatened unless as part of a collective threatening (the world is going to be destroyed kind of thing).  Nothing negative is directed at them.  On the other hand, I have a player that enjoys having their hooks pulled.  I have no fear in putting his hooks in danger or under threat and even applying bad consequences to them as a result of play.  I don't go out of my way, and often his hooks are positive interactions (because universal negatives are bad), but I am not concerned if play brings his hooks into conflict.

And this issue, actually, is one of the main reasons I run a secret backstory game -- I have some control over the content that's provided and the things threatened.  I don't have a group of players willing to engage and have that engagement threatened to truely play a player-driven game with my current group.  I don't have a problem with it (I put glaring hooks in  all of my characters, regardless of game and I push them within the confines of the kind of game I'm playing in -- ie, I don't try to monopolize play with my hooks, but I do make sure they're visible).  But, when I run, I have to run for my players, and that includes picking a set of play conventions that best matches the group.  And player-driven isn't it.*


*We tried Fiasco a few times as an icebreaker/trial of player driven games.  Fiasco is great because everyone understands that the point is conflict, but the roles and vignette style keep things in small doses and non-personal.  Half of my group had a blast.  On the other side, there were 2 that were ambivalent -- they thought it was fun but not something they really liked, and one that didn't make the second game because they didn't like the first.  Of course, they like games where they have a clear concept of 'winning', which they define in D&D as surviving and being good at their chosen niche.  Fiasco didn't have a way for him to understand how to do better that he could latch onto.  For me, I loved the evolution of the story and didn't care who got the most dice.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> The last sentence is not correct. The fourth sentence - beginning "the central conceit here" is correct.
> 
> In my view the distinction is fundamental. My thinking about it is a mixture of (what I would regard as) common sense informed by experience in RPGing; and Vincent Baker's writings about "boxes, clouds and arrows", ficitonal positioning, and the fundamental act in RPGing (which is _establishing some content in a shared fiction_).



I misspoke, I didn't mean request as in ask for, I meant request in the sense that the player is presenting new fiction and then asking if it's accepted or tested.  Further, I think it's a strong point of confusion that you think your formulation and conception is common, especially given the evidence that secret backstory is the majority mode of play.  You note this yourself in talking about posts on this board, and WotC's continued successful business plan involved a major pillar of providing pre-authored adventures, which despite being primarily for DMs (a fraction of the player base) still account for a market share in excess of most indie games combined.



> I'd hoped it was clear from the OP that I'm not talking about LARPing, or SCA, or cops and robbers. I'm talking about table top RPGs.
> 
> (And to ward of objections from @howandwh99 - I don't think this analysis and account of the "fundamental act" is all that apt for Gygaxian dungeoneering, which in many ways is better analogised to a boardgame. Eg while Gygaxian dungeoneering involves a shared fiction (sorry, howandwhy99) the dungeon map is a real thing, and the players are - among other things - trying to create an accurate duplicate of it by means of their play of the game. But as I said in the OP, this thread takes as a premise that mose contemporary RPGing, including most contemporary D&D play, is not Gygaxian in this sense.



This goes back to my points that your arguments are special pleading -- you're saying that this argument about RPGs deserves special consideration and isn't applicable except where you say it is.  That doesn't make it as useful argument.  If it cannot be applied to even all kinds of tabletop RPGs, much less non-tabletop RPGs, how is it useful to discussing the difference between those RPGs styles you say it's good for?  




> <snip>



I snipped out the wall of words in the middle of your post because it read as you going off on tangents - none of it responded to anything in the post you're quoting, and, honestly, I'm not sure that it addresses any points I've made previously.  Most of it is uncontroversial, and most of it is you describing how you play in different systems, a topic I'm sure you find fascinating but I understand how those systems work so that's not the crux of my arguments.  I have never argued you can't play like that, and most certainly I've never argued you shouldn't play like that.  My arguments have focused on trying to explain how I do play and addressing the arguments you use to explain why I don't have to play like that.  Largely, you arguments keep trying to establish some concrete reason your method is better (which I readily accept it's better for _you_) without accepting that there is anything subjective about your preferences.



> Obviously the words on paper, the thoughts in players' heads, etc, exist. But the orc, the swords, the study, the map - they are all imaginary. (But see my above remarks about the dungeon map in Gygaxian play - it's a real artefact which, like a board in a boardgame, is a component of play.)
> 
> And I didn't assert it. I said:
> 
> ​
> I'll assert it again: adding a sentence to the orc's description, and to the study's descriptoin, are structurally equivalent game moves. They are both acts of authorship that increase the detail about the orc and the study respectively.



You failed to follow that argument.  

You claimed that the fiction doesn't exist.  This, logically, means it doesn't matter.  Things that have no existence cannot, by definition, matter to the real world.  This part of my argument establishes that this, in fact, is false -- the fiction does have relevance.  The thing you claim doesn't exist does, and that you use that thing to constrain the act of authoring.

So, this part where you say you didn't say that -- well, you did, you did say the fiction doesn't exist, but you didn't mean it.  And that part of the construct was to show that you couldn't mean it because the ramifications of fiction not existing in any way would be that the rest of your argument failed.

It fails anyway due to your myopia about playstyles being subjective.




> This is all non-sequitur.
> 
> I am talking about _adding descriptions to established elements of the fiction_. None of the descriptions I've posited contradict established fiction, depart from genre conceits, or otherwise collide with any basic constraints on good authorship. (Cf the presence of beam weapons in the Duke's toilet.) Those facts about the added descriptions are not "subjective". They are pretty obvious.



Man, it's really validating to be told that my argument is a non-sequitur (latin for 'does not follow' and meaning it's not even related to the discussion) and then you tell me what you meant is exactly what I said you meant -- that you constrain authoring new fiction with arbitrary and subjective constraints.  Only you deny that these are subjective, despite the obvious fact that they only matter to authorship of fiction because you prefer them to not having them.  There's no reason you can't author fiction without adhering to genre tropes except that this would be something that you would not prefer happen in your game where you want genre tropes adhered to.  So the reason for that constraint is subjective: it's there because you prefer it to be there (and presumably your other players).  It certainly has no objective reason to be there -- you can author fiction without adhering to genre logic at all.

So, this is exactly what I'm talking about with your arguments:  you are blind to the fact that you're making arguments based on your preferences because you mistake your preferences for objective measures and/or commonly held beliefs.

This isn't true, again as evidenced by all of those ways to play 'let's pretend' that you admit don't fit your arguments.  Why do you believe that the ones you include do?



> But the difference isn't one of structure or metaphysics (contra  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and others who refer to "Schroedinger's map" and the like).
> 
> The difference is that some players want the GM's authorship practices to, more-or-less, track the real-world metaphysics of the imagined things. So the GM is to treat the map as an object which does not supervene on it's location in the study; whereas we can use mechanics to determine the death of the orc which do treat that death as supervening on the orc (rather than being some distinct event that the GM is free to author as if it were independent of the causal processes governing the orc).
> 
> Ron Edwards invented a name for this preference: purist-for-system simuationism. Some RPGs serve it very well - RQ and RM among them. My point is that it's not a preference that is inherent in having a rich, complex, "living" world. Hence the answer to "what is worldbuilding for" can't be "because otherwise you won't get a rich, complex, "living" world. And the reason for that is the structural equivalence, as acts of authorship, of introducing a new description about the orc and a new description about the map, which permits the latter just as much as the former to be an outcome of, rather than an input into, actiion resolution.




It's actually very much about the structure.  The metaphysics I'll let you argue with someone else, as I'm not terribly interested in determining who has the best way of playing 'let's pretend' and getting the metaphysics of their play correct.  That really seems silly (and I direct that to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] equally).

But structure is the core of this:  how is the ability to author the fiction structured?  In secret backstory games, that structure is to allow players to author fiction so long as it follows genre conventions and meets both the open and hidden fictional positioning.  The DM can accept that fiction, test it, or reject it in total or part.  If the player declares they search the study for a map, that's in genre, and meets the open fictional positioning (they're in the study and can search).  The DM then checks the secret positioning and determines if the outcome succeeds, fails, or must be tested according to the overall structure.  Based on the result of that step, the DM narrates the outcome of that fiction.  Note that this structure implicitly binds the DM to also restrict their authoring to the same structure: that is adhere to genre conventions and meet the open and hidden fictional positioning.

In the no-secret backstory game, the structure is slightly different.  The player is allowed to author fiction so long as it follows genre conventions and known fictional positioning.  The DM, however, is structurally limited to either accepting or testing that fiction -- he cannot reject it so long as it's properly formed.  The DM is allowed to alter the fiction if the test if failed to whatever the DM wishes, so long as he follows the same authoring structure as the player.  The player is not allowed to modify or reject this fiction from the DM.

These are different structures, with power allocated differently.  They are similar, and the results of both methods for a given play may be indistinguishable, but other results can vary widely.  There's no room for DM rejection without a test for properly formed fiction in the latter, but there is in the former, based on information the player does not have.

So, the argument that there's no structural difference isn't true:  it's only true if you make a set of assumptions about play that favor your preferred structure and ignore that other structures of play exist.  And there a other structures of play that exist than these two, including a huge amount of increased sophistication and modification of these basic chassis.



> Novels and movies also engage emotions. If I could ever run a RPG session that had the impact of (say) The Quiet American or The Human Factor I'd be immensely proud. That doesn't mean those people and events are real.
> 
> It's not nihilist to deny the reality of imaginary things. It's just stating the literal truth.



You didn't say that imaginary things aren't real (although that's also debatable), you said that they don't exist.  Which makes me ask what it was about a novel that made you feel emotion?  

Claiming imaginary things don't exist is saying that ideas don't exist because you can't pick them up or look at them.  This is obviously false, as what we're doing here is throwing ideas at each other, and those certainly cause reactions and use to use real world resources to engage.  I just spent some of my life responding to this, for example.  Why would I do that if the ideas you presented didn't exist?

To address the pivot to 'well, okay, they exist but they aren't physical things' my question is then 'what's your point?'  Even if I can't pick up an idea, that doesn't mean that idea isn't constrained by real world thing, or by subjective things, or by other ideas. It doesn't mean that ideas are fungible, or that the idea of hitting an orc with a sword until it dies is the same as an idea that there's a map in the study.   Heck, the existence of ideas as things is part and parcel of the argument you are making -- you require ideas to be real and effective to make your points about genre appropriateness after all.  So, this sideline you're making about ideas and fiction being non-existent is very, very strange and, as I've said, absurd and not conducive to discussion.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION], I'm replying only to those bits of your post where I think I've got something interesting to say in reponse.
> 
> Here I think I just want to say a bit more about how I see things.
> 
> By GM control over "big picture" I don't mean so much the setting/genre conventions you raise - I see that as more about reaching group consensus on setting basics (eg my Cortex+ Fantasy game started with a vote for Japan vs vikings, because I'd written pre-gens in a way to deliberately leave either option open). I mean stuff like who the nemesis will be, what the basic trajectory of play will be (eg the final fight will be against Tiamat). Then the nitty-gritty stuff is things like (to go back to an upthread example) whether there are bribeable officials around. So whereever the players look to engage the fiction, they find stuff that's there because the GM put it there. (Your mercenary comany example is more-or-less the opposite of what I'm talking about here.)




Okay, understood. I can see how you wouldn't like it, but I do think that GM determined backstory is a useful tool. And I don't think it need be "where ever the players look to engage the fiction". The GM can determine some things, and leave others to be established during play. 




pemerton said:


> APs are obvious examples of what I've just described, but not the only one.
> 
> Now, on club-bashing: that's not my issue (at least, if that's similar to "fairness" which [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] raised not too far upthread). The GM can be fair with secret backstory and I stil wouldn't like it. My issue is that it makes the game about what the GM wants it to be about. So it's a concern that's cumulative with the stuff about framing (both big picture framing and "nitty-gritty" framing.




APs tend to be like that, yes. I have incorporated elements from some published modules, but I tend to alter them so that they are more open and less linear. 

I don't really see a problem with the game being about what the GM would like. Or at least, I don't see the problem if it's reasonable. If the players share the feeling, or are willing to go along with it, or if they're allowed to add things that they want so that the game is a collection of things wanted by everyone....then it's simply not a problem. 



pemerton said:


> And on random tables - I agree that they are no panacea, and I'm using them in Traveller because without them it wouldn't be Traveller! But I think they're different from pre-authorship, because (i) they don't lock the GM into one track of fiction, so don't cause the same GM-focus issue that pre-authored framing tends to (the players can even help make sense of the random roll, as with the ambergris example), and (ii) because they happen in the course of play, often triggered by player action declarations (eg roll for a starship encouner when you leave the system), they don't generate declaration-blocking/defeating secret backstory, but rather feed into the resolution of the declared action.




I don't see why a random table result can't generate declaration blocking elements. I can see how it doesn't have to, but I think the risk of it is still there, no? 

As for the GM being locked onto one track...I don't think that need be the case if he remains flexible. If my players don't show interest in a story hook or element that I've introduced, then I will change or replace that element based on what their interests seem to be. 



pemerton said:


> I've broken this out because I think it's probably the biggest deal, and has generated the most discussion in the thread.
> 
> So first, _the player trying to author a solution to a problem_. If the problem is a charging orc, the player authors (or tries to author) a solution by rolling the combat dice. If the problem is lack of a map, the player authors (or tries to author) a solution by looking for the map in the study and rolling a perception (or whatever is appropriate) check.
> 
> As I said to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION], and have just reiterated above to [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], I think these have the same structure as moves in the game. If one is acceptable from the pont of view of abstract principle, so is the other.
> 
> Now there can be reasons more particular than abstract principle that someone allows one but not the other. You have reasons for the GM specifying the locations of maps, but not the deaths of orcs. What I'm saying is that I don't see how that reason can be aversion to players authoring solutions to problems, given that (I'm assuming) you are happy with that in the orc case.
> 
> As to whether this sort of pre-authorship used to adjudicate action declaration is "thwarting" or not - I discussed this in some long replies to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION].




Okay, but if we compare the search for the letter and the attack on the orc, I don't think they're exactly alike. One is the player actively seeking something, the other is the player responding to action from the game world. 

What if the orc is 100 feet away from the PC and is attacking them with a bow? Is not allowing the PC to retaliate with a melee attack denying their agency? Is the player free to resolve the issue of the orc in any way he sees fit? Or is he bound by the constraints of the fictional world? 

Is that any different than the hidden letter? It's location determines the chance of finding it. The orc's location determines the chance of hitting it with a sword. Both have restrictions based on where the things are in the game world. 

The PC choosing to draw his own bow and retaliate is the same as moving to another room to search there. No?



pemerton said:


> If the player's Perception/Search/whatever check is for the purpose of triggering the GM to describe what is in the room - to narrate more fiction - then saying "There's no map here" is not thwarting. It's givng the player what s/he wanted in making a good roll.
> 
> If the player's Perception check is with the desire that the fiction be along the lines of _my PC finds a map in this study_ then saying, without regard to the results of the check, "There's no map here", _is_ thwarting. Because the fiction does not take the form the player wanted. (It would be like vetoing - overtly or via rolling secretly or whatver - the attack roll on the orc, and just narrating to the player, "It dodges your blow" without actually having regard to the result of the to hit roll.)
> 
> If players never declare perception checks (or Streetwise checks to find bribeable officials, or  . . .) hoping that the fiction will be X rather than Y then this won't come up. But equally a game in which the players spend a significant amount of time declaring checks  whose function is to trigger GM narration rather than impose their own will on the fiction are, in my estimation of the situation, being rather passive. They're not really exercising agency.




I think the default assumption of many games, and of D&D certainly, is that the player should describe what the character does and then let the GM determine the outcome based on what's been established and the results of whatever check may be required (Search or Perception or what have you). The player is limited to describing what his character attempts to do. 

I think that the approach for the player to attempt to establish game elements beyond their character's actions is less common. No less viable, and certainly it has advantages to it that can create interesting play, but I don't think that many players would expect this to be the case. Not unless it was a specific game designed with mechanics that promoted this approach. 

I have incorporated this kind of approach in my game from time to time...not necessarily through player action declaration...but I have asked players to provide world details...."you find yourself in a dungeon....what brings you here?" and the like. They struggled with this at first....and this is a group of players who love to come up with story elements for their characters with the intention they be folded into the game. A creative group of players, for all intents and purposes. But it took a real shift to get them to think that way. 

It's probably a byproduct of the fact that most of their gaming experience has come from D&D in its many iterations, and similar games. And with using published modules as a template for how to construct an adventure scenario and run a game.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> Yep.
> 
> Agreed except for the bolded bit, on which I only partly agree.
> 
> Major worldbuilding e.g. where are the continents, how many moons are there, the pantheons, etc. should be left to the DM.




I think maybe as a default assumption, sure, but I don't see why it must be so. It could be something as simple as the player wanting to play a character from a far off land. I look at that and then ask for details about that land. Let the player provide them...if he doesn't want to, then I will. 

Honestly, I try to get my players to put as much into the world as possible. It helps invest them in the world and in the game. 



Lanefan said:


> Minor worldbuilding, such as your example of the Fighter's mercenary company below, can be cool when done by a player provided a) that the DM retains veto rights and b) that it doesn't veer into probem-solving
> Problem-solving worldbuilding, where a player tries to generate a solution to an in-game challenge by authoring or re-authoring some aspect of the game world, is just another form of either metagaming or cheating depending how/why its done and with what degree of malice.




I suppose if a veto was necessary, then sure, the DM should have that ability. But I try to do everything I can not to have to veto things. That literally boils down to a player saying "hey this seems like it would be fun" and the DM saying "oh well, too bad". 

I mean, it would have to be a really compelling reason for me to want to deny a player of something they think would be fun. Especially when I most likely really can adjust whatever I have in mind to accommodate him. And by compelling I don't mean something like "There are no gnomes on Athas!!!!" and the like. 



Lanefan said:


> I don't know - a berserker in a court-intrigue game could provide all kinds of entertainment and amusement.
> 
> But yes, if something's likely not going to work it's best to say so up front.  That way players can either steer away from it or find a creative way to force it to work.




Ultimately, just about anything we've been discussing becomes a non-issue if the GM and players are all on board. If the Gm has racial restrictions in place, and none of the players care, then there's no problem. 



Lanefan said:


> Exactly.  These elements are in many cases established before I even fully know who the players and-or PCs will be at the time they're encountered.  And because of this there'll be times when something comes off as easier or harder than it otherwise might, simply because of who is trying to deal with it.  For example I might put together an underground adventure with a lot of undead in it...and then the players run a party of Druids (who do better outdoors) and Illusionists (undead are generally immune to illusions) into it.  Conversely, they might take in a group of nothing but high-charisma Clerics who can turn or destroy undead on a relative whim and sail through.




Well here is where I think there can be an issue. It's a matter of what may be engaging and enjoyable for the players. I think Pemerton is saying that some players may not like if the adventure in question does not connect with the characters they've created. They'd like one to flow from the other....or at the very least for the two things to inform each other. 

Some players may be fine with a bunch of nature druids in the underdark. They may see it as a challenging adventure or whatever. Others may be annoyed that their group of players created characters with a very specific leaning, and then the DM went ahead and ignored that when designing the adventure. 

Especially when, with a little work, the DM can likely switch the underground catacombs to be a forest haunted by undead, or what have you. 

I think the attitude of "well this is what the DM came up with, deal with it" is what's being questioned a bit. And I can understand that. 

Again, as we said above, if everyone's cool with whatever is happening, there's no issue. But if there is an issue....I would wonder why a DM would rather play what he's made when the players would clearly prefer something else. 



Lanefan said:


> This sort of thing, as I said above, can be all kinds of cool as long as the DM retains the right of veto (though in this particular example it's hard to think of any reason to veto it).




Well in this case, sure, hard to think of a reason to veto it. And certainly the player didn't necessarily expect me to adopt the mercenary company to the extent that I did, so a lot of it was up to me....but again, why not do all I can to engage the players and get their buy in? 



Lanefan said:


> Now this would be something I may or may not do, depending on circumstances.  Maybe the mercenary company eventually become part of the story's villainy - the party have to go through them to get to whoever's sending them out on these "loathsome contracts", for example.  But the mercenaries - either some individuals or together as a company - would probably rear their ugly heads at some point.
> 
> Lanefan




I pretty much replaced one militaristic bad guy with the mercenary company, and then tied the company to another group I had in mind. They've become a significant source of conflict for the players, and the players have a vested interest in taking them down....so the hooks that I introduce involving the group appeal to the players.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> I think maybe as a default assumption, sure, but I don't see why it must be so. It could be something as simple as the player wanting to play a character from a far off land. I look at that and then ask for details about that land. Let the player provide them...if he doesn't want to, then I will.
> 
> Honestly, I try to get my players to put as much into the world as possible. It helps invest them in the world and in the game.



Fair enough.

The example of a character from a far-off land is a good one.  For my part, when I design a world there's usually vast swathes of it left blank - mostly because I'm concentrating on the parts where most or all of the adventuring is likely to take place - and if someone wants to fill in a bit of the blank page they're welcome to do so.  However, the risk there is that doing so might run up against something specific I have in mind for what is now a blank bit; and to have to move or alter what the player does might hint at or completely give away a reveal that's not supposed to happen for years. (at risk of my players reading this: my current world has a number of these sort of elements - specific things in specific locations in the middle of what looks like a vast ocean of blank map, with those specific locations tied to specific story bits that will in theory come up later either in this campaign or a future one, depending how things go)



> I suppose if a veto was necessary, then sure, the DM should have that ability. But I try to do everything I can not to have to veto things. That literally boils down to a player saying "hey this seems like it would be fun" and the DM saying "oh well, too bad".
> 
> I mean, it would have to be a really compelling reason for me to want to deny a player of something they think would be fun. Especially when I most likely really can adjust whatever I have in mind to accommodate him. And by compelling I don't mean something like "There are no gnomes on Athas!!!!" and the like.



Come on, man - you know in your heart that banning Gnomes is always the best option. 

But if a player wants to play a full Vampire as a character in a low-level party - and I've had this happen - yeah, out comes the veto hammer. (this was before the days of templates)



> Ultimately, just about anything we've been discussing becomes a non-issue if the GM and players are all on board. If the Gm has racial restrictions in place, and none of the players care, then there's no problem.



And even if one or more players do care, there's often room for compromise.  But if that fails, in the end it's the DM's game.



> Well here is where I think there can be an issue. It's a matter of what may be engaging and enjoyable for the players. I think Pemerton is saying that some players may not like if the adventure in question does not connect with the characters they've created. They'd like one to flow from the other....or at the very least for the two things to inform each other.
> 
> Some players may be fine with a bunch of nature druids in the underdark. They may see it as a challenging adventure or whatever. Others may be annoyed that their group of players created characters with a very specific leaning, and then the DM went ahead and ignored that when designing the adventure.



Where I posit that the DM, in neutrally designing the world, should as a part of that neutrality be actively trying to ignore what the players are doing.

When faced with an adventure they're clearly not set up for the players - in character - can always choose to abandon the mission and go elsewhere, or to recruit or hire some NPCs that can help cover their weak points, or to take a much more cautious and-or different approach that plays a bit more to their strengths, or whatever.



> Especially when, with a little work, the DM can likely switch the underground catacombs to be a forest haunted by undead, or what have you.



While this is true, it's also verging into the very gray area of DM metagaming - a whole other can o' worms.



> I think the attitude of "well this is what the DM came up with, deal with it" is what's being questioned a bit. And I can understand that.
> 
> Again, as we said above, if everyone's cool with whatever is happening, there's no issue. But if there is an issue....I would wonder why a DM would rather play what he's made when the players would clearly prefer something else.



First, it's not always clear what the players would prefer.  Even if they all roll up Nature Clerics it doesn't mean they're looking to play the whole game in the forest; just that they want a lot of available healing no matter what transpires.

Second, most players IME are looking for a fun game with beer and monsters and aren't all that serious about much else.  Which leads to something we all need to keep in mind here: not everyone - and I'm often in this number, when a player - takes this all that seriously, or puts much thought into it beyond their own character, maybe a bit of the overarching story, and the here-and-now of the in-game situation; and some don't even get that far.   From what I've read here and elsewhere I'd hazard a guess that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and his players take this all far more seriously than I'd ever want to - a rather gulf-like difference in playstyles. 



> Well in this case, sure, hard to think of a reason to veto it. And certainly the player didn't necessarily expect me to adopt the mercenary company to the extent that I did, so a lot of it was up to me....but again, why not do all I can to engage the players and get their buy in?
> 
> I pretty much replaced one militaristic bad guy with the mercenary company, and then tied the company to another group I had in mind. They've become a significant source of conflict for the players, and the players have a vested interest in taking them down....so the hooks that I introduce involving the group appeal to the players.



The advantage you had was that the player in this case handed you something you could fairly easily put to use and that would likely engage all involved, and you ran with it.  Unfortunately not everything is as simple.

Example: I once had a player who rolled up a character and then came up with a great long drama-riddled (and rather depressing) backstory for it which was intended to spill over into the ongoing run of play once the PC joined the party.  Great fiction, great foundation for roleplaying the character, but when as DM I'm looking at a choice between trying to involve everyone in (or drag everyone into) this one character's personal angst or playing through something that's more fun and cheerful for all then yeah - easy choice; and the drama gets swept under the rug.

Lanefan


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> Fair enough.
> 
> The example of a character from a far-off land is a good one.  For my part, when I design a world there's usually vast swathes of it left blank - mostly because I'm concentrating on the parts where most or all of the adventuring is likely to take place - and if someone wants to fill in a bit of the blank page they're welcome to do so.  However, the risk there is that doing so might run up against something specific I have in mind for what is now a blank bit; and to have to move or alter what the player does might hint at or completely give away a reveal that's not supposed to happen for years. (at risk of my players reading this: my current world has a number of these sort of elements - specific things in specific locations in the middle of what looks like a vast ocean of blank map, with those specific locations tied to specific story bits that will in theory come up later either in this campaign or a future one, depending how things go)




It really does depend on the elements in question. 

But, I'd personally tend to worry more about the game that is happening now rather than a possible element for a later game. Especially when whatever future element might be at risk can be reworked in whatever way needed. 



Lanefan said:


> Come on, man - you know in your heart that banning Gnomes is always the best option.
> 
> But if a player wants to play a full Vampire as a character in a low-level party - and I've had this happen - yeah, out comes the veto hammer. (this was before the days of templates)




Sure, but most likely such a character isn't actually promoted by the rules, so I don't even know if that constitutes a veto. The rules already don't allow such a character. 



Lanefan said:


> And even if one or more players do care, there's often room for compromise.  But if that fails, in the end it's the DM's game.
> 
> Where I posit that the DM, in neutrally designing the world, should as a part of that neutrality be actively trying to ignore what the players are doing.




Well, ultimately, it's actually everyone's game. I know we tend to attribute some level of ownership to the game on the DM....but it's still everyone else's time to have fun too. And yes, the DM may put more into the game, so we kind of default to him having final say or veto or whatever you want to call it. I get that, and it's pretty much how my group handles things because everyone's okay with that. 

But if the DM isn't doing all this work ahead of time and is instead playing along the lines that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is advocating, then it's even less the "DM's game", isn't it? This is probably where a big part of the disconnect is coming from. 

I mean, if you had friends over to watch a movie and they made a choice, you probably wouldn't veto the choice and say "well it's my Blu-Ray player". So it's a bit odd to do that in an RPG. 



Lanefan said:


> When faced with an adventure they're clearly not set up for the players - in character - can always choose to abandon the mission and go elsewhere, or to recruit or hire some NPCs that can help cover their weak points, or to take a much more cautious and-or different approach that plays a bit more to their strengths, or whatever.
> 
> While this is true, it's also verging into the very gray area of DM metagaming - a whole other can o' worms.




I don't think the DM needs to be neutral about the party when designing adventures and so on. I think it's probably best if he designs things with the specific players and characters in mind. 

I get your approach. It's a bit more classic in that you have an idea for an adventure and it's the same no matter who comes to try it. Much like the old modules. Nothing wrong with that. 

I think I lean toward Pemerton here, even if we approach it differently, in that I prefer a game where the story and the characters are more connected. The story I tell must be about those characters...it's their journey, not anyone's who happens to come along. 



Lanefan said:


> First, it's not always clear what the players would prefer.  Even if they all roll up Nature Clerics it doesn't mean they're looking to play the whole game in the forest; just that they want a lot of available healing no matter what transpires.
> 
> Second, most players IME are looking for a fun game with beer and monsters and aren't all that serious about much else.  Which leads to something we all need to keep in mind here: not everyone - and I'm often in this number, when a player - takes this all that seriously, or puts much thought into it beyond their own character, maybe a bit of the overarching story, and the here-and-now of the in-game situation; and some don't even get that far.   From what I've read here and elsewhere I'd hazard a guess that  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and his players take this all far more seriously than I'd ever want to - a rather gulf-like difference in playstyles.




That's very possible. Who knows? We're all here discussing it at length, so it seems that we all at least assign some importance to it. 

What I would say is that Pemerton and his players have a play style that involves creative collaboration more so than yours, which is a more relaxed "beer and pretzels" type of game. 



Lanefan said:


> The advantage you had was that the player in this case handed you something you could fairly easily put to use and that would likely engage all involved, and you ran with it.  Unfortunately not everything is as simple.
> 
> Example: I once had a player who rolled up a character and then came up with a great long drama-riddled (and rather depressing) backstory for it which was intended to spill over into the ongoing run of play once the PC joined the party.  Great fiction, great foundation for roleplaying the character, but when as DM I'm looking at a choice between trying to involve everyone in (or drag everyone into) this one character's personal angst or playing through something that's more fun and cheerful for all then yeah - easy choice; and the drama gets swept under the rug.
> 
> Lanefan




Sure....some players can try and make it all about what they want. I find that annoying, too.

I think that for Pemerton, that same annoyance applies to the GM wanting to do that. 

Your playstyle requires the DM to take the reins and do the bulk of worldbuilding, so you don't even see how that could be an issue. But in his game, worldbuiling is split more evenly among all parties, so any single party trying to control the game is seen as a negative. 

At least, that's my take on the things.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> It really does depend on the elements in question.
> 
> But, I'd personally tend to worry more about the game that is happening now rather than a possible element for a later game. Especially when whatever future element might be at risk can be reworked in whatever way needed.



OK, though in some cases such reworking is easier than others (mine involves some things being at very precise points on the planet, which it took some math and geometry to come up with...I'd rather not have to do that again  ).



> Sure, but most likely such a character isn't actually promoted by the rules, so I don't even know if that constitutes a veto. The rules already don't allow such a character.



There's those who would say a rules veto is the same as a DM veto in a case like this.




> I mean, if you had friends over to watch a movie and they made a choice, you probably wouldn't veto the choice and say "well it's my Blu-Ray player". So it's a bit odd to do that in an RPG.



In our crew, if someone invites friends over to watch a movie the movie to ve watched is usually included in the invite.  That way, people who aren't interested in that movie know what they're in for should they choose to attend.



> I don't think the DM needs to be neutral about the party when designing adventures and so on. I think it's probably best if he designs things with the specific players and characters in mind.
> 
> I get your approach. It's a bit more classic in that you have an idea for an adventure and it's the same no matter who comes to try it. Much like the old modules. Nothing wrong with that.
> 
> I think I lean toward Pemerton here, even if we approach it differently, in that I prefer a game where the story and the characters are more connected. The story I tell must be about those characters...it's their journey, not anyone's who happens to come along.



However in my case "anyone who happens to come along" is a near-inevitability as time goes by - the campaigns are many years long, players come and go, characters die or retire or whatever and then may or may not resurface years later, and so on.  Just a few weeks ago with not too much warning* I had a player come back into my game who had been out for 4 years; he rebooted one of his characters who had kind of been left hanging, we updated it out-of-session and engineered a way for him to meet the party, and away we went.

There's no way on earth I can plan for that.

* - he came to our Yule party, we got talking, he showed interest in getting back in as real life was now allowing the time for it.  Nobody objected, and a few weeks later after we'd all got over the flu, in he came.

Many times I don't even know ahead of time what characters will be in the party.  Most of my players have a bunch of 'em, and they get cycled in and out between adventures depending on which one(s) the player feels like playing.  Only when we're on a semi-hard AP within the campaign (like right now) can I predict a reasonably consistent party for a run of a few adventures.



> Sure....some players can try and make it all about what they want. I find that annoying, too.
> 
> I think that for Pemerton, that same annoyance applies to the GM wanting to do that.



Where in my view the DM is, in the end, fully allowed to do that...though if she goes overboard on it she risks losing her players; so some degree of give and take is inevitable.  In the end, though, the DM rules.

Lan-"a sign on my first DM's screen read 'THE DM IS GOD.  ABIDE OR DIE.' and I've lived by that ever since"-efan


----------



## Emerikol

pemerton said:


> Yes, they do.
> 
> In [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s example, the players' knowledge of the cart is practically zero, their knowledge that they've pushed it over much the same, and their ability to ascertain and manage the consequences in any sort of proactive manner very close to zero also.




That may be the crux of the matter.  People like myself don't want to create things outside our characters.  At least not when we are playing this particular style of play.  When I play, I want to "explore" the world and I want my DM to know it pretty well so that he isn't making it up as he goes which I can detect almost immediately.  And yes of course if you had a sufficiently advanced AI as DM this could be hidden from me.  So far no human has pulled it off.

So exploration is a big deal.  And to me exploration to discovering something not creating it.  Again that is how I feel.  If I played in your style of game I'd obviously feel very creative but I'd feel like the world wasn't very solid under my feet.  I want that feeling and I tend to avoid DMs that won't give it to me.  Now I admit I DM more than I play though of late I've done neither due to being in a new town with a very busy job.  

I think if we were all traveling in a car somewhere and just wanted to play a thought experiment style of game where we created the fiction as we go I might do it since playing my style would be very hard.  I'm not saying it couldn't be at least more fun than counting busted headlights on volkswagon beetles.  (you also avoid getting slugged in some variations).  But I am sure I wouldn't find it as satisfying as playing in my style around a table.  

Here is an example of a really great product and why I thought it was great.  Ptolus.  A detailed city with a ton of hooks for adventures.  Players are free to go anywhere they want.  The city is the sandbox.  That doesn't mean there aren't adventures with rooms but it's take it up as you wish.  And of course mess with the wrong people and you might have trouble on your hands.  All detailed out.  As DM, I'd still add more but I like it.  The original book has risen steadily in value but I haven't considered selling it.

Constructively, where do you see this thread going?  Is it style evangelism by you?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> I think each certainly has some worldbuilding going on(in the more widely applied sense as opposed to Pemerton's more narrow definition in this discussion). Simply choosing the overall setting, and creating PCs has likely forced certain world elements to be established. These may be minimal, but they are there, and some may likely have larger world implications (a cleric character may imply a deity or a pantheon; an alien PC establishes that humans are not alone in the galaxy; etc.).
> 
> Now, in each case, it is very possible that there is no larger story the GM has established, or that is inherent in the setting. So the action of the PCs, and their story, may be entirely undetermined, and may be revealed as they go. I have indeed played games like this, where I have asked the players to establish bits about the characters and the world as we go.
> 
> But I don't know if a true story....any kind of narrative element beyond describing the actions of the PCs....will really emerge unless someone instigates it. very often that seems to be the job of the GM, but it could just as easily be a player. Someone has to do it though....they have to add that one element or take that one action that kind of forces things one way. It could be the reason they're in the dungeon, or it could be the mission statement of their crew, or whatever.




Well, I can tell you about a game I ran several years ago. It was with some people I've played with a lot and I'd consider them to be 'advanced' in terms of being into RPGs and having a good idea of how to make things work, so we were in a "lets see what we can do" mode.

So, we all sat down together (online actually, but whatever) and invented a concept for a game. Someone proposed, or we were already kind of talking about, medieval chivalric tales, Arthurian legend and other somewhat similar stuff (there was actually a very wide range of material in those days, even if you limit yourself to say France). I proposed we use a diceless lightweight FATE-like system (maybe its even more like Cortex+ as it has a concept of a pool, though the mechanical details are different). So the other players generated characters, described basically the kind of place they were going to find themselves, the parameters of what they wanted to accomplish, etc. 

I played the role of GM, which is needed in this system to generate conflict out of the pool of 'stones' and to help regulate the level of tension in the game. Everyone else described characters and what they were doing, and explained how their actions related to the setting, inventing new details in a collaborative way as they seemed needed. In that sense there were no 'secrets', all the PLAYERS know what the world state is, and we can do anything we want with it, including retcons I guess if we wanted.

One thing I did do was create a map at one point of the 'Land of Alleterre' where the story takes place, and some areas around it. This amounted to a reasonably significant contribution to the overall setting, but it was highly consonant with what we were all going for. It was also open enough that castles and towns and forests, and monster lairs or whatever could be added as needed.

So, there was plenty of world building in the most general sense, I ended up with a fairly hefty 20 or 30 pages of material on the region, as well as a decent map. We played out a good bit of the story we were interested in and then went on to other things. It was fun, and I think it probably basically conformed to the sort of scene-framing type of thing that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is usually doing (from what I can tell). 

Truthfully, I think when I hear you guys debating about the map in the room and who gets to decide where it is and when, I think the essence of the question, from a scene-framing standpoint, has been lost. What is this map about? Why is the PC trying to find it? What is he willing to stake on finding it, and what are the consequences if it isn't found? I mean, if its just a map that you might find by chance, then who cares? If it isn't something that the players know will shape the story, then it doesn't even exist. I mean, until some element enters into the story, its just a notion in someone's imagination, or maybe a note scribbled in a notebook that nobody else has ever read. Does a tree make a sound if it falls in the forest and nobody hears it? Does an imaginary map exist if nobody finds it?

The point being that that whole debate is pointless until you talk about the greater context. In a Gygaxian sort of game the map is simply a possible resource that may or may not be found, and [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] is right, a check to find it resolves nothing but the check, either way the character succeeded. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] SHOULD see it the same way! NOTHING IS AT STAKE THAT WE KNOW OF, so there cannot BE 'success' or 'failure' by his criteria! 

Once the map NEEDS to be found, because it is now a part of the narrative in terms of furthering or resolving some conflict in the game, then by [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s method of play, the PLAYER is entitled to (either by fictional positioning of his character, or by use of a meta-game construct in the rules of play) exercise his agency in the game to bring about a chance of finding that map, regardless of any 'puzzle-solving' aspect of the game. If its just a matter of the character lacking the knowledge to have the agency to control his destiny then in 'Pemertonian' terms the scenario is a railroad, or at least lacks a potential positive outcome that could exist. Its not the case that the player must get his way, BTW, it is only the case that he should have a way to WAGER on success. Failure will propel the scenario into a region of greater stakes and greater tension, which is a perfectly fine outcome for all concerned!


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## Sunseeker

hawkeyefan said:


> I think maybe as a default assumption, sure, but I don't see why it must be so. It could be something as simple as the player wanting to play a character from a far off land. I look at that and then ask for details about that land. Let the player provide them...if he doesn't want to, then I will.
> 
> Honestly, I try to get my players to put as much into the world as possible. It helps invest them in the world and in the game.




More than that, when Throttleneck Dwarffist says they come from a long and proud linage of dwarven warriors, *I* don't want to responsible, as DM for executing his vision.  It is _far_ easier to tell the player to tell me a little bit about this proud lineage of dwarven warriors, what are his parents names, does he have siblings, who did he train with, what was their family name (the Dwarffists I guess?) and so on and so forth.

I tend to favor players filling in the little details, while I keep track of the big details.  I've no real desire to let a player author an entire continent or countryside for example, but if Billy wants to come from a backwater fishing town, I'm more than happy to let him fill in that sort of thing.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> No, but the PCs are seeing their causal powers at work.
> 
> Again - and how many times do I have to repeat this - *look at these events through the eyes and perception of the PC* rather than through the eyes and perception of the player.
> 
> And yes of course the DM has to generate - and then maybe narrate - the fiction that comes between cause A and result B, just like she narrates anything else that happens to or around or in reaction to the PCs.
> 
> Lanefan




This focus on PCs confuses me. I'm not sitting down at a table full of friends to enjoy a game of D&D with Grog the Half-Orc, Gilladian the one-handed dwarf fighter, and the rest of the crew. I don't care if they are thrilled or not! In fact, as GM, I narrate horrible things happening to them all the time that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy in real life!


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## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> Firstly, thanks for engaging the concepts I tried to explain.  That's very welcome.
> 
> Okay, I see that I went a bit to general and maybe skipped a few steps, because you're talking a bit past the point I was making and why @_*pemerton*_'s argument fails.  Let me expand a bit using what you referenced, as boardgames are a fantastic metaphor to explain the thinking.
> 
> Firstly, the claim was that fiction doesn't exist -- it's not a real thing, it's imaginary, and, as such, it's really only the act of authoring that fiction that's a real thing.  This is important because @_*pemerton*_'s argument revolves around authoring.  To relate this to boardgames, it would be like saying that the rules of a boardgame don't exist, the are not real things.  The only thing that is real is making moves in the game, because you don't rule, you make moves.
> 
> @_*pemerton*_ goes on to use the framework above -- that authoring fiction is the only real thing, to say that therefore authoring one fiction is equivalent to authoring different fiction -- they're the same act, and, and here's where he skips a number of steps, therefore changing the fictional orc to dead is the same as saying there's a map in the study.  However, the steps he skips are the rules applied to how it's okay to author fiction.  For @_*pemerton*_'s examples, those rules are that the authoring adheres to the established fiction, that it adheres to the pre-defined genre logic, and that it adheres to the concepts that it should always revolve what certain authors want over other authors (this last being player action declarations vs DM fiat).  To relate back to boardgames, @_*pemerton*_ wants to say that both moving your pawn one space forward is just as legal as moving your knight in an 2x1 L.  What he skips is that this is true in the game of chess, but not in the game of checkers -- that you can play different games with different rules and that those rules are subjective and not objective things -- they are imaginary restraints on allowable moves, just as the conventions of an RPG are imaginary restraints on how authoring occurs.
> 
> For some reason @_*pemerton*_ misses this crucial point to his own argument -- that it's the subjective restrictions on what's allowable that determine the usefulness and legality of moves.  @_*pemerton*_ so loves a certain set of games that he applies the rules of those games to other games and becomes confused when confronted with games that use different rules.  In a way, it's like @_*pemerton*_ really loves his chess, and when confronted with the move of jumping in checkers, which has the same board, the same number of pieces, the same general concept as chess, stops and asks, "What's jumping for?"  When explained, he says, "but that's doesn't make any sense, why should I have to wait until the opponent moves into a space where I can take his piece, and why does that mean I have to move past him.  What should be happening is that I can move my pieces according to their unique abilities and take whatever piece I want, so long as it's withing my abilities, by moving into their space?"  He's applying a different game's rules.
> 
> When this is pointed out, he then retreats to the argument that the rules are fictional constructs and don't really exist, it's the moves that matter and that moving your pawn forward 1 is just as legal as moving your knight in an L.  He, again, applies the rules of the game he prefers when he presents this argument, which defeats his argument because it hinges on his preferred rules and doesn't allow for other rules to be equally valid.
> 
> As far as agency, yes, your example is largely devoid of agency. The decision to regarding the door being only to open it or not, and the results being being told what's behind the door or doing nothing is an example of very low agency.  I think, for this reason, it's a bad example, as what's happening is that people are bringing in larger assumption sets of their playspace and not understanding that that those assumptions aren't universal.  For example, in a style where there's a set dungeon, and set encounters, then opening that door is a part of a larger agency to engage that dungeon in the order you wish, and you might have many tools to bring to bear on your decision making on how to do that.  In that context, opening that door might be very fraught with agency due to things you've already found or that your very low on resources and opening a new door may bring salvation or ruin.  On the other hand, if the game you're playing is one that centers on things the players have indicated are of interest to them and on situations that engage those with stakes, then, sure, that door might just be set dressing and the players shoudn't even be faced with a choice to open it or not -- it's not the crux of the scene.  Or maybe it is, but because of things brought to the table.
> 
> The point of that example is to show that opening a door as a move in a game is something that, absent any other rules or conceits, is hard to evaluate.  It's really the rules you bring to the situation, those completely fictional rules, that turn opening a door into something loaded with agency or trivial and banal.  If you only look at the door from one point of view, you'll only see the value of it from that point of view.  Someone else may have a completely different opinion of that door and the impact of opening it.




I think you may be selling [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] a bit short. He's not saying 'checkers is a silly game' or misunderstanding that you play a different game than he does. He started the thread asking a question about what the purpose of certain 'rules' in a certain type of RPG are for. Now, he may be interpreting them in terms that he understands, but I think that cuts both ways as certainly there's been some interpreting his ideas in the lens of 'classic DM-driven play' (to try to coin some sort of name for it, please substitute something better if you don't like it). 

Also I think there was a bit of cross-posting, as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] also elaborated on what I said in terms of the difference/similarity of the orc vs the map as fiction. Now, I will note that in terms of that elaboration you could still simply say "the rules of my game are that they're different situations, players get agency in combat that they don't get in exploration" but its valid to point that out and ask WHY (and that may actually be a part of the question of world building/DM content generation too for that matter). 

Anyway, I don't think anyone is 'not getting' you, or that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is being either sloppy nor employing some form of rhetorical art in cleverly ignoring some key point. He's driving at a certain question, that's all. The notion that different games are all potentially valid rules sets and different from each other AFAICT is not a bone of contention here (though I skipped a good bit of the middle of the thread, maybe it was at some point).


----------



## The Crimson Binome

AbdulAlhazred said:


> This focus on PCs confuses me. I'm not sitting down at a table full of friends to enjoy a game of D&D with Grog the Half-Orc, Gilladian the one-handed dwarf fighter, and the rest of the crew. I don't care if they are thrilled or not! In fact, as GM, I narrate horrible things happening to them all the time that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy in real life!



That's what role-playing is, though: it's pretending to be your character. Everything that happens in the game world, the player has to look at it from the perspective of their character in order to figure out what the character would think about it, and how they would act.

The physical process in the brain, by which role-playing occurs, is that one person (the player) pretends they are in the same situation as another person (the character); and whatever your brain spits back as what _you_ would do, that's your best guess for what _they_ would do in that situation. The fact that the character doesn't exist is not actually relevant to the role-playing process. Humans are usually pretty good at modeling other humans and predicting their behavior, as long as they know what's going on with them and they can imagine themselves in that situation; it's a byproduct of an evolutionary arms race where modeling other people gives you a comparative fitness advantage, and all of us are survivors of that competition. (It's also why it can be difficult to play as characters that are substantially not human - you need to re-filter all of your thoughts to correct for your anthro-centric bias.)

But it's also the direct cause of one of the major conflicts between role-players and story-tellers. Since story-tellers treat characters like fictional entities in some sort of novel, they don't really _care_ about whatever traumas they inflict upon those characters; having the fighter's loved-one be kidnapped by terrorists and then killed in front of him is just dramatic story-telling that gives him suitable motivation. To a role-player, if you're pretending that your loved-one was kidnapped by terrorists and then killed in front of you, that means your brain has to actually configure itself to replicate that scenario; from a biological perspective, your brain _becomes_ something like the brain of someone who has gone through that horrible experience. Whatever trauma you visit upon the character, it is also directly felt by the player (albeit mitigated somewhat by distance).

For the purpose of the player doing the role-playing, the character _is_ a real person in almost every way that matters. The brain which is telling you what Grog the Half-Orc wants to do _is_ the brain of Grog the Half-Orc in a very meaningful way.


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## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> I don't think the DM needs to be neutral about the party when designing  adventures and so on. I think it's probably best if he designs things  with the specific players and characters in mind.
> 
> I get your approach. It's a bit more classic in that you have an idea  for an adventure and it's the same no matter who comes to try it. Much  like the old modules. Nothing wrong with that.




It is much more ancient and fundamental than that. In the true Gygaxian model of play the DM is NEUTRAL ARBITER when it comes to actually adjudicating the action. He's also author of the environment, but it is actually DIRTY POOL in Gygaxian terms to construct elements of the dungeon which favor or disfavor a specific character (its OK if specific skills that character has prove useful, that's different). It becomes favoritism. 

I think in the end you can trace most of the preferences of people in [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s camp back to elements of the roles associated with player challenge exploration/puzzle play. AD&D (2e specifically) advocated moving away from that mode of play, but it left in place most of the mechanical structure, so the roles and associated concepts culture persisted and took on new meaning in the context of more open-ended story focused play. 

In Gygax's formulation the DM was referee and the world was a game board, or even in a sense a battlefield. Much like the referee role in Chainmail, and especially in extended wargaming campaigns, one of the referee's main jobs was to maintain the 'fog of war'. So, in a 2e context the DM's role persisted but changed, so that he became the author of a story, a fiction that was inherent in the structure of the adventure and which was played out by the players moving their characters through it. The player's role basically didn't change from OD&D, they were supposed to use cleverness and expert play to get through the tough parts of the adventure, the climaxes and such. 

So, you ended up with the hidden information adventure story kind of setup. Problematically 2e lacks any sort of rules for the players to assert any real control in this story. In the puzzle dungeon their simple agency as their character alter-egos was enough. They decided to push ahead, go back, check for traps, hire a sage to decipher the map, etc. In the story (basically the same as the APs that are popular today) that agency is not always sufficient. The story can really only play out as variations on success or failure to move along the set plot (it may have a small number of branches, but logistically many complex branches are hard to do in a pre-authored story).

2e is, and I think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has stated this before and I agree with it, an incoherent game. It espouses a type of play and a set of goals which its mechanics are incapable of delivering.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Saelorn said:


> That's what role-playing is, though: it's pretending to be your character. Everything that happens in the game world, the player has to look at it from the perspective of their character in order to figure out what the character would think about it, and how they would act.
> 
> The physical process in the brain, by which role-playing occurs, is that one person (the player) pretends they are in the same situation as another person (the character); and whatever your brain spits back as what _you_ would do, that's your best guess for what _they_ would do in that situation. The fact that the character doesn't exist is not actually relevant to the role-playing process. Humans are usually pretty good at modeling other humans and predicting their behavior, as long as they know what's going on with them and they can imagine themselves in that situation; it's a byproduct of an evolutionary arms race where modeling other people gives you a comparative fitness advantage, and all of us are survivors of that competition. (It's also why it can be difficult to play as characters that are substantially not human - you need to re-filter all of your thoughts to correct for your anthro-centric bias.)
> 
> But it's also the direct cause of one of the major conflicts between role-players and story-tellers. Since story-tellers treat characters like fictional entities in some sort of novel, they don't really _care_ about whatever traumas they inflict upon those characters; having the fighter's loved-one be kidnapped by terrorists and then killed in front of him is just dramatic story-telling that gives him suitable motivation. To a role-player, if you're pretending that your loved-one was kidnapped by terrorists and then killed in front of you, that means your brain has to actually configure itself to replicate that scenario; from a biological perspective, your brain _becomes_ something like the brain of someone who has gone through that horrible experience. Whatever trauma you visit upon the character, it is also directly felt by the player (albeit mitigated somewhat by distance).
> 
> For the purpose of the player doing the role-playing, the character _is_ a real person in almost every way that matters. The brain which is telling you what Grog the Half-Orc wants to do _is_ the brain of Grog the Half-Orc in a very meaningful way.




Eh, I don't entirely buy that. I mean, sure, RP can and does work as you say to some extent. However that doesn't make RP ALL THERE IS TO AN RPG. Its a game after all for one thing, and you could play it for a whole variety of reasons. Beyond that, the RP part need not be the entirety of the game. I mean, I have no problem imagining (and have played in) games where I was RPing some character and using my agency as a player to help throw twists and difficulties in the path of the character I was RPing. Sure, I identify with the character, but if I didn't want adventure and the adversity and etc that goes along with that why would I play D&D? If I only wanted to endlessly triumph in my play, then why would I again play D&D instead of some game where I didn't ever risk failure and nothing bad happened to anyone.

Now, I think its reasonable to ask just exactly what sorts of things you want to RP. I can think of some types experiences I'm not particularly eager to explore in a game which is supposed to be entertaining. Maybe either some aspects that might logically be present in such games are glossed over or left out. Its a fantasy world, we don't have to make it TOO realistic, sure. Likewise we usually have a sort of 'cartoon evil' in our games, etc.

Anyway, my point is, I'm still playing with my friends, the PCs are imaginary. I think most players would say they would like agency to avoid certain things in game, or add certain things to the game, but they don't all want to just give their characters bennies.


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## chaochou

I see the tedious one true wayist Saelorn is back trying to extrapolate from a single word what the entirety of 'roleplaying' has to involve. It's so tenuous as to be moronic.

Nothing in the words 'roleplaying game' says it has to be first person. It can be third. Equally, nothing says other activities within the game are 'forbidden'.

It's the same as insisting that a 'wargame' must involve only war - therefore if your game involves production, economics, politics and negotiation, or logistics it isn't a wargame. It's like insisting that a 'boardgame' must involve only a board. So that if you roll dice or get dealt a hand of cards you're no longer boardgaming.

It's clear that such 'definitions' are untenable. As is Saelorn's chronically blinkered view of roleplaying. What roleplaying 'is' involves putting fictional characters in situations. He desperately wants to believe - and to promote the idea - that the one true way of generating _situation _is for it to be dictated by the GM.

It's complete nonsense. It can be generated by players as well. It can be generated through the process of action resolution, if such a process is sufficiently robust and transparent enough. Such things have been part of roleplaying since the start of the hobby.

But he doesn't want that to happen - and his comedically bad method of arguing against anyone having any sort of say or control - has been to adopt a position that anything but 'thinking in character' is no longer 'roleplaying' and then to subject thread after thread to the same unending bilge.

As an ironic aside, Saelorn is on record as saying only the GM can change the gamestate. What this means is that most of the time you, as a player, are not playing. The ability to effect the gamestate constitutes playing - and the players aren't allowed. So not only does his definition of 'roleplaying' fail to reflect anything but prejudice, his game fails the definition of 'game'.


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## pemerton

[MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION], novels aren't imaginary. But the people they talk about are.

I never said that shared fictions are imaginary, either - in fact I've tried to analyse in some detail that social processes that generate them. Thoughts are real - they are caused by complex processes that begin (typically) in the "external" world and terminate somewhere in the brain. But fictional things - the orcs, swords, maps, studies etc that make up the imaginary worlds of our roleplaying games, and that we think about when RPGing - do not exist. They are imaginary. Not real.

If you want to discuss the metaphysics of fictions, and of ideas about and reference to fictional things, I'm happy to do so. It's a topic on which I have a degree of expertise. But I don't think it is necessary in the context of this thread, as the basic point - that imaginary things don't exist and don't exercise causal power - is sufficient.

I can explore the streets of Melbourne. (And have done so.) I can't _literally_ explore the streets of Greyhawk. What I can literally do is read a book that someone has written describing the (imaginary, hence non-existent) streets of Greyhawk. Or, in the context of RPGing, I can have someone (typically, the GM) read me passages from that book. Or I can declare "I look for a handy side-alley to ambush them from" and then roll some dice - which, if the requisite result is obtained, then leads to everyone at the table agreeing that the streets of Greyhawk include said alley.

The above strikes me as so obvious - as a literal description of how RPGs work - that it is strange that you so vehemently reject it. Where do you think the map of Greyhawk came from? Presumably you accept that it was invented. Who invented it, and when? It can either be invented in advance, or invented in the course of play. If the latter, by what means? A roll of the dice to determine whether the player's desire as to how it is to be, or something adverse to that, is a method that is available and fairly widely used in RPGing.

If I'm telling a story about an orc confronting a swordsman, and then add - "It just got killed by a sword blow from the swordsman" - that is an act of authorship, of invention. It adds detail to the story of the orc and its encounter with the swordsman.

If I'm telling a story about the (imaginary) city of Grehyawk, and some character's travels through it, and then add - "And then she found a side-alley to hide in, and to lay an ambush for her pursuers" - that is an exactly parallel act of authorship. It adds details to the story of Greyhawk, and this character's adventures in that city.

Mutatis mutandis for a story of a study being searched, in which I add - "And the searcher found a map in the bottom desk drawer!".

I take it as obvious that these stories are not the same, and so I'm surprised that you think that is important to spell out - one is a story of an orc and a swordsman who kills it, one of a city and a would-be ambusher who finds an alley to lurk in, one of a study and a searcher who finds a map in it. What I said is that they are _structurally equivalent acts of authorship_. The structure in each case is: (1) established fiction about a situation involving a character (the swordsman, the would-be ambusher, the searcher) and some other story element (the orc, the city, the study); (2) an embellishment of the situation, an extra detail added - the orc is dead, killed by the swordsman; the city has an alley suitable for lurking in, which the would-be ambusher handily comes upon; the study contains a map, which the searcher finds.

There are millions of RPGers the world over who don't want player action declarations to play any roll in embellishing the story involving the city or the study, but are happy for those action declarations to play a roll in embellishing the story of the orc. That is there prerogative. No doubt they have their reasons. But if the reasons they assert are that it is "unrealistic" for the player to embellish some of these stories, that is a bad reason. Because there is nothing less "realistic" about one rather than another person embellishing a story of a study than embellishing a story of an orc.

If the person asserts (as I think   [MENTION=6698278]Emerikol[/MENTION] does) that "As a player I only want to add those embellishments that correspond to causal powers exercised by my PC in the gameworld, so I will embellish deaths caused by my PC, but not maps discovered by my PC" that's his/her prerogative. It's a type of aesthetic preference. (As well as Emerikol,   [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has advocated it strongly in this thread.)

My claims about it are two. (1) It is not more "realistic", or less "Schroedinger-y" than embellishing other parts of the fiction. (2) It means that a reasonable amount of your play experience will involve the GM telling you stuff that s/he made up (either in advance in his/her notes, or stuff that s/he makes up as needed but that is to be treated the same by the game participants as if it were part of his/her pre-authored notes).

The reason for (2) I take to be obvious given the extensive discussion of it in this thread, and the example provided by   [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION],   [MENTION=40176]MarkB[/MENTION] and others. And the more the game involves "exploration" - that is, the players declaring actions which have, as an outcome, their PCs _learning_ about the gameworld (eg opening doors, finding bribeable officials, searching for maps, etc) rather than their PCs _changing_ the gameworld (eg by killing orcs or befriending strangers) - then the more that (2) will obtain.

Furthermore, given that a PC's success in _changing_ the gameworld often depends (in the imaginary causal processes) upon unknown but relevant factors (eg the armour of the orc; the temperament of the stranger) then even _changing_ the gameworld through action declarations can become hostage to a resolution process that does not permit the player to embellish other elements of the shared fiction.

For instance, if we go from _player action declaration _through _resolution mechanics_ through _embellishment that reflects outcome_, then it is possible to have combat systems like D&D (AC, roll to hit, determine outcome from that) and hence it is impossible for it to be established, in advance of combat resolution, that the orc to literally have no chinks in his armour (such that, eg, you can't kill him until you rip off his helmet). Even a mage wielding a dagger can get lucky, find a chink in his armour, and kill the orc (if the orc wins, it's possible to say "Well, no chinks after all" - embellishment following resolution and reflecting outcome). Similarly, it is impossible for it to be established in advance that the temperament of the stranger is such that s/he is never befriendable: if the reaction roll (or corresponding resolution system) is high enough, it turns out that today the stranger is cheerful enough (or perhaps sufficiently in need of cheering up) that s/he will make a new friend. (Again, if the roll comes up poorly for the player, maybe this person really can't be befriended - _embellishment follows resolution and reflects outcome_.)

Whereas if the process is _GM adds all embellishments that pertain to elements of the fiction that, in the fiction, are not consequences of a PC's causal powers_, and only then go to action declaration, then we may never even get to the resolution mechanic to find out if the PC changed the gameworld. Eg  if the GM decides the stranger is too despondent to be befriended, then the PC _can't change_ that part of the gameworld. If the GM decides there are no chinks in the orc's armour, then the dagger-wielding mage PC _can't change_ that part of the gameworld.

This is the point about agency. In a game in which (2) is strong, the players' agency over the shared fiction is rather minimal. The focus of game play is on triggering the GM to relate this or that bit of the fiction that she is in charge of embellishing (because it concerns elements whose nature, in the gameworld, is not amenable to being caused by the PCs).

I think I've made it clear that I don't really enjoy that sort of gameplay. Others have made it clear that they do. One thing that worldbuilding, in the OP sense, is for, is to enable that sort of gameplay. The only things that seems contentious is that some people don't like the description of it as "The GM telling the players stuff from his/her notes." But given that, literally, that is what it involves - as spelled out in some of the actual examples given in this thread - I don't see what the grounds for contention are.



Ovinomancer said:


> in a style where there's a set dungeon, and set encounters, then opening that door is a part of a larger agency to engage that dungeon in the order you wish



Agency in Gygaxian dungeoneering has two main elements.

(1) The dungeon map is a real artifact. It is a strong constraint on the fiction that the GM narrates when the players trigger narration of fiction. The dungeon key is another strong constraint. These constraints establish a maze/puzzle that the players can solve. And that puzzle has "nodes" - in the fiction, they are rooms of the dungeon - which contain the elements of the win condition for the game - in the fiction, this is treasure; and also contain obstacles to both solving the maze and meeting the win condition - in the fiction, these are traps, tricks and monsters. The players' agency consists in solving the puzzle in a way that achieves the win condition; overcoming the obstacles is an important means to doing this.

(2) The second element of player agency is what distinguishes Gygaxian dungeoneering from a boardgame (and whereas I think   [MENTION=3192]howandwhy99[/MENTION] and I broadly agree in respect of (1), I know that we disagree on the following point). Because the dungeon is not _only_ a physical artefact (a map) but is also an imagined thing, the players can declare, as moves in the game, whatever they conceive of their PCs being able to do given their fictional positioning. This means that overcoming the obstacles permits a range of problem-solving solutions that goes beyond a traditional boardgame. In Talisman, just to pick an example, you can't cross the river by damming it; in classic dungeoneering you can.

The second element of agency in Gygaxian dungeoneering depends _very heavily_ on fair refereeing (   [MENTION=6680772]Iosue[/MENTION] had an interesting thread a few years ago that talked about Mike Carr's comments on fair refereeing). It also depends upon the obstacles, and their basic natures, being settled in advance of the players trying to overcome them by declaring moves for their PCs. (This is why Lewis Pulsipher said (paraphrasing) "Never put a diamond-studded room in your dungeon; because you can never be sure that a player won't find a way to get the diamonds - eg via a ring of wishing".)

The second element of agency in Gygaxian dungeoneering does not depend, in general (perhaps it might in some cases) on the players getting the GM to tell them enough of his/her notes for the players to put together the solution to which the GM has scattered hints. So it is not (in general) like   [MENTION=40176]MarkB[/MENTION]'s example of looking around to see if any PCs are bribeable; and, if none are, then looking for more information from the GM until you learn what the solution is to the problem of your PC being a wanted criminal that is written in the GM's notes.

Some Gygaxian dungeoneering does have this character - eg a door that won't open until a particular password is read, with the password written on a scroll elsewhere in the dungeon. If we describe this in literal rather than figurative terms, we have an obstacle to the players solving/beating the maze that the players can't overcome by declaring moves until they have made the correct other moves to trigger the GM to read the bit of his/her notes that records the information about the scroll. Some even has this character to a more extreme degree: there's a solution written in the GM's notes but there is no move the players can make in the course of play that will trigger the GM to tell them the solution, so they just have to guess. Tomb of Horrors has a lot of this; it contrasts with (say) White Plume Mountain or Castle Amber, which have lots of wacky obstacles but don't tend to impose particular solutions. I think these latter modules therefore offer players more opportunity to exercise agency of the second Gygaxian sort than does ToH.

As I've said, I think running a game with either of these sorts of agency becomes hard when (i) the "map" ceases to be a real physical artefact and becomes, instead, some ideas in the GM's head which the player's only have access to through the GM's exposition of those ideas (the living, breathing world) and (ii) the situations - the obstacles - get framed in ways that suggest such a confluence of verisimilitudinous forces operating upon them that the open-ness of possibility found in wacky modules like S2 and X2 is lost, and play becomes increasingly about getting the GM to tell you stuff from his/her notes.

The paradigm of RPGing in which neither sort of agency is present is a CoC module.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> The GM can determine some things, and leave others to be established during play.



This is true.



hawkeyefan said:


> I don't really see a problem with the game being about what the GM would like. Or at least, I don't see the problem if it's reasonable.



My response to this is slightly round about.

My own experience is that play becomes more engaged, and visceral, when the stakes reflect player buy in, rather than a GM-established McGuffin. A very large number of modules involve McGuffins ("fetch quests" are the paradigm; just today I saw a post which suggested that it is good GMing to require a PC to go on a quest to get ingredients for the magic item that s/he wants for his/her PC).

I don't think that the GM establishing what the game is about _has_ to involve McGuffins. But I think it can.

If the GM buys into the players' stuff and embellishes it and works with it, I find the engagement and visceral nature of play increases. That's a mixture of aesthetic preference (    [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] upthread said he doesn't want pressure when playing; for me it's pretty vital, and McGuffins are the enemy of pressure in the relevant sense as the pressure is purely tactical/operational, not gut-wrenching) and generalization from experience. Both are prone to idiosyncrasy!



hawkeyefan said:


> I don't see why a random table result can't generate declaration blocking elements. I can see how it doesn't have to, but I think the risk of it is still there, no?



It depends on the table and its function.

Sticking to the Traveller example, I've used several random tables. I'll try to break them down.

Some are, in effect, action resolution mechanisms:

* random patron (doesn't block anything - I let the player make the roll, adding one for Carousing skill - it's a type of action resolution, the declared action being "I hang out in the TAS lounge to see if anyone wants/needs my services);

* random reaction (doesn't block anything - I let the player make the roll, adding appropriate mods for skills - it's a type of action resolution, the declared action being roughly along the lines of "I want to establish a friendly connection with these people);

* random starship encounters (doesn't block anything - the action declaration is "We leave the system in our ship" which triggers a check at that point and again at the point of entering the new system - I once again let the player make the roll).​
Then there are the random person and animal encounters. These aren't really a type of action resolution; they're more like random framing devices, for generating new content periodically. They don't block anything. Both these and the starship ones do give rise to a different issue - namely, they require some deft GMing to keep things going "where the action is" - the modest level of abstraction at which they deliver results (roughly speaking, _beings_ but not _purposes_) helps here.

Random world generation is similar to the random person and animal encounters - it's a way of generating framing.

One bit of randomness that _could_ block, and which I am therefore not using, is to actually generate the whole sector map via the random method the book recommends. Our starmap has been generated by me rolling up individual worlds but putting them into play, and in relation to one another, in a way that responds to the demands of action resolution and "go where the action is" framing.

Another bit of randomness that _could_ block, but which I am using, is the presence of Psionics Institute branches on worlds. The rule here is first the GM rolls randomly to see if there's one present; the player then rolls to see if s/he can find it, but can't succeed on that check if the GM's roll means there is not one there. When this rule came into play, it actually _did_ block. And the strongest lover of Burning Wheel in my group was the one who experienced the blocking and he DIDN'T LIKE IT; he very strongly felt that it should hinge on the resolution of his action declaration (which is how a Traveller Streetwise check is handled).

Why am I using a rule that goes contrary to my preferences and that has irritated one of my players? Two reasons: I want to play the game more-or-less as written, to get the "Traveller experience"; and the rule is there to make getting psionics fairly hard, and I'm happy for that part of the game experience to be delayed a bit because it will change the nature of the game once this player's PC does develop psionics.

Why not just ban psionics, then? See the first of my two reasons. But then why, given that reason, am I not using sector-mappig? Because (i) I contain multitudes etc, and (ii) that would have such a ubiquitous blocking effect that it would make the game effectively unplayable for me, and so on that point Traveller has had to yield.

I could have worked out an alternative Psionics Institute rule that puts it all on the player action declaration side but roughly preserves the likelihoods of finding one, but that would have required doing maths that I didn't get around to doing. And would have involved a departure from the first reason.



hawkeyefan said:


> I think the default assumption of many games, and of D&D certainly, is that the player should describe what the character does and then let the GM determine the outcome based on what's been established and the results of whatever check may be required (Search or Perception or what have you). The player is limited to describing what his character attempts to do.



This isn't how D&D handles combat (subject to a qualification in the next paragraph). In combat the player _doesn't_ have to describe what the player does (other than the very generic "I attack with my sword"); and the GM doesn't decide the outcome - we roll to hit dice, and damage dice, and track hit point totals, and some (not all) of us track figures on a map, etc.

I agree with you for non-combat, though, in contemporary D&D (I don't know that it was always thus, but it has been at least since 2nd ed and its NWP system). Also, GM fudging of hit point totals or monster to hit rolls or monster AC will tend to change the character of combat to being what you described. That's why upthread, in reply to   [MENTION=59082]Mercurius[/MENTION], I described this approach to player action declarations as the player making suggestions to the GM as to how the fiction might be developed.



hawkeyefan said:


> Okay, but if we compare the search for the letter and the attack on the orc, I don't think they're exactly alike. One is the player actively seeking something, the other is the player responding to action from the game world.
> 
> What if the orc is 100 feet away from the PC and is attacking them with a bow? Is not allowing the PC to retaliate with a melee attack denying their agency? Is the player free to resolve the issue of the orc in any way he sees fit? Or is he bound by the constraints of the fictional world?
> 
> Is that any different than the hidden letter? It's location determines the chance of finding it.



I posted a lot about this upthread. The difference I see is that in your orc example the player knows the fictional positioning - the GM has framed something, and the player has to deal with it. (If the player declared an action to sneak within dagger distance of the orc, and the GM fiated failure, that's a further matter, but I hope you're happy for me to assume that the player finds his/her PC at sub-optimal distance from the orc either as the result of a failed check, or in other circumstances where the GM was at liberty to frame the PC, and thereby the player, into adversity.)

In the case of the hidden document, the player doesn't know the fictional positioning - it's _secret_ fictional positioning, _secret_ backstory that leads to failure.

Upthread we also discussed invisible opponents, or NPCs in social encounters with hidden motivations or quirks. My view about these is that they're fair game if (i) the hidden stuff is knowable by the players within the current framing, and (ii) the hidden stuff in some sense is salient (because if not salient then, in practice, not knowable even if knowable in principle), and (iii) the failure to find the hidden stuff won't be a "rocks fall" moment.

Obviously factors (ii) and (iii) in particular are highly contextual - I would take more liberties playing with friends than with strangers.

My view is that the hidden document - which in this thread has served as placeholder for the generic "clue", or the generic _thing that is central to the unfolding of play_ - violates (iii), and may well violate (ii) if the GM has decided that it's hidden in some largely arbitrary or unlikely place (my example upthread was the breadbin in the kitchen).

This obviously isn't exact science, but what is motivating my comments here is that the practical result of the map being hidden in the breadbin is that quite a bit of the actual episode of play, at the table, will be the players declaring moves for their PCs that trigger the GM to narrate stuff about the rooms of the house being searched by the PCs until eventually they think to search the breadbins and the GM tells them they find the map. Because of issue (iii) the play couldn't continue without that moment taking place; because of issue (ii) it is an extended period of play; and thus a lot of time is spent on something where the players exercise little agency and the game doesn't really move forward.

Contrast: there are two scroll cases in the study, one with the rune of Ioun and one with the rune of Vecna, and one of the PCs is an invoker who is affiliated with both these (mutually opposed) deities, and finding the map in one or the other would count as a big reveal. We now have (i) and (ii) both satisfied, so no risk of a type (iii) misfire because the hidden thing _is_ going to be revealed. Personally I would be quite comfortable with this sort of framing.

Between the two examples - of breadbins, and of two scroll cases on the desk - lie a range of other possibilities which differ as far as (i), (ii) and (iiii) are concerned. It's not an exact science. But I've tried to explain why I incline to one end of the spectrum, and the method I use to try and satisfy myself that that's where I am.



hawkeyefan said:


> I think that the approach for the player to attempt to establish game elements beyond their character's actions is less common. No less viable, and certainly it has advantages to it that can create interesting play, but I don't think that many players would expect this to be the case. Not unless it was a specific game designed with mechanics that proamoted this approach.
> 
> <snip example>
> 
> It's probably a byproduct of the fact that most of their gaming experience has come from D&D in its many iterations, and similar games. And with using published modules as a template for how to construct an adventure scenario and run a game.



I definitely agree with this - that is, the influence of a certain approach to D&D play and module design.


----------



## pemerton

Emerikol said:


> Constructively, where do you see this thread going?  Is it style evangelism by you?



My main goal is analysis of play that talks in literal terms - ie how, in the real social world of a group of people sitting around a table talking with one another, handling some physical stuff (maps, dice, etc), does RPGing work?

And then to talk about what worldbuilding achieves in these literal terms.

I'm not ruling out aesthetic preference as a factor (I hope that's clear, but wanted to put it out there to make sure) - but again I want to describe the object of that preference in literal rather than metaphoric terms.

This is why I keep talking about what the GM and players say and do, emphasise the imaginary character of the PCs and gameworld, etc.


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## MarkB

pemerton said:


> If the person asserts (as I think   [MENTION=6698278]Emerikol[/MENTION] does) that "As a player I only want to add those embellishments that correspond to causal powers exercised by my PC in the gameworld, so I will embellish deaths caused by my PC, but not maps discovered by my PC" that's his/her prerogative. It's a type of aesthetic preference. (As well as Emerikol,   [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has advocated it strongly in this thread.)
> 
> My claims about it are two. (1) It is not more "realistic", or less "Schroedinger-y" than embellishing other parts of the fiction. (2) It means that a reasonable amount of your play experience will involve the GM telling you stuff that s/he made up (either in advance in his/her notes, or stuff that s/he makes up as needed but that is to be treated the same by the game participants as if it were part of his/her pre-authored notes).
> 
> The reason for (2) I take to be obvious given the extensive discussion of it in this thread, and the example provided by   [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION],   [MENTION=40176]MarkB[/MENTION] and others. And the more the game involves "exploration" - that is, the players declaring actions which have, as an outcome, their PCs _learning_ about the gameworld (eg opening doors, finding bribeable officials, searching for maps, etc) rather than their PCs _changing_ the gameworld (eg by killing orcs or befriending strangers) - then the more that (2) will obtain.
> 
> Furthermore, given that a PC's success in _changing_ the gameworld often depends (in the imaginary causal processes) upon unknown but relevant factors (eg the armour of the orc; the temperament of the stranger) then even _changing_ the gameworld through action declarations can become hostage to a resolution process that does not permit the player to embellish other elements of the shared fiction.
> 
> For instance, if we go from _player action declaration _through _resolution mechanics_ through _embellishment that reflects outcome_, then it is possible to have combat systems like D&D (AC, roll to hit, determine outcome from that) and hence it is impossible for it to be established, in advance of combat resolution, that the orc to literally have no chinks in his armour (such that, eg, you can't kill him until you rip off his helmet). Even a mage wielding a dagger can get lucky, find a chink in his armour, and kill the orc (if the orc wins, it's possible to say "Well, no chinks after all" - embellishment following resolution and reflecting outcome). Similarly, it is impossible for it to be established in advance that the temperament of the stranger is such that s/he is never befriendable: if the reaction roll (or corresponding resolution system) is high enough, it turns out that today the stranger is cheerful enough (or perhaps sufficiently in need of cheering up) that s/he will make a new friend. (Again, if the roll comes up poorly for the player, maybe this person really can't be befriended - _embellishment follows resolution and reflects outcome_.)
> 
> Whereas if the process is _GM adds all embellishments that pertain to elements of the fiction that, in the fiction, are not consequences of a PC's causal powers_, and only then go to action declaration, then we may never even get to the resolution mechanic to find out if the PC changed the gameworld. Eg  if the GM decides the stranger is too despondent to be befriended, then the PC _can't change_ that part of the gameworld. If the GM decides there are no chinks in the orc's armour, then the dagger-wielding mage PC _can't change_ that part of the gameworld.
> 
> This is the point about agency. In a game in which (2) is strong, the players' agency over the shared fiction is rather minimal. The focus of game play is on triggering the GM to relate this or that bit of the fiction that she is in charge of embellishing (because it concerns elements whose nature, in the gameworld, is not amenable to being caused by the PCs).
> 
> I think I've made it clear that I don't really enjoy that sort of gameplay. Others have made it clear that they do. One thing that worldbuilding, in the OP sense, is for, is to enable that sort of gameplay.



Well, there's your answer. The purpose of what you call worldbuilding is to enhance a mode of gameplay that you don't enjoy, but others do. It seems like you could've managed to reach that conclusion a good couple of dozen pages ago, but at least we got there in the end.


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## pemerton

[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], I've just XPed a whole lot of your posts as they basically reiterate, pithily, what I've been saying for several pages now!

On the "what is RPGing" thing that you and [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] have posted about in your most recent posts, I'm happy to accept that mainstream RPGing involves "inhabiting" a character. (I know there's some wacky stuff out there that heads in a different direction, but I'm actually fairly conservative in my RPGing tastes! - certainly moreso than chaochou.)

In dungeoncrawling the "inhabitation" is pretty simple - it's a way of establishing permissible "moves" that follow from the PCs' fictional positioning.

In the sort of play that I think is more typical today, the PC is expected to have some life or motivation that goes beyond just being a tool to establish permissible moves. S/he is a character in the literary sense, with drives, motivations, dramatic needs etc.

There is no contradiction between inhabiting one's PC in this sense, and it being the case that an action declaration can result in the fiction containing the embellishment that you found the map you were searching for in the study where you were looking for it.

One reason I dislike GM-driven RPGing is that these tend to be subordinated in play - so my PC's goal (to borrow an example from Christopher Kubasik might be to woo a princess, but I spend my time hunting for the GM's McGuffin. There's a lot of discussion on these boards about "murder hobos", but I think a certain approach to play naturally tends to lead to it - if there is no significant scope in play for players to express their PCs' dramatic needs, it's natural that their range of character motivations will tend to narrow into ones that they can express.


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## pemerton

MarkB said:


> Well, there's your answer. The purpose of what you call worldbuilding is to enhance a mode of gameplay that you don't enjoy, but others do. It seems like you could've managed to reach that conclusion a good couple of dozen pages ago, but at least we got there in the end.



Well, on the way through at least we established that a significant component of that gameplay involves the GM telling the players stuff that is in her notes (literally or notionally). Earlier in the thread that was being doubted or denied by many posters.


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## MarkB

pemerton said:


> Well, on the way through at least we established that a significant component of that gameplay involves the GM telling the players stuff that is in her notes (literally or notionally). Earlier in the thread that was being doubted or denied by many posters.




The notion that the purpose of writing stuff down in advance is so that, during the game, you can refer to stuff you wrote down in advance is not controversial. The prejorative way in which you characterised this practice (consciously or not on your part) is what was called into doubt.


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## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think you may be selling  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] a bit short. He's not saying 'checkers is a silly game' or misunderstanding that you play a different game than he does. He started the thread asking a question about what the purpose of certain 'rules' in a certain type of RPG are for. Now, he may be interpreting them in terms that he understands, but I think that cuts both ways as certainly there's been some interpreting his ideas in the lens of 'classic DM-driven play' (to try to coin some sort of name for it, please substitute something better if you don't like it).



I don't think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is saying checkers is a silly game.  I think he can't evaluate how checkers works without referencing chess.

And, yes, there's been a lot of people doing the same back -- not being able to evaluate chess without referencing checkers.  I don't deny that.  I have limited time, though, so I can't engage everything.




> Also I think there was a bit of cross-posting, as  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] also elaborated on what I said in terms of the difference/similarity of the orc vs the map as fiction. Now, I will note that in terms of that elaboration you could still simply say "the rules of my game are that they're different situations, players get agency in combat that they don't get in exploration" but its valid to point that out and ask WHY (and that may actually be a part of the question of world building/DM content generation too for that matter).



Actually, my point is that the fundamental conceits that govern how you approach authorship in the fiction are different, and that can make the orc and the map very different kinds of moves.  In [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s approach, with his fundamental conceits, the are equivalent moves.  But that's because of those conceits and may or may not apply with a differing set of conceits.  Again, the reference to boardgames:  in chess, you take a piece by moving into it's space using the prescribed way your piece is allowed to move.  In checkers, you take a piece by using a special move only allowed in specific circumstances -- ie, you cannot jump unless you're taking a piece.  If you evaluate jumping a piece from the paradigm of chess, you will have problems understanding how it works, and vice versa.  This kind of thing is pretty much exemplified by the interactions between [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] in this thread -- both keep entirely missing the paradigm the other is using and how that fundamentally changes play that superficially seems similar, like taking a piece in chess vs checkers.



> Anyway, I don't think anyone is 'not getting' you, or that  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is being either sloppy nor employing some form of rhetorical art in cleverly ignoring some key point. He's driving at a certain question, that's all. The notion that different games are all potentially valid rules sets and different from each other AFAICT is not a bone of contention here (though I skipped a good bit of the middle of the thread, maybe it was at some point).




Oh, I'm absolutely sure [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] isn't getting this.  His continued insistence that fiction doesn't exist while applying fictional constraints on authorship makes it pretty clear he has missed the core of what I'm saying.  And his driving at that certain question has been fruitless for him so far, despite many excellent answers, because he is only evaluating it from his paradigm.  When you ask 'what's jumping good for' but you keep arguing that jumping is pointless in chess, then you're clearly only playing lip service to the idea that different paradigms are valid ways to play -- either because the concepts aren't clicking or because you're making an argument that one way is better than the other.  I'm extending [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] the benefit of the doubt that his problem is one of understanding.  And that's not a slight, either -- it's often extremely difficult to understand a different paradigm of understanding, and even more difficult to understand that another paradigm may be equally valid to your own.  This is a challenge all people face everyday.  I'm quite certain I have huge blindspots.  I'm also quite certain that I do understand some other paradigms and have concluded that mine is, indeed, better.  Not in regards to the topic at hand, for sure, I'm committed that the only thing about RPGs that should be absolutely true is that the players have fun.  Not having fun (and, I supposed, not honoring the social contract) is really the only badwrongfun.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> In the case of the hidden document, the player doesn't know the fictional positioning - it's _secret_ fictional positioning, _secret_ backstory that leads to failure.




I find it is not unusual for a table to play a medley of _Gygaxian style_ play and _contemporary style_ play. Do you find this practice strange?

Also in the case of those that play differently to you, more often than not the map exists therefore secret fictional positioning makes sense (given the exploration of the map).


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> One reason I dislike GM-driven RPGing is that these tend to be subordinated in play - so my PC's goal (to borrow an example from Christopher Kubasik might be to woo a princess, but I spend my time hunting for the GM's McGuffin.




So at your table it might just require a singular skill challenge for the character to woo the the Princess, whereas at someone else's table it might require a greater number of lesser role-playing opportunities/skill challenges. 
So its about the number of hoops a particular DM creates. I think this has less to do with DM-driven RPGs and more to do with the *adjudication process*. 4e provides a mechanism which allows the DM to determine the level of complexity of the PC desired action whilst the other editions play fast and loose with such a scenario leaving it up to the DM to create the mechanic/s (if any) to be used for the PC desired action.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> OK, though in some cases such reworking is easier than others (mine involves some things being at very precise points on the planet, which it took some math and geometry to come up with...I'd rather not have to do that again  ).




I'm trying to wrap my head around that....I mean, it's all made up, so I would think you can make it do whatever you want.....but, I'll take your word for it. 



Lanefan said:


> There's those who would say a rules veto is the same as a DM veto in a case like this.




This is true. 

But I also think that most games....even ones that allow a lot of leeway on the part of the players....still have some kinds of guidelines or requirements for character generation. Most instances of a GM not allowing a non-PC race to be used wouldn't be considered to be the GM abusing his power. 



Lanefan said:


> In our crew, if someone invites friends over to watch a movie the movie to ve watched is usually included in the invite.  That way, people who aren't interested in that movie know what they're in for should they choose to attend.




Sure, you can sidestep the analogy, but I think you get the point, no? 



Lanefan said:


> However in my case "anyone who happens to come along" is a near-inevitability as time goes by - the campaigns are many years long, players come and go, characters die or retire or whatever and then may or may not resurface years later, and so on.  Just a few weeks ago with not too much warning* I had a player come back into my game who had been out for 4 years; he rebooted one of his characters who had kind of been left hanging, we updated it out-of-session and engineered a way for him to meet the party, and away we went.




I can sympathize here. Our group is a longstanding group. We've been playing for decades. Players have come and gone due to family or work reasons, and then sometimes they come back. Just recently, a friend moved back to our area and rejoined our game after about 15 years and jumped back in. He made a new character for one group of PCs, and we'll recreate a 2E character of his for our high-level group of PCs. 



Lanefan said:


> There's no way on earth I can plan for that.




Having a bit of flexibility might help with it. I don't know if that's planning, but it can certainly facilitate the arrival of a new player or returning player. 

But I think the nature of your game (which in some ways sounds similar to mine; long standing, ongoing in the same campaign world) lends itself to your playstyle and the way you DM. Which is fine. But it doesn't mean that approach works for everyone. 

Some games will have players who want more input into the game. Some games will have the same 3 or 4 people no matter what. And so on. 




Lanefan said:


> * - he came to our Yule party, we got talking, he showed interest in getting back in as real life was now allowing the time for it.  Nobody objected, and a few weeks later after we'd all got over the flu, in he came.
> 
> Many times I don't even know ahead of time what characters will be in the party.  Most of my players have a bunch of 'em, and they get cycled in and out between adventures depending on which one(s) the player feels like playing.  Only when we're on a semi-hard AP within the campaign (like right now) can I predict a reasonably consistent party for a run of a few adventures.




Sure, but this is how you've chosen to set things up. The story isn't dependent on any particular characters. It's mission based, in a sense....here's what's needed, here's who is going to go on the mission. Players having multiple characters at different levels is also a choice. I don't think most games work that way. So you've created a situation where you cannot really predict the party make up. 

For others, the story flows from the characters. The reason they are doing what they're doing is because one or more of the characters are invested in the adventure. 

My game is a mix of both of these things. I do have goals and problems that I introduce as the GM, and expect the players to get involved to some extent with them. But the players also have goals of their own that we've incorporated into the game. So there's almost always some personal connection to what they're trying to do. 



Lanefan said:


> Where in my view the DM is, in the end, fully allowed to do that...though if she goes overboard on it she risks losing her players; so some degree of give and take is inevitable.  In the end, though, the DM rules.
> 
> Lan-"a sign on my first DM's screen read 'THE DM IS GOD.  ABIDE OR DIE.' and I've lived by that ever since"-efan




Yes, I understand that approach. I've played in many games like that, and they are perfectly fun. But others have a different view of the role of the DM and the players and how much they collaborate. 

The style of my game has a lot in common with yours. But there are also a few key differences, and in those cases, I think I lean more toward Pemerton's style, even if the methods we use might be different.


----------



## Sadras

hawkeyefan said:


> I'm trying to wrap my head around that....I mean, it's all made up, so I would think you can make it do whatever you want.....but, I'll take your word for it.




I can understand @_*Lanefan*_ in this (lets called it OCD). Our multi-campaign game has just introduced the multiverse - and I had to tie up timelines between FR (week = 10 days) and Mystara (week = 7 days) due to a particular cosmological event (secret backstory). 

I'm glad it is done, but I wouldn't want to do it again.  
And the only reason to do this is because Time (and therefore travel time via the exploration pillar) plays an intricate factor in how the setting may change based on the PC actions or in-actions over the course of the game.


----------



## hawkeyefan

I've pulled out a few items to focus upon.



pemerton said:


> My response to this is slightly round about.
> 
> My own experience is that play becomes more engaged, and visceral, when the stakes reflect player buy in, rather than a GM-established McGuffin. A very large number of modules involve McGuffins ("fetch quests" are the paradigm; just today I saw a post which suggested that it is good GMing to require a PC to go on a quest to get ingredients for the magic item that s/he wants for his/her PC).
> 
> I don't think that the GM establishing what the game is about _has_ to involve McGuffins. But I think it can.
> 
> If the GM buys into the players' stuff and embellishes it and works with it, I find the engagement and visceral nature of play increases. That's a mixture of aesthetic preference (    @_*Lanefan*_ upthread said he doesn't want pressure when playing; for me it's pretty vital, and McGuffins are the enemy of pressure in the relevant sense as the pressure is purely tactical/operational, not gut-wrenching) and generalization from experience. Both are prone to idiosyncrasy!




I won't say that I don't use McGuffin type elements from time to time in my game. They tend not to be as basic as finding ingredients or the like. I usually tie such quests more tightly to in game elements or events. Given that we're playing D&D in a fantasy world, I don't want to discard such item based quests, which are a big part of the genre expectations. 

However, I do think such quests function differently in a game as opposed to fiction. So I try to take that into consideration. 

I agree about player engagement, though. It's why much of my "GM backstory" actually draws upon a lot of elements created or introduced by my players. 



pemerton said:


> Why am I using a rule that goes contrary to my preferences and that has irritated one of my players? Two reasons: I want to play the game more-or-less as written, to get the "Traveller experience"; and the rule is there to make getting psionics fairly hard, and I'm happy for that part of the game experience to be delayed a bit because it will change the nature of the game once this player's PC does develop psionics.
> 
> Why not just ban psionics, then? See the first of my two reasons. But then why, given that reason, am I not using sector-mappig? Because (i) I contain multitudes etc, and (ii) that would have such a ubiquitous blocking effect that it would make the game effectively unplayable for me, and so on that point Traveller has had to yield.




To compare this with the finding of the map example (removing the arbitrary choice of it being in the breadbin, see my comments below), what if the map is meant to be hard to find? Obviously, the breadbin makes no sense. But let's change it a bit....what if it was in the orc chief's treasure chest? That makes sense in the fiction, and makes the finding of the map more of a challenge for the PCs. 

Does this still violate your player attempting to determine the map in the first room of the complex that they enter? 

Or is the map just the maguffin itself? Is it just the impetus introduced to get the players to explore the complex? The more they explore, the greater the chance for some compelling aspect of gameplay to emerge. 

Doesn't finding the map immediately undo that? 

This all assumes importance being placed on the possession of the map (it's needed for some greater purpose, or it can lead to further adventure, or finding it is the current goal, etc.).




pemerton said:


> I posted a lot about this upthread. The difference I see is that in your orc example the player knows the fictional positioning - the GM has framed something, and the player has to deal with it. (If the player declared an action to sneak within dagger distance of the orc, and the GM fiated failure, that's a further matter, but I hope you're happy for me to assume that the player finds his/her PC at sub-optimal distance from the orc either as the result of a failed check, or in other circumstances where the GM was at liberty to frame the PC, and thereby the player, into adversity.)
> 
> In the case of the hidden document, the player doesn't know the fictional positioning - it's _secret_ fictional positioning, _secret_ backstory that leads to failure.
> 
> Upthread we also discussed invisible opponents, or NPCs in social encounters with hidden motivations or quirks. My view about these is that they're fair game if (i) the hidden stuff is knowable by the players within the current framing, and (ii) the hidden stuff in some sense is salient (because if not salient then, in practice, not knowable even if knowable in principle), and (iii) the failure to find the hidden stuff won't be a "rocks fall" moment.
> 
> Obviously factors (ii) and (iii) in particular are highly contextual - I would take more liberties playing with friends than with strangers.
> 
> My view is that the hidden document - which in this thread has served as placeholder for the generic "clue", or the generic _thing that is central to the unfolding of play_ - violates (iii), and may well violate (ii) if the GM has decided that it's hidden in some largely arbitrary or unlikely place (my example upthread was the breadbin in the kitchen).




Okay, I will admit to thinking the mention of the map being in the bread bin was arbitrary in the context of an example, not that you meant if the location of the map is arbitrary, then why not simply allow it to be where the player hoped.

In the case of an arbitrary choice such as that, I would not in any way feel beholden to having the map be in the kitchen rather than the study. It's unimportant, and it may as well be in one place as another. I suppose that I'd question if the determination of such unimportant game elements really qualifies as player agency, though. 

If the map or its location were not arbitrary, but were instead planned as part of the framing of the challenge, would that be different in your eyes? 



pemerton said:


> This obviously isn't exact science, but what is motivating my comments here is that the practical result of the map being hidden in the breadbin is that quite a bit of the actual episode of play, at the table, will be the players declaring moves for their PCs that trigger the GM to narrate stuff about the rooms of the house being searched by the PCs until eventually they think to search the breadbins and the GM tells them they find the map. Because of issue (iii) the play couldn't continue without that moment taking place; because of issue (ii) it is an extended period of play; and thus a lot of time is spent on something where the players exercise little agency and the game doesn't really move forward.
> 
> Contrast: there are two scroll cases in the study, one with the rune of Ioun and one with the rune of Vecna, and one of the PCs is an invoker who is affiliated with both these (mutually opposed) deities, and finding the map in one or the other would count as a big reveal. We now have (i) and (ii) both satisfied, so no risk of a type (iii) misfire because the hidden thing _is_ going to be revealed. Personally I would be quite comfortable with this sort of framing.
> 
> Between the two examples - of breadbins, and of two scroll cases on the desk - lie a range of other possibilities which differ as far as (i), (ii) and (iiii) are concerned. It's not an exact science. But I've tried to explain why I incline to one end of the spectrum, and the method I use to try and satisfy myself that that's where I am.




That's all fine. I can understand your preference even if I don't share it in the same way. I suppose that part of the disconnect was that I was viewing the finding of the map as a challenge, rather than some arbitrary element, and so, to me it seems odd to have a player be able to introduce a solution to the problem through the mechanism of a simple Search/Perception check.


----------



## Lanefan

chaochou said:


> Nothing in the words 'roleplaying game' says it has to be first person.



Not perhaps in the words 'roleplaying game'; but when the 1e PH starts off by describing play as:



			
				1e PH page 7 said:
			
		

> As a role player, you become Falstaff the fighter. [...] You act out the game as this character, staying within your [abilities and alignment].  You interact with your fellow role players, not as Jim and Bob and Mary who work at the office together, but as Falstaff the fighter, Angore the cleric, and Filmar, the mistress of magic! [...]  Each of you will become an artful thespian as time goes by...



It certainly seems like a pretty hard foundational shove towards first-person roleplay, and also sets the tone for everything that has come since.



> What roleplaying 'is' involves putting fictional characters in situations. He desperately wants to believe - and to promote the idea - that the one true way of generating _situation _is for it to be dictated by the GM.
> 
> It's complete nonsense. It can be generated by players as well.



It can, though in a game type where the characters often find themselves in unpleasant or dangerous situations (i.e. most RPGs) allowing players to generate or arbitrarily meta-change these situations just doesn't work.



> As an ironic aside, Saelorn is on record as saying only the GM can change the gamestate. What this means is that most of the time you, as a player, are not playing. The ability to effect the gamestate constitutes playing - and the players aren't allowed. So not only does his definition of 'roleplaying' fail to reflect anything but prejudice, his game fails the definition of 'game'.



I've never seen or heard of any table where the players can't affect the gamestate through the actions of their PCs.  The PCs burn down a barn?  They've just changed the gamestate through their playing of their PCs.

But can the players arbirtrarily change the game rules?  Can they decide the capital city of the realm is 100 miles inland instead of on the coast where the DM's map puts it?  No.  These things fall outside the realm of playing the game, and are instead a part of designing the game; an undertaking not done by players but by first the professional game designers (system) and then the DM (setting and gameworld).

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> My main goal is analysis of play that talks in literal terms - ie how, in the real social world of a group of people sitting around a table talking with one another, handling some physical stuff (maps, dice, etc), does RPGing work?
> 
> And then to talk about what worldbuilding achieves in these literal terms.



It's a real DM doing real work to generate an imaginary world which the imaginary PCs can later explore and-or bash around in.

I can't put it much simpler than that.

One thought occurs to me, though, regarding work.  Doing as much worldbuilding, designing, etc. ahead of time as you can (in other words, front-loading the work) greatly reduces the work required at the table to run a session.  Less work is good.


----------



## Sunseeker

Lanefan said:


> One thought occurs to me, though, regarding work.  Doing as much worldbuilding, designing, etc. ahead of time as you can (in other words, front-loading the work) greatly reduces the work required at the table to run a session.  Less work is good.




Unless you're good at winging it and keeping it consistent.  Some people are.  Some people aren't.


----------



## Manbearcat

Lanefan said:


> One thought occurs to me, though, regarding work.  Doing as much worldbuilding, designing, etc. ahead of time as you can (in other words, front-loading the work) greatly reduces the work required at the table to run a session.  Less work is good.






shidaku said:


> Unless you're good at winging it and keeping it consistent.  Some people are.  Some people aren't.




What shidaku wrote.  To expound, having only what you need to begin and facilitate playing to a thematic premise and frame an opening situation allows you:

1)  To hold on lightly and be surprised what emerges from play (all of the filling out of the setting, the snowballing situation, the unfolding nature of each character as decision-points turn into player action declarations, and whatever dramatic arc forms organically out of the mesh of all of that).

2)  To be free of temptation to use GM Force to ensure that the hard work and time that you put into setting/metaplot before play began (that you're invariably going to be emotionally invested in) play is legitimized (both personally and with respect to the group).

3)  To be free of the array of entanglements inherent to (2) (emotional weight and mental workload all in prep, retention, and in referencing/accounting) so you can let system and the players have their say.  Consequently, you can be mentally fresh and focus your creative energies on introducing interesting content and refereeing in the spirit of the game you're playing.


----------



## Manbearcat

chaochou said:


> Quote Originally Posted by Lanefan  View Post
> Let me try an example.
> 
> There's skullduggery going on all over the city. The place is rife with rumours and plots and spies and gossip, and into all this prance the innocent naive low-level PCs looking to spend the spoils of their first real adventure. They take a room at an inn, and go out for a night on the town. At some point things go a bit sideways - there's some yelling and pushing and screaming and the party mage ends up having to discreetly charm a local harlot in order to calm the situation down; the charm works, well, like a charm. The mage now has a new friend, adventurers-plus-new-friend go about their merry evening, and a good time is had by all. The adventurers, including the mage, pass out around sunrise whereupon the harlot wanders off.
> 
> Player side: mage charms harlot who at his invitation joins mage and friends for a night of partying before slipping away a bit after sunrise. String pulled, result obtained.
> 
> DM side: harlot is actually an agent (who, depending on developments, the party may or may not have met later in this capacity) working for the local Duke. She realized the yelling and pushing was a distraction intended to mask something else, and joined the fray in order to get herself into the scene so she could try to determine what was being masked by the distraction. She managed to notice two men sneaking into an alley that she knew led to a hidden access to the Duke's manor house, just before being charmed by the mage and taken along for a night of revels. She didn't report this - in fact, she failed to report at all - and thus the two sneaks get where they're going and none the wiser. Meanwhile other agents who really can't be spared are sent out to search for the missing one, who none too sober comes in on her own not long after sunrise. String pulled, dominoes fall.
> 
> Ramifications: next morning word gets out of an attempt on the Duke's life during the night by two unknown men.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I really don't understand what such a DM needs players for. They may as well DM for themselves.
> 
> What this reveals, probably inadvertently, is completely self-indulgent GMing. It's purely for the GMs entertainment. You admit the PCs know nothing about what's happening. And will probably never know. And if they do 'find out' all they are ever, ever going to 'find out' is what the GM had pre-decided had happened. I get more agency reading a book.
> 
> And then you add in a new layer of GM force. The mage may get arrested for treason. And if he does the players get the joys of unravelling the GMs smugly convoluted plot to clear his name.
> 
> Was this supposed to be an example of 'player agency'? Is this the GM in 'full on react mode'? I'm genuinely confused by what this example is supposed to demonstrate. But what it actually reveals is quite telling - players as powerless stooges and pawns being exploited to help spice up a GMs solo game.
Click to expand...



So lets re-iterate this play excerpt using Dungeon World and the difference should be noticeable.



> There's skullduggery going on all over the city. The place is rife with rumours and plots and spies and gossip, and into all this prance the innocent naive low-level PCs looking to spend the spoils of their first real adventure.




Ok, this might be a setup for a DW game with 3 PCs; Dashing Hero (A Lover in Every Port, Daring Devil, Plan of Action), Barbarian (Mortal Pleasures and Fame and Glory appetites), Wizard (Mystical Puppet Strings, Charm Person spell).  

Skulduggery City wouldn't be a place that the GM fleshed out stem to stern before play.  This may be a place that was put on the map by a player prior to play and the only bit that we know about it (and have written out) is that its a den of scoundrels from the government, to the nobles, to the watch, to the clergy, to the layfolk.  That, coupled with the PC build flags is plenty to work with to come up with interesting, dangerous situations on the spot and let things snowball from there.



> They take a room at an inn, and go out for a night on the town. At some point things go a bit sideways - there's some yelling and pushing and screaming




So they've entered the town.  That triggers the Dashing Hero's move:



> A Lover In Every Port (CHA) When you enter a town that you’ve been to before (your call), roll +CHA. On a 10+, there’s an old flame of yours who is willing to assist you somehow. On a 7-9, they’re willing to help you, for a price. On a miss, your romantic misadventures make life more complicated for the party.




Looks like a 6- and the harlot is the romantic misadventure.  I would make up some story about a hooker without a heart of gold in this city to reveal an unwelcome truth.  I may ask the player to fill in the blanks about what went wrong or I may make something up myself.  So my current complication is the only chance they have to avoid her wrath is by sticking to this real den of horrors ward of the city.  She's so well-connected that she'll hear he is in town, but she _might _steer clear of that place (but, of course, it amps up the danger).

Alright, so it sounds like they have Coin to spend (on hirelings/henchman, lodgings, finery, gear, prestige).  So if they do indeed go to the den of horrors ward, then I make up an appropriate inn and clientele for that setting, give it an appropriate name (maybe Rock Bottom), an appropriate staff and layabouts/rabblerousers/troublemakers.  The players pay their Coin and are making the Recover move and the Carouse move:



> Recover
> When you do nothing but rest in comfort and safety after a day of rest you recover all your HP. After three days of rest you remove one debility of your choice. If you’re under the care of a healer (magical or otherwise) you heal a debility for every two days of rest instead.
> 
> Carouse
> When you return triumphant and throw a big party, spend 100 coins and roll +1 for every extra 100 coins spent. ✴On a 10+, choose 3. ✴On a 7–9, choose 1. ✴On a miss, you still choose one, but things get really out of hand (the GM will say how).
> 
> You befriend a useful NPC.
> You hear rumors of an opportunity.
> You gain useful information.
> You are not entangled, ensorcelled, or tricked.
> 
> You can only carouse when you return triumphant. That’s what draws the crowd of revelers to surround adventurers as they celebrate their latest haul. If you don’t proclaim your success or your failure, then who would want to party with you anyway?




Sounds like a 6- on Carouse!.  Players mark xp, they get one thing they want and then I make things get out of hand.



> and the party mage ends up having to discreetly charm a local harlot in order to calm the situation down; the charm works, well, like a charm. The mage now has a new friend, adventurers-plus-new-friend go about their merry evening, and a good time is had by all. The adventurers, including the mage, pass out around sunrise whereupon the harlot wanders off.
> 
> Player side: mage charms harlot who at his invitation joins mage and friends for a night of partying before slipping away a bit after sunrise. String pulled, result obtained.
> 
> DM side: harlot is actually an agent (who, depending on developments, the party may or may not have met later in this capacity) working for the local Duke. She realized the yelling and pushing was a distraction intended to mask something else, and joined the fray in order to get herself into the scene so she could try to determine what was being masked by the distraction. She managed to notice two men sneaking into an alley that she knew led to a hidden access to the Duke's manor house, just before being charmed by the mage and taken along for a night of revels. She didn't report this - in fact, she failed to report at all - and thus the two sneaks get where they're going and none the wiser. Meanwhile other agents who really can't be spared are sent out to search for the missing one, who none too sober comes in on her own not long after sunrise. String pulled, dominoes fall.
> 
> Ramifications: next morning word gets out of an attempt on the Duke's life during the night by two unknown men.




This doesn't tell me much of anything about what may have happened in terms of how the content was introduced/procedurally generated.  From the above, it looks like a lot of GM Force and offscreen piece-moving that in no way interacted with player knowledge or reasonably informed decision-points.  

Here is something of consequence.  If the players picked "you are not entangled, ensorcelled, or tricked" I would be breaking the rules to have this harlot be a double agent.  So clearly, they didn't choose that in this situation.  Lets say they chose to "gain useful information."  Perhaps that useful generation was about a secret entrance in the alley to the Duke's manor house.  Now this Duke must have been a relevant feature of play beforehand for this to be "useful information" for the players.  Perhaps this Duke's manor house actually has his distillery where he makes spirits of which the formula was stolen from the Barbarian's people.  And its time for some revenge!

So they get their info, but I get to introduce a major complication with a Hard move (given the 6-).  So as the evening picks up, of course in comes the harlot with a temper a mile wide and a band of ruffians to beat the tar out of the Dashing Hero PC.  Everyone is excited about the prospect of a fight (heck, maybe some rabblerousers fall in line behind her crew!) and its mayhem.  

Looks like its time for our Wizard to make use of their Mystical Puppet Strings (folks charmed don't recall what you had them do and bear you no ill will) and Charm Person spell:



> Cast a Spell (Int)
> When you release a spell you’ve prepared, roll+Int.
> 
> ✴ On a 10+, the spell is successfully cast and you do not forget the spell—you may cast it again later.
> 
> ✴ On a 7-9, the spell is cast, but choose one:
> 
> You draw unwelcome attention or put yourself in a spot. The GM will tell you how.
> The spell disturbs the fabric of reality as it is cast—take -1 ongoing to cast a spell until the next time you Prepare Spells.
> After it is cast, the spell is forgotten. You cannot cast the spell again until you prepare spells.
> Note that maintaining spells with ongoing effects will sometimes cause a penalty to your roll to cast a spell.




So obviously a 7-9 and the player chose to draw unwelcome attention or put themselves in a spot.

So now I go with the double agent complication.  Right before she gets charmed, she nods to a pair of shadowy figures at the door who quickly slip away into the night.  This would be conveyed to the PCs.  It would also be conveyed that they have a good headstart and there is a boisterous crowd that is just getting quelled (the harlot is quelling them at the Wizards command I guess...maybe she is table dancing or something)...taking the harlot away may turn a potential powderkeg into a blow-up (they would have to Defy Danger Charisma).  So I guess they stay put rather than pursue.

So the Barbarian and the Dashing Hero break into the manor house to smash the whiskey and steal back the formula.  In the course of it, they get a 6- on a result of some appropriate move and end up leaving some incriminating information at the scene that points directly to them.  They only realize it the next morning when something identifying that should be on their person is missing...or torn fine silks that match the Dashing Heroes cape/longcoat (whatever)!



So that is how Dungeon World's play agenda/GMing ethos/action resolution and no real setting prep of any consequence/hidden backstory/offscreen moving parts by fiat can bring this situation to life.  You don't have to deploy Force, you don't have to adjudicate action resolution by way of extrapolation of unknowable offscreen/unintroduced content.  Stuff can just happen and you can fill in the necessary setting blanks as you go to give the players interesting decision points and thematic complications...and players can have all the necessary control over their archetypal portfolio and their decision-tree and inhabit their character's perspective and push their interests.

And GMs can play to find out what happens.


----------



## pemerton

MarkB said:


> The notion that the purpose of writing stuff down in advance is so that, during the game, you can refer to stuff you wrote down in advance is not controversial. The prejorative way in which you characterised this practice (consciously or not on your part) is what was called into doubt.



How is it pejorative to talk about it being a goal of play for the players to trigger the GM reading stuff from his/her notes, if that is in fact a signficant goal of play?

To go back to the map example, or the bribeable officials, or The Alexandrian's node-based design and three clue rule: we are talking about perhaps hours of play in which the players declare that their PCs move from place A to place B in the gameworld; this triggers the GM to tell the players stuff from his/her notes; the players contnue this until they have enough hints and clues to (eg) declare that their PCs go to the ktichen and check the breadbin, at which point the GM tells them - by reading from his/her notes - that they have found the map.

My description is not pejorative. It's accurate.

If you think that the metaphor of "exploring" or "discovering" the gameworld has some different literal meaning, what is it?


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> I find it is not unusual for a table to play a medley of _Gygaxian style_ play and _contemporary style_ play. Do you find this practice strange?



No. 



Sadras said:


> Also in the case of those that play differently to you, more often than not the map exists therefore secret fictional positioning makes sense (given the exploration of the map).



I think the more the map turns from a dungeon map in the classic sense to a wilderness or town map, the less likely Gygaxian-type "solve the maze" agency will be preserved.

To try and explain why: suppose the map is hidden in a chest in a dungeon - well, there is a convention in classic play that every chest is noted on the map and in the key, and so it is inherently salient to the player that any given chest might be a repository for the map. (There can be invisible chests, of cousre, so the players may need to use detection magic etc to find them - but this is also an established part of the conventions of game play.)

Now suppose the map is hidden in a chest buried at the base of a tree. There is no established convention of wilderness exploration - and I think for obvious reasons there couldn't be - of describing every tree, the nature of every patch of earth at the base of a tree, etc. So the ability of the players to find that map and chest through engaging the map as a maze and beating it is much reduced. They become very dependent on paying attention to the GM's narration to pick up the clues that the particular tree they should be looking for is _this one_ rather than _that one_.

Town adventuring exemplifies the same phenomenon.

The map as physical artefact which the players try to duplicate and thereby solve/defeat becomes less important than the GM's narration of particular details that aren't on the map, but are the essentially clues that the players need to solve the puzzle.

The example of trying to work out whether or not any official will take bribes exemplifies this.



Sadras said:


> So at your table it might just require a singular skill challenge for the character to woo the the Princess, whereas at someone else's table it might require a greater number of lesser role-playing opportunities/skill challenges.



How it's resolved could depend on any number of things, depending on mood and system.

The key issue to me seems to be "what is a roleplaying challlenge?"

I resolve some social encounters via "free roleplaying" - that is, in effect, the GM saying "yes": the GM (as the NPC) says something, the player (as PC) says something, etc in a mechanically unmediated back-and-forth.

But what happens when the GM is not inclined to say "yes"? In the fiction, that corresponds to the NPC potentially rejecting the PC's offer/request. If "roleplaying challenge" means that the player has to play his/her PC in a way that persuades the GM of the successful wooing (or whatever) then that's not really what I'm into. This is when I prefer to toggle from "saying 'yes'" to rolling the dice.



Sadras said:


> I think this has less to do with DM-driven RPGs and more to do with the *adjudication process*. 4e provides a mechanism which allows the DM to determine the level of complexity of the PC desired action whilst the other editions play fast and loose with such a scenario leaving it up to the DM to create the mechanic/s (if any) to be used for the PC desired action.



The adjudication process directly feeds into GM-driven RPGing. If the adjudication process is "Say the thing that the GM has noted will do the trick", then I consider that GM-driven.

If the adjudcation is mechanical, but there is no mechanical framework for what counts as enough successes, that can also feed into GM driven RPGing, as it is the GM who decides when enough is enough.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Not perhaps in the words 'roleplaying game'; but when the 1e PH starts off by describing play as:
> 
> It certainly seems like a pretty hard foundational shove towards first-person roleplay, and also sets the tone for everything that has come since.



Yeah, OTOH the whole rest of the structure of D&D works AGAINST it. You don't get to choose what sort of a character to play, some dice are rolled and you get what you get, at least to some extent. Its likely that Jim will roll and 8 STR and a 13 INT, so he'll end up being a wizard, and Mary will get stuck playing a cleric.

Then of course, even if you get exactly what you want, Falstaff is pretty likely to be ganked by the first batch of 4 goblins you run across. Maybe after that Jim decides to call his next character 'Falstaff Jr', and so on. 

Furthermore the game definitely mires you in a lot of details and trivia that revolve around sub-games, the 'getting your numbers up by acquiring magic stuff' subgame, the equipment and supplies subgame (do we still have some more oil flasks?). There's also the whole issue of some types of characters simply being only marginally useful in play, particularly if you manage to survive and get to higher levels. Falstaff is cool and all, and has a castle, but he is hardly even a vital part of a party anymore when Filmar and her ilk can hire some lower level guys to hold the front line and blast the bad guys with powerful spells.

I'm not denigrating 1e, but it really doesn't live up to that blurb. Its a different kind of a game, still fundamentally a Gygaxian dungeon crawl in mechanical and play-structural terms. I guess what I'm saying is, there's not really much incentive to heavily identify with the character you prefer to play and spend a lot of your time in 1st person play. TBH I have only really ever seen fairly sporadic 1st person in D&D, and I've played a LOT of D&D...


> It can, though in a game type where the characters often find themselves in unpleasant or dangerous situations (i.e. most RPGs) allowing players to generate or arbitrarily meta-change these situations just doesn't work.



Only if the focus and structure of play are basically Gygaxian in nature. If the expectations are different then it makes perfectly good sense to have a game which is 100% transparent (I've done this numerous times). It can work in a lot of different ways. Nor are 'dangerous and unpleasant situations' removed from consideration. They just aren't situations where PLAYER SKILL is the determinant. They might be, for example, situations where the player's aesthetic and dramatic sensibilities are fulfilled by a certain PC falling to his death, or something.



> I've never seen or heard of any table where the players can't affect the gamestate through the actions of their PCs.  The PCs burn down a barn?  They've just changed the gamestate through their playing of their PCs.
> 
> But can the players arbirtrarily change the game rules?  Can they decide the capital city of the realm is 100 miles inland instead of on the coast where the DM's map puts it?  No.  These things fall outside the realm of playing the game, and are instead a part of designing the game; an undertaking not done by players but by first the professional game designers (system) and then the DM (setting and gameworld).
> 
> Lanefan




Heh, I played in a campaign for YEARS with a GM of extremely great energy, creativity, and story-telling power. However that game was EXACTLY described by "players can't affect the gamestate through the actions of their PCs." Truthfully you could TAKE many actions in that game. They would generally have some localized and modest effect, though often not what you were interested in or wanted. In any greater sense, the story was writ, and you were there to experience it. No choice you would make was going to deflect that greater story even one iota. If an NPC was to play a certain role in the meta-plot, then that WAS going to happen. No amount of killin' 'em dead was going to stop it. At most some other NPC would just pop up to take on the same role, or there would be a time warp, or almost whatever it took, but the show was going to go on! 

I cannot claim this wasn't a highly fun campaign, it was, but you had to be willing to just come to an understanding that you were pretty much watching the show and contributing color. Now, this guy and I were best friends and we talked through a lot of stuff outside of play and came up with ideas, etc. Sometimes things came out the way I thought they should/might/could. It was just, once his mind was made up it was going in a certain way, there wasn't much that was going to change it.

I'm sure he's still GMing although we haven't had a chance to play together in quite a few years.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]: the idea of "finding the map as a challenge" proveids an answer to the OP question "what is (GM-preauthored) worldbuilding for"?

Here is my understanding of what you mean by "finding the map as a challenge":

The GM writes that the map is in X place. The players "explore the gameworld" (that's metaphor), which is to say they make moves by declaring actions for their characters that trigger various bits of narration by the GM: eg "We look behind the tapestry." "There's nothing there but a whitewashed brick wall." Some of this narration contains clues that point (directly or indirectly) towards X. Eventually, the players declare "We go to X and [insert appropriate details that pertain to how one might search X] and look for the map." Assuming the details are correct, the GM tells the players "You find the map."

That's the sort of play that I personally don't enjoy.

I mentioned upthread that in my Traveller game I had to resolve an attempt to find trinkets of alien manufacture being sold in a market on a low-tech world whose inhabitants have mixed alien/human ancestry. Traveller has no generic Perception mechanic, nor does it have a Scavenging mechanic. (It has Streetwise, and maybe that's what we should have used, but it didn't quite seem to fit.)

As I said in that earlier post, I made what was probably the wrong call in adjudication method: I assigned a chance to their being such a trinket for sale and rolled that (I can't remember what it was - maybe 9+ on 2d6?), and then - when that came up affirmatively I had the relevant player roll against his PC's Education (which is high, and which was already established to represent a PhD in xeno-archaeology - his focus on this activity explained why, although quite competent, he had not been promoted in four terms of service as a navy enlistee),

If my (first) roll had been a fail, that would have been a type of block, and I'm not sure how I would have handled it (hence, as I say, I think it was the wrong call - but I was also bumping into limits of the system).

But what I can say is that the game play was never going to turn into a hunt for the right clue. The whole idea of looking for alien trinkets was invented by the players (after I dropped in the bit of fiction - in the mouth of a NPC scientist who had been DNA anaysing the inhabitants' blood - about the alien ancestry). It was an important "quest" for that episode of play, but I didn't have any idea about how it might be fulfilled. That was going to depend on plausible action declarations plus dice rolls to resolve them.

So the "challenge" in finding the trinket is not about getting to the right bit of pre-authored fiction. It's about identifying plausible (and hopefully interesting) action declarations - in this case, the players decided to check out local markets on the world in question - and then getting lucky with the dice. (Burning Wheel, 4e and Cortex+ Heroic all have varying devices that allow a player to put more "oomph" behind a dice roll, in the form of various sorts of player side resources. Traveller doesn't, which is one way in which it is a very dice-driven game.)

If the players get lucky early, the game moves on to the next bit of action. If they are unlucky, a mixture of fail-forward resolution (not as much a part of Traveller as those other systems, but not impossible either) and deft framing of new scenes should keep the action moving.


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## Lanefan

Manbearcat said:


> What shidaku wrote.  To expound, having only what you need to begin and facilitate playing to a thematic premise



Facilitating playing to a thematic premise means I need everything (or as much as I can) ahead of time, so I can stick to the theme and be consistent in presenting it; even if it only lasts for a few sessions before the PCs go on to somethng else entierly.



> 1)  To hold on lightly and be surprised what emerges from play (all of the *filling out* of the setting, the snowballing situation, the unfolding nature of each character as decision-points turn into player action declarations, and whatever dramatic arc forms organically out of the mesh of all of that).



Replace the bolded "filling out" with "exploration" and you're a lot closer.  That, and you're assuming much more serious and drama-driven players than many of us have, I think.



> 2)  To be free of temptation to use GM Force to ensure that the hard work and time that you put into setting/metaplot before play began (that you're invariably going to be emotionally invested in) play is legitimized (both personally and with respect to the group).
> 
> 3)  To be free of the array of entanglements inherent to (2) (emotional weight and mental workload all in prep, retention, and in referencing/accounting) so you can let system and the players have their say.



If you subscribe to the notion that GM Force is always a bad thing, this is true.  However, GM Force is not always a bad thing: the determinant of whether it's good bad or neutral lies in how it's applied and - sometimes - in hindsight when looking at what came of it in play.


> Consequently, you can be mentally fresh and focus your creative energies on introducing interesting content and refereeing in the spirit of the game you're playing.



I can do that anyway, even if I already have a lot of it pre-written and ready to go.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, OTOH the whole rest of the structure of D&D works AGAINST it. You don't get to choose what sort of a character to play, some dice are rolled and you get what you get, at least to some extent. Its likely that Jim will roll and 8 STR and a 13 INT, so he'll end up being a wizard, and Mary will get stuck playing a cleric.



Depending on what roll-up method is used, all of these are possible.  That said, whatever character you end up with, that's what you inhabit (which is in fact a part of the player-side challenge of hard-coded 0e and 1e, somewhat lost since).



> Then of course, even if you get exactly what you want, Falstaff is pretty likely to be ganked by the first batch of 4 goblins you run across. Maybe after that Jim decides to call his next character 'Falstaff Jr', and so on.



Again true, and again perfectly acceptable as a part of the game (except for the Falstaff Jr. bit).  Characters die.  It's a realistic result when they stick their noses into dangerous places where others fear to tread.



> Furthermore the game definitely mires you in a lot of details and trivia that revolve around sub-games, the 'getting your numbers up by acquiring magic stuff' subgame, the equipment and supplies subgame (do we still have some more oil flasks?).



Yes, the 'logistics' side - something else that has rather sadly been lost over the years.


> There's also the whole issue of some types of characters simply being only marginally useful in play, particularly if you manage to survive and get to higher levels. Falstaff is cool and all, and has a castle, but he is hardly even a vital part of a party anymore when Filmar and her ilk can hire some lower level guys to hold the front line and blast the bad guys with powerful spells.



Depends on level.  In 35 years of playing 1e variants I've never seen a party average above about 10th level; and at 10th-ish the non-casters can still more than hold their own.

Once you get to 18th and the MU has Wish available in the field then yeah - it's over. 



> I'm not denigrating 1e, but it really doesn't live up to that blurb. Its a different kind of a game, still fundamentally a Gygaxian dungeon crawl in mechanical and play-structural terms. I guess what I'm saying is, there's not really much incentive to heavily identify with the character you prefer to play and spend a lot of your time in 1st person play. TBH I have only really ever seen fairly sporadic 1st person in D&D, and I've played a LOT of D&D...



Drop in any Saturday night to the game I play in. 

And yes, there's not much incentive to do much with your character until it's survived a few adventures...which is why I generally don't; and have no problem with not doing so.  I bang out the numbers, give it a basic personality (sometimes more over-the-top than others) and see how it goes from there.  Background etc. can wait till later.



> Only if the focus and structure of play are basically Gygaxian in nature. If the expectations are different then it makes perfectly good sense to have a game which is 100% transparent (I've done this numerous times). It can work in a lot of different ways. Nor are 'dangerous and unpleasant situations' removed from consideration. They just aren't situations where PLAYER SKILL is the determinant. They might be, for example, situations where the player's aesthetic and dramatic sensibilities are fulfilled by a certain PC falling to his death, or something.



You're very very VERY trusting of your players to not more or less subtly bend this transparency and play-style to their advantage.  If you have such trustworthy players, good on ya; but they're a very rare breed.

That, and I see it as a bit more adversarial; in that the game world (as reasonably run by the DM) is out to make the PCs miserable in one way or another and the PCs are out to survive and mitigate and win through said misery.



> Heh, I played in a campaign for YEARS with a GM of extremely great energy, creativity, and story-telling power. However that game was EXACTLY described by "players can't affect the gamestate through the actions of their PCs." Truthfully you could TAKE many actions in that game. They would generally have some localized and modest effect, though often not what you were interested in or wanted. In any greater sense, the story was writ, and you were there to experience it. No choice you would make was going to deflect that greater story even one iota. If an NPC was to play a certain role in the meta-plot, then that WAS going to happen. No amount of killin' 'em dead was going to stop it.



Yeah, that's overdoing it on the part of that particular DM.

Sounds like he wasn't one for hitting player-thrown curveballs.  Pity.



> I cannot claim this wasn't a highly fun campaign, it was, but you had to be willing to just come to an understanding that you were pretty much watching the show and contributing color. Now, this guy and I were best friends and we talked through a lot of stuff outside of play and came up with ideas, etc. Sometimes things came out the way I thought they should/might/could. It was just, once his mind was made up it was going in a certain way, there wasn't much that was going to change it.



Depending on the story being told, I'd findsomething like this to be either a great game or a crashing bore.

But - I'm a chaotic player; and it's pretty much guaranteed that at some point I'd have suggested the party abandon the whole thing and just go bash ogres in the hills.  Wonder how he'd have handled that?

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> It's a real DM doing real work to generate an imaginary world which the imaginary PCs can later explore and-or bash around in.



The PCs explore the world, just like Sherlock Holmes walked the streets of London.

Ie these things happen in imagination.

The question about agency is what input (if any) the _players_ - who are real people, ostensibly playing a game - have into the shared fiction: do they get to establish any of it, or are they primarily having the GM tell them bits of it?



Lanefan said:


> I've never seen or heard of any table where the players can't affect the gamestate through the actions of their PCs.  The PCs burn down a barn?  They've just changed the gamestate through their playing of their PCs.



 [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION]'s point is that the players can't bring it about that their PCs perform actions, because it is the GM who mediates everything through his/her decision-making.

This is a strong version of the idea that player action declarations are simply suggestions to the GM as to how the fiction might be changed.


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> GM Force is not always a bad thing: the determinant of whether it's good bad or neutral lies in how it's applied and - sometimes - in hindsight when looking at what came of it in play.



Bracket the question whether GM Force is good or bad. Just think about what this means.

GM Force = GM establishes the content of the shared fiction without regard to the game mechanics (including without regard to the mechanical resolution of player action declarations).

Thus, GM Force = game play, at that moment, consists simply in the GM telling the players some fiction that s/he wrote (either in advance, or on the spur of the moment).

Upthread I was told this was a pejorative description of GM-worldbuilding-oriented play. But here you are saying _exactly what I talked about_ can be a good thing if everyone likes the fiction that the GM established. I wasn't being pejorative - I was being accurate!


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## Manbearcat

pemerton said:


> Bracket the question whether GM Force is good or bad. Just think about what this means.
> 
> GM Force = GM establishes the content of the shared fiction without regard to the game mechanics (including without regard to the mechanical resolution of player action declarations).
> 
> Thus, GM Force = game play, at that moment, consists simply in the GM telling the players some fiction that s/he wrote (either in advance, or on the spur of the moment).
> 
> Upthread I was told this was a pejorative description of GM-worldbuilding-oriented play. But here you are saying _exactly what I talked about_ can be a good thing if everyone likes the fiction that the GM established. I wasn't being pejorative - I was being accurate!




Yup.

And upthread I was told I was being extreme and unfair when I wrote out 7 points that I felt were not particularly contentious and widely held among the majority of users of this thread and ENWorld at large (and 2 others that were likely more contentious and not as widely held as the prior 7); world-building as art and fun unto itself, GM's table and if you don't like their game then you can certainly find another.

And we've seen it written more adamantly, more transparently, and more aggressively by others in this thread (GM IS GOD)...yet, for some reason, they aren't highlighting those advocates and calling them out as using pejoratives!

I think the lesson here is that you're able to describe, distill, clarify a discipline if you are a card-carrying member (and even use language that can only be described as extreme), but if you're not, then bad feelings and you're wrong.


----------



## Sebastrd

pemerton said:


> How is it pejorative to talk about it being a goal of play for the players to trigger the GM reading stuff from his/her notes, if that is in fact a signficant goal of play?




Let me break it down for you.

The entirety of an RPG revolves around generating a shared fiction. That fiction is established in three ways:


A player declares an action and/or rolls some dice, and the GM tells them some stuff they made up two days ago.
A player declares an action and/or rolls some dice, and the GM tells them some stuff they made up on the spot.
A player declares an action and/or rolls some dice, and the player tells the GM some stuff the player made up on the spot.

Personally, I don't see any functional difference between the three, while your contention seems to be that options 2 and 3 are acceptable, but option 1 is not. I wouldn't want to play in any game wherein only one of the above options was utilized - each of the three are best in different situations. Folks are interpreting your opinions as "pejorative", because you say things like "the GM reading stuff from his/her notes is a significant goal of play". As if we all sat down around the table for a GM to read us a story. You also continually use examples of bad GMing to make your point that option 1 is a bad thing. A good GM will not send his players on a wild goose chase through the mansion for a map macguffin. That would be akin to describing _your_ style of play as the GM forces the players to go through every room of the mansion rolling perception checks until they hit a target DC to find a map no matter how long that takes or how little sense it makes that they finally found the map in the privy.

The games I run utilize all three of the above options to establish the shared fiction. Even the fiction that I've "pre-authored" can be impacted (or changed entirely if the situation calls for it) at any time by the players' actions - they are the heroes after all. "My" game world is simply the canvas on which they create our art. Constraint breeds creativity, and my "pre-authored" _and_ on-the-spot decisions _can_ serve as constraint for the players.


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## darkbard

Sebastrd said:


> A good GM will not send his players on a wild goose chase through the mansion for a map macguffin.




How can you believe this to be so when this is _exactly_ the sort of GMing that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] advocates throughout this thread: that the _players_ must guess the location of the map as he, as GM, has preauthored it, and that if that slows the progress of the game to a halt while the PCs run through a sequence of rooms making checks until they succeed at a check in the _correct_ room, well, then, them's the breaks?!?


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, OTOH the whole rest of the structure of D&D works AGAINST it. You don't get to choose what sort of a character to play, some dice are rolled and you get what you get, at least to some extent. Its likely that Jim will roll and 8 STR and a 13 INT, so he'll end up being a wizard, and Mary will get stuck playing a cleric.




This just isn't true.  Many are the times where I played a 14 strength, 16 int fighter for example, because I wanted to play a fighter and not a wizard at that moment.  The game didn't stick you with a class, you did by self-limiting based on your highest stat.  Further, you weren't stuck what you get.  The game very strongly implies that the DM should allow players who roll low to re-roll by letting DMs know that it is usually essential to have a 15+ in no fewer than 2 abilities.  



> Then of course, even if you get exactly what you want, Falstaff is pretty likely to be ganked by the first batch of 4 goblins you run across. Maybe after that Jim decides to call his next character 'Falstaff Jr', and so on.




No.  Blaming crappy naming and roleplaying on the danger of the game is weak sauce.  Some people did that, but the vast majority did not and the game didn't tell them to do so.



> Furthermore the game definitely mires you in a lot of details and trivia that revolve around sub-games, the 'getting your numbers up by acquiring magic stuff' subgame, the equipment and supplies subgame (do we still have some more oil flasks?). There's also the whole issue of some types of characters simply being only marginally useful in play, particularly if you manage to survive and get to higher levels. Falstaff is cool and all, and has a castle, but he is hardly even a vital part of a party anymore when Filmar and her ilk can hire some lower level guys to hold the front line and blast the bad guys with powerful spells.




This has absolutely nothing to do with roleplaying.  You can roleplay and seek to gain items and mechanical advantage.  You can roleplay very well, even much better than the guy with the spells that is stronger than  your character.  Mechanics do not equal roleplay.

Your examples of the structure of D&D working against first person roleplay fall flat.


----------



## Ovinomancer

darkbard said:


> How can you believe this to be so when this is _exactly_ the sort of GMing that  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] advocates throughout this thread: that the _players_ must guess the location of the map as he, as GM, has preauthored it, and that if that slows the progress of the game to a halt while the PCs run through a sequence of rooms making checks until they succeed at a check in the _correct_ room, well, then, them's the breaks?!?






darkbard said:


> How can you believe this to be so when this is _exactly_ the sort of GMing that  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] advocates throughout this thread: that the _players_ must guess the location of the map as he, as GM, has preauthored it, and that if that slows the progress of the game to a halt while the PCs run through a sequence of rooms making checks until they succeed at a check in the _correct_ room, well, then, them's the breaks?!?




What does what [MENTION=21473]Sebastrd[/MENTION] says have to do with what [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] says?  This requirement that a poster must either refute another poster or be held to what the other poster says is bizarre.  What [MENTION=21473]Sebastrd[/MENTION] said already doesn't align to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s more absolutist positions, so why are you requiring an explicit refutation?

Should I now hold that you agree with everything in this tread you haven't explicitly rejected?  No, if course not.  Neither should you, or [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] for that matter, expect that a lack of explicit disagreement means agreement or deference.


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## Emerikol

It's interesting that I was having breakfast with a friend today and he described what he wanted in a roleplaying game and it pretty much matched my own view.  Interesting in that it came up while I'm in this thread discussing this topic.

In my campaigns here is how it is set up...
1.  The DM creates a sandbox world with a lot of detail at the center where the PCs will primarily be playing and then lesser amounts as you get farther away.  So I may know the royal family of a neighboring country but I don't (yet!) know the butcher on 3rd street in the capital.  Whereas in the town where the players start I pretty much know almost everyone.

2.  I create a whole bunch of NPC's.  I figure out which ones are the "movers & shakers" of my campaign world.  From good guys to bad guys.  I map out their plans and their agenda.  Even where they are at at various times and places.  If there is some nearby menace(s), I map those out with their agenda.  I also make notes on race relations etc...

3.  I create wandering monster tables for the wilderness.  Some random and some drawn from a pool of local threats.  

4.  I create a bunch of adventures.  These range from traditional dungeons to more event style adventures in town or in the wilderness.   I generally just work this stuff up for about five levels of adventuring.  Why?  Because by then it might be time for another sandbox or perhaps an expansion of the current one or both.  Some of these are just plot hooks because the prep is fairly light.   One thing about a prepped dungeon though.  If it never gets used it's always usable next time.


So what can the players do?
1.  They can affect any person or place their character could affect.  Just like we humans living in this world can affect our world.  If someone in the above setting is killed by the group, that person is dead in the campaign world.

2.  To me that is agency as I define it.  Complete and total agency with the only limit, again a gentlemen's agreement, that we will at least for a while stay in the sandbox.  Even then, if the group insisted I might ask for time to build the new area but I wouldn't out reject them if they were insistent.

3.  Keep in mind too that I offer a particular style of game where I know what my kinds of players want.  So I cater to those desires.  If the DM's world is unimportant to you then I encourage you to seek another venue.  Politely.


 [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and those who enjoy his style of play
1.  They feel they lack agency if they cannot shape the world as they play in it.  It is not enough to control their own character's actions.  They want to control the environment so that they can set up situations that they enjoy.  I think I understand what you want.  I think agency is the wrong word for it which might be the confusion.  

2.  The world is grown organically far more than it is crafted.  This is great for them as they are continuously creating things they enjoy.  Other than as someone who controls the monsters in a fight, the DM has far less involvement in the world than in my style of game.  He is more a moderator of world building than the world builder.   

3.  I think what is widely regarded as worldbuilding really is of little use to Pemerton's playstyle.  One of my favorite books which I still use is the Wilderness Survival Guide because it has really good weather tables.  Such a concern I'm certain is not at all a Pemerton concern.  


Which style is better?
1.  The one you enjoy playing with your friends.  

Which style is more traditional?
1.  Well I believe my style is more in line with what has been said here as traditional.  If D&D is the first serious RPG then yes.  
2.  I will though add that many modern games very much cater to Permerton's style (sorry I know it's not yours alone).  
3.  It makes total sense that the hobby has branched out into different styles.  That is a sign of growth and not a bad thing at all.

What I hope we all can agree on
1.  Play what you like and what is fun for you.
2.  We all have good reasons for why we like what we like.  We just emphasize different elements and thus have different priorities.


Back to my friend.  He basically said that one major part of the game for him was exploring the world.  Not creating it.  But exploring it as the DM's creation.  I have to say that is really a major thing I want out of any roleplaying game.

This is also why I don't like games with "metagame" controls.  I disliked 4e, parts of 5e, dungeonworld, savage worlds, etc...  Those games give players more control than the fictional character has and that goes against the style I prefer.  I am sure for those who enjoy some hybrid version of mine and Permerton's, they might like such metagame rules.  In Permerton's case they probably aren't enough.


----------



## Manbearcat

Ovinomancer said:


> What does what [MENTION=21473]Sebastrd[/MENTION] says have to do with what [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] says?  This requirement that a poster must either refute another poster or be held to what the other poster says is bizarre.  What [MENTION=21473]Sebastrd[/MENTION] said already doesn't align to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s more absolutist positions, so why are you requiring an explicit refutation?
> 
> Should I now hold that you agree with everything in this tread you haven't explicitly rejected?  No, if course not.  Neither should you, or [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] for that matter, expect that a lack of explicit disagreement means agreement or deference.




Where I come in on this is as follows:

1) I write a (what should be) completely non-contentious 7 statements that basically just aggregate what 3-4 advocating posters have conveyed (in a few cases, word for word regurgitation or even throttling back the rhetoric; eg GM IS GOD/MY GAME to “its the GMs game/table).

Those aggregated statements are profoundly over-represented on ENWorld these days (the evidence for that is overwhelming) so I call it “collective” (do we really need to haggle over collective versus majority versus consensus?).

2) I write 2 more statements that I caveat as much more contentious and likely/possibly not majority held (They get disputed nearly as much as the get affirmed it seems).

3) I get called out for extremism, middle-excluding, over-generalizing...so basically my intellectual integrity challenged.

4) Meanwhile, the same user basically restates/accidentally affirms what I write in those 7 in subsequent answers (!)...fails to acknowledge what has been said by advocates in this thread (much more aggressively in this thread, before, during, and after that exchange)...while simultaneously obfuscating discussion and bogging it down with needless haggling over classification (back to 1).

Oh, and calls me out after I publicly (on purpose obviously) praise pemerton for not being a jerk even though a specific (different) user was being a terrific one to him while offering precisely 0 substance to the conversation (trolling)!

That is about the score of it as I can see it. I’m more than fine with minutae and nuance of opinion. I love it. Let’s analyze and break down GMing techniques/play priorities/rule paradigms all day long in deep nuance.

I’m not ok with the afformentioned exchange because it pollutes the technical breakdown signal, because I work very hard on my integrity, and because my time is limited (so I don’t want to have to waste time on non gaming stuff).


----------



## Manbearcat

darkbard said:


> How can you believe this to be so when this is _exactly_ the sort of GMing that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] advocates throughout this thread: that the _players_ must guess the location of the map as he, as GM, has preauthored it, and that if that slows the progress of the game to a halt while the PCs run through a sequence of rooms making checks until they succeed at a check in the _correct_ room, well, then, them's the breaks?!?




And on this, I’m not sure this is darkbard looking to constrain a consensus.

The statement was “a good GM will not do x.” That looks to me that darkbard was intimating that Lanefan seems to be/must be a good GM and also seems to align with a fair amount (though not all) of the user’s (who darkbard was responding to) play priorities and aesthetic play interests.

So how does “a good GM will not do x” square with that?

Fair question that asks for deeper analysis/unpacking? Disagree?


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]: the idea of "finding the map as a challenge" proveids an answer to the OP question "what is (GM-preauthored) worldbuilding for"?
> 
> Here is my understanding of what you mean by "finding the map as a challenge":
> 
> The GM writes that the map is in X place. The players "explore the gameworld" (that's metaphor), which is to say they make moves by declaring actions for their characters that trigger various bits of narration by the GM: eg "We look behind the tapestry." "There's nothing there but a whitewashed brick wall." Some of this narration contains clues that point (directly or indirectly) towards X. Eventually, the players declare "We go to X and [insert appropriate details that pertain to how one might search X] and look for the map." Assuming the details are correct, the GM tells the players "You find the map."
> 
> That's the sort of play that I personally don't enjoy.




That’s fair. I don’t blame you. I was working with the example provided. Finding a map in and of itself would likely not be a challenge I introduce to my game. At least not in the manner described in the example.

Maybe an example from my game would help show how I think GM backstory can enhance a game. Otherwise, I think we’re running into the issue summarized well by [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] and his “Chess vs. Checkers” analogy. 

So the PCs in my game became co-owners of the Phandelver Mines at the completion of the Lost Mines of Phandelver module from the 5E Starter Set. We ran that as an intro to the system, but everyone was happy with their PCs, so we decided to continue the campaign. So one of the goals of the PCs became to establish trade routes to increase their income from the mine. So we looked at the map and we discussed options. This discussion was very high level, pros and cons of different routes and/or locations. 

Then based on that discussion, I came up with some material for each option. Most of this material was tailored to a specific option, but I also came up with some generic material I could use no matter which route they decided to pursue. 

So the next session, the players made their choice...they decided it would be most lucrative to establish a trade route to the Heartlands of Cormyr and the Dales. So based on their choice, I then began to incorporate the material I had in mind for that choice....it included some elements from the Princes of the Apocalypse module because the area detailed in that adventure was a first step aling the proposed trade route. It also involved the Empire of Shade, because the trade route ran along the southern portion of the Anauroch Desert, which belongs to the Shades. 

This worked well because one of our PCs has ties to the Empire of Shade. So the PCs sent a delegation to work out some kind of trade agreement qith the Shades that would allow the PC’s company to establish a trade route through their land. I didn’t commit to a specific “victory condition” for this delegation, and I did have the PCs become embroiled in some internal political intrigue amongst the Shades. So their success depended on their approach and what they offered to the Shades, and also how they handled the intrigue. 

So although I pre-authored a lot of the elements that came into play, I was never forcing the players down a certain path. Everything I came up with was in response to player choice. I did draw upon existing Forgotten Realms lore to determine which elements might come into play, but I bery much cherry pick in that regard. I don’t adhere to whatever the current lore is and instead choose the ones that interest us as a group. 

I hope this example helps to illustrate how the players are still driving much of the action and direction of this game, even though it does contain elements of GM backstory.


----------



## Sunseeker

Emerikol said:


> It's interesting that I was having breakfast with a friend today and he described what he wanted in a roleplaying game and it pretty much matched my own view.  Interesting in that it came up while I'm in this thread discussing this topic.
> 
> In my campaigns here is how it is set up...
> 1.  The DM creates a sandbox world with a lot of detail at the center where the PCs will primarily be playing and then lesser amounts as you get farther away.  So I may know the royal family of a neighboring country but I don't (yet!) know the butcher on 3rd street in the capital.  Whereas in the town where the players start I pretty much know almost everyone.
> 
> 2.  I create a whole bunch of NPC's.  I figure out which ones are the "movers & shakers" of my campaign world.  From good guys to bad guys.  I map out their plans and their agenda.  Even where they are at at various times and places.  If there is some nearby menace(s), I map those out with their agenda.  I also make notes on race relations etc...
> 
> 3.  I create wandering monster tables for the wilderness.  Some random and some drawn from a pool of local threats.
> 
> 4.  I create a bunch of adventures.  These range from traditional dungeons to more event style adventures in town or in the wilderness.   I generally just work this stuff up for about five levels of adventuring.  Why?  Because by then it might be time for another sandbox or perhaps an expansion of the current one or both.  Some of these are just plot hooks because the prep is fairly light.   One thing about a prepped dungeon though.  If it never gets used it's always usable next time.



Aside from point 3, as I'm no particular fan of participating in or running random encounters (though I understand their value when utilizing XP), we're fairly in line here, but as someone who often agrees with @_*pemerton*_ (at least in game design principles) I thought I should posit here for a moment.



> So what can the players do?
> 1.  They can affect any person or place their character could affect.  Just like we humans living in this world can affect our world.  If someone in the above setting is killed by the group, that person is dead in the campaign world.
> 
> 2.  To me that is agency as I define it.  Complete and total agency with the only limit, again a gentlemen's agreement, that we will at least for a while stay in the sandbox.  Even then, if the group insisted I might ask for time to build the new area but I wouldn't out reject them if they were insistent.
> 
> 3.  Keep in mind too that I offer a particular style of game where I know what my kinds of players want.  So I cater to those desires.  If the DM's world is unimportant to you then I encourage you to seek another venue.  Politely.



Yep same page here too.  I think if 2B (asking for new areas) came up it sort of leads to 3C (run your own game!).  But it's also a place where I will stop and ask the players to start contributing more.  They've either A: outgrown what I have to offer, or B: aren't terribly interested in what I have to offer.  In the case of B, it of course either leads to A1: Creating new areas myself.  B1: Them creating their own game.  In the interests of compromise, I usually will go with "a little bit of both".  If my players aren't interested in whats going on "here" but are enjoying my world, I will solicit ideas for what they want to see in new areas.  If it's not terribly complicated I'll make it myself.  The more it diverges from the campaign world I created the greater burden I will put on the players to create the material and I will simply compile and integrate it (if possible).  



> @_*pemerton*_ and those who enjoy his style of play
> 1.  They feel they lack agency if they cannot shape the world as they play in it.  It is not enough to control their own character's actions.  They want to control the environment so that they can set up situations that they enjoy.  I think I understand what you want.  I think agency is the wrong word for it which might be the confusion.
> 
> 2.  The world is grown organically far more than it is crafted.  This is great for them as they are continuously creating things they enjoy.  Other than as someone who controls the monsters in a fight, the DM has far less involvement in the world than in my style of game.  He is more a moderator of world building than the world builder.
> 
> 3.  I think what is widely regarded as worldbuilding really is of little use to Pemerton's playstyle.  One of my favorite books which I still use is the Wilderness Survival Guide because it has really good weather tables.  Such a concern I'm certain is not at all a Pemerton concern.



For people who define worldbuilding via random tables and ticking timetables I suspect that is likely true.

As I posted earlier in the thread, I see worldbuilding more as an art.  It's part technical skill (applying rules consistently, making the world feel believable, etc..) and part creative endevour (assembling existing parts and creating new ones to create a new picture), which can then be "viewed" by players and altered.  Like painting with LEGOs.  You have pre-defined elements to work with, but the outcome is completely undefined beyond "a world". 




> Back to my friend.  He basically said that one major part of the game for him was exploring the world.  Not creating it.  But exploring it as the DM's creation.  I have to say that is really a major thing I want out of any roleplaying game.
> 
> This is also why I don't like games with "metagame" controls.  I disliked 4e, parts of 5e, dungeonworld, savage worlds, etc...  Those games give players more control than the fictional character has and that goes against the style I prefer.  *I am sure for those who enjoy some hybrid version of mine and Permerton'*s, they might like such metagame rules.  In Permerton's case they probably aren't enough.



Yeah at the end of the day that's probably where I stand.  Part mechanism, part artistry.  I can sympathize with your friend quite a bit, it's one reason regardless of what class, race, combo, build or whatever I bring to the table, the final character will always have some kind of driving motivation that pushes them to adventuring (beyond simple wanderlust).  A desire to gain something to give them focus and a natural curiosity to explore new ways to achieve that.  I build "adventurers".  Their reasons for adventuring all stem from my own desire to do as your friend says: explore the world the DM has created for me.

But on the same token, that world must be at least a little malleable.  I don't want to create my own whole content, but I do want to be able to affect the content available to me.  Even in railroads, there's a difference between being in the passenger seat on the train and being in the engine.  Just because we're on the rails doesn't mean I can't toot the horn!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Depending on what roll-up method is used, all of these are possible.  That said, whatever character you end up with, that's what you inhabit (which is in fact a part of the player-side challenge of hard-coded 0e and 1e, somewhat lost since).



Well, at the time Gygax wrote that introductory text the only known methods of rolling up a PC were exactly one, 3d6 six times in order. Admittedly, 1e PHB doesn't contain those rules and they wouldn't appear for about another year when the DMG was released. Perhaps Gygax was thinking in terms of those nascent rules, which he may have already put into force in his own games? We don't know. I know that those of us who used the PHB in that time period knew of no other generally accepted method of rolling up characters, although I think its possible we may have already started using 4d6 and take the 3 highest, in order six times, maybe. Even that method was problematic. DMG's '4d6 and take the 3 highest, arrange in any order' method which became pretty standard in my experience is a little better, you can generally qualify for at least 3 of the 4 major base classes every time. So it did get a little better with time.



> Again true, and again perfectly acceptable as a part of the game (except for the Falstaff Jr. bit).  Characters die.  It's a realistic result when they stick their noses into dangerous places where others fear to tread.



Yes, and that's not a bad way for a gritty exploration game to go, but you have to admit that it doesn't mesh well at all with the prefatory text you quoted from PHB 1e. MOSTLY you get to play a weak guy who falls prey to some garden-variety dungeon threat while engaged in a looting mission. Its not very heroic at all, and the PCs quickly take on a fairly disposable nature and the game usually ends up played in 'pawn stance' most of the time. There are always interludes where some RP happens, and maybe more so in some groups than others. Interestingly most of that RP happens OUTSIDE of the structured portions of the game, in 'town play' where the rules are much less explicit and most of the game structure is typically put aside.



> Yes, the 'logistics' side - something else that has rather sadly been lost over the years.
> Depends on level.  In 35 years of playing 1e variants I've never seen a party average above about 10th level; and at 10th-ish the non-casters can still more than hold their own.



I don't think we ever, in anything but some very silly early games, played about 14th level either, that's the highest level 1e PC I ever achieved. I would say that if you actually play in maximum 'player skill' mode you want to replace your straight fighters by around 7th level with either henchmen/hirelings (making more room in the party for PC wizards) or at least mixed caster types like fighter/magic-user. Same with thieves, either higher a specialist to do the few tasks that would otherwise waste valuable spell slots, or bring along a thief/magic-user. The 2e bard fills this role pretty nicely. Straight fighters are just a waste of party slots at that point.

The logistics game is fun too, but again, it isn't anything that works well with the mode of play implied in Gary's prefatory PHB 1e text. That mode of play simply does not exist in AD&D 1e if its played straight up as-written. 2e is a testament to what happens when you try to bend the game to do it, you get a pretty incoherent result. 3e was a recognition of that and both espoused 'back to the dungeon' (IE forget story-driven play, this is a game of skilled dungeon crawling) AND at the same time implemented a whole host of changes that were PROBABLY (its hard to say) meant to improve story-driven play. The result is AGAIN somewhat incoherent, the actual common play mode that arises being quite different from what is implied by 'back to the dungeon'.



> Once you get to 18th and the MU has Wish available in the field then yeah - it's over.



I just think it is far less than 18th level. 9th is more like it. At that point the fighter finally gets his stronghold. In adventuring terms this is pretty anemic. Its a fortress, which doesn't help at all in the 'party of explorers' mode of play that even high level material presents. Nor do his followers really do a lot for him. I mean, sure, they're cheaper than henchmen, but anyone can fork over gold to get basically the same thing. The best he can hope for is a 6th level follower with a couple minor magical items. That's pretty good! It doesn't compare much to a 5th level spell slot though! And the wizard can pay a quarter share to get his own 6th level fighter henchman.

I really did play in a group where the challenge level was extreme and we pushed hard on 1e to make our party maximally effective. In that game it was all casters. There simply wasn't any room to waste on a fighter after level 6. For levels 1-6 the fighter was a fine character, sometimes quite a bit more useful than an MU or cleric, but they just don't hold up. Not as a PC. Their main role becomes basically infantry to hold a line while the casters do battle. Its just not worth a PC for that when you can hire maybe 10 NPCs to form that line, and if you give them all the magic swords and whatnot you find, they'll be plenty well compensated and tend to be maybe at most 2 levels behind the PCs.



> Drop in any Saturday night to the game I play in.
> 
> And yes, there's not much incentive to do much with your character until it's survived a few adventures...which is why I generally don't; and have no problem with not doing so.  I bang out the numbers, give it a basic personality (sometimes more over-the-top than others) and see how it goes from there.  Background etc. can wait till later.



Yeah, I just don't think it ever lived up to that blurb. That was why I found 4e to be quite cool because as soon as we started playing, you felt like you were playing that game that Gygax kept describing but never quite delivered the rules for.



> You're very very VERY trusting of your players to not more or less subtly bend this transparency and play-style to their advantage.  If you have such trustworthy players, good on ya; but they're a very rare breed.



Ah, see, in our way of playing there's no 'advantage' for them to bend it to. RPGs don't have winners and losers. There's no points to be scored, no conflict between the participants in their roles at the table. The very notion that I'm 'giving up advantage' to the players doesn't exist in that model, its not like that. I mean, we CAN enter into something like that mode with say 4e's tactical play where I can as DM run a bunch of monsters and the rules are ALMOST completely objective (and I could spell out with terrain powers and such many of the grey areas). Then we could play a 'no holds barred' sort of tactical wargame-like combat scenario. There can even be some skill uses and whatnot that are handled using related rules (the combat uses of skills for instance) and 'page 42' also helps, though it does rely on some DM judgment. 

I could even have a bit of a surprise for the players in terms of maybe an encounter is suddenly stronger than they expected or different in some way. That would probably in response to some expressed but not (by meta-game procedures we use) brought explicitly into play by a player. So, there CAN be a sort of 'secret'. In fact its also quite conceivable to have a scenario where the players say something like "give us a murder mystery to solve" and the GM creates that without consulting with the players BEFOREHAND, so they don't necessarily know the details and they uncover them through play. Of course, even then, the players are on a par with the GM in terms of story, so they COULD all agree (GM and players together) to rewrite some element or introduce some new element and end up with a different solution than the one that was originally created secretly at their behest. Or they could simply enjoy solving the thing in-character and proceed to do so. 



> That, and I see it as a bit more adversarial; in that the game world (as reasonably run by the DM) is out to make the PCs miserable in one way or another and the PCs are out to survive and mitigate and win through said misery.



Only to the extent that the players desire that. If they want a scene of glorious triumph for their characters, then they'll probably get that too. Heck, they could all agree to play a game where the story of the characters seems to logically follow from them simply being ordinary, if gifted, individuals with no special place in the world except what they make of it. In fact, I've found that a lot of groups kind of naturally fall into that zone. They just play, doing what the PCs 'would do' and maybe now and then they invoke some authorial power to bring an element into play that they find interesting.


> Yeah, that's overdoing it on the part of that particular DM.
> 
> Sounds like he wasn't one for hitting player-thrown curveballs.  Pity.



He was, and is, truly unique IME amongst all people, in both personal and D&D terms. Some people hated playing with him, but myself and others of his friends were cool with it. After a while we'd take a break for a year or so and play other campaigns, and then we'd eventually go back and find out what was going to happen next in his crazy world. It was oddly fun.



> Depending on the story being told, I'd findsomething like this to be either a great game or a crashing bore.
> 
> But - I'm a chaotic player; and it's pretty much guaranteed that at some point I'd have suggested the party abandon the whole thing and just go bash ogres in the hills.  Wonder how he'd have handled that?
> 
> Lanefan




Yeah, well, sometimes we did do that, lol. He'd roll with it, but inevitably the meta-plot would catch up with you. He was also good at getting the characters integrated into the game world, so if you were name-level (and we had a large stable of PCs in his game that usually were in that level range) then he'd happily have the meta-plot arrive at your castle door and start breaking it down! lol. You might even just hear about it when a few of your followers found you and said "boss, the dragon ate the castle!" lol.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Manbearcat said:


> Yup.
> 
> And upthread I was told I was being extreme and unfair when I wrote out 7 points that I felt were not particularly contentious and widely held among the majority of users of this thread and ENWorld at large (and 2 others that were likely more contentious and not as widely held as the prior 7); world-building as art and fun unto itself, GM's table and if you don't like their game then you can certainly find another.
> 
> And we've seen it written more adamantly, more transparently, and more aggressively by others in this thread (GM IS GOD)...yet, for some reason, they aren't highlighting those advocates and calling them out as using pejoratives!
> 
> I think the lesson here is that you're able to describe, distill, clarify a discipline if you are a card-carrying member (and even use language that can only be described as extreme), but if you're not, then bad feelings and you're wrong.




I openly disagreed with Lanefan about the game being “the DM’s game”.

As I said when I first jumped into this thread, I was a little hesitant to do so because usually it becomes two camps. But I am very much in the middle on this. 

So it’s tough when someone mentally places me on one “side” of the debate and then decides I share the opinion of others on that side, despite not having expressed those opinions.

So, while I understand that sometimes boiling things down to sides can be convenient, it limits nuance.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> This just isn't true.  Many are the times where I played a 14 strength, 16 int fighter for example, because I wanted to play a fighter and not a wizard at that moment.  The game didn't stick you with a class, you did by self-limiting based on your highest stat.  Further, you weren't stuck what you get.  The game very strongly implies that the DM should allow players who roll low to re-roll by letting DMs know that it is usually essential to have a 15+ in no fewer than 2 abilities.



Yes, it is, usually, possible to play in a sub-optimal way and take the class you want, or at least the 'base' class (its VERY hard, even with 4d6 ordered as you want to qualify for the 'sub' classes in 1e). That assumes you aren't using 3d6 in order, which was the only known method when 1e PHB was released. With THAT method you are entirely incorrect, and I think its fair to judge what Gygax wrote in that light. Nor do I know anything in the PHB (or even the DMG) which 'strongly implies' anything. It was a known fact that if you dumped players with a sucky character they didn't like they would just find a way to die and roll again. So it wasn't uncommon to bow to the inevitable a bit and allow a player to start over if the result was particularly bad AND they weren't in the mood to ham it up and try to make a go of it (which we often did, heck it could be fun for a while). OD&D even codifies this to a small extent by allowing you to reduce one stat by 2 points and increase another by 1 point, though that was never implemented in 1e.



> No.  Blaming crappy naming and roleplaying on the danger of the game is weak sauce.  Some people did that, but the vast majority did not and the game didn't tell them to do so.



It was an inevitable consequence of play in that era using those processes. I was there, and no amount of telling me different is going to change that. I mean, I have actual character sheets that have names like 'blah blah blah #7' and such written on them. It happened quite often. It was also common to just not bother to NAME the character until after a few levels since then you weren't stuck with some crappy name on your high level guy. In my friend's campaign there was a very high level wizard called 'Tribord VII'. Well, we thought it was amusing, and the character eventually obviously got a real history and some personality, but you can only imagine the endless hours of slogging away with nameless low-level throw-away PCs before that happened. I speak truth, and many others will corroborate this.



> This has absolutely nothing to do with roleplaying.  You can roleplay and seek to gain items and mechanical advantage.  You can roleplay very well, even much better than the guy with the spells that is stronger than  your character.  Mechanics do not equal roleplay.
> 
> Your examples of the structure of D&D working against first person roleplay fall flat.




You are missing the point Max. The whole point was that the prefatory description of play in 1e that Gygax put in the PHB in 1978 simply doesn't match the reality of play that his system actually presents AT ALL. 

In fact you play a character of a type drawn from a fairly narrow range of choices with attributes at least partially mandated by dice, and said character is then projected into a gritty world of dungeon looting in which their chances of reaching even 3rd level are fairly thin, at best. Its an interesting enough game, but it isn't AT ALL what was 'on the tin' so to speak. This is equally true of Original D&D, all three versions of Basic D&D, and of 2e. 

And to be perfectly frank, TSR missed the boat. There might have been any numbers of reasons for their demise that were business-related and whatnot, but ONE of things that hurt them was a seeming inability to produce a set of rules for their flagship product that delivered the sort of games a lot of the public was looking for. By the early 90's TSR's sales were waning, 2e never achieved the success of earlier 1e/Red Box, and they had entirely ceded thought leadership in RPGs to newer entrants like White Wolf who WERE able to produce games responding to many player's increased desire to actually play something that met their expectations in a way that they found more interesting. 

Admittedly, no other game has ever really topped D&D in overall sales, but I'm not at all sure that is a product of it being an inherently superior game. It has some elements that other games haven't duplicated (a very extensive and rather unique milieu, a steep and open-ended power curve, straightforward archetypes modeled by discrete classes, etc). OTOH 'modern' D&D, post TSR and post 3.x, has certainly had to embrace some of the innovations of the 90's in a sense, or at least respond to them. I don't think that's an accident. 1e-style play was simply too limited to remain the only possible offering of a game in the 2nd decade of the 21st Century. That is pretty clear to me.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

OK, so my response to this is that you seem to be doing something pretty close in spirit to what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is doing, though maybe some of the details of procedure of play are different, etc. I don't know for sure. Pemerton may also be more of a 'purist' in terms of making every scene drive directly 'to the action', etc. However, I think if he was to run a game in FR he might well take something like your tack in a general sense, though I think a setting like FR is not ideal for his style of play. I'd say the 4e Nentir Vale is an example of a setting, coupled with 4e lore/cosmology, that is more useful in his kind of a game (because it is much more loosely established and basically free of meta-plot, but has a lot of 'hooks' that could suggest useful narrative elements to meet player interests). 

I think this leads into what [MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION] is saying in response to [MENTION=6698278]Emerikol[/MENTION]. Its quite possible to (perhaps incoherently, but life is rarely an exercise in coherency) kind of walk in the various grey zones between some sort of hard sandbox and some kind of entirely free-form joint-authorship play where nothing is pre-established at all. I would note that EVEN PEMERTON hasn't yet hinted at playing that way! Even he pre-generated some planets in Traveller and used Nentir Vale as a starting point for his 4e campaign. 

I think plenty of us fall in this zone somewhere. I almost always run D&D campaigns in the same consistent campaign world that I established in the 1970's. So there is a MASS of pre-established material, and it runs a gamut of stuff I generated as elements of early sandboxes, later world-building exercises, various dungeon-maze-with-nearby-town locations, as well as material put in place by players in the course of establishing their character's motives, backstory, or even action resolution narrative (mostly in more recent times, but even some of that goes back 20+ years). Players don't generally establish elements that upend that whole world, so in a sense it is a lot like running FR I suppose. OTOH I long ago ceased to endlessly detail things and its quite easy to move to a new blank spot on the map and construct some scenario that meets player expectations there.

Truthfully I think that both Pemerton and probably Emerikol, Manbearcat, etc would all manage to find it interesting and fun, both in terms of unearthing all the layers of previous campaign stuff and in making up new stuff to suite their own agendas. In all my decades of running games for people, nobody ever expressed vast dissatisfaction at what happened at the table, and only a small percentage of people, I can almost enumerate them, ever simply dropped out for reasons that seemed to be related to not liking the game (I think all of them were basically super-optimizer competitive types, which I don't frown on but which sometimes just don't mesh with some of my less rules-focused players).


----------



## Emerikol

[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]
So for a bit now you've been going on about heroic play and story driven play.  I think some clarification is necessary.

There is no conflict between heroic games and the following...
1. Dying at first level on occasion.  And honestly if you were doing it even once every five times you were an incompetent player with incompetent allies.  Now it may be true that when you entered the game at the beginning that was your experience.  We all start out as beginners.  I never really experienced that as a player or DM.  I admit my groups were paranoid, not afraid to run in the face of superior foes, and took great care in their preparations.

2. Having a game where player character preparation is rewarded.  I can remember reading the text for the Descent into the Depths module where Gygax discusses preparing pack mules because of their sure footing in the dangerous terrain.  A group of intrepid adventurers were going into the underworld to smite an enemy that had plagued the surface world.  It felt very heroic to me.  It also felt "realistic" to be concerned about all these things.  Realistic here in the context of a fantasy world with magic.

3.  Dungeon based adventures with lots of player skill.  The flavor is what gives something it's heroic aspect.  The story line behind the dungeon.  The relationship to the villain.  Exploring a lost tomb that you've discovered is exactly the sort of thing Indiana Jones does and I hardly think those movies lacked flavor or heroism.  It's the fluff and backstory surrounding a dungeon that immerses the players.


It almost seems like it's a variation of the Stormwind Fallacy from the DM's perspective.  Caring about skill and prep in no way necessarily detracts from the story.  Of course individual examples fall all over the place just as you'd expect from something not correlated.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Emerikol said:


> [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]
> So for a bit now you've been going on about heroic play and story driven play.  I think some clarification is necessary.
> 
> There is no conflict between heroic games and the following...
> 1. Dying at first level on occasion.  And honestly if you were doing it even once every five times you were an incompetent player with incompetent allies.  Now it may be true that when you entered the game at the beginning that was your experience.  We all start out as beginners.  I never really experienced that as a player or DM.  I admit my groups were paranoid, not afraid to run in the face of superior foes, and took great care in their preparations.
> 
> 2. Having a game where player character preparation is rewarded.  I can remember reading the text for the Descent into the Depths module where Gygax discusses preparing pack mules because of their sure footing in the dangerous terrain.  A group of intrepid adventurers were going into the underworld to smite an enemy that had plagued the surface world.  It felt very heroic to me.  It also felt "realistic" to be concerned about all these things.  Realistic here in the context of a fantasy world with magic.
> 
> 3.  Dungeon based adventures with lots of player skill.  The flavor is what gives something it's heroic aspect.  The story line behind the dungeon.  The relationship to the villain.  Exploring a lost tomb that you've discovered is exactly the sort of thing Indiana Jones does and I hardly think those movies lacked flavor or heroism.  It's the fluff and backstory surrounding a dungeon that immerses the players.
> 
> 
> It almost seems like it's a variation of the Stormwind Fallacy from the DM's perspective.  Caring about skill and prep in no way necessarily detracts from the story.  Of course individual examples fall all over the place just as you'd expect from something not correlated.




I was responding to the assertion that 1e, specifically, is a game where you play your chosen hero and have heroic type adventures (which I would characterize as having at least some elements which correspond with other genre where characters are considered 'heroes', which could be Super Hero Comics, Classic Mythology, Arthurian Legend, Classic Fantasy, Modern Fantasy, etc.). 

Does 1e actually deliver that? Well, in some ways it is hard to say what the dividing lines between 1e and the conventions of a table, variations of technique used by a DM, etc. exactly is, so its not ever going to be answered with perfect precision. I think we can all acknowledge that. So, my procedure was to actually examine the rules (from memory since I know them almost by heart) and draw from actual play experience, and then contrast that with the prefatory text (and I think its fair to say that other 'classic' D&D materials repeat quite similar texts too). TSR advertising, the D&D Cartoon, etc. all reinforce this idea of heroic play.

However, the examination of the rules doesn't entirely bear out that this is how the rules work, or are intended to work when considered on their own. To answer your points a bit more specifically:

While I never played with EGG as a GM I've played with a lot of GMs and players, some of whom actually DID play with Gygax and/or Arneson, or with Tim Kask or others of the original D&D groups. I know from this experience that characters were mercilessly slaughtered at low levels in these early games. That in fact the game, at least up to a point, was pretty much nothing but a skill gauntlet. To say that we were basically "doing it wrong" if we died 1 in 5 times is actually kind of hilarious. If you played with Gygax my informed guess is you'd be lucky to survive to 2nd level 1 in 5 times! This was no example of incompetence, these games were just LETHAL. 

Also I played in 1e tournaments in the late 70's up to the mid-80's. Tomb of Horror is EXACTLY the text of the earliest tournament module. Play it straight, there's basically a 0% chance of survival. This might not be what you'd play exactly in your home campaign (when published by TSR it basically advised DMs NOT to use it with characters anyone wanted to play again). Still, it was pretty typical stuff, and that's a very HIGH LEVEL module, it was MORE that way at low levels!

Again, the 'D' modules are quite high level, assuming at least name level PCs, if not 11th and up. Play at high levels gets progressively more 'heroic' in at least some respects. Were this a module written for low level PCs it would likely also stress this kind of thing, but there would be little scope for heroic action. Instead the modus would necessarily be to establish bases and supply caches below ground and slowly and painstakingly explore, with heavy losses likely at regular intervals. Not really very 'heroic', though again it would be a fun game in its own right.

I don't think you can reproduce 'Indiana Jones' using D&D's rules. Starting at level 1 you'd die often, which certainly doesn't match Indy. You could look at it as "well, he's the one character that didn't die", which is a fine meta-game way to look at it, but that doesn't address the non-heroicness of the EXPERIENCE of play leading up to the survival of 'Joe 5', which was the actuality of play if you pretty much ran the game 'by the book'. You could certainly create the temple in the jungle from the first movie, but you'd have to either run it as a high level adventure (in which case some of the later scenes don't work out coherently) or it would be an attrition operation where you'd probably lose 5 or 10 'archaeologists' in the process of traversing the trap gauntlet (even Indy lost a guide, though that guy was a traitor so it was a dramatic element than attrition). 

I do think there's room for skill tests and 'gauntlets', puzzles, etc. in a game that is fundamentally dramatic and scene-framed, they just originate from a bit different source than in Gygaxian origin play. D&D doesn't have any mechanics or tradition that leads to this sort of play. 4e does move into that realm and is quite usable for that, but I'm not sure that was 100% intentional, or at least it was intended only to be ONE possible mode of 4e play. My own game that I run, which is mostly based off 4e-style mechanics, does do it pretty well, and wouldn't really work at all for say a straight up sandbox, unless the GM was quite prepared for it to be open to reimagining by the players in some cases.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, at the time Gygax wrote that introductory text the only known methods of rolling up a PC were exactly one, 3d6 six times in order. Admittedly, 1e PHB doesn't contain those rules and they wouldn't appear for about another year when the DMG was released. Perhaps Gygax was thinking in terms of those nascent rules, which he may have already put into force in his own games? We don't know. I know that those of us who used the PHB in that time period knew of no other generally accepted method of rolling up characters, although I think its possible we may have already started using 4d6 and take the 3 highest, in order six times, maybe.



It's also possible some alternate roll-up methods had already been trial-ballooned in Dragon Magazine.  All before my time. 



> Yes, and that's not a bad way for a gritty exploration game to go, but you have to admit that it doesn't mesh well at all with the prefatory text you quoted from PHB 1e. MOSTLY you get to play a weak guy who falls prey to some garden-variety dungeon threat while engaged in a looting mission. Its not very heroic at all, and the PCs quickly take on a fairly disposable nature and the game usually ends up played in 'pawn stance' most of the time. There are always interludes where some RP happens, and maybe more so in some groups than others. Interestingly most of that RP happens OUTSIDE of the structured portions of the game, in 'town play' where the rules are much less explicit and most of the game structure is typically put aside.



It meshes if the players read into it that the characters they inhabit are going to have some sort of self-preservation instinct and thus use lots of caution etc.  But let's face it, in reality we all played gonzo for a while, and filled the graveyard in so doing. 

And you're right about a lot of the RP happening outside the structured dungeon, though a lot also happened between the PCs all the way along.  I think this comes from many of the early modules (say, pre-1983 or so) providing very few if any decent opportunities for RP with the dungeon inhabitants; this changed with DL, Ravenloft, and - of all things - a few Judges Guild modules.



> I don't think we ever, in anything but some very silly early games, played about 14th level either, that's the highest level 1e PC I ever achieved. I would say that if you actually play in maximum 'player skill' mode you want to replace your straight fighters by around 7th level with either henchmen/hirelings (making more room in the party for PC wizards) or at least mixed caster types like fighter/magic-user. Same with thieves, either higher a specialist to do the few tasks that would otherwise waste valuable spell slots, or bring along a thief/magic-user. The 2e bard fills this role pretty nicely. Straight fighters are just a waste of party slots at that point.



Interesting.

In the game I play in we're up to about a 10th-level average at the moment, and in our year-end awards the only pure Fighter in the party was just voted most valuable character for the 5th time in 6 years, this time after a tiebreak with the pure Ranger!  Two non-caster* classes - what does that say?

* - the Ranger's spell ability at 10th is still so trivial that it might as well not count.



> The logistics game is fun too, but again, it isn't anything that works well with the mode of play implied in Gary's prefatory PHB 1e text. That mode of play simply does not exist in AD&D 1e if its played straight up as-written.



I disagree here.  Both the PH and DMG, for example, point out the need for tracking things like gear, arrows, encumbrance, and so forth; and of hiring porters or buying/renting pack mules to carry what you cannot.


> 2e is a testament to what happens when you try to bend the game to do it, you get a pretty incoherent result. 3e was a recognition of that and both espoused 'back to the dungeon' (IE forget story-driven play, this is a game of skilled dungeon crawling) AND at the same time implemented a whole host of changes that were PROBABLY (its hard to say) meant to improve story-driven play. The result is AGAIN somewhat incoherent, the actual common play mode that arises being quite different from what is implied by 'back to the dungeon'.



Huh?

Somehow in there you jumped from logistics play to story-driven play.  They're not the same thing by any means, though one can tangentially influence the other. 



> I just think it is far less than 18th level. 9th is more like it. At that point the fighter finally gets his stronghold. In adventuring terms this is pretty anemic. Its a fortress, which doesn't help at all in the 'party of explorers' mode of play that even high level material presents.



It can provide a home base for the party, but not much else.  That said, I think the assumption is that when a Fighter goes the stronghold route (or the Cleric builds her own temple, or whatever) that character is also pretty much retiring from adventuring.  Result: many characters IME put off this step until they think they've done their career, which might be several levels later.



> Yeah, I just don't think it ever lived up to that blurb. That was why I found 4e to be quite cool because as soon as we started playing, you felt like you were playing that game that Gygax kept describing but never quite delivered the rules for.
> 
> Ah, see, in our way of playing there's no 'advantage' for them to bend it to. RPGs don't have winners and losers. There's no points to be scored, no conflict between the participants in their roles at the table. The very notion that I'm 'giving up advantage' to the players doesn't exist in that model, its not like that. I mean, we CAN enter into something like that mode with say 4e's tactical play where I can as DM run a bunch of monsters and the rules are ALMOST completely objective (and I could spell out with terrain powers and such many of the grey areas). Then we could play a 'no holds barred' sort of tactical wargame-like combat scenario. There can even be some skill uses and whatnot that are handled using related rules (the combat uses of skills for instance) and 'page 42' also helps, though it does rely on some DM judgment.



This looks like the start of a D&D-as-sport vs. D&D-as-war discussion; where I see it as war and you (going by what you've said here) see it as sport.  Fair enough. 



> I could even have a bit of a surprise for the players in terms of maybe an encounter is suddenly stronger than they expected or different in some way. That would probably in response to some expressed but not (by meta-game procedures we use) brought explicitly into play by a player. So, there CAN be a sort of 'secret'.



So the players can author their own surprises?

Isn't that kind of like wrapping your own birthday present?



> In fact its also quite conceivable to have a scenario where the players say something like "give us a murder mystery to solve" and the GM creates that without consulting with the players BEFOREHAND, so they don't necessarily know the details and they uncover them through play. Of course, even then, the players are on a par with the GM in terms of story, so they COULD all agree (GM and players together) to rewrite some element or introduce some new element and end up with a different solution than the one that was originally created secretly at their behest.



This sounds more like group storytelling on a D&D chassis than anything else.  It's neither sport nor war; it's more like two teams getting together before the game and deciding what the score will be, who'll get the goals, and whether the referee will be given the chance to send someone off - and then going out and playing it through to that result.



> Only to the extent that the players desire that. If they want a scene of glorious triumph for their characters, then they'll probably get that too. Heck, they could all agree to play a game where the story of the characters seems to logically follow from them simply being ordinary, if gifted, individuals with no special place in the world except what they make of it. In fact, I've found that a lot of groups kind of naturally fall into that zone. They just play, doing what the PCs 'would do' and maybe now and then they invoke some authorial power to bring an element into play that they find interesting.



Again, you're very lucky with your players that they don't abuse this authorial power.



> He was also good at getting the characters integrated into the game world, so if you were name-level (and we had a large stable of PCs in his game that usually were in that level range) then he'd happily have the meta-plot arrive at your castle door and start breaking it down! lol. You might even just hear about it when a few of your followers found you and said "boss, the dragon ate the castle!" lol.



I've done that - the party rile up some powerful opponents somewhere and the next thing they know their home base is getting turned into Swiss cheese by the retaliation. 

Lanefan


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> It's also possible some alternate roll-up methods had already been trial-ballooned in Dragon Magazine.  All before my time.



Yeah, I'm not sure how or where or when such things originated. I equally suspect that some people knew of them before the publication of the 1e PHB and, as I said, Gygax may have even had that in mind since 1 year later he published the DMG with several alternative optional methods.



> It meshes if the players read into it that the characters they inhabit are going to have some sort of self-preservation instinct and thus use lots of caution etc.  But let's face it, in reality we all played gonzo for a while, and filled the graveyard in so doing.
> 
> And you're right about a lot of the RP happening outside the structured dungeon, though a lot also happened between the PCs all the way along.  I think this comes from many of the early modules (say, pre-1983 or so) providing very few if any decent opportunities for RP with the dungeon inhabitants; this changed with DL, Ravenloft, and - of all things - a few Judges Guild modules.



Right, I think there was a steady movement in the direction of more RP, less arbitrary character death, etc. You can almost plot that in terms of changes to the game. In OD&D you roll 3d6 in order (you can lower one score by 2 to raise one by 1, that's it). Then you get a d4/6/8 hit points and are basically on average WEAKER than some level 1 monsters (like an orc). Clerics don't even get a heal spell until level 2, and there aren't any bonus spells.

In 1e hit dice are upped, so its d4/d6/d8/d10 (and even 2d8 for the specialist ranger). Clerics get THREE level 1 spells (with a 13 WIS, probably not exactly hard to attain) IIRC, AND d8 hit points. Fighters get d10 hit points, and enough cash to buy chain armor most of the time, making them better than an orc.

2e doesn't change this much, but specialist wizards now get 2 spells to start with, and a better spell selection (probably, its a bit unclear). Characters also get to do a bunch of WP stuff (its an optional rule but only marginally so). Later 2e supplements add a lot more 'bennies', making even level 1 PCs considerably better equipped and survivable.

3e doesn't change too much, but does provide more options.

4e obviously makes low level characters considerably more insulated from 'the winds of fate', though relative to monsters they're not any stronger than in 1e or 2e. Its more like you start at the AD&D equivalent of 3rd level where you aren't expected to die every other session anymore.

5e is a little more equivocal, but characters are basically as survivable as in 4e.

So there's a pretty strong progression towards survivability. In every edition from 1e onwards there's also further moves towards being able to pick your character type instead of being dictated partly by luck. 1e has better dice rolling, 2e the same, 3e has point buy, etc. Basically in WotC D&D you choose your stats out of a budget so you always play the character you want. This is the endpoint of a trend that started in 1978.



> Interesting.
> 
> In the game I play in we're up to about a 10th-level average at the moment, and in our year-end awards the only pure Fighter in the party was just voted most valuable character for the 5th time in 6 years, this time after a tiebreak with the pure Ranger!  Two non-caster* classes - what does that say?
> 
> * - the Ranger's spell ability at 10th is still so trivial that it might as well not count.



Its hard to say. I mean there's a lot of variation. I had a ranger that was in that level range. He was an integral part of a long-running story, so he just WAS in that party, regardless. At that level he was equipped with some sort of vampiric armor, a vampiric sword, a ring of regen, and a number of other quite strong items that made him ALMOST immune to death. I recall he once leaped off a 200' cliff into the middle of an enemy army and proceeded to simply slaughter them by the 100's until the whole army basically ran away. By that time his vampiric sword had given him several 1000 hit points and he proceeded to kill a number of demons.

He still didn't hold a candle to my equally high-level straight human MU (who admittedly also had some pretty nifty equipment). In terms of "which would straight up contribute more to party success" it wasn't even a contest. The ranger still was probably the vastly more popular of the two characters with the DM and the other players as he was an endless source of amusement and plot hooks. The wizard was fun, in a "how do we game this stuff" sort of way, and had a pretty good story too, but frankly playing that sort of character was a lot 'easier' in some respects.



> I disagree here.  Both the PH and DMG, for example, point out the need for tracking things like gear, arrows, encumbrance, and so forth; and of hiring porters or buying/renting pack mules to carry what you cannot.



Right, but this doesn't mesh well with the idea of 'heroic play', at least in my mind. I mean, in the Odyssey for instance there's some mention at one or two points that the characters are needing to replenish supplies, but it isn't a primary concern, more like a bit of a device to explain why they choose to land on an island now and then. That and maybe things like the part of LotR where they visit Lothlorien and get resupplied are about the extent of such things in heroic source material. I wouldn't consider focusing on this to be particularly heroic and thus meshing too well with Gygax's text, though TBH it doesn't actually CLASH with it either.



> Huh?
> 
> Somehow in there you jumped from logistics play to story-driven play.  They're not the same thing by any means, though one can tangentially influence the other.



Well, I think that, while 2e fails in real rules terms to enable heroic play, it at least called it out as more than a blurb, and there ARE rules in 2e, the XP rules being the main example, that actually DO try to work in that direction. So 2e doesn't do 1e-type play so well, but it doesn't do heroic play really either. Its a weird game.

3e I cite as an example of the idea that 'playing in the dungeon' (IE Gygaxian play) WAS in fact the goal of, presumably, 1e, and that 2e strayed from it. I don't assert that 3e ACTUALLY gets you back to it mechanically, its much more like 2e there, but it does fly its flag on that hill. That just tells me how little WotC thought of Gygax's assertion in 1e PHB, they are asserting that 1e is a dungeon-crawl game!



> It can provide a home base for the party, but not much else.  That said, I think the assumption is that when a Fighter goes the stronghold route (or the Cleric builds her own temple, or whatever) that character is also pretty much retiring from adventuring.  Result: many characters IME put off this step until they think they've done their career, which might be several levels later.



Right, and in the Ur-game, maybe even before OD&D when it was emerging, I think the concept was that the 'real' game was the strategic empire-building game where you raised armies and played out Chainmail fantasy supplement battles against other kingdoms (probably even PC run ones). The stronghold rules are sort of a vestige of that IMHO. They don't contribute at all to the 'heroic game' except in some way maybe some color (you are now a ruler, which is kinda heroic). As you say, its more an invitation to retire. Few people actually run the empire building phase, so in effect the character either exits stage left or maybe gets trotted out to defend his lands now and then.



> This looks like the start of a D&D-as-sport vs. D&D-as-war discussion; where I see it as war and you (going by what you've said here) see it as sport.  Fair enough.



I never liked that formulation of the debate, but I understand what you mean. I think its the difference between:

1. Gygaxian Play - game as test of playing skill, can you survive the dungeon and make Nth level?
2. DM-centric Story Play - the GM presents a story, the players engage it from character stance only and some elements are hidden from them. This can also incorporate sequences of Gygaxian Play as a variation. They might also incorporate some elements of Narrative Cooperative Play, though neither are primary.
3. Narrative Cooperative Play - All participants shape the story, some play PCs and one usually plays the NPCs and often takes on tasks inherited from type 1 and 2 play's DM role (IE rules interpretation, maybe some backstory and thematic authority, etc).

In type 3 play, there simply isn't conflict at the table, no adversarial role exists. At least not inherently, players could create such as part of their play style and they can of course engage in bouts of type 1 and 2 play to whatever extent their chosen rules system allows for.



> So the players can author their own surprises?
> 
> Isn't that kind of like wrapping your own birthday present?



Sure, I take your meaning. As I say, there's always the option to agree on some hidden element which can foster entertaining/challenging play. I simply advocate that these elements are embedded in a fundamentally egalitarian matrix where no one participant's 'vision' is per-eminent. It isn't even REALLY that radical in practical terms because even Gygax had to cater to his player's desires if he wanted to remain in possession of a group to play with. So there's ALWAYS been some practical balance of or limits to authority of GMs in all games. I just prefer a convention where this is explicit and if a GM wants to hide something from the players that there is a buy in of that. I guess it doesn't need a vote or debate, but when the GM presents a 'mystery' as a narrative element without giving away the details to the players, then they COULD exercise meta-game authority to stop that. If they don't, well they must want that mystery! 



> This sounds more like group storytelling on a D&D chassis than anything else.  It's neither sport nor war; it's more like two teams getting together before the game and deciding what the score will be, who'll get the goals, and whether the referee will be given the chance to send someone off - and then going out and playing it through to that result.
> 
> 
> 
> See, you talk about teams and agreements and things. I see only one unitary 'team' at the table. I think your stance actually harks back to Gygax. In his conception the DM has a role as 'the antagonistic force' and thus there's a certain division into 2 asymmetric teams. This doesn't exist in modernistic play, but D&D has carried it over implicitly even as it has tried to achieve a non-Gygaxian (what I call type 2 above) play style. It is kind of problematic in ways that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and others have discussed many times in various places. Obviously it WORKS, but I contend there's always been an element of dissatisfaction starting with that blurb you quoted in the 1e PHB. Other RPGs have more and more grown up in that unclaimed territory. D&D is a big game with a lot of milieu, lore, material, etc. that has accreted to it, but it has never really figured this part out.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Again, you're very lucky with your players that they don't abuse this authorial power.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I literally cannot, in my mode of play, internalize 'abuse' as a concept. It just doesn't make sense. I guess I could recruit a group of players and they could decide to go off and construct a narrative that was completely uninteresting to me. I wouldn't consider this a game design issue, its a table issue. I suppose if that happened I'd have to assess my needs/desires/tastes and decide if I wanted to GM that game or not. If it was a case of me running a game in my persistent campaign and say the players wanted to totally rework the campaign, or turn into comedy or something. I'm happy with that if we're all having fun. I'm not obliged to incorporate that play into the 'canon' of my world if I don't want to. I'd probably just call it an 'alternate reality' or something.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I've done that - the party rile up some powerful opponents somewhere and the next thing they know their home base is getting turned into Swiss cheese by the retaliation.
> 
> Lanefan
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah, it was fun, but mostly because this particular guy is so much fun in terms of the characters he makes up and situations and whatnot. I think if you had 1000 DMs no other one could pull off the degree of 'railroad' that was in that game. I don't consider him an example of anything except that every generalization has its exception.
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...


----------



## Lanefan

XP for a thoughtful reply, even if I don't agree with some of it. 


AbdulAlhazred said:


> Right, I think there was a steady movement in the direction of more RP, less arbitrary character death, etc. You can almost plot that in terms of changes to the game. In OD&D you roll 3d6 in order (you can lower one score by 2 to raise one by 1, that's it). Then you get a d4/6/8 hit points and are basically on average WEAKER than some level 1 monsters (like an orc). Clerics don't even get a heal spell until level 2, and there aren't any bonus spells.
> 
> In 1e hit dice are upped, so its d4/d6/d8/d10 (and even 2d8 for the specialist ranger). Clerics get THREE level 1 spells (with a 13 WIS, probably not exactly hard to attain) IIRC, AND d8 hit points. Fighters get d10 hit points, and enough cash to buy chain armor most of the time, making them better than an orc.
> 
> 2e doesn't change this much, but specialist wizards now get 2 spells to start with, and a better spell selection (probably, its a bit unclear). Characters also get to do a bunch of WP stuff (its an optional rule but only marginally so). Later 2e supplements add a lot more 'bennies', making even level 1 PCs considerably better equipped and survivable.
> 
> 3e doesn't change too much, but does provide more options.
> 
> 4e obviously makes low level characters considerably more insulated from 'the winds of fate', though relative to monsters they're not any stronger than in 1e or 2e. Its more like you start at the AD&D equivalent of 3rd level where you aren't expected to die every other session anymore.
> 
> 5e is a little more equivocal, but characters are basically as survivable as in 4e.



While the 4e-5e model you present does allow for jumping right into the deep end as a local hero, as it were, it also completely negates any thought of playing a character up from "nobody" to said local hero: the riskiest part of an adventurer's career.  With 4e in particular there's quite a big gap between a commoner and a 1st-level character, probably holding enough design space to squeeze three or so more levels in there. In 1e that commoner-to-1st-level gap is much smaller; small enough that it's easy to envision how the progression would naturally occur; and even more so if one incorporates 0th level as a stepping stone.

I don't mind greater choice in class and race of character than raw 1e gives, and I've done away with most racial level limits (a race can either be a class or it can't) while also toning down some of the non-Human racial benefits.  I'm also more generous than 1e RAW in how many spell slots casters get at very low levels - figuring out how many they should have at higher levels remains a work in progress...I'll get it right one of these decades! 



> So there's a pretty strong progression towards survivability. In every edition from 1e onwards there's also further moves towards being able to pick your character type instead of being dictated partly by luck. 1e has better dice rolling, 2e the same, 3e has point buy, etc. Basically in WotC D&D you choose your stats out of a budget so you always play the character you want. This is the endpoint of a trend that started in 1978.



I rather loathe point-buy or array systems for reasons I've pointed out in other threads that largely boil down to preferring luck to be and remain a big factor in char gen - thus mirroring reality to some extent.



> Its hard to say. I mean there's a lot of variation. I had a ranger that was in that level range. He was an integral part of a long-running story, so he just WAS in that party, regardless. At that level he was equipped with some sort of vampiric armor, a vampiric sword, a ring of regen, and a number of other quite strong items that made him ALMOST immune to death. I recall he once leaped off a 200' cliff into the middle of an enemy army and proceeded to simply slaughter them by the 100's until the whole army basically ran away. By that time his vampiric sword had given him several 1000 hit points and he proceeded to kill a number of demons.
> 
> He still didn't hold a candle to my equally high-level straight human MU (who admittedly also had some pretty nifty equipment).



I play the human MU in our game, and even though she's 10th level I think half the PCs in the party could wipe her out in a 1-on-1 arena situation, rising to nearly all of them if I lost initiative on the first round. 



> Right, but this doesn't mesh well with the idea of 'heroic play', at least in my mind.



Here's another difference between us, then: you seem to be looking for heroic play where I'm looking for something a bit more gritty where the characters maybe end up as heroes at the finish.

And in all honesty I find that the full-on logistical play only lasts for the first few levels, after which everyone (players and PCs) kinda knows what they're doing and can put it on autopilot.  Couple that in with things like _Continual Light_ and _Create Food and Water_ coming into play and before long the most important things remaining to track are ammunition and party/personal wealth.  But that introduction to logistics is IMO vitally important.



> Well, I think that, while 2e fails in real rules terms to enable heroic play, it at least called it out as more than a blurb, and there ARE rules in 2e, the XP rules being the main example, that actually DO try to work in that direction. So 2e doesn't do 1e-type play so well, but it doesn't do heroic play really either. Its a weird game.
> 
> 3e I cite as an example of the idea that 'playing in the dungeon' (IE Gygaxian play) WAS in fact the goal of, presumably, 1e, and that 2e strayed from it. I don't assert that 3e ACTUALLY gets you back to it mechanically, its much more like 2e there, but it does fly its flag on that hill. That just tells me how little WotC thought of Gygax's assertion in 1e PHB, they are asserting that 1e is a dungeon-crawl game!



By the late '90s 2e had really lost its way, and was drowning in bloat.  The 3e designers, backed by their customer research, realized that there was a common desire for a) simplification and integration of the rules and b) a return to good old-fashioned dungeon-crawling as a point from which to start over.  On (a) they half-succeeded: the rules became well-integrated but they sure didn't get any simpler!  On (b) they hit a home run, with this and other factors leading to a rather massive resurgence in the game's popularity.



> Right, and in the Ur-game, maybe even before OD&D when it was emerging, I think the concept was that the 'real' game was the strategic empire-building game where you raised armies and played out Chainmail fantasy supplement battles against other kingdoms (probably even PC run ones). The stronghold rules are sort of a vestige of that IMHO. They don't contribute at all to the 'heroic game' except in some way maybe some color (you are now a ruler, which is kinda heroic). As you say, its more an invitation to retire. Few people actually run the empire building phase, so in effect the character either exits stage left or maybe gets trotted out to defend his lands now and then.



In fairness, it can also be seen as an invitation to the DM to slowly transition from a bash-and-haul type of game to something with a lot more courtly intrigue in it; though not all DMs or players would go for this.



> I never liked that formulation of the debate, but I understand what you mean. I think its the difference between:
> 
> 1. Gygaxian Play - game as test of playing skill, can you survive the dungeon and make Nth level?
> 2. DM-centric Story Play - the GM presents a story, the players engage it from character stance only and some elements are hidden from them. This can also incorporate sequences of Gygaxian Play as a variation. They might also incorporate some elements of Narrative Cooperative Play, though neither are primary.
> 3. Narrative Cooperative Play - All participants shape the story, some play PCs and one usually plays the NPCs and often takes on tasks inherited from type 1 and 2 play's DM role (IE rules interpretation, maybe some backstory and thematic authority, etc).
> 
> In type 3 play, there simply isn't conflict at the table, no adversarial role exists. At least not inherently, players could create such as part of their play style and they can of course engage in bouts of type 1 and 2 play to whatever extent their chosen rules system allows for.



 (1) is most often RPG as war - it's deadly; (2) is most often RPG as sport - we'll beat each other up on the field then all go down to the pub for a beer; and (3) is RPG as...well, kinda not much.

You can't have a story without conflict, and in an RPG that conflict can only come from two places: the DM (acting as the game world and its inhabitants) and-or the other players (acting as their PCs); and as many tables ban PvP that only leaves one source of conflict. 

(I don't count conflict against self here - if someone wants to play out their own character's internal angst that's fine, but it's not much fun for anyone else who has to sit through it)



> Sure, I take your meaning. As I say, there's always the option to agree on some hidden element which can foster entertaining/challenging play. I simply advocate that these elements are embedded in a fundamentally egalitarian matrix where no one participant's 'vision' is per-eminent. It isn't even REALLY that radical in practical terms because even Gygax had to cater to his player's desires if he wanted to remain in possession of a group to play with. So there's ALWAYS been some practical balance of or limits to authority of GMs in all games.



Agreed.


> I just prefer a convention where this is explicit and if a GM wants to hide something from the players that there is a buy in of that.



So, you can buy me a birthday present but only if I allow you to.  You're not allowed to surprise me without my foreknowledge. 


> I guess it doesn't need a vote or debate, but when the GM presents a 'mystery' as a narrative element without giving away the details to the players, then they COULD exercise meta-game authority to stop that.



Or I can tell you to return whatever you bought me to the shop for a refund.



> See, you talk about teams and agreements and things. I see only one unitary 'team' at the table. I think your stance actually harks back to Gygax. In his conception the DM has a role as 'the antagonistic force' and thus there's a certain division into 2 asymmetric teams.



Of course.  That's how it works. 

The DM has a very different role within an RPG than do the players, much like a football referee and linesmen have very different roles in football from those of the lads kicking the ball around.  The DM and the referee are not playing the game even though they are directly involved in it; instead they are facilitating the game and making sure things stay vaguely within the rules.

In an RPG the DM is in an odd situation in that she's filling the roles of both referee and opposition; and all involved just have to trust that she can do this fairly.



> This doesn't exist in modernistic play, but D&D has carried it over implicitly even as it has tried to achieve a non-Gygaxian (what I call type 2 above) play style. It is kind of problematic in ways that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and others have discussed many times in various places. Obviously it WORKS, but I contend there's always been an element of dissatisfaction starting with that blurb you quoted in the 1e PHB. Other RPGs have more and more grown up in that unclaimed territory.



I'm not so sure I'd say "grown up" but rather "branched out"; as "grown up" implies that what went before was childish - I hope that's not what you're trying to say. 

And one can argue that this branching out has in some cases gone so far as to produce entirely new plants, some of which aren't really growing in the RPG garden any more but are instead sprouting up out of the collaborative storytelling soil just near it. 



> I literally cannot, in my mode of play, internalize 'abuse' as a concept. It just doesn't make sense. I guess I could recruit a group of players and they could decide to go off and construct a narrative that was completely uninteresting to me. I wouldn't consider this a game design issue, its a table issue.



That's not abuse as I see it, it's just boring for the DM. 


> I suppose if that happened I'd have to assess my needs/desires/tastes and decide if I wanted to GM that game or not. If it was a case of me running a game in my persistent campaign and say the players wanted to totally rework the campaign, or turn into comedy or something. I'm happy with that if we're all having fun. I'm not obliged to incorporate that play into the 'canon' of my world if I don't want to. I'd probably just call it an 'alternate reality' or something.



By 'abuse' (as in abuse of the play-style or system) I mean it'd be very open to players making things far too easy on their PCs and, in effect, Monty Hauling the campaign.  Without meaningful opposition they could (and many IME probably would, given the chance) turn a high-risk high-reward game into a low-or-no-risk high-reward game; and providing this meaningful opposition and risk in the form of the game world and its occupants is in part what the DM is there for.

They'd then get awfully bored with the whole thing and probably blame the game, but in the end it'd be a boredom they had brought upon themselves.

Lan-"sure I want it all, but it's more fun if I have to fight to get it and there's no guarantee I'll win"-efan


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> XP for a thoughtful reply, even if I don't agree with some of it.
> While the 4e-5e model you present does allow for jumping right into the deep end as a local hero, as it were, it also completely negates any thought of playing a character up from "nobody" to said local hero: the riskiest part of an adventurer's career.  With 4e in particular there's quite a big gap between a commoner and a 1st-level character, probably holding enough design space to squeeze three or so more levels in there. In 1e that commoner-to-1st-level gap is much smaller; small enough that it's easy to envision how the progression would naturally occur; and even more so if one incorporates 0th level as a stepping stone.



There are two parts to this. The 'gap between commoner and level 1' part is really a little hard to judge. There is literally no standard in 4e of what a 'commoner' is, because 4e doesn't posit that statistics are the world. There is a bigger gap between the weakest possible generally usable stat block in 4e and a level 1 PC than in say 1e (where the weakest PC and a Kobold and a notional '0 level human' are all pretty close, with the PC having some special class abilities and maybe equipment, but not a lot else). In 4e a level 1 minion is a LOT weaker than a level 1 PC. I think its fair to say we can imagine commoners occupying some range in there, but some of them COULD be about on a par with PCs (certainly there are examples of 'townspeople' in Fallcrest, the only really developed 'normal' town in 4e material) who are on a par with PCs, so its a hard call actually. Some may be a lot weaker.

The second part, about 'riskiness', I dismiss out of hand. Risk doesn't exist in D&D. You play a character, the GM determines what dangers exist. He can threaten, and indeed carry through on, killing any PC regardless of statistics, and he can do it without using any fiat simply by what he places in the challenges that the character faces. Risk is thus an illusion, or at least it is simply an agreement between the GM and the player as to what sort of game is being played at the table. Thus it is entirely orthogonal to what rules set is being used. If risk of character death (wagered on player skill and luck with the dice in most games) is an element of a particular scenario, then so it is. Even then DMs have traditionally (even 4e has Rule 0) absolute fiat power that ultimately decides life and death.



> I rather loathe point-buy or array systems for reasons I've pointed out in other threads that largely boil down to preferring luck to be and remain a big factor in char gen - thus mirroring reality to some extent.



Eh, I can see an argument from the standpoint of trying to move players out of their comfort zone and get them to play something new. The original point, to make the choice of which type of 'pawn' the player had to attempt to solve the dungeon with a matter of both chance and skill in deciding if it was better to be a suboptimal wizard or an optimal fighter, doesn't matter in anything but Gygaxian play however. The philosophical notion that there is a 'luck of the draw' in what attributes we are born with is so dubious to begin with that to attach any 'realism' constraint to it is practically meaningless IMHO. Again, I think its valid to want to both express the full range of possible characters and push players into new experiences, though it obviously has to mesh with what the PLAYERS want. I actually don't have an issue with random 3d6 in order character creation. I personally find it entertaining. Maybe some time I will run a game like that and see who is interested. I'm OK with point buy though for a lot of games. I actually thought the Traveller process, where the player makes some choices and rolls some dice, was pretty interesting.



> I play the human MU in our game, and even though she's 10th level I think half the PCs in the party could wipe her out in a 1-on-1 arena situation, rising to nearly all of them if I lost initiative on the first round.



Yes, but such 'spherical cow' type evaluations are meaningless. You won't ever even see Questioner of All Things coming, nor ever get surprise on him. Even if you did, he long ago took specific magical precautions against that sort of thing. You might cause him a significant inconvenience, at best, if you were to catch him at unawares going about his presumed daily routine life or something like that. GMs of course rarely stoop to that kind of thing, though in a certain type of game I don't think its unfair. As I say, Q has countermeasures. DMs are of course equipped with infinite resources, so you can't say I'm proof against any possible plot, but it would require a level of resources, preparations and knowledge that a GM would be hard pressed to justify NPCs having in order to succeed. 

In any case, just because your fighter could gank my wizard from a standing start at a range of 5 feet with a 50/50 toss of the initiative die doesn't make him my equal in an adventure. 



> Here's another difference between us, then: you seem to be looking for heroic play where I'm looking for something a bit more gritty where the characters maybe end up as heroes at the finish.



Even zero-to-hero doesn't necessarily need to have this gritty kind of logistics sub-game. DW for instance has a pretty abstract concept of character resources. They exist, and you can track them to whatever detail you want, but they aren't generally central to play of the game. In fact they're more a sort of 'plot hook' (so for instance the GM in that game might reveal an unpleasant truth, your last torch is guttering down and the exit is nowhere in sight, a 'soft' move, but yet kind of nasty depending on the mix of PCs in the party). 



> By the late '90s 2e had really lost its way, and was drowning in bloat.  The 3e designers, backed by their customer research, realized that there was a common desire for a) simplification and integration of the rules and b) a return to good old-fashioned dungeon-crawling as a point from which to start over.  On (a) they half-succeeded: the rules became well-integrated but they sure didn't get any simpler!  On (b) they hit a home run, with this and other factors leading to a rather massive resurgence in the game's popularity.



I think in terms of (a) they took the mass of disfunctional 2e kits and supplements and rationalized it into a set of workable character options, which was good to some degree. On (b) I think there was a huge pent-up demand for a new set of core books, since 2e was over 10 years old at that point. 3e was thus a pretty good bet, they could have sold almost anything to people that hadn't had a new product in 5 years aside from a few things left over from TSR's pipeline. I'd note that, while 3e was pretty popular it doesn't seem to have ever reached the levels of 1e (nothing since has) and it quickly faded, so quickly that 4 years later they had to roll out 3.5e to keep selling books. I think 3e has its good points in a sense, but I'm not real convinced it was all that incredible a product. There are certainly plenty of grounds upon which to criticize the particular design choices it made. I'd also say that 'back to the dungeon' is no more than a slogan, the rules don't support it at all.


> In fairness, it can also be seen as an invitation to the DM to slowly transition from a bash-and-haul type of game to something with a lot more courtly intrigue in it; though not all DMs or players would go for this.



Yeah, that's a possibility. You could work out some sort of milder form of 'Birthright' kind of game as well, or various things. Battlesystem was, I think, one of several attempts to revitalize that aspect of the game that ultimately failed. Court intrigue is fun, but D&D doesn't really support it well. You need rules that outline how to progress through stories and really do a better job of defining character's capabilities. OA does it better than any other part of 1e. 3e can do it fairly well, which is maybe its strongest suite really.



> (1) is most often RPG as war - it's deadly; (2) is most often RPG as sport - we'll beat each other up on the field then all go down to the pub for a beer; and (3) is RPG as...well, kinda not much.
> 
> You can't have a story without conflict, and in an RPG that conflict can only come from two places: the DM (acting as the game world and its inhabitants) and-or the other players (acting as their PCs); and as many tables ban PvP that only leaves one source of conflict.
> 
> (I don't count conflict against self here - if someone wants to play out their own character's internal angst that's fine, but it's not much fun for anyone else who has to sit through it)



This might all be true if you assume that antagonism must involve different game participants taking each side. However, because the antagonism is at the CHARACTER level, the participants are free to make decisions about any or all sides in the conflict, THEY aren't on any side, inherently, because they aren't part of the narrative. 

It would be perfectly feasible for a player in a game to say something like "Wait, when the guy in the helmet raises his visor, its General Zongo, my family's nemesis! I channel all my anger into one mighty surprise attack against him!" Obviously there may be game mechanics that govern the details of what the player can establish, when, how often, to what degree, who else needs to concur, etc. The conflict between the PC and General Zongo is no less a conflict simply because it was arranged by the same game participant who decides what the PC does about it.



> So, you can buy me a birthday present but only if I allow you to.  You're not allowed to surprise me without my foreknowledge.



I would say that one considers one's knowledge of a particular person, and generally only a fairly significant understanding of that person leads to good presents. It isn't exactly controversial to ask people what they want. Anyway, the analogy shouldn't be stretched too far. You wouldn't consider it an appropriate present for me to buy you a coupon to have your old sick cat euthenized. I think maybe I'd ask before I introduced a plot element that totally re-arranged the basis of your character's history or something too.



> Of course.  That's how it works.
> 
> The DM has a very different role within an RPG than do the players, much like a football referee and linesmen have very different roles in football from those of the lads kicking the ball around.  The DM and the referee are not playing the game even though they are directly involved in it; instead they are facilitating the game and making sure things stay vaguely within the rules.
> 
> In an RPG the DM is in an odd situation in that she's filling the roles of both referee and opposition; and all involved just have to trust that she can do this fairly.



I think this is a perfectly OK way to play, but the way you state it is as if it is THE way it HAS to be, not just one of many options. Now, I don't think you and I are anywhere near disagreeing that we both play an RPG, or think the other guy's playing style is somehow badwrongfun or anything like that. HOWEVER, I've heard much more militant versions of what you stated here that basically do amount to that, many times! There are people that have posted a bit here even that have pretty much told me that what I do isn't RPing, isn't a game, etc. You may hear [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] that way at times, but I think, at worst, he's just got strong preferences of his own. You could probably go through his activity over the last year and find a LOT of times he's been told he's off the reservation and not even playing an RPG. Its a bit like the old Edition Wars where certain things just got to be silly.

Anyway, not that we're fighting, this is a fun conversation, and I don't even totally disagree with you, there's a very strong tradition of D&D where what you're saying is how its played. I even like a lot of those games, in moderation. 



> I'm not so sure I'd say "grown up" but rather "branched out"; as "grown up" implies that what went before was childish - I hope that's not what you're trying to say.



Yeah, I meant 'grown up like weeds' more than 'as in more mature' in some fashion. I think we can safely say that playing ANY kind of RPG is often seen by the world as childish, lol. I actually think Gygaxian D&D is a very clever and surprisingly 'mature' game in terms of the evolution of its forms. Its restricted enough that it got there in a relatively short period of 5-6 years, but Gary himself was quite good at welding together game elements to do what he wanted. OD&D is messy, but once you mix in Greyhawk it is a pretty tight dungeon crawl game. The higher level/other elements are a bit 'out there', but it does dungeons really well. Heck, Mentzer is really just a distillation of that one part of OD&D.



> And one can argue that this branching out has in some cases gone so far as to produce entirely new plants, some of which aren't really growing in the RPG garden any more but are instead sprouting up out of the collaborative storytelling soil just near it.



Well... I think as long as each player is associated with a character, and that there are genuine mechanical constraints on the player's game activities, they're pretty much playing an RPG. Its a different kind of game than classic D&D maybe, but there's still a lot of 'game' in it.



> By 'abuse' (as in abuse of the play-style or system) I mean it'd be very open to players making things far too easy on their PCs and, in effect, Monty Hauling the campaign.  Without meaningful opposition they could (and many IME probably would, given the chance) turn a high-risk high-reward game into a low-or-no-risk high-reward game; and providing this meaningful opposition and risk in the form of the game world and its occupants is in part what the DM is there for.



Again though, I think this concern is only cogent in terms of a sort of Gygaxian-like type of game where treasure and advancement is the main goal and the GM's main function is to act as the opposition standing in the way of that goal. Once that paradigm is discarded, then the concern is no longer present. There may of course be OTHER concerns which are equally significant in say [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s game, which he's got to address in whatever ways you address those.



> They'd then get awfully bored with the whole thing and probably blame the game, but in the end it'd be a boredom they had brought upon themselves.




Yeah, if you play to find loot and beat the GM's traps and monsters and such to get it, then the non-existence of such traps and monsters, or your ability to edit them away, would be problematic. I could see a game however where the players had the ability to set the level and nature of the opposition, and then lets say that the referee set the corresponding reward (or some sort of game mechanic did so). That could work as a system with both challenge (IE you can lose) and a feasible reward mechanism. I actually haven't seen a game like that in action, though the idea seems obvious enough that SOMEONE must have experimented with it by now!


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## Sebastrd

darkbard said:


> How can you believe this to be so when this is _exactly_ the sort of GMing that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] advocates throughout this thread: that the _players_ must guess the location of the map as he, as GM, has preauthored it, and that if that slows the progress of the game to a halt while the PCs run through a sequence of rooms making checks until they succeed at a check in the _correct_ room, well, then, them's the breaks?!?




My statement stands for itself. I'll leave it at that.


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## innerdude

AbdulAlhazred said:


> . . . the REAL pitfall IME is that the game of D&D never really provided the means to play out the sorts of fantasies that many players envisaged. DMs were increasingly, especially as AD&D evolved, forced to 'fudge things' to try to get that to work, and the discrepancy between the exploration-focused rules and the story-focused table expectations becomes a breaking point. No amount of pre-generated content, pseudo-realism in game systems, or attempts at even-handed refereeing really fixes it.




This rings so very true to me. I think the proliferation of Marvel universe movies is a glimpse into this mindset---the _de rigeur_ line of thinking that the players are going to be the earth-shatterers, the apocalypse-makers for their game worlds. They're going to be the ones holding the "Tri-Force" at the end of the game and deciding the fate of the world. And if the story doesn't manage to TAKE their characters into that "superhero" space, that the "story" behind the gameplay is a waste. 

And truthfully, I don't know that any RPG is up to the task of making that kind of storyline possible without a tremendous amount of GM force in the background.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yes, it is, usually, possible to play in a sub-optimal way and take the class you want, or at least the 'base' class (its VERY hard, even with 4d6 ordered as you want to qualify for the 'sub' classes in 1e). That assumes you aren't using 3d6 in order, which was the only known method when 1e PHB was released. With THAT method you are entirely incorrect, and I think its fair to judge what Gygax wrote in that light. Nor do I know anything in the PHB (or even the DMG) which 'strongly implies' anything. It was a known fact that if you dumped players with a sucky character they didn't like they would just find a way to die and roll again. So it wasn't uncommon to bow to the inevitable a bit and allow a player to start over if the result was particularly bad AND they weren't in the mood to ham it up and try to make a go of it (which we often did, heck it could be fun for a while). OD&D even codifies this to a small extent by allowing you to reduce one stat by 2 points and increase another by 1 point, though that was never implemented in 1e.



Going purely by the 1e PHB, it very strongly implies that the DM should allow re-rolls if the player doesn't roll two 15's or higher on those 3d6.  If the DM didn't allow that, it was a DM problem, not a game problem.  With two 15's or higher, you can be almost any class in the book.  Ranger and Paladin being the two super hard to qualify for classes under 3d6.



> It was an inevitable consequence of play in that era using those processes. I was there, and no amount of telling me different is going to change that. I mean, I have actual character sheets that have names like 'blah blah blah #7' and such written on them. It happened quite often. It was also common to just not bother to NAME the character until after a few levels since then you weren't stuck with some crappy name on your high level guy. In my friend's campaign there was a very high level wizard called 'Tribord VII'. Well, we thought it was amusing, and the character eventually obviously got a real history and some personality, but you can only imagine the endless hours of slogging away with nameless low-level throw-away PCs before that happened. I speak truth, and many others will corroborate this.




If it was so inevitable, why did it almost never happen where I could see it?  Other than a few really bad players, I didn't see this "inevitable consequence" happen.  We lost a lot of characters, but didn't resort to that sort of BS.  And I didn't even see it for the first time until 2e.



> You are missing the point Max. The whole point was that the prefatory description of play in 1e that Gygax put in the PHB in 1978 simply doesn't match the reality of play that his system actually presents AT ALL.
> 
> In fact you play a character of a type drawn from a fairly narrow range of choices with attributes at least partially mandated by dice, and said character is then projected into a gritty world of dungeon looting in which their chances of reaching even 3rd level are fairly thin, at best. Its an interesting enough game, but it isn't AT ALL what was 'on the tin' so to speak. This is equally true of Original D&D, all three versions of Basic D&D, and of 2e.




I remember how deadly it was.  We were still able to, and did roleplay our PCs.  The mechanics didn't prevent or discourage that. It just meant that we had several backup concepts in mind for when a PC died.


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## Jacob Lewis

46 pages of forum postings on the topic of "worldbuidling". Still not a continent, kingdom, principality, or hamlet in sight. Must be Waterworld but with a lot less Costner.


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## AbdulAlhazred

innerdude said:


> This rings so very true to me. I think the proliferation of Marvel universe movies is a glimpse into this mindset---the _de rigeur_ line of thinking that the players are going to be the earth-shatterers, the apocalypse-makers for their game worlds. They're going to be the ones holding the "Tri-Force" at the end of the game and deciding the fate of the world. And if the story doesn't manage to TAKE their characters into that "superhero" space, that the "story" behind the gameplay is a waste.
> 
> And truthfully, I don't know that any RPG is up to the task of making that kind of storyline possible without a tremendous amount of GM force in the background.




Well, IMHO, that only holds if the expectation is that the player's agency is only through their characters viewpoint agency and its up to the GM to build all the world detail. At that point GMs find themselves in a bind where, if they want to make their content relevant, they must limit the character's options to those which advance things in a direction they have envisaged. Otherwise they must perforce improvise. MOST GMs, given the choice of improvising away their carefully constructed story arc, will resort to GM force (in some degree). When the characters are comic superheroes, classically of very great character agency and power, then this becomes LOTS of force. This same issue afflicts high level classic D&D play, making it increasingly untenable. That is to say that after some level, say 9th, 'dungeons' can no longer really function to channel character agency, they can start to pass through the walls, break down all the doors, detect all the traps, etc. The characters then go through increasingly remote and less constrained environments, the wilderness, outer planes, etc. until the GM either 'kills them' or the game simply can't accommodate them anymore. 

There are definitely games, however, which can accommodate arbitrary amounts of character agency. They simply aren't going to have as an agenda the overcoming of DM presented challenges as their primary focus. My own private form of 'D&D' for instance works largely like this, there's really no problem with 20th level PCs, the scope of their actions is quite large, but the issues they face are the same, fundamentally, as low level PCs. The activities of the players are largely the same too, just with a different stage to set them on and different tools.


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## pemerton

Emerikol said:


> @pemerton and those who enjoy his style of play
> 1. They feel they lack agency if they cannot shape the world as they play in it. It is not enough to control their own character's actions. They want to control the environment so that they can set up situations that they enjoy. I think I understand what you want. I think agency is the wrong word for it which might be the confusion.
> 
> 2. The world is grown organically far more than it is crafted.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> 3. I think what is widely regarded as worldbuilding really is of little use to Pemerton's playstyle.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I don't like games with "metagame" controls.  I disliked 4e, parts of 5e, dungeonworld, savage worlds, etc...  Those games give players more control than the fictional character has and that goes against the style I prefer.  I am sure for those who enjoy some hybrid version of mine and Permerton's, they might like such metagame rules.  In Permerton's case they probably aren't enough.



I agree with 2 and 3. Metagame controls aren't that important to me: Burning Wheel, 4e and Cortex+ Heroic all have the to a modest degree (but less than, say, OGL Conan); Classic Traveller and Rolemaster have them not at all.

This relates to your 1, 2 and 3.

2 and 3 are both (in my view) true.

1 is not true. When I play an RPG I want to play my character and control my character's actions. _Being able to shape the world as I play in it_ is not a big deal. What is a big deal is that _the outcomes of my character's actions aren't settled by the GM's pre-authored setting_.

EDIT: And likewise when I'm GM, with appropriate changes of role: I like to see the players' declare actions for their character that engage with the unfolding fiction, and I don't want the outcomes of those actions to be pre-determined by me.

As I hope this thread has made clear, there's a category of actions whose outcomes typically is not predetermined by GMs (eg a running race against a NPC - opposed checks to resolve; or a fight with an orc - use the combat mechanics) but another category of actions whose outcomes often are predetermined by a reasonable number of GMs (searching for a map in the study; finding a bribeable official; etc).

Upthread I described this second category as ones in which the _PC_ is learning about the world rather than changing it. If these correlate to actions in which the player _learns about the GM's authorship decisions_ rather than _contributes, via action declaration and resolution, to the unfolding shared fiction_ then I find that unsatisfying both as GM and as player.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Going purely by the 1e PHB, it very strongly implies that the DM should allow re-rolls if the player doesn't roll two 15's or higher on those 3d6.  If the DM didn't allow that, it was a DM problem, not a game problem.  With two 15's or higher, you can be almost any class in the book.  Ranger and Paladin being the two super hard to qualify for classes under 3d6.



I'm unaware of any such text in the 1e PHB, and I can almost quote the darned thing. Beyond that, getting 2 15's out of 6 rolls of 3d6 is actually fairly unusual. You'd have to allow at least 6 or more rerolls for most players to manage that. Nobody in my experience was doing that, although the DMG methods considerably change the odds. 1 in 3 characters using method II will have 2 15s. Method III will AVERAGE 3 15s, and Method IV should produce roughly 2 sets of stats with 2 15s. I'm not sure about method 1 exactly, I don't have  dice calculator I feel like playing with to get that one, but IME 2 15s using Method I is similar to Method II. Note that not all these methods let you pick WHICH stats the 15s will be in, assuming you get them. Method III was widely considered too generous, but nice for rolling up higher level PCs (which tend to be the ones with better stats if you played them out). 

Again though, no hint of this exists in PHB. I think its safe to say that the DMG tells us Gygax WAS aware of the problem, and was interested in giving players something more like what they wanted. Truthfully ability scores in OD&D pre-Greyhawk were of marginal mechanical use anyway, so he probably just didn't think it was an issue back then. It was only with the advent of Greyhawk and then the codification of stat bonuses into 1e along with the 'advanced' classes that the issue really became acute. DMG helps relieve it some, but paladins were still RARE IME.



> If it was so inevitable, why did it almost never happen where I could see it?  Other than a few really bad players, I didn't see this "inevitable consequence" happen.  We lost a lot of characters, but didn't resort to that sort of BS.  And I didn't even see it for the first time until 2e.



Look, I played from 1975 until the end of 2e classic D&D. In the early 1e days I was in a gaming club that had 300+ members. We played D&D sometimes continuously for a week at a time with rotating DMs even. I saw plenty of it. Characters were nothing. They died left, right, center, up, down, and all around. If you made 6th level that was rare. There were some 'easy' DMs of course, but mostly nobody even bothered to name a character at level 1, or just called it by some generic name, or maybe it was a new guy and he named his character, which we thought was funny. Usually after a session or so the character's got some kind of nickname or whatever. That's just how it was back then. Maybe where you played everyone was gung-ho to RP every character fully and the DMs let them all live, I dunno. 



> I remember how deadly it was.  We were still able to, and did roleplay our PCs.  The mechanics didn't prevent or discourage that. It just meant that we had several backup concepts in mind for when a PC died.




Well, I'm not saying you couldn't or didn't RP. I'm saying that the blurb in the PHB is largely not born out by the rules as-written, which lead to high character attrition and low player agency in selecting what to play. There's nothing wrong with low-level 1e, it just doesn't match what is commonly desired by a lot of players, a cool character they identify fully with.

This is not a controversial conclusion, Gygax basically admits it on page 11 of the DMG in the intro to the methods for rolling up characters, where he actually kind of disparages the 3d6 6 times standard as producing many unsuitable PCs and many that are not what the player really wanted.


----------



## pemerton

innerdude said:


> I think the proliferation of Marvel universe movies is a glimpse into this mindset---the _de rigeur_ line of thinking that the players are going to be the earth-shatterers, the apocalypse-makers for their game worlds. They're going to be the ones holding the "Tri-Force" at the end of the game and deciding the fate of the world. And if the story doesn't manage to TAKE their characters into that "superhero" space, that the "story" behind the gameplay is a waste.
> 
> And truthfully, I don't know that any RPG is up to the task of making that kind of storyline possible without a tremendous amount of GM force in the background.



I'm not all that across the MCU, but if the idea is that the PCs become the world-shattering/saving heroes who hold the fateful artefact under their control - well, I think that 4e does this more-or-less out of the box.

(It'll take you more than 20 levels of play to get there, and the published modules won't help - you'll have to use the advice and the material published in the core books and supplements - but it'll do it!)

And for a game that let's you take this approach from the start (no zero-to-hero) there's Marvel Heroic RP - the Annihiliation Wars supplement was exactly this (if I've got you right).


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], I agree with your comments about the gulf between what Gygax describes in those opening remarks, and the reality of play. I've often said the same thing in relation to the Foreword to Moldvay Basic.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I literally cannot, in my mode of play, internalize 'abuse' as a concept. It just doesn't make sense.





AbdulAlhazred said:


> Ah, see, in our way of playing there's no 'advantage' for them to bend it to. RPGs don't have winners and losers. There's no points to be scored, no conflict between the participants in their roles at the table. The very notion that I'm 'giving up advantage' to the players doesn't exist in that model, its not like that. I mean, we CAN enter into something like that mode with say 4e's tactical play where I can as DM run a bunch of monsters and the rules are ALMOST completely objective (and I could spell out with terrain powers and such many of the grey areas). Then we could play a 'no holds barred' sort of tactical wargame-like combat scenario. There can even be some skill uses and whatnot that are handled using related rules (the combat uses of skills for instance) and 'page 42' also helps, though it does rely on some DM judgment.
> 
> I could even have a bit of a surprise for the players in terms of maybe an encounter is suddenly stronger than they expected or different in some way. That would probably in response to some expressed but not (by meta-game procedures we use) brought explicitly into play by a player. So, there CAN be a sort of 'secret'.



I can relate to all this very easily!

As far as "abuse" is concerned, I rely mostly on the game rules to handle that. Eg let's agree that a +5 sword at 1st level is abusive in D&D - well, the 4e rules (which is the version of D&D that I run campaigns in) preculde 1st level characters having +5 swores. Of course any table is free to depart from that, but presumably they know it won't be abusive.

Obviously a list-based game like 4e allows for highy optimised or even degenerate combos - we have no real trouble handling that through a mixture of player self-limiatation and gentelmen's agreements.

As far as the _fiction_ is concerned, I'm not sure the concept of "abuse" really bites: if it fits the fictional positioning, and can be framed in terms of genre + rules, then let's do it and see what happens! It's not like we're going to run out of story - or, if we do, then we know the game's done.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Only to the extent that the players desire that. If they want a scene of glorious triumph for their characters, then they'll probably get that too.



This I relate to a bit less! I'm less inclined to "say 'yes"" to a glorious triumph - I'll at least make them roll!



Lanefan said:


> So the players can author their own surprises?
> 
> Isn't that kind of like wrapping your own birthday present?





Lanefan said:


> By 'abuse' (as in abuse of the play-style or system) I mean it'd be very open to players making things far too easy on their PCs and, in effect, Monty Hauling the campaign.  Without meaningful opposition they could (and many IME probably would, given the chance) turn a high-risk high-reward game into a low-or-no-risk high-reward game; and providing this meaningful opposition and risk in the form of the game world and its occupants is in part what the DM is there for.



I can't speak for the details of how [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s game works, but clearly it's not utterly different from mine.

In my own case, the players establish - with more or less detail, depending on the system, the player and the mood - what it is they care about in the game. (Eg one of our Traveller PCs is travelling the galaxy hoping to find signs of alien activity.)

It's the GM's job to feed that into the framing of scenes ("going where the action is"), which lets the player pursue it; and to have regard to it in the framing of consequences of failure. The only "Monty Hauling" here is that the player (subject to the fact that there are multiple players, and so that player's PC may not always be to the fore) has something of a guarantee that his/her thing will be an aspect of play most of the time.

The player of the invoker/wizard in my 4e game established, early on in the campaign as part of the narration of a resurrection episode, that his PC had been sent back into the world to find an artefact of great value to Erathis. As GM, I embellished this by having the original sceptre that he recovered turn out to be the first part of the Rod of Seven Parts. Later on, [urlo=http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?324018-Wizard-PC-dies-returns-as-Invoker]in another resurrection episode[/url], the player decided that his PC was _really_ an immortal deva who had been reborn as a human for one of his lives.

When this PC was looking for the next (5th, I think) bit of the Rod of Seven Parts -  - , and located it in a duergar stronghold, the players ultimately failed to save the stronghold (after brining Pazuzu's wrath to bear upon it). As a result, the Rod fragment ended up being eaten by a purple worm - the PCs were eventually able to extract it after some brutal surgery!

That's a fairly typical example of play in one of my games - I hope the general structural resemblance to the "looking for an alien artefact on sale in a market" Traveller episode that I've mentioned upthread is clear enough.

The action resolution difficulties are the same as they would be in any other relatively demanding upper paragon 4e game. But it's not a random encounter in pursuit of a McGuffin - the whole situation is framed around this key dramatic need of this PC. (And other aspects of the situation speak to other PCs and their players: eg the PC who opened the door to Pazuzu's problematic relationship with chaotic forces; the tiefling paladin who sees, in the failure of the duergar's devil worship, echoes of his own people's fall.)


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION], what you describe doesn't sound wildly different from the Traveller ambergris episode I described upthread.

Where we may differ in approach (or not) is the following:

(1) Tthe extent to which the player-chosen backstory elements (eg ties to the Shades) provide the material for the challenges of play. The more this stuff is "going where the action is", the closer we are.

(2) The extent to which player concenrs (as evinced through PC motivations) have a thematic/value-type dimension to them rather than a purely utilitarian/efficiency aspect. The more of the former, the easier to force the players into choices where there is no optimal solution (as opposed to simply a cost-benefit calculation to be made). From what you posted, I didn't work out whether or not the PC has _loyalty_ to the Shades.

(3) The method of resolution of the intrigue. That could be more like the "solve the GM's puzzle" or more like my own preferred approach of "frame a check, and then resolve it".


----------



## Lanefan

Just pulling out a few bits here as it's late...







AbdulAlhazred said:


> The second part, about 'riskiness', I dismiss out of hand. Risk doesn't exist in D&D.



Risk to the player?  No.  Risk to the PC?  Most certainly yes.


> You play a character, the GM determines what dangers exist. He can threaten, and indeed carry through on, killing any PC regardless of statistics, and he can do it without using any fiat simply by what he places in the challenges that the character faces. Risk is thus an illusion, or at least it is simply an agreement between the GM and the player as to what sort of game is being played at the table. Thus it is entirely orthogonal to what rules set is being used. If risk of character death (wagered on player skill and luck with the dice in most games) is an element of a particular scenario, then so it is. Even then DMs have traditionally (even 4e has Rule 0) absolute fiat power that ultimately decides life and death.



Keep in mind there's many risks to a PC other than just death.  The presence or absence of these is ultimately up to the DM, but without any of them the game would soon get kinda dull.



> I think in terms of (a) they took the mass of disfunctional 2e kits and supplements and rationalized it into a set of workable character options, which was good to some degree. On (b) I think there was a huge pent-up demand for a new set of core books, since 2e was over 10 years old at that point. 3e was thus a pretty good bet, they could have sold almost anything to people that hadn't had a new product in 5 years aside from a few things left over from TSR's pipeline. I'd note that, while 3e was pretty popular it doesn't seem to have ever reached the levels of 1e (nothing since has) and it quickly faded, so quickly that 4 years later they had to roll out 3.5e to keep selling books.



3e didn't get to 1e levels but it beat the tar out of what 2e's release managed.

And as for 3.5, yes they wanted to keep their sales up but I suspect we might never have seen it as a full sub-edition if 3.0 didn't have so many holes and broken bits in it.



> I think 3e has its good points in a sense, but I'm not real convinced it was all that incredible a product. There are certainly plenty of grounds upon which to criticize the particular design choices it made.



Yeah, in hindsight this about sums up my view of it as well.



> This might all be true if you assume that antagonism must involve different game participants taking each side. However, because the antagonism is at the CHARACTER level, the participants are free to make decisions about any or all sides in the conflict, THEY aren't on any side, inherently, because they aren't part of the narrative.



If they're playing their characters in character they're on the same side as their characters.  The antagonism is at the character level but it's played out at the player level; and good players can keep their character antagonism separate from whatever they feel about the real people sitting with them.



> You may hear [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] that way at times, but I think, at worst, he's just got strong preferences of his own.



True that; but it comes across as evangelising sometimes which will always get a strong pushback from here. I don't like evangelists, of any kind. 



> Anyway, not that we're fighting, this is a fun conversation,



Thanks! And, agreed. 



> Yeah, I meant 'grown up like weeds' more than 'as in more mature' in some fashion. I think we can safely say that playing ANY kind of RPG is often seen by the world as childish, lol. I actually think Gygaxian D&D is a very clever and surprisingly 'mature' game in terms of the evolution of its forms. Its restricted enough that it got there in a relatively short period of 5-6 years, but Gary himself was quite good at welding together game elements to do what he wanted. OD&D is messy, but once you mix in Greyhawk it is a pretty tight dungeon crawl game. The higher level/other elements are a bit 'out there', but it does dungeons really well. Heck, Mentzer is really just a distillation of that one part of OD&D.



I've never played true 0e D&D.  I started with 1e and pretty much stayed there, other than a sojourn into 3e for a while.



> Again though, I think this concern is only cogent in terms of a sort of Gygaxian-like type of game where treasure and advancement is the main goal and the GM's main function is to act as the opposition standing in the way of that goal. Once that paradigm is discarded, then the concern is no longer present. There may of course be OTHER concerns which are equally significant in say [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s game, which he's got to address in whatever ways you address those.



Even if advancement and treasure are irrelevant or nearly nonexistent a primary goal is still going to be one or more of [story completion, mission accomplishment, just getting the job done, mystery solved, villagers rescued, etc.] ; and something's got to get in the way of that goal to provide some opposition.  And if that opposing "something" is being provided or authored by the players it'd be a simple thing for them to make it a little - or a lot - easier to overcome than it might have been had it been provided by a DM, as players aren't likely to want to put their characters at risk if they don't have to.

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Sebastrd said:


> Let me break it down for you.
> 
> The entirety of an RPG revolves around generating a shared fiction. That fiction is established in three ways:
> 
> 
> A player declares an action and/or rolls some dice, and the GM tells them some stuff they made up two days ago.
> A player declares an action and/or rolls some dice, and the GM tells them some stuff they made up on the spot.
> A player declares an action and/or rolls some dice, and the player tells the GM some stuff the player made up on the spot.
> 
> Personally, I don't see any functional difference between the three, while your contention seems to be that options 2 and 3 are acceptable, but option 1 is not.



Well, options (2) and (3) aren't really very good descriptions of how I prefer to play a RPG.

There are games that work like that - roll to assign narration rights, then narrate - but I've never played them, and I would think of them as borderline cases of RPGs.

Here is my preferred method - it is implicit in Eero Tuovinene's account of the "standard narrativistic model" and many RPGs use it in some form or other (eg Burning Wheel, Cortex+ Heroic, 4e skill challenges, HeroQuest revised):

Step (1): The GM frames a scene/situation - the material for this is drawn from established fiction (at the start of play, this will be PC backstory/motivation plus general thematic/genre elements of the game);

Step (2): The player declares an action for his/her PC that bears upon the framed scene/situation - if the GM has done his/her job properly at (1), the scene/situation will provoke the player to a choice;

Step (3a): If the GM doesn't want to apply further pressure (eg because the player has already relented; or because there's no other direction for things that seems salient) then the GM says "yes" and the player's action declaration succeeds;

Step (3b): Otherwise, the GM frames a check in accordance with the system rules, and the player rolls the dice;

Step (4): If the player succeeds on the check, the player's intention for the action declaration is achieved (ie the fictional situation unfolds as the PC hoped things would); otherwise the GM narrates consequences that are adverse to the PC, having regard to what was at stake in the framing, the intention of the action declaration, etc;

Step (5): return to step (1) - the processes above mean that the newly framed situation should continue to speak to the players and provoke action declarations for their PCs.​
The main "risk" in this sort of game is that the GM narration (at (1), or at (4) in the event of failure) will fail to engage the players and provoke them to declare actions for their PCs. If that happens, the situation falls flat and the game loses momentum. In practice, if this happens I feed more elements into the framing trying to get the fire re-lit. It doesn't happen all that often.

The difference from your (2) and (3) is that you make no reference to framing or action declarations in your account of those approaches - they really are presented by you as _dicing for narration rights_.

What do I think the functional differences are?

Here's one, between (i) your (2) and (3) and (ii) my preferred method: As I already said, I personally see dicing for narration rights as a borderline case of RPGing, because it's far less clear in what sense the player is playing his/her PC. Whereas in the method that I prefer, the player is _clearly and unequivocally_ playing his/her PC, making action delcarations that engage with the situation that has been framed by the GM.

Here's another, between your (i) and both (ii) your (2) and (3) and (iii) my preferred method: method (1) means that the shared fiction is a story told by the GM, already written. (2) and (3) mean that the shared fiction is something narrated on the spur of the moment, in a shared storytelling enterprise among friends. My preferred method means that the shared fiction is also established on the spur of the moment, but not as shared storytelling but rather by resolving action declarations that are driven by the way a scene framed by one participant grabs the (imagined, and "inhabited") motivations of the "avatar" or vehicle of another participant.

My method pyshes towards an ideal that, at every moment of play, the shared fiction that is being established speaks to what the participants in the game have, together, established as the stakes of the unfolding story. Initially it is the players who contribute more of that, but as the GM frames in relation to it, and narrates consequences, the shared fiction takes on elements that the players didn't anticipate, and they find themselves having to confront - in their play of their PCs - challenges to their values/concerns/goals that they didn't anticipate arising.

In my Traveller game, the player of a PC decided that that PC was travelling the galaxy to find evidence of alien life and civilisation. I'm the one, as GM, who presented his first hint, in play, of alien life as being on a planet that also happens to be the home of a source virus for a bioweapons program that other PCs are concerned about. It's the players, in turn, who decided to look for artefacts of alien origin at the tourist market on the world. And in the course of that, it was I who introduced the information that the artefact they found had been sold by the local bishopric to raise funds (and it was the random world generation that had established that the world is a religious dictatorship, and hence _has_ significant bishoprics). Etc.

I don't play shared storytelling/narration games, so I can't say that what I've described is _better_ than them. But I certainly think it's a fun thing. The player only has to play his/her PC, not worry about the big picture. And as long as the GM keeps framing scenes that speak to the PC's motivation/dramatic needs, _story will happen_ without anyone having to take charge of authoring it. The contributions of fictional elements according to the distinct roles I've described in steps (1) to (4) above - the GM providing framing; the players providing starting material and action declarations; the GM providing consequences for failure - generate a story, and - relevant to this thread - a shared world, with no one having to _take charge_ of it.



Sebastrd said:


> I wouldn't want to play in any game wherein only one of the above options was utilized - each of the three are best in different situations.



Well, as I've said I prefer to play in a RPG where none of them is utilised.



Sebastrd said:


> Folks are interpreting your opinions as "pejorative", because you say things like "the GM reading stuff from his/her notes is a significant goal of play". As if we all sat down around the table for a GM to read us a story.



What do you think (1) involves? It involves the GM reading stuff from his/her notes.

When some posters - the "folks" you refer to (although you have since dissacotiated yourself from some posters whom I would have taken to be among them, eg   [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], so I'm not 100% sure who you mean by that term) - talk about the players _exploring the gameworld_, what can that mean except that the players declare actions for their PCs which trigger the GM to read more stuff from his/her notes?

In a CoC-style mystery scenario, getting the GM to read you bits of his/her notes is _the whole point_ of play: get the clue from here, find the tome there, find the cultists' ritual headquaters, etc. This is all about learning what is in the GM's notes.

It's not (or need not be) the GM reading a story: the sequence may not correspond to any particular pre-planned sequence, and there may not be any particular structure of rising action, complication, climax, etc.



Sebastrd said:


> You also continually use examples of bad GMing to make your point that option 1 is a bad thing.



Well, I make do with the examples I have. I don't believe that you've posted any actual play examples. (If you have, and I've missed them, I apologise - can you point me back to them?)

The example of the map came (I think) from   [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] - at least, it has been established in lengthy back-and-forth with him.

The example of the plot on the Duke came from   [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION].

The example of the attempt to find bribeable officials came from   [MENTION=40176]MarkB[/MENTION].

Are you saying that these are all examples of bad GMing? So what does good GMing look like, in this context? What is a good use of secretly-established fictional positioning being used by a GM to establish that a player's action declaration fails, without regard to the action resolution mechanics?



Sebastrd said:


> A good GM will not send his players on a wild goose chase through the mansion for a map macguffin.



So what would the pre-authorship be used for?



Sebastrd said:


> Even the fiction that I've "pre-authored" can be impacted (or changed entirely if the situation calls for it) at any time by the players' actions - they are the heroes after all.



Can you give an example of what you mean? For instance - and I am going to give an example I am familiar with, as I don't have much to go on from your game - I have a PC in my 4e game whose goal is to reconstruct the Rod of Seven Parts. He got the first part at the start of 2nd level. The campaign is now 30th level and he and his friends are in a fight that will determine whether or not they get the 7th part; he will then have to decide whether or not he tries to assemble the whole Rod (some of his friends may object to that).

My main device for having him find the Rod has been to periodically narrate scenes in which the Rod, in its current state, feels the presence nearby of the next part. (At least one part - the second, I think - he obtained when refugees from his homeland gave him custody of the city's mayoral sceptre.) The period has been established roughly on the basis of the 4e treasure parcel system, which is to say about once every five levels (the Rod is also the character's main implement, stepping up +1 with each segment - it is the only +7 implement in the published rules as far as I'm aware).

In the fiction, the challenge of assembling the Rod includes finding its parts - the PC (we imagine) is frequently communing with the Rod to see if it can detect the next part. But at the table, that has not been a challenge at all. _From the point of view of play_, the challenge has been (i) what is the player (as his/her PC) prepared to risk or sacrifice in individual situations to acquire and reconstruct the Rod (eg the hunt for the Rod brought destruction down upon the PCs' duergar allies), and (ii) what consequences of assembling and wielding the Rod is he prepared to endure (eg he finds himself led into arrangements with devils that he would prefer to avoid). (This is also relevant to the discussion with   [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and   [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] about "abuse", Monty Haul, etc - the issue of Monty Haul simply doesn't come up, as _locating and acquiring_ the Rod is not the focus of play - it's focused on the cost and meaning of this.)

How have you handled stuff like this in your RPGing?


----------



## darkbard

pemerton said:


> Well, options (2) and (3) aren't really very good descriptions of how I prefer to play a RPG.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> How have you handled stuff like this in your RPGing?




XPs not only because I agree with what you write here but because you continue to take the time to spell out clearly, carefully, and respectfully your analysis of gameplay.


----------



## pemerton

darkbard said:


> XPs not only because I agree with what you write here but because you continue to take the time to spell out clearly, carefully, and respectfully your analysis of gameplay.



Thanks.

A recurrent idea in this thread has been an equation of _play that does not depend upon GM pre-authored backstory_ with _play that gives players fiat narration rights_. I know that there are RPGs that do the latter - OGL Conan is one that I've mentioned already upthread, and I was looking through my copy of the Fate Core rulebook today and saw that it also has this.

But none of the games that I GM campaigns for has such a mechanic: in Cortex+ Heroic and BW everything requires a check (unless the GM "says 'yes'" - which is hardly _player_ fiat), and in 4e there can be player fiat in combat (eg Come and Get It) but the closest that it comes in skill challenges is use of a Daily power or ritual, and that's still mediated through GM adjudication of the fictional positioning. (It almost goes without saying that Traveller has no overt player fiat narration, given it's 1977 - the closest it gets is the idea that the players work with the referee to help make sense of random world generation results.)

The undue focus on player narration rights then makes it very easy to equate _player agency_ as I've been characterising it with _not playing my PC but doing something else_. This is why I am keen to keep coming back to the example of the map: if the player action declaration is "I search the study for the map we need" then the player is not doing anything but playing his/her PC. And it is the result of that action declaration, not any "director stance" exercise of some fiat narration power, that determines success or failure. That is - to spell it out even more - the player doesn't need the power to say _the map is in the study_; s/he just needs the power to say (as his/her PC) _I look for the map in the study_ - and then the rules need to allow that a success on that attempt really counts as a success.

I know there are other posters in this thread who are more enthusiastic than I am about full-fledged player narration rights (eg   [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has them in his 4e hack, I believe; and   [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] thinks that I worry too much about the "Czege Principle" - ie that players framing their own challenges can lead to play that fizzles or is a bit insipid). And I'm sure that if I played Fate or some other game that includes them I'd be able to handle it fine.

But what I'm keen to point out, in the post just upthread and again in this one, is that player narration rights is pretty orthogonal to player agency and GM pre-authorship of setting. Because action resolution - _success and things are as the PC hoped for; fail and they're adverse to the PC_ - can do the job instead.


----------



## darkbard

pemerton said:


> But what I'm keen to point out, in the post just upthread and again in this one, is that player narration rights is pretty orthogonal to player agency and GM pre-authorship of setting. Because action resolution - _success and things are as the PC hoped for; fail and they're adverse to the PC_ - can do the job instead.




Right. And this is why I'm relatively stunned that you continue to receive strong (at times, even vicious) pushback for (1) advocating for action resolution in this function and (2) providing/inviting additional analysis of how action resolution can serve this function.

 [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] has already praised you for your patience in the face of this pushback (and received some harsh criticism himself in the process), but I too think you continue to engage these threads with admirable equanimity despite some posters continuing to assert that you _should not_ approach the game with the principles you do (if you want to call what you do RPGing or playing D&D, etc.) or even that you _cannot_ logically play the game this way, even with the reams of evidence you provide from your own games proving contrary.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION], what you describe doesn't sound wildly different from the Traveller ambergris episode I described upthread.
> 
> Where we may differ in approach (or not) is the following:
> 
> (1) Tthe extent to which the player-chosen backstory elements (eg ties to the Shades) provide the material for the challenges of play. The more this stuff is "going where the action is", the closer we are.




At this point in the campaign, I had four players. Two had detailed histories for their PCs, one had a fair amount, and the fourth was a loose sketch being detailed as we went along (the fighter and ex-mercenary I mentioned earlier). Considering the amount of material I had to draw upon from what they offered, I was reasonably sure I could engage them regardless of which trade route they chose. 

So the way I see it, the players were actively looking to expand their business. So any pursuit of establishing a new trade route would be going where the action is. The fact that I could use their established history to add to events, or to complicate events is preferable to me and my way of DMing. 



pemerton said:


> (2) The extent to which player concenrs (as evinced through PC motivations) have a thematic/value-type dimension to them rather than a purely utilitarian/efficiency aspect. The more of the former, the easier to force the players into choices where there is no optimal solution (as opposed to simply a cost-benefit calculation to be made). From what you posted, I didn't work out whether or not the PC has _loyalty_ to the Shades.




The desires of the PCs (and by extension the intent of the players) is very much the focus in our game. And I do like to put hard choices before them, where there’s no easy answer. I feel that’s an element of traditional storytelling that transfers well to an RPG. 

So to expand...the PC with ties to the Shades...they were a bit conflicted. The Shades were responsible for the death of her family, but there was also a Shade who spared her as a child and took her in and helped her learn how to use her powers (she’s a Diviner Wizard). So she very much disliked the Empire of Shade and was angry at the idea of having to cooperate with them, but she did care for her mentor.

This created complications for the PCs because the mentor was embroiled in the intrigue that came up. A coulle of different factions within the Shade Empire were vying for dominance, and this possible trade agreement could give one faction an edge. 

So I authored a lot of the internal situation involving the Shades, which I think would fall into your description of GM driven backstory or secret backstory. However, I set it up as a dynamic situation into which the PCs stroll. How it all played out was entirely up to them and what they tried to do, and the results of the rolls for any associated checks.




pemerton said:


> (3) The method of resolution of the intrigue. That could be more like the "solve the GM's puzzle" or more like my own preferred approach of "frame a check, and then resolve it".




I don’t know what you would call it based on my description above. I don’t think it is simply a case of “solving the GMs puzzle” because that implies a predetermined success condition that I did not establish, openly nor secretly. So skill/ability checks and their resolution seems closer to what I’m describing. But I don’t know that I handled that exactly as you would have as far as the checks themselves and their results. I used a good deal of judgment to decide what the results of a check would mean in the fiction.


----------



## Nytmare

innerdude said:


> And truthfully, I don't know that any RPG is up to the task of making that kind of storyline possible without a tremendous amount of GM force in the background.




I am in no way calling you out on this, I just figured I'd throw out a couple names for people who might not have ever run into them:

Exalted - http://theonyxpath.com/category/worlds/exalted/

Necessary Evil (Savage Lands) - https://www.peginc.com/product-category/necessary-evil/​


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I'm unaware of any such text in the 1e PHB, and I can almost quote the darned thing. Beyond that, getting 2 15's out of 6 rolls of 3d6 is actually fairly unusual. You'd have to allow at least 6 or more rerolls for most players to manage that. Nobody in my experience was doing that, although the DMG methods considerably change the odds. 1 in 3 characters using method II will have 2 15s. Method III will AVERAGE 3 15s, and Method IV should produce roughly 2 sets of stats with 2 15s. I'm not sure about method 1 exactly, I don't have  dice calculator I feel like playing with to get that one, but IME 2 15s using Method I is similar to Method II. Note that not all these methods let you pick WHICH stats the 15s will be in, assuming you get them. Method III was widely considered too generous, but nice for rolling up higher level PCs (which tend to be the ones with better stats if you played them out).
> 
> Again though, no hint of this exists in PHB. I think its safe to say that the DMG tells us Gygax WAS aware of the problem, and was interested in giving players something more like what they wanted. Truthfully ability scores in OD&D pre-Greyhawk were of marginal mechanical use anyway, so he probably just didn't think it was an issue back then. It was only with the advent of Greyhawk and then the codification of stat bonuses into 1e along with the 'advanced' classes that the issue really became acute. DMG helps relieve it some, but paladins were still RARE IME.




If you think no hint exists and are unaware of any such text, you need to read page 9 under Character Abilities.  Unless you think Gygax was a complete ass was taunting people by giving them 3d6 and then saying, it's usually essential to have two 15's or higher BUT HAHAHHAHA!!! YOU'RE STUCK LOSERS!, then his saying that was a statement to the DMs implying that they allow players to re-roll until they got two 15's or higher.  He himself was quoted saying that he ran his own games that way, coming up with alternative methods and allowing re-rolls in order for players to have sufficient stats to have a chance to survive.



> Look, I played from 1975 until the end of 2e classic D&D. In the early 1e days I was in a gaming club that had 300+ members. We played D&D sometimes continuously for a week at a time with rotating DMs even. I saw plenty of it. Characters were nothing. They died left, right, center, up, down, and all around. If you made 6th level that was rare. There were some 'easy' DMs of course, but mostly nobody even bothered to name a character at level 1, or just called it by some generic name, or maybe it was a new guy and he named his character, which we thought was funny. Usually after a session or so the character's got some kind of nickname or whatever. That's just how it was back then. Maybe where you played everyone was gung-ho to RP every character fully and the DMs let them all live, I dunno.




I played from 1983 to the end of 2e and barely saw it.  Since we had two very different experiences, this cannot be a game issue, or we both would have experienced the "inevitable".  Rather, this is purely a player thing.  Some players will act that way and others won't.


----------



## RedShirtNo5.1

pemerton said:


> The undue focus on player narration rights then makes it very easy to equate _player agency_ as I've been characterising it with _not playing my PC but doing something else_. This is why I am keen to keep coming back to the example of the map: if the player action declaration is "I search the study for the map we need" then the player is not doing anything but playing his/her PC. And it is the result of that action declaration, not any "director stance" exercise of some fiat narration power, that determines success or failure. That is - to spell it out even more - the player doesn't need the power to say _the map is in the study_; s/he just needs the power to say (as his/her PC) _I look for the map in the study_ - and then the rules need to allow that a success on that attempt really counts as a success.



Pemerton, let me see if I can rephrase this.  Unless the results are constrained by pre-existing shared fictional positioning, the results of action declaration statements by the players should be determined by a rule set that permits success (and presumably failure) and not constrained by the GM's notes.  Would you say that's accurate?

Edit - "Should" indicating your preference, not some categorical statement.


----------



## Emerikol

pemerton said:


> I agree with 2 and 3. Metagame controls aren't that important to me: Burning Wheel, 4e and Cortex+ Heroic all have the to a modest degree (but less than, say, OGL Conan); Classic Traveller and Rolemaster have them not at all.
> 
> This relates to your 1, 2 and 3.
> 
> 2 and 3 are both (in my view) true.
> 
> 1 is not true. When I play an RPG I want to play my character and control my character's actions. _Being able to shape the world as I play in it_ is not a big deal. What is a big deal is that _the outcomes of my character's actions aren't settled by the GM's pre-authored setting_.
> 
> Upthread I described this second category as ones in which the _PC_ is learning about the world rather than changing it. If these correlate to actions in which the player _learns about the GM's authorship decisions_ rather than _contributes, via action declaration and resolution, to the unfolding shared fiction_ then I find that unsatisfying both as GM and as player.




I think my #1 was an attempt to describe your words above.  Since it's to a degree something hard for me to understand, I admit I am struggling to make it understandable to someone like myself.

Assuming there is some item that is necessary to completing a mission (something not inconceivable as a real challenge if such a fantasy world existed),  that item is part of the world.  The player characters have a variety of choices.  Find the item, go back and seek other adventure, find another way to solve the mission.  Admitted in some instances #3 is not easy or is perhaps impossible in some DM's campaigns.  I tend to dislike single solution dungeons personally.  

This is a style of dungeon though more than a style of play.  You could run in my style and never create such a dungeon.  So objecting to that style of challenge is perhaps a dungeon taste more than an overarching campaign style choice.  I've rarely seen the case though where every single adventure is one of these sorts.  Perhaps I just haven't seen enough.  I'd consider a DM who made such adventures exclusively to be a poor DM for sure.

What I meant by "controlling" the fiction as a player character though is the ability to add to the campaign setting on the fly and as long as it doesn't dispute what is already known by the party it can stand.  Perhaps with some limits agreed to ahead of time on the flavor of campaign you are running.  I get the feeling that you want at least some of this ability.


----------



## Emerikol

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I was responding to the assertion that 1e, specifically, is a game where you play your chosen hero and have heroic type adventures (which I would characterize as having at least some elements which correspond with other genre where characters are considered 'heroes', which could be Super Hero Comics, Classic Mythology, Arthurian Legend, Classic Fantasy, Modern Fantasy, etc.).
> .




I think the 1e D&D approach was about becoming heroes.  I never bought into the premise that 1st level or even 5th level characters where great heroes.  Maybe at 5th they are local heroes like a countywide football star.  

If you look at modules 7th level and above in 1e, most of them were the stuff of heroes.  If you look at lower level modules, they were not.   So D&D was about becoming a hero.  I think that was one of it's greatest appeals.  The idea of growing in power over time.  In fact I consider it the fundamental conceit that put D&D on the map as a generational phenomena.

My only point though really was to dispute that the elements in discussion could not lead to a heroic game.  And it seems we agree on that.  So enough said.


----------



## Manbearcat

hawkeyefan said:


> I openly disagreed with Lanefan about the game being “the DM’s game”.
> 
> As I said when I first jumped into this thread, I was a little hesitant to do so because usually it becomes two camps. But I am very much in the middle on this.
> 
> So it’s tough when someone mentally places me on one “side” of the debate and then decides I share the opinion of others on that side, despite not having expressed those opinions.
> 
> So, while I understand that sometimes boiling things down to sides can be convenient, it limits nuance.




Few thoughts on this:

1)  I'm really not looking to establish "who is in the general consensus of those 7 points", "who agrees with a few, who disagrees with others", "who actually agrees with all 9 points."  The only reason that this became an issue at all is because it somehow became contentious while the same few users who were declaring it contentious were actually agreeing with it in their other posts (and one was challenging my integrity in even outlining "the worldbuilding ethos" - which again, was almost entirely aggregation and not extrapolation on my end - in the course of that odd exchange)! 

But none of that is interesting.  Its obfuscatory and derails interesting conversation about the discussed subjects.  You can have two people agree with the Anthropgenic Global Warming Hypothesis (say agreement on radiative heat transfer and forcing related to the properties of carbon molecules, and general agreement on positive feedbacks) while they disagree on finer points of the hypothesis (such as net albedo and the total dynamics of ocean heat uptake/transfer).  But bogging down conversation with THERE IS NO CONSENSUS detracts from fine analysis on the dynamics/fundamentals of the system is neither helpful nor interesting.  It just gives us biographical facts about various users (which isn't very interesting in a technical discussion).

I mean,  @_*pemerton*_ and I definitely have some nuanced disagreements on our play (he mentioned The Czege Principle above) such as the viability of proliferate player-authored kickers (scene-openers/framing) in the course of play.  And that is fine.  But we have never bothered to dispute our overlap and general consensus on GMing (even when its come up in conversations on these boards with folks "putting us into the same broad box").  It just doesn't matter that we don't agree completely on The Czege Principle or certain versions of Success With Complications.  Maybe if we started a thread to focus precisely on those nuanced disagreements it might...but I suspect the involved users and total interest would be sparse on these boards (therefore we don't), whereas something like "Fail Forward" or "how setting generation impacts play (this thread)" would get a lot more action.

2)  With that out of the way, how about something interesting to talk about!   @_*chaochou*_ and  @_*Lanefan*_ had an exchange about either a play excerpt or a hypothetical one above.  It involved questions of:

(a) setting generation
(b) initial situation generation and related framing
(c) offscreen-part moving/move-making by the GM
(d) information (or lacktherof) and player decision-points/action declarations
(e) the evolution of the gamestate from the initial state to subsequent states.

Now this is extremely relevant to this conversation, so I took that play excerpt (or hypothetical one) and rendered it into a Dungeon World format to contrast the differences with respect to a-e above.  Do you have any thoughts on this?  I'll grab both and sblock them below:

[sblock]







chaochou said:


> Quote Originally Posted by Lanefan View Post
> Let me try an example.
> 
> There's skullduggery going on all over the city. The place is rife with rumours and plots and spies and gossip, and into all this prance the innocent naive low-level PCs looking to spend the spoils of their first real adventure. They take a room at an inn, and go out for a night on the town. At some point things go a bit sideways - there's some yelling and pushing and screaming and the party mage ends up having to discreetly charm a local harlot in order to calm the situation down; the charm works, well, like a charm. The mage now has a new friend, adventurers-plus-new-friend go about their merry evening, and a good time is had by all. The adventurers, including the mage, pass out around sunrise whereupon the harlot wanders off.
> 
> Player side: mage charms harlot who at his invitation joins mage and friends for a night of partying before slipping away a bit after sunrise. String pulled, result obtained.
> 
> DM side: harlot is actually an agent (who, depending on developments, the party may or may not have met later in this capacity) working for the local Duke. She realized the yelling and pushing was a distraction intended to mask something else, and joined the fray in order to get herself into the scene so she could try to determine what was being masked by the distraction. She managed to notice two men sneaking into an alley that she knew led to a hidden access to the Duke's manor house, just before being charmed by the mage and taken along for a night of revels. She didn't report this - in fact, she failed to report at all - and thus the two sneaks get where they're going and none the wiser. Meanwhile other agents who really can't be spared are sent out to search for the missing one, who none too sober comes in on her own not long after sunrise. String pulled, dominoes fall.
> 
> Ramifications: next morning word gets out of an attempt on the Duke's life during the night by two unknown men.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I really don't understand what such a DM needs players for. They may as well DM for themselves.
> 
> What this reveals, probably inadvertently, is completely self-indulgent GMing. It's purely for the GMs entertainment. You admit the PCs know nothing about what's happening. And will probably never know. And if they do 'find out' all they are ever, ever going to 'find out' is what the GM had pre-decided had happened. I get more agency reading a book.
> 
> And then you add in a new layer of GM force. The mage may get arrested for treason. And if he does the players get the joys of unravelling the GMs smugly convoluted plot to clear his name.
> 
> Was this supposed to be an example of 'player agency'? Is this the GM in 'full on react mode'? I'm genuinely confused by what this example is supposed to demonstrate. But what it actually reveals is quite telling - players as powerless stooges and pawns being exploited to help spice up a GMs solo game.
Click to expand...



So lets re-iterate this play excerpt using Dungeon World and the difference should be noticeable.



> There's skullduggery going on all over the city. The place is rife with rumours and plots and spies and gossip, and into all this prance the innocent naive low-level PCs looking to spend the spoils of their first real adventure.




Ok, this might be a setup for a DW game with 3 PCs; Dashing Hero (A Lover in Every Port, Daring Devil, Plan of Action), Barbarian (Mortal Pleasures and Fame and Glory appetites), Wizard (Mystical Puppet Strings, Charm Person spell). 

Skulduggery City wouldn't be a place that the GM fleshed out stem to stern before play. This may be a place that was put on the map by a player prior to play and the only bit that we know about it (and have written out) is that its a den of scoundrels from the government, to the nobles, to the watch, to the clergy, to the layfolk. That, coupled with the PC build flags is plenty to work with to come up with interesting, dangerous situations on the spot and let things snowball from there.



> They take a room at an inn, and go out for a night on the town. At some point things go a bit sideways - there's some yelling and pushing and screaming




So they've entered the town. That triggers the Dashing Hero's move:



> A Lover In Every Port (CHA) When you enter a town that you’ve been to before (your call), roll +CHA. On a 10+, there’s an old flame of yours who is willing to assist you somehow. On a 7-9, they’re willing to help you, for a price. On a miss, your romantic misadventures make life more complicated for the party.




Looks like a 6- and the harlot is the romantic misadventure. I would make up some story about a hooker without a heart of gold in this city to reveal an unwelcome truth. I may ask the player to fill in the blanks about what went wrong or I may make something up myself. So my current complication is the only chance they have to avoid her wrath is by sticking to this real den of horrors ward of the city. She's so well-connected that she'll hear he is in town, but she might steer clear of that place (but, of course, it amps up the danger).

Alright, so it sounds like they have Coin to spend (on hirelings/henchman, lodgings, finery, gear, prestige). So if they do indeed go to the den of horrors ward, then I make up an appropriate inn and clientele for that setting, give it an appropriate name (maybe Rock Bottom), an appropriate staff and layabouts/rabblerousers/troublemakers. The players pay their Coin and are making the Recover move and the Carouse move:



> Recover
> When you do nothing but rest in comfort and safety after a day of rest you recover all your HP. After three days of rest you remove one debility of your choice. If you’re under the care of a healer (magical or otherwise) you heal a debility for every two days of rest instead.
> 
> Carouse
> When you return triumphant and throw a big party, spend 100 coins and roll +1 for every extra 100 coins spent. ✴On a 10+, choose 3. ✴On a 7–9, choose 1. ✴On a miss, you still choose one, but things get really out of hand (the GM will say how).
> 
> You befriend a useful NPC.
> You hear rumors of an opportunity.
> You gain useful information.
> You are not entangled, ensorcelled, or tricked.
> 
> You can only carouse when you return triumphant. That’s what draws the crowd of revelers to surround adventurers as they celebrate their latest haul. If you don’t proclaim your success or your failure, then who would want to party with you anyway?




Sounds like a 6- on Carouse!. Players mark xp, they get one thing they want and then I make things get out of hand.



> and the party mage ends up having to discreetly charm a local harlot in order to calm the situation down; the charm works, well, like a charm. The mage now has a new friend, adventurers-plus-new-friend go about their merry evening, and a good time is had by all. The adventurers, including the mage, pass out around sunrise whereupon the harlot wanders off.
> 
> Player side: mage charms harlot who at his invitation joins mage and friends for a night of partying before slipping away a bit after sunrise. String pulled, result obtained.
> 
> DM side: harlot is actually an agent (who, depending on developments, the party may or may not have met later in this capacity) working for the local Duke. She realized the yelling and pushing was a distraction intended to mask something else, and joined the fray in order to get herself into the scene so she could try to determine what was being masked by the distraction. She managed to notice two men sneaking into an alley that she knew led to a hidden access to the Duke's manor house, just before being charmed by the mage and taken along for a night of revels. She didn't report this - in fact, she failed to report at all - and thus the two sneaks get where they're going and none the wiser. Meanwhile other agents who really can't be spared are sent out to search for the missing one, who none too sober comes in on her own not long after sunrise. String pulled, dominoes fall.
> 
> Ramifications: next morning word gets out of an attempt on the Duke's life during the night by two unknown men.




This doesn't tell me much of anything about what may have happened in terms of how the content was introduced/procedurally generated. From the above, it looks like a lot of GM Force and offscreen piece-moving that in no way interacted with player knowledge or reasonably informed decision-points. 

Here is something of consequence. If the players picked "you are not entangled, ensorcelled, or tricked" I would be breaking the rules to have this harlot be a double agent. So clearly, they didn't choose that in this situation. Lets say they chose to "gain useful information." Perhaps that useful generation was about a secret entrance in the alley to the Duke's manor house. Now this Duke must have been a relevant feature of play beforehand for this to be "useful information" for the players. Perhaps this Duke's manor house actually has his distillery where he makes spirits of which the formula was stolen from the Barbarian's people. And its time for some revenge!

So they get their info, but I get to introduce a major complication with a Hard move (given the 6-). So as the evening picks up, of course in comes the harlot with a temper a mile wide and a band of ruffians to beat the tar out of the Dashing Hero PC. Everyone is excited about the prospect of a fight (heck, maybe some rabblerousers fall in line behind her crew!) and its mayhem. 

Looks like its time for our Wizard to make use of their Mystical Puppet Strings (folks charmed don't recall what you had them do and bear you no ill will) and Charm Person spell:



> Cast a Spell (Int)
> When you release a spell you’ve prepared, roll+Int.
> 
> ✴ On a 10+, the spell is successfully cast and you do not forget the spell—you may cast it again later.
> 
> ✴ On a 7-9, the spell is cast, but choose one:
> 
> You draw unwelcome attention or put yourself in a spot. The GM will tell you how.
> The spell disturbs the fabric of reality as it is cast—take -1 ongoing to cast a spell until the next time you Prepare Spells.
> After it is cast, the spell is forgotten. You cannot cast the spell again until you prepare spells.
> Note that maintaining spells with ongoing effects will sometimes cause a penalty to your roll to cast a spell.




So obviously a 7-9 and the player chose to draw unwelcome attention or put themselves in a spot.

So now I go with the double agent complication. Right before she gets charmed, she nods to a pair of shadowy figures at the door who quickly slip away into the night. This would be conveyed to the PCs. It would also be conveyed that they have a good headstart and there is a boisterous crowd that is just getting quelled (the harlot is quelling them at the Wizards command I guess...maybe she is table dancing or something)...taking the harlot away may turn a potential powderkeg into a blow-up (they would have to Defy Danger Charisma). So I guess they stay put rather than pursue.

So the Barbarian and the Dashing Hero break into the manor house to smash the whiskey and steal back the formula. In the course of it, they get a 6- on a result of some appropriate move and end up leaving some incriminating information at the scene that points directly to them. They only realize it the next morning when something identifying that should be on their person is missing...or torn fine silks that match the Dashing Heroes cape/longcoat (whatever)!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So that is how Dungeon World's play agenda/GMing ethos/action resolution and no real setting prep of any consequence/hidden backstory/offscreen moving parts by fiat can bring this situation to life. You don't have to deploy Force, you don't have to adjudicate action resolution by way of extrapolation of unknowable offscreen/unintroduced content. Stuff can just happen and you can fill in the necessary setting blanks as you go to give the players interesting decision points and thematic complications...and players can have all the necessary control over their archetypal portfolio and their decision-tree and inhabit their character's perspective and push their interests.

And GMs can play to find out what happens.[/sblock]


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> The undue focus on player narration rights then makes it very easy to equate _player agency_ as I've been characterising it with _not playing my PC but doing something else_. This is why I am keen to keep coming back to the example of the map: if the player action declaration is "I search the study for the map we need" then the player is not doing anything but playing his/her PC. And it is the result of that action declaration, not any "director stance" exercise of some fiat narration power, that determines success or failure. That is - to spell it out even more - the player doesn't need the power to say _the map is in the study_; s/he just needs the power to say (as his/her PC) _I look for the map in the study_ - and then the rules need to allow that a success on that attempt really counts as a success.




I think the reason this keeps coming up is due to the example itself. I admit to not recalling if there were more details when this example was first put forth, but whenever it has been brought up since, it’s boiled down to “the PCs need a map, a player searches the stoudy for the needed map, the presence of the map is determined by the success or failure of the relevant check.”

So finding the map had been positioned as a goal, and the player’s skill check determines whether the goal is achieved.

To me, the example seems too simple to really tell us much. What’s the point of making the map hidden unless a search for it can result? And should a search for the map, if intended to be a goal involving any kind f challenge, be resolved with one check? If finding the map is a goal of the party, then allowing a skill check to determine its presence does imply that the player can control obstacle resolution through action declaration. 

If the character’s stated goal is to find the presence of alien life, then does he simply ask to search for signs of alien life every time he enters a room? Or are there other parameters at play not addressed in the map example? 

I’d like to offer another example that perhaps will help.

A character has fallen from a cliff. This may be diring the course of battle, or it may be due to some mishap while exploring. At this point, the character’s goal is to not die.

So the player indicates that they’d like to make a check or a saving throw or whatever relevant roll the game mechanics call for the PC to avoid falling to his doom. 

Would a classic GM driven game simply say “the cliff face is sheer and there is nothing to grab....you die”? Meaning the GM had determined this prior and consults his notes and that’s that? I would not expect most games to play out that way. Only the most extreme version of such a style. 

I would expect that the result of the check would determine the fiction, so that a successful check indicates the presence of a root that the character manages to grab. I’d kind of expect this approach in either tyle of game. Or at least in most games using eother style. 

To me, this seems a better example of a player attempting to introduce an element to the fiction through action declaration.


----------



## hawkeyefan

[MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] I think your translation of Lanefan’s example to a DW framework and how it would play out there is interesting. I’m actually impressed that you could make such a direct correlation. 

But I don’t know if it helps with the OP question all that much. All it says is that the results determined by Approach A can also be achieved using Approach B. 

My goal in this conversation is to advocate for creative use of Secret Backstory tagged as “worldbuilding” by Permetton in the OP. Tome, the presence of such material does not necessarily prevent the GM from playing to find out. 

To me, Secret Backstory is clearly usefulfor a few reasons:
- to help establish the scope of play via setting 
- to help establish long term thematic elements
- to help guide the course of play when the players have not shown a desire or ability to do so

I think in the course of this comversation that Agency has been conflated with Engagement. And I don’t think that should be te case. Players can be very much engaged by any style of game, even the purest of railroads. To look atanother medium, moviegoers are passive, but movies can of course be engaging.

I think the differences between writing a novel and reading a novel are pretty apropros to the discussion. Yet I don’t think most games must correlate to one or the other, or that thise who enjoy one cannot enjoy the other.


----------



## TwoSix

Manbearcat said:


> I think the lesson here is that you're able to describe, distill, clarify a discipline if you are a card-carrying member (and even use language that can only be described as extreme), but if you're not, then bad feelings and you're wrong.



Well, this does tend to be the default assumption whenever people feel some kind of tribal lines are being drawn.  Two Eagles fans can commiserate about shared Nick Foles concerns; they're not going to accept that same critique from a Patriots fan.


----------



## TwoSix

hawkeyefan said:


> - to help guide the course of play when the players have not shown a desire or ability to do so



To my mind, this is the most salient point.  Player-driven play is _hard_, certainly much harder than a GM-driven adventure path, unless you have a group where the majority of your players are skilled and motivated role-players.  (Having a critical mass of skilled, motivated players tends to motivate the others to be more creative, I've observed.)

If your group has been brought up in a tradition of ambivalently adversarial exploration focused play, player-driven play is going to seem downright alien.


----------



## Arilyn

I'm sitting moderately in the middle of things. I appreciate pemerton's style and his, and others' posts, are giving me tips on how to manage that style of game better. The idea that this style of play leads to players narrating their way out of trouble and getting what they want is obviously not true. Nobody would play that way. It seems like the nay sayers should at least give it a whirl.

On the other hand, I am not throwing away traditional GMing. If I have a cool idea for a ghost story that requires hidden back story to make the story hang together properly, I'm going to do it.

What's really becoming a pet peeve is the accusations of railroading being flung about like confetti, as well as meta-gaming. Next time my players are going to be on a train, and will be encouraged to meta-game to their heart's' content!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> As far as "abuse" is concerned, I rely mostly on the game rules to handle that. Eg let's agree that a +5 sword at 1st level is abusive in D&D - well, the 4e rules (which is the version of D&D that I run campaigns in) preculde 1st level characters having +5 swores. Of course any table is free to depart from that, but presumably they know it won't be abusive.



Yeah, I don't worry about it. I mean, there are conventions, as you say, and the players are likely to express a desire in less mechanical terms, like "I want to find my father, and he made a powerful sword that can help me do so, which I have inherited" could be viable (or recovered in an earlier part of the story arc, etc). So its powerful, in absolute terms, but the PCs are low level. OK, it doesn't have to be powerful in a simple mechanistic +5 way. In fact this scenario played out almost exactly in my 1st 4e campaign, except it was an axe. Every so often the thing would manifest a new attribute which would help enable the quest. By level 12 the axe was pretty strong, but it was in 4e mechanical terms a paragon weapon. Later it became an artifact.



> Obviously a list-based game like 4e allows for highy optimised or even degenerate combos - we have no real trouble handling that through a mixture of player self-limiatation and gentelmen's agreements.



Meh, you want to get stupid with that, I can just throw level +8 at you, its immaterial. Or in a more sophisticated way, "OK, you utterly kick ass in a fight, but can you negotiate your way out of a paper bag?" This is why I HATE this notion that there are 'pillars' and everyone should be good at something in every mode of play. If the GM can't work out his game such that resources need to be applied to all different aspects of the character, so be it. The whole notion is dumb.



> This I relate to a bit less! I'm less inclined to "say 'yes"" to a glorious triumph - I'll at least make them roll!



I think you have to trust your players some. I mean, adversity makes the game go anyway, so it WILL come. Remember how the whole Star Wars trilogy goes? First they beat the Death Star, great triumph, medals for all! Then they're floating on the edge of the Galaxy plotting some desperate hail Mary in the next scene (starting of 2nd movie). Sic transit gloria mundi. 



> The action resolution difficulties are the same as they would be in any other relatively demanding upper paragon 4e game. But it's not a random encounter in pursuit of a McGuffin - the whole situation is framed around this key dramatic need of this PC. (And other aspects of the situation speak to other PCs and their players: eg the PC who opened the door to Pazuzu's problematic relationship with chaotic forces; the tiefling paladin who sees, in the failure of the duergar's devil worship, echoes of his own people's fall.)




Right, going to where the action is is not going to where the PCs just waltz over everything. If that's REALLY all the players want though, I think its silly not to give them some version of it. Like I said above, conflict will always come. Anyway, there's always the larger framing of the whole milieu. My D&D campaign world's premise in the end is that you shape your destiny and the world around you. Only a few heroes are great enough to succeed. To enter into the company of legends is HARD, to enter into the company of myths, good luck! You want an easy victory, you won't be remembered, not like that.


----------



## chaochou

Arilyn said:


> I appreciate pemerton's style and his, and others' posts, are giving me tips on how to manage that style of game better. The idea that this style of play leads to players narrating their way out of trouble and getting what they want is obviously not true. Nobody would play that way.




There's a little more finesse to it, although largely my experience bears this out.

If you take a group of players who have been in a game with complete GM control and give them _momentary _power - often they will narrate their way out of trouble.

So the _fear _that players will narrate their way out of trouble is almost a surefire indication of a table in which the players are routinely powerless.

It also belies a lack of understanding of how games like those run by myself @_*pemerton*_ @_*Manbearcat*_ @*AbdulAlhazred* and others actually work. I don't believe any of us hand over carte blanche 'narration' rights to a player. Pemerton certainly doesn't.

All of us, though, are willing to let action resolution mechanics determine the outcomes of player decisions, such that a player stating: 'I search the study for the map' results in 'Okay, what skill are you using? Let's roll the dice' and on a success they find the map. Maybe the map says more than they bargained for. Or they miss the roll and find something far less agreeable.

I will be very open in allowing players to describe things, places, people, events that their characters know better than me, but often by asking questions to focus them on producing fiction which will move play forward.

So I'll say: "So how do you know Chauncy over in the Pits?"
... (player answer)
And then I might ask: "So when was the last time you saw him?"
... (player answer)
And then: "So how come he was threatening to kill you that time?"
... (player answer)

And right there you have a player-authored kicker - a situation they need to deal with. Or the player might decline and say "Are you crazy? He doesn't want to kill me! He wants me to kill someone else!"
 or
"He had to say that to save face with the biker gang at the Pits. They're always at each other's throats."

Powerful, driving questions are a very good way to create a vivid and living, breathing world which (unlike secret ones on stacks of notepaper) have the full investment of the players.

Those players who try to avoid such questions or to leverage a perceived 'advantage' in some way just find they've undercut their own fun and purpose of play. I find that by not correcting them, they learn to correct themselves.

One of the weaknesses of GM controlled play is that it breeds constant enforcement and policing. Once there are no rails and the players understand that their fun comes from the challenge, tension and drama in each new situation, I find they actively drive towards conflict.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> I authored a lot of the internal situation involving the Shades, which I think would fall into your description of GM driven backstory or secret backstory. However, I set it up as a dynamic situation into which the PCs stroll. How it all played out was entirely up to them and what they tried to do, and the results of the rolls for any associated checks.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I don’t think it is simply a case of “solving the GMs puzzle” because that implies a predetermined success condition that I did not establish, openly nor secretly. So skill/ability checks and their resolution seems closer to what I’m describing. But I don’t know that I handled that exactly as you would have as far as the checks themselves and their results. I used a good deal of judgment to decide what the results of a check would mean in the fiction.



From what you've said, I'm going to try a conjecture. Hopefully it does not misfire too badly!

It sounds like the player interest in the shades led you (perhaps also informed by your own interest/enthusiasm?) to make up some internal details about the shades, which you were then able to use as elements of framing as the PCs dealt with the shades.

Comparing that to my own 4e game, it reminds me a bit of when the PCs arrived in the stronghold of the duergar, I came up with the idea for two factions among the duergar, with different attitudes towards the PCs' desire to take the duergar's fragment of the Rod of Seven Parts. A possible point of difference (again, conjecture at best) is that my framing made it reasonably clear that there were two fractins: by the way the PCs were housed (some were treated well; others, deemed too chaotic, were under house arrest); by the way NPCs approached the PCs; etc.

With resolution, it sounds like the players engaged with the situation and thereby learned some of this stuff that you had worked out; and then declared actions that traded on those ascertained elements. It sounds as if the framing of the action declarations relied rather heavily on an implicit sense, among the participants, of what might be at stake; and left it to the GM to work out the details for successes as well as failure.

To pull back to some analysis, and without prejudging but trying to use some comparators that the thread has given us: [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] gave us an example, upthread (the scuffle, the charming of the NPC, the resultant attempt on the Duke's life) where the GM works out all the details behind the scenes in a way that is not transparent to the players and gives them little agency.

Alternatively, I can imagine the use of action resolution to - in effect - establish some elements of situation/framing: so the players know, roughly at least, what is going on (unlike Lanefan's example), and declare actions to try and establish new elements of the framing (eg the Shade ambassador meets with us and willingly accepts our gift). But then the actual unfolding of the situation is left to the GM's free narrations, extrapolating from the change in the situation resulting from the action declaration. The players might input loosely/informally into this, but in a _formal_ sense the GM is doing it. However, that informal element of player input can give this some flavour, at least, of the GM saying "yes".

I think the approach I've just described manifests player agency; personally, I think it can be a bit "weak" in the sense that the players don't quite have to lay it all on the line, because at the ultimate moment of crunch the GM is making the decisions about extrapolation.

I think that, if the players are aware of what's going on in the fiction (unlike Lanefan's example) and have a sense of what might be a bit "weak" in what I've described, the pressure can emerge to drift resolution more, and more often, towards player action declarations that don't just try and add elements to the framing but triest to generate concrete outcomes directly (eg having accepted our gift, the Shade ambassador agrees to our proposal). That's what I would think of as outcomes fully driven by action resolution. (In 3E one problem with this would be the broken maths of the Diplomacy skill; I'm assuming that the system's underlying maths works.) One force that pushes towards this is that, as the game unfolds, the stakes get higher and the sense that the GM can simply extrapolate the situation in a fair way from the established elements of framing reduces. (Back when I used to GM Rolemaster, this sort of development in play was not uncommon. It also accompanied an evolving sense, in the campaign, of how social resolution worked: RM has social skills, but the resolution is wonky enough that the table needs to establish a shared understanding of how they can be deployed and resolved; the rules themselves won't give that indpenedently of some sort of concrete table consensus.)

Of the three approaches I've described - no player agency; player agency but GM carries the weight for the "crunch"; full player agency with resolution determining outcomes - my sense is that the play you described may have been (roughly) in the second category; my prediction is that, if that was so, it will have generated internal pressure in the game to drift towards the third category. If anything I've said is remotely on target, I'd be interested in knowing if my conjecture and prediction are at all right, and (if so) how you felt the game play may have evolved as stakes and player investment stepped up.


----------



## pemerton

RedShirtNo5.1 said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The undue focus on player narration rights then makes it very easy to equate player agency as I've been characterising it with not playing my PC but doing something else. This is why I am keen to keep coming back to the example of the map: if the player action declaration is "I search the study for the map we need" then the player is not doing anything but playing his/her PC. And it is the result of that action declaration, not any "director stance" exercise of some fiat narration power, that determines success or failure. That is - to spell it out even more - the player doesn't need the power to say the map is in the study; s/he just needs the power to say (as his/her PC) I look for the map in the study - and then the rules need to allow that a success on that attempt really counts as a success.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Pemerton, let me see if I can rephrase this.  Unless the results are constrained by pre-existing shared fictional positioning, the results of action declaration statements by the players should be determined by a rule set that permits success (and presumably failure) and not constrained by the GM's notes.  Would you say that's accurate?
> 
> Edit - "Should" indicating your preference, not some categorical statement.
Click to expand...


I think so.

The first qualification: "saying 'yes'" is an alternative - so the fiction just evolves in accordance with the player's evinced desire. This is for low-stakes stuff, for establishing the narrative connections necessary to get crunch-moment A linked to crunch-moment B, etc.

The second qualification: system makes a difference here. Eg 4e uses treasure parcels for loot. If the players declare a low stakes "Is there loot?" action (eg they've beaten up on some hobgoblins and now want to search them) or "Is there a secret door here" (where they don't really care one way or the other, they're just wondering and engaging in generic D&D behaviour) then I'll say "nothing to see here" and move things on.

For the second case, that's a version of what I was talking about upthread as "The GM tells the players some more fiction." Basically what I'm saying is "I've got nothing interesting to give you here that involves secret doors; let's move on to the good stuff."

For the first case, becaus treasure is on a system-determined feed there is no deprivation of treasure by saying "Can we skip the hobgoblins and get on to something more interesting?" (Other systems which don't use treasure parcels are different in this respect; eg in my BW game looking for treasure is almost always high stakes.)

Because the above is all about assessing stakes, degree of buy-in, etc in framing, interpreting action declarations, etc, there's scope for error! One does one's best.

The third qualification (or gloss, rather): action resolution, fictional positioning etc, are all system-relative. Marvel Heroic/Cortex+ Heroic is very liberal in how the players engage fictional positioning, establish new elements of it (via creating assets), etc. So lots of hijinks in that system. Burning Wheel is more gritty, at least as I experience it, and so what counts as a permissible action declaration and hence outcome will probably be more constrained (as far as the gonzo-ness is concerned) but more intense.

4e D&D is gonzo but probably not as liberal as Cortex+ Heroic. So rather than the players establishing the extra fictional positioning they might need by creatig assets, at least as I experience it there is a lot of informal negotiation between players and GM about what is or isn't possible (using things like "the tiers of play", particular PC abilities, etc to guide that).

Hopefully this answer plus qualifications/glosses helps!


----------



## pemerton

chaochou said:


> I don't believe any of us hand over carte blanche 'narration' rights to a player. Pemerton certainly doesn't.
> 
> All of us, though, are willing to let action resolution mechanics determine the outcomes of player decisions, such that a player stating: 'I search the study for the map' results in 'Okay, what skill are you using? Let's roll the dice' and on a success they find the map. Maybe the map says more than they bargained for. Or they miss the roll and find something far less agreeable.
> 
> I will be very open in allowing players to describe things, places, people, events that their characters know better than me, but often by asking questions to focus them on producing fiction which will move play forward.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Powerful, driving questions are a very good way to create a vivid and living, breathing world which (unlike secret ones on stacks of notepaper) have the full investment of the players.



I don't use the "driving questions" method that much. (I'll have to remember to try it and see what happens.)

I have one player in particular who likes to contribute to backstory that helps frame what is going on - he often has a very clear sense of how the fiction is working (especially for the stuff that has no realworld analogue, like magic or sci-fi elements; but also for factional/organisational dynamics) and will build that into his action declarations. Sometimes the way he does this helps his PC; sometimes it hinders.  I almost always just run with it, and less it's butting into something else that is established, or it's clear that another player sees the situation differently. Then we talk it out.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I HATE this notion that there are 'pillars' and everyone should be good at something in every mode of play. If the GM can't work out his game such that resources need to be applied to all different aspects of the character, so be it. The whole notion is dumb.



I tend to start with the characters as the players have built them, and then that determines what the "pillars" are; rather than start with some pillars that constrain PC build.

The dwarf fighter in my main 4e game has low CHA and no social skills trained. That just means that the player has to work harder in social situations (eg spend action points) or else not get what he wants. It's not as if he _couldn't_ have spent a feat on Diplomacy training if he'd wanted to.

In Traveller, so far combat has been the least important "pillar" as far as minutes of play are concerned; although when it came up, it was helpful to be good at it!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> If they're playing their characters in character they're on the same side as their characters.  The antagonism is at the character level but it's played out at the player level; and good players can keep their character antagonism separate from whatever they feel about the real people sitting with them.



Well, sure, the players are likely to have some cognitive bias for the characters in general, and maybe for their specific character, depending on group dynamics. They can still achieve a game-wide stance.



> Even if advancement and treasure are irrelevant or nearly nonexistent a primary goal is still going to be one or more of [story completion, mission accomplishment, just getting the job done, mystery solved, villagers rescued, etc.] ; and something's got to get in the way of that goal to provide some opposition.  And if that opposing "something" is being provided or authored by the players it'd be a simple thing for them to make it a little - or a lot - easier to overcome than it might have been had it been provided by a DM, as players aren't likely to want to put their characters at risk if they don't have to.
> 
> Lanefan




Well, I think if the players, IME, have some real ownership of the larger game, then they'll also be able to take a wider view of things. They MAY WELL be strong advocates for their characters, but that is actually perfectly fine. You can advocate for someone, but not want their destiny to be easy. I mean, you'd want to see your character achieve great and actually difficult achievements, right? As to whether those are difficult for the PLAYER, well, maybe in this sort of game its creating the really excellent STORY that is difficult. 

I mean, what would be the most cool. To 'beat the game', or to create a masterpiece of a campaign? My goal was always to have characters and story that would be worth remembering.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I know there are other posters in this thread who are more enthusiastic than I am about full-fledged player narration rights (eg   @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ has them in his 4e hack, I believe; and   @_*chaochou*_ thinks that I worry too much about the "Czege Principle" - ie that players framing their own challenges can lead to play that fizzles or is a bit insipid). And I'm sure that if I played Fate or some other game that includes them I'd be able to handle it fine.




Interesting, its sometimes hard for me to say if what I'm doing is close to what you're doing. In HoML you can make trade-offs. By expending a resource a player can turn the narrative in a direction he desires, which is generally assumed to be favorable to the player's character, but it doesn't have to be. It is also possible to accept a 'setback' in order to reacquire the ability to spend this 'plot coupon'. I'd note that it ALWAYS requires narrative explanation, which is normally via some attribute of the character. 

Players are also generally free to establish their character's backstory, etc. As you say, when an adverse check result is produced, then it is up to the GM to 'reveal an unpleasant truth' or even make some sort of 'hard move' (IE introduce a direct threat which the PC must then react to or suffer some immediate effect from). 

I've found that the majority of my players are also good at introducing general story elements that move things forward. Some of them are themselves pretty accomplished GMs, so there's a fairly deep understanding on all our parts as to what is likely to push a game forward and make it interesting.

For instance when I play a character I generally set some fairly ambitious goals and/or some kind of fairly explicit conflict that can be developed because I know that will push the game forward. Even if its a fairly straightforward 'classic' type of game that works mostly on hidden backstory this is a good idea. In the last campaign I played in my Dwarf Transmuter (this was our 5e experiment) as a highly ambitious fellow who was trying to build a whole new barony/kingdom/empire on the edge of civilization. The DM threw lots of problems at him. I'm not sure if that was a 'lets make this interesting' or a 'lets not let this rewrite the campaign world map' reaction exactly, but it certainly drove the character forward through the story!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Arilyn said:


> I'm sitting moderately in the middle of things. I appreciate pemerton's style and his, and others' posts, are giving me tips on how to manage that style of game better. The idea that this style of play leads to players narrating their way out of trouble and getting what they want is obviously not true. Nobody would play that way. It seems like the nay sayers should at least give it a whirl.




I think I may have partly confused things somewhat, as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and I probably use somewhat different techniques. Like [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] I don't really care too much about 'Czege Principle', which is basically the idea that the players will write their characters an easy meal ticket. Pemerton does!

In the technique he uses, I don't believe there's any danger of the players 'narrating their way out of trouble', because all the trouble originates from the GM. It might go something like:

1. Player - "Yeah, I'd really like to find that lost book that my Uncle wrote, it proves that our family was innocent of treason back in '96"

2. DM - The guy says the book is beyond the next room. There's a whole bunch of orcs down at that end of the room, they don't look like they want to let you through

3. Player - I charge forward, sword drawn with a mighty bellow! 

4. DM - OK, roll to hit...

The player has established a fictional goal, something he wants. The GM has given him a way to achieve it, and placed an obstacle in his path. The player moves the character into the proper narrative position to attempt to achieve his goal. Checks ensue which will determine success or failure. 

5. DM - The big orc bashes you on the head (rolls to hit). You go down. You can feel the orcs grasping your legs and starting to drag you away as you black out.

Now clearly the character has failed, and as a consequence his narrative positioning is no longer such that he's going to easily achieve his goal. At least not through combat.

6. DM - You wake up some time later as something wet is splashed in your face. A horrific visage fills your field of view, a terribly scarred orc face. A second later a hand follows, your jaw is forced open and some sort of strong drink is forced down. "Har! Awaken! You managed to kill 5 of my elite warriors, human! You're too good for the slave pens. Come and drink with me when you feel better!" 

Maybe another chance is arising, but it sounds like it will require a strong constitution this time! 

I mean, this is a pretty simplistic sort of narrative, obviously, but assuming the player has established his character as a hard-drinking bruiser, then I think its a pretty reasonable tack for the GM to take. The player can maybe try to risk escaping, or drinking the Orc King under the table, or maybe something else. 

Now in MY system, the player might be able to establish some things on the fly, like his drinking credentials, or the existence of an ally to assist in an escape attempt, or various things like that. I'm not sure where [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] draws the line there, or how that might differ from what [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] might do in his game. 

In other words, I don't want to put false impressions about what other GMs do in your head based on what I do, the techniques and philosophies are, as Manbearcat alluded above, quite diverse.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

chaochou said:


> All of us, though, are willing to let action resolution mechanics determine the outcomes of player decisions, such that a player stating: 'I search the study for the map' results in 'Okay, what skill are you using? Let's roll the dice' and on a success they find the map. Maybe the map says more than they bargained for. Or they miss the roll and find something far less agreeable.




This is a good point, EVERY CHECK exists to move the fictional position of the narrative either in the player's favor, or against them. There are ALWAYS stakes. In fact, my game, HoML, literally does not allow checks outside of a challenge situation (basically an SC or combat though there's a bit more nuance to it than that). So there is ALWAYS an established set of stakes, something the players are driving for, and something that will happen if they fail. At the very least when you elect to search for the map a null result would be something like "you waste a lot of time here looking for the map before you find it in the bread box in the nearby kitchen." That would be a bit of a flat action resolution, but it meets the minimally acceptable criteria of moving the narrative forward into a more or less favorable scenario for the PCs. 

In other words, really the whole idea that there's some big importance to that level of detail, exactly where the map is hidden doesn't matter in this style of play. The GM might well note where the map is hidden, and then use that information in narration, that's fine. It just isn't critical. If the fictional positioning has to be correct for an action to matter, then there's no reason for a check to take place, "you search the study, there's no map here". There's neither success nor failure, nothing hinges on a search of the study. Thus if the kitchen is out of scope, then part of the character's goal must be to establish themselves there in order to search. Here's where [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s information point comes in, it makes no sense in this mode of play to have the necessary fictional positioning be unknowable. Either give some hints or just put the map where the PCs actually are, etc. Long guessing games are rarely that much fun.


----------



## Manbearcat

TwoSix said:


> Well, this does tend to be the default assumption whenever people feel some kind of tribal lines are being drawn.  Two Eagles fans can commiserate about shared Nick Foles concerns; they're not going to accept that same critique from a Patriots fan.




  Uh huh, which is precisely what I was getting at!  I just felt I had to call it out for what it was as it was sitting there an LED lights yet defiantly acting like it wasn't even there! 



TwoSix said:


> To my mind, this is the most salient point.  Player-driven play is _hard_, certainly much harder than a GM-driven adventure path, unless you have a group where the majority of your players are skilled and motivated role-players.  (Having a critical mass of skilled, motivated players tends to motivate the others to be more creative, I've observed.)
> 
> If your group has been brought up in a tradition of ambivalently adversarial exploration focused play, player-driven play is going to seem downright alien.




I think the frustrating thing about this is (a) folks having a mental framework on the limits of RPGing evolved from decades or more of a very specific play paradigm (which you outlined in your final sentence)  while (b) simultaneously having entrenched positions on different play paradigms that don't reflect the reality of the gameplay therein (due to erroneous extrapolation or fundamental lack of understanding).  Which leads to (c) them never trying these games/techniques and (d) reducing these games' exposure both passively and actively by advocating hard, and sometimes relentlessly (see 4e), against them (for some reason).


----------



## Manbearcat

hawkeyefan said:


> @_*Manbearcat*_ I think your translation of Lanefan’s example to a DW framework and how it would play out there is interesting. I’m actually impressed that you could make such a direct correlation.
> 
> But I don’t know if it helps with the OP question all that much. All it says is that the results determined by Approach A can also be achieved using Approach B.
> 
> My goal in this conversation is to advocate for creative use of Secret Backstory tagged as “worldbuilding” by Permetton in the OP. Tome, the presence of such material does not necessarily prevent the GM from playing to find out.
> 
> To me, Secret Backstory is clearly usefulfor a few reasons:
> - to help establish the scope of play via setting
> - to help establish long term thematic elements
> - to help guide the course of play when the players have not shown a desire or ability to do so
> 
> I think in the course of this comversation that Agency has been conflated with Engagement. And I don’t think that should be te case. Players can be very much engaged by any style of game, even the purest of railroads. To look atanother medium, moviegoers are passive, but movies can of course be engaging.
> 
> I think the differences between writing a novel and reading a novel are pretty apropros to the discussion. Yet I don’t think most games must correlate to one or the other, or that thise who enjoy one cannot enjoy the other.




Thank you for saying it was interesting and impressive, but I was going for provocative 

Since it didn't seem to provoke analysis on the two widely disparate play excerpts (not in outcome, but with respect to content generation and play aesthetic), let me do a little bit of it and you tell me what you think.

Lets pick out a seminal moment of backstory and conflict generation:

The harlot.

In the first excerpt, she is generated well in advanced with no ties to the party.  Her nature is opaque or "hidden" (an agent for the Duke who is inserting herself into a situation with the PCs for undetermined reasons...spy?).  She is fundamentally the catalyst for the GM's major off-screen move to set them in conflict down the line with the Duke and potentially put his trigger-hairs upon them later (which the PCs don't know about).  

Contrast that with the second excerpt.  She is generated at the table as a response to one of the most fundamental moves in The Dashing Hero's playbook; A Lover in Every Port.  The 6- result immediately turns her from ally to complication.  In this case, she serves as (a) an overt ticking time-bomb and (b) an immediate complicating input in the PCs' decision-point in city-fairing and danger navigation.  She gets us "right into the action."  And she is fundamentally connected, at a thematic level, to one of the PCs who will naturally now be invested in her (either steering clear of her or perhaps righting whatever wrong happened in the past);  So play could easily see an "Indy and Marion" angle emerge just by a simple roll of the dice and some genre logic.


So I asked about comparing the disparate excerpts with respect to:

(a) setting generation
(b) initial situation generation and related framing
(c) offscreen-part moving/move-making by the GM
(d) information (or lacktherof) and player decision-points/action declarations
(e) the evolution of the gamestate from the initial state to subsequent states.

Does hawkeyefan or anyone else have any thoughts on the harlot dynamics of the two play excerpts with respect to the above?  Why does the backstory generation procedure that you prefer (just limiting evaluation of the harlot) work better than the other one?


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Interesting, its sometimes hard for me to say if what I'm doing is close to what you're doing. In HoML you can make trade-offs. By expending a resource a player can turn the narrative in a direction he desires, which is generally assumed to be favorable to the player's character, but it doesn't have to be. It is also possible to accept a 'setback' in order to reacquire the ability to spend this 'plot coupon'. I'd note that it ALWAYS requires narrative explanation, which is normally via some attribute of the character.
> 
> Players are also generally free to establish their character's backstory, etc. As you say, when an adverse check result is produced, then it is up to the GM to 'reveal an unpleasant truth' or even make some sort of 'hard move' (IE introduce a direct threat which the PC must then react to or suffer some immediate effect from).
> 
> I've found that the majority of my players are also good at introducing general story elements that move things forward.



The "general story elements" and the backstory authorship are both parts of how I GM (subect to the standard disclaimer that different systems handle the minutiae of this stuff a bit differently - eg in 4e, having a nemesis as part of your backstory is just a thing you decied on; in BW, having a nemesis as part of your backstory is a player resource you have to pay for as part of PC building).

The bit where I think I'm probably a bit less liberal than you, [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] is in relation to your first paragraph. For that sort of thing I generally look for action declaration, and then (assuming it's a big deal and so we're not just saying "yes"  I'd really put that under the "general story elements" label) we'd resolve that check.

As far as taking a disadvantage to earn a resource, for me that's system dependent. Cortex+ Heroic PCs have "limits" (eg War Machine's armour can suffer a system overload) - when the fiction permits, the GM can trigger these at a cost from the Doom Pool, or the player can instead take a plot point (= fate point, more-or-less). In BW, whenever following an Insinct gets you into trouble you get a fate point, which can be spent on dice pool manipulation (eg my knight PC's wizard follower has the Instinct "Never meet a stranger's gaze" - when I play to the instinct and it causes issues with social interaction, she gets a fate point).

In 4e, the way I implement something a bit similar is to use risks to manage p 42 action resolution: so when a player wanted his (2nd level, I think) paladin to say a prayer that would grant combat advantage against a wight as a minor action, I allowed the attempt, but with the prospect - if the Religion check failed - of psychic damage to the PC (as he feels the will of the wight stronger than that of his divine mistress as channelled through him).

In some cases success can also bring a cost, if it makes sense in the fictional positioning (I tend to confine this to "big deal" stuff).

I've also been thinking a bit more about [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION]'s "driving questions". In our first BW session, the player of the mage declared a Circles check to make contact with the leader of his sorcerous cabal, Jabal the Red. The existence of Jabal was established as part of backstory by the player (he hadn't spent any resources on a relationship, and so had no _entitlement_ to this bit of backstory, but it seemed like good stuff). The check failed, which gives the GM some options, and I chose to have Jabal make contact but in an angry way. This could have been an opportunity to ask "Why is Jabal mad at you", but I didn't. Earlier in the session, a failed Aura Reading check had resulted in the PC discoverig that the angel feather he had purchased from a peddler was cursed. And I decided that it was this curse that had made Jabal angry - he wanted the mage and his companions to leave town, rather than bring down the consequences of the curse upon the cabal.

I see that as the BW spirit: the GM is expected to use failures to turn the screws of already-etablished difficult situatios - and the odds for success (noticeably less than 4e, at least in our 5 starting lifepaths game) are such that this is likely to occur quite a bit.

Something we did closer to "driving questions": in our Traveller game one of the PCs had to be introduced in the second session, which started with the PCs in the domed city of Byron on the corrosive atmosphere, desert world of Byron, investigating a bioweapons conspiracy. The PC was a one-term marine conscript who had failed her survival roll by 1 in that first term, and hence forcibly musterd out with no checks on any mustering out benefits table. (This is a house rule that combines bits of a MegaTraveller option with bits of an Andy Slack house rule from his old White Dwarf "Expanding Universe" series.) As well as having no money because of no benefit rolls, the PC also had only one skill: Cutlass-4. (One for being a marine, the rest rolled by way of skill checks.)

So how did a penniless 20 year old former marine fencer end up on Byron? The player decided that she had faked an injury to secure a discharge (he had wanted her to be a doctor but had failed that enlistment roll; hence her being drafted into the marines). I decided that the other PCs found her, shivering and obviously ill, on the streets of Byron, where she remebered nothing bu escaping from a cold sleep chamber in a warehouse and out into the streets.

Investigation by the PCs (via actions declared by their players) established that she was infected with the bioweapons pathogen. Discussion with the player established that her last clear memory was of being in hospital in a naval base - I rolled up the world of Shelley to be the site of this base, as Byron doesn't have one.

So how did she get from Shelley, into a cold sleep berth, and onto Byron, infected with the disease? A mixture of talking it through at the time, plus elaborating as further elements of the bioweapons conspiracy have been established, led to an agreement that she had been infected on Shelley - presumably by Lt Li of the Imperial Marines, the apparent leader of the conspiracy - before being placed into cold sleep for transport to the labs on Byron.

But why would Li do that to her? After some discussion, which included reviewing Li's "UPP" (ie character stats), we decided that the PC and Li had been rivals in the marine's competition fencing squad, but the PC was clearly superior (more skill, higher DEX) - and so Li had had an animus against her, which led her to choose the PC as her experimental subject. And because Traveller has no _mechanics_ to deal with this at all, really, it's been worked out through conversation at the table. Some of that discussion has been purely at the metagame level; but some of that has been in character, as one PC wonders "Why did Lit have it in for you?" and then someone else chimes in with a conjecture which makes no less sense treated as a piece of in-character RP rather than as a purely out-of-character suggestion.

That's not identical to what [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] described - it's a bit of PC backstory that has been established over the course of mutiple sessions, both by making up the necessary new fiction (like the world of Shelley) but also by incorporating other facts about Lt Li and her conspiracy that have emerged out of play.

But I've outlined it just to give a sense of the sort of thing that happens in our games.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> From what you've said, I'm going to try a conjecture. Hopefully it does not misfire too badly!
> 
> It sounds like the player interest in the shades led you (perhaps also informed by your own interest/enthusiasm?) to make up some internal details about the shades, which you were then able to use as elements of framing as the PCs dealt with the shades.




Pretty much. We talked out some possible trade route options. We did this precisely so that I could do some high level prep based on their choices. So they came up with a few possibilities. I then, in between sessions, jotted down some possibilities for each route. I also jotted down some ideas that might be usable regardless of the route they chose. This last bit is probably not your cup of tea! But I like to have a couple of options as a back up depending on how everything goes. 

My selection of the Shades was equally about the existing connection to a PC’s past, what made sense based on the locations involved, and my personal interest. I’ve used them in the past when we’ve played a Realms campaign. I find the concept and possible themes pretty interesting.

As an aside, my previous use of them is perhaps what led the player to incorporate them into the character’s background. Kind of a feedback loop that may be the best endorsement I can give about my approach.



pemerton said:


> Comparing that to my own 4e game, it reminds me a bit of when the PCs arrived in the stronghold of the duergar, I came up with the idea for two factions among the duergar, with different attitudes towards the PCs' desire to take the duergar's fragment of the Rod of Seven Parts. A possible point of difference (again, conjecture at best) is that my framing made it reasonably clear that there were two fractins: by the way the PCs were housed (some were treated well; others, deemed too chaotic, were under house arrest); by the way NPCs approached the PCs; etc.




I didn’t hide the multiple factions from the PCs. Not for any significant amount of time anyway. I don’t mind my players being in the dark about aome things, but I usually (admittedly not always) try to make the major decisions that they face about elements they know. 




pemerton said:


> With resolution, it sounds like the players engaged with the situation and thereby learned some of this stuff that you had worked out; and then declared actions that traded on those ascertained elements. It sounds as if the framing of the action declarations relied rather heavily on an implicit sense, among the participants, of what might be at stake; and left it to the GM to work out the details for successes as well as failure.




I suppose. To describe it plainly: I came up with a basic scenario of conflict among the Shades, the ruling elite and a rogue group, and then I let the PCs decide how to proceed with each faction, trying to determine the best side to choose and what agreement to make. The negotiations were weighted by what the PCs decided to include. So a Persuasion check to appeal to the ruling faction was easier if the PCs were making large concessions, or offering additional offerings. 

At this point, it was largely a back and forth DM to players and back, each sode reacting to the other, and making checks where relevant. 



pemerton said:


> Of the three approaches I've described - no player agency; player agency but GM carries the weight for the "crunch"; full player agency with resolution determining outcomes - my sense is that the play you described may have been (roughly) in the second category; my prediction is that, if that was so, it will have generated internal pressure in the game to drift towards the third category. If anything I've said is remotely on target, I'd be interested in knowing if my conjecture and prediction are at all right, and (if so) how you felt the game play may have evolved as stakes and player investment stepped up.




I’m not quite sure what you mean by the GM carrying the weight for the “crunch”. But I expect that you’d consider the game to be in the second option you describe. I consider it a middle option certainly. If you mean that the narrative leaned largely on the GM at this point, then yes, I’d agree. It was up to me to decide how things ultimately played out. But the breadth or scope of possible results was significantly reduced by the players and their actions. 

So surely this is not a case of pure GM fiat, or the players being mostly passive and having the DM read his notes to them. But neither is it a case where the players can introduce fictional elements through action declaration. The players essentially tell me what their characters want to achieve given what the characters know, and then I let them know what kind of check is appropriate. 

So perhaps there are two levels of play going on. A high level, thrust of the campaign, this is where things are going kind of level which is largely determined by the players. And then a lower level, this is what my PC is doing right now level, which although it may involve player agency, also relies on GM judgment.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> If you think no hint exists and are unaware of any such text, you need to read page 9 under Character Abilities.  Unless you think Gygax was a complete ass was taunting people by giving them 3d6 and then saying, it's usually essential to have two 15's or higher BUT HAHAHHAHA!!! YOU'RE STUCK LOSERS!, then his saying that was a statement to the DMs implying that they allow players to re-roll until they got two 15's or higher.  He himself was quoted saying that he ran his own games that way, coming up with alternative methods and allowing re-rolls in order for players to have sufficient stats to have a chance to survive.




And yet then none of Gygax's rules follow through on this at all. Its not ACTUALLY true. Method I (by far the most common in my experience) produces a 23% chance of 0 15s, and only an 28% chance of 2 15s. Of the other methods only Method III produces a majority of characters of the type that are claimed to be NECESSARY, and it doesn't allow them to be arranged as desired (though chances are you'll be able to sub-optimally join most all classes with such a character). Method I at least lets you arrange things as you wish.

Now, what difference in survival does two 15s make? Is it really that much? It could be somewhat handy depending on the stats in question. A 15 STR does almost nothing, a 15 WIS is pretty good for a cleric, a 15 DEX raises your AC by 1 (nice), 15 CON is good for 1 HP/level, 15 CHA gives +15% reaction/loyalty and 7 henchmen max. All of these are useful, though the CON and DEX are probably the best. None of them is going to transform a character into one that is profoundly more survivable though. Obviously an extra hit point (or 3) or point of AC MIGHT save your skin. Clearly if you factor in 16-18s you might also get those are even more useful. 

Seems to me that its kinda oversold though. Ability scores in AD&D are just not THAT critical.

As an aside, 16, 14, 13, 12, 10, 9 is the average array of Method I, almost identical to the standard array in 4e and the expert array in 3e. So for anyone thinking that stats have inflated, not since 1979... Now, the VALUE of those stats has increased considerably, since a 15 in any stat in 3.x, 4e, and 5e is worth a +3 bonus.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], the drinking with orcs in your post reminds me of our last Cortex+ Heroic Vikings session:

The PCs had been beaten up by marauders who took a whole lot of villagers prisoner before razing the village. In the next session (I think - maybe in the second half of the same session?) the PCs recovered left for dead in the village, found the villagers missing, and followed the trail back to a giant steading they'd visited in an earlier session. The villagers had been sold as thralls (or food?) to the giants, and the marauders were celebrating their victory with some heavy drinking at one end of the giant chieftain's hall.

The berserker PC arrived at the steading and made out that he wanted to join the marauders, and joined in with their drinking - from memory another PC was meant to have infiltrated the kitchens so as to be able to put some sort of herb in the berserker's flagon to help protect him from getting drunk, but if I'm remembering right that didn't work out. But anyway, drunken antics, arm wrestling etc in the hall helped create a distraction (I think this was probably an assett passed to one of the other PCs, although my memory is a bit foggy) which then enabled the other PCs to sneak the villagers out through a hole in the pallisade (itself an asset that one of them had established).

Because of it's pretty liberal asset creation rules, I find Cortex+ Heroic leads to a lot more player establishment of the shared fiction at the moment of resolution than (say) BW or 4e. But because it is done by way of opposed rolls against the Doom Pool, the Czege Principle is not violated!


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> So surely this is not a case of pure GM fiat



I don't think so. At least as I understand it, the players' action declarations affected the framing. Eg those action declarations made it the case (say) that this Shade NPC was sympathetic rather than hostile to them, which makes it impossible for the GM to (say) narrate that _everyone_ among the Shades turns on them.

(That's a simplified example, obviously, just to try and convey what I mean.)



hawkeyefan said:


> I’m not quite sure what you mean by the GM carrying the weight for the “crunch”. But I expect that you’d consider the game to be in the second option you describe. I consider it a middle option certainly. If you mean that the narrative leaned largely on the GM at this point, then yes, I’d agree. It was up to me to decide how things ultimately played out. But the breadth or scope of possible results was significantly reduced by the players and their actions.



The last sentence here is helping me reach the description I gave just above: the GM's narration was constrained by elements of the framing that had changed, or been established, by action resolution.

When I talk about the GM carrying the weight at that final point, I think I'm talking about the same thing as your "how things ultimately played out." A difference between us is that I would generally look to the players for a desire as to how things ultimately play out, and have that be a direct consequence of the action resolution (which doesn't meant it has to be simple - the action resolution might unfold over mutliple checks, with both mechanical and fiction-to-fiction iteration, etc).

My tentative prediction was that your game might have come under pressure to let the players exercise more control (not narrative fiat control, but settling-it-through-action-declaration control) up through those final/ultimate elements as it went along: as the players got more invested, and formed more concrete ideas about how they wanted to see things end up, and so made a greater effort to frame and push their action declarations in those definite directions (rather than, say - and to use another toy example - just trying to make the negotiator friendly to them, but leaving it to the GM to work out exactly what "being friendly" yields in concrete terms).

Did your game experience any such trajectory or pressure?


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> And yet then none of Gygax's rules follow through on this at all. Its not ACTUALLY true. Method I (by far the most common in my experience) produces a 23% chance of 0 15s, and only an 28% chance of 2 15s. Of the other methods only Method III produces a majority of characters of the type that are claimed to be NECESSARY, and it doesn't allow them to be arranged as desired (though chances are you'll be able to sub-optimally join most all classes with such a character). Method I at least lets you arrange things as you wish.




Which doesn't really matter since implied re-rolls if you don't get the two 15+ stats is in the PHB.  Method I has a 42% chance of giving two 15's by the way, so few re-rolls are necessary.

http://anydice.com/articles/4d6-drop-lowest/



> Now, what difference in survival does two 15s make? Is it really that much? It could be somewhat handy depending on the stats in question. A 15 STR does almost nothing, a 15 WIS is pretty good for a cleric, a 15 DEX raises your AC by 1 (nice), 15 CON is good for 1 HP/level, 15 CHA gives +15% reaction/loyalty and 7 henchmen max. All of these are useful, though the CON and DEX are probably the best. None of them is going to transform a character into one that is profoundly more survivable though. Obviously an extra hit point (or 3) or point of AC MIGHT save your skin. Clearly if you factor in 16-18s you might also get those are even more useful.




It makes quite a bit of difference.  You get AC bonuses, spell advantage for magic classes.  Extra system shock and survival roll chances.  And very importantly, exp bonus if you get a 16 in your prime stat.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Manbearcat said:


> Thank you for saying it was interesting and impressive, but I was going for provocative
> 
> Since it didn't seem to provoke analysis on the two widely disparate play excerpts (not in outcome, but with respect to content generation and play aesthetic), let me do a little bit of it and you tell me what you think.
> 
> Lets pick out a seminal moment of backstory and conflict generation:
> 
> The harlot.
> 
> In the first excerpt, she is generated well in advanced with no ties to the party.  Her nature is opaque or "hidden" (an agent for the Duke who is inserting herself into a situation with the PCs for undetermined reasons...spy?).  She is fundamentally the catalyst for the GM's major off-screen move to set them in conflict down the line with the Duke and potentially put his trigger-hairs upon them later (which the PCs don't know about).
> 
> Contrast that with the second excerpt.  She is generated at the table as a response to one of the most fundamental moves in The Dashing Hero's playbook; A Lover in Every Port.  The 6- result immediately turns her from ally to complication.  In this case, she serves as (a) an overt ticking time-bomb and (b) an immediate complicating input in the PCs' decision-point in city-fairing and danger navigation.  She gets us "right into the action."  And she is fundamentally connected, at a thematic level, to one of the PCs who will naturally now be invested in her (either steering clear of her or perhaps righting whatever wrong happened in the past);  So play could easily see an "Indy and Marion" angle emerge just by a simple roll of the dice and some genre logic.
> 
> 
> So I asked about comparing the disparate excerpts with respect to:
> 
> (a) setting generation
> (b) initial situation generation and related framing
> (c) offscreen-part moving/move-making by the GM
> (d) information (or lacktherof) and player decision-points/action declarations
> (e) the evolution of the gamestate from the initial state to subsequent states.
> 
> Does hawkeyefan or anyone else have any thoughts on the harlot dynamics of the two play excerpts with respect to the above?  Why does the backstory generation procedure that you prefer (just limiting evaluation of the harlot) work better than the other one?




I didn’t mean to imply that I didn’t find your analysis provocative. I honestly think of the two scenarios described, your DW take on things is far preferrable. I would much rather have PC investment in such an NPC, and also some kind of motovation for her. Even if all the details aren’t sorted yet, I like to have a general sketch. The mechanics of DW certainly help in that regard. I don’t know if I’d say they are essential to achieve what you did, but I can see how they lend themselves to that.

I think that if I were to design this encounter, I’d likely have arrived at something closer to your DW example. Although I don’t play DW, so I would have arrived at it using different methods. I also don’t think that Lanefan presented his scenario as clearly as he could have....I think he was loosely describing a scenario in hope that the broader strokes would illustrate his point. As such, it’s difficult for me to analyze it very much. 

To address each of your listed items is then difficult, because one example is clearly drawn while the other is not. I don’t know if it’s fair to assess the two approaches based on these examples. Instead, I’ll focus on your example:

(a) setting generation- the DW mechanics are interesting, they add to the setting and involve the PCs in the setting- always good in my opinion
(b) initial situation generation and related framing- the DW method creates a sense of immediacy; this NPC must be dealt with in some way
(c) offscreen-part moving/move-making by the GM- here is where the unclear areas of the Harlot example Lanefan gave make discussion difficult- without knowing the reasons for keeping her role as a spy secret, I can’t say if it’s justifiable- personally, I’d have at the very least establised that there was more to her than there seemed
(d) information (or lacktherof) and player decision-points/action declarations- depending on the role she takes, there are many possibilities here, a complication of what kind? How can the complication be resolved? I like how this is going to make the player make some decisions, but it still feels like a lot of this is left up to the GM. 
(e) the evolution of the gamestate from the initial state to subsequent states- I think it helps drive the play forward, it goves the PCs an immediate goal or obstacle. My concern is that perhaps this is a bit distracting? Depending upon what the PCs were doing until this character was introduced. I’m sure that’s not necessarily the case, but it seems possible.

Again, sorry if it seems like I’m dodging the question. I just feel that the initial example offered by Lanefan is too vague to analyze and to contrast it to your version. 

Would an example from my own game maybe help?


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> I don't think so. At least as I understand it, the players' action declarations affected the framing. Eg those action declarations made it the case (say) that this Shade NPC was sympathetic rather than hostile to them, which makes it impossible for the GM to (say) narrate that _everyone_ among the Shades turns on them.
> 
> (That's a simplified example, obviously, just to try and convey what I mean.)




Sounds about right. I generally let the PCs actuons and the results of their rolls determine events. I did have one NPC who could not be influenced by them, but they pretty much recognized that by the way he behaved toward them.



pemerton said:


> The last sentence here is helping me reach the description I gave just above: the GM's narration was constrained by elements of the framing that had changed, or been established, by action resolution.
> 
> When I talk about the GM carrying the weight at that final point, I think I'm talking about the same thing as your "how things ultimately played out." A difference between us is that I would generally look to the players for a desire as to how things ultimately play out, and have that be a direct consequence of the action resolution (which doesn't meant it has to be simple - the action resolution might unfold over mutliple checks, with both mechanical and fiction-to-fiction iteration, etc).
> 
> My tentative prediction was that your game might have come under pressure to let the players exercise more control (not narrative fiat control, but settling-it-through-action-declaration control) up through those final/ultimate elements as it went along: as the players got more invested, and formed more concrete ideas about how they wanted to see things end up, and so made a greater effort to frame and push their action declarations in those definite directions (rather than, say - and to use another toy example - just trying to make the negotiator friendly to them, but leaving it to the GM to work out exactly what "being friendly" yields in concrete terms).
> 
> Did your game experience any such trajectory or pressure?




I think so, yes. There were negotiations, some progress was made, a complication was introduced, more progress...the players decided which faction they wanted to work with, further negotiations. I used the Diviner’s relationship with her Mentor to further complicate things.

I realize I’m not being specific, but if I said I remembered every detail, I’d be lying! In the end, they had to ally with the Royal Family and the Mentor would lose out (and likely suffer a horrible fate), or they could side with the Rogue Faction, but they’d have to do so in secret and they’d earn the ire of the Ruling Family. 

So we kind of distilled things until there were two courses to take based on what the PCs wanted. Neither of which was ideal. Each had a drawback of some sort.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> I also don’t think that Lanefan presented his scenario as clearly as he could have....



Oh, most definitely guilty as charged, y'r honour. 



> I think he was loosely describing a scenario in hope that the broader strokes would illustrate his point.



Something like that, and I was making it up as I typed it.  It wasn't drawn from actual play.

What I was trying to do was come up with a hypothetical situation that could illustrate what amounts to a butterfly effect within the game world, where a seemingly minor or irrelevant bit of PC action [here and now] sooner or later leads to major repercussions [somewhere else later] that may or may not come back to affect the PCs at some point; and if the PCs do end up being affected they'll have to work hard and do some digging to be able to connect the dots between initial cause and eventual effect.

If you can think of a better example of a situation where events go in this order...

1. one or more PCs does something that, unknown to them and almost certainly unintentionally, pushes over a domino (_in my previous example, the PCs unknowingly pull a spy away from her duties_)
2. dominoes continue to fall elsewhere without the PCs' knowledge until... (_in my previous example, the spy was thus not where she needed to be to prevent a series of unfortunate events_)
3. ...a falling domino somehow affects one or more PCs (_in my previous example, the spy fingers the PCs as being responsible for her dereliction of duty and suddenly they're wanted criminals_)

...then I'm all ears. 

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> I think the reason this keeps coming up is due to the example itself. I admit to not recalling if there were more details when this example was first put forth, but whenever it has been brought up since, it’s boiled down to “the PCs need a map, a player searches the stoudy for the needed map, the presence of the map is determined by the success or failure of the relevant check.”
> 
> So finding the map had been positioned as a goal, and the player’s skill check determines whether the goal is achieved.
> 
> To me, the example seems too simple to really tell us much. What’s the point of making the map hidden unless a search for it can result?



I agree with your rhetorical question, but I don't think that - on it's own - that settles the approach to resolution.



hawkeyefan said:


> And should a search for the map, if intended to be a goal involving any kind f challenge, be resolved with one check? If finding the map is a goal of the party, then allowing a skill check to determine its presence does imply that the player can control obstacle resolution through action declaration.



I think your last sentence _may_ have misfired a little bit - I think we agree that players sometimes at least sometimes can "control obstacle resolution" - eg if the obstacle is an orc, player action declaration can result in removal of the obstacle.

As to whether the goal is resolved with one check - well, that depends a bit on system. In 4e, I could imagine the whole thing being a skill challenge: in the early stage of the challenge the PCs make contact with a sage and learn that there is a map that will show them the way to [whatever it is they care about]; and then subsequent checks bring them to a house, and a study; and then the final check determines whether or not the map is in the study (skill challenge success) or not (skill challenge failure - we'd have to imagine there have been two earlier failures - but it's plausible that one of them could have been a failure to learn at some earlier stage exactly which room of the house the map is hidden in!).

In BW, that sort of goal ultimately does get resolved with one check, as it has no generic complex resolution system. Of course, there may well have been earlier checks leading up to the framing of that final check. In my BW game, the attempt to find the mace in the ruined tower turned on a single check, but the return to the tower by way of a trek across the Bright Desert had itself involved other checks.



hawkeyefan said:


> If the character’s stated goal is to find the presence of alien life, then does he simply ask to search for signs of alien life every time he enters a room? Or are there other parameters at play not addressed in the map example?



I think some of [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s posts have been really helpful for trying to convey what I feel is a fairly straightforward spirit of play, but which seems less intuitive to some posters. (I'm not saying that you're one of those posters - nor denying that you are, as I'm not sure and I don't think it matters!) What I'm trying to get at is the sense of when a particular goal is at issue, or up for grabs, in a particular situation.

So in my Traveller game - to go with the _alien life_ example - there is no "every time he enters a room". To elaborate on that: of course, in the fiction, the character comes and goes from rooms, vehicles, etc. But at the table, when we're playing the game, we don't worry about that (eg he's been staying at the Travellers Aid Society - at least up to date, that has mattered only as a way of establishing his weekly living expenses). When I present the ingame situation to the players - when I present the _framing_, that is - my goal is that something they care about is already at issue in the situation, which will motivate some sort of action declaration.

To give an example: when the PCs arrived on Byron, they had to offload medical gear from their ship to be picked up by bioweapons conspirators. They were expecting this gear to be loaded onto another vessel (that was what the patron who briefed them had said would happen), but instead (as I told the players) the alien-life PC noticed that the gear was loaded onto an ATV and carried out of the city dome into the largely uninhabited desert.

Around the same time, the PC I talked about in a post not far upthread was introduced into the game, which established - as part of the shared fiction - a warehouse in the domed city with (it seemed) experimental subjects inside cold sleep berths.

Now, if - in response to that - the player of the alien life PC declares "I search my room at the TAS for signs of alien life", then my framing has completely misfired. Because from the point of view of the established fiction, and the course of play so far, the TAS room is competely irrelevant to anything. I'm not saying I would veto that action declaration - what I am saying is that it would be a sign of something going wrong, and I can't really say in the abstract how I might respond to it.

Whereas, had that PC tracked down the bioweapons warehouse and looked for signs of alien biology, that would be a completely different kettle of fish - that would be just the sort of thing one might anticipate in response to the framing, and a check would have to be framed etc. (As I've already posted, Traveller isn't perfect for this as written, so I'm still experimenting with ways to handle it.) As it turns out, though, the PCs got the police to sort out the warehouse, and then hired an ATV driver (another late-introduction PC) to go out from the dome also in pursuit of the NPCs with the high tech medical gear. And it was in the upshot of that that one of the NPC scientists they captured at the NPC's outpost told the alien life PC about what he had noticed in scanning the DNA of some of the exprimental subjects.

To relate this back to the map example: I'm assuming that the framing has largely been successful, and so it is salient to everyone at the table that the map may, indeed, be hidden in the study.

(This is also the answer to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s question, why won't the players just scavenge up diamonds or Hammers of Thunderbolts or whatever? Of course if a player has that as an evinced goal for his/her PC then it is fair game, subject to system conventions like 1st level D&D PCs simply don't get Hammers of Thunderbolts. But otherwise, it is a sign of play going wrong in some way if the GM is trying to present situations that speak to the evinced goals/motivations/themes of the PCs, and the players are hunting everywhere for spare loot.)



hawkeyefan said:


> I’d like to offer another example that perhaps will help.
> 
> A character has fallen from a cliff. This may be diring the course of battle, or it may be due to some mishap while exploring. At this point, the character’s goal is to not die.
> 
> So the player indicates that they’d like to make a check or a saving throw or whatever relevant roll the game mechanics call for the PC to avoid falling to his doom.
> 
> Would a classic GM driven game simply say “the cliff face is sheer and there is nothing to grab....you die”? Meaning the GM had determined this prior and consults his notes and that’s that? I would not expect most games to play out that way. Only the most extreme version of such a style.
> 
> I would expect that the result of the check would determine the fiction, so that a successful check indicates the presence of a root that the character manages to grab. I’d kind of expect this approach in either tyle of game. Or at least in most games using eother style.



There are posters on ENworld (one of them has me blocked, so I can't invite him into the conversation) who think that the method you describe - ie narrating the root - is impermissible in a true RPG.

But it is the default in Gygax's DMG in the entry on saving throws.

But I don't think it establishes a very robust pressure point for distinguishing approaches, because most D&D players probably use the saving throw rules, and if they do then you're forced either to allow the narration of the root, or to adopt a theory of hit points as "uber-meat" that many people find implausible. And the root is not in itself an interesting element of play, generating signficant emotional investment and player activity. (Obviously a saving throw can be exciting, but I think it's rare for the players to care whether it's a root or a vine or a ledge or a pond at the bottom of the cliff or . . . etc.)

The reason I think the map example is clearer for present purposes is because it invites us to directly tackle the question - when the players (through the play of their PCs) have indicated a real hope that the fiction is _X_, but it is not self-evident that it should be so, then how do we work out whether that hope is realised or not?


----------



## pemerton

Emerikol said:


> Assuming there is some item that is necessary to completing a mission (something not inconceivable as a real challenge if such a fantasy world existed),  that item is part of the world.  The player characters have a variety of choices.  Find the item, go back and seek other adventure, find another way to solve the mission.



That sounds reasonable as a general way of putting things.

But it does leave it open what, exactly, an action declaration to find the item looks like at the table, and how it is resolved.



Emerikol said:


> What I meant by "controlling" the fiction as a player character though is the ability to add to the campaign setting on the fly and as long as it doesn't dispute what is already known by the party it can stand.  Perhaps with some limits agreed to ahead of time on the flavor of campaign you are running.  I get the feeling that you want at least some of this ability.



Some of the recent posts from [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] and me have addressed this.

I am fairly relaxed with the players contributing to backstory and contributing to (what AbdulAlhazred called) "general story elements". This is generally handled fairly informally in our group, although some systems formalise some of it (eg Classic Traveller and Burning Wheel both use lifepath PC generation; and BW also formalises some other aspects of PC backgrounds, like relationships).

But when it comes to the immediate situation, and the PCs attempts to deal with it, I prefer action resolution mechanics to player-side narrative fiat. (As has come out in some of the posts, others posting in this thread are more relaxed than me about the latter - eg [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION], and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION].)

In my BW game, one of the PCs is dominated by a dark naga, and has been commanded to bring the naga Joachim the mage (a NPC, and the brother of one of the PCs) so that Joachim's blood can be spilled as tribute to the spirits. Unfortunately, just as the PC in question finally found Joachim (lying badly injured in a bed chamber in another mage's tower), an assassin cut Joachim's head off. (This was the result of the two PCs trying to find Joachim failing in their Speed checks to arrive their first.)

The player's action declaration was "I look around for a vessel - a jug or a chamber pot - to catch the blood in!" I set a difficulty for the check - I can't remember what it was, but not too hard as the likelihood of spotting a vessel like that in the bed chamber of a recuperating mage is quite high. The player made the check, and was successful - hence his PC was able to grab a jug and catch (some of) Joachim's blood in it.

Had the check failed, a range of options would be open to me as GM - from "You look around but there are no vessels" (which would require the player to think up some other way of trying to get the mage's blood) to "You see a jug, but the fleeing assassin knocks it to the ground before you can grab it, and it smashes into pieces" (which eg allows for the use of mending magic to try and get the jug back) to who-knows-what.

This is an example of what I mean by letting the action declaration be resolved _without_ having recourse to the GM's pre-authored notes/setting.

The setting is being established by reference to the player's action declaration - it is because the player's action declaration succeeded that it has been established that there is a jug in the bed chamber - but the player did not have a power of fiat narration. He had to make the check.

I also want to say that there are other ways that I perhaps could have resolved that situation: eg I could have just "said 'yes'" to the question "Is there a jug?" and framed the real obstacle as a physical check to catch the blood. (Last time I posted about this example, some posters suggested that alernative framing.)

The reason I did it the way I did was because, as best I could judge sitting there in the moment talking to the player, what he _really_ wanted was _that there be a vessel in the room_. And after we resolved that, I didn't call for any check to actually catch the blood in it. That would have been anti-climactic.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> As to whether the goal is resolved with one check - well, that depends a bit on system. In 4e, I could imagine the whole thing being a skill challenge: in the early stage of the challenge the PCs make contact with a sage and learn that there is a map that will show them the way to [whatever it is they care about]; and then subsequent checks bring them to a house, and a study; and then the final check determines whether or not the map is in the study (skill challenge success) or not (skill challenge failure - we'd have to imagine there have been two earlier failures - but it's plausible that one of them could have been a failure to learn at some earlier stage exactly which room of the house the map is hidden in!).



This is something else I just can't grasp.

The paragraph I quoted above holds all the elements that could make up an entire adventure...

- initial information gathering [the sage and related activities]
- travel to the adventure site [potential dangers or threats or encounters en route to the mansion]
- on-site information gathering [exploration around the mansion, and some surveillance]
- exploration part 1 [clearing out any unwanted or dangerous occupants from the mansion, clearing any traps, and maybe mapping out the place]
- exploration part 2 [searching for the map, along with checking for any other hidden secrets or loot the mansion might hold]
- travel back to town  [more potential dangers etc.]

...potentially representing several sessions of interesting play, and blows it all off with one skill challenge.

This is fine for what I call "mini-dungeoning", a method I use if I need to quickly update a character who's been retired for a few years wherein what would otherwise be full adventures get boiled down to a few dice rolls; but to run the main campaign this way just smacks of "I want to get this campaign over with ASAP".



> The reason I think the map example is clearer for present purposes is because it invites us to directly tackle the question - when the players (through the play of their PCs) have indicated a real hope that the fiction is _X_, but it is not self-evident that it should be so, then how do we work out whether that hope is realised or not?



Well, step one is to play it all out in a lot more detail than just a single skill challenge.   Ideally, in the end we want to come away knowing in the fiction not only _whether_ that hope is realized but _how_ it was realized; and what other interesting stories might have occurred along the way to getting to this point.

Lan-"granularity is your friend"-efan


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> This is something else I just can't grasp.
> 
> The paragraph I quoted above holds all the elements that could make up an entire adventure...
> 
> - initial information gathering [the sage and related activities]
> - travel to the adventure site [potential dangers or threats or encounters en route to the mansion]
> - on-site information gathering [exploration around the mansion, and some surveillance]
> - exploration part 1 [clearing out any unwanted or dangerous occupants from the mansion, clearing any traps, and maybe mapping out the place]
> - exploration part 2 [searching for the map, along with checking for any other hidden secrets or loot the mansion might hold]
> - travel back to town  [more potential dangers etc.]
> 
> ...potentially representing several sessions of interesting play, and blows it all off with one skill challenge.



How long do you think that would take? I didn't offer any conjecture. A complexity 5 skill challenge (12 successes before 3 failures) could take anywhere from 45 minutes to 2+ hours to resolve, depending on details.

But why would I worry about that? It's not like I'm going to run out of interesting stuff.



Lanefan said:


> Ideally, in the end we want to come away knowing in the fiction not only _whether_ that hope is realized but _how_ it was realized; and what other interesting stories might have occurred along the way to getting to this point.



Well, a skill challenge will answer those questions.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> I think the more the map turns from a dungeon map in the classic sense to a wilderness or town map, the less likely Gygaxian-type "solve the maze" agency will be preserved.




Agreed.



> The key issue to me seems to be "what is a roleplaying challlenge?"
> 
> ...(snip)...
> 
> But what happens when the GM is not inclined to say "yes"? In the fiction, that corresponds to the NPC potentially rejecting the PC's offer/request. If "roleplaying challenge" means that the player has to play his/her PC in a way that persuades the GM of the successful wooing (or whatever) then that's not really what I'm into. This is when I prefer to toggle from "saying 'yes'" to rolling the dice.




I understand. So the NPC is framed as a stickler for order and presents himself an incorruptible. The PCs attempt to bribe him, you don't say yes - you would instead toggle to rolling dice? 




Lanefan said:


> This is something else I just can't grasp.
> 
> The paragraph I quoted above holds all the elements that could make up an entire adventure...
> 
> - initial information gathering [the sage and related activities]
> - travel to the adventure site [potential dangers or threats or encounters en route to the mansion]
> - on-site information gathering [exploration around the mansion, and some surveillance]
> - exploration part 1 [clearing out any unwanted or dangerous occupants from the mansion, clearing any traps, and maybe mapping out the place]
> - exploration part 2 [searching for the map, along with checking for any other hidden secrets or loot the mansion might hold]
> - travel back to town  [more potential dangers etc.]
> 
> ...potentially representing several sessions of interesting play, and blows it all off with one skill challenge.
> 
> ...(snip)...
> 
> Well, step one is to play it all out in a lot more detail than just a single skill challenge.   Ideally, in the end we want to come away knowing in the fiction not only _whether_ that hope is realized but _how_ it was realized; and what other interesting stories might have occurred along the way to getting to this point.







pemerton said:


> How long do you think that would take? I didn't offer any conjecture. A complexity 5 skill challenge (12 successes before 3 failures) could take anywhere from 45 minutes to 2+ hours to resolve, depending on details.




This exact question by @_*Lanefan*_ is what I alluded to almost 10 pages back and in the other thread touching on the adjudication process.


----------



## Jester David

pemerton said:


> In my BW game, one of the PCs is dominated by a dark naga, and has been commanded to bring the naga Joachim the mage (a NPC, and the brother of one of the PCs) so that Joachim's blood can be spilled as tribute to the spirits. Unfortunately, just as the PC in question finally found Joachim (lying badly injured in a bed chamber in another mage's tower), an assassin cut Joachim's head off. (This was the result of the two PCs trying to find Joachim failing in their Speed checks to arrive their first.)



They failed their speed check. But what set the DC of the check?

In short, what was the terrain like between the home of the dark naga and the mage tower? Were there multiple routes that could have been taken? Could there have been the main road patrolled by the king's guard that is slow but safe or a faster route crossing overland but passing through a fetid swamp, which would have a higher chance of monster encounter?

That's what worldbuilding is for. Setting the stage and presenting the world



pemerton said:


> The player's action declaration was "I look around for a vessel - a jug or a chamber pot - to catch the blood in!" I set a difficulty for the check - I can't remember what it was, but not too hard as the likelihood of spotting a vessel like that in the bed chamber of a recuperating mage is quite high. The player made the check, and was successful - hence his PC was able to grab a jug and catch (some of) Joachim's blood in it.



Your decision that a jug or vessel would be common in the tower of a recuperating mage was worldbuilding. 

After all, who is to say wizards wouldn't live austere lives like monks with few creature comforts? Or avoid having liquids in their homes to avoid damaging their books? Or use most of their vessels for alchemical experiments, thus making a clean vessel rare? Or even, being a nerdy bachelor, have a slovenly home full of dirty dishes piling up in the unkempt sink. 

Heck, even having the wizard live in a tower rather than a small hut or an apartment above a greengrocer is the result of worldbuilding.


----------



## Jester David

pemerton said:


> Unfortunately, just as the PC in question finally found Joachim (lying badly injured in a bed chamber in another mage's tower), an assassin cut Joachim's head off. (This was the result of the two PCs trying to find Joachim failing in their Speed checks to arrive their first.)






pemerton said:


> The player's action declaration was "I look around for a vessel - a jug or a chamber pot - to catch the blood in!" I set a difficulty for the check - I can't remember what it was, but not too hard as the likelihood of spotting a vessel like that in the bed chamber of a recuperating mage is quite high. The player made the check, and was successful - hence his PC was able to grab a jug and catch (some of) Joachim's blood in it.
> 
> Had the check failed, a range of options would be open to me as GM - from "You look around but there are no vessels" (which would require the player to think up some other way of trying to get the mage's blood) to "You see a jug, but the fleeing assassin knocks it to the ground before you can grab it, and it smashes into pieces" (which eg allows for the use of mending magic to try and get the jug back) to who-knows-what.
> 
> This is an example of what I mean by letting the action declaration be resolved _without_ having recourse to the GM's pre-authored notes/setting.




Out of morbid curiosity, why an assassin? Was that just because they failed their Speed check? Did you roll randomly to determine if an assassin appeared or was that the result of previous story decisions? Why did the assassin cut their head off rather than resorting to, say, poisoned food or a dart?


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> Oh, most definitely guilty as charged, y'r honour.
> 
> Something like that, and I was making it up as I typed it.  It wasn't drawn from actual play.
> 
> What I was trying to do was come up with a hypothetical situation that could illustrate what amounts to a butterfly effect within the game world, where a seemingly minor or irrelevant bit of PC action [here and now] sooner or later leads to major repercussions [somewhere else later] that may or may not come back to affect the PCs at some point; and if the PCs do end up being affected they'll have to work hard and do some digging to be able to connect the dots between initial cause and eventual effect.
> 
> If you can think of a better example of a situation where events go in this order...
> 
> 1. one or more PCs does something that, unknown to them and almost certainly unintentionally, pushes over a domino (_in my previous example, the PCs unknowingly pull a spy away from her duties_)
> 2. dominoes continue to fall elsewhere without the PCs' knowledge until... (_in my previous example, the spy was thus not where she needed to be to prevent a series of unfortunate events_)
> 3. ...a falling domino somehow affects one or more PCs (_in my previous example, the spy fingers the PCs as being responsible for her dereliction of duty and suddenly they're wanted criminals_)
> 
> ...then I'm all ears.
> 
> Lanefan




Sorry if it seemed like I was criticizing your example....that's not what I meant. I simply took it to be a quick off the cuff example, and so I didn't think it would be right to compare it to a more detailed version as some kind of analysis on two approaches to the game. 

I'm sure I have had similar evnts occur in my game....where the PCs do one thing that somehow triggers certain events without their knowledge....but I can't think of any examples now. I'll give it some thought and see if I can come up with something.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> I agree with your rhetorical question, but I don't think that - on it's own - that settles the approach to resolution.




I simply asked it because the example seems incomplete. What is the point of the map being hidden? Why are the PCs searching for the map? If the map was elsewhere....perhaps in the war room of the orc chief or whatever sensible location the fiction may allow, would that still be considered denying player agency? 

I think that the incompleteness of the example (or at least when it is repeated; as I said, if more details were initially offered, they've long since been forgotten/overlooked) is what is causing a lot of confusion about what the example is meant to show. 

Hence why some posters keep seeing it as an example of a player authoring a solution to the challenge at hand. 



pemerton said:


> I think your last sentence _may_ have misfired a little bit - I think we agree that players sometimes at least sometimes can "control obstacle resolution" - eg if the obstacle is an orc, player action declaration can result in removal of the obstacle.




Sure. There are established ways that the game mechanics work (allowing for some variance from system to system, but we can assume each one has mechanics in place for failure/success determination of actions). Again, to go with the orc example....what the player can do about the orc is indeed constrained. He cannot simply attack the orc if it is too far, or on higher ground, or what have you. There are other factors that must be addressed prior to him making the attack, which then may succeed or not, and even if it succeeds, more attacks may be required to achieve the desired result. 




pemerton said:


> I think some of @_*AbdulAlhazred*_'s posts have been really helpful for trying to convey what I feel is a fairly straightforward spirit of play, but which seems less intuitive to some posters. (I'm not saying that you're one of those posters - nor denying that you are, as I'm not sure and I don't think it matters!) What I'm trying to get at is the sense of when a particular goal is at issue, or up for grabs, in a particular situation.




I'm following the style of play you are describing. I don't find it to be less intuitive or all that difficult to follow. I think familiarity with the specific game mechanics would likely help, and I am only passing familiar with Dungeon World. And my experience with Burning Wheel consists solely of conversations I've had with you. But in a general sense, I am following. 

My post was an attempt to point out why the example of the map wasn't doing what you may have hoped. 



pemerton said:


> So in my Traveller game - to go with the _alien life_ example - there is no "every time he enters a room". To elaborate on that: of course, in the fiction, the character comes and goes from rooms, vehicles, etc. But at the table, when we're playing the game, we don't worry about that (eg he's been staying at the Travellers Aid Society - at least up to date, that has mattered only as a way of establishing his weekly living expenses). When I present the ingame situation to the players - when I present the _framing_, that is - my goal is that something they care about is already at issue in the situation, which will motivate some sort of action declaration.




Sure, I said every time he walks into the room, but I think you know I mean at any time that it may be permissible to make such a check, even if it doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense. 

Now, the example you provided (which I did not copy just to keep things a little more brief) paints a better picture. I 



pemerton said:


> There are posters on ENworld (one of them has me blocked, so I can't invite him into the conversation) who think that the method you describe - ie narrating the root - is impermissible in a true RPG.




I'm sure there are. There are always examples. But I think that this particular example is more an exception than the norm. Most GMs that I know and interact with would 



pemerton said:


> But I don't think it establishes a very robust pressure point for distinguishing approaches, because most D&D players probably use the saving throw rules, and if they do then you're forced either to allow the narration of the root, or to adopt a theory of hit points as "uber-meat" that many people find implausible. And the root is not in itself an interesting element of play, generating signficant emotional investment and player activity. (Obviously a saving throw can be exciting, but I think it's rare for the players to care whether it's a root or a vine or a ledge or a pond at the bottom of the cliff or . . . etc.)




No, I meant it as a very basic example of what you were talking about that may make sense to folks who are more firmly planted in the D&D style of play. I was not trying to create a compelling example that would involve emotioinal investment or personal stakes (other than the PC not falling). It was intentionally basic, as was the map example. 

I don't think most D&D players or DMs would see the example that I offered as the player *abusing* his power and narrating something into the fiction via an action and associated roll that allows him to overcome an obstacle. Abuse being the main concern most seem to have in this regard, that's what I was hoping to bridge a bit. 



pemerton said:


> The reason I think the map example is clearer for present purposes is because it invites us to directly tackle the question - when the players (through the play of their PCs) have indicated a real hope that the fiction is _X_, but it is not self-evident that it should be so, then how do we work out whether that hope is realised or not?




That's a good way to put it. But again, I find the map example to be to vague. "Let me look in the bread bin....wow, I found it!" just seems meh no matter what system or mechanics are used. I am not advocating having the players simply walk from room to room and search until they're in the correct room and get a success....seems pretty boring to me.


----------



## BryonD

> One reason I dislike GM-driven RPGing is that these tend to be subordinated in play - so my PC's goal (to borrow an example from Christopher Kubasik might be to woo a princess, but I spend my time hunting for the GM's McGuffin. There's a lot of discussion on these boards about "murder hobos", but I think a certain approach to play naturally tends to lead to it - if there is no significant scope in play for players to express their PCs' dramatic needs, it's natural that their range of character motivations will tend to narrow into ones that they can express.



This is a mistake.
I can't know, but I'm willing to presume that you have experienced it (I'm guessing more than once) and thus presumed this is the way it is for everyone.

But if your claim was correct then the games would not be fun.
If the game was not fun, few people would play it.
If few people played it, it would not be a dominate format of play.
It is a dominate format of play.
A contradiction is reached, demonstrating the starting presumption to be incorrect.

If a player wants to do one thing but instead finds themselves forced to chase the GMs McGuffin, then one of two very broad things has happened:
The player and GM failed to mutually understand the game expectations  or
The GM sucks.
Either one of those things will make any game system bad.

I can readily reject the idea that the problem you identify occurs in games run by me or many other games I have played in.  I see it as the GM's job to make players beg for more game.  The behavior you describe is the opposite of that.
I have seen the results you describe.  But there are other causes.  And I solved the problem by moving to better gaming groups (or just better GMs)


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## Emerikol

pemerton said:


> That sounds reasonable as a general way of putting things.
> 
> But it does leave it open what, exactly, an action declaration to find the item looks like at the table, and how it is resolved.
> 
> Some of the recent posts from [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] and me have addressed this.




So I believe I've mistaken your position for something like Iserith's and the reality is it is not vastly different from mine.  If I did not know something about the contents of a room, I would of course adjudicate it the way you did though I might roll behind the screen and just say "you see the jug" or "you can't find one".   The reality is that in some cases I will know.  In others I may have to make a probabilistic DC based on what I know about the owner of the room (with a nod to the Jester's comments).

I enjoy world building.  I think a DM that doesn't know his world very well is just not very interesting as a content provider.  I grow bored quickly.  If I know the DM has a deep understanding of his world, I still don't expect him to know absolutely every last detail.  But the better he knows his world the better he can offer a DC that is consistent with his world.  

When I play and I believe when my players play in my games, we generally want to do several things...
1.  Explore the world in general.
2.  Interact with NPCs and build alliances and of course inevitably acquire some enemies.  A hero is only as good as his villainous enemy.
3.  Dungeons and adventures while interesting and flavorful puzzle combats are not the end all of what we do.  As the players grow in power their adventures tend to align with their campaign objectives.  They may be trying to build a temple to their God or a fortress in the wilderness.  
4.  Eventually become a mover and shaker in the world.  

It really is very Gygaxian.  I just loved the game as he imagined it and never went away from that.  And if I got it wrong, then it was a happy mistake because it turned out well for me and my players.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Which doesn't really matter since implied re-rolls if you don't get the two 15+ stats is in the PHB.  Method I has a 42% chance of giving two 15's by the way, so few re-rolls are necessary.
> 
> http://anydice.com/articles/4d6-drop-lowest/



That still means have your characters are 'unable to survive', which is of course ridiculous. You have pretty much the same chances of surviving with 6 12's in 1e as you do with the 'most likely array' (a 16, a 14, etc). I just don't believe Gygax. Sure, you can keep rerolling and using favorable methods, you could roll 3d6 until you got a paladin (I did it once, it used up several sheets of paper, 12 yr olds do strange things). 



> It makes quite a bit of difference.  You get AC bonuses, spell advantage for magic classes.  Extra system shock and survival roll chances.  And very importantly, exp bonus if you get a 16 in your prime stat.




Meh, characters of levels 1-3 that are making system shock rolls, and for whom it is critical what their 3rd or 4th choice spell was are already in a bad place. It will help you, SLIGHTLY. I mean, a couple 18s in say CON and DEX will basically be about as good as an extra level, which is nothing to sneeze at (at least at low levels), but even that's just shading the odds in your favor. It is far from being enough to call a character with the 16 and the 14 (or even just a couple 13s) 'unplayable'. 

Now, there's a DIFFERENT problem here with 1e. That problem is that, for casters at least, what is quite playable at low level is garbage at high level. A 12 INT wizard will do fine for the first half dozen levels, until spell level limits coupled with a narrow spell selection turns him into somewhat of a joke at higher levels. Actually, such a character is MUCH more on par with the average fighter than the wizard with a 16 INT. Even THAT wizard however is quite gimped above 15th level (not a big problem, but it kinda sucks to survive to that level range and then be denied the real goods).

So, I can see Gary's point, if he's basically gotten to the point of starting people at level 5 and assuming all high level guys are basically casters, then maybe you want to just skip to the good stuff? He sure had a weird way of saying it...

Anyway, for what it is worth, you've won the point on the PHB. I am sure we read that paragraph ONCE in 1978, laughed heartily (or scratched our heads) and went on with things.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> This is something else I just can't grasp.
> 
> The paragraph I quoted above holds all the elements that could make up an entire adventure...
> 
> - initial information gathering [the sage and related activities]
> - travel to the adventure site [potential dangers or threats or encounters en route to the mansion]
> - on-site information gathering [exploration around the mansion, and some surveillance]
> - exploration part 1 [clearing out any unwanted or dangerous occupants from the mansion, clearing any traps, and maybe mapping out the place]
> - exploration part 2 [searching for the map, along with checking for any other hidden secrets or loot the mansion might hold]
> - travel back to town  [more potential dangers etc.]
> 
> ...potentially representing several sessions of interesting play, and blows it all off with one skill challenge.
> 
> This is fine for what I call "mini-dungeoning", a method I use if I need to quickly update a character who's been retired for a few years wherein what would otherwise be full adventures get boiled down to a few dice rolls; but to run the main campaign this way just smacks of "I want to get this campaign over with ASAP".
> 
> Well, step one is to play it all out in a lot more detail than just a single skill challenge.   Ideally, in the end we want to come away knowing in the fiction not only _whether_ that hope is realized but _how_ it was realized; and what other interesting stories might have occurred along the way to getting to this point.
> 
> Lan-"granularity is your friend"-efan




IMHO it all boils down to overall pacing and what you consider to be the function of this adventure within the overall story arc it is part of. In HoML I have some considerable notes and guidelines for myself about what constitutes action which is worth casting into what forms. Some things contain essentially no interesting conflict (IE the stakes are either non-existent or so trivial that, in the context of an adventure game, they don't deserve to be addressed). If something in this category requires addressing at all, say for narrative consistency, then it is an 'interlude', no dice are used at all, its just a brief bit of narration by one or more participants.

If its more than that, then we have to look more closely. Something prefatory to an action sequence (combat or similar) then it could well be a single SC. In the example case perhaps getting the map is a lead up to the main action (something like the Tibet scene in Indiana Jones, there's conflict but its just getting us set up for the main action). An SC could also simply be the non-combat part of getting to the location of some other action. Several SCs could also CONSTITUTE the main action if its simply not really a combat-heavy adventure. Most likely they'll be interspersed with combats and maybe interludes if there's a pause in the action.

So, I can't gauge how I would handle what you're describing as potentially extensive action. I do like to cut to the chase, that's something that the 4e-like structure of my game does for me.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> That still means have your characters are 'unable to survive', which is of course ridiculous. You have pretty much the same chances of surviving with 6 12's in 1e as you do with the 'most likely array' (a 16, a 14, etc). I just don't believe Gygax. Sure, you can keep rerolling and using favorable methods, you could roll 3d6 until you got a paladin (I did it once, it used up several sheets of paper, 12 yr olds do strange things).




You're seriously claiming that no bonuses at all is pretty much the same as having two higher AC and +1 to initiative?  Or pretty much the same as +2 hit points per levels, which allows survival of more and larger hits.  Or the same as +1 damage when fighting things with an average of 4.5 hit points(orcs), 3.5 hit points(goblins) or 2.5(kobolds)?  Or a +2 on saves vs. magic?  Or +25% to reaction rolls, which could mean life or death for the entire party, not just you?

And you keep saying 16, 14, when the game implies that you re-roll until you get a 15/15 or 16/15 or even better.  16/14 is the average, but the 1e PHB states that average isn't good enough.



> Meh, characters of levels 1-3 that are making system shock rolls, and for whom it is critical what their 3rd or 4th choice spell was are already in a bad place. It will help you, SLIGHTLY. I mean, a couple 18s in say CON and DEX will basically be about as good as an extra level, which is nothing to sneeze at (at least at low levels), but even that's just shading the odds in your favor. It is far from being enough to call a character with the 16 and the 14 (or even just a couple 13s) 'unplayable'.




Not unplayable, just more likely to die and not have an even chance on the field.  You needed two 15s or higher for that. 



> Anyway, for what it is worth, you've won the point on the PHB. I am sure we read that paragraph ONCE in 1978, laughed heartily (or scratched our heads) and went on with things.



Lots of people skipped or changed a lot of things back in those days.  We sure did.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> The reason I think the map example is clearer for present purposes is because it invites us to directly tackle the question - when the players (through the play of their PCs) have indicated a real hope that the fiction is _X_, but it is not self-evident that it should be so, then how do we work out whether that hope is realised or not?




I'm sure someone has mentioned this before (haven't managed to read every single post), but if the finding of the map is a MUST in order for the PCs to get from A to B in the adventure, then the likelihood of finding said map will be 100%. DMs (and especially the ones who have invested much time in pre-authorship) do not generally attempt to sabotage their campaigns with having the PCs fail and unable to progress the story just because they couldn't find a map.

The challenge of finding the map might require the solving of a puzzle, resource cost (combat and/or otherwise) or making an unlikely alliance - but not GM-forced failure. Of course, that doesn't mean that the map will be found in any privy the PCs visit. It still has to be a challenge.
Given the important of the map, I imagine it would require the use of intelligence on the part of the player/s - (combat tactics or otherwise i.e. where to search)


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> I understand. So the NPC is framed as a stickler for order and presents himself an incorruptible. The PCs attempt to bribe him, you don't say yes - you would instead toggle to rolling dice?



Yes.

How the difficulty for that check is set depends upon system. In BW, the NPC's Will is relevant. In Cortex+, the NPC gets a reaction roll to resist the attempt, and various traits might contribute to the relevant dice pool. In Traveller, the referee is encouraged by the rules to impose appropriate modifiers - given it's a 2d6 system for most rolls, I think that most modifiers have to be confined to +/-1 or 2 or else they'll swamp the dice. (This is also the band of modifiers that Moldvay Basic uses for its 2d6 reaction rolls.) In 4e there are guidelines for setting DCs in the context of a skill challenge which would factor in.



Sadras said:


> This exact question by @_*Lanefan*_ is what I alluded to almost 10 pages back and in the other thread touching on the adjudication process.



I'm sorry, I don't remember the allusion. Are you agreeing with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] that you would want it to take longer in play?


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> IMHO it all boils down to overall pacing and what you consider to be the function of this adventure within the overall story arc it is part of.



The adventure might in fact have no function in the overall story arc at all, but instead just be a side quest or even a red herring.  Doesn't mean playing it through will be any less fun in the here and now.



> If its more than that, then we have to look more closely. Something prefatory to an action sequence (combat or similar) then it could well be a single SC. In the example case perhaps getting the map is a lead up to the main action (something like the Tibet scene in Indiana Jones, there's conflict but its just getting us set up for the main action).



The Tibet scene in Indiana Jones was obviously important enough to that story that they bothered filming it and having the actors play it all through rather than just have a character relate it as exposition at some point.

So for a similar scene in a D&D game, I'd say play it through in detail.  Don't just reduce it to a skill challenge, as that kinda cheapens the whole thing.  Play out the combat, play out the role-play, play out the exploration (though in that particular scene there really isn't much) - in short, take the time!



> An SC could also simply be the non-combat part of getting to the location of some other action. Several SCs could also CONSTITUTE the main action if its simply not really a combat-heavy adventure. Most likely they'll be interspersed with combats and maybe interludes if there's a pause in the action.



I don't think this is your intention, but when you describe this it comes across as though you just want to blast through the campaign and get on to the next one.

When pemerton describes a skill challenge from one of his games he makes it sound very complex and involved and time-consuming, but my reading of the 4e DMG along with some adventure modules gives me the impression that a skill challenge would normally be pretty fast at the table - a goal is set, the players state how they're approaching it and what they're doing, the dice are rolled (and then adjusted or rerolled based on how the players make use of the mechanical benefits of their PCs), and the DM tells them how they did.  If you're saying you could boil the main action of a whole adventure down to several skill challenges that also means you could easily do the whole adventure in one session; though likely skipping over a huge amount of interesting detail in the process.



> So, I can't gauge how I would handle what you're describing as potentially extensive action. I do like to cut to the chase, that's something that the 4e-like structure of my game does for me.



Quite the opposite to my stance, which is that if I can take something relatively trivial such as finding a map or crossing a desert and make a decent playable adventure out of it, I will.

So - the ongoing story has somehow determined there's a map needs finding in a mansion?  OK, that mansion's about to become a full adventure site; and out comes Tegal Manor... 

In other words I'm looking for interesting and fun ways to keep the campaign going longer, not to make it shorter.

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Jester David said:


> Out of morbid curiosity, why an assassin? Was that just because they failed their Speed check? Did you roll randomly to determine if an assassin appeared or was that the result of previous story decisions? Why did the assassin cut their head off rather than resorting to, say, poisoned food or a dart?



The assassin is a sometime-PC, from a player who occasionally drops into the campaign. Her most enduring belief was that she would kill Joachim, her former master (because of unspeakable things that he did to her when she was his apprentice). From memory, she actually did the assassinating using a ritual sword she had taken from an orcish servant of the dark, which she'd been carrying around in her backpack for some time and which seemed apt for the deed. (She has sword skill, but not poisoning or throwing skill.)

On this occasion, I was playing the assassin as a NPC (with input, where appropriate, from the other players). The other PCs had drugged her and tied her up, so that she couldn't get to Joachim. But then they got lost in the catacombs trying to sneak into the mage's tower (failed Catacombs-wise). So the assassin woke, and headed to the tower - I can't quite remeber all the details now, but I know she had a chance to taunt the two PCs on her way there (at the table, this was my way of narrating the consequence of failure ie that the assassin has woken and so the competition to get to Joachim first was back on).



Jester David said:


> They failed their speed check. But what set the DC of the check?
> 
> In short, what was the terrain like between the home of the dark naga and the mage tower? Were there multiple routes that could have been taken? Could there have been the main road patrolled by the king's guard that is slow but safe or a faster route crossing overland but passing through a fetid swamp, which would have a higher chance of monster encounter?
> 
> That's what worldbuilding is for. Setting the stage and presenting the world



See above. In the end, it was opposed Speed checks. I think the assassin may have had an advantage die from using her Witch's Flight spell to get up to the tower window, but I'm not sure now. 



Jester David said:


> Your decision that a jug or vessel would be common in the tower of a recuperating mage was worldbuilding.
> 
> After all, who is to say wizards wouldn't live austere lives like monks with few creature comforts? Or avoid having liquids in their homes to avoid damaging their books? Or use most of their vessels for alchemical experiments, thus making a clean vessel rare? Or even, being a nerdy bachelor, have a slovenly home full of dirty dishes piling up in the unkempt sink.
> 
> Heck, even having the wizard live in a tower rather than a small hut or an apartment above a greengrocer is the result of worldbuilding.



I think the past (X >> 20) pages of this thread have made clear what its topic is - namely, the role in RPGIng of GM pre-authored setting. The tower was not pre-authored - as this post explains, I introduced it into the fiction in the first session, because (i) a player's action declaration made me have to establish a wizard's home, and (ii) one of the PCs had the Instinct "Cast Falconskin if I fall", and a tower seemed like an interesting place to fall from.

As far as the vessel was concerned, it was already well-established that this particular mage lived in a rather well-appointed tower and hosted pleasant dinner parties.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> I'm sorry, I don't remember the allusion. Are you agreeing with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] that you would want it to take longer in play?




Well it's a pacing thing - so at times I would stretch it out and other times fast track it. Stretching a challenge out does lend itself to a DM adjudicating immediate failure to certain action declarations (due to secret backstory) as the exploration and social activities are lengthened and not constrained to but a single skill challenge.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> When pemerton describes a skill challenge from one of his games he makes it sound very complex and involved and time-consuming, but my reading of the 4e DMG along with some adventure modules gives me the impression that a skill challenge would normally be pretty fast at the table - a goal is set, the players state how they're approaching it and what they're doing, the dice are rolled (and then adjusted or rerolled based on how the players make use of the mechanical benefits of their PCs), and the DM tells them how they did.



Each toll in a skill challenge should change the fiction. (I think this was pretty obvious in the DMG - it was spelled out explicitly in the DMG2.) So it's not about totalling up the rolls.

So each check has to be framed, stakes established, roll made, consequences narrated. Plus there is often bridging narration to manage continuity etc.

I should add here, I'm talking primarilyi about complexity 3 to 5 skill challenges (ie 8 to 12 successes required). A small complexity 4 skill challenge may not be as intricate - that said, there is currently an active skill challenge thread on the <5E sub-forum which has some illustrations of how even a low complexity skill challenge can involve significant evolution in the fiction.


----------



## Manbearcat

pemerton said:


> Each toll in a skill challenge should change the fiction. (I think this was pretty obvious in the DMG - it was spelled out explicitly in the DMG2.) So it's not about totalling up the rolls.
> 
> So each check has to be framed, stakes established, roll made, consequences narrated. Plus there is often bridging narration to manage continuity etc.
> 
> I should add here, I'm talking primarilyi about complexity 3 to 5 skill challenges (ie 8 to 12 successes required). A small complexity 4 skill challenge may not be as intricate - that said, there is currently an active skill challenge thread on the <5E sub-forum which has some illustrations of how even a low complexity skill challenge can involve significant evolution in the fiction.




I don’t understand how after a million, in-depth posts on the subject there is still this fundamental disconnect on how 4e Skill Challenges work. 

WHAT SKILL CHALLENGES ARE NOT:

* an exercise in dice rolling where the fiction doesn’t matter

* a bunch of tallied up dice rolls then the GM tells a story

WHAT SKILL CHALLENGES ARE:

1) Initially framed situation with something at stake and an approach on how to attain it or avoid it.

2) Player(s) action declaration on how to handle present obstacle.

3) Dice resolve that action declaration.

4) This micro success or failure LEADS TO A CHANGE IN THE GAMESTATE. The fictional situation evolves either positively (and a new complication emerges later emerges) or negatively (and the present situation snowballs either into something new and dire or the present situation escalated)

5) This continues until the conflict resolution framework says the scene is over (won or lost), at which time the gamestate changes dynamically based on (1) and the context of the aggregate fiction 
of the SC.

6) The above should yield a dramatic arc.


----------



## Jester David

pemerton said:


> I think the past (X >> 20) pages of this thread have made clear what its topic is - namely, the role in RPGIng of GM pre-authored setting. The tower was not pre-authored - as this post explains, I introduced it into the fiction in the first session, because (i) a player's action declaration made me have to establish a wizard's home, and (ii) one of the PCs had the Instinct "Cast Falconskin if I fall", and a tower seemed like an interesting place to fall from.
> 
> As far as the vessel was concerned, it was already well-established that this particular mage lived in a rather well-appointed tower and hosted pleasant dinner parties.



If the tower was established in the first session, it _was_ pre-authored. 

Again, by limiting worldbuilding to stuff authored "by the GM" you're imposing an artificial limit. Worldbuilding is the creation of the setting and its purpose is the same regardless of the source: the GM, the GM and the players, the players, a campaign setting, a novelist, or a random table. 

The existence of a tower was still you. The player wanted a home and another player had an Instinct related to falling. So you made a tower. It could have easily been a dwelling built into the side of a cliff, a house on a tree, a keep on a floating island, a hut on chicken legs, a house constructed on the ruins of an ancient bridge, or just a small manor atop a cliff. 
Because of the conventions established of wizards (the trope, which is a form of existing worldbuilding) you chose a tower. You made the worldbuilding decision that mages in your setting live in mage towers and match the tropes rather than subverting them.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Sadras said:


> I'm sure someone has mentioned this before (haven't managed to read every single post), but if the finding of the map is a MUST in order for the PCs to get from A to B in the adventure, then the likelihood of finding said map will be 100%. DMs (and especially the ones who have invested much time in pre-authorship) do not generally attempt to sabotage their campaigns with having the PCs fail and unable to progress the story just because they couldn't find a map.
> 
> The challenge of finding the map might require the solving of a puzzle, resource cost (combat and/or otherwise) or making an unlikely alliance - but not GM-forced failure. Of course, that doesn't mean that the map will be found in any privy the PCs visit. It still has to be a challenge.
> Given the important of the map, I imagine it would require the use of intelligence on the part of the player/s - (combat tactics or otherwise i.e. where to search)




While I agree with you overall...if finding the map is meant to be a challenge, then make it so, if not then don’t have it be hidden...I am often amazed at how many old modules I read through that do exactly what you describe in your first paragraph. Some element of the story or location is only accessible by one method and if the PCs are incapable of using that method, or if they fail their attempt, then that’s it. Usually, this was the presence of a secret door that was the only way to reach the final section of the dungeon. It seriously happened a lot, and the game kind of assumes an “oh well, you failed” attitude.

I think it’s an artifact of what the game was in those early days that has carried over a bit because of how often those materials are looked at for inspiration or guidance in adventure design. I have played in games where things have ground to a halt and we’re all just wandering the entire dungeon again trying to find whatever it is that we mossed that will allow us to complete the module. When that happens, I find it to be the most frustrating and boring experience. And 9 times out of 10, the DM eventually goes “okay so you go back to the master bedroom and you twist the southeastern bedpost counter clockwise and the nearby bookcase slides aside to reveal a tunnel”. 

For me, that’s an awful gaming experience. And although modern game design has largely moved past it, it’s lingered enough in theh old material or in homebrew games of major fans of the old material that I’ve come across it. I make a conscious effort to make sure my games don’t fall into this trap.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> While I agree with you overall...if finding the map is meant to be a challenge, then make it so, if not then don’t have it be hidden...I am often amazed at how many old modules I read through that do exactly what you describe in your first paragraph. Some element of the story or location is only accessible by one method and if the PCs are incapable of using that method, or if they fail their attempt, then that’s it. Usually, this was the presence of a secret door that was the only way to reach the final section of the dungeon. It seriously happened a lot, and the game kind of assumes an “oh well, you failed” attitude.



Exactly, and from my perspective there's nothing wrong with this at all.  Overall mission failure, sometimes with downstream consequences, is a perfectly valid outcome.



> I think it’s an artifact of what the game was in those early days that has carried over a bit because of how often those materials are looked at for inspiration or guidance in adventure design. I have played in games where things have ground to a halt and we’re all just wandering the entire dungeon again trying to find whatever it is that we mossed that will allow us to complete the module. When that happens, I find it to be the most frustrating and boring experience. And 9 times out of 10, the DM eventually goes “okay so you go back to the master bedroom and you twist the southeastern bedpost counter clockwise and the nearby bookcase slides aside to reveal a tunnel”.



I'd be the other 1 time then; as I'll let 'em wander as long as they want to wander, knowing full well that eventually they'll either find what they're after or pack it in and go back to town.  It's not like most parties don't have some heavy-duty means of finding things - divinations, devices, whatever - so I don't have that much sympathy.

Also, nothing says they have to succeed every time. 



> For me, that’s an awful gaming experience. And although modern game design has largely moved past it, it’s lingered enough in theh old material or in homebrew games of major fans of the old material that I’ve come across it. I make a conscious effort to make sure my games don’t fall into this trap.



Success after frustration and effort is always much more satisfying than success without any.

Lanefan


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> Exactly, and from my perspective there's nothing wrong with this at all.  Overall mission failure, sometimes with downstream consequences, is a perfectly valid outcome.
> 
> I'd be the other 1 time then; as I'll let 'em wander as long as they want to wander, knowing full well that eventually they'll either find what they're after or pack it in and go back to town.  It's not like most parties don't have some heavy-duty means of finding things - divinations, devices, whatever - so I don't have that much sympathy.
> 
> Also, nothing says they have to succeed every time.
> 
> Success after frustration and effort is always much more satisfying than success without any.
> 
> Lanefan




I don't necessarily disagree with your points in a general way....failure can be fine, and frustration can be a motivator or can help add to emotional connection to the game.....but it's not about that. 

Let me put it this way. If you're playing a game, would you rather your character be dealing with something new....an unknown dungeon room, or a new part of a quest, or an interaction with a long sought NPC....or would you rather your character be walking through the cleared rooms of a dungeon waiting to roll high enough to find the secret door that leads to the rest of the adventure? 

Choose. 

Everyone's going to choose the first option every time. So shouldn't a goal of play be to try and maintain that throughout?


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> I'm sure someone has mentioned this before (haven't managed to read every single post), but if the finding of the map is a MUST in order for the PCs to get from A to B in the adventure, then the likelihood of finding said map will be 100%. DMs (and especially the ones who have invested much time in pre-authorship) do not generally attempt to sabotage their campaigns with having the PCs fail and unable to progress the story just because they couldn't find a map.





hawkeyefan said:


> if finding the map is meant to be a challenge, then make it so, if not then don’t have it be hidden...I am often amazed at how many old modules I read through that do exactly what you describe in your first paragraph. Some element of the story or location is only accessible by one method and if the PCs are incapable of using that method, or if they fail their attempt, then that’s it.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I have played in games where things have ground to a halt and we’re all just wandering the entire dungeon again trying to find whatever it is that we mossed that will allow us to complete the module.



These remarks seem oriented towards a style of play which is (in a broad sense) puzzle/mystery solving - CoC adventures can be like that, where if you don't solve the puzzle then you lose the adventure (in the sense that you can't continue) - or, alternatively, which is about playing through the pre-established story. 

In an approach to RPGing in which there is no _the adventure_ or _the module_, then it doesn't matter if the map is found or not. I think there are two main sub-types of such an approach. One is Gygaxian dungeoneering - if the PCs never find the map, then they don't get whatever dungeoneering opportunity it would provide, but that doesn't stop them sacking other parts of the dungeon and earning their XP.

The other is "indie"/"story now" style - where the significance of the map being hidden isn't because it is a puzzle-solving challenge, nor because it is a clue to get from A to B, but because something in the dramatic essence of the situation or the characters calls for a hidden map. If the map is discovered (eg by a successful Scavenging or Perception check) then that particular dramatic need is satisied, and things unfold one way. If the map is not discovered (eg because a player never finds his/her PC in a fictional context that allows the framing of a check to find it; or because a check is made but fails) then that dramatic need is frustrated, and the resulting complications lead to things unfolding a different way.


----------



## Sadras

hawkeyefan said:


> Let me put it this way. If you're playing a game, would you rather your character be dealing with something new....an unknown dungeon room, or a new part of a quest, or an interaction with a long sought NPC....or would you rather your character be walking through the cleared rooms of a dungeon waiting to roll high enough to find the secret door that leads to the rest of the adventure?




For me it will depend on the adventure.
For instance, at my table the PCs failed to solve a riddle of a planned were-terrorist attack within a city. They did not solve the cipher-poem in-time and the attacks occurred resulting in the killing of civilians, the destruction of an inn and were not able to capture/slay The Hound (the legendary mastermind leading the lycanthropes). I'm absolutely fine with that as the PCs met interesting NPCs, established a network within the city, dealt with the aftermath and obtained a few clues about the lycanthropes...etc. It also created a re-occurring villain for down the line.

I'm far less inclined to have PCs spend a session searching a manor for a map and coming out empty with nothing to show for it.


----------



## pemerton

Jester David said:


> If the tower was established in the first session, it _was_ pre-authored.



Did you actually read the post I linked to?

I'll quote it for you, to spare you the effort:



			
				pemerton posting as thurgon on rpg said:
			
		

> Jobe, having both nobility and sorcerers in his circles, and a +1D affiliation with both (from Mark of Privilege and a starting affiliation with a sorcerous cabal), initially thought of trying to make contact with the Gynarch of Hardby, the sorceress ruler of that city. But then he thought he might start a little lower in the pecking order, and so decided to make contact with the red-robed firemage Jabal (of the Cabal). With Circles 2 he attempted the Ob 2 check, and failed.
> 
> So, as the 3 PCs were sitting in the Green Dragon Inn (the inn of choice for sorcerers, out-of- towners and the like), putting out feelers to Jabal, a thug wearing a rigid leather breastplate and openly carrying a scimitar turned up with a message from Jabal: Leave town, now. You're marked. Halika noticed him looking at the feather sticking out from Jobe's pouch as he said that: it seemed that the curse had already struck!
> 
> Argument ensued, but attempts to persuade, and to intimidate, both failed, and they didn't want to start a fight in the inn. Once they got outside, however, with Athog (the thug) ready to escort them to the East Gate, the elf said something to provoke him to draw his scimitar by way of threat. The player of the elf decided that this was enough provocation to justify an honourable elf striking a blow, and brought his Brawling 5 to bear on the situation. This was the first and only combat of the session, which I decided to resolve as Bloody Versus. The elf had a 1D advantage from skills, plus the same from greater Reflex, and another bonus from somewhere else that I'm forgetting, although I gave Athog +1D for sword vs fist. In any event the elf won outright, successfully evading the sword and delivering a superficial wound to Athog as he grabbed his sword hand and forced him to the ground.
> 
> Halika helped herself to Athog's purse (+1D cash, and no longer being penniless) and scimitar, and they insisted that Athog take them to Jabal.
> 
> The trip to Jabal's tower took them through the narrow, winding streets of the city. When they got there, Jabal was suitably angry at his Igor-like servitor for letting them in, and at Athog for not running them out of town. They argued, although I don't think any social skill checks were actually made. Jabal explained that the curse on the feather was real, from a mummy in a desert tomb, and that he didn't want anything to do with Jobe while he was cursed. Jobe accepted his dressing down with suitable Base Humility, earning a fate point. (The second for the session from a character trait. During the exchange in the bar Halika, who as a one-time wizard's apprentice is Always in the Way, got in the way of Jobe doing something-or-other to earn a point.)
> 
> As the PCs left Jobe's tower, they noticed a dishevelled, wild-eyed figure coming down the stairs. This caused suitable speculation about the nature of Jabal's conspiracy with the person who had sold the feather to the peddler.



The peddler, the feather, the curse, Athog, Jabal, the tower, the dishevelled figure - all were authored during the course of the session.

The peddler, the feather, the tower and the dishevelled figure were authored by me as GM - they were elements of framing.

The curse was narrated by me following a failed Aura-Reading check on the feather.

Jabal was narrated by the player in the course of making a Circles check. Athog was narrated by me as a consequence of that check failing.

Despite what you may think, it is possible to run a RPG session without all the story elements having been made up in advance.



Jester David said:


> Again, by limiting worldbuilding to stuff authored "by the GM" you're imposing an artificial limit. Worldbuilding is the creation of the setting and its purpose is the same regardless of the source: the GM, the GM and the players, the players, a campaign setting, a novelist, or a random table.



None of this is correct.

I'm not interested in arguing the meaing of words - that's a tedious pastime that I'll leave to the pedants.

I'm interested in discussing a particular pheneomnon in RPGing - namely, GM pre-authorship of setting. If you don't think "worldbuilding" is an apt label for that, fine - in your imagination substitute some other term into the title of the thread.

If you think it makes no difference to the character of RPGing how, when and by whom setting elements are authored, then I don't know what to say! You're obviously looking for a _very__very_ different experience in RPGing from what I am.

The existence of a tower was still you. The player wanted a home and another player had an Instinct related to falling. So you made a tower. It could have easily been a dwelling built into the side of a cliff, a house on a tree, a keep on a floating island, a hut on chicken legs, a house constructed on the ruins of an ancient bridge, or just a small manor atop a cliff. 
Because of the conventions established of wizards (the trope, which is a form of existing worldbuilding) you chose a tower. You made the worldbuilding decision that mages in your setting live in mage towers and match the tropes rather than subverting them.[/QUOTE]


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> For instance, at my table the PCs failed to solve a riddle of a planned were-terrorist attack within a city. They did not solve the cipher-poem in-time and the attacks occurred resulting in the killing of civilians, the destruction of an inn and were not able to capture/slay The Hound (the legendary mastermind leading the lycanthropes). I'm absolutely fine with that as the PCs met interesting NPCs, established a network within the city, dealt with the aftermath and obtained a few clues about the lycanthropes...etc. It also created a re-occurring villain for down the line.



Reading this, it _seems_ like an example of GM-authored setting and backstory being a major driver of play, with at least some of that happening "behind the scenes".

The riddle, the terrorist attack, the lycanthropes, all seem to be story elements established by the GM.

Did the players know that a consequence of failing to solve the riddle would be the destruction of the inn etc?


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> These remarks seem oriented towards a style of play which is (in a broad sense) puzzle/mystery solving - CoC adventures can be like that, where if you don't solve the puzzle then you lose the adventure (in the sense that you can't continue) - or, alternatively, which is about playing through the pre-established story.




I hazard a guess that is how most DMs (including me) run their adventures (the second option). Certainly MiBG (Murder in Baldur's Gate) and LoftCS (Legacy of the Crystal Shard) were designed that way.



> The other is "indie"/"story now" style - where the significance of the map being hidden isn't because it is a puzzle-solving challenge, nor because it is a clue to get from A to B, but because something in the dramatic essence of the situation or the characters calls for a hidden map. If the map is discovered (eg by a successful Scavenging or Perception check) then that particular dramatic need is satisied, and things unfold one way. If the map is not discovered (eg because a player never finds his/her PC in a fictional context that allows the framing of a check to find it; or because a check is made but fails) then that dramatic need is frustrated, and the resulting complications lead to things unfolding a different way.




This echoes my preferred game play. Secret backstory in our table's lycanthrope storyline being that The Hound was a beloved mentor of one of the PCs. He (player) missed all the story-line clues, only to eventually have The Hound reveal himself when the party made themselves too troublesome for him to continue to ignore them and so confronted them revealing his nature. That was GM pre-authorship added onto player derived background. I suppose this could have been developed at the table but I wouldn't know where to begin. By doing it my way I was able to frame clues properly and set-up well-thought out situations and so when the big reveal occurred (4 years of RL game-time) the player loved it.
He could have solved it earlier and that would have been perfectly fine too. 

 EDIT: I'm just glad as DM the campaign never ended before I could spring the surprise twist - that their arch enemy was a dear friend and mentor.



> The peddler, the feather, the tower and the dishevelled figure were authored by me as GM - they were elements of framing.
> 
> ...(snip)...
> 
> I'm not interested in arguing the meaing of words - that's a tedious pastime that I'll leave to the pedants.
> 
> I'm interested in discussing a particular pheneomnon in RPGing - namely, GM pre-authorship of setting. If you don't think "worldbuilding" is an apt label for that, fine - in your imagination substitute some other term into the title of the thread.




Well, I think that is the issue - *the meaning of words* - where you seem to differentiate between framing and worldbuilding.
Framing a scene can (usually does if not always) lead to worldbuilding.
A tower has been established through the framing - a tower that wasn't there before. I don't know how you can't see it. I believe this is where everyone is having the disconnect with you.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> Reading this, it _seems_ like an example of GM-authored setting and backstory being a major driver of play, with at least some of that happening "behind the scenes".




Agree. Sometimes the PCs play a player-selected tight-themed campaign (my current Iron Ring campaign with all PCs connected to in someway to the organisation) while other times they each have individual player designed-backgrounds with a common bond of being in a company with me as DM interweaving and evolving much of their background into the current campaign for stronger player-investment.  



> The riddle, the terrorist attack, the lycanthropes, all seem to be story elements established by the GM.
> 
> Did the players know that a consequence of failing to solve the riddle would be the destruction of the inn etc?




No, but they knew something dire would occur. The first two stanzas along with 2 terrorist attacks that had occurred revealed that the third (and last) stanza hinted at another attack.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> Let me put it this way. If you're playing a game, would you rather your character be dealing with something new....an unknown dungeon room, or a new part of a quest, or an interaction with a long sought NPC....or would you rather your character be walking through the cleared rooms of a dungeon waiting to roll high enough to find the secret door that leads to the rest of the adventure?



I'd rather be doing the first, but I accept as a part of the game that there's going to be times when I'm doing the second.

And, if the party's just walking around the cleared dungeon waiting to roll high enough to find the secret door then we're doing it wrong.  We should instead:

- map the place out and look for any "missing" areas or out-of-place dead ends, then focus our search there (ideally we did the mapping already, during our initial exploration of the place)
- bring to bear any and all divination and detection spells and-or abilities we have access to
- think back on any odd behavior by the dungeon occupants that maybe we ignored at the time - could they have actually been defending a secret door that we never bothered to look for?
- trash the place, if we haven't already - maybe the door we're looking for is simply concealed behind a tapestry or buried under the manticore's bedding straw

And if all else fails, abandon the mission and go find another one. 

Lanefan


----------



## Jester David

pemerton said:


> Did you actually read the post I linked to?
> 
> The peddler, the feather, the curse, Athog, Jabal, the tower, the dishevelled figure - all were authored during the course of the session.
> The peddler, the feather, the tower and the dishevelled figure were authored by me as GM - they were elements of framing.
> The curse was narrated by me following a failed Aura-Reading check on the feather.
> Jabal was narrated by the player in the course of making a Circles check. Athog was narrated by me as a consequence of that check failing.



Yes, I had seen that. 

My point was that in the session where the mage was decapitated, the existence of the tower had been previously established. (I am making the assuming it wasn't created in the same session, as the linked post was from 2014.) For the session where the PCs returned to the tower, it had effectively been pre-authored. It was established. It was an element of the world. There was continuity.

For the purposes of that session, it doesn't matter if you had created the tower personally, it was the result of a random roll, if it came from a published campaign product, or even if it had been generated by a player not currently at the table. It's source was moot and had no impact on the unfolding of the plot or the challenges of the story. It didn't modify any roles or alter the choices of the players. 



pemerton said:


> Despite what you may think, it is possible to run a RPG session without all the story elements having been made up in advance.



I have run multiple sessions entirely on the fly, thank you very much. 

My current 5e campaign began with notes on a fight to start the session _in media res_ but the rest of the session was entirely improvised. I've done dungeon crawls through randomly generated dungeons created by websites. And I've done completely spontaneous games planned off the seat of my pants while hanging with fellow gamers when someone has said "hey, we should do some gaming!" 

But I've also done several pre-published campaigns, running two Paizo APs and the Dragonlance adventures. I've also spent several years running pre-published modules for organised play. And I've done a number of homebrew games with various levels of scripting and preparation. 

I've run campaigns set in Ravenloft, the Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Golarion, the 'Verse, a galaxy far, far away, and a half-dozen homebrew settings of various degrees of fantasy or modernity. I've been a part of a zombie apocalypse game set in my hometown. And I've collaboratively built worlds, where each player takes turns adding towns, regions, factions, and similar world elements as the need arises, creating a mosaic world. 



pemerton said:


> None of this is correct.



I disagree. 

Which is the crux of my point, which keeps apparently going over your head. I'll try again...



pemerton said:


> I'm interested in discussing a particular pheneomnon in RPGing - namely, GM pre-authorship of setting.



The question I tease earlier is:_* why does it matter when the GM does so rather than anyone else? *_

Unless you're playing with telepaths who can also see your notes, players don't know the source of a piece of the setting. If they see a giant fey tree filled with sprites at the edge of their vision, they have no way of knowing if that tree exists because they failed a travel check, if it's a random encounter from a table, if it's a planned encounter prepared by the GM, or if it's a scripted encounter part of the pre-published module. The different illusionary. And irrelevant to the players so long as they have a choice with how to interact with the tree. That's what matters: the freedom for players to choose how their character interacts with the elements of the adventure. 
The source of the world details has zero impact on session itself.

Having watched many, many episodes of Critical Role, I have no idea which social encounters and NPCs were planned well in advance and which ones were created spontaneously because the players decided to go into a random store. Because it doesn't matter to the flow of the story. 

To hammer the point home, what was the source of my example? The giant tree covered by sprites. Which published adventure was it from? Or was it really from an episode of a streamed game? Or was that from my homegame? Or was it just something that popped into mind? Couldn't it also have equally have come from multiple sources, since few people generate ideas entirely in a vacuum? 



pemerton said:


> If you think it makes no difference to the character of RPGing how, when and by whom setting elements are authored, then I don't know what to say! You're obviously looking for a _very__very_ different experience in RPGing from what I am.



After reading several of your threads over the years, I don't think anybody looks at RPGing just like you do...


----------



## RedShirtNo5.1

Pemerton says that in Gygaxian play, a significant goal of play is for players to make action declaration statements to trigger the GM to read stuff from his/her notes.

I say that in Pemertonian play, a significant goal of play is for the GM to read stuff from his/her notes to trigger the players to make action declaration statements.


----------



## Lanefan

RedShirtNo5.1 said:


> Pemerton says that in Gygaxian play, a significant goal of play is for players to make action declaration statements to trigger the GM to read stuff from his/her notes.
> 
> I say that in Pemertonian play, a significant goal of play is for the GM to read stuff from his/her notes to trigger the players to make action declaration statements.



You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.


----------



## pemerton

Jester David said:


> Yes, I had seen that.
> 
> My point was that in the session where the mage was decapitated, the existence of the tower had been previously established.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> For the session where the PCs returned to the tower, it had effectively been pre-authored. It was established. It was an element of the world. There was continuity.
> 
> For the purposes of that session, it doesn't matter if you had created the tower personally, it was the result of a random roll, if it came from a published campaign product, or even if it had been generated by a player not currently at the table. It's source was moot and had no impact on the unfolding of the plot or the challenges of the story.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Unless you're playing with telepaths who can also see your notes, players don't know the source of a piece of the setting.



Do you really believe that last sentence?

None of my players is telepathic, and yet they know that stuff is being authored by me in response to their action declarations - because they see me do it.

Your comment has the same plausibility as saying that someone in a conversation with you won't be able to tell if you're actually responding to them, or just reading them a script. Much, I would say most, of the time, they actually can.

The tower _would not even have been an element of the fiction established during play_ except that the player declared a check to make contact with a senior member of his cabal. Likewise in my Traveller game, the trinket markets wouldn't even have been conceived of as elements of the fiction except the players decided that their PCs would go to look for signs of alien manufacture.

The players can tell this without being telepaths. They're not idiots. They know that I am responding to their action declarations. It's obvious.

And if you think it doesn't matter, when the PCs return to the tower months (years?) of actual time later, that it is the tower of a NPC whose character is intimately connected, both in the fiction and at the table, to the mage PC - well, that's also wrong. That's actually pretty fundamental to the play experience.

From time to time my daughters have derived pleasure from the fact that I put their bikes together. The phenomenon in RPGing is not identical, but it has some similiarities: it makes a big difference (to me, and as best I can tell to my players) that this is our fiction that we established together playing the game.

EDIT: some more responses to a baffling post.



Jester David said:


> After reading several of your threads over the years, I don't think anybody looks at RPGing just like you do...



Well, given that most of my analysis is highly derivative of Ron Edwards, Vincent Baker, Luke Crane, Christopher Kubasik, Eero Tuovinen, and probably others I'm forgetting to name (Robin Laws in some moods would be another), that surprises me.

Christopher Kubasik wrote the "Interactive Toolkit" about 20 years ago (I just Googled it - 1995). This stuff is not cutting edge.



Jester David said:


> The different illusionary.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is just a bizarre thing to say. As if my choices don't matter, because it's possible that an alien who controlled my brain by remote control might have me do the same stuff.
> 
> It's completly typical, in human creative and expressive endeavours, for origins, participation, mutuality of input, etc to matter a great deal.
> 
> 
> 
> Jester David said:
> 
> 
> 
> And irrelevant to the players so long as they have a choice with how to interact with the tree. That's what matters: the freedom for players to choose how their character interacts with the elements of the adventure.
> The source of the world details has zero impact on session itself.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The current state of my BW game is that the mage PC is locked in a prison cell, but Jabal is also there with him - having come to pay a "friendly" visit. I think the PC is going to try and kill Jabal.
> 
> The idea that it makes no difference to this _how_ Jabal became an element of focus for the campaign is just silly.
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> Framing a scene can (usually does if not always) lead to worldbuilding.
> A tower has been established through the framing - a tower that wasn't there before. I don't know how you can't see it. I believe this is where everyone is having the disconnect with you.



What disconnect?

Obviously framing a scene with a tower establishes setting. My point is that it is not pre-authored. It occurs on the spot as part of the ongoing back-and-forth between players and GM.

This relates back to a reply upthread to [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION].

One consequence of pre-authored setting is that the GM may (frequently does, I believe) use it to declare actions unsuccessful based on secret considerations of fictional positioning. (This is what the map example has mostly been about.)

Another is that the pre-authored setting reflects the GM's conception of the concerns/themes/direction of play. As I posted just upthread of this, the idea that there is no interesting difference here strikes me as no more plausible than the idea that conversing with a friend is no different from reading a script to them.


----------



## pemerton

RedShirtNo5.1 said:


> I say that in Pemertonian play, a significant goal of play is for the GM to read stuff from his/her notes to trigger the players to make action declaration statements.



What notes?

Eg this:



			
				pemerton posting as thurgon on rpg.net said:
			
		

> each also wrote up a immediate goal-oriented belief: I had pulled out my old Greyhawk material and told them they were starting in the town of Hardby, half-way between the forest (where the assassin had fled from) and the desert hills (where Jobe had been travelling), and so each came up with a belief around that: I'm not leaving Hardby without gaining some magical item to use against my brother and, for the assassin with starting Resources 0, I'm not leaving Hardby penniless .
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I started things in the Hardby market: Jobe was looking at the wares of a peddler of trinkets and souvenirs, to see if there was anything there that might be magical or useful for enchanting for the anticipated confrontation with his brother. Given that the brother is possessed by a demon, he was looking for something angelic. The peddler pointed out an angel feather that he had for sale, brought to him from the Bright Desert. Jobe (who has, as another instinct, to always use Second Sight), used Aura Reading to study the feather for magical traits. The roll was a failure, and so he noticed that it was Resistant to Fire (potentially useful in confronting a Balrog) but also cursed. (Ancient History was involved somehow here too, maybe as a FoRK into Aura Reading (? I can't really remember), establishing something about an ancient battle between angels and demons in the desert.)



The framing is a direct response to the player's authorship of a Belief: no notes. The magical properties of the feather (fire resistance, and the curse) were consequences narrated in response to the check: no notes.

Then there's this:



pemerton said:


> We ended up with the following PCs (sheets attached):
> 
> * Roland, who served 4 terms in the Interstellar Navy but never received a commission despite finishing a PhD (Educ D);
> 
> <snip>
> 
> * Methwit, who had poor physical stats but good Edu and Soc and served as a diplomat - it quickly became clear (given his skill rolls) that his status as 3rd Secretary was a cover for some sort of espionage role, and after 3 terms the player decided there was no reason to hang around and risk aging rolls, so Methwit "retired" from the diplomatic corps to make himself available for a wider range of "irregular" operations;
> 
> <snip>
> 
> * Vincenzo (Baron of Hallucida), the replacement for a belter who died in his first term (crushed between asteroids!), was rolled up last - with Soc B the player went noble to try for a yacht; this looked pretty unlikely when he failed his second term survival roll (by 1) and so had to muster out early with Gambling-2 and Bribery-1 his only skills, and just a single roll for mustering out benefits; but the die came up 6 and everyone cheered - now the group would have a ship.​
> Given that all the players had submitted to the randomness that is Traveller - and had got a pretty interesting set of characters out of it - I had to put myself through the same rigour as GM. So I rolled up a random starting world:
> 
> Class A Starport, 1000 mi D, near-vaccuum, with a pop in the 1000s, no government and law level 2 (ie everything allowed except carrying portable laser and energy weapons) - and TL 16, one of the highest possible!​
> So what did all that mean, and what were the PCs doing there?
> 
> I christened the world Ardour-3, and we agreed that it was a moon orbiting a gas giant, with nothing but a starport (with a casino) and a series of hotels/hostels adjoining the starport (the housing for the 6,000 inhabitants). The high tech level meant that most routine tasks were performed by robots.
> 
> Roland, having left the service and now wandering the universe (paid for by his membership of the TAS), was working as a medic in the hospital, overseeing the medbots. Vincenzo was a patient there - the player explained that Vincenzo had won his yacht in the casino, and the (previous) owners had honoured the bet but had also beaten Vincenzo to within an inch of his life (hence the failed surival roll).
> 
> <snip>
> 
> With the background in place, I then rolled for a patron on the random patron table, and got a "marine officer" result. Given the PC backgrounds, it made sense that Lieutenant Li - as I dubbed her - would be making contact with Roland. The first thing I told the players was that a Scout ship had landed at the starport, although there it has no Scout base and there is no apparent need to do any survey work in the system; and that the principal passenger seemed to be an officer of the Imperial Marines. I then explained that, while doing the rounds at the hospital, Roland received a message from his old comrade Li inviting him to meet her at the casino, and to feel free to bring along any friends he might have in the place.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Lt Li wondered whether Vincenzo would be able to take 3 tons of cargo to Byron for her. (With his excellent education, Roland knew that Byron was a planet with a large (pop in the millions) city under a serious of domes, but without the technical capabilities to maintain the domes into the long term.) When the PCs arrived on Byron contact would be made by those expecting the goods. And payment would be 100,000 for the master of the ship, plus 10,000 for each other crew member.
> 
> Some quick maths confirmed that 100,000 would more than cover the fuel costs of the trip, and so Vincenzo (taking advice from Roland - he knows nothing about running a ship) agreed to the request.
> 
> Methwit thought all this sounded a bit odd - why would a high-class (Soc A) marine lieutenant be smuggling goods into a dead-end world like Byron - and so asked Li back to his hotel room to talk further. With his Liaison-1 and Carousing-1 and a good reaction roll she agreed, and with his Interrogation-1 he was able to obtain some additional information (although he did have to share some details about his own background to persuade her to share).
> 
> The real situation, she explained, was that Byron was itself just a stop-over point. The real action was on another world - Enlil - which is technologically backwards and has a disease-ridden atmosphere to which there is no resistance or immunity other than in Enlil's native population. So the goods to be shipped from Ardour-3 were high-tech medical gear for extracting and concentrating pathogens from the atmosphere on Enlil, to be shipped back to support a secret bio-weapons program. The reason a new team was needed for this mission was because Vincenzo had won the yacht from the original team - who were being dealt with "appropriately" for their incompetence in disrupting the operation.




That's not reading notes. That's establishing a situation (with elements established by random rolls) in a way that responds to the players' PCs and their backstories.

This is just the Traveller variant of Eero Tuovinen's "Standard Narrativistic Model": the players generate PCs who have dramatic needs of some sort; the GM frames situations which speak to those needs; the players declare actions; those actions generate consequences which inform the framing of subsequent situations.

The main points of peculiarity in Traveller are (i) the random generation of content, and (ii) the fact that the action resolution mechanics sometimes (by no means always) display their 40 year old provencance - they don't always generate significant consequences, and sometimes there are no clear mechanics to resolve a declared action. (Like the trip to the market to find the alien-manufactured trinket that I discussed above.)


----------



## Jester David

pemerton said:


> Do you really believe that last sentence?



Yes.
I have played in lots of different games with lots of different DMs, and watched games online, and read blogs by DMs about their game, and listened to podcasts about DMing & DMs and no one runs a game just like you...



pemerton said:


> None of my players is telepathic, and yet they know that stuff is being authored by me in response to their action declarations - because they see me do it.
> 
> Your comment has the same plausibility as saying that someone in a conversation with you won't be able to tell if you're actually responding to them, or just reading them a script. Much, I would say most, of the time, they actually can.
> 
> The tower _would not even have been an element of the fiction established during play_ except that the player declared a check to make contact with a senior member of his cabal. Likewise in my Traveller game, the trinket markets wouldn't even have been conceived of as elements of the fiction except the players decided that their PCs would go to look for signs of alien manufacture.
> 
> The players can tell this without being telepaths. They're not idiots. They know that I am responding to their action declarations. It's obvious.



Your argument can be reduced to:
*"I (think/ know) my players can tell when I'm improvising or using pre-planned ideas. Therefore, all players can tell when all DMs are using pre-planned ideas rather than improvising. *
And that's a big ol' "no".  

Again, I direct you to the latest episode of Critical Role. Watching the episode, the PCs go to several locations and meet several NPCs and which ones were planned well ahead of time and which ones were spontaneously generated because the players wanted to buy books is unknown. 

Okay, it can be apparent if the DM is reading from a book or sheet of paper, reciting the read-aloud text. But if I just have a few key word notes and improvise my description, there's fewer tells that I'm improvising or pre-planning. And I can also change details, customising elements to match the player's expectations and respond to their questions. 
Ditto is you paraphrase, reading the text and then putting it into your own words. If there is a DM screen, there's no easy way for the players to tell if you're reading from a book, reading from the notes beside the open book, or just looking down to give the impression they're on the right track and you're not just pulling everything out of your ass.



pemerton said:


> And if you think it doesn't matter, when the PCs return to the tower months (years?) of actual time later, that it is the tower of a NPC whose character is intimately connected, both in the fiction and at the table, to the mage PC - well, that's also wrong. That's actually pretty fundamental to the play experience.



Uh-huh. And that play experience isn't affected if you took a pre-existing tower that was on a map in a published campaign setting and just said, "oh, this is the NPC tower", tweaking the description to match their tastes. 
The details that matter are basically madlibs. "This is the <place noun> of an NPC <class> whose is you <relation>." You can mix and match those blanks infinitely but the actual effect on the session is unchanged if the players are racing to their mage brother's tower to save him from an assassin or charging to their thief sister's warehouse lair to save her from a slaadi. The relationship and how it affects the players is the important part and what the players care about. The origin of the specific noun does not. 



pemerton said:


> From time to time my daughters have derived pleasure from the fact that I put their bikes together. The phenomenon in RPGing is not identical, but it has some similiarities: it makes a big difference (to me, and as best I can tell to my players) that this is our fiction that we established together playing the game.



Did they like those bikes more than if you had paid someone else to assemble them or bought them pre-assembled? Or were they just happy to have a damn bike? 
Or was it the time spent making the bike the important bonding part? 



pemerton said:


> Well, given that most of my analysis is highly derivative of Ron Edwards, Vincent Baker, Luke Crane, Christopher Kubasik, Eero Tuovinen, and probably others I'm forgetting to name (Robin Laws in some moods would be another), that surprises me.
> 
> Christopher Kubasik wrote the "Interactive Toolkit" about 20 years ago (I just Googled it - 1995). This stuff is not cutting edge.



I've read some of the same stuff you have and had very different reactions. How I read the Luke Crane bit you posted was _very_ different. 



pemerton said:


> Jester David said:
> 
> 
> 
> The different illusionary.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is just a bizarre thing to say. As if my choices don't matter, because it's possible that an alien who controlled my brain by remote control might have me do the same stuff.
> 
> It's completly typical, in human creative and expressive endeavours, for origins, participation, mutuality of input, etc to matter a great deal.
> 
> The current state of my BW game is that the mage PC is locked in a prison cell, but Jabal is also there with him - having come to pay a "friendly" visit. I think the PC is going to try and kill Jabal.
> 
> The idea that it makes no difference to this _how_ Jabal became an element of focus for the campaign is just silly.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I know some players that would be appalled by the idea of the DM just making things up as they occurred. The idea that they're not on the right track or doing the right thing but simply rolling well or having things laid out for them.
> 
> Others, yeah, they want the involved interactive story. But many PCs also just want the rollercoaster with the solid plot, even if there are heavy rails. So long as the story is good, does it matter? And there's the challenge of doing better than other groups.
> 
> And, again, I'm talking about perception. If the players do not know that there's only a veil of choice or their connections are being added to established content, it makes no different to them because they don't know.
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...


----------



## RedShirtNo5.1

NotesImprovisedIn response to player actionsGygaxian - read notes in response to player actions? - improvise in response to player actionsBefore player actions? - read notes in order to provide framePemerton? - improvise in order to provide frame


----------



## RedShirtNo5.1

pemerton said:


> What notes?



Yeah, color me confused.  I assume that when you pull out your old Greyhawk material and tell them they are in Hardby, you are reading notes to generate the framing.  Maybe you disagree that they are notes because someone else authored them?  Maybe you disagree because the party being in Hardby is not part of the framing?  Maybe you pulled out your old Greyhawk material but didn't read it?   I don't think it's the last one.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Not unplayable, just more likely to die and not have an even chance on the field.  You needed two 15s or higher for that.
> 
> Lots of people skipped or changed a lot of things back in those days.  We sure did.




But again, this wasn't about what people DID, it was about what works. NOTHING about characters with less than two 15s makes them anything but very marginally less survivable. Sure, if EVERYONE ELSE ALWAYS rerolls every other character then you might feel like you should too, but that doesn't mean it was ever necessary, or even particularly desirable. Again, the AVERAGE (without rerolls) of Method I is 16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 9 or something like that. I consider that a very fair and excellent character which I would choose to play. 

You can play any way you like of course, but what is the point of even rolling at all if you just reroll anything that isn't already above average? This is in fact EXACTLY what led to the logic of 3e's point buy, which is the direct ancestor of 4e's point buy (both of which produce just about the same array as above). If you are just going to roll again anyway if you have slightly bad luck, then its really pointless. I'd just call it powergaming to hope you get some crazy good result. I once had a high level character that started out with two 18s and a 17, which was darn handy, but that happens once, even with Method I (which is probably what we used, I don't recall, but I think Method IV is the only other one I ever sanctioned, Method III is ridiculous).


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Well, given that most of my analysis is highly derivative of Ron Edwards, Vincent Baker, Luke Crane, Christopher Kubasik, Eero Tuovinen, and probably others I'm forgetting to name (Robin Laws in some moods would be another) ...



The very fact that you've even heard of most of these people tells me you take RPG game-play theorycraft far more seriously (to the point of, dare I say, way too seriously) than probably 95+% of the rest of us. 

It's just a hobby, done for fun...or so I thought.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> These remarks seem oriented towards a style of play which is (in a broad sense) puzzle/mystery solving - CoC adventures can be like that, where if you don't solve the puzzle then you lose the adventure (in the sense that you can't continue) - or, alternatively, which is about playing through the pre-established story.
> 
> In an approach to RPGing in which there is no the adventure or the module, then it doesn't matter if the map is found or not. I think there are two main sub-types of such an approach. One is Gygaxian dungeoneering - if the PCs never find the map, then they don't get whatever dungeoneering opportunity it would provide, but that doesn't stop them sacking other parts of the dungeon and earning their XP.
> 
> The other is "indie"/"story now" style - where the significance of the map being hidden isn't because it is a puzzle-solving challenge, nor because it is a clue to get from A to B, but because something in the dramatic essence of the situation or the characters calls for a hidden map. If the map is discovered (eg by a successful Scavenging or Perception check) then that particular dramatic need is satisied, and things unfold one way. If the map is not discovered (eg because a player never finds his/her PC in a fictional context that allows the framing of a check to find it; or because a check is made but fails) then that dramatic need is frustrated, and the resulting complications lead to things unfolding a different way.




Well, my choice of words may have been a bit extreme in that "you can't win" or anything. But given how early modules were presented, it's odd to me to potentially exclude any of the potential action due to the presence of a secret door or something similar. I think some modules did this, and that that design choice has led some GMs to play in a manner to adhere to what's written or been determined beforehand even if it means play grinds to a halt.

I was commenting on that phenomenon and how its informed play since by some GMs. I think you took my comments and created a binary situation where none exists. 



Sadras said:


> For me it will depend on the adventure.
> For instance, at my table the PCs failed to solve a riddle of a planned were-terrorist attack within a city. They did not solve the cipher-poem in-time and the attacks occurred resulting in the killing of civilians, the destruction of an inn and were not able to capture/slay The Hound (the legendary mastermind leading the lycanthropes). I'm absolutely fine with that as the PCs met interesting NPCs, established a network within the city, dealt with the aftermath and obtained a few clues about the lycanthropes...etc. It also created a re-occurring villain for down the line.
> 
> I'm far less inclined to have PCs spend a session searching a manor for a map and coming out empty with nothing to show for it.




Sure....this is the approach that I think most GMs and players woudl kind of expect. Not that they will be free from failure. Just that all situations are dynamic, and succeeding or failing is ultimately just going to lead to the next steps in the story. 

Your last line is what I was talking about. Wasting play time on what is really a minor goal rather than moving things along to more worthwhile play. 



Lanefan said:


> I'd rather be doing the first, but I accept as a part of the game that there's going to be times when I'm doing the second.
> 
> And, if the party's just walking around the cleared dungeon waiting to roll high enough to find the secret door then we're doing it wrong.  We should instead:
> 
> - map the place out and look for any "missing" areas or out-of-place dead ends, then focus our search there (ideally we did the mapping already, during our initial exploration of the place)
> - bring to bear any and all divination and detection spells and-or abilities we have access to
> - think back on any odd behavior by the dungeon occupants that maybe we ignored at the time - could they have actually been defending a secret door that we never bothered to look for?
> - trash the place, if we haven't already - maybe the door we're looking for is simply concealed behind a tapestry or buried under the manticore's bedding straw
> 
> And if all else fails, abandon the mission and go find another one.
> 
> Lanefan




I realize I said "walking around waiting to roll high enough" but I honestly meant all those things you listed. Mapping, divination or detection magic, skills.....all to find a door. For me, that's not how I want to spend my time at the table, and the players I play with agree, so I don't let my game get bogged down in it. It's just not fun compared to most of the rest of the game. 

I re-purpose a lot of published material, and if I encounter anything like this that will slow things down to a slog for some minor detail like a secret door, then I simply change it.....the door's not secret or whatever.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> What disconnect?
> 
> Obviously framing a scene with a tower establishes setting. My point is that it is not pre-authored. It occurs on the spot as part of the ongoing back-and-forth between players and GM.
> 
> This relates back to a reply upthread to [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION].
> 
> One consequence of pre-authored setting is that the GM may (frequently does, I believe) use it to declare actions unsuccessful based on secret considerations of fictional positioning. (This is what the map example has mostly been about.)
> 
> Another is that the pre-authored setting reflects the GM's conception of the concerns/themes/direction of play. As I posted just upthread of this, the idea that there is no interesting difference here strikes me as no more plausible than the idea that conversing with a friend is no different from reading a script to them.




What about a third option? Where the person actually has plans with their friend and thinks ahead of time "I've got to remember to ask about the family, and work, and if he's had any chance to play D&D". And then introduces those topics that are known points of interest to the friend, and then they discuss them. 

Conversations aren't always this purely spontaneous occurrence. And to be honest, when they are, they can be crappy. Everyone's bumped into someone unexpectedly and not had anything to say, and then later on realized "oh I should have mentioned X". Sometimes, preparation is good. 

Same with a game. 

As for the disconnect....there has clearly been some confusion, no? I don't really want to speak for [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION], but I don't think it was hard to realize s/he meant the apparent disconnect about framing versus pre-authorship. 

If I had to guess, I think perhaps this may be most relevant at the very start of play, before the GM has player action upon which to frame what follows.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> The adventure might in fact have no function in the overall story arc at all, but instead just be a side quest or even a red herring.  Doesn't mean playing it through will be any less fun in the here and now.



This is true. There are a few things about that of course. Some games are more focused on a specific story arc or maybe the players have a desire to focus mostly in a certain direction, in which case they would at best spend a brief time on a side-quest. Now, it might still be worth several encounters. It COULD be a red herring and yes it might not be dull to play through. Again, depends on exactly how focused the players are. Some games are also just not mechanically well-suited for undirected play, others are.



> The Tibet scene in Indiana Jones was obviously important enough to that story that they bothered filming it and having the actors play it all through rather than just have a character relate it as exposition at some point.



Right, and it might well be important enough to play through in detail in a game too, or it might be left as a single quick prefatory SC. I doubt it would be an interlude, although I guess you could play a game like that as long as the players are comfortable with almost no mechanics, since interludes in my game are diceless.



> So for a similar scene in a D&D game, I'd say play it through in detail.  Don't just reduce it to a skill challenge, as that kinda cheapens the whole thing.  Play out the combat, play out the role-play, play out the exploration (though in that particular scene there really isn't much) - in short, take the time!



But this is the point, time is different in a movie and an RPG. It could be different in different RPGs. There's no one-size-fits-all answer. IME the most interesting stuff is the stuff that speaks most closely to the player's concerns, so I don't usually spend a lot of focus on other stuff unless people decide it really is interesting enough for them to start incorporating it into their story arc. Movies are 2 hours or so long and have a 'rhythm' they want to keep of rising and falling action, so each scene is tailored to that need. In _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ it so happened that the scene in question worked well as an early bit of rising tension. In an RPG it might have mostly come across as a long digression, though I suspect at least the action part would have been played out. Remember, even the movie had travel vignettes and things, there are definitely things worth leaving out of play at the table, or minimizing.



> I don't think this is your intention, but when you describe this it comes across as though you just want to blast through the campaign and get on to the next one.



No, but endless weeks of shopping and chit chat aren't really my main style. I think if you look at the techniques of the really talented GMs you'll see that they all spend relatively little time on this kind of thing, and mostly get at the action of the game, the meat of it. Now, depending on the game, that might be combat, spying, or something completely different. 



> When pemerton describes a skill challenge from one of his games he makes it sound very complex and involved and time-consuming, but my reading of the 4e DMG along with some adventure modules gives me the impression that a skill challenge would normally be pretty fast at the table - a goal is set, the players state how they're approaching it and what they're doing, the dice are rolled (and then adjusted or rerolled based on how the players make use of the mechanical benefits of their PCs), and the DM tells them how they did.  If you're saying you could boil the main action of a whole adventure down to several skill challenges that also means you could easily do the whole adventure in one session; though likely skipping over a huge amount of interesting detail in the process.



Well, I wouldn't generalize TOO much on the length of an SC. You can do short ones, or long ones, but I think a complexity five 4e SC is likely to take a while. It requires a setup, at least a dozen checks, each with a transition of the narrative significant enough to warrant using a different skill (at least potentially), an equal number of decision points, etc. Consider a 5x5 by 5 round combat (the nominal 4e combat) requires something like an hour and will have probably about 30 attack rolls and maybe 5 saves. So a complex SC should take 30-45 minutes, though some might be shorter and a few longer.

I would think an adventure spans at least a level usually, and in 4e that's probably around 7 or so encounters, maybe 2 sessions. If it was all SCs it would probably be at least 4 to 6 hours of encounter play. None of this counts outright exploration. HoML considers exploration either part of an SC or possible an interlude. 



> Quite the opposite to my stance, which is that if I can take something relatively trivial such as finding a map or crossing a desert and make a decent playable adventure out of it, I will.
> 
> So - the ongoing story has somehow determined there's a map needs finding in a mansion?  OK, that mansion's about to become a full adventure site; and out comes Tegal Manor...
> 
> In other words I'm looking for interesting and fun ways to keep the campaign going longer, not to make it shorter.




I find that I'd rather get the thing moving. I don't want to hurriedly end it, but I don't need a given campaign to run for many years or something. If it did then it would probably consist of a number of largely disconnected story arcs, like mini-campaigns. I can come up with new material pretty easily, I don't feel like I need to milk what I have. In fact I've got YEARS, maybe DECADES worth of ideas and locations stored up in my notes, my brain, etc. I could fire off a new campaign a week if I had the time and energy.


----------



## Ovinomancer

hawkeyefan said:


> What about a third option? Where the person actually has plans with their friend and thinks ahead of time "I've got to remember to ask about the family, and work, and if he's had any chance to play D&D". And then introduces those topics that are known points of interest to the friend, and then they discuss them.
> 
> Conversations aren't always this purely spontaneous occurrence. And to be honest, when they are, they can be crappy. Everyone's bumped into someone unexpectedly and not had anything to say, and then later on realized "oh I should have mentioned X". Sometimes, preparation is good.
> 
> Same with a game.
> 
> As for the disconnect....there has clearly been some confusion, no? I don't really want to speak for [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION], but I don't think it was hard to realize s/he meant the apparent disconnect about framing versus pre-authorship.
> 
> If I had to guess, I think perhaps this may be most relevant at the very start of play, before the GM has player action upon which to frame what follows.




Not had a lot of time to respond lately, and I'd like to get back to a few posts, but, for now:

I think another part of the continued disconnect is that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] isn't really adverse to pre-authored material so long as it's presented as framing and not as part of action resolution.  Prepping an encounter map or a villain (his naga and the elf in the desert come to mind) are perfectly fine, so long as their introduction is open and such things are not used to negate action declarations.  He's not ever been clear on this, though, so I might misunderstand him once again.

To your main point, I'm much better at running a game that engages player actions with at least a framework to rely on.  A few notes about main points usually suffices.  I can usually predict what my players will do (within reasonable boundaries) so I can aim my prep at making sure I have a backbone of possibilities to model my resolutions on.  Quite often I go very far "off script" due to play, but I find I'm much better at doing so if I have a framework in place than if I'm just winging it altogether.  Providing consequences that hang together and have coherent impacts are easier for me if I have put some thought into the general shape of things beforehand.

 [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] seems to espouse a gaming philosophy that is much in line with the concepts of improv acting:  don't negate another's input, build on it.  "Yes, and" is the touchstone.  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s approach differs really only in the use of mechanics to adjudicate some actions, those that touch directly on the stated focuses of the characters, but, even then, the "Yes, and" holds some water as the action is always validated, it's always employed, with the results adding to that action rather than moving away from it.

And, much as with improv, this isn't something everyone likes or is good at.  Many actors use improv as a technique to improve their craft, but then go on to primarily do scripted parts.  This is because scripted parts do a better job of being coherent and impactful _on average_.  Not to say improv can't do this, it certainly can, often in surprising ways, but scripts are usually better for this impact.  It's a bit different in RPGs, as all RPGs have improv traits, but [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] advocates a style that skews much more heavily towards that end of the spectrum.  I think the problem with most of the threads that this comes up in is that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] looks at everything from the lens of improv being better at getting to what he likes and that means that he has trouble looking at games with more scripting (prep, worldbuilding, secret backstory, whatever) and figuring out what people get from that.  This is apparent in his responses, especially those that drift towards blanket statements that everyone can play his way and that players will come around to liking it if they try it.  That's not so, just as not all actors like improv, or can even do it well.  There's a reason improv theaters aren't the majority, and it's not the inherent superiority of improv.

I guess the wrap up is that players can be both actors in the game and the audience for the game.  And how the story unfolds can appeal to different players according to where players fall in those camps.  Some players love being the actor, being the focal point of the story and having everything engage them and nothing that constrains that engagement.  Other players are more situated on the audience side -- yes they act, but they're mostly there to be entertained, to be part of an entertaining story, and they're not nearly as interested in acting on that story as having the story act on them (as audience members do).  Neither is better or worse.  Both can be fun.  But it's important to realize the difference as it answers the OP question of what worldbuilding (prep, secret backstory, scripting, whatever) is for -- it's to engage a player type that is different from the type of player [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Jester David said:


> The question I tease earlier is:_* why does it matter when the GM does so rather than anyone else? *_
> 
> Unless you're playing with telepaths who can also see your notes, players don't know the source of a piece of the setting. If they see a giant fey tree filled with sprites at the edge of their vision, they have no way of knowing if that tree exists because they failed a travel check, if it's a random encounter from a table, if it's a planned encounter prepared by the GM, or if it's a scripted encounter part of the pre-published module. The different illusionary. And irrelevant to the players so long as they have a choice with how to interact with the tree. That's what matters: the freedom for players to choose how their character interacts with the elements of the adventure.
> The source of the world details has zero impact on session itself.



I completely disagree with this! The whole tenor and content of a pre-authored setting and adventures is different. First of all the framing is decidedly controlled by the author and isn't particularly adaptive to the wishes and needs of the players at the table (unless they helped author it, which I've actually done with a group twice, but even then much of the same issue arises). GM force is likely as there's a high investment in the material, etc. 

In fact I would say that these are almost two diametrically opposed types of game. 



> After reading several of your threads over the years, I don't think anybody looks at RPGing just like you do...




Depends on how much we split hairs. I certainly understand, appreciate, and largely utilize many of the same techniques, as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]. I think I look at it in a similar way, and I think there are at least 2 and maybe more other posters who do as well if I'm not mistaken. Given that an entire branch of the RPG tree seems dedicated to games that cater to our needs, I'm not that worried that we're ALL THAT out there.


----------



## RedShirtNo5.1

Ovinomancer said:


> I think another part of the continued disconnect is that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] isn't really adverse to pre-authored material so long as it's presented as framing and not as part of action resolution.  Prepping an encounter map or a villain (his naga and the elf in the desert come to mind) are perfectly fine, so long as their introduction is open and such things are not used to negate action declarations.  He's not ever been clear on this, though, so I might misunderstand him once again.



I think Pemerton's reply to me is a categorical denial that he uses pre-authored material for framing.  

Maybe he takes the position that any content generated in response to player input isn't pre-authored?  Like if the player says "my character has a grudge against dragons" and the GM then goes and stats out Carlyxiarus, the white wyrm, and maps out a lair and creates some minions that could interact with the party and eventually lead to the dragon.  I would certainly call that pre-authored GM material, but maybe Pemerton wouldn't.


----------



## Ovinomancer

RedShirtNo5.1 said:


> I think Pemerton's reply to me is a categorical denial that he uses pre-authored material for framing.
> 
> Maybe he takes the position that any content generated in response to player input isn't pre-authored?  Like if the player says "my character has a grudge against dragons" and the GM then goes and stats out Carlyxiarus, the white wyrm, and maps out a lair and creates some minions that could interact with the party and eventually lead to the dragon.  I would certainly call that pre-authored GM material, but maybe Pemerton wouldn't.[/QUOTE [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] often uses unique definitions for things.  In thus case, "pre-authored" really means "prepped prior to play AND kept secret from the players AND used to determine action resolution."  Ou'd you made a note before play on sime dragon stats and then only introduced the dragon as part of framing or action resolution, but not using the dragon as secret unit to action resolution, then is not "pre-authired" to pemerton.
> 
> Essentially, he's talking about pre-authored action resolutions (I have a note that says the map is in the kitchen, so looking for it in the study will fail) not pre-authored bits of framing (I frame Hardby as being on the map right here, as according to the Greyhawk setting, a fact now openly known to players to include in their action declarations).
> 
> Why he's so bad at explaining this clearly and instead keeps using unique definitions of common terms, I don't know.


----------



## BryonD

Ovinomancer said:


> Not had a lot of time to respond lately, and I'd like to get back to a few posts, but, for now:
> 
> I think another part of the continued disconnect is that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] isn't really adverse to pre-authored material so long as it's presented as framing and not as part of action resolution.  Prepping an encounter map or a villain (his naga and the elf in the desert come to mind) are perfectly fine, so long as their introduction is open and such things are not used to negate action declarations.  He's not ever been clear on this, though, so I might misunderstand him once again.
> 
> To your main point, I'm much better at running a game that engages player actions with at least a framework to rely on.  A few notes about main points usually suffices.  I can usually predict what my players will do (within reasonable boundaries) so I can aim my prep at making sure I have a backbone of possibilities to model my resolutions on.  Quite often I go very far "off script" due to play, but I find I'm much better at doing so if I have a framework in place than if I'm just winging it altogether.  Providing consequences that hang together and have coherent impacts are easier for me if I have put some thought into the general shape of things beforehand.
> 
> [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] seems to espouse a gaming philosophy that is much in line with the concepts of improv acting:  don't negate another's input, build on it.  "Yes, and" is the touchstone.  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s approach differs really only in the use of mechanics to adjudicate some actions, those that touch directly on the stated focuses of the characters, but, even then, the "Yes, and" holds some water as the action is always validated, it's always employed, with the results adding to that action rather than moving away from it.
> 
> And, much as with improv, this isn't something everyone likes or is good at.  Many actors use improv as a technique to improve their craft, but then go on to primarily do scripted parts.  This is because scripted parts do a better job of being coherent and impactful _on average_.  Not to say improv can't do this, it certainly can, often in surprising ways, but scripts are usually better for this impact.  It's a bit different in RPGs, as all RPGs have improv traits, but [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] advocates a style that skews much more heavily towards that end of the spectrum.  I think the problem with most of the threads that this comes up in is that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] looks at everything from the lens of improv being better at getting to what he likes and that means that he has trouble looking at games with more scripting (prep, worldbuilding, secret backstory, whatever) and figuring out what people get from that.  This is apparent in his responses, especially those that drift towards blanket statements that everyone can play his way and that players will come around to liking it if they try it.  That's not so, just as not all actors like improv, or can even do it well.  There's a reason improv theaters aren't the majority, and it's not the inherent superiority of improv.
> 
> I guess the wrap up is that players can be both actors in the game and the audience for the game.  And how the story unfolds can appeal to different players according to where players fall in those camps.  Some players love being the actor, being the focal point of the story and having everything engage them and nothing that constrains that engagement.  Other players are more situated on the audience side -- yes they act, but they're mostly there to be entertained, to be part of an entertaining story, and they're not nearly as interested in acting on that story as having the story act on them (as audience members do).  Neither is better or worse.  Both can be fun.  But it's important to realize the difference as it answers the OP question of what worldbuilding (prep, secret backstory, scripting, whatever) is for -- it's to engage a player type that is different from the type of player [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is.




I think there is another important distinction.  And, consistent with what you have said, I don't make any claim of inherent superiority.  It is all about what is fun to who.
But there is a lot that can be said about "NO" in the tabletop RPG context that differs from simply improv acting.  

To me, and I'd be comfortable saying to many others I've gamed with, being a player is tied to being an alternate person within a setting and context and having the experience as that person.  You may be a "god among men" or little nothing just trying to make ti day to day within the game.  But whatever the case may be, the interaction within the world while constrained to being that character and nothing more is a lot of fun.  With no definition hard-wired to what "fun" needs to be.  It may be just the glory of the experience, or it may be the virtual empowerment of killing a slew of orcs.  It can be as wide as an imagination.

But "yes and" undermines that.  Again, someone else may find that "yes and" creates a great deal more dopamine in their brain.  It isn't a value statement I'm making.  But it objectively changes the context of how the player experiences the world if they have a "yes and" GM or a "depends on your character's capacity to make that change happen, so quite possibly NO" GM.  
I have players in my games who are very much actors and not at all spectators.  The running side joke is "how are you going to destroy all my prep this time?"  And I love that.  They absolutely take control.  And yet they do that ONLY within the constraints of their characters.  

"NO" is an important part of the joy of success.

I think the context of the conversation makes this sound harsh.  I've discussed this specific idea with players.  But ONLY subsequent to seeing it brought up on these boards in recent years.  Previously, the idea of limitations was simply obvious and not a consideration.   I'd even very much call myself a "yes and" GM in more typical circumstances.  But it would be "yes and" within boundary condition which, to me, require no conversation.


----------



## Jester David

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I completely disagree with this! The whole tenor and content of a *pre-authored setting* and *adventures *is different. First of all the framing is decidedly controlled by the author and isn't particularly adaptive to the wishes and needs of the players at the table (unless they helped author it, which I've actually done with a group twice, but even then much of the same issue arises). GM force is likely as there's a high investment in the material, etc.
> 
> In fact I would say that these are almost two diametrically opposed types of game.



Emphasis added.
I'm not just talking about setting and adventures, which are on the far side of the spectrum. There's very, _very _much a middle ground where you can take elements from them and add them to a homegame. 
Such as a dungeon from an adventure, a town from a campaign setting, a location of note from either.
In those instances the source in that case is irrelevant. 

Pemerton seems to be talking entiely about pre-authored vs improv authored. So he's not just talking published settings, but also ones created by the GM in advance. Which adds a whole other level, as something I create in my downtime before a game is probably pretty similar in tone to something I'm going to add at the table. 

My point is that it doesn't matter to the players if the location they encounter was created 100% at that moment and entirely unplanned, or if it was created six months ago and kept on an inspirational index card in my gaming books, or if it was in a published adventure. Because a good GM can leave them wondering. Because a good GM can work it into the story seamlessly, taking this unrelated element and making it a functional part of their setting or their homebrew adventure. 

Say my adventurers are travelling through the jungle. On their travels they encounter:

 The decapitated body of a giant dinosaur, killed by trophy hunters who plan on stuffing & mounting its head.
 An ancient stone druid circle with a petrified treant in the middle. A single small sapling is emerging from the dead plan's side.
 An ovoid floating island with two trees emerging from it, their stumps and roots giving it the appearance of a giant stone heart.
 An abandoned wagon with multiple crates stocked with food provisions, strips of leather, and two barrels of spoiled wine. There signs of battle around, including arrows in the wagon, but no bodies.

Does it matter which of those I created off the top of my head? Which I pulled from a WotC adventure? Which I pulled from an online forum? Which I pulled from a table of random encounters? 

Does preparing the encounter or the location ahead of time fundamentally change it for my players? 
I say no. Not as long as I can customise it for them and work it into the story. So long as the location fits the world and campaign, it's irrelevant if I did the work ahead of time when I was inspired or if I created it on the fly at the table.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

RedShirtNo5.1 said:


> I think Pemerton's reply to me is a categorical denial that he uses pre-authored material for framing.
> 
> Maybe he takes the position that any content generated in response to player input isn't pre-authored?  Like if the player says "my character has a grudge against dragons" and the GM then goes and stats out Carlyxiarus, the white wyrm, and maps out a lair and creates some minions that could interact with the party and eventually lead to the dragon.  I would certainly call that pre-authored GM material, but maybe Pemerton wouldn't.




Seems to me this part gets to be semantics. I think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is happy to use the Monster Manual to pick a monster. So, if he picks a mage tower from a module or setting book, is that really any different? He says "I didn't decide ahead of time this was going to be present in the setting" so it isn't 'pre-authored'. You are saying that someone wrote it up, so it IS pre-authored. I don't think there is a clear right or wrong answer to that, but lets just say there isn't an unequivocal one either.

So, nobody would say selecting an orc from the MM is 'using pre-authored content' BUT I think we would ALL say "running Isle of Dread is using pre-authored content", yet any GM could drop Isle of Dread into a campaign on a whim because they need someplace for the PCs to go with their ship (or whatever). The point being that degree does matter. Where is the dividing line, and do any of these activities constitute 'world building' either in the sense Pemerton meant it or in any other sense people might mean it. Again, degree is going to matter here. You could argue that even establishing the existence of orcs is world building, so there's differences in terms of what we're defining too.

Semantics is not really that easy...


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> This is true. There are a few things about that of course. Some games are more focused on a specific story arc or maybe the players have a desire to focus mostly in a certain direction, in which case they would at best spend a brief time on a side-quest. Now, it might still be worth several encounters. It COULD be a red herring and yes it might not be dull to play through. Again, depends on exactly how focused the players are. Some games are also just not mechanically well-suited for undirected play, others are.



All true.



> Right, and it might well be important enough to play through in detail in a game too, or it might be left as a single quick prefatory SC. I doubt it would be an interlude, although I guess you could play a game like that as long as the players are comfortable with almost no mechanics, since interludes in my game are diceless.



Please define "interlude" as you're using it here, as you seem to have a specific game-related meaning behind the term.



> But this is the point, time is different in a movie and an RPG.



Yes; a movie has a limited time frame while an RPG can be endless.



> No, but endless weeks of shopping and chit chat aren't really my main style. I think if you look at the techniques of the really talented GMs you'll see that they all spend relatively little time on this kind of thing, and mostly get at the action of the game, the meat of it. Now, depending on the game, that might be combat, spying, or something completely different.



If you mean the podcasts, I don't look at those as being at all representative of how the game is really played or DMed; as the goal of a podcast (to entertain the online non-participating audience) is greatly different from the goal of an average home game (to entertain the other people at the table).  And because of this a podcast game is likely going to maintain an artificially high level of pacing and action and drama while skipping over the mundane-but-realistic bookkeeping and logistics and downtime.

And a talented home-game DM would allow time for shopping and downtime activities and bookkeeping.



> Well, I wouldn't generalize TOO much on the length of an SC. You can do short ones, or long ones, but I think a complexity five 4e SC is likely to take a while. It requires a setup, at least a dozen checks, each with a transition of the narrative significant enough to warrant using a different skill (at least potentially), an equal number of decision points, etc. Consider a 5x5 by 5 round combat (the nominal 4e combat) requires something like an hour and will have probably about 30 attack rolls and maybe 5 saves. So a complex SC should take 30-45 minutes, though some might be shorter and a few longer.
> 
> I would think an adventure spans at least a level usually, and in 4e that's probably around 7 or so encounters, maybe 2 sessions. If it was all SCs it would probably be at least 4 to 6 hours of encounter play. None of this counts outright exploration. HoML considers exploration either part of an SC or possible an interlude.



Yeah, don't get me started on 4e's too-rapid advancement pace.  Were I ever to run anything resembling 4e (or 3e or 5e, for that matter) the very first thing I'd do to the rules would be slow down the level advancement by a huge amount.

But in the context of RAW 4e I can see what you're saying.  In my own context 7 or so encounters may or may not take place before you even get to the adventure itself.  



> I find that I'd rather get the thing moving. I don't want to hurriedly end it, but I don't need a given campaign to run for many years or something. If it did then it would probably consist of a number of largely disconnected story arcs, like mini-campaigns. I can come up with new material pretty easily, I don't feel like I need to milk what I have. In fact I've got YEARS, maybe DECADES worth of ideas and locations stored up in my notes, my brain, etc. I could fire off a new campaign a week if I had the time and energy.



Again quite the opposite from how I look at it. 

In my case I put quite a bit of work into designing the setting-world-cultures-etc., and particularly the history; and though I could do it again if I had to (and most likely will have to, sometime down the road when my current game runs out of steam) this is all the kind of work I really only ever want to do once.  

A good solid game-world history can be mined for story ideas until death do us part.  At best guess, with what I've got in mind right now - along with some maybe-unrelated things I half-expect my players are going to introduce - my current game is good for maybe 3-5 more years provided people still want to play it; and both I and the players have those 3-5 years to come up with new or continuing story ideas that'll keep it running longer.  And beyond that I've an idea for at least one hard AP that would recycle the same setting and game-world, and that'd be probably good for another couple of years of play.

Lan-"which means that with any luck I won't have to design another game world until the mid-late 2020's"-efan


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## AbdulAlhazred

BryonD said:


> I think there is another important distinction.  And, consistent with what you have said, I don't make any claim of inherent superiority.  It is all about what is fun to who.
> But there is a lot that can be said about "NO" in the tabletop RPG context that differs from simply improv acting.
> 
> ...
> 
> "NO" is an important part of the joy of success.
> 
> I think the context of the conversation makes this sound harsh.  I've discussed this specific idea with players.  But ONLY subsequent to seeing it brought up on these boards in recent years.  Previously, the idea of limitations was simply obvious and not a consideration.   I'd even very much call myself a "yes and" GM in more typical circumstances.  But it would be "yes and" within boundary condition which, to me, require no conversation.




I think fictional positioning is basically the same sort of limiter in my process of running a game. You can't just do any old arbitrary thing as a player because your PC needs the fictional positioning to make that happen. Now, you may be able to, within limits, establish parts of the narrative yourself and then use that as a way to get your character positioned (IE you might use a plot coupon to find some money and pay for a potion with the money, etc). Of course the GM might then wonder where that money came from and who's missing it...

Say 'yes' is A technique, but it isn't the last word in story-driven play. Its just a good starting point, and you're perfectly OK to say "yes, but..." or "yes, and..." etc. (like the found money above). Sometimes you say "make a check". It is also possible for different participants to say "wait, that violates my sense of genre appropriateness, why do you want to tell it that way?" And obviously if you get a player who constantly has that issue and doesn't like to collaborate at all then they might not be a good match for the table. 

I've also had players who just don't put themselves forward much and play in a more 'classic' fashion in games where they could and should do something. It can be worked around, at least to some extent. DW is good because you simply HAVE to eventually make a move, or your not playing at all for example.


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## Emerikol

Say what you want but I’ve never met a DM who could pull it off for long at all doing it on the fly.  Not something a huge as a full blown encounter.  Now I have seen DMs using existing content with creative flourishes.


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## BryonD

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think fictional positioning is basically the same sort of limiter in my process of running a game. You can't just do any old arbitrary thing as a player because your PC needs the fictional positioning to make that happen. Now, you may be able to, within limits, establish parts of the narrative yourself and then use that as a way to get your character positioned (IE you might use a plot coupon to find some money and pay for a potion with the money, etc). Of course the GM might then wonder where that money came from and who's missing it...
> 
> Say 'yes' is A technique, but it isn't the last word in story-driven play. Its just a good starting point, and you're perfectly OK to say "yes, but..." or "yes, and..." etc. (like the found money above). Sometimes you say "make a check". It is also possible for different participants to say "wait, that violates my sense of genre appropriateness, why do you want to tell it that way?" And obviously if you get a player who constantly has that issue and doesn't like to collaborate at all then they might not be a good match for the table.
> 
> I've also had players who just don't put themselves forward much and play in a more 'classic' fashion in games where they could and should do something. It can be worked around, at least to some extent. DW is good because you simply HAVE to eventually make a move, or your not playing at all for example.



Certainly.   I think under normal circumstances my reply to you would be "well, duh!"   
But in context my reply still describes a meaningful distinction.


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## Ovinomancer

Emerikol said:


> Say what you want but I’ve never met a DM who could pull it off for long at all doing it on the fly.  Not something a huge as a full blown encounter.  Now I have seen DMs using existing content with creative flourishes.



System matters.  Its very hard to do this in D&D, for instance, but baked in to DW and BW.  Its doable to greater or lesser extents in other systems.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Emerikol said:


> Say what you want but I’ve never met a DM who could pull it off for long at all doing it on the fly.  Not something a huge as a full blown encounter.  Now I have seen DMs using existing content with creative flourishes.




I think in the timeframe 2011-2013 I was running 2 4e campaigns and I prepared NOTHING. I mean, I was running them in my setting, so there's some established stuff, but I just winged it entirely 4e is especially good for that, particularly with encounter design. I think both of those campaigns were some of the best ones I've done. I ended up moving and the group was hankering to play the new Star Wars game, so we broke them off, but they both ran well up to the early parts of paragon, and I haven't any reason to believe they'd have broken down after that.

Now, maybe I'm weird, but if I just close my eyes for a second, all sorts of ideas will come forth and I just pick one. Sometimes it seems wildly improbable, but it works. If things need to move forward and I am feeling a lack of character material to engage, then I put out some bait, otherwise I'm really just pushing back what the players throw at me and adding twists to it as they pass checks or not. 

I didn't always play this way. In the 90's I created vast timelines and whatnot. It was WAY too much work and I didn't find the return on investment or quality of the game warranted it. I get better games for less work now  Again, possibly unique to me and maybe certain other people that like to do it that way.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> System matters.  Its very hard to do this in D&D, for instance, but baked in to DW and BW.  Its doable to greater or lesser extents in other systems.




I know next to nothing of BW, but DW certainly is OK with a certain amount of DM prep. It recommends that the DM create what are called 'fronts', which are basically organizations and general plot arcs, possibly down to the level of some NPCs and a description of what these groups do, where they exist, etc. Remembering that in DW maps are supposed to 'have a lot of white space' and be basically just some names and a general list of ideas. 

DW is also pretty thematically tight, the world is a pretty D&D-esque fantasy world, and the PCs are larger-than-life figures which populate it (though they may be reasonably limited in the capabilities at level 1, they are still fairly powerful to start with and don't have to 'build out' to their full potentiality in their class, a level 1 wizard is still a wizard, even if he's not a super powerful one).

You could run DW without any prep at all, it isn't exactly hard to do that, but the game as-written doesn't imagine you will go to that extreme.


----------



## Emerikol

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think in the timeframe 2011-2013 I was running 2 4e campaigns and I prepared NOTHING. I mean, I was running them in my setting, so there's some established stuff, but I just winged it entirely 4e is especially good for that, particularly with encounter design. I think both of those campaigns were some of the best ones I've done. I ended up moving and the group was hankering to play the new Star Wars game, so we broke them off, but they both ran well up to the early parts of paragon, and I haven't any reason to believe they'd have broken down after that.
> 
> Now, maybe I'm weird, but if I just close my eyes for a second, all sorts of ideas will come forth and I just pick one. Sometimes it seems wildly improbable, but it works. If things need to move forward and I am feeling a lack of character material to engage, then I put out some bait, otherwise I'm really just pushing back what the players throw at me and adding twists to it as they pass checks or not.
> 
> I didn't always play this way. In the 90's I created vast timelines and whatnot. It was WAY too much work and I didn't find the return on investment or quality of the game warranted it. I get better games for less work now  Again, possibly unique to me and maybe certain other people that like to do it that way.




If it works for you it works.  What I find when I encounter on the fly games is a very shallow world.  World events rarely drive anything.  To me it lacks something.  I suspect that the prep that many people do is substandard as well.  I find if the DM does the prep well the world is very rich and exploring the mysteries of such a world and really be satisfying.  

While surely system choice is driven by campaign preferences to a degree I’d hesitate to say that most games can’t be adapted to whatever style you like.  I love to read and buy rpgs of all sorts but many of them I know in practice aren’t for me.  I do think when I’m building my own system I can take ideas from even the systems I think aren’t well suited to my style.  They have something worthwhile.


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## Sadras

pemerton said:


> One consequence of pre-authored setting is that the GM may (frequently does, I believe) use it to declare actions unsuccessful based on secret considerations of fictional positioning. (This is what the map example has mostly been about.)
> 
> Another is that the pre-authored setting reflects the GM's conception of the concerns/themes/direction of play.




I agree with both your observations. Speaking for myself I believe I have reflected how neither of those two are a concern at our table given that I strive not to have 'boring sessions' (extreme as this map example is) and that I attempt to tie-in/bake as much of the character backstory (when provided) into the campaign and obviously picking up (and using) any additional interests/themes provided by the players during play.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Say 'yes' is A technique, but it isn't the last word in story-driven play. Its just a good starting point, and you're perfectly OK to say "yes, but..." or "yes, and..." etc. (like the found money above). Sometimes you say "make a check". It is also possible for different participants to say "wait, that violates my sense of genre appropriateness, why do you want to tell it that way?" And obviously if you get a player who constantly has that issue and doesn't like to collaborate at all then they might not be a good match for the table




This I feel is where this improv-like approach (for lack of a better description) would not work for my table. I have players who are not interested in being part of the creative process on that scale. They prefer DM prepping the story legwork - which includes a strong storyline and secret backstory.


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## Ratskinner

AbdulAlhazred said:


> <snip>
> Now, maybe I'm weird, but if I just close my eyes for a second, all sorts of ideas will come forth and I just pick one. Sometimes it seems wildly improbable, but it works. If things need to move forward and I am feeling a lack of character material to engage, then I put out some bait, otherwise I'm really just pushing back what the players throw at me and adding twists to it as they pass checks or not.
> 
> I didn't always play this way. In the 90's I created vast timelines and whatnot. It was WAY too much work and I didn't find the return on investment or quality of the game warranted it. I get better games for less work now  Again, possibly unique to me and maybe certain other people that like to do it that way.




I feel the same way, but I'm currently running a 5e game with some old-schoolers....gotta prep. At first it was really cool, but now I keep drifting off during prep fantasizing about how much simpler and richer it would be to do in Fate or DW, or how to rewrite D&D to be totally player-facing so that I can....well, anyway.

I think its one of my few gripes about 5e overall, that its a throwback to an era when I had to do a ton of prep for games. The DM side was one area that I thought 4e did a great job (especially monster stat blocks). The way monsters were set up made it easy, but 5e seems a huge step back in that department. (Even if it does better reflect the traditional "heart" of DMing.)


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## Sunseeker

Sadras said:


> This I feel is where this improv-like approach (for lack of a better description) would not work for my table. I have players who are not interested in being part of the creative process on that scale. They prefer DM prepping the story legwork - which includes a strong storyline and secret backstory.




I can admittedly be a difficult person to DM for sometimes, because I'll easily vaccinate between being content to sit back and enjoy the show and wanting to lead the circus.  It's one reason I rarely take issue with railroads.  If the story is interesting enough, I'm happy to move my pieces as necessary and watch things unfold.  What drives me nuts are games and DMs who want to control everything, but provide nothing of value.  If I'm going to give up my agency, I'm going to demand some sweet cut scenes in return.  (I'm looking at you Diablo III!)

But, I think a collaborative table can function with a few "builders" and a few "watchers".  The folks who aren't interesting in building just have to be willing to accept that sometimes they're going to be taken along for the right when another player gets going.  And I think there will be nothing lost for those people because now they're getting 3 people to tell them a story instead of 1.  Sort of like tables that rotate DMs.  Some people just don't want to DM.  As long as _not_ DMing makes them happy then there's no problem.  It only becomes a problem when you have "too many cooks in the kitchen" or too few people to contribute fresh material.


----------



## Jester David

Emerikol said:


> Say what you want but I’ve never met a DM who could pull it off for long at all doing it on the fly.  Not something a huge as a full blown encounter.  Now I have seen DMs using existing content with creative flourishes.




In my current game I try not to plan *that* much, not unless I'm doing a dungeon crawl or the like. I tend to plan some encounters mostly because I use minis and drawing the maps in advance saves time, but depending on how much time I have to prep I can run a session largely improv. 
As it's a reactive sandbox game, I also don't plan more than a session ahead, so I can tailor things to the players. 

However, the world is a heavily detailed homebrew setting. So much of my planning is just writing NPCs and expanding elements of the setting. 
And because I'm a worldbuilding snob who hates the illogical results of spontaneously created campaign settings. It invariably leads to unnatural ecologies and impossible rivers.


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## Manbearcat

I think the last few pages of advocacy positions on worldbuilding/big granular setting/metaplot approach are the most transparent and clear on the “why worldbuilding” question, on the nature of players at the table (what those players want and what is expected from them), and the play paradigm that emerges as a result.

This is probably a wrap.


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## Ovinomancer

Manbearcat said:


> I think the last few pages of advocacy positions on worldbuilding/big granular setting/metaplot approach are the most transparent and clear on the “why worldbuilding” question, on the nature of players at the table (what those players want and what is expected from them), and the play paradigm that emerges as a result.
> 
> This is probably a wrap.




I'm not so sure.  Are you saying that these align with your previous 9 points or are you saying that you have a new viewpoint?  If the former, well, no, I can't agree with you (mainly points 7, 8, and 9).  If the latter, I'd actually be interested in hearing about your new insights.  Either way, not really a wrap.


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## Manbearcat

@_*Ovinomancer*_

I don’t have the spare time to look up those 7 points (and the 8, 9 caveat extension), but here is what I’ve seen in terms of advocacy in the last few pages.

1) It’s an activity from which some derive enjoyment as a stand-alone craft.

2) It aids the cause of granular interaction with the gamestate so of-kind decision-points can be navigated for a certain player archetype.

3) It aids extrapolation/inference for GMs whose games hew to a process-sim, hexcrawl ethos (who typically hack the rules a bit to aid this); related to 2. Also includes adjudication by way of secret (perhaps unknowable) backstory.

4) It aids the passive setting/metaplot consumption/wonderment experience for certain player archetypes.

5) It aids extrapolation/inference for GMs whose games hew to a hybrid of storyteller: process-sim ethos.

6) Related to 4 and 5 above, it (along with resolution mechanics that are opaque and/or require heavy GM mediation) allows a GM to more easily exert covert Force (Illusionism) for players of persuasion (4); including adjudication by secret, unknowable backstory which may or may not exist (eg classic GM blocks against classic PC power plays).

7) It ensures GMs will be interested in any content that is a fundamental part of play (“the GM is supposed to have fun too”).

8) It fascilitates GMs in constraining the pace of play toward a granularly-intensive, more methodical (therefore slower) bent.

I think that covers it.


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## Ovinomancer

Manbearcat said:


> @_*Ovinomancer*_
> 
> I don’t have the spare time to look up those 7 points (and the 8, 9 caveat extension), but here is what I’ve seen in terms of advocacy in the last few pages.
> 
> 1) It’s an activity from which some derive enjoyment as a stand-alone craft.
> 
> 2) It aids the cause of granular interaction with the gamestate so of-kind decision-points can be navigated for a certain player archetype.
> 
> 3) It aids extrapolation/inference for GMs whose games hew to a process-sim, hexcrawl ethos (who typically hack the rules a bit to aid this); related to 2. Also includes adjudication by way of secret (perhaps unknowable) backstory.
> 
> 4) It aids the passive setting/metaplot consumption/wonderment experience for certain player archetypes.
> 
> 5) It aids extrapolation/inference for GMs whose games hew to a hybrid of storyteller: process-sim ethos.
> 
> 6) Related to 4 and 5 above, it (along with resolution mechanics that are opaque and/or require heavy GM mediation) allows a GM to more easily exert covert Force (Illusionism) for players of persuasion (4); including adjudication by secret, unknowable backstory which may or may not exist (eg classic GM blocks against classic PC power plays).
> 
> 7) It ensures GMs will be interested in any content that is a fundamental part of play (“the GM is supposed to have fun too”).
> 
> 8) It fascilitates GMs in constraining the pace of play toward a granularly-intensive, more methodical (therefore slower) bent.
> 
> I think that covers it.




Those have some similarities to the original 9, but some important differences as well.  I like these better.  I may have some issues with your 6), but largely because I'm not entirely certain what you're driving at.  I think that system is a bigger determinate of the use and acceptability of GM force rather than setting elements, but those two do go hand in hand quite often.

I also think there's a lot to say about systems that use grids for combat vs theatre of the mind.  It's much easier to wing it, and therefore be fully responsive to player input, in TotM games, but you lose much of the tactical aspects of the grid.  Conversely, grid systems need maps, and it's hard to consistently provide interesting maps with tactical aspects on the fly, so those systems reward prep.  Once you have a system that rewards prep in some instances, then it has a follow on effect of rewarding more prep so that the prep work already invested becomes relevant.  3.x was really bad about this, as the prep for combat was grueling, and so there was a strong incentive towards using GM force and Illusionism so that generated content was useful.  

D&D in general has this feature/bug.  The systems you generally espouse don't have this feature/bug.  So, I think system has a big impact on what worldbuilding is for.


----------



## hawkeyefan

So I'm currently reading the RPG "Tales From the Loop". It's an interesting game....very much in the vein of "Stranger Things" and similar fiction, right down to the 80s setting. I think it's a good example of player driven gaming. Each player designs a "Kid" as a character, with an archetype of some sort serving as what we would think of as a character class (Bookworm, Jock, Troublemaker, Popular kid, etc.). When the players make their Kids, they choose certain story elements; each Kid has a Problem, a Drive, a Pride, and an Anchor, all of which contribute to the story. The Problem is essential as the GM is expected to bring the Problem up during play. So if a Kid's problem is "I'm scared of the dark", then the GM will introduce a dark place in which some of the story will take place. And so on. 

The game is also interesting because all rolls are made by the players. When a Kid gets into Trouble...the GM can put a kid in Trouble or the players can....they decide what Attribute/Skill to use to get out of Trouble. So the players have a lot of agency. They can come up with creative ways to get out of Trouble, and then steer the action in that way. They basically pick which Atribute/Skill used to get out of a situation, and they have to make a case for it, and the GM decides if they can do so, or if another Attribute/Skill is needed. 

Throughout the book, there are many examples of "The GM has final say". On a failed check, very often the GM indicates success with a complication rather than outright failure. This kind of element seems in line with the "indie" approach that is being advocated for in this thread. So the game is by no means shy about Players driving the elements of the story. But neither is the game afraid of the GM using his judgment. 

Much of the game comes from the GM. For instance, NPC actions and their success or failure are decided by GM fiat. The Mystery itself (the story or adventure that the players are facing) is designed by the GM, within constraints of the setting. There's an assumed setting, but I can see taking the core mechanics and themes and coming up with a homebrew take on the game. 

I think reading through this game I was just struck by how obvious of a middle road it is between Player Driven and GM Driven. It immediately made me think of this thread. 

And I think it also touches upon something that I think is core to the discussion. It's in game design. If a game is designed with a Player Driven approach, then of course that is how play will proceed. The mechanics of the game support that style, and indeed, enforce it. 

If a game is not designed with such mechanics, then I don't think it means that it is impossible to incorporate Player Driven material, but the game is not actively calling for it, so it may be less likely. The assumed or default mode of play may lean heavily on the GM. But there is nothing stopping a GM from increasing the amount of Player Driven focus s/he allows. In such a game, the GM has to actively get the players to offer material, and then has to actively decide how to use it. There's nothing preventing this, but most of the time, the mechanics don't enforce it. 

And I think that's likely the crux of any lingering failure for folks in the discussion to understand the "other side".


----------



## Aenghus

I think a significant proportion of players don't want a decision-heavy game, or want to restrict their decisions making to particular subsets of the whole.  Sometimes this results in an increased workload for the GM, who needs to facilitate the type of game desired, and avoid forcing the sort of decisions their players want to avoid on them.

I think a detailed, self-consistent gameworld makes it easier for players to reverse-engineer the GM decision making process. Why is this relevant? Well, it isn't for some people, but in the case of people who care about in-game success, how the referee makes decisions is very relevant. Some referees seem very invested in obfuscating how they make decisions, which I have to admit is mystifying to me. But then I highly value transparency in game systems.

Partially it's because I want to engage meaningfully with game systems. It's also a trust issue, black box GMing makes it easier to use illusionism and gm force behind the scenes. Trust is never absolute, it has to be earned and maintained.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> Those have some similarities to the original 9, but some important differences as well.  I like these better.  I may have some issues with your 6), but largely because I'm not entirely certain what you're driving at.  I think that system is a bigger determinate of the use and acceptability of GM force rather than setting elements, but those two do go hand in hand quite often.



I think force/illusionism goes well with heavily pre-generated elements. It provides the GM with both means and motivation. Means in the sense of plot elements which can act as easy controls on PCs or to force the plot along lines the GM desires. Motivation in that a heavily plotted backstory integrated with a detailed setting (or even just the mass of setting details itself) begs to be shown off and elaborated on vs being undone. Few GMs relish spending several weekends of prep time on a town just to have the PCs burn it down in session 1. Instead the fire brigade will prove to have been equipped with a magical water pump, or something. You can light it on fire, but you can't burn it! The essence of illusionism, ones actions and choices simply don't produce predictable effects. Now, this isn't ALWAYS bad, but it can get old sometimes.



> I also think there's a lot to say about systems that use grids for combat vs theatre of the mind.  It's much easier to wing it, and therefore be fully responsive to player input, in TotM games, but you lose much of the tactical aspects of the grid.  Conversely, grid systems need maps, and it's hard to consistently provide interesting maps with tactical aspects on the fly, so those systems reward prep.  Once you have a system that rewards prep in some instances, then it has a follow on effect of rewarding more prep so that the prep work already invested becomes relevant.  3.x was really bad about this, as the prep for combat was grueling, and so there was a strong incentive towards using GM force and Illusionism so that generated content was useful.
> 
> D&D in general has this feature/bug.  The systems you generally espouse don't have this feature/bug.  So, I think system has a big impact on what worldbuilding is for.




Now, see, I found the opposite to be true. Playing out combats in 'TotM' meant I had to VERY carefully set everything out, describe it all in detail, etc. This is usually facilitated by pre-generated descriptions, and even artwork. Whereas I can drop a few dungeon tiles or draw a few lines on my Chessex with a wet erase marker about as fast as I can spin out the description in my head. 

Frankly, I like to consider many possible encounter locations and opponents ahead of time, but I don't get too detailed about who they are, where they might appear, or exactly what the action will be ahead of time. That way I can come up with some clever tactical situations that might be harder to just whip out on the fly, and still have a pretty unstructured game. 

Besides, if I don't focus on too many trivial combats, then the real fights are going to mostly be with 'name' figures, which have probably already been fleshed out to some extent in most cases through play. Stories with significant plot rarely run to "suddenly you find yourself fighting a dragon out of the blue" kinds of things. That dragon will be developed through earlier interactions, knowledge gained in the course of study or recon, etc. It may well be a sometime patron that has now come to a parting of the ways with the PCs! 

So, the general situation is likely to be that the location has been developed to some extent already, etc. I'm only fixing tactically relevant details at the time of the fight, and if I know its coming ahead of time I may even do a bit of that before the session. Heck, I might even map out the whole lair, though I've gotten pretty lazy in my old age...


----------



## pemerton

RedShirtNo5.1 said:


> I assume that when you pull out your old Greyhawk material and tell them they are in Hardby, you are reading notes to generate the framing



You said "a significant goal of play is for the GM to read stuff from his/her notes to trigger the players to make action declaration statements." The description of the starting town as Hardby isn't triggering an action declaration It's just colour. I could have said Zamboula if I wanted to. Or just made something up.

The action declarations are generted by the details of situation that aren't mere colour, like the angel feather for sale by the peddler. That's not based on notes.



RedShirtNo5.1 said:


> Pemerton? - improvise in order to provide frame



The GM's role is to establish situations - framing - that speaks to the dramatic needs of the PCs, as evinced by the player through PC build, through actual play, etc. This then leads to action declarations by the players for their PCs - resolution of those declarations provides new material that feeds into further framing, etc.

So if the plauyer builds a Raven Queen devotee, then situations are going to include agents of Orcus. If the player builds a mage who is trying to find items to help free his brother from possession by a balrog, then the situation is going to include stuff that speaks to that desire, like angel feathers of doubtul provenance.

This goes also to the contrast between mere colour, and substantive aspects of the situation. The fact that the Orcus cultists is 5' tall or 6' tall is (at least in every game I've run that I can think of) mere colour. I've never had a player build a PC where personal height is a thematic component of the PC. The fact that the Orcus cultist wields a mace is also colour, but - assuming that "mace" here is the mechanical representation of a skull-tipped rod - is also part of establishing the feel of an Orcus cultist. The fact that the Orcus cultist is in a tomb or not is - in the context of the Raven Queen devoteese - more than mere colour, because that matters to the way in which, in that particular context of play, Orcus's desecration of the dead is going to play out. And obviously the fact that the cultist serves Orcus rather than (say) Demogorgon is not mere colour.

An understanding on the GM's part of what is mere colour, and what is not, is pretty important to the approach I am describing. Glossing over mere colour is fine, and even expected. But glossing over some substantive element of a scene is a GMing mistake, on this approach. This also connects to establishing stakes, which goes back to secret backstory: suppose the cultist is some otherwise run-of-the-mill townsperson. The players are aware that, if their PCs kill the cultist, that has consequences in the mundane world - eg the dead cultist will be missed by family, colleagues etc. If the GM thinks its appropriate to introduce that into some subsequent framing, it probably doesn't matter whether the dead cultist turns out to have been a cobbler or a baker.

But if the cultist is (say) an undertaker, then that probably should be part of the framing, as that bears directly upon the stakes of the situation - this cultist of Orcus has been handling funerary preparations for who knows how many people! That's not mere colour that can be harmlessly established after the event.

I also would like to stress that _improvisation_ is not really the key concept here. What is key is (i) an absence of unilateral authorship of the setting by the GM, and (ii) no use of secret backstory as an element of framing so as to defeat action declarations.

You can get (i) and (ii) with prepared material - be that encounter maps (for systems that use them) or NPC ideas or NPC/creature statblocks - that is likely to be useful. Preparing material doesn't, itself, estalish the setting _prior to its actual use in play_.



hawkeyefan said:


> What about a third option? Where the person actually has plans with their friend and thinks ahead of time "I've got to remember to ask about the family, and work, and if he's had any chance to play D&D". And then introduces those topics that are known points of interest to the friend, and then they discuss them.
> 
> Conversations aren't always this purely spontaneous occurrence. And to be honest, when they are, they can be crappy. Everyone's bumped into someone unexpectedly and not had anything to say, and then later on realized "oh I should have mentioned X". Sometimes, preparation is good.
> 
> Same with a game.



Preparation isn't the same thing as pre-establishing setting. And it's even moreso not the same thing as pre-establishing setting secretly or unilaterally.

Preparation can include all sorts of different things, depending on the system, the campaign context, etc.

Writing up some NPC ideas is preparation. Whether ot not that is also establishing setting is a further matter. Before my first BW session, I had an idea for a NPC taken from a Penumbra d20 module - a renegade murdering mage. I wrote up a BW version of that character.

During the course of play, as the situation with the peddler, the feather, the curse, and Jabal the red unfolded, I introduced that NPC into the situation as part of the framing - as the dishevelled figure visible on Jabal' staircase, and as the person who sold the feather to the peddler.

The preparation did not establish any element of the shared fiction. The moments of framing and narration, in the course of play, did.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> he has trouble looking at games with more scripting (prep, worldbuilding, secret backstory, whatever) and figuring out what people get from that.



I've been more focused on trying to accurately describe what is going on, rather than analyse what people get from it - which can be rather subjective.



Ovinomancer said:


> I guess the wrap up is that players can be both actors in the game and the audience for the game.



That's not controversial. Players can also be authors and audience.

But if the GM is narrating pre-authored material to the players, and is using that material to adjudicate action declaration, what acting/agency are the players providing? They may be determining the sequence in which the pre-authored material is revealed by the GM (qv The Alexandrian's "node-based design"), or whether or not it is revealed at all. They establish characterisation for their PCs. What else?



Ovinomancer said:


> how the story unfolds can appeal to different players according to where players fall in those camps.  Some players love being the actor, being the focal point of the story and having everything engage them and nothing that constrains that engagement.  Other players are more situated on the audience side -- yes they act, but they're mostly there to be entertained, to be part of an entertaining story, and they're not nearly as interested in acting on that story as having the story act on them



Right. And how is it _possibly _pejorative to describe this as "the GM reading the players his/her notes"? That's exactly what the story/entertainment consists in!


----------



## pemerton

Jester David said:


> Your argument can be reduced to:
> *"I (think/ know) my players can tell when I'm improvising or using pre-planned ideas. Therefore, all players can tell when all DMs are using pre-planned ideas rather than improvising. *
> And that's a big ol' "no".



No. My claim is that there is a difference between helping establish the shared fiction, and having someone else preauthor it and provide it to you.

I looked at a little bit of Critical Role, and it looked pretty GM-driven to me.



Jester David said:


> The details that matter are basically madlibs. "This is the <place noun> of an NPC <class> whose is you <relation>." You can mix and match those blanks infinitely but the actual effect on the session is unchanged if the players are racing to their mage brother's tower to save him from an assassin or charging to their thief sister's warehouse lair to save her from a slaadi.



If the GM is driving the players through a series of fetch-quests and McGuffin hunts, then what you say might be true. If the game is actually player-driven in the sorts of ways I've described, where the whole orientation of play is towards the dramatic needs of the PCs (as build and/or played by their players) then it's not so at all.

To give an obvious literary example, The Quiet American can't just be reworked by changing the setting from Vietnam to Korea, changing Pyle from American to Chinese, and changing Fowler from English to Russian. Or by making Phuong a friend rather than a lover.

And just confining myself to the small episode of play described above and referenced in your thread, it matters that the assassin is a friend of the mage PC; that the assassin had earlier, in a duel of wits, extracted a promise from the mage PC to help defeat the brother; that the dominated PC is trying to capture the mage for his naga master; that the mage PC does not want to completely destroy his relationship with Jabal (whose tower it is); etc.



Jester David said:


> The relationship and how it affects the players is the important part and what the players care about. The origin of the specific noun does not.



The relationship affects the players because of their role in establishing it. They have chosen (eg) to play Raven Queen devotees; or Nightcrawler; or a mage with a demon-possessed brother.

Addressing that, in play, and allowing the players' responses to actually shape the ingame situation, is significant. Conversely, treating such material as the stuff for "sidequests", or as mere colour (eg the Raven Queen devotee says a prayer over killed foes), or as background that explains why the PC is ready to adventure, has a different (more-or-less opposite) significance.



Jester David said:


> that play experience isn't affected if you took a pre-existing tower that was on a map in a published campaign setting and just said, "oh, this is the NPC tower", tweaking the description to match their tastes.[/quote\
> 
> 
> Ovinomancer said:
> 
> 
> 
> pemerton isn't really adverse to pre-authored material so long as it's presented as framing and not as part of action resolution.  Prepping an encounter map or a villain (his naga and the elf in the desert come to mind) are perfectly fine, so long as their introduction is open and such things are not used to negate action declarations.  He's not ever been clear on this, though, so I might misunderstand him once again.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Preparation isn't the same thing as establishing the shared fiction.
> 
> A monster manual is preparation. A book of maps is preparation. Noting up a whole lot of NPCs (stats, personalities, either, both) is preparation. Making notes like "Orcus cultists attack if the Raven Queen devotees meet with the baron" is preparation.
> 
> But it is not inherent in any such preparation that it establishes any element of the shared fiction. I carry a Monster Manual and Monster Vault with me to my 4e sessions. These books have orcs in them. But (as best I recall) orcs, and Gruumsh, have never figured in our campaign. So it's a completely open question whether or not the shared fiction includes them.
> 
> For a long time I carried around notes on a possible duergar stronghold (written up by drawing from the module H2). I ended up not using them, as the occasion never arose. When the PCs eventually visited a duergar stronghold the context was completely different from one in which those notes would make sense, and so the only bit of them that I used was some NPC names. That other material is not part of the shared fiction.
> 
> In short, preparing material and ideas is not the same thing as worldbuilding, as establishing setting. But obviously some GMs treat it in that fashion - which is the topic of the OP.
> 
> 
> 
> Jester David said:
> 
> 
> 
> many PCs also just want the rollercoaster with the solid plot, even if there are heavy rails. So long as the story is good, does it matter? And there's the challenge of doing better than other groups.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I assume that by "PCs" you mean players.
> 
> I've got no doubt that some players like the GM to tell them a story. Presumably that's one answer to the question asked at the start of this thread: worldbuiling, in the sense of GM pre-authored setting that the GM uses to frame and adjudicate action resolution, provides the content of that story.
> 
> By "doing better than other groups" I assume you mean that the players defeat the (pre-authored) combat encounters in fewer rounds or consuming fewer resources; or solve the puzzle more quickly, eg by finding a more optimal sequence for having the GM narrate the material, or drawing inferences more quickly from a thinner basis of GM narration - although I suspect that this latter sort of "doing better" can cause headaches in D&D if the players don't do enough of whatever it is that will earn their PCs sufficient levels to actually be able to take on the later (pre-authored) combat encounters.
> 
> 
> 
> Jester David said:
> 
> 
> 
> I know some players that would be appalled by the idea of the DM just making things up as they occurred. The idea that they're not on the right track or doing the right thing but simply rolling well or having things laid out for them.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> First, you present your two option - _on the right track_ (ie correctly discerning the GM's notes) vs _rolling well or having things laid out for them_ - as if they cover the field.
> 
> What about _having their dramatic needs addressed_? In my 4e game, the player of the invoker/wizard, tasked by Erathis and the Raven Queen to restore the Rod of Seven Parts, and to work with Bane and Levistus so as to ensure the Abyss is not inadventently let loose, may soon have to choose whether or not to add the final piece of the Rod to the six currently-assembled pieceds. In some earlier episodes of play, the same player had to decide what to do with the Eye of Vecna (he implanted it in his imp familiar), and whether to allow Vecna, or the Raven Queen, to receive the flow of soul energy that had been feeding Torog's Soul Abattoir until the PCs destroyed that piece of magical apparatus.
> 
> None of these choices are about "rolling well" or "having things laid out for you". Nor are they about "being on the right track". There _is_ no right track. The game is not a puzzle. There is no prescribed endgame the players are shooting for. It's about making a choice that matters to the character, and discovering how that will shape the content of the resulting fiction. In this approach to play, the idea of "doing better than other groups" doesn't have any sort of purchase at all; there is no common "story" or puzzle being worked through as the main focus of play.
> 
> The idea of such choices seems to be fundamentally absent from your conception of RPGing. But it is fundamental to what I enjoy about RPGing, both as a player and a GM.
Click to expand...


----------



## pemerton

BryonD said:


> To me, and I'd be comfortable saying to many others I've gamed with, being a player is tied to being an alternate person within a setting and context and having the experience as that person.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> "NO" is an important part of the joy of success.



In the context of action declarations which concern the PC _learning about the gameworld_ rather than the PC _changing the gameworld_ - and perhaps even for some of the latter, if there are secret elements of the fiction that the GM will treat as part of the fictional positioning (eg the notorious chamberlain example from years ago) - then _succes_ here means _trigger the GM to narrate for you the relevant part of his/her pre-authored material_.

Eg _success in finding the map_ means, as player, declaring the right move (eg "I search the such-and-such") that will lead to the GM narrating the location of the map from his/her notes.

This may or may not be fun - that's obviously a matter of taste. But clearly it involves relatively little player agency in respsect of the content of the shared fiction.



Ovinomancer said:


> System matters.  Its very hard to do this in D&D, for instance, but baked in to DW and BW.  Its doable to greater or lesser extents in other systems.



Burning Wheel does not assume no prep. Monster Burning, full-fledged Character Burning, etc are lengthy processes. The game assumes that the GM will do these things between actual play sessions. (And also the players, if appropriate -eg the player of the mage in my BW game befriended a NPC cleric by way of a Circles check, and then burned her up.)

What BW does assume is that the GM will not pre-author situations and outcomes. (The map example, once again, illustrates the point.)



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think fictional positioning is basically the same sort of limiter in my process of running a game. You can't just do any old arbitrary thing as a player because your PC needs the fictional positioning to make that happen. Now, you may be able to, within limits, establish parts of the narrative yourself and then use that as a way to get your character positioned
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Say 'yes' is A technique, but it isn't the last word in story-driven play. Its just a good starting point



This thread keeps getting side-tracked by assumptions that don't hold good, and that I and you and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] have already posted about.

"Say 'yes' or roll the dice" is an approach to resolving action declarations: if the GM frames a situation (eg "OK, so you're in the cartographer's study - what are you doing?"), and the player then declares an action for his/her PC that is congruent with the established framing (eg "I search for the map!"), the GM has two options: either the GM says "yes", or the GM calls for a check. The GM says "yes" if nothing is at stake - essentially we're establishing some colour, or narrating some transition in the situation on our way to the crunch; the GM calls for a check when something is at stake.

Plenty of RPGs can be run in this way: 4e seems to me to encourage it; Burning Wheel mandates it; Cortex+ Heroic appears to presuppose it. Classic Traveller can tolerate it (but defaults fairly heavily to rolling the dice, as it has a very liberal conception of when something is at stake).

The use of this technique is quite separate from allowing the players to stipulate new elements of the fiction. That is not a default part of any of the above-mentioned systems. (Contrast, say Fate, or OGL Conan, which do allow this as a core system element, by way of fate point expenditure.)

Sometimes saying "yes" may allow the player to, incidentally to the action declaration, establish some part of the fiction (eg "I collect herbs as we walk through the forest" "OK, no worries"). If the GM thinks this is controversial, of course s/he can call for a check ("OK, roll Foraging").

Also, the GM in BW is encouraged to allow a player a bonus die if s/he asks for it by reference to some element of the fictional positioning (eg "I use those herbs I collected to flavour the soup" grants +1D to cooking), and in some context that could allow the player to establish modest elements of the situation (eg if events are unfolding a kitchen, the player might say "I take up a position near the oven, so they risk getting burned if they attack my flank" "OK, have +1D to block").

But the player can't, by default, just specify something like "OK, my friend is here to help me" (in BW that would be a Circles check; in 4e the GM might call for a Streetwise check, or just say no).

This is a signifcant difference between RPGing and improv theatre. RPGing, at least in its mainstream form, has distinct player and GM roles, and the player role is based around declaring actions for a particular character in the shared fiction. You don't _need_ to move beyond that in order to have player-driven play (resulting from "say 'yes' or roll the diced adjudication of declared actions).


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> Preparation isn't the same thing as pre-establishing setting. And it's even moreso not the same thing as pre-establishing setting secretly or unilaterally.




I’m not saying they’re the same. I’d say one can be an example of the other. 



pemerton said:


> Preparation can include all sorts of different things, depending on the system, the campaign context, etc.
> 
> Writing up some NPC ideas is preparation. Whether ot not that is also establishing setting is a further matter. Before my first BW session, I had an idea for a NPC taken from a Penumbra d20 module - a renegade murdering mage. I wrote up a BW version of that character.
> 
> During the course of play, as the situation with the peddler, the feather, the curse, and Jabal the red unfolded, I introduced that NPC into the situation as part of the framing - as the dishevelled figure visible on Jabal' staircase, and as the person who sold the feather to the peddler.
> 
> The preparation did not establish any element of the shared fiction. The moments of framing and narration, in the course of play, did.




I suppose if the fiction ended there you’d be right. But I would imagine a murderous mage may shape the fiction going forward quite a bit differently than if you’d prepped an absentminded old sage. No? 

And either way, I’m not saying that there can’t be anything useful about spontaneous creativity...to letting the game and the players and their choices shape things. I enjoy it. 

But I also think that having some ideas ahead of time is a good idea. And clearly based on your comments about prep, you do, too.


----------



## BryonD

pemerton said:


> BryonD said:
> 
> 
> 
> To me, and I'd be comfortable saying to many others I've gamed with, being a player is tied to being an alternate person within a setting and context and having the experience as that person.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> "NO" is an important part of the joy of success./QUOTE]In the context of action declarations which concern the PC _learning about the gameworld_ rather than the PC _changing the gameworld_ - and perhaps even for some of the latter, if there are secret elements of the fiction that the GM will treat as part of the fictional positioning (eg the notorious chamberlain example from years ago) - then _succes_ here means _trigger the GM to narrate for you the relevant part of his/her pre-authored material_.
> 
> Eg _success in finding the map_ means, as player, declaring the right move (eg "I search the such-and-such") that will lead to the GM narrating the location of the map from his/her notes.
> 
> This may or may not be fun - that's obviously a matter of taste. But clearly it involves relatively little player agency in respsect of the content of the shared fiction.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Your proclamation seems myopic and bizarre.
> 
> But that is just going to go back down the same rabbit hole once more.  The entire idea of "player agency" vs. "player fun" when the player wants to be 100% in character remains a disconnect.  And I can completely respect the idea that you prefer something different than me.  It is the unending rejection of the idea that "shared fiction" remains awesome even where the sharing is highly asymmetrical because the player's agency is constrained to what their character can do and the DM has unlimited authority of authorship.
> 
> And yet, even with that concurrence of the vague concept of player agency, the extrapolation to "right moves" and presumption that the answer will be in DM notes is terribly off-base.  My players would laugh their asses off if I told them someone claimed the games they are in worked that way.
> 
> I do recognize that you are referencing constraints which have been identified in this thread.  But those constraints have also been shown to be artificial and misleading.  Holding to them as sacred seems to be simply an effort to avoid hearing the actual position of the other side and engaging in good faith dialogue.
Click to expand...


----------



## pemerton

Aenghus said:


> I think a significant proportion of players don't want a decision-heavy game, or want to restrict their decisions making to particular subsets of the whole.



This is surely true.

But it would seem odd to _also_ assert that those players are exerting a lot of agency in play!


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> I suppose if the fiction ended there you’d be right. But I would imagine a murderous mage may shape the fiction going forward quite a bit differently than if you’d prepped an absentminded old sage. No?



Sure. I'm not sure where you're going with this - yes, GM framing contributes to the shared fiction. The current discussion I had taken to be more about the extent to which it is the predominant or sole contribution.


----------



## pemerton

BryonD said:


> The entire idea of "player agency" vs. "player fun" when the player wants to be 100% in character remains a disconnect.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It is the unending rejection of the idea that "shared fiction" remains awesome even where the sharing is highly asymmetrical because the player's agency is constrained to what their character can do and the DM has unlimited authority of authorship.



The fiction may be awesome or not - that seems mostly a matter of taste. If players enjoy the GM presenting them with the products of his/her imagination, no doubt that's a reason for the GM to create and present such products.

My claim is simly about agency. In that situation, the players do not seem to have a great deal of agency over the shared fiction. This was a point that was made upthread and treated as controversial. But now it seems that it is a point that attracts widespread agreement.



BryonD said:


> And yet, even with that concurrence of the vague concept of player agency, the extrapolation to "right moves" and presumption that the answer will be in DM notes is terribly off-base.  My players would laugh their asses off if I told them someone claimed the games they are in worked that way.



Where do the constraints come from, then. Eg how is it determined where the map is located?


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> Sure. I'm not sure where you're going with this - yes, GM framing contributes to the shared fiction. The current discussion I had taken to be more about the extent to which it is the predominant or sole contribution.




Because your pre-authored NPC will surely influence the story going forward. And that you recognize the value of preparation by the GM prior to play. Which would indicate that you know the value of worldbuilding.


----------



## Jester David

pemerton said:


> No. My claim is that there is a difference between helping establish the shared fiction, and having someone else preauthor it and provide it to you.



And I claim that you're wrong.

You admit later to using a _Monster Manual_. So you admit that you don't make up monsters on the fly and tailor them for your games, to the tone of your game and world. That’s the _exact same thing_ as an NPC or a location or an adventuring site. 
If you can use the statblocks of an orc you can pull the description of a tower, a tavern with innkeeper, a city, or even an entire nation. You can pull a dungeon out of _Dungeon Delves_. You can use the Village of Hommlet.

As I say this in an earlier post:


Jester David said:


> Say my adventurers are travelling through the jungle. On their travels they encounter:
> 
> The decapitated body of a giant dinosaur, killed by trophy hunters who plan on stuffing & mounting its head.
> An ancient stone druid circle with a petrified treant in the middle. A single small sapling is emerging from the dead plan's side.
> An ovoid floating island with two trees emerging from it, their stumps and roots giving it the appearance of a giant stone heart.
> An abandoned wagon with multiple crates stocked with food provisions, strips of leather, and two barrels of spoiled wine. There signs of battle around, including arrows in the wagon, but no bodies.
> 
> Does it matter which of those I created off the top of my head? Which I pulled from a WotC adventure? Which I pulled from an online forum? Which I pulled from a table of random encounters?



So… which is which? Which did I create just for this thread and which are pre-authored? 
Points will be counted. Go. 



pemerton said:


> I looked at a little bit of Critical Role, and it looked pretty GM-driven to me.



With 400 hours of show there’s a lot driven by the DM, Matthew Mercer, but a lot driven by the players. (We're also seeing the show as presented at the table. He has conversations with the players away from the table and sets up stuff in conjunction with them. Last week's session is a great example of that.)

Mercer does a lot of prep, but he is very reactive to the players, and created a campaign and a world that progresses. The villain doesn't sit around and cease acting when the players are elsewhere. The longer they take, the more things change. 

But the _*point*_ was that when the DM is reacting and improvising, it's not immediately apparent. 
If your players can tell when you're improvising and using a script, that's a reflection of you.



pemerton said:


> If the GM is driving the players through a series of fetch-quests and McGuffin hunts, then what you say might be true. If the game is actually player-driven in the sorts of ways I've described, where the whole orientation of play is towards the dramatic needs of the PCs (as build and/or played by their players) then it's not so at all.



First off, you don't need to be so dismissive, by suggesting that people running a game with a story is "fetch quests" and isn't player driven. 

Secondly, how exactly does the story change for your players if they're going to their sister's warehouse rather than the brother's tower?  How does changing the gender change the motivation? How does altering the type of location dramatically change the tone?
The important bits remain the same. The urgency is the same. They're not going to rush slower to save their sister or have an easier time getting to a warehouse.

Yeah, if the players wanted a tower for their character, then, yeah, there should *probably* be a tower. If they don't specify, then why not grab an interesting location from a published source? Even if they do have a firmer idea, why not punch it up with a few idea, combining what they have with other concepts?
The investment is the important bit. The motivation. The tie to the character. The original source of story element is irrelevant, because once it enters your game it ceases to be what it was and becomes something new. And because, when done correctly, the players won't know that you pulled the description of the tower from a novel/ sourcebook/ movie/ DeviantArt sketch/ napkin. 



pemerton said:


> Preparation isn't the same thing as establishing the shared fiction.
> 
> A monster manual is preparation. A book of maps is preparation. Noting up a whole lot of NPCs (stats, personalities, either, both) is preparation. Making notes like "Orcus cultists attack if the Raven Queen devotees meet with the baron" is preparation.



A book of locations is also a preparation book. A campaign setting is a preparation book. 

Having a setting prepared doesn't prevent you from telling the types of stories you want. That's just the background. The painted sets at the back of the stage. 
Just because a stagehand prepared a few backdrops before the improv show doesn't mean the show suddenly becomes scripted.

Why can't you tell a player focused shared fiction campaign in the Forgotten Realms? Or New York? 
Why does it matter if you create the pub at the moment or pull it from a book penned by Ed Greenwood or from a travelogue of Manhattan? Once the players decide to make that their base of operations that's what's important. 



pemerton said:


> But it is not inherent in any such preparation that it establishes any element of the shared fiction. I carry a Monster Manual and Monster Vault with me to my 4e sessions. These books have orcs in them. But (as best I recall) orcs, and Gruumsh, have never figured in our campaign. So it's a completely open question whether or not the shared fiction includes them.



Lore for D&D exists in a quantum state. It both exists and doesn't exist. If the players (or you) think up better lore it overwrites the book's lore. If the players are uninterested and the you can't think of anything then what the book says works just fine. 

That's what worldbuilding is for. Creating the backdrop ahead of time so you can spend time at the table managing the pace of the story, running the encounters, and wrangling the players. To save the brain power and time for what matters. So when the players are sneaking into the orc warband's territory and ask if there's a totem to an orc god they can set fire to as a distraction you don't need to create a pantheon on the spot. You can just say "Sure. There's a hideous fetish idol to Gruumsh, with its one eye being a large glass lense." (Or roll to see if the idol exists before saying that.)



pemerton said:


> For a long time I carried around notes on a possible duergar stronghold (written up by drawing from the module H2). I ended up not using them, as the occasion never arose. When the PCs eventually visited a duergar stronghold the context was completely different from one in which those notes would make sense, and so the only bit of them that I used was some NPC names. That other material is not part of the shared fiction.
> 
> In short, preparing material and ideas is not the same thing as worldbuilding, as establishing setting. But obviously some GMs treat it in that fashion - which is the topic of the OP.



If I established the duergar stronghold and presented it to the players as a location to go to, then it’s part of the world. If the players don't get involved, then whatever the duergar were planning continues. If the players leave that plot then that's fine, but it continues without them. 

Which means things happen. As a result of the player's actions, and as a consequence of their choices. To do otherwise would be to diminish their actions and reduce the impact of their characters in the world. 



pemerton said:


> I assume that by "PCs" you mean players.



Yes, yes. Mixing those up is a common slip (who hasn't accidentally commented on "a player dying" instead of "a character"?) Pointing that out just seems petty and pedantic. 



pemerton said:


> I've got no doubt that some players like the GM to tell them a story. Presumably that's one answer to the question asked at the start of this thread: worldbuiling, in the sense of GM pre-authored setting that the GM uses to frame and adjudicate action resolution, provides the content of that story.



By "some" you probably mean "most". While I think almost all players like to have a choice in how the plot unfolds, I think most are quite happy to have the DM tell a story they really want to tell. Because when the GM is excited about a story, they're going to put more energy into the game and the excitement will be contagious.

(Plus, the GM is a player too. So they should have some say in how the story goes, just like the other players.)



pemerton said:


> By "doing better than other groups" I assume you mean that the players defeat the (pre-authored) combat encounters in fewer rounds or consuming fewer resources; or solve the puzzle more quickly, eg by finding a more optimal sequence for having the GM narrate the material, or drawing inferences more quickly from a thinner basis of GM narration - although I suspect that this latter sort of "doing better" can cause headaches in D&D if the players don't do enough of whatever it is that will earn their PCs sufficient levels to actually be able to take on the later (pre-authored) combat encounters.



I'm pretty much referring to running pre-published adventures and comparin how your group did compared to others. A tradition that goes back to the old Tournament mods of the mid-70s. 
Because when a bunch of gamers sit around a table they can't talk about their characters, but they can compare notes about how each did in the _Tomb of Horrors_ or how they handled the kobolds in the _Caves of Chaos_



pemerton said:


> What about _having their dramatic needs addressed_? In my 4e game, the player of the invoker/wizard, tasked by Erathis and the Raven Queen to restore the Rod of Seven Parts, and to work with Bane and Levistus so as to ensure the Abyss is not inadventently let loose, may soon have to choose whether or not to add the final piece of the Rod to the six currently-assembled pieceds. In some earlier episodes of play, the same player had to decide what to do with the Eye of Vecna (he implanted it in his imp familiar), and whether to allow Vecna, or the Raven Queen, to receive the flow of soul energy that had been feeding Torog's Soul Abattoir until the PCs destroyed that piece of magical apparatus.



That sure sounds like you used a heck of a lot of D&D lore. Aka… worldbuilding.

If you feel comfortable including Bane and Levistus, the Rod of Seven Parts and the Abyss, why not the town of Daggerdale? A dungeon adapted from _Hoard of the Dragon Queen_ where the motives of the NPCs are changed? An NPC from a PDF of NPCs sold on the DMsGuild?



pemerton said:


> The game is not a puzzle.



That's not what you said in the first page.



pemerton said:


> The idea of such choices seems to be fundamentally absent from your conception of RPGing. But it is fundamental to what I enjoy about RPGing, both as a player and a GM.



Quite the opposite really. 

I have a big prewritten campaign setting but I write the adventure based on the players and their choices. And their actions and choices shape the world: for their characters, for their next characters, and the characters of future parties playing in the world. The players in my 4e game impacted the world by their successes and failures, which *might* impact the players of the current campaign, if they choose to go to that location. 
The catch is, half my players don't really have characters with strong motivations. They just want to play. So the story becomes all about the other players who do have strong motivations and character desires. So, as a good GM, I need to invent stories for the other players to keep them involved and prevent them from just being sidekicks to the more extroverted players. The stories are still focused on the PCs, but I'm more active in initiating and doing the backstory. 

My 5e game is just going on a break so I can do some Star Wars and then another DM can take over to tell a story he really wants to tell. After that I'm working the _Tomb of Annihilation_ adventure into the campaign, moving the location to a place in my world and tying a PCs' quest to the Tomb. Do they have a choice? Sure. Walking away and going elsewhere is totally a choice. It will just kill a couple PCs. But then the campaign will shift to adventures set wherever they head towards.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> Because your pre-authored NPC will surely influence the story going forward. And that you recognize the value of preparation by the GM prior to play. Which would indicate that you know the value of worldbuilding.



But that murderous mage could have been introduced in any number of ways. Likewise the dark elf from the same campaign.

As it happens, the murderous mage was the vendor of the angel feather, and was also sheltering in Jabal's tower. But given that the angel feather and the tower were both authored in the course of play, this particular mode in which the murderous mage was introduced couldn't be established until the game was actually underway.

That's the contrast between having an idea, and pre-authoring setting elements.

EDIT: [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION], the above also answers the questions you ask in your post: the difference between preparation and establishing a setting.

But you have provided another answer to the question: a reason for worldbuilding is so that group A can play through the same story as group B and compare notes about it.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> But that murderous mage could have been introduced in any number of ways. Likewise the dark elf from the same campaign.
> 
> As it happens, the murderous mage was the vendor of the angel feather, and was also sheltering in Jabal's tower. But given that the angel feather and the tower were both authored in the course of play, this particular mode in which the murderous mage was introduced couldn't be established until the game was actually underway.
> 
> That's the contrast between having an idea, and pre-authoring setting elements.
> 
> EDIT: @_*Jester David*_, the above also answers the questions you ask in your post: the difference between preparation and establishing a setting.
> 
> But you have provided another answer to the question: a reason for worldbuilding is so that group A can play through the same story as group B and compare notes about it.




So you came up with the idea of te NPC beforehand, but because you used two ideas introduced during play to introduce him, you claim that the NPC is an idea and not a pre-authored element? 

I don’t agree with that at all. Sounds to me like the setting elements in question were one third GM authored prior to play. Those other two elements don’t erase the fact that you came up with major traits for this character that will influence his role in the game. The feather and the tower help define him more, for sure...they serve to fix him in the world to some extent, they grant context by which he interacts with the PCs.

But still....you authored the NPC beforehand. It seems you did so because you found the character interesting, perhaps you wanted to see how the PCs would deal with such a character, or perhaps you were intrigued by the idea of roleplaying the character. 

Whatever the actual reason, I think this can probably be considered another answer to the worldbuilding question. The GM may introduce elements to the story because he thinks they are interesting. 

Which is absolutely fine.

I’d even go so far as to replace “may” in the sentence above with “must”, but perhaps that’s a separate discussion.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> This thread keeps getting side-tracked by assumptions that don't hold good, and that I and you and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] have already posted about.
> 
> "Say 'yes' or roll the dice" is an approach to resolving action declarations: if the GM frames a situation (eg "OK, so you're in the cartographer's study - what are you doing?"), and the player then declares an action for his/her PC that is congruent with the established framing (eg "I search for the map!"), the GM has two options: either the GM says "yes", or the GM calls for a check. The GM says "yes" if nothing is at stake - essentially we're establishing some colour, or narrating some transition in the situation on our way to the crunch; the GM calls for a check when something is at stake.
> 
> Plenty of RPGs can be run in this way: 4e seems to me to encourage it; Burning Wheel mandates it; Cortex+ Heroic appears to presuppose it. Classic Traveller can tolerate it (but defaults fairly heavily to rolling the dice, as it has a very liberal conception of when something is at stake).
> 
> The use of this technique is quite separate from allowing the players to stipulate new elements of the fiction. That is not a default part of any of the above-mentioned systems.



It sure seems to be, when coupled with rolling the dice.

An example that has come up in other discussions is searching for a secret door.  A player declares her PC is searching for a secret door at the end of a dead-end passage, after which the DM can respond in one of two ways depending on the situation:

1. Say yes.  On this the player - not the DM - has just introduced a secret door into the fiction.
2. Roll the dice.  On success, the player - not the DM - has just introduced a secret door into the fiction.  On failure quite likely she has not, but she still may have.

While the player can't usually bypass the check if the DM calls for one, the success (automatic on say-yes) or failure of the check itself establishes whether the player's attempt to stipulate a new fiction element works or not.  But the result remains: sometimes players *can* stipulate fiction elements, or try to.

Lanefan


----------



## Aenghus

pemerton said:


> This is surely true.
> 
> But it would seem odd to _also_ assert that those players are exerting a lot of agency in play!




So long as they are satisfied with the amount of agency they do end up with, it doesn't matter. More agency isn't objectively better, it's only better if that's what the players want, and the referee (if there is one) is OK with it. More agency means more or bigger decisions, and players who don't want these decisions often balk at them like a horse refusing a jump. 

For such players pre-authored backstory can be an advantage, as such worlds can have enough detail to allow them to keep making a bunch of  small incremental decisions, rather than much smaller number of  big dramatic ones.

I want to write something about boxed text, which are a feature of old-fashioned adventure modules. Such adventures often feature a linear adventure model and some railroading may be useful or necessary to keep the players on track. Node or scene based adventures can feature boxed text as well, and may require less railroading.

Done right, boxed text allows newbie GMs to run a tolerable game, and newbie players to figure out how to play. When the players make some progress in the adventure, it's often signified by a new passage of boxed text. When run in this style pretty quickly players associate boxed text with adventure progress. Depending on the system, GM and adventure, there may be non-boxed parts of the adventure that the players still find fun, but the GM may downplay excursions off the main adventure path.

For better or worse, IMO some players associate boxed text with rookie GMing. They conceal it with improved exposition or avoid it entirely by various means, including just not having boxed text at all. Boxed text doesn't need to be delivered in a monotone, or be boring, or be in a single easily identifiable block.

Concealing or removing boxed text potentially removes clear signals to players that they are on the right path (assuming a right path exists-I have to say it annoys me when a referee says there's no right path when the game itself clearly illustrates there is one). It might be necessary to replace missing signals so players have enought information to make meaningful decisions. I'm a big fan of transparency in games, among other things because I've seen so much time wasted in games when the players and referee were at loggerheads but unwilling to talk things out out of character.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Writing up some NPC ideas is preparation. Whether ot not that is also establishing setting is a further matter. Before my first BW session, I had an idea for a NPC taken from a Penumbra d20 module - a renegade murdering mage. I wrote up a BW version of that character.
> 
> During the course of play, as the situation with the peddler, the feather, the curse, and Jabal the red unfolded, I introduced that NPC into the situation as part of the framing - as the dishevelled figure visible on Jabal' staircase, and as the person who sold the feather to the peddler.
> 
> The preparation did not establish any element of the shared fiction. The moments of framing and narration, in the course of play, did.




There's always the danger here that such prep will graduate onto the level of being canonicalized by the GM and thus become a driver of play for the GM. Of course this isn't universally bad, GMs are allowed to want to express specific agendas in play like anyone else, but it can interfere with their other tasks. 

It would be interesting to create a game/table procedures where all these various GM tasks were parsed up in different ways. What if there was someone who introduced material in response to PC dramatic needs, and someone who established color, and someone else who dealt with pacing? I mean I don't know how to parse it actually, but who's done this analysis?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> This thread keeps getting side-tracked by assumptions that don't hold good, and that I and you and @_*Manbearcat*_ and @_*chaochou*_ have already posted about.
> 
> "Say 'yes' or roll the dice" is an approach to resolving action declarations: if the GM frames a situation (eg "OK, so you're in the cartographer's study - what are you doing?"), and the player then declares an action for his/her PC that is congruent with the established framing (eg "I search for the map!"), the GM has two options: either the GM says "yes", or the GM calls for a check. The GM says "yes" if nothing is at stake - essentially we're establishing some colour, or narrating some transition in the situation on our way to the crunch; the GM calls for a check when something is at stake.
> 
> Plenty of RPGs can be run in this way: 4e seems to me to encourage it; Burning Wheel mandates it; Cortex+ Heroic appears to presuppose it. Classic Traveller can tolerate it (but defaults fairly heavily to rolling the dice, as it has a very liberal conception of when something is at stake).
> 
> The use of this technique is quite separate from allowing the players to stipulate new elements of the fiction. That is not a default part of any of the above-mentioned systems. (Contrast, say Fate, or OGL Conan, which do allow this as a core system element, by way of fate point expenditure.)
> 
> Sometimes saying "yes" may allow the player to, incidentally to the action declaration, establish some part of the fiction (eg "I collect herbs as we walk through the forest" "OK, no worries"). If the GM thinks this is controversial, of course s/he can call for a check ("OK, roll Foraging").
> 
> Also, the GM in BW is encouraged to allow a player a bonus die if s/he asks for it by reference to some element of the fictional positioning (eg "I use those herbs I collected to flavour the soup" grants +1D to cooking), and in some context that could allow the player to establish modest elements of the situation (eg if events are unfolding a kitchen, the player might say "I take up a position near the oven, so they risk getting burned if they attack my flank" "OK, have +1D to block").
> 
> But the player can't, by default, just specify something like "OK, my friend is here to help me" (in BW that would be a Circles check; in 4e the GM might call for a Streetwise check, or just say no).
> 
> This is a signifcant difference between RPGing and improv theatre. RPGing, at least in its mainstream form, has distinct player and GM roles, and the player role is based around declaring actions for a particular character in the shared fiction. You don't _need_ to move beyond that in order to have player-driven play (resulting from "say 'yes' or roll the diced adjudication of declared actions).




Yeah, in my HoML 4e hack I provided some means. So for instance a player might say "OK, I'll search for some herbs along the way, and I want to use my Overconfident weakness to acquire Inspiration. I am SURE that the pixies won't find me as I search for the herbs! After all I'm sure I got away clean from them..." Now the GM can author the consequences. The player gets her inspiration point, and the character presumably runs into the pixies (or maybe some other variation of getting in trouble 'You see some bear sign, but you're confident you can avoid encountering the bear, then you hear a roar behind you!') or something like that. Maybe the suggested pixies factor in, its not really up to the player to dictate exactly how.

Alternatively a player might establish that they DID gather herbs, leveraging 'Always be prepared' so that they can gain fictional positioning in some later situation "I am always prepared, I gathered herbs as we moved through the forest and now I use them to achieve a success in curing the disease!", this time EXPENDING inspiration. Its a limited resources which you can't stockpile (you have it or not) but it lets players establish some narrative in relation to their characters which builds on the character concept in a fairly natural way. This is of course very FATE-like (or actually FUDGE-like, but whatever). 

One thing I have found with this is it works better with a lot of players than more thorough-going 'story telling' focused systems such as some of those you've mentioned. You can play HoML and it can feel pretty close to 4e or even 5e if you are a player comfortable with that paradigm, but it has the tools needed to do more than that. 4e LETS you do these things, kind of, HoML has actual procedures and its structure being very conflict-focused means things are almost always moving towards rising action. I took away all the crutches that I as a GM could use to dilly-dally around or overtly control the narrative. Still working on the ideal way to formulate some subsystems though, like 'rituals'.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> The fiction may be awesome or not - that seems mostly a matter of taste. If players enjoy the GM presenting them with the products of his/her imagination, no doubt that's a reason for the GM to create and present such products.
> 
> My claim is simly about agency. In that situation, the players do not seem to have a great deal of agency over the shared fiction. This was a point that was made upthread and treated as controversial. But now it seems that it is a point that attracts widespread agreement.
> 
> Where do the constraints come from, then. Eg how is it determined where the map is located?




I suspect, since most of the DMs of 2e/3e/5e games I've played in work something like this, that in [MENTION=34194]byron[/MENTION]'s play process the players are making pretty high-level decisions about where to go and what to do, probably often informed by intelligence they have acquired about different areas of the GM's world. So in effect you could model it like a 'dungeon maze' where the players have maps and descriptions of some areas and a fair idea that going left or right at the next passage will lead to areas with some specific character to them, or something that they want. Also, being an RPG, there's always the alternative of subverting some of the GM's arranged material. In 'dungeon maze' terminology someone prepared a scroll with 'Passwall' on it and can use that to partially rewrite the map at some point if they don't like the direction things are going. 

Players are also likely to find ways to have their characters exercise significant agency in terms of restructuring the world at a higher level, building a castle, conquering a city, assassinating a king, whatever. As long as the GM in question doesn't fall to exercising force and illusion to artificially limit this, then its cool. This is a treacherous problem though because there's always SOME logic inherent in the situation for resisting player-established goals. I mean, it wouldn't even be exciting in a challenge sense (which is part of this modus of play to one extent or another) to simply allow the PCs to roll over things and get what they want. Where is the line between challenging and railroading/controlling? Its a big grey area. Clearly fudging die rolls in order to limit (or enhance) character success crosses into force/illusionism, but there's a LOT of territory short of that.

Lets suppose the PCs decided to assassinate the king. Just how strong are his bodyguards and what precautions does he take? That probably isn't established in advance, at least in detail. The GM now is in the position of effectively deciding if the task is within the resource limits that the PCs can deploy (and those are purely in-game resources, the players have no meta-game power outside of 'convince the GM to let us do X'). 

Now we begin to see clearly WHY the alternative forms of play evolved. In MY game, this would simply be cool beans. The PCs wouldn't know if they were going to succeed or fail ahead of time, but the players and GM could establish that the risks were "either you succeed and the kingdom falls into chaos as you wish, or you fail and the King's army will lay waste to your lands and besiege your castle!" Maybe there's a 'lesser risk' version where the PCs hire some guy to try to poison the King, little chance of success, but maybe even the attempt is a useful ploy, and no real chance it gets back to them either. This can all be established using the sorts of techniques I've noted here and in other threads, and/or with those of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] or [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] (which are substantially similar though maybe not identical). 

IMHO the problem with the 'classic' approach is it ALWAYS ends up falling to the DM's shoulders. Even if the players are substantially driving the story with in-game decision making on a big stage there are limits. The GM is always free to derail them at any time, there is always the great likelihood of unknown, maybe unknowable,  backstory entering into play to thwart them, etc. AT BEST in the final analysis it is a GM-gated story.

The 'story driven' approaches DO go outside this limitation. By establishing some level of focus on character needs and player interests, and always allowing those to be entirely the scope of the players to establish, the role of the GM shifts to 'provider of narrative framing'. Instead of presenting fictional elements as pre-established world canon the GM is throwing up story elements to act as food to feed the agenda established by the players. It could go ANYWHERE. In the assassination example above its still within the GM's scope to declare the consequences of actions, but that will be within the framework of 'say yes' or 'roll the dice'. The ultimate result can easily be that the character's plot is foiled, they are unmasked, and their castle is laid in ruins and they flee into exile. That's a fun outcome! It is of course likely that the players are partisan to some degree and WANT to succeed in the character's plan, but they still have to wager, and part of the fun in that is the possibility of failure. If they fail then they'll have plenty of material to fuel further conflict narrative and perhaps in the end they will triumph in some other fashion, or simply go on to other concerns and leave that incident as a backstory element. 

I think you could do all of this using 2e if you were really focused on it and know the techniques well. It just doesn't HELP you.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I suspect, since most of the DMs of 2e/3e/5e games I've played in work something like this, that in [MENTION=34194]byron[/MENTION]'s play process the players are making pretty high-level decisions about where to go and what to do, probably often informed by intelligence they have acquired about different areas of the GM's world. So in effect you could model it like a 'dungeon maze' where the players have maps and descriptions of some areas and a fair idea that going left or right at the next passage will lead to areas with some specific character to them, or something that they want. Also, being an RPG, there's always the alternative of subverting some of the GM's arranged material. In 'dungeon maze' terminology someone prepared a scroll with 'Passwall' on it and can use that to partially rewrite the map at some point if they don't like the direction things are going.
> 
> Players are also likely to find ways to have their characters exercise significant agency in terms of restructuring the world at a higher level, building a castle, conquering a city, assassinating a king, whatever. As long as the GM in question doesn't fall to exercising force and illusion to artificially limit this, then its cool. This is a treacherous problem though because there's always SOME logic inherent in the situation for resisting player-established goals. I mean, it wouldn't even be exciting in a challenge sense (which is part of this modus of play to one extent or another) to simply allow the PCs to roll over things and get what they want. Where is the line between challenging and railroading/controlling? Its a big grey area.



Corollary question: where's the line between a DM introducing elements in order to frame a scene and a DM building the world?  This also seems to be a rather fuzzy division.


> Clearly fudging die rolls in order to limit (or enhance) character success crosses into force/illusionism,



Or cheating, depending on how bluntly one wants to put it.



> Lets suppose the PCs decided to assassinate the king. Just how strong are his bodyguards and what precautions does he take? That probably isn't established in advance, at least in detail. The GM now is in the position of effectively deciding if the task is within the resource limits that the PCs can deploy (and those are purely in-game resources, the players have no meta-game power outside of 'convince the GM to let us do X').
> 
> Now we begin to see clearly WHY the alternative forms of play evolved. In MY game, this would simply be cool beans. The PCs wouldn't know if they were going to succeed or fail ahead of time, but the players and GM could establish that the risks were "either you succeed and the kingdom falls into chaos as you wish, or you fail and the King's army will lay waste to your lands and besiege your castle!" Maybe there's a 'lesser risk' version where the PCs hire some guy to try to poison the King, little chance of success, but maybe even the attempt is a useful ploy, and no real chance it gets back to them either. This can all be established using the sorts of techniques I've noted here and in other threads, and/or with those of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] or [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] (which are substantially similar though maybe not identical).
> 
> IMHO the problem with the 'classic' approach is it ALWAYS ends up falling to the DM's shoulders. Even if the players are substantially driving the story with in-game decision making on a big stage there are limits. The GM is always free to derail them at any time, there is always the great likelihood of unknown, maybe unknowable,  backstory entering into play to thwart them, etc. AT BEST in the final analysis it is a GM-gated story.
> 
> The 'story driven' approaches DO go outside this limitation. By establishing some level of focus on character needs and player interests, and always allowing those to be entirely the scope of the players to establish, the role of the GM shifts to 'provider of narrative framing'. Instead of presenting fictional elements as pre-established world canon the GM is throwing up story elements to act as food to feed the agenda established by the players. It could go ANYWHERE. In the assassination example above its still within the GM's scope to declare the consequences of actions, but that will be within the framework of 'say yes' or 'roll the dice'. The ultimate result can easily be that the character's plot is foiled, they are unmasked, and their castle is laid in ruins and they flee into exile. That's a fun outcome! It is of course likely that the players are partisan to some degree and WANT to succeed in the character's plan, but they still have to wager, and part of the fun in that is the possibility of failure. If they fail then they'll have plenty of material to fuel further conflict narrative and perhaps in the end they will triumph in some other fashion, or simply go on to other concerns and leave that incident as a backstory element.



 "The PCs hire an assassin to poison the king" is an excellent example of my idea from way upthread about "pushing over a domino" and subsequent off-stage results.  The difference between this and my earlier not-the-best play example involving the spy-harlot is that here the PCs are very intentionally pushing over the domino to set some events in motion; events which in this case the PCs quite understandably don't want to be involved in or assiciated with if possible.

But then what?  No matter what system you use, in a case like this it's squarely on the DM to determine how the dominoes fall and-or whether there's any subsequent narratable effects either indirectly (next morning, news of the king's sudden death sweeps the streets of Kerratrim) or directly (next morning a squadron of soldiers shows up at the PCs' inn) affecting the PCs.

"We hire an assassin to poison the king" is a large-scale action declaration (most DMs would quite reasonably want to break this down into some smaller-scale details e.g. where are you finding an assassin, what terms are you offering, how does the assassin contact the PCs before-after the job, etc.) that, on a success, means an assassin has been hired to poison the king; and there the involvement of the PCs ends for a while, if not forever (e.g. the PCs set this in motion and then immediately skip town).  

It doesn't mean the assassin has successfully poisoned the king yet.  The DM has to by whatever means play this out either with herself or (and maybe the best if not always most practical option) by having someone else not playing in that game do the rolling etc. for the assassin when the usual players aren't around.

In a normal DM-driven game this isn't a problem at all - in fact, it's pretty much business as usual.  The question is more one of how would a player-driven system or game handle something like this, where the players/PCs are acting as backroom directors rather than front-line agents?

Lan-"sometimes it's nice as a PC to sit back and let someone else do the dying"-efan


----------



## Aenghus

Lanefan said:


> "We hire an assassin to poison the king" is a large-scale action declaration (most DMs would quite reasonably want to break this down into some smaller-scale details e.g. where are you finding an assassin, what terms are you offering, how does the assassin contact the PCs before-after the job, etc.) that, on a success, means an assassin has been hired to poison the king; and there the involvement of the PCs ends for a while, if not forever (e.g. the PCs set this in motion and then immediately skip town).




IMO this is the sort of large scale action which conventional procedural games can struggle with on both micro and macro levels. 

On the micro level the probabilities of repeated dice rolling can all but guarantee eventual failure if the GM is inclined to keep asking for rolls till a critical one fails. I have seen this happen more than once in real games, typically when the GM doesn't think the players can succeed or doesn't want them to succeed, or just doesn't understand probability. Very rarely I've seen players succeed by sheer awesome dicerolling despite such GM tactics, which in some cases is accepted bu the GM in good faith, but in others explodes the game in flames as the GM can't handle large PC-initiated changes in the setting.

At the macro level I've seen GMs refuse point blank to adjudicate such actions. Sometimes the players can still sneak in the action by assembing all the parts without telling the GM what the overall plan is, or perhaps having a cover plan more acceptable to the GM. The results are similar to above with a bigger chance of GM bad will.

In some cases the outcomes of the attempt prove to be unacceptable to the players, given the lack of a stakes negotiation phase. Depending on the level of unhappiness, there can be arguments, players leaving, the group breaking up, or player revolution with a new GM installed.



> It doesn't mean the assassin has successfully poisoned the king yet.  The DM has to by whatever means play this out either with herself or (and maybe the best if not always most practical option) by having someone else not playing in that game do the rolling etc. for the assassin when the usual players aren't around.
> 
> In a normal DM-driven game this isn't a problem at all - in fact, it's pretty much business as usual.




Handled competently, yes. There plenty of examples in original games or even in printed works of similar situations handled incorrectly as outlined above, thus the number of gun-shy players who feel obliged to check for probability traps.



> The question is more one of how would a player-driven system or game handle something like this, where the players/PCs are acting as backroom directors rather than front-line agents?
> 
> Lan-"sometimes it's nice as a PC to sit back and let someone else do the dying"-efan




I suspect player-based games with stake setting could find such problems much easier, with a few dice rolls or even just one if the king and government isn't important to the main player game goals. Stake setting allows the players and GM to agree as to outcomes, win or lose, and avoid most of the "unhappy player" issues above. With fewer dice rolls it's much easier to get the probabilities correct and give the players a transparent idea of their odds of success or failure, and what's likely to fall out either way.


----------



## Lanefan

Aenghus said:


> IMO this is the sort of large scale action which conventional procedural games can struggle with on both micro and macro levels.
> 
> On the micro level the probabilities of repeated dice rolling can all but guarantee eventual failure if the GM is inclined to keep asking for rolls till a critical one fails.



True, though the odds of success on any given roll (including automatic) would realistically be swayed by situation.  For example if the PCs are already familiar with the town and have contacts etc. then finding and hiring someone would be much easier than if they were a bunch of total strangers here for the first time.


> I have seen this happen more than once in real games, typically when the GM doesn't think the players can succeed or doesn't want them to succeed, or just doesn't understand probability. Very rarely I've seen players succeed by sheer awesome dicerolling despite such GM tactics, which in some cases is accepted bu the GM in good faith, but in others explodes the game in flames as the GM can't handle large PC-initiated changes in the setting.



The not-understanding-probability is fair, but otherwise it comes back to whether the DM is both willing and able to hit the curveball thrown by the PCs/players.



> At the macro level I've seen GMs refuse point blank to adjudicate such actions.



I can certainly understand a "wtf?" response if a bomb like this gets dropped on a DM without warning - it's happened to me numerous times - but even if the DM thinks the result will 99%-likely be a TPK (or at worst TPLifeInPrison) she should at least go through the motions.

That said, if a DM sees disaster coming there's nothing wrong with asking the age-old question: "Are you sure about this?".  If the players carry on after that, so be it...



> In some cases the outcomes of the attempt prove to be unacceptable to the players, given the lack of a stakes negotiation phase. Depending on the level of unhappiness, there can be arguments, players leaving, the group breaking up, or player revolution with a new GM installed.



I think here you're being a bit extremist.  The players/PCs have in effect given up any say over the final outcome via their putting someone else (in this case the hired assassin) on the front line, and in so doing have implicitly agreed to a) trust the DM to fairly and reasonably adjudicate what happens behind the scenes and b) accept whatever outcome comes out from however the dominoes fall - whether it's what they originally wanted/intended or not.

Attempting to kill a king whether directly or indirectly is obviously not just a very high stakes move, it's almost certainly an all-in move.  No negotiations required. 

And a player who would leave a game over this is probably a player I didn't want in the first place as he or she is clearly not willing to accept losing a gamble: in this case the 'loss' being a negative outcome of actions s/he (probably along with the other players) intentionally and willingly set in motion in the first place. 



> I suspect player-based games with stake setting could find such problems much easier, with a few dice rolls or even just one if the king and government isn't important to the main player game goals. Stake setting allows the players and GM to agree as to outcomes, win or lose, and avoid most of the "unhappy player" issues above. With fewer dice rolls it's much easier to get the probabilities correct and give the players a transparent idea of their odds of success or failure, and what's likely to fall out either way.



Problem here is this immediately crashes into the wall of player knowledge vs. PC knowledge.

The PCs (and thus players) have no real way of knowing the assassin's chance of success.  At best they can use their own observations, intuitions and information gathering to give it an educated guess.  But once they send the assassin on his way the - pardon the pun - die is cast, and the players/PCs at this point should and IMO must have no way* of knowing what's happening except via events/actions/outcomes in the game world that their PCs can actually observe, as - hopefully competently - narrated by the DM.

"You wish your operative well and send him on his way.  For a few hours the night is quiet, then suddenly shouting erupts from the general direction of the palace; and soon it's clear the shouting is getting closer."

I posit the players'/PCs' reactions to this will be a lot different if the players already meta-know the assassin has 1) succeeded or 2) failed than 3) if they don't know.  Option 3 here is the only one that can give a player/PC reaction untainted by meta-knowledge.

* - for these purposes let's assume the PCs and the assassin do not have long-range communication with each other.  If they did, this whole set-up would change dramatically and the players in fact could play through the actual assassination attempt via giving direction and suggestions to the assassin and receiving reports and updates in return.

Lan-"assassination before the age of radio"-efan


----------



## pemerton

Aenghus said:


> So long as they are satisfied with the amount of agency they do end up with, it doesn't matter. More agency isn't objectively better



Sure. That's not in dispute.

My goal in starting the thread was analysis, not aesthetic evaluation.



Aenghus said:


> pre-authored backstory can be an advantage, as such worlds can have enough detail to allow them to keep making a bunch of  small incremental decisions, rather than much smaller number of  big dramatic ones.
> 
> I want to write something about boxed text
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Done right, boxed text allows newbie GMs to run a tolerable game, and newbie players to figure out how to play. When the players make some progress in the adventure, it's often signified by a new passage of boxed text. When run in this style pretty quickly players associate boxed text with adventure progress.



I think it's fair to describe this sort of approach to RPGing as one in which the players declare moves, the purpose of which is to trigger the GM reading material from his/her notes. _Progress through the adventure_ consists in making some of those moves (ie the ones that trigger boxed text) rather than others (ie the ones that trigger the GM elaborating on established details, or having to ad lib such that the "notes" become notional rather than literal).

EDIT:



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I suspect, since most of the DMs of 2e/3e/5e games I've played in work something like this, that in [MENTION=34194]byron[/MENTION]'s play process the players are making pretty high-level decisions about where to go and what to do, probably often informed by intelligence they have acquired about different areas of the GM's world. So in effect you could model it like a 'dungeon maze' where the players have maps and descriptions of some areas and a fair idea that going left or right at the next passage will lead to areas with some specific character to them, or something that they want.



This would be an instance of a significant element of play being to make moves that trigger the GM narrating material from his/her notes. _intelligence acquired about the GM's world_, after all, just means _having learned the content of the GM's notes_.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Players are also likely to find ways to have their characters exercise significant agency in terms of restructuring the world at a higher level, building a castle, conquering a city, assassinating a king, whatever. As long as the GM in question doesn't fall to exercising force and illusion to artificially limit this, then its cool. This is a treacherous problem though because there's always SOME logic inherent in the situation for resisting player-established goals.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Lets suppose the PCs decided to assassinate the king. Just how strong are his bodyguards and what precautions does he take? That probably isn't established in advance, at least in detail. The GM now is in the position of effectively deciding if the task is within the resource limits that the PCs can deploy (and those are purely in-game resources, the players have no meta-game power outside of 'convince the GM to let us do X').
> 
> Now we begin to see clearly WHY the alternative forms of play evolved.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> IMHO the problem with the 'classic' approach is it ALWAYS ends up falling to the DM's shoulders. Even if the players are substantially driving the story with in-game decision making on a big stage there are limits. The GM is always free to derail them at any time, there is always the great likelihood of unknown, maybe unknowable,  backstory entering into play to thwart them, etc. AT BEST in the final analysis it is a GM-gated story.



There's a lot going on here!

I agree about the GM-gated story, where a significant structural element of the gate is the GM's pre-authored setting material ("worldbuilding"). The players have the capacity to declare actions - but the GM exercises a very high degree of control over how these actions resolve.

Want to build a castle? The GM has to decide how much stone is available from local quarries.

Assinate the king? As you say, the GM decides on the bodyguards etc.

There are potential issues of "fairness" here, but I don't think that's the main thing. The GM can be as fair as you like - that doesn't change the fact that assassinating the king is likely to involve a lot of play time spent with the players triggering the GM to tell them stuff (in the fiction, this will be spying etc). Or in the building example, the players spend a lot of time learning information about availability of materials, employees, etc.

I've known of GMs who string this stuff out endlessly to avoid having to deal with the actual goal of the players' action declarations (to perform the assassination, build the castle or whatever).


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> So you came up with the idea of te NPC beforehand, but because you used two ideas introduced during play to introduce him, you claim that the NPC is an idea and not a pre-authored element?



Yes. I've been posting about the contrast between preparation and establishing setting for much of the thread.

To give more examples: the murderous mage could have been introduced as a potential ally of the PCs. Or: when the player failed the Circles check to make contact with Jabal, instead of taking the approach that I did (Jabal sends Athog to tell the PCs to leave town) I could have had the murderous mage approach the PC ("Jabal's after me - I hear you can help me get away from him!"). 

Another way to come at the distinction is this: _who sold the angel feather to the peddler_? In the session I ran, it turned out that the murderous mage did so. But what if the players had decided to investigate this directly - so that it becomes like the map? There is no established setting element that it was the murderous mage who did so, which would then become part of the (unrevealed) ficitonal positioning that would inform adjudication of actions delcared in that investigation attempt.



hawkeyefan said:


> The GM may introduce elements to the story because he thinks they are interesting.



Yes.

But identifying a trope, or an idea, as being potentially interesting is different from establishing the setting in advance of play.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> There's always the danger here that such prep will graduate onto the level of being canonicalized by the GM and thus become a driver of play for the GM.



Agreed. Luke Crane talks about some aspects of this in the Adventure Burner for BW.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> What if there was someone who introduced material in response to PC dramatic needs, and someone who established color, and someone else who dealt with pacing? I mean I don't know how to parse it actually, but who's done this analysis?



I think separating your second - introducing material - and fourth - pacing - could be tricky. But that's conjecture, not based on actual experience.

 [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] has much better knowledge than me of systems and approaches that depart from the "mainstream" GM/player division of roles.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Corollary question: where's the line between a DM introducing elements in order to frame a scene and a DM building the world?  This also seems to be a rather fuzzy division.
> Or cheating, depending on how bluntly one wants to put it.



Its also a quite common technique in actual use, and endorsed by no less than EGG, amongst many others. In later times it has come to be seen as less desirable, but still quite heavily utilized in many games. To be quite honest vanilla 5e doesn't really give you much support for alternatives, though there are some optional rules that kind of help a bit, and obviously GMs/tables can incorporate any technique they want. 

As for the line between introducing elements and world building, yes, it isn't really a line, its a continuum and thus I don't really think it makes too much sense to dwell heavily on the middle of that range. The extremes are interesting though.



> "The PCs hire an assassin to poison the king" is an excellent example of my idea from way upthread about "pushing over a domino" and subsequent off-stage results.  The difference between this and my earlier not-the-best play example involving the spy-harlot is that here the PCs are very intentionally pushing over the domino to set some events in motion; events which in this case the PCs quite understandably don't want to be involved in or assiciated with if possible.



Right, I wanted to construct it as the kind of example that would work well in a variety of games. If I framed it as "some NPC that has a grudge against the party stemming from stuff that happened years ago frames them for assassinating/attempting to assassinate the king and..." that would fit fine within the 'domino theory', but it would obviously involve 'hidden backstory' (assuming the players had no way of discovering the plot and no inkling that they might even need to be wary of such). So we have again probably a continuum, and that illustrates how there aren't really totally distinct practices of play (as opposed to theories). 



> But then what?  No matter what system you use, in a case like this it's squarely on the DM to determine how the dominoes fall and-or whether there's any subsequent narratable effects either indirectly (next morning, news of the king's sudden death sweeps the streets of Kerratrim) or directly (next morning a squadron of soldiers shows up at the PCs' inn) affecting the PCs.



Agreed. In my formulation, the players chose the wager. The GM framed the situation in some degree "As you contemplate the various ways to thwart the King's evil plans you recall your contacts with the Assassin's Guild." (maybe this is narrated as the result of a check or in HoML it would simply be part of an interlude, since nothing is yet at stake). Once they've committed and the challenge is afoot then any consequences are theirs to bear. I have no problem with this. They fail the challenge and soldiers show up at their door! 4e/HoML handle this quite easily.



> "We hire an assassin to poison the king" is a large-scale action declaration (most DMs would quite reasonably want to break this down into some smaller-scale details e.g. where are you finding an assassin, what terms are you offering, how does the assassin contact the PCs before-after the job, etc.) that, on a success, means an assassin has been hired to poison the king; and there the involvement of the PCs ends for a while, if not forever (e.g. the PCs set this in motion and then immediately skip town).
> 
> It doesn't mean the assassin has successfully poisoned the king yet.  The DM has to by whatever means play this out either with herself or (and maybe the best if not always most practical option) by having someone else not playing in that game do the rolling etc. for the assassin when the usual players aren't around.
> 
> In a normal DM-driven game this isn't a problem at all - in fact, it's pretty much business as usual.  The question is more one of how would a player-driven system or game handle something like this, where the players/PCs are acting as backroom directors rather than front-line agents?




Yeah, I think the SC (HoML General Challenge) system of 4e is fine with this. The fictional position is one of pulling the strings from the shadows. Part of the consequences of a significant enough failure is that the shadows are drawn away and the puppet master is revealed. It could be that there are lesser possibilities in a range. Failing after several successes might result in being forced to leave town to avoid being unmasked, or being forced to frame one of your allies to take the fall in your place. Limited success might produce similar results, the King dies but you or someone/something you value is lost, or even that you are fully revealed and your 'victory' becomes hollow or much more equivocal.

If the game is one in which the players are heavily invested in the fiction and their characters then these sorts of indirect consequences work fine. In a sort of simpler setup where the PCs just cart around the setting and don't really have much concern for allies, property, allegiances, etc. then maybe a setup like this doesn't work too well. At worst there's a fight scene and otherwise perhaps the party simply moves on to some other location and doesn't look back.

I'd note that I wouldn't have other people or the GM by himself 'play out' anything like an assassination. I'd simply have it either succeed or fail based on whatever the PCs did and the check results they got. If they plan it really well, hire the best guy, equip him with everything he needs, etc then things go off as planned (IE 12 successes and no failures). If there's one failure, then maybe there's clues left behind that point to the PCs, perhaps requiring them to undertake further actions to avoid being revealed, 2 failures maybe means the assassin is captured afterwards and fingers the PCs (or their agents). I never roll dice between one NPC and another, the relevant part of the game is what the players do. I guess it would be OK to have an opposing NPC roll to accomplish something that thwarts or complicates a PC action, sort of like in combat, but I don't really use that technique.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> An example that has come up in other discussions is searching for a secret door.  A player declares her PC is searching for a secret door at the end of a dead-end passage, after which the DM can respond in one of two ways depending on the situation:
> 
> 1. Say yes.  On this the player - not the DM - has just introduced a secret door into the fiction.
> 2. Roll the dice.  On success, the player - not the DM - has just introduced a secret door into the fiction.  On failure quite likely she has not, but she still may have.
> 
> While the player can't usually bypass the check if the DM calls for one, the success (automatic on say-yes) or failure of the check itself establishes whether the player's attempt to stipulate a new fiction element works or not.  But the result remains: sometimes players *can* stipulate fiction elements, or try to.



In your example, the player isn't stipulating anything but his/her PC's action: the PC searches for a secret door.

That's the whole point: the player doesn't have to think about the gameworld expect as a place his/her PC is engaging with: "I look around for a vessel to catch the blood!" "I search for a secret door so we can get out of here!" "I search the study for the map!"

The action resolution tells us whether the attempt succeeds or fails: does the PC find a vessel or not? a secret door, or not? the map, or not?

Only a rotten metagamer would be spending time outside the PC perspective to worry about the process whereby the shared fiction is established!


----------



## Aenghus

Lanefan said:


> I think here you're being a bit extremist.  The players/PCs have in effect given up any say over the final outcome via their putting someone else (in this case the hired assassin) on the front line, and in so doing have implicitly agreed to a) trust the DM to fairly and reasonably adjudicate what happens behind the scenes and b) accept whatever outcome comes out from however the dominoes fall - whether it's what they originally wanted/intended or not.




I did say "sometimes", there are lots of acceptable resolutions I didn't discuss, precisely because they are acceptable. I'm interested in failure modes and how to avoid them, so I tend to focus on stuff going wrong. 

The stuff going wrong in this case is generally when the players and GM's view of the gameworld differ significantly. In a conventional game, the GM has the overwhelming advantage, but if the players actively dislike the resulting game it's a lose-lose scenario for everyone concerned. As a player, nowadays I'm much less likely to play through extreme frustration, boredom or misery.



> Attempting to kill a king whether directly or indirectly is obviously not just a very high stakes move, it's almost certainly an all-in move.  No negotiations required.
> 
> And a player who would leave a game over this is probably a player I didn't want in the first place as he or she is clearly not willing to accept losing a gamble: in this case the 'loss' being a negative outcome of actions s/he (probably along with the other players) intentionally and willingly set in motion in the first place.




I was actually imagining disappointment over a "success" that was fiated into a state the players saw as an unfair failure.



> Problem here is this immediately crashes into the wall of player knowledge vs. PC knowledge.




This wall is potentially a lot shorter or even non-existent in player-driven games.



> The PCs (and thus players) have no real way of knowing the assassin's chance of success.  At best they can use their own observations, intuitions and information gathering to give it an educated guess.  But once they send the assassin on his way the - pardon the pun - die is cast, and the players/PCs at this point should and IMO must have no way* of knowing what's happening except via events/actions/outcomes in the game world that their PCs can actually observe, as - hopefully competently - narrated by the DM.




In some systems the players are allowed access to these probabilities either as players, PCs or both. Your preferred style isn't an universal rule and may not apply to other people. 

In some systems the assassin could be a resource on the character sheet of one of the players

I find strangely attractive the idea of resolving the whole task with one dice roll, again in the case where this was  a side show and the main business of the game rested elsewhere. Amateur PCs would probably fail badly, experienced ones would likely have a better chance.



> "You wish your operative well and send him on his way.  For a few hours the night is quiet, then suddenly shouting erupts from the general direction of the palace; and soon it's clear the shouting is getting closer."




One way of doing it. Depending on how ruthless and professional the PCs are, they could set up a false flag operation and kill the assassin afterwards if he survives.



> I posit the players'/PCs' reactions to this will be a lot different if the players already meta-know the assassin has 1) succeeded or 2) failed than 3) if they don't know.  Option 3 here is the only one that can give a player/PC reaction untainted by meta-knowledge.




I don't see meta-knowledge as necessarily forbidden or unthinkable. As a GM I have to constantly handle meta-knowledge, some players can do so as well if they are willing and able. And as I wrote above, the failure modes I was most concerned about is apparent success turned by the GM into what the players saw as failure, or changing the gameworld to something unfun for the players.

e.g. state of emergency and martial law closes down much of the nation and prevents the players from pursuing any of their goals. They could hide in a hole for an extended period, but if the GM forces them to play through their confinement one day at a time I can see good reason for player unhappiness.

Extended periods of meaningless boredom is possibly the worst type of game, at least PC death allows new PCs.



> * - for these purposes let's assume the PCs and the assassin do not have long-range communication with each other.  If they did, this whole set-up would change dramatically and the players in fact could play through the actual assassination attempt via giving direction and suggestions to the assassin and receiving reports and updates in return.
> 
> Lan-"assassination before the age of radio"-efan




In D&D for instance there are a bunch of spells and items for long range sensing and communication.

But the competence and loyalty of the assassin could inform a single die roll that indicated the result in non-procedural systems. In some games this might be a secret GM roll, in others it could be open with pre-negotiated stakes determining the outcomes.


----------



## pemerton

Aenghus said:


> IMO this is the sort of large scale action which conventional procedural games can struggle with on both micro and macro levels.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Very rarely I've seen players succeed by sheer awesome dicerolling despite such GM tactics, which in some cases is accepted bu the GM in good faith, but in others explodes the game in flames as the GM can't handle large PC-initiated changes in the setting.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Sometimes the players can still sneak in the action by assembing all the parts without telling the GM what the overall plan is, or perhaps having a cover plan more acceptable to the GM. The results are similar to above with a bigger chance of GM bad will.
> 
> In some cases the outcomes of the attempt prove to be unacceptable to the players, given the lack of a stakes negotiation phase.



Personally, I would regard all this as a sign of something having gone pretty badly wrong at the table.

EDIT: I just read your follow-up post which talks about the GM narrating success as failure (eg the assassination succeeds, but the outcome still thwarts the players eg because of the outbreak of civil war or similar). That, to me, is another sign of things having gone badly wrong.

The idea that success is success, not just another mode of failure established by the GM deploying hidden backstory material, is the first step towards establishing genuine player agency over the shared fiction.

(Obviously this also connects directly to what  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has talked about as GM-gated stories.)

FURTHER EDIT:

A micro version of this is when the GM doesn't treat any non-combat resolution as final - so eg the NPCs surrender and promise compliance, but then betray the PCs as soon as possible. Or the PCs find the map, but its withered parchment turns to dust in their hands. Etc.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

I think [MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION]' concern here in terms of probabilities and mechanics is cogent. Its also cogent in the sense that it demonstrates a way in which 'classic' D&D and its focus on tactical rules leaves us with a vast swath of room for the GM to simply engineer things to his own liking. In fact it seems that the resolution is so firmly in the GM's hands that it can hardly be else! This illustrates my earlier noted observation of the 'incoherence' of 2e, it claims to wish to be a system focused on stories and narrative, but it lacks any mechanics to support that, providing only the same dungeon-crawl-focused D&D mechanics that originated in OD&D years earlier.

I will note that where D&D (and later versions moreso with their large spell lists) does provide for 'operational' level action it is virtually the exclusive province of casters, and particularly of wizards (though clerics/druids/priests are no slouches here either). While any PC could theoretically contact an assassin, etc. a wizard of sufficient level can CONJURE ONE UP or induce someone to carry out the task, etc. A wizard will have a much easier time assassinating a king than a fighter, a rogue, or even an assassin (in 1e)! 

I also don't really like [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s "they can't know the probability of success" notion. This is again leading back into 'hidden backstory' kind of territory, and certainly at least smacks of the DM being almost exclusively the source of story in the game. 

Now, I don't think I would just give away to the PCs an accurate estimate of their chances of success merely for the asking. If they want to undertake an assassination then lets let them figure out what the stakes are for themselves. If they don't like the odds, then they can change plans, although I might still use their prep as hooks (later the guy you paid to give you the guard schedules and list of magical wards used by the King turns up dead, a week later your favorite barkeep hands you a note left by an 'unsavory character'...). However, plot hooks are never hard to come by, I wouldn't consider this to be especially increasing the character's exposure to them, just providing an easy formulation FOR them. One suggested by the players in the first place to some extent. If they simply left it at that and didn't investigate I'd probably just have their major domo later on let them know that he paid off some guy 500gp, the players are obviously not interested in engaging this story element.

Anyway, I think that an accurate assessment of the chances of success are a necessary part of the wager, and are in fact a part of the formulation of the game as such. The players get to choose what they are risking, and they obviously need in turn to know what they have to gain from taking that risk. It just won't work otherwise.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Right, I wanted to construct it as the kind of example that would work well in a variety of games. If I framed it as "some NPC that has a grudge against the party stemming from stuff that happened years ago frames them for assassinating/attempting to assassinate the king and..." that would fit fine within the 'domino theory', but it would obviously involve 'hidden backstory' (assuming the players had no way of discovering the plot and no inkling that they might even need to be wary of such). So we have again probably a continuum, and that illustrates how there aren't really totally distinct practices of play (as opposed to theories).
> 
> 
> Agreed. In my formulation, the players chose the wager. The GM framed the situation in some degree "As you contemplate the various ways to thwart the King's evil plans you recall your contacts with the Assassin's Guild." (maybe this is narrated as the result of a check or in HoML it would simply be part of an interlude, since nothing is yet at stake). Once they've committed and the challenge is afoot then any consequences are theirs to bear. I have no problem with this.



OK, we're all good up to here.  But then you add... 







> They fail the challenge and soldiers show up at their door! 4e/HoML handle this quite easily.



 ...and right there I start thinking you've got the challenge bit wrong.

The challenge, from the PCs' perspective, isn't to poison the king.  That's eventually to be the assassin's challenge, in which the PCs (and by extension the players) are not involved at all.  The PCs' challenge is to convince someone else to try to poison the king, success in which provides them a hired field operative committed to that mission.



> Yeah, I think the SC (HoML General Challenge) system of 4e is fine with this. The fictional position is one of pulling the strings from the shadows. Part of the consequences of a significant enough failure is that the shadows are drawn away and the puppet master is revealed. It could be that there are lesser possibilities in a range. Failing after several successes might result in being forced to leave town to avoid being unmasked, or being forced to frame one of your allies to take the fall in your place.



Yes, these could happen during the recruiting/hiring process - on a failure a prospective operative turns the PCs in, for example.  But it's less likely to happen at this stage than during the actual assassination attempt.


> Limited success might produce similar results, the King dies but you or someone/something you value is lost, or even that you are fully revealed and your 'victory' becomes hollow or much more equivocal.



But now you're jumping ahead to the assassination attempt itself, which is a different challenge and out of the players/PCs' hands.



> I'd note that I wouldn't have other people or the GM by himself 'play out' anything like an assassination. I'd simply have it either succeed or fail based on whatever the PCs did and the check results they got. If they plan it really well, hire the best guy, equip him with everything he needs, etc then things go off as planned (IE 12 successes and no failures).



A 12-0 success run means they've hired the best and most loyal operative they could ever hope to find.  Still doesn't at all speak to whether said operative is going to be able to pull it off or not, though it might influence the odds somewhat.

I guess in short I see the players dealing with what's in their PCs' range to be involved with (in this case the hiring and equipping of an assassin) and then not being involved in what their PCs are not involved in (here, the actual infiltration and assassination attempt).



> I never roll dice between one NPC and another



I don't do this very often*, but in a case like this I think I'd have to - there's just too many variables.  It'd end up working more like a flowchart; in that both successes and failures could be mitigated or overcome by other factors arising then or later.  There's no way I could beat this down to just one die roll, even if I wanted to, without really shortchanging the game.

* - most common occurrence is during 3-way combats where the PCs are fighting two opposing groups who are also fighting each other - if someone from foe group A is fighting someone from foe group B I'll play out their initiatives, swings etc. right along with the rest of the combat, mostly so I know what will be left of either or both should one or more PCs end up fighting them later.



> the relevant part of the game is what the players do.



True, only here they've conceded the ability to do very much of anything other than wait for developments; developments which they neither get to author nor influence.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> In your example, the player isn't stipulating anything but his/her PC's action: the PC searches for a secret door.



And in so doing is opening up the possibility of there being one, which possibility (in a player-driven system) would not have opened up had nobody said anything.  In a prepared set-up, however, the DM already knows the exact chance (0% or 100%) of a secret door being in that wall, because she put one there...or didn't.

Never mind what comes next: on the establishment in the fiction of a secret door, what's beyond it?  And who gets to determine that?



> That's the whole point: the player doesn't have to think about the gameworld expect as a place his/her PC is engaging with: "I look around for a vessel to catch the blood!" "I search for a secret door so we can get out of here!" "I search the study for the map!"
> 
> The action resolution tells us whether the attempt succeeds or fails: does the PC find a vessel or not? a secret door, or not? the map, or not?



And in so doing also authors the here-and-now presence of these items on a success and mostly leaves their existence uncertain on a failure.



> Only a rotten metagamer would be spending time outside the PC perspective to worry about the process whereby the shared fiction is established!



But isn't that exactly what you're doing every time you worry about whether something is coming from the DM's notes or not?

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I will note that where D&D (and later versions moreso with their large spell lists) does provide for 'operational' level action it is virtually the exclusive province of casters, and particularly of wizards (though clerics/druids/priests are no slouches here either). While any PC could theoretically contact an assassin, etc. a wizard of sufficient level can CONJURE ONE UP or induce someone to carry out the task, etc. A wizard will have a much easier time assassinating a king than a fighter, a rogue, or even an assassin (in 1e)!



Well, a really up-there MU could simply Wish the king dead; but that's hardly the point here. 



> I also don't really like [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s "they can't know the probability of success" notion.



OK, you say this in disagreement with me, but then... 



> Now, I don't think I would just give away to the PCs an accurate estimate of their chances of success merely for the asking. If they want to undertake an assassination then lets let them figure out what the stakes are for themselves.



 ...go on to say exactly the same thing I did only using different words: that they can use their abilities and observations and knowledge to give themselves an educated guess.  Even the ease or difficulty encountered in finding and-or hiring a killer may add useful knowledge.



> Anyway, I think that an accurate assessment of the chances of success are a necessary part of the wager, and are in fact a part of the formulation of the game as such. The players get to choose what they are risking, and they obviously need in turn to know what they have to gain from taking that risk. It just won't work otherwise.



I'll change that a bit, to read: an accurate assessment of the chances of success are a nice-to-have part of the wager, but true accuracy isn't always possible; and sometimes it really does come down to a gamble against unknown or very poorly-known odds.

Lan-"though you can mitigate or tweak the odds all you like, in the end any game involving dice is still at its heart a game of luck"-efan


----------



## Emerikol

Jester David said:


> In my current game I try not to plan *that* much, not unless I'm doing a dungeon crawl or the like. I tend to plan some encounters mostly because I use minis and drawing the maps in advance saves time, but depending on how much time I have to prep I can run a session largely improv.
> As it's a reactive sandbox game, I also don't plan more than a session ahead, so I can tailor things to the players.
> 
> However, the world is a heavily detailed homebrew setting. So much of my planning is just writing NPCs and expanding elements of the setting.
> And because I'm a worldbuilding snob who hates the illogical results of spontaneously created campaign settings. It invariably leads to unnatural ecologies and impossible rivers.




You did a lot of planning.  You just did it ahead of time.  I’m not a snob but I do know what I like and if it’s my free time at stake then I care to have what I like.


----------



## Sunseeker

pemerton said:


> Personally, I would regard all this as a sign of something having gone pretty badly wrong at the table.






pemerton said:


> EDIT: I just read your follow-up post which talks about the GM narrating success as failure (eg the assassination succeeds, but the outcome still thwarts the players eg because of the outbreak of civil war or similar). That, to me, is another sign of things having gone badly wrong.
> 
> The idea that success is success, not just another mode of failure established by the GM deploying hidden backstory material, is the first step towards establishing genuine player agency over the shared fiction.
> 
> (Obviously this also connects directly to what @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ has talked about as GM-gated stories.)
> 
> FURTHER EDIT:
> 
> A micro version of this is when the GM doesn't treat any non-combat resolution as final - so eg the NPCs surrender and promise compliance, but then betray the PCs as soon as possible. Or the PCs find the map, but its withered parchment turns to dust in their hands. Etc.





Maybe, but BIG Action Declarations like "I hire an assassin to kill the King." need to be followed with subsequent specificity from the players. The DM can be much like the genie with the action declaration being a badly worded wish. If you don't clearly state your goals, how can the DM adjudicate the results? Things like overthrowing a King (through death or other means) requires a series of action declarations, no matter if we address them via role-play or roll-play. Yes, statistically the more rolls you make the more likely you are to fail (that's statistics for you). 

But BIG Action Declarations should be more prone to failure. 
Players may not be aware of fictional positioning of the King distrusting them (I mean, they wanna kill this guy for a reason that we're assuming isn't "the players are jerks", and if they are well...I suspect the King knows this), sending spies to watch them, intercept their moves. 
Perhaps the King has no interest in the party (which is often another reason the party wants to kill someone in power), and just happens to catch them looking to buy an assassin in the kingdom's routine checks on the Thieves Guild. 
Perhaps another noble is paying the Assassins League good money to keep the disliked King alive (maybe the King himself is doing this) and that funding is more valuable to the Assassins League than the coin the players are throwing out.
Perhaps a rival kingdom is seeking to overthrow the King as well, and some ne'er-do-well PCs are just the right guys at the right time.

Declaring an action for something simple and immediate is easy, and similarly easy to adjudicate. (I drink the beer!....okay, you drink the beer, what's your Con? 16? *Auto-pass* Okay, it's tasty and you don't feel a buzz.)
The larger the action declaration, the more likely players are to experience side effects. In this example, the DM declaring that the death of the King has thrown the society into chaos should be keeping in line with what the players should have been able to learn about the Kingdom. It is not terribly difficult for an observant PC to pick up signs of internal strain in a land and perhaps after a chance encounter with the King, learn he's holding the country together with both hands.

For BIG Action Declarations, I like to follow this simple guide:
The are Known Knowns: These are the things the party knows. They don't require checks and finding this information is relatively easy. This information tends to remain consistent and if it changes, then the that new knowledge is likely to be a "known known" as well.
-In this situation, the "known known" should be the fact that the country is under heavy strain and the King is all that is keeping the land together. 

There are Known Unknowns: These are things the party can find out, but can be subject to rapid change. This also includes information the party can reasonably intuit exists somewhere but lack specifics. (There is a Princess...therefore there must be a Queen. There is an Army, therefore there must be a General. There are 5 Noble Houses, two of which the King likes, two of which the King does not like, and one Switzerland.)
-The example scenario lacks these, but any of these could be applicable, and are worth serious consideration when declaring "I hire an assassin to kill the King!". Such as "Who is next in line to assume the throne?" We know someone will, but we don't know who, or how, or how much competition there is.

Finally, there are Unknown Unknowns: These are the sort of "secret fictional story positioning" ya'll keep coming back to. Players can't reasonably know everything that's going on in the Kingdom. Such as an enemy nation also seeking to assassinate the King. Or that the King as a secret heir born to a Tiefling woman who lives in the slums. Or that the bartender they've been so fond of yapping in front of is a Royal Spy. 

Utilizing these three basic elements, it's fairly easy for a player or a DM to determine the potential side-effects of a BIG Action Declaration.  Many players get in the habit of expecting success to come without strings. But you cannot truly make BIG Action Declarations and hold that expectation. I would find it incredibly unbelievable were a player to declare they wish to assassinate the King, have the DM roll a single d20, happen to roll a success, even a crit! And declare that the King is dead with no ill consequences to the country, or no caveats to the success of that assassination.

The problem is of course, getting players to "think of the big picture". Few do. Which is why we end up with games with BIG Action Declarations that function like small action declarations, with no or inconsequential side effects in comparison to the actual act the players just took.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> Yes. I've been posting about the contrast between preparation and establishing setting for much of the thread.
> 
> To give more examples: the murderous mage could have been introduced as a potential ally of the PCs. Or: when the player failed the Circles check to make contact with Jabal, instead of taking the approach that I did (Jabal sends Athog to tell the PCs to leave town) I could have had the murderous mage approach the PC ("Jabal's after me - I hear you can help me get away from him!").
> 
> Another way to come at the distinction is this: _who sold the angel feather to the peddler_? In the session I ran, it turned out that the murderous mage did so. But what if the players had decided to investigate this directly - so that it becomes like the map? There is no established setting element that it was the murderous mage who did so, which would then become part of the (unrevealed) ficitonal positioning that would inform adjudication of actions delcared in that investigation attempt.
> 
> Yes.
> 
> But identifying a trope, or an idea, as being potentially interesting is different from establishing the setting in advance of play.




Sure, you could have used any NPC to fill that role. You could have come up with one on the fly. In this instance, you chose to use one that you had conceived beforehand (or that you lifted from another source, as the case may be).

Why did you do that?

Because there is value in preparing ahead of time. That’s the answer. Forget your GM force/secret backstory denying player agency concerns for a minute. I’m not addressing that.

What I’m saying is that you understand the value of preparation. So even if preparation is of a type you don’t like, or leads to a style of play you’re not crazy about....you understand that it’s useful to have some ideas ready ahead of time. 

And that is what “worldbuilding”, in the limited sense that you’ve defined, is for. Because it is useful to prepare. The degree of preparation and how it is used in the game are separate matters.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I will note that where D&D (and later versions moreso with their large spell lists) does provide for 'operational' level action it is virtually the exclusive province of casters, and particularly of wizards (though clerics/druids/priests are no slouches here either). While any PC could theoretically contact an assassin, etc. a wizard of sufficient level can CONJURE ONE UP or induce someone to carry out the task, etc. A wizard will have a much easier time assassinating a king than a fighter, a rogue, or even an assassin (in 1e)!



This is a general feature of D&D-type spellcasting - it _is_ player-side fiat/stipulation, but given an in-fiction rationalisation as magical power.

One practical consequence is that (at least in my experience) most seasoned D&D players who want to exercise significant and reliable agency over the fiction play spellcasters. (This was a phenomenon that was being noted, although under a slightly different description, at least as far back as the late 70s.)

Another consequence is that, in D&D culture, the _gameplay_ aspect of this - ie the player exercising fiat/stipulation over the shared fiction - gets subordinated beneath a focus on its _in-fiction_ character. Which then means that the attempt to establish comparable sorts of agency for non-caster PCs gets analysed not in gameplay terms but under labels like "martial mind control" or "Schroedinger's dungeon".



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I don't think I would just give away to the PCs an accurate estimate of their chances of success merely for the asking. If they want to undertake an assassination then lets let them figure out what the stakes are for themselves. If they don't like the odds, then they can change plans, although I might still use their prep as hooks (later the guy you paid to give you the guard schedules and list of magical wards used by the King turns up dead, a week later your favorite barkeep hands you a note left by an 'unsavory character'...). However, plot hooks are never hard to come by, I wouldn't consider this to be especially increasing the character's exposure to them, just providing an easy formulation FOR them.



To me, at least, the last sentence here is the most important.

The whole point of RPGing in the "Standard Narrativistic Model" or any similar approach is for the players to be confronted by hard choices that put pressure on their PCs. (The hardness can be thematic/trope-derived hardness - 4e tends towards this - or more personal/intimate hardness - BW tends a bit more towards this lattter.)

If the players decide to have their PCs assassinate the king, that is one source of hardness, but - everything else being equal - it's not as if, _but for that_, there would be no challenges in the game. Nor is there any gameplay reason why the challenges that result from it should be _distinctively _hard. It's just that the players have chosen this, rather than some other thing, to be the fiction that they are going to engage in.

(There can be fictional positioning elements to this - that is, everything else _may not be equal_. And in some systems that fictional positioning is mechanically expressed. For instance, in default 4e, heroic tier PCs are simply not going to be in a position to attempt to assassinate the king, at least most of the time. The village elders or orc chieftain are closer to their league. But that is not a consequence of secret backstory. It's a game conceit that is known to all the participants.)

EDIT: shidaku's post seemed relevant here:



shidaku said:


> Maybe, but BIG Action Declarations like "I hire an assassin to kill the King." need to be followed with subsequent specificity from the players.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Declaring an action for something simple and immediate is easy, and similarly easy to adjudicate.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The larger the action declaration, the more likely players are to experience side effects. In this example, the DM declaring that the death of the King has thrown the society into chaos should be keeping in line with what the players should have been able to learn about the Kingdom. It is not terribly difficult for an observant PC to pick up signs of internal strain in a land and perhaps after a chance encounter with the King, learn he's holding the country together with both hands.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Players can't reasonably know everything that's going on in the Kingdom. Such as an enemy nation also seeking to assassinate the King. Or that the King as a secret heir born to a Tiefling woman who lives in the slums. Or that the bartender they've been so fond of yapping in front of is a Royal Spy.
> 
> Utilizing these three basic elements, it's fairly easy for a player or a DM to determine the potential side-effects of a BIG Action Declaration.  Many players get in the habit of expecting success to come without strings. But you cannot truly make BIG Action Declarations and hold that expectation.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The problem is of course, getting players to "think of the big picture". Few do. Which is why we end up with games with BIG Action Declarations that function like small action declarations, with no or inconsequential side effects in comparison to the actual act the players just took.



I think this clearly goes to different approaches to resolution and to (subsequent) framing.

Whether the attempt is resolved in one roll, or multiple, I see as a function of system. 4e, for instance, would normally have this be a skill challenge. In BW it might be one roll, or multiple, depending on how big a deal the group wants to make it.

What the consequences are I see as primarily a function of player intent. Which also feeds back into resolution - the resolution has to be consonant with the intent (eg if the players want the assassination not to provoke unrest, they have to factor the appropriate efforts into their approach to resolution - eg a Streetwise element to spread appropriately calming rumours). This might speak in favour of a more complex approach to resolution - eg a skill challenge, with the Streetwise attempt as one part of that.

The fact that it's a big deal doesn't, to me, seem to create a reason in and of itself for the GM to exercise more control over the outcome.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> there is value in preparing ahead of time.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> What I’m saying is that you understand the value of preparation. So even if preparation is of a type you don’t like, or leads to a style of play you’re not crazy about....you understand that it’s useful to have some ideas ready ahead of time.
> 
> And that is what “worldbuilding”, in the limited sense that you’ve defined, is for. Because it is useful to prepare. The degree of preparation and how it is used in the game are separate matters.



Well, I know why it is useful to have ideas or elements for framing prepared in advance (can help with tropes, can help with mechanics, can help with provoking choices).

But why is it useful to have outcomes of action declarations prepared in advance? Helps with what - directing the story? That's seems to be one answer provided by some posters in this thread.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> And in so doing is opening up the possibility of there being one
> 
> <snip>
> 
> And in so doing also authors the here-and-now presence of these items on a success and mostly leaves their existence uncertain on a failure.



Well, clearly that's _possible_, within the context of the fiction as established in play, or else the player wouldn't have delcared his/her PC to be looking for one (because otherwise s/he would know it's _im_possible to find one there).

As for failure, whether or not that leaves the existence of a secret door uncertain depends on how failure is narrated. That will depend upon the details of system and what it permits on narration of a failure. In Burning Wheel, for instance, it is open to the GM to narrate the failure as resulting from the absence of a secret door in the wall. But that is not the only permitted narration of failure.



Lanefan said:


> on the establishment in the fiction of a secret door, what's beyond it?  And who gets to determine that?



That's a system question. You ask the question as if it's rhetorical - but given that, in fact, game systems which work this way are out there, you just need to consult them to get your answers.



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Only a rotten metagamer would be spending time outside the PC perspective to worry about the process whereby the shared fiction is established!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> But isn't that exactly what you're doing every time you worry about whether something is coming from the DM's notes or not?
Click to expand...


Well, as I've posted repeatedly, mostly I'm a GM. So I'm talking about my preference for how to GM a game.

And as a player, as I've said, I want to play a game where my character, and my character's choices, matter. [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION] thinks that I can't tell whether or not this is happening in a game; I know from esxperience that he is wrong. I've been part of GM sackings, and have quit games, because GMs don't want to run that sort of game.



Lanefan said:


> A 12-0 success run means they've hired the best and most loyal operative they could ever hope to find.  Still doesn't at all speak to whether said operative is going to be able to pull it off or not, though it might influence the odds somewhat.
> 
> I guess in short I see the players dealing with what's in their PCs' range to be involved with (in this case the hiring and equipping of an assassin) and then not being involved in what their PCs are not involved in (here, the actual infiltration and assassination attempt).
> 
> I don't do this very often [roll dice between one NPC and another], but in a case like this I think I'd have to - there's just too many variables.  It'd end up working more like a flowchart; in that both successes and failures could be mitigated or overcome by other factors arising then or later.  There's no way I could beat this down to just one die roll, even if I wanted to, without really shortchanging the game.



Who is being "shortchanged" by you not rolling against yourself?


----------



## BryonD

pemerton said:


> The fiction may be awesome or not - that seems mostly a matter of taste. If players enjoy the GM presenting them with the products of his/her imagination, no doubt that's a reason for the GM to create and present such products.
> 
> My claim is simly about agency. In that situation, the players do not seem to have a great deal of agency over the shared fiction. This was a point that was made upthread and treated as controversial. But now it seems that it is a point that attracts widespread agreement.



I think the disconnect is that you take a reasonable position, differing player agency in differing systems and/or group dynamics, and then you make an flawed leap to how that is important to the merits of the game.  People react to the second part as controversial and you misdirect that.


> Where do the constraints come from, then. Eg how is it determined where the map is located?



And, this is a fair example.  You throw this question out as a dropped mike moment, or maybe a dropped gauntlet.  And yet, the question is truly completely irrelevant.
If the joy that players in your game get comes from finding mundane maps hidden in mundane places then I don't think I want to play in your game.

Yes, if there is a map hidden at spot X, then the players have ZERO agency to change that.  There is no relevance to this point with regard to the players ability to be proactive creators of the fiction at large.  Maybe they find the map by saying the right thing, exactly as you have complained.  But maybe the story continues with the consequences of them not finding the map.  Or, much more likely, the players come up with creative things their character can do to work out a solution.  The challenge becomes a straw man because it is so arbitrary and lacking in context.  so all I can really say is 

- This crap never happens in my game.  If the constraints on how the map is located is that important to you then you are simply not grasping some idea.  Yeah, it is either purely in my brain or on a piece of paper.  But it doesn't even merit consideration.

It comes back to good GMs making good, interesting, and fun canvases for the players to interact with.  

To sum up, in this very post you make reference to "the GM presenting them with the products of his/her imagination" and then you segue into agency.  That is a mistake.  In a good game, the players can be completely constrained by the character's capacity and yet have a great deal of agency because of the very nature of those character's capacity.   They may not be able to define the location of the map itself, btu the products of my imagination are like a good plan on its first meeting with the enemy.  The resulting experience for all is far greater than my imagination.  Your responses keep rejecting and/or failing to observe this critically important distinction.


----------



## Jester David

pemerton said:


> And as a player, as I've said, I want to play a game where my character, and my character's choices, matter. [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION] thinks that I can't tell whether or not this is happening in a game; I know from esxperience that he is wrong. I've been part of GM sackings, and have quit games, because GMs don't want to run that sort of game.



Goddammit, no, that's not what I said. That's not even close to what I said. You can't even see what I said from here. 

What I was talking about had nothing to do with player choice. Zero. Zilch. It was entirely unrelated and so much so that I didn't even mention player choice in the same paragraph.

The discussion was on pre-authored content and worldbuilding, not player agency and rails vs sandbox. The two are entirely different conversations, as you can have a giant pre-authored sandbox where the players have freedom to go wherever just as you can have an improvised railroad where the GM creates the story in the moment but gives little freedom. 

I talked about not being to tell if the GM is using a pre-prepared location versus an improvised one. And how you cannot tell a pre-planned location from a spontaneously generated one. That you can worldbuild and create settings & locations & NPCs & quest hooks ahead of time. And so long as they are added to the adventure as the result of players actions, it does not matter when they were created.


----------



## BryonD

Jester David said:


> Goddammit, no, that's not what I said. That's not even close to what I said. You can't even see what I said from here.
> 
> What I was talking about had nothing to do with player choice. Zero. Zilch. It was entirely unrelated and so much so that I didn't even mention player choice in the same paragraph.
> 
> The discussion was on pre-authored content and worldbuilding, not player agency and rails vs sandbox. The two are entirely different conversations, as you can have a giant pre-authored sandbox where the players have freedom to go wherever just as you can have an improvised railroad where the GM creates the story in the moment but gives little freedom.
> 
> I talked about not being to tell if the GM is using a pre-prepared location versus an improvised one. And how you cannot tell a pre-planned location from a spontaneously generated one. That you can worldbuild and create settings & locations & NPCs & quest hooks ahead of time. And so long as they are added to the adventure as the result of players actions, it does not matter when they were created.



He said he knows from experience.  And there is the answer.  It is all about preconceived notions and then selecting the evidence backwards to establish the presumed conclusion.

Heaven forbid that someone else have both the narrative "in character" joy AND also have a great game.  To quote somebody: "Inconceivable!"


----------



## Jester David

Emerikol said:


> You did a lot of planning.  You just did it ahead of time.  I’m not a snob but I do know what I like and if it’s my free time at stake then I care to have what I like.



There's a couple different levels of free time. 
There's my free time between the game sessions. But the game is _also_ free time. I'm not at work. I'm playing with my friends. I want to maximise the fun at the game table, so that free time was well spent.

But at the game table, it's also not my free time. It's my friends' free time. 
Why would I want to waste their precious free time being unprepared to run a game? Why would I gamble my friends' free time that I'll be able to improvise an adventure that's better than one I could plan ahead of time?


----------



## Sunseeker

pemerton said:


> I think this clearly goes to different approaches to resolution and to (subsequent) framing.
> 
> Whether the attempt is resolved in one roll, or multiple, I see as a function of system. 4e, for instance, would normally have this be a skill challenge. In BW it might be one roll, or multiple, depending on how big a deal the group wants to make it.
> 
> What the consequences are I see as primarily a function of player intent. Which also feeds back into resolution - the resolution has to be consonant with the intent (eg if the players want the assassination not to provoke unrest, they have to factor the appropriate efforts into their approach to resolution - eg a Streetwise element to spread appropriately calming rumours). This might speak in favour of a more complex approach to resolution - eg a skill challenge, with the Streetwise attempt as one part of that.
> 
> The fact that it's a big deal doesn't, to me, seem to create a reason in and of itself for the GM to exercise more control over the outcome.




A few things:
First, players are _always_ going to want to minimize the biggest risks with the smallest amount of effort.  This isn't an _unreasonable_ position to take, but a DM cannot in good faith to the game, adjudicate things with the players intentions in mind.  The only thing that matters are the players _actions_.  They may _want_ to minimize internal strife, but we're talking about killing a King here.  That's a BFD and the players DO NOT get to say it isn't, or pass out some poorly xeroed socialist newsletters and assume everything will be hunky-dory.

Second: The GM _isn't_ exercising more control over the outcome.  He's just aware of more of the "fictional positioning" than the players are.  He _has_ to exercise more control for the simple reason that he's aware of potential outcomes the players are not.  Not to mention, that's kinda his job.  The players declare their actions.  The GM adjudicates them.

Finally: if you combine your two arguments then you have essentially removed the GM from the game, with the players both declaring their actions and subsequently determining the outcome in line with their intent.  I mean that's awesome for _some_ kind of game, and maybe collaborative story-teller games do this, but GM-less games are by far the minority.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> Well, I know why it is useful to have ideas or elements for framing prepared in advance (can help with tropes, can help with mechanics, can help with provoking choices).




I’ll take this as you acknowledging that preparation can be useful. 



pemerton said:


> But why is it useful to have outcomes of action declarations prepared in advance? Helps with what - directing the story? That's seems to be one answer provided by some posters in this thread.




As for this, I was not commenting about this. 

But since you’ve asked for my take on it, I would say that it serves to limit the players choices to what is plausible for the game. This is the same function as genre or setting limitations,  or even as scene framing. Again, you may not like or prefer this approach, but it doesn’t change why it’s useful. 

Saying that the player can’t find a map where it’s been decided that there is no map is no different than saying that the player in a D&D game can’t introduce a helicopter to the story. 

As much as an RPG is a story, it’s also still a game. And in any game, players are limited in what they can try to do.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> OK, we're all good up to here.  But then you add...  ...and right there I start thinking you've got the challenge bit wrong.
> 
> The challenge, from the PCs' perspective, isn't to poison the king.  That's eventually to be the assassin's challenge, in which the PCs (and by extension the players) are not involved at all.  The PCs' challenge is to convince someone else to try to poison the king, success in which provides them a hired field operative committed to that mission.
> 
> Yes, these could happen during the recruiting/hiring process - on a failure a prospective operative turns the PCs in, for example.  But it's less likely to happen at this stage than during the actual assassination attempt.
> But now you're jumping ahead to the assassination attempt itself, which is a different challenge and out of the players/PCs' hands.
> 
> A 12-0 success run means they've hired the best and most loyal operative they could ever hope to find.  Still doesn't at all speak to whether said operative is going to be able to pull it off or not, though it might influence the odds somewhat.
> 
> I guess in short I see the players dealing with what's in their PCs' range to be involved with (in this case the hiring and equipping of an assassin) and then not being involved in what their PCs are not involved in (here, the actual infiltration and assassination attempt).
> 
> I don't do this very often*, but in a case like this I think I'd have to - there's just too many variables.  It'd end up working more like a flowchart; in that both successes and failures could be mitigated or overcome by other factors arising then or later.  There's no way I could beat this down to just one die roll, even if I wanted to, without really shortchanging the game.
> 
> * - most common occurrence is during 3-way combats where the PCs are fighting two opposing groups who are also fighting each other - if someone from foe group A is fighting someone from foe group B I'll play out their initiatives, swings etc. right along with the rest of the combat, mostly so I know what will be left of either or both should one or more PCs end up fighting them later.
> 
> True, only here they've conceded the ability to do very much of anything other than wait for developments; developments which they neither get to author nor influence.
> 
> Lanefan




What 'variables' are there here? _There is no challenge which does not involve the PCs!_ This is bedrock fundamental in my method of play, and it is reflected in the mechanics of HoML, which literally has no mechanical system to handle things outside of the scope of the characters. Any such goings-on are either unrelated to the PCs and their concerns, in which case they are merely setting detail, color essentially; or they are things which DO bear upon the conflicts that the PCs are engaged in, in which case the players play them out. Since no PC is acting directly in a 'scene' between the Assassin and the King, there are no checks to be made at that point in the narrative. 

It is sufficient that the players have achieved execution of the mission to a sufficiently high level of success, the rest is already encompassed within that. When the characters execute their last actions in the process, the last check is cast and success (or failure) is achieved. The end results will then be narrated, probably by the GM. Perhaps the players will be treated to a dramatic vignette, or maybe they'll just get a message later on or a pounding at their door telling them the King's Men have arrived to bring them in. 

The DM tossing extra dice at the end of a challenge and giving the players no more input into it is IMHO pointless. The wager has been made, fate has already decreed the outcome based on the skill, luck, and willingness to wager the necessary stakes (or not). In my conception of D&D it isn't a process sim. Dice are not used to simulate some sort of 'world', they are used as they would be in any gamble of skill and chance, to introduce uncertainty and transform the exercise into one where the outcomes are not forgone conclusions, but have an element of tension. 

Now, perhaps a better story would include some way for the PCs to actually engage in the assassination itself? Yeah, maybe! Perhaps if they can scry and help the assassin, or if they actually do it themselves. Well, then that would be a different thing. Obviously the challenge would then extend beyond preparation, or it could be reframed into several challenges, etc. Again, this is all a matter of how central the element is to the story, is it climactic or is it merely one more link in a chain of plot elements leading to some greater climax? I tend to structure things so that the pacing slows in the highest stakes and most dramatic aspects of the adventure or story arc.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Well, a really up-there MU could simply Wish the king dead; but that's hardly the point here.
> 
> OK, you say this in disagreement with me, but then...
> 
> ...go on to say exactly the same thing I did only using different words: that they can use their abilities and observations and knowledge to give themselves an educated guess.  Even the ease or difficulty encountered in finding and-or hiring a killer may add useful knowledge.



But I think you were saying they CANNOT really know, that there are too many unknown factors, or at least that unknowability is an option. I don't believe that is an option. I might make the players resolve the odds by actions of their PCs as a concomitant of the wager (and I guess that opens up the possibility they could deliberately choose a 'blind wager' if they really want to).



> I'll change that a bit, to read: an accurate assessment of the chances of success are a nice-to-have part of the wager, but true accuracy isn't always possible; and sometimes it really does come down to a gamble against unknown or very poorly-known odds.




Here we will simply have to fundamentally disagree. I don't think it is the GM's purview alone to know this (and the GM will, necessarily decide it in this case). That's the GM deciding what wagers are worth taking and depriving the players of agency. What meaning do decisions have when you have no way of understanding the consequences? In the real world that might be how it is, but the real world isn't a game and lacks drama or narrative (except where we impose such after the fact). 

This is where our agendas part ways, apparently. I'm not going to dig into my notions of whether the concept of 'world simulation'  is even valid in terms of its feasibility in RPGs, but I do propose that it isn't part of my agenda at all. I think there's a certain core 'base and ground' of essential cause-effect relationships that needs to mostly hold true in order to play, like gravity works pretty much like in the real world, etc. However I'm not interested in 'simulation' per se.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

shidaku said:


> Maybe, but BIG Action Declarations like "I hire an assassin to kill the King." need to be followed with subsequent specificity from the players. The DM can be much like the genie with the action declaration being a badly worded wish. If you don't clearly state your goals, how can the DM adjudicate the results? Things like overthrowing a King (through death or other means) requires a series of action declarations, no matter if we address them via role-play or roll-play. Yes, statistically the more rolls you make the more likely you are to fail (that's statistics for you).
> 
> But BIG Action Declarations should be more prone to failure.
> Players may not be aware of fictional positioning of the King distrusting them (I mean, they wanna kill this guy for a reason that we're assuming isn't "the players are jerks", and if they are well...I suspect the King knows this), sending spies to watch them, intercept their moves.
> Perhaps the King has no interest in the party (which is often another reason the party wants to kill someone in power), and just happens to catch them looking to buy an assassin in the kingdom's routine checks on the Thieves Guild.
> Perhaps another noble is paying the Assassins League good money to keep the disliked King alive (maybe the King himself is doing this) and that funding is more valuable to the Assassins League than the coin the players are throwing out.
> Perhaps a rival kingdom is seeking to overthrow the King as well, and some ne'er-do-well PCs are just the right guys at the right time.
> 
> Declaring an action for something simple and immediate is easy, and similarly easy to adjudicate. (I drink the beer!....okay, you drink the beer, what's your Con? 16? *Auto-pass* Okay, it's tasty and you don't feel a buzz.)
> The larger the action declaration, the more likely players are to experience side effects. In this example, the DM declaring that the death of the King has thrown the society into chaos should be keeping in line with what the players should have been able to learn about the Kingdom. It is not terribly difficult for an observant PC to pick up signs of internal strain in a land and perhaps after a chance encounter with the King, learn he's holding the country together with both hands.
> 
> For BIG Action Declarations, I like to follow this simple guide:
> The are Known Knowns: These are the things the party knows. They don't require checks and finding this information is relatively easy. This information tends to remain consistent and if it changes, then the that new knowledge is likely to be a "known known" as well.
> -In this situation, the "known known" should be the fact that the country is under heavy strain and the King is all that is keeping the land together.
> 
> There are Known Unknowns: These are things the party can find out, but can be subject to rapid change. This also includes information the party can reasonably intuit exists somewhere but lack specifics. (There is a Princess...therefore there must be a Queen. There is an Army, therefore there must be a General. There are 5 Noble Houses, two of which the King likes, two of which the King does not like, and one Switzerland.)
> -The example scenario lacks these, but any of these could be applicable, and are worth serious consideration when declaring "I hire an assassin to kill the King!". Such as "Who is next in line to assume the throne?" We know someone will, but we don't know who, or how, or how much competition there is.
> 
> Finally, there are Unknown Unknowns: These are the sort of "secret fictional story positioning" ya'll keep coming back to. Players can't reasonably know everything that's going on in the Kingdom. Such as an enemy nation also seeking to assassinate the King. Or that the King as a secret heir born to a Tiefling woman who lives in the slums. Or that the bartender they've been so fond of yapping in front of is a Royal Spy.
> 
> Utilizing these three basic elements, it's fairly easy for a player or a DM to determine the potential side-effects of a BIG Action Declaration.  Many players get in the habit of expecting success to come without strings. But you cannot truly make BIG Action Declarations and hold that expectation. I would find it incredibly unbelievable were a player to declare they wish to assassinate the King, have the DM roll a single d20, happen to roll a success, even a crit! And declare that the King is dead with no ill consequences to the country, or no caveats to the success of that assassination.
> 
> The problem is of course, getting players to "think of the big picture". Few do. Which is why we end up with games with BIG Action Declarations that function like small action declarations, with no or inconsequential side effects in comparison to the actual act the players just took.





Is any of this really a big issue? Is it really related to what sort of model of game you choose to accept? I mean, I wouldn't imagine that, in a game I ran, that the players would have doped out all of exactly what the CONSEQUENCES of regicide would be. OTOH I would imagine they would have considered the possibilities, weighed their options, and chosen (hopefully based mostly on RP considerations mixed with their agenda etc.) We didn't delve into the motivations of the characters, or the players for that matter, in my example. 

So, yeah, the consequences of killing the king are probably complex, and perhaps so variable that in a realistic sense you wouldn't know what they would be. In a dramatic story they might well be more definite, but that's not a given. I'd say that the wager the players are making, character interests put up against steering the narrative, means that the players get SOME say in what happens next. That doesn't mean that the GM (or the players themselves for that matter) can't produce a narrative where the consequences are out of the PC's hands, or different from what they have expressed in-game as their desires. Remember, the goals of the characters and the players need not coincide. Usually players are advocates for their characters, but that doesn't mean they can't wish complications and setbacks on them. Certainly the GM is free to introduce 'unpleasant facts' as Dungeon World puts it. This is a part of moving to the action. Once the assassination has happened, then the GM is going to once again 'move to the action', so perhaps some of the noble houses ally with an outside power against them, they find themselves taking to the battlefield outnumbered. Will they achieve victory or go down in defeat? Will the Princess rule or the Bastard? Come back next week to play it out!


----------



## Sunseeker

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Is any of this really a big issue? Is it really related to what sort of model of game you choose to accept? I mean, I wouldn't imagine that, in a game I ran, that the players would have doped out all of exactly what the CONSEQUENCES of regicide would be. OTOH I would imagine they would have considered the possibilities, weighed their options, and chosen (hopefully based mostly on RP considerations mixed with their agenda etc.) We didn't delve into the motivations of the characters, or the players for that matter, in my example.
> 
> So, yeah, the consequences of killing the king are probably complex, and perhaps so variable that in a realistic sense you wouldn't know what they would be. In a dramatic story they might well be more definite, but that's not a given. I'd say that the wager the players are making, character interests put up against steering the narrative, means that the players get SOME say in what happens next. That doesn't mean that the GM (or the players themselves for that matter) can't produce a narrative where the consequences are out of the PC's hands, or different from what they have expressed in-game as their desires. Remember, the goals of the characters and the players need not coincide. Usually players are advocates for their characters, but that doesn't mean they can't wish complications and setbacks on them. Certainly the GM is free to introduce 'unpleasant facts' as Dungeon World puts it. This is a part of moving to the action. Once the assassination has happened, then the GM is going to once again 'move to the action', so perhaps some of the noble houses ally with an outside power against them, they find themselves taking to the battlefield outnumbered. Will they achieve victory or go down in defeat? Will the Princess rule or the Bastard? Come back next week to play it out!




A big issue?  No, not really.  But it seemed as though [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] was suggesting that the DM should attempt to make results work out to align with the players intentions (as opposed to their characters actions I guess?) and that to favor the "secret fictional positioning" was somehow taking control _away_ from the players?  Which seemed t contravene the position he wrote earlier regarding secret fictional positioning...though I could be misreading him.

But its not a big deal I think, but I feel pemerton's suggestion devalues the impact of such a declaration, which in turn devalues the fictional positioning of the game, and thus the game itsself.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

shidaku said:


> A big issue?  No, not really.  But it seemed as though [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] was suggesting that the DM should attempt to make results work out to align with the players intentions (as opposed to their characters actions I guess?) and that to favor the "secret fictional positioning" was somehow taking control _away_ from the players?  Which seemed t contravene the position he wrote earlier regarding secret fictional positioning...though I could be misreading him.
> 
> But its not a big deal I think, but I feel pemerton's suggestion devalues the impact of such a declaration, which in turn devalues the fictional positioning of the game, and thus the game itsself.




I think it needs to be clear what is being risked vs what may be gained, but it doesn't need to be exactly spelled out what every obstacle is. In 'move to the action' style you wouldn't necessarily KNOW what those obstacles are. So, the players should know that they're risking their lands to assassinate the king, and that success is fairly likely if they put up that wager, but not assured. Once they've achieved THAT goal, then presumably they have some good notion that it will get them some reasonable ways further towards their greater goals (assuming it wasn't simply an end in itself, revenge or something). Now a new set of obstacles will appear.

This is really almost exactly like how a skill challenge is structured, each action of the PCs changes their narrative positioning and advances them (or not) towards some longer term goal (represented by success in the SC). Likewise an adventure is a sequence of such challenges, which progress towards some climax, which in turn may form elements of a greater story arc/campaign which includes ultimate goals at some point (or at least has some thematic unity within which such goals eventually become manifest).


----------



## Sunseeker

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think it needs to be clear what is being risked vs what may be gained, but it doesn't need to be exactly spelled out what every obstacle is. In 'move to the action' style you wouldn't necessarily KNOW what those obstacles are. So, the players should know that they're risking their lands to assassinate the king, and that success is fairly likely if they put up that wager, but not assured. Once they've achieved THAT goal, then presumably they have some good notion that it will get them some reasonable ways further towards their greater goals (assuming it wasn't simply an end in itself, revenge or something). Now a new set of obstacles will appear.
> 
> This is really almost exactly like how a skill challenge is structured, each action of the PCs changes their narrative positioning and advances them (or not) towards some longer term goal (represented by success in the SC). Likewise an adventure is a sequence of such challenges, which progress towards some climax, which in turn may form elements of a greater story arc/campaign which includes ultimate goals at some point (or at least has some thematic unity within which such goals eventually become manifest).




Mmmm eeeyup, think I agree with everything you said there.

BUT, to do more than just up my post count and bring this back to the subject of world-building...

I think this is in part why I like to only ever sketch in my worlds, putting detail only in the start and finish points.  (There's a guy looking for lost children in City A, and there's a Lich who's been eating the souls of children in Ruins Z.)  Obviously the players will need to discover this, adventure from City A to Ruins Z and formulate a plan, but that's all up to them.  I'm here to respond to their moves as best as is reasonably possible within the setting I've created.  They're here to to an extent, navigate the pathways they discover within it and to another lay their own path.  

It's definitely the domain of the players to determine their approach.  It's my domain to determine the difficulty/impact of that approach and determine what information regarding that difficulty the players will be able to uncover.


----------



## pemerton

shidaku said:


> a DM cannot in good faith to the game, adjudicate things with the players intentions in mind.  The only thing that matters are the players _actions_.  They may _want_ to minimize internal strife, but we're talking about killing a King here.  That's a BFD and the players DO NOT get to say it isn't, or pass out some poorly xeroed socialist newsletters and assume everything will be hunky-dory.



Well, in some systems player intention is - by the rules of the game - key to establishing what the action is and what it might accomplish.

If the players declare actions intended to minimise strife, including (say) propaganda efforts, then as I said that can be factored into the check and the resolution.



shidaku said:


> The GM _isn't_ exercising more control over the outcome.  He's just aware of more of the "fictional positioning" than the players are.  He _has_ to exercise more control for the simple reason that he's aware of potential outcomes the players are not.



I don't see the agreement here. The "fictional positioning" is something that the GM has established, ie over which s/he has control. By drawing upon unrevealed/hidden/secret elements of the setting and backstory to adjudicate the consequences, the GM absolutely is exercising control. Whether that's a good or bad thing is orthogonal at this point - I'm just trying to get the analysis clear. 



shidaku said:


> if you combine your two arguments then you have essentially removed the GM from the game, with the players both declaring their actions and subsequently determining the outcome in line with their intent.



No. I mean, there are games that actually work more-or-less as I've described, and they have GMs.

Two things the GM does that are relevant to the current discussion are (i) establishing the framing and (ii) establishing and narrating the consequences of failure.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think it needs to be clear what is being risked vs what may be gained, but it doesn't need to be exactly spelled out what every obstacle is. In 'move to the action' style you wouldn't necessarily KNOW what those obstacles are. So, the players should know that they're risking their lands to assassinate the king, and that success is fairly likely if they put up that wager, but not assured. Once they've achieved THAT goal, then presumably they have some good notion that it will get them some reasonable ways further towards their greater goals (assuming it wasn't simply an end in itself, revenge or something). Now a new set of obstacles will appear.



Of course if the game is going to continue (ie assassinating the king isn't itself the endgame of the campaign) then new opposition has to emerge.  My view is that this new set of obstacles should not invalidate whatever success the players had in action declaration.

So if, for instance, as part of the assassination resolution (be that skill challenge, or something else), the players have brought it about that the major houses have all entered into cooperation agreements with their PCs, then the obstacles that emerge should not (in my view) include the major houses turning on the PCs.

Applying the general principle that you stated upthread, that there is no in-principle limit on the amount of opposition/obstacles I can think up for my game, I don't think it costs anything (from the point of view of the game going on) to honour the players' successes in establishing certain elements within the fiction. And this is - as I understand it - my point of disagreement with [MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION]. I don't think resolving an assassination attempt against a king is, in principle, any different from resolving a negotiation with a baker over the price of a loaf of bread: if the check is framed, and the player succeeds, then it is established that the fiction is as the player wanted, be that that _the baker will sell the loaf for a good price_, or that _the noble houses are allied with the PCs, and so won't just turn on them when the king is assassinated_.

A further comment: I think it is a _very big deal_ in GMing to know when it is OK to put some settled bit of the fiction back into play. If you never do it, the game can lack depth and drama; but if you do it all the time, then (as I have just been describing) resolution lacks finality and the players' successes aren't being honoured. 

Burning Wheel has rules that deal with this, and GM advice to accompany those rules. Here are some of the things that, in BW, are considered to re-open a result which was hitherto final:

discovering new information, being deceived or being betrayed; losing your vehicle, being lost, being found, or the weather taking a sudden, horrific turn for the worse; your finery being covered in filth or losing your precious possessions; learning a new spell, discovering a powerful artefact or earning a new trait; a miracle happening.​
Conversely, simply failing subsequent checks, or taking wounds, are not considered not to disturb finality of resolution.

BW also has a more general principle that the consequences of failure should be known, either expressly stated before the dice are rolled or implicit in the situation. Combining that general principle with the above, and we can see that finality is not going to be disturbed unless the players have taken action which they know has the potential to generate some big deal consequence that might affect finality.

A system like 4e or Cortex+ Heroic doesn't have such strict rules/guidelines around finality, but similar ideas can be used. So in the assassination example, it seems to me to be fair game to have the alliance between the PCs and the noble houses be disturbed _if the players fail in action declarations intended to keep the PCs' roles in the assassination secret_. It's implicit in being caught out as the assassin that previous allies might turn against you.

But I don't think it should be fair game for the (hypothesised) alliance to fail _just because_ the king has been killed and so times have become more tumultuous.

The previous two paragraphs also illustrate my views about secret backstory: in the first of them, there's no secret backstory at work - it's the players's own failure (ie the PCs role in the assassination becomes known) that leads to them losing their alliance; in the second of them, I don't favour an approach where the GM relies on secret backstory (whether in the notes, or whether generated by the sort of "GM only play" that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] argues for) to conclude that the noble houses would sever their alliances with the PCs to try and exploit the tumult.

And to draw once again on what [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] said about obstacles and their ubiquity - if the GM thinks it is interesting to make that alliance, and the stress that must be placed on it by the king's murder, a focus of play, well it's really easy to do that by way of framing, and then seeing what the players do in response. This could be as easy as a delegate from one of the allied houses coming to visit the PCs and proposing that they join together to find out who organised the assassination. If the players (as their PCs) refuse to cooperate, or try to persuade the allied house to let the matter go, well now we have some action declarations in which the players are clearly staking their alliance on the outcome of the appropriate social checks that would be needed to resolve such courses of action.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Well, clearly that's _possible_, within the context of the fiction as established in play, or else the player wouldn't have delcared his/her PC to be looking for one (because otherwise s/he would know it's _im_possible to find one there).



No, she would never know whether there was one there to be found or not; and nor would anyone else.



> As for failure, whether or not that leaves the existence of a secret door uncertain depends on how failure is narrated. That will depend upon the details of system and what it permits on narration of a failure. In Burning Wheel, for instance, it is open to the GM to narrate the failure as resulting from the absence of a secret door in the wall. But that is not the only permitted narration of failure.



That's why I just left it as 'uncertain' - there could be one there but with complications, there might not be one there, whatever.



> Well, as I've posted repeatedly, mostly I'm a GM. So I'm talking about my preference for how to GM a game.



Where I'm talking about both player-side and DM-side preferences pretty much equally, as for me it's the same either way: I want to be DMed the same way I DM, and vice versa.



> And as a player, as I've said, I want to play a game where my character, and my character's choices, matter. [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION] thinks that I can't tell whether or not this is happening in a game; I know from esxperience that he is wrong. I've been part of GM sackings, and have quit games, because GMs don't want to run that sort of game.



And here it comes down to our different definitions of what 'matter' means in the phrase 'choices matter'.

For me, I know it's not my place as a player to build the game world in any major way; but I also know it can be my place to make a bit of a mess of what has been built via what my PC does.  How and where and why and even if I make said mess are all my choices, and they all matter.

The DM puts out hooks but I can choose to ignore them or not; the resulting choice of what adventuring we do is one that matters.  Etc.

In your system, something I wonder is just how often - if ever - the PCs actually get a real chance to sit back, relax, and choose from more than one available option what major thing (i.e. adventure) they will tackle next.  From your play examples and your talk of "always keeping the pressure on" it seems like this never happens; that the PCs are always up against it in an endless cycle of action-and-reaction.  I wonder if this works against player/PC choice every bit as much as a hard railroad does.



> Who is being "shortchanged" by you not rolling against yourself?



Not who, but what: the integrity of the game.

Yes it might seem a bit silly to in effect roll against myself, but how else do I honestly and fairly determine how and where - and in some cases why - the dominoes fall?  I could, I suppose, just make something up - it'd be faster to do it this way, but less robust; and I could easily trap myself in paradox or talk myself into a corner (both of which are completely unacceptable red flags pointing to a DM who just doesn't know his guano) if the PCs/players dig deep into what happened and how.

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Jester David said:


> The discussion was on pre-authored content and worldbuilding, not player agency and rails vs sandbox. The two are entirely different conversations, as you can have a giant pre-authored sandbox where the players have freedom to go wherever just as you can have an improvised railroad where the GM creates the story in the moment but gives little freedom.



The conversations are not entirely different. They're not different at all.

If the GM establishes elements of the shared fiction ahead of time, and does not reveal those elements to the players, then they act as constraints on action declaration. To reiterate an example that has been going on now for much of the thread, if (i) the GM has authored that the map is hidden in the kitchen rather than the study, and (ii) the players declare that their PC search the study for the map, then (iii) the players are _not_ free to have that action declaration succeed, as the GM will (presumably) automatically declare, on the basis of his/her pre-established setting, that the map is not to be found in the study.

To say that the players have the "freedom to go wherever" is just to say that they can trigger different episodes of narration from the GM. It doesn't show that they have significant agency over the actual content of the shared fiction.

This is why I did not frame the OP in terms of "improv" vs "prep", and have consistently explained why I don't see this as a very critical distinction for the purposes of this thread. The question I asked in the OP was about the GM establishing, in advance, the setting and backstory elements of the game.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> What 'variables' are there here? _There is no challenge which does not involve the PCs!_ This is bedrock fundamental in my method of play, and it is reflected in the mechanics of HoML, which literally has no mechanical system to handle things outside of the scope of the characters. Any such goings-on are either unrelated to the PCs and their concerns, in which case they are merely setting detail, color essentially; or they are things which DO bear upon the conflicts that the PCs are engaged in, in which case the players play them out. Since no PC is acting directly in a 'scene' between the Assassin and the King, there are no checks to be made at that point in the narrative.



OK, then how do you determine whether the assassin succeeded or not?



> It is sufficient that the players have achieved execution of the mission ...



But they haven't!  That's the whole point here - the players/PCs have only succeeded in setting things in motion.  Put another way, they have only achieved success in those things they can influence - the assassin is hired, equipped, and sent on his - *his* - mission.  It's not the PCs' mission any more; they've handed it off to someone else.


> ... to a sufficiently high level of success, the rest is already encompassed within that. When the characters execute their last actions in the process, the last check is cast and success (or failure) is achieved. /////// The end results will then be narrated, probably by the GM. Perhaps the players will be treated to a dramatic vignette, or maybe they'll just get a message later on or a pounding at their door telling them the King's Men have arrived to bring them in.



Between "the success or failure of the last check" (which on success gets the assassin out the door and on his way to his mission) and "the end result being narrated ... by the DM" there's a great big process gap which I noted in the quote with '///////'; this gap represents the determination of the success or failure of the assassin's mission, and that gap has to be filled in by the DM.



> The DM tossing extra dice at the end of a challenge and giving the players no more input into it is IMHO pointless. The wager has been made, fate has already decreed the outcome based on the skill, luck, and willingness to wager the necessary stakes (or not). In my conception of D&D it isn't a process sim. Dice are not used to simulate some sort of 'world'



Then what's the point?

If you don't have an internally consistent world where relevant things can be theoretically counted on to work offstage the same way they do onstage, using the same rules and limitations and process as when the PCs are present and involved, then you might as well throw out the rulebook entirely.  Even if in most cases all the offstage stuff is either ignored or fiated to a result achievable within the rules and process, in cases like this where the eventual outcome is a) highly uncertain and b) possibly life-or-death relevant to the PCs it's incumbent on the DM to at least vaguely try to follow the process - which means roll some flippin' dice and figure out what happens behind the scenes so you can usefully narrate what the PCs see and experience.
 they are used as they would be in any gamble of skill and chance, to introduce uncertainty and transform the exercise into one where the outcomes are not forgone conclusions, but have an element of tension. 



> Now, perhaps a better story would include some way for the PCs to actually engage in the assassination itself? Yeah, maybe! Perhaps if they can scry and help the assassin, or if they actually do it themselves.



Yes it would be a different thing; different enough that I'm ignoring it as a possibility here.  What I'm trying to do here is poke at the idea of how a series of player/PC-initiated falling dominoes can or would be resolved when the PCs aren't involved in anything more than the first push.


> Well, then that would be a different thing. Obviously the challenge would then extend beyond preparation, or it could be reframed into several challenges, etc.



Well, yeah; here you'd play it out for real.


> Again, this is all a matter of how central the element is to the story, is it climactic or is it merely one more link in a chain of plot elements leading to some greater climax? I tend to structure things so that the pacing slows in the highest stakes and most dramatic aspects of the adventure or story arc.



As sometimes the importance of any given story element isn't known until well after the fact (if ever!), I tend to want to even out the level of detail where I can such that it's not always obvious.  That said, there's also times when it's blatantly obvious that ***THIS IS A BOSS FIGHT!*** and we play it as such. 

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> But I think you were saying they CANNOT really know, that there are too many unknown factors, or at least that unknowability is an option. I don't believe that is an option. I might make the players resolve the odds by actions of their PCs as a concomitant of the wager (and I guess that opens up the possibility they could deliberately choose a 'blind wager' if they really want to).



They might think they know the odds...and they might be right.

Or they might not have a clue.



> Here we will simply have to fundamentally disagree. I don't think it is the GM's purview alone to know this (and the GM will, necessarily decide it in this case). That's the GM deciding what wagers are worth taking and depriving the players of agency. What meaning do decisions have when you have no way of understanding the consequences? In the real world that might be how it is, but the real world isn't a game



Yet I feel the game world should try to replicate the real world where and how it can, while knowing there'll be obvious times - usually involving magic - when it can't. 







> and lacks drama or narrative (except where we impose such after the fact).



Nobody but you said anything about lacking drama or narrative; but there's two versions.  One is the here-and-now drama and narrative of trying to kill these bandits and their wolf allies before they kill us.  The other is the narrative that doesn't emerge until later, when you realize those bandits were in fact one group among many working for the Magister as part of his plot to destabilize the kingdom.  Both are completely valid.



> This is where our agendas part ways, apparently. I'm not going to dig into my notions of whether the concept of 'world simulation'  is even valid in terms of its feasibility in RPGs, but I do propose that it isn't part of my agenda at all. I think there's a certain core 'base and ground' of essential cause-effect relationships that needs to mostly hold true in order to play, like gravity works pretty much like in the real world, etc. However I'm not interested in 'simulation' per se.



I'm not as hard-core simulation as I'm probably coming across, but there are some basic tenets I always try to go by:

- the baseline default is that the science within the game world mirrors the real world when and if it can (weather, physics, astronomy, all kinds of -ologies, etc.)
- where something forces the science to do otherwise, real-world parameters apply where possible (e.g. a fireball glows orange and sets things on fire; a dragon flying through fog disturbs the fog)
- there is no material or game-mechanical difference between a PC and an NPC in the game world; each is simply an inhabitant of that world and doesn't have a tattoo on its forehead saying PC or NPC.
- the rules and processes used in the run of play are assumed to reflect those in use everywhere and by everyone in the game world except in unusual cases where circumstances dicate differently
- the main difference between the real world and pretty much any game world is that the game world has controllable magic where the real world does not; and that there is a consistent explanation in game-world physics for why this difference exists.

Make sense?

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> how else do I honestly and fairly determine how and where - and in some cases why - the dominoes fall?  I could, I suppose, just make something up - it'd be faster to do it this way, but less robust; and I could easily trap myself in paradox or talk myself into a corner (both of which are completely unacceptable red flags pointing to a DM who just doesn't know his guano) if the PCs/players dig deep into what happened and how.



How do dice rolls mean you avoid contradiction?

And given that the parameters for the dice roll are (in your approach) all GM-authored, what sort of integrity does a dice roll at the 11th hour generate?


----------



## pemerton

BryonD said:


> Heaven forbid that someone else have both the narrative "in character" joy AND also have a great game.  To quote somebody: "Inconceivable!"





BryonD said:


> I think the disconnect is that you take a reasonable position, differing player agency in differing systems and/or group dynamics, and then you make an flawed leap to how that is important to the merits of the game.  People react to the second part as controversial



There is no "second part". This thread isn't about what is fun and what is not. It's about the analysis of RPGing techniques.

Maybe most RPGers enjoy games with only modest or little player agency. That isn't relevant to analysising the nature and extent of agency in various approaches to RPGing.



BryonD said:


> If the joy that players in your game get comes from finding mundane maps hidden in mundane places then I don't think I want to play in your game.



Who said the map is mundane? Or the place mundane?

I don't recall, now, who originated the example - it may have been [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], it may have been me, it may have been some other poster whose contribution I've forgotten.

The actual question is: how do you adjudicate an action declaration "I search this place for this thing that I am hoping to find"?



BryonD said:


> Yes, if there is a map hidden at spot X, then the players have ZERO agency to change that.  There is no relevance to this point with regard to the players ability to be proactive creators of the fiction at large.  Maybe they find the map by saying the right thing, exactly as you have complained.  But maybe the story continues with the consequences of them not finding the map.



What does "the story continues" mean here? Who is establishing what components of the shared fiction?



BryonD said:


> It comes back to good GMs making good, interesting, and fun canvases for the players to interact with.



In real life, "interacting with a canvas" means painting on it. But upthread you said that the players in your game don't get to author setting elements. So I'm having trouble following the metaphor.



BryonD said:


> In a good game, the players can be completely constrained by the character's capacity and yet have a great deal of agency because of the very nature of those character's capacity.   They may not be able to define the location of the map itself, btu the products of my imagination are like a good plan on its first meeting with the enemy.  The resulting experience for all is far greater than my imagination.  Your responses keep rejecting and/or failing to observe this critically important distinction.



You haven't actually posted any play examples. Concrete examples would help me understand what you have in mind.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> If the GM establishes elements of the shared fiction ahead of time, and does not reveal those elements to the players, then they act as constraints on action declaration.



Actually, no they don't.

They act as constraints on action resolution, which is a completely different phase of the process.



> To reiterate an example that has been going on now for much of the thread, if (i) the GM has authored that the map is hidden in the kitchen rather than the study, and (ii) the players declare that their PC search the study for the map, then (iii) the players are _not_ free to have that action declaration succeed, as the GM will (presumably) automatically declare, on the basis of his/her pre-established setting, that the map is not to be found in the study.



 Point ii above can - and one assumes will - happen exactly the same at the table regardless of whether the map's location is preauthored or free-floating: the players declare that their PCs search the study for the map.  This is the action declaration phase, and probably is close to the same in nearly all RPGs.

Where the difference comes is in point iii, which is the resolution/narration phase that varies somewhat by system used.  And in fact *it's the DM who is constrained, not the players*!

The players can declare any action they like for their PCs.  The DM, however, is constrained by her own notes/the module as to how that declaration is resolved and narrated: the map's not in this room so she's forced to narrate something amounting to "You don't find it here" no matter what any dice may say.

Sometimes the DM is similarly constrained by the game rules: a player can declare anything as an action - her 4th-level Wizard casts a 7th-level Clerical spell or her Fighter puts on 6 magic rings at once expecting them all to function - and the DM is forced by the game rules to say something that boils down to "That fails".



> To say that the players have the "freedom to go wherever" is just to say that they can trigger different episodes of narration from the GM. It doesn't show that they have significant agency over the actual content of the shared fiction.



Yes it does, in that the choices they make followed by the DM narration those choices provoke are what builds the story of the game; and it's this story that is the shared fiction. 

Lanefan


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Here we will simply have to fundamentally disagree. I don't think it is the GM's purview alone to know this (and the GM will, necessarily decide it in this case). That's the GM deciding what wagers are worth taking and depriving the players of agency. What meaning do decisions have when you have no way of understanding the consequences? In the real world that might be how it is, but the real world isn't a game and lacks drama or narrative (except where we impose such after the fact).




How do you figure that there is no way to understand the consequences if the DM decides what wagers are worth?  If my PC decides to have the king assassinated, I as a player immediately understand that the consequences can include any or all of the following.  1) loss of property.  2) loss of freedom.  3) loss of life.  4) dodging assassins for the rest of my PC's life.  5) hatred of the people.  6) banishment.  7) the spice girls get back together.  

I don't need to be told that failure is going to result in one or more of those before I roll in order to understand the consequences, and the choices my PC makes will still have tremendous meaning to both the game world and to himself.


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## Sunseeker

pemerton said:


> Well, in some systems player intention is - by the rules of the game - key to establishing what the action is and what it might accomplish.
> If the players declare actions intended to minimise strife, including (say) propaganda efforts, then as I said that can be factored into the check and the resolution.



Sure, but these actions _could_ result in failure.  Creating propaganda, if not carefully handled for example, can produce the opposite effect.  So even if the intent was to undermine loyalty to the King, if they fail to execute that properly, it could produce _more_ loyalty.  When the assassination finally comes, the results should be based on the current situation in the game world.  Not the situation the players envisioned.  That's why it's important to differentiate intent (what they _want_ to do) from action (what they actually did).



> I don't see the agreement here. The "fictional positioning" is something that the GM has established, ie over which s/he has control. By drawing upon unrevealed/hidden/secret elements of the setting and backstory to adjudicate the consequences, the GM absolutely is exercising control. Whether that's a good or bad thing is orthogonal at this point - I'm just trying to get the analysis clear.



Your suggestion was that the GM was exercising _more_ control, when the level of GM control has been unchanged.  The GM was always aware of more information than the players.  Acting upon what the GM knows is not exercising more control, or to phrase it differently, taking away control from the players (over, in his example, something the players should only questionably have had control over to begin with).



> No. I mean, there are games that actually work more-or-less as I've described, and they have GMs.
> Two things the GM does that are relevant to the current discussion are (i) establishing the framing and (ii) establishing and narrating the consequences of failure.



Not success?


----------



## Nagol

shidaku said:


> <snip>
> 
> Not success?




In a game like Dungeon World, complete success means the PC action matches the player's declaration so the fiction is adjusted implicitly to match since everyone who is paying attention already knows the situation.  The GM only narrates to update the fiction to account for partial success (and this is often a resource adjustment like lost health), failure (the fiction should change to prevent/disincent retrying), or to introduce new pressures on the group if the action enters a lull.

*edit*
This last item is a great reason for world-building.  It provides a terrific resource to inspire the GM with appropriate and consequential new pressures to place on the characters. */edit*


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## Jester David

pemerton said:


> The conversations are not entirely different. They're not different at all.
> 
> If the GM establishes elements of the shared fiction ahead of time, and does not reveal those elements to the players, then they act as constraints on action declaration. To reiterate an example that has been going on now for much of the thread, if (i) the GM has authored that the map is hidden in the kitchen rather than the study, and (ii) the players declare that their PC search the study for the map, then (iii) the players are _not_ free to have that action declaration succeed, as the GM will (presumably) automatically declare, on the basis of his/her pre-established setting, that the map is not to be found in the study.



By that logic, the dice are also a limit on action declaration. Because if they declare they're searching the study for a map but roll poorly, it's not there. The players are _not_ free to have that action declaration succeed. 

(You also make the pretty HUGE assumption that once the world has been pre-authored ahead of time that it's impossible to change. Which is not so. If the players are really focused on searching the study and not the kitchen or they roll fantastically well, perhaps the map just changes locations to reward them.)

This also assumes that the players look for what the GM planned. In this instance, the players might declare they're looking for notes and not a map, so the GM has to decide if those exist or not. Alternatively, even if they do look for a map in the wrong place, the GM doesn't have to give the players and easy win; instead they're challenged and encouraged to keep looking or think of something else that will get them to where they want to go.

Plus, one of my favourite types of story to write are investigations. Finding the killer, deducing why the ghost is restless, tracking down the monster, etc. Those stories fall flat if I don't work out the clues and details ahead of time. While they can shift as needed to keep the action moving, evidence shouldn't shift because the players declare an action. There's no challenge there. The challenge of the game is solving the crime and finding the criminal, or setting a trap and catching the monster. _How _they solve things is dependant on them and their action declarations, but they still need to figure out who the bad guy in my notes is.  



pemerton said:


> To say that the players have the "freedom to go wherever" is just to say that they can trigger different episodes of narration from the GM. It doesn't show that they have significant agency over the actual content of the shared fiction.



So? 
Again, the players don't know what is a triggered episode or what is improvised unless they're looking over your screen. (Or, unless the DM has a tell like reciting their notes in a monotone voice or stalling and stammering as they improvise.) 



pemerton said:


> This is why I did not frame the OP in terms of "improv" vs "prep", and have consistently explained why I don't see this as a very critical distinction for the purposes of this thread. The question I asked in the OP was about the GM establishing, in advance, the setting and backstory elements of the game.



This and your above statmente assumes the NARRATIVE is pre-made along with the world. Which is two different things. 

Again, the campaign could be a giant sandbox set in the Realms where the entire setting and every location is pre-written and prepared, but the actual narrative and course taken by the players could be entirely driven by the players. Moreso, since they have access to the world lore as well and can decide to see places they like ("We need lore. Let's go to Candlekeep!)


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=93444]shidaku[/MENTION] - it is true that propaganda efforts can go wrong. That's what a Streetwise check (or whatever other PC ability might be relevant) is for. If the check fails, then perhaps the consequence (in the fiction) is that the people of the kingdom become more loyal.

If the check succeeds, however, then - in the approach that I prefer - the PCs (and, thereby, the players) have attained their goal - in this case, quelling potential unrest.

That is the essence of "say 'yes' or roll the dice" - either the GM says "yes" and the action declaration succeeds (generally used for low-stakes stuff, managing narrative continuity, etc) or else a check is made. If it succeeds, the intention is realised. If not, the GM establishes the consequences of failure

This contrast between success and failure - success = players get what they wanted; failure = GM establishes some adverse consequence - also feeds into the issue of player agency over the shared fiction:



Lanefan said:


> The players can declare any action they like for their PCs. The DM, however, is constrained by her own notes/the module as to how that declaration is resolved and narrated: the map's not in this room so she's forced to narrate something amounting to "You don't find it here" no matter what any dice may say.



I think this is the crux: if you think that player agency consists solely in declaring actions, then every RPG has unlimited player agency (subject to background genre constraints): the players can always declare that their PCs are doing whatever the players might conceive of from time-to-time.

But, as  [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] posted somewhere upthread, I tend to think of agency, in the context of a game, as a capacity to change the actual state of play by making moves. In a RPG, at the core is the shared fiction. If the players can't change that by making moves, they have no agency. If they can't change it except by making particular sequences of moves that have been pre-established by the GM (eg the "I search for a map" move can only succeed if it is preceded by the "I go into the kitchen" move) then they have only limited agency.



Lanefan said:


> the choices they make followed by the DM narration those choices provoke are what builds the story of the game



This is true for a choose-your-own adventure book. If that's what passes for player agency, you're setting a very low threshold!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

shidaku said:


> Mmmm eeeyup, think I agree with everything you said there.
> 
> BUT, to do more than just up my post count and bring this back to the subject of world-building...
> 
> I think this is in part why I like to only ever sketch in my worlds, putting detail only in the start and finish points.  (There's a guy looking for lost children in City A, and there's a Lich who's been eating the souls of children in Ruins Z.)  Obviously the players will need to discover this, adventure from City A to Ruins Z and formulate a plan, but that's all up to them.  I'm here to respond to their moves as best as is reasonably possible within the setting I've created.  They're here to to an extent, navigate the pathways they discover within it and to another lay their own path.
> 
> It's definitely the domain of the players to determine their approach.  It's my domain to determine the difficulty/impact of that approach and determine what information regarding that difficulty the players will be able to uncover.




Yeah, though I would say that I'd be happy if the players engaged with the initial plot, and if it turned out to be the Lich, that's cool, but it could turn out to be explained some other way. Or it might just not turn out to be the central aspect of the campaign. 

I think, for me, there's also 2 sort of different types of games that I tend to pitch. There's some shorter and more tightly thematic ones, where I don't think the campaign is going to go on for years, and there's a pretty well-defined theme/genre. The actual narrative could still go in ways that the players express a desire to engage in, but there could be a pretty central concept that shapes things. I like to set these up every couple years. I don't tend to run them using D&D, though 4e can work. 

Then there are the more open-ended sorts of games, "lets just start some PCs in one of the towns on my old campaign map that hasn't ever gotten fleshed out and see what happens" or something like that. Last one I had a concept of 'Draconic Intrigue' that I threw in, where there were several dragons openly or secretly fighting it out for dominance, with their various allies, servants, etc. The party sometimes paid some attention to that, sometimes not. They eventually killed ONE of the dragons, and another one consequently burned down a good bit of their town! I guess that was as close to 'hidden' backstory as I get, but the players were helping to figure out who was allied with whom, "wouldn't it be cool if Joe over there was really working for the Green Dragon?!!!"


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> OK, then how do you determine whether the assassin succeeded or not?
> 
> Then what's the point?
> 
> If you don't have an internally consistent world where relevant things can be theoretically counted on to work offstage the same way they do onstage, using the same rules and limitations and process as when the PCs are present and involved, then you might as well throw out the rulebook entirely.  Even if in most cases all the offstage stuff is either ignored or fiated to a result achievable within the rules and process, in cases like this where the eventual outcome is a) highly uncertain and b) possibly life-or-death relevant to the PCs it's incumbent on the DM to at least vaguely try to follow the process - which means roll some flippin' dice and figure out what happens behind the scenes so you can usefully narrate what the PCs see and experience.
> they are used as they would be in any gamble of skill and chance, to introduce uncertainty and transform the exercise into one where the outcomes are not forgone conclusions, but have an element of tension.



Hehe, yes, we have very different approaches to RPGs, in some respects. Its still fun that we can play basically the same game in cool different ways. For the record, I don't mind being a player in some well-considered games of the type you're talking about. As long as my PC can accomplish something and build a little on his accomplishments, I don't feel its a huge big deal.

But I just don't like to run games like they're world simulators. I think there's still a good deal of basic consistency in most of my games, the players and I assume that the world works basically in some way that we define, and if the PCs are 'special' that's OK. 

I don't NEED to play out something that is offstage between NPCs because it only needs to be established in relation to how it works in the story. So, if the PCs picked a good assassin and gave him good info and enough incentive to do the job right, then it will get done. I don't even think that is at odds with process sim. There is SOME point in any resolution sequence where the PC has 'done enough' to succeed. The assassin example is a bit indirect, but I don't think that really makes it somehow 'wrong' to assume something set in motion was successful. Rolling more dice doesn't make it somehow 'more accurately simulated' or something like that (I would argue there's no meaningful level of accuracy in RPGs anyway, but that's a topic for a different day).



> As sometimes the importance of any given story element isn't known until well after the fact (if ever!), I tend to want to even out the level of detail where I can such that it's not always obvious.  That said, there's also times when it's blatantly obvious that ***THIS IS A BOSS FIGHT!*** and we play it as such.




This is an interesting point. I understand that it represents a fairly often cited reason why everything has to follow some set kind of process where some platonic ideal of a 'PC neutral world' exists. IMHO though no such world ever exists, or even close to exists, so its mostly moot. Still, it seems to be a strong leg of the conceptual framework that supports a certain type of play. As I said, interesting.


----------



## prosfilaes

What's 1+1?



pemerton said:


> (1) I've never talked about a "right way" to play. I started a thread with a question: some posters answered it (@Nagol, @_*Caliban*_, etc). Some other posters - @_*Mercurius*_, @_*Lanefan*_ - asserted or implied that by asking the question I was insulting them. To be frank, that's on them, not on me. If they don't want to answer the question "what is GM worldbuiling for", or think that the answer is so self-evident that to ask the question is to commit some RPG faux pas, well, no one is forcing them to post in the thread.




A new player is capable of not understanding why GMs worldbuild. You do, in fact, have some understanding of why GMs worldbuild. You probably have more than many GMs have. You could have asked "why do you worldbuild as a GM", and that would have felt like you're willing to listen. You could have said "Worldbuilding is overrated" and people would have expected a strong opinion. But "what is GM worldbuilding for" feels like, and is, a bit of a trap; you're not interested in the answers people have, you're interested in arguing with the answers. So, yes, that's on you; if you use a question to start a discussion you have a solid opinion in, instead of elicit information, then some people are going to be annoyed.

I don't feel people jumped forward to answer the question I put at the top of this post, and I wouldn't have. It's because I can see two distinct responses the poster might give, the first being:



> Really? Without knowing what + is, you're going to brashly assume that the answer is 2, and not 1 (if + is or) or 0 (if + is and, or addition over Z_2). In mathematics, you've got to investigate what the question means before you jump in naively assuming you understand it...




and if I wanted to post that, I should have just posted it.


----------



## Lanefan

prosfilaes said:


> What's 1+1?



Easy.

It's the number of beer I'll have.  And then I'll have a third.


----------



## pemerton

Jester David said:


> By that logic, the dice are also a limit on action declaration. Because if they declare they're searching the study for a map but roll poorly, it's not there. The players are _not_ free to have that action declaration succeed.



Clearly the dice are a limit. But in most games I'm familiar with, it's understood that losing a dice roll is different from having another participant stipulate that you fail.



Jester David said:


> This also assumes that the players look for what the GM planned. In this instance, the players might declare they're looking for notes and not a map, so the GM has to decide if those exist or not. Alternatively, even if they do look for a map in the wrong place, the GM doesn't have to give the players and easy win; instead they're challenged and encouraged to keep looking or think of something else that will get them to where they want to go.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> the campaign could be a giant sandbox set in the Realms where the entire setting and every location is pre-written and prepared, but the actual narrative and course taken by the players could be entirely driven by the players.



I don't see how this is meant to be disagreeing with me. Yes, the players can make other moves that may trigger the GM to narrate different bits of the pre-established shared fiction. That is not player agency over the shared fiction - it is the GM (or Ed Greenwood, or . . .) who establishes the shared fiction. The players are learning what that fiction is.



Jester David said:


> one of my favourite types of story to write are investigations. Finding the killer, deducing why the ghost is restless, tracking down the monster, etc. Those stories fall flat if I don't work out the clues and details ahead of time. While they can shift as needed to keep the action moving, evidence shouldn't shift because the players declare an action. There's no challenge there.



In real life, the challenge of solving a mystery is collecting information by inspecting the environment, making inferences about what caused what, etc.

In a RPG, the challenge of solving a mystery in the style you describe is making moves that lead the GM to narrate salient bits of fiction. CoC modules are exemplars of this. Player agency in this sort of adventure is rather limited, being largely confined to triggering the sequence of GM narrations. (To avoid distractions: this is not a criticism of CoC. I can enjoy playing CoC modules. But they don't give the player any significant agency in respect of the shared fiction.)

It is possible to run a mystery scenario in which the players do have agency over the shared fiction (see eg this actual play example), but the techniques are different from what you describe.



Jester David said:


> You also make the pretty HUGE assumption that once the world has been pre-authored ahead of time that it's impossible to change. Which is not so. If the players are really focused on searching the study and not the kitchen or they roll fantastically well, perhaps the map just changes locations to reward them.



This was discussed rather extensively upthread.

This sort of approach just emphasises the GM's control over outcomes - the GM is entitled to "block" by sticking to the original material, or to "say 'yes'" if s/he wants to by changing that material. As I posted uptreahd, this style of GMing means that player action declarations are really best understood as suggestions to the GM as to how the shared fiction might unfold.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> This sort of approach just emphasises the GM's control over outcomes - the GM is entitled to "block" by sticking to the original material, or to "say 'yes'" if s/he wants to by changing that material. As I posted uptreahd, this style of GMing means that player action declarations are really best understood as suggestions to the GM as to how the shared fiction might unfold.




Interestingly, I do not think it is too unusual that while players are thinking aloud and making assumptions (usually about secret backstory) that the DM might decide to pinch an idea or two if he/she liked them better than his/her own. I have seen posters say as much on Enworld, but don't ask me to find their posts now.

I'm pretty sure I as DM have poached an idea from player during play.


----------



## Jester David

pemerton said:


> Clearly the dice are a limit. But in most games I'm familiar with, it's understood that losing a dice roll is different from having another participant stipulate that you fail.



How? 
Either way you fail. 

What if it was another player? A player passes a note to the GM describing how they hide the map. That also leads to failure. 
If that's okay, why is it wrong if the GM—who is a player of the game as well—makes that call instead? 



pemerton said:


> I don't see how this is meant to be disagreeing with me. Yes, the players can make other moves that may trigger the GM to narrate different bits of the pre-established shared fiction. That is not player agency over the shared fiction - it is the GM (or Ed Greenwood, or . . .) who establishes the shared fiction. The players are learning what that fiction is.



How does going into a pre-written location, like Candlekeep, take away player agency? The world is just the backdrop. The story of the adventure is of the PCs and they can have great agency even in a published setting. 



pemerton said:


> In real life, the challenge of solving a mystery is collecting information by inspecting the environment, making inferences about what caused what, etc.
> 
> In a RPG, the challenge of solving a mystery in the style you describe is making moves that lead the GM to narrate salient bits of fiction. CoC modules are exemplars of this. Player agency in this sort of adventure is rather limited, being largely confined to triggering the sequence of GM narrations. (To avoid distractions: this is not a criticism of CoC. I can enjoy playing CoC modules. But they don't give the player any significant agency in respect of the shared fiction.)



Not even remotely. 
In a _good_ RPG mystery you need to collect the clues, which can be done through asking questions or skill checks. This provides the information, which the DM can extrapolate on based on what is reasonable for the character to know or be able to deduce. The players make inferences and follow up those leads. 
It's very much like it works in real life/ in detective fiction. 

Most of the time when I plan a mystery I don't have a hard script, I just have an outline or idea of what the villain is doing. So their scheme unfolds over time, perhaps giving the players more clues. But those plans change in reaction to the PCs. I play the antagonist as a reactive character. 

Also, you're pretty much equating "investigation" with "_Call of Cthulhu_ modules". That's not always the case, since pre-written modules have their own limits, and modules tend to have to be more overt in their clues and solutions. It's a baseline, but the words are a guide that the GM has to make come alive and make responsive to the players. 



pemerton said:


> It is possible to run a mystery scenario in which the players do have agency over the shared fiction (see eg this actual play example), but the techniques are different from what you describe.



I can't parse the events in that summary for the life of me. What was the mystery? Was the solution to the mystery known ahead of time? How did player agency lead to the solution?



pemerton said:


> This sort of approach just emphasises the GM's control over outcomes - the GM is entitled to "block" by sticking to the original material, or to "say 'yes'" if s/he wants to by changing that material. As I posted uptreahd, this style of GMing means that player action declarations are really best understood as suggestions to the GM as to how the shared fiction might unfold.



Player action declarations are always suggestions. They can be blocked by the dice, the actions of other players, the GM declaring the logic doesn't work, or the GM declaring it doesn't work because of information unknown to the players. 
How they are blocked is largely irrelevant. The player's reaction and emotions to failure are going to be mostly the same.


----------



## innerdude

Jester David said:


> Player action declarations are always suggestions. They can be blocked by the dice, the actions of other players, the GM declaring the logic doesn't work, or *the GM declaring it doesn't work because of information unknown to the players.*
> 
> How they are blocked is largely irrelevant. The player's reaction and emotions to failure are going to be mostly the same.




While I think this statement is true, I also think @_*pemerton*_'s whole point is that the bolded section in your quote should be used with extreme, extreme discretion. There's a mindset for many GMs where the more information they withhold from their players, the more "intense" and "mysterious" their game will be. When in reality, much of the actual gameplay ends up being boring, snooze-fest pixel-witching trying to find just where, exactly, the GM's "railroad" is supposed to be going.

Too, something that's largely lost in this whole discussion is the level of experience most of us have as GMs. _Of course_ we're not going to do all of these terrible, un-fun activities, because we know better.

New, inexperienced GMs don't.

I don't want to put words in @_*pemerton*_'s mouth, but I think too he's saying that the hobby as a whole might be better served if inexperienced GMs could catch the vision a bit earlier to not rely so much on "hidden backstory" in their planning.


----------



## Jester David

innerdude said:


> While I think this statement is true, I also think @_*pemerton*_'s whole point is that the bolded section in your quote should be used with extreme, extreme discretion. There's a mindset for many GMs where the more information they withhold from their players, the more "intense" and "mysterious" their game will be. When in reality, much of the actual gameplay ends up being boring, snooze-fest pixel-witching trying to find just where, exactly, the GM's "railroad" is supposed to be going.
> 
> Too, something that's largely lost in this whole discussion is the level of experience most of us have as GMs. _Of course_ we're not going to do all of these terrible, un-fun activities, because we know better.
> 
> New, inexperienced GMs don't.
> 
> I don't want to put words in @_*pemerton*_'s mouth, but I think too he's saying that the hobby as a whole might be better served if inexperienced GMs could catch the vision a bit earlier to not rely so much on "hidden backstory" in their planning.



It takes some skill, but so does all GMing. Running a good railroad takes some gamemastering chops. But then so does an improv sandbox. The rabbit hole of “but what about bands GMs?” is bottomless and largely a distraction. 

Even leaving things to a roll involves some GM control, since they typically need to set the difficulty: picking a DC, telling the players the difficulty, setting the challenge, etc. 
Excluding the rare systems with set difficulty (All Outta Bubblegum, Honey Heist, or the Tearable RPG) where you always know the requirements for success.
Is finding the clue a DC 5 or DC 10 or DC 25? Does it require 1 success or 3? Setting the difficulty too high is functionally the same thing as saying "no".

Shifting the decision maker to the dice is just making the efficacy of player agency random. The dice have the real agency.
I‘ve been watching a lot of the Geek & Sundry improv RPG The Adventures of Dick & Johnson, which uses All Outta Bubblegum and is a great example of a “yes, but” RPG. But there’s a whole lotta times when the player’s really cool thing just gets shot down by a bad roll.

But surrendering random change for DM fiat, you can paradoxically *increase* player agency. By not rolling and the DM just saying “yes” the odds increase dramatically. From <100% to 100%. 
When running a pre-authored scenario, like my aforementioned investigation adventures, I often don’t make players roll. They ask questions and I tell them “yes” or “no. Rolling is for when they lack questions, and they need to look for extra clues to potentially give them more questions to ask.


----------



## Aenghus

Worldbuilding can be fun in and of itself, it can help certain playstyles and some players enjoy exploring gameworlds created by other people.

Overly rigid worldbuilding that doesn't leave room for PCs to breathe, and worldbuilding that isn't appreciated by players the way the creator would like can be issues. It's my experience that most players care a lot less about the particulars of the gameworld than the creator. Occasionally there are fans, but these often focus on small parts of the setting or particular npcs or plots.

It's some time ago now, when roleplaying was a bit more primitive, but I remember a game where player enthusiasm for some proactive plans was casually crushed in a tone-deaf way because the player plans didn't fit the rigid preconceptions of the referee, and the referee was unwilling to attempt a compromise with the players for fear of revealing some of his plots or secret backstory. Player unhappiness grew until the most frustrated players, angry that they weren't allowed to affect the gameworld in to them reasonable ways, attempted some in-game vandalism to test the referee it they would be permitted to do it.  and frankly to annoy him. 

So some parts of the gameworld burned down, the referee got annoyed and the game ended in general disarray.

I don't think this was down to mere bad refereeing/playing, everyone was making an honest effort, it's just that the older GM advice was IMO often awful. Ridiculously adversarial, needlessly secretive, there was plenty of advice that hindered or prevented clear communication between players and referee.

There's a particular issue with worldbuilding where the referee is the creator, in that the referee is typically highly invested in the gameworld and it's details, and  the players are less so, sometimes a lot less. The players are also the audience for the gameworld, and the critics of it. Players rejecting plots or gameworld elements for whatever reason can be hard on the referee, and some referees being human overreact and take revenge on the players who didn''t appreciate their wonderful creation. 

It's really difficult for referees to maintain objectivity in the face of player plans they don't understand or don't agree with. I know I've failed at this a number of times, and I'm willing to talk to my players out of character to try and figure things out. Communication gaps because of concerns of secrecy and meta-gaming can make things a lot worse, IMO.

In the old days PCs were simple, and if a PC died it was quick to put a new one together. New characters often died early, so many didn't bother with a backstory until they had survived the early meat-grinder levels. So referees could kill off annoying or problematic characters without raising too many eyebrows.

Times have changed for many people, and PCs are more complex, starting with goals and backstory. PCs have become more survivable, and in more modern systems can have more agency, or different kinds of agency to that provided by earlier systems. In many game groups it's no longer acceptable to merely kill off PCs who in the referees eyes are wandering off the reservation. Just like referees can be attached to worldbuilding, players can be attached to PC backstory and goals, even when they don't quite match, or turn out to be totally incompatible some time later on.

Worldbuilding can interfere with players who are invested in their PC's backstory and goals. The PC backstory and goals can be inadvertently modified, twisted or ruined by the details of the gameworld, especially when there are big campaign secrets lurking in the background. This can destroy a player's fun in the game, especially when the referee refuses to discuss such issues, or make accommodations.


----------



## Emerikol

Jester David said:


> There's a couple different levels of free time.
> There's my free time between the game sessions. But the game is _also_ free time. I'm not at work. I'm playing with my friends. I want to maximise the fun at the game table, so that free time was well spent.
> 
> But at the game table, it's also not my free time. It's my friends' free time.
> Why would I want to waste their precious free time being unprepared to run a game? Why would I gamble my friends' free time that I'll be able to improvise an adventure that's better than one I could plan ahead of time?




Oh I included all the time spent involved with the game in my statement.  Of course I don't want to waste the players time either.  It's why I am very upfront about my game style when I do play.  I realize the hobby is full of different expectations.  I'd even go so far as to say people on opposite extremes probably aren't even playing the same game.


----------



## Emerikol

Aenghus said:


> Worldbuilding can be fun in and of itself, it can help certain playstyles and some players enjoy exploring gameworlds created by other people.




To me good players are those who receive what world information the DM offers and try to build a character within that framework.  Early on it's good to have private DM/player one on ones to flesh out a character and develop his backstory so it really fits the world.  Obviously a DM is someone who builds a world that he believes will appeal to his players.  Often he mentions the type of world and gets some feedback from his potential group before he starts building.  

Players will engage a world that engages them and yes starting out that means a teeeny tiny part of the world.  A good DM though will weave in off screen personalities as the game progresses.  Think about Tywin Lannister in Game of Thrones.  That character was really completely developed off camera so that when he walks into the scene the reader holds their breath in anticipation.  When I first started playing the Castellion of Keep on the Borderlands was that sort of character.  We kept hearing about him but it was some time before we actually got to meet him.

I find that players who think they can develop a character without any reference to the world and object if that comes into conflict after the fact are players I avoid.  A character is a product of his environment which is the world.  It's nonsensical to develop something without at minimum tying it to the underlying world.  It makes it a lot more rich and enjoyable when your not just a thief but your are the famous burgler of a nearby local village.  

I find the spotlight is one key to making sure the player is engaged.  I don't think you really want them to be big time heroes at the beginning.  I prefer the rise from nothing trope.  I do though think you can still have a very interesting backstory.  

I think NPCs are vital in party development.  They need to have people they love and people they hate.  A fair number can come from the backstory but not all of them.  

I guess what I'm saying is you need to do it well and be interesting.  For some that is hard and I sympathize.


----------



## Manbearcat

I have an awful lot to catch up on and some posts to respond to, but I don't have the time to now.  Just skimming to catch up and I want to respond to this right quickly because it won't take more than a moment:



Jester David said:


> Originally Posted by pemerton  View Post
> Clearly the dice are a limit. But in most games I'm familiar with, it's understood that losing a dice roll is different from having another participant stipulate that you fail.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> How?
> 
> Either way you fail.
Click to expand...



Your response is a bit of a head-scratcher here for two reasons Jester:

1)  It seems by disagreeing with  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] here (and in the alternative position you're espousing) that you're denying the existence (or at least the implications on play integrity) of Calvinball as a meme.

2)  Since Cops and Robbers and Army/War have been played (or any sort of game where there isn't an actual resolution method to mediate disputes over outcomes), children have learned that there is a stark difference between the experience (in both agency and competitive integrity) of loss/failure by dictatorial fiat ("I shot you!"  "NO YOU DIDN'T, I SHOT YOU!") and loss by way of some sort of (non-cooked) dispute-mediating resolution procedure (eg "Ok, let's play rock > paper > scissors and loser is dead" or <introduce thrown eggs>).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Jester David said:


> It takes some skill, but so does all GMing. Running a good railroad takes some gamemastering chops. But then so does an improv sandbox. The rabbit hole of “but what about bands GMs?” is bottomless and largely a distraction.



Eh, just because something may never be easy to do well doesn't mean you can't make it easier to do better.



> Even leaving things to a roll involves some GM control, since they typically need to set the difficulty: picking a DC, telling the players the difficulty, setting the challenge, etc.
> Excluding the rare systems with set difficulty (All Outta Bubblegum, Honey Heist, or the Tearable RPG) where you always know the requirements for success.
> Is finding the clue a DC 5 or DC 10 or DC 25? Does it require 1 success or 3? Setting the difficulty too high is functionally the same thing as saying "no".



And, IMHO, this is simply a matter of good game design. 4e answered this question. As of the RC that answer is completely detailed. You run an SC, the GM has the liberty to set the complexity and the level of the RC (though in all fairness 4e doesn't actually discuss using SCs of a level different from the party one must assume this is a possibility and it is done in practice). Thus solving a mystery could be precisely defined in 4e as 'a Complexity 5 Skill Challenge of Level 7' for instance. That leaves the matter of the fiction open, and the GM still has choices about how and when to deploy the different easy/medium/hard DCs (but the number of each is fixed). Likewise the players have room to decide when and how to deploy their advantages, secondary skill uses, and any other resources they may want to expend, given that they still need to explain how their fictional positioning warrants their employment in each situation. I always thought this was a HUGE advance over the situation in all prior editions, and 5e, where its just "however many checks of whatever difficulty and type the GM feels like until he decides what happened". I always found that to be rather lacking...



> Shifting the decision maker to the dice is just making the efficacy of player agency random. The dice have the real agency.
> I‘ve been watching a lot of the Geek & Sundry improv RPG The Adventures of Dick & Johnson, which uses All Outta Bubblegum and is a great example of a “yes, but” RPG. But there’s a whole lotta times when the player’s really cool thing just gets shot down by a bad roll.



Sure, but this is why the players define the stakes and then make the wager against some narrative or mechanical reward they can presumably set a value on. This requires that the mechanics guarantee there won't be a GM presented "Oh, but too bad, you spent your potion and there's still no chance of success, what a bummer..." sort of thing. Again, blind wagers are always possible, but I'd say they pretty much always come in the context of a larger cost/benefit trade off by the player (IE I won't wait to be sure if this is a good idea because the cost in fictional positioning of doing so is greater than the added risk). There's also "I just want to do it, I don't care if I fail" which GMs should generally respect.



> But surrendering random change for DM fiat, you can paradoxically *increase* player agency. By not rolling and the DM just saying “yes” the odds increase dramatically. From <100% to 100%.
> When running a pre-authored scenario, like my aforementioned investigation adventures, I often don’t make players roll. They ask questions and I tell them “yes” or “no. Rolling is for when they lack questions, and they need to look for extra clues to potentially give them more questions to ask.




Well, its a common technique in this sort of adventure to have a 'floor' at which the character gains the requisite information needed to proceed to the next step. This is, for example, the entire process in Gumshoe, which is a game all about investigations. It is how a good CoC adventure SHOULD work as well (and one reason why the Gumshoe-based Trail of Cthulhu is a MUCH MUCH MUCH better game than CoC IMHO). 

In fact, I ran a CoC mini-campaign a couple years ago. I honestly will never touch that game again. It is just antiquated. Even the latest edition, which tones down the worst problems somewhat, is still awkward and antiquated by comparison to modern story-telling games of all sorts. I just found it literally painful to run and try to sort out the mess of different overlapping skills and dope out how to deal with the constant failures and figure out why we were even bothering with skill checks at all (outside of combat anyway).


----------



## Sunseeker

Emerikol said:


> To me good players are those who receive what world information the DM offers and try to build a character within that framework.  Early on it's good to have private DM/player one on ones to flesh out a character and develop his backstory so it really fits the world.  Obviously a DM is someone who builds a world that he believes will appeal to his players.  Often he mentions the type of world and gets some feedback from his potential group before he starts building.



This works for those of you who have been playing with the same group for decades.  You likely don't even need to ask.  For those of us with shorter-lived groups, you take the same approach D&D has always taken: create generic fantasy settings and populate them with some spice.  

I would never build a campaign world for a single group.  Waste of time.  I'd more than happily build one that will _generally_ appeal to people who like to play the game I'm building the setting for.  D&D gets generic fantasy.  And to be honest, I don't _need_ to build a world for the vast majority of systems out there.  Only a few actually require it because the world is only implied through the content.  Other games, Warhammer, Deadlands, CoC, Star Wars, Star Trek, the world is explicit in the material.  When we all sit down to play Warhammer 40K, we know what kind of universe we're stepping into.  It will ALWAYS be that universe.  

Building a campaign for a specific group?  I don't even think I'd do that either.  If I've got enough people interested in WH40K to run it, then the stock material is _exactly_ what these people are looking for.  Making it an enjoyable, interesting experience?  That's at-the-table work.  The best laid plans at home can never guarantee an enjoyable session.



> I find that players who think they can develop a character without any reference to the world and object if that comes into conflict after the fact are players I avoid.  A character is a product of his environment which is the world.  It's nonsensical to develop something without at minimum tying it to the underlying world.  It makes it a lot more rich and enjoyable when your not just a thief but your are the famous burgler of a nearby local village.



There are a lot of nobodies in the world.  Again, this goes back to my previous point: the number of games that actually require worldbuilding are few.  They're some of the bigger names in the industry, but they make up a smaller number of titles than the many other games which are often explicitly stated to be The Federation, The New Republic, The Weird West, or Modern Times.  You can easily develop characters for these games because the world-lore is readily available to players.  The theme of the game is "Adventures in the Delta Quadrant"?  Are Delta Quadrant races playable?  Yes/No?  Then I can easily go research them, and build a character, with ZERO input for this particular campaign.  Are we making alien-hunting agents of the Human Imperium?  Easy peesy.  

Minor, and I mean _minor_ input may be required to fit a specific theme (We're all smugglers!  We're all Sith Lords!  We're all Romulans!) but the character itsself can be easily assembled in those games.

And frankly, Session Zero is, IMO, part of the problem sometimes in these homebrew worlds.  Reasonably speaking, even with D&D, you should be able to go home, build a character (mechanically) and then write some generic backstory (Poor farmer kid who dreams of being a soldier) and fit it into 90% of any possible world.  But some worlds step far out of line with the traditional elements of the game, making it difficult to create a character because Session Zero isn't a Session, it's a two-month long series of seminars on how radically different New World is from TraditionalLand.  

I wrote about this a long time ago and I'll bring it up again: being creative is great, but there is a point when it becomes too much.  When you are so far outside of the box that it becomes more difficult to parse the world, because it is so out-of-like with the system expectations.

I've played in several of these games (am in one now) the worlds are vast, creative, but the DM varies between information overload and playing his cards tight to the chest.  It makes it difficult to operate because in many cases, we quite literally know _nothing_ about how the game world functions.  Which gods are commonly worshipped, what the laws of the land are like, how non-humans are treated, what sort of races are unique to this world, the history of the world.  All those simple things that can help frame the kind of character you make aren't handed out, and when we finally press for them, it's a frikken novel!

Anyway.  I just wanted to point out that I find the idea of worldbuilding well..a _world_ for a specific group to be silly.  If you know what game book is going to be brought to the table, you know what kind of content those players will _generally_ enjoy.  There should be no impetus to make a game _just_​ for that group unless you plan on gaming with them for ya know, a decade.  Take some of their preferences into consideration as the game grows?  Sure.  Tailor it just for them?  Don't waste your time.


----------



## prosfilaes

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Thus solving a mystery could be precisely defined in 4e as 'a Complexity 5 Skill Challenge of Level 7' for instance. That leaves the matter of the fiction open,




Color me unexcited. It doesn't even feel like a game at that point. I don't want to leave the fiction open; I want to entangle it in the rules. Clue/Cluedo is quite simplistic, but "by a process of elimination, find the who, how and where" is way more exciting than "make a series of fiction-disconnected dice rolls". Look at D&D combat, of just about any edition; there's a host of complex decisions to make. If an ogre and goblin attack the party, do you try and bring down the ogre first to stop him from doing more damage, or do you take out the goblin quickly to avoid having to worry about him? Every good game is filled with options that interact with each other in complex ways and the odds on each option, especially in the long run, are not clear.


----------



## prosfilaes

shidaku said:


> If I've got enough people interested in WH40K to run it, then the stock material is exactly what these people are looking for.




I run and play Pathfinder because that's what I have and what people are interested in running and playing. That doesn't mean it's exactly what I'm looking for, especially not stock. Maybe some of the people like the epic science fiction fantasy, but would be happy to turn the grim-dark down, maybe way down.



> Again, this goes back to my previous point: the number of games that actually require worldbuilding are few.  They're some of the bigger names in the industry, but they make up a smaller number of titles than the many other games which are often explicitly stated to be The Federation, The New Republic, The Weird West, or Modern Times. You can easily develop characters for these games because the world-lore is readily available to players.




I find trying to count games irrelevant here. Yes, the market has tolerance for a fairly limited set of world-less games; Fate, GURPS, Hero; at a different level, D&D, Dungeon World, Stars Without Number. But the more popular of those games have dozens of settings you can play in, and a lot of the rulebooks with settings are functionally a worldbook with some rules stuck in.

I have a lot of small RPGs I can't hope to bring to the table because I can't sell reading the rules as much as the setting material, and currently run Pathfinder in the (frustratingly underdescribed) Zeitgeist setting, which my players weren't the least familiar with.



> Reasonably speaking, even with D&D, you should be able to go home, build a character (mechanically) and then write some generic backstory (Poor farmer kid who dreams of being a soldier) and fit it into 90% of any possible world.




To start that with "reasonably speaking" is to assume what you're trying to argue. I don't want to open a preformed can of character and dump it into the game world; I want the game world to help define my character, to make him or her feel like a real character in a real world. "Poor farmer kid who dreams of being a soldier" will fit 90% of settings, but I don't want a backstory that fits 90% of settings, that I could have got out of a list of generic backstories on some website.



> When you are so far outside of the box that it becomes more difficult to parse the world, because it is so out-of-like with the system expectations.




I think you're conflating different things here. There are races that are hard to mesh with D&D rules that aren't hard to play, and there are human cultures that are completely alien to most of our mind sets, but system-wise, they're just humans.



> I've played in several of these games (am in one now) the worlds are vast, creative, but the DM varies between information overload and playing his cards tight to the chest.  It makes it difficult to operate because in many cases, we quite literally know _nothing_ about how the game world functions.  Which gods are commonly worshipped, what the laws of the land are like, how non-humans are treated, what sort of races are unique to this world, the history of the world.  All those simple things that can help frame the kind of character you make aren't handed out, and when we finally press for them, it's a frikken novel!




So it's hard to worldbuild a world for a group. That doesn't make it silly. I also wonder if it's a literal novel, or merely a large collection of reading material, and if the later, how large? I have no idea from this statement how much material you need, and how much is too much.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> Interestingly, I do not think it is too unusual that while players are thinking aloud and making assumptions (usually about secret backstory) that the DM might decide to pinch an idea or two if he/she liked them better than his/her own. I have seen posters say as much on Enworld, but don't ask me to find their posts now.
> 
> I'm pretty sure I as DM have poached an idea from player during play.



I agree this is a common technique. I think it can go in different directions., depending on other things that are going on at the table.

For instance, in "say 'yes' or roll the dice"-type adjudication, this may be an instance of the GM saying "yes".

But what happens when the GM is not inclined to say "yes"? Do the players get to roll the dice? Or does the GM stipulate the fiction to be otherwise? I think this is the main crunch point from the point of view of player agency over the shared fiction.

Another element can be how this is handled at the table. If the GM is actively keeping secret the degree of influence the players have over the shared fiction, so they never know whether the GM narrated pre-authored material, or arrived at a situation in the coure of paly; and never know what significance, if any, their action declarations for their PCs have; then I think this lessens player agency. They don't really know what affect, if any, they are having on the content of the shared fiction. This will tend to drift the game, I think, towards one in which all the players are doing is making suggestions to the GM about how things might unfold.


----------



## pemerton

prosfilaes said:


> AdbulAlhzared said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Thus solving a mystery could be precisely defined in 4e as 'a Complexity 5 Skill Challenge of Level 7' for instance. That leaves the matter of the fiction open
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Color me unexcited. It doesn't even feel like a game at that point. I don't want to leave the fiction open; I want to entangle it in the rules.
Click to expand...


So does [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]. The fiction is not open in the framing and resolution of any given skill challenge; the point is that when you refer to a Level 7 Complexity 5 skill challenge, you haven't at that point established any fiction; just as if you refer to a combat with two creatures having AC 12 and 20 hp and AC 14 and 50 hp, you haven't established any fiction either.


----------



## Sadras

AbdulAlhazred said:


> And, IMHO, this is simply a matter of good game design. 4e answered this question. As of the RC that answer is completely detailed. You run an SC, the GM has the liberty to set the complexity and the level of the RC (though in all fairness 4e doesn't actually discuss using SCs of a level different from the party one must assume this is a possibility and it is done in practice). Thus solving a mystery could be precisely defined in 4e as 'a Complexity 5 Skill Challenge of Level 7' for instance. That leaves the matter of the fiction open, and the GM still has choices about how and when to deploy the different easy/medium/hard DCs (but the number of each is fixed). Likewise the players have room to decide when and how to deploy their advantages, secondary skill uses, and any other resources they may want to expend, given that they still need to explain how their fictional positioning warrants their employment in each situation. I always thought this was a HUGE advance over the situation in all prior editions, and 5e, where its just "however many checks of whatever difficulty and type the GM feels like until he decides what happened". I always found that to be rather lacking..




I'm a little surprised the SC mechanic hasn't been explored properly in 5e, either in the additional 5e published material or in UA (especially the latest one). I would pay good money for a book which runs through numerous SC examples *even if that is all it was*. There really is so much content available for those in the know.

Perhaps one of the 4e luminaries should do that and sell it on the DMs Guild because WotC doesn't appear to want to go down that direction. I reckon it would sell well.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> But what happens when the GM is not inclined to say "yes"? Do the players get to roll the dice? Or does the GM stipulate the fiction to be otherwise? I think this is the main crunch point from the point of view of player agency over the shared fiction.
> 
> Another element can be how this is handled at the table. If the GM is actively keeping secret the degree of influence the players have over the shared fiction, so they never know whether the GM narrated pre-authored material, or arrived at a situation in the coure of paly; and never know what significance, if any, their action declarations for their PCs have; then I think this lessens player agency. They don't really know what affect, if any, they are having on the content of the shared fiction. This will tend to drift the game, I think, towards one in which all the players are doing is making suggestions to the GM about how things might unfold.




I guess if I look at my B10 game, from my perspective I do not see player agency being affected and there certainly is secret backstory at play. I see more that the players debating/arguing which route to take amongst themselves while also engaging with the motives of the NPCs in the settlement. What they do not know is that different routes will provide different parts of the puzzle which they are not aware of.

Option 1 might lead them straight to the ruined city 
Option 2 might provide more clues about the goblin attacks on the homesteads
Option 3 might lead to knowledge of the secret ruined city as well as the schism within the Iron Ring (changed a little from module)
Option 4 might see them return the stolen horses and provide clues of the prisoners taken.
Option 5 etc

Obviously getting to the ruined city is the eventual goal but how/when they get there, that is on them. I as DM currently do not know which option they will take, or take next...etc. It is very open ended and I do not see player agency being stifled/lessened because I have secret backstory (schism within the Iron Ring, the magical mural...etc) or because they don't know of the ruins or how to get there.


----------



## Lanefan

Aenghus said:


> In the old days PCs were simple, and if a PC died it was quick to put a new one together. New characters often died early, so many didn't bother with a backstory until they had survived the early meat-grinder levels. So referees could kill off annoying or problematic characters without raising too many eyebrows.



Though it's a poor referee who intentionally kills off a character just because it's problematic in that way.  For better or worse, the referee has to remain neutral even if her game world will suffer for it.

That said, IME if the party (and sometimes the players, but most of the time this stays in character and doesn't get too meta) feels a particular character is going to be annoying or problematic they'll often take care of matters themselves via PvP, either blatantly (walk up and kill it) or subtly (hang it out to dry sometime in a tough fight).



> Times have changed for many people, and PCs are more complex, starting with goals and backstory.



And generally take far longer to roll up, which is a glaring red flag problem across many game systems.


> PCs have become more survivable



Also a problem, but this time the root of it can come from any or all of: system; DMs giving unwarranted plot protection; players unwilling to accept the bad with the good. 


> and in more modern systems can have more agency, or different kinds of agency to that provided by earlier systems. In many game groups it's no longer acceptable to merely kill off PCs who in the referees eyes are wandering off the reservation.



Agency aside, it's not acceptable for the referee to kill off PCs who are "wandering off the reservation" merely because they are doing so.  It's the referee's job to hit that curveball.


> Just like referees can be attached to worldbuilding, players can be attached to PC backstory and goals, even when they don't quite match, or turn out to be totally incompatible some time later on.



Yes, and if the referee has done a good enough job of worldbuilding then the game world should be robust enough to handle whatever the PCs throw at it.

Story, on the other hand, is a different question; and here a referee has to be at all times halfway prepared to rip it up and go to plan B.



> Worldbuilding can interfere with players who are invested in their PC's backstory and goals. The PC backstory and goals can be inadvertently modified, twisted or ruined by the details of the gameworld, especially when there are big campaign secrets lurking in the background. This can destroy a player's fun in the game, especially when the referee refuses to discuss such issues, or make accommodations.



First off, I far prefer character-specific goals be something that arise out of the run of play as the player/PC learns more about the game world and-or plot arcs.  Having a very vague career goal e.g. "I wanna be the richest man in the land" is cool, as it can help define a characters personailtiy and basic motivations, but anything more specific than that e.g. "I want to free my brother from his arranged marriage to the wizard's daughter" risks being ignored (or at best done as an out-of-session solo trip) if the rest of the PCs turn out not to give a damn and decline your request for help.

And no, the referee should never be forced to reveal twists and secrets before their time.



			
				shidaku said:
			
		

> Reasonably speaking, even with D&D, you should be able to go home, build a character (mechanically) and then write some generic backstory (Poor farmer kid who dreams of being a soldier) and fit it into 90% of any possible world.



Agreed except for the "go home and" part: characters are rolled up in front of at least the DM, thank you, if not the other players as well.

But yes, there's a bunch of somewhat generic character archetypes (both mechanical and backstory) that can fit, or be easily made to fit, into almost any game world unless said game world has something odd about it; and one hopes the DM will have made any such oddities clear up front before char-gen begins.



> I just wanted to point out that I find the idea of worldbuilding well..a world for a specific group to be silly. If you know what game book is going to be brought to the table, you know what kind of content those players will generally enjoy. There should be no impetus to make a game just​ for that group unless you plan on gaming with them for ya know, a decade. Take some of their preferences into consideration as the game grows? Sure. Tailor it just for them? Don't waste your time.



What about a campaign that'll last over a decade but during that time there'll almost certainly be slow but steady player turnover?

This is my situation, and my answer is to have in place a solidly-built world in decreasing detail the farther one gets from the core adventuring area; with such details of geography-culture-history as an average PC would know or can easily find out posted online on the game's site for any player to read (though whether they ever do or not is up to them).  As the adventuring enters or hears of new areas or learns previously-unknown historical information, that gets added in.

Example: for my current campaign, part of the historical write-up is a list of all the past Emperors of the (remains of the) empire in which the game began and is still largely based.  Among them are Kallios I (ruled for several decades about 350 years ago) and Kallios II (a shorter reign about 170 years ago)...but it wasn't until some PCs actually met Kallios in the present day and learned he's a not-that-evil Vampire; that he'd been so since close to the end of his first reign; and that Kallios I, Kallios II and the person they're meeting now are all in fact one and the same that I put those particular little details next to his listings. 

<side note: I'm no novel writer but I think if I ever did write any they'd center on this Kallios guy - so much story to mine around him> 



			
				prosfilaes said:
			
		

> I don't want to open a preformed can of character and dump it into the game world; I want the game world to help define my character, to make him or her feel like a real character in a real world. "Poor farmer kid who dreams of being a soldier" will fit 90% of settings, but I don't want a backstory that fits 90% of settings, that I could have got out of a list of generic backstories on some website.



Props for the line "...open a preformed can of character..." - love it!

That said, something generic is always a fine place to start; which you can then flesh out as the game goes along...and again, I posit that the future story that will arise out of the run of play is more important than the backstory anyway. 

Lanefan


----------



## prosfilaes

pemerton said:


> just as if you refer to a combat with two creatures having AC 12 and 20 hp and AC 14 and 50 hp, you haven't established any fiction either.




For a simplified version of a fairly trivial combat, you've used twice as many numbers (as "Level 7 Complexity 5"), and you have established some fiction, however vague. There's two individuals, and guy one is much weaker and a little bit easier to hit than guy two. Given an actual stat block, like from B1:

1. Orcs (1-4)-AC 6, HD 1, hp 6,4,3,1, #AT 1, D 1-6 or by weapon, MV 90' (30'), Save F1, ML 8
2. Giant Centipedes (1-2)-AC 9, HD 1/2, hp 2,2, #AT 1, D poison, MV 60' (20'), Save NM, ML 7

Fiction starts to appear out of numbers. Even dropping the "orcs" and "giant centipedes" part, we have two very different sets of attackers, one that attack by hand but also uses weapons, and the other is trying to poison you.


----------



## pemerton

innerdude said:


> While I think this statement is true, I also think @_*pemerton*_'s whole point is that the bolded section in your quote should be used with extreme, extreme discretion. There's a mindset for many GMs where the more information they withhold from their players, the more "intense" and "mysterious" their game will be. When in reality, much of the actual gameplay ends up being boring, snooze-fest pixel-witching trying to find just where, exactly, the GM's "railroad" is supposed to be going.
> 
> Too, something that's largely lost in this whole discussion is the level of experience most of us have as GMs. _Of course_ we're not going to do all of these terrible, un-fun activities, because we know better.
> 
> New, inexperienced GMs don't.
> 
> I don't want to put words in @_*pemerton*_'s mouth, but I think too he's saying that the hobby as a whole might be better served if inexperienced GMs could catch the vision a bit earlier to not rely so much on "hidden backstory" in their planning.



Well, I personally don't like "hidden backstory". Clearly plenty of D&D players and GMs do.

This thread wasn't started to serve as a warning or caution. The interest was in analysis of play techniques - there's a common technique of pre-authorship, what is it for?

What I feel created some struggles early in the thread was that many answers offered to that question were metaphorical (eg "The players explore the world") and it took quite a bit of time and effort to get them rendered in more literal terms (eg "The players make moves with their PCs to trigger the GM to narrate to them a certain bit of information which is recorded, either literally or notionally, in the GM's notes").

I don't necessarily think that the hobby is better served by having less hidden backstory in RPGing, but I do think it is better served by actually recognising, in literal rather than metaphorical terms, how various techniques work and what sort of play experience they might deliver. I think this helps break down ungrounded misconceptions: eg that the action declaration "I search the study for the map" is different from the action declaration "I attack the orc with my sword". Of course in _real life_, looking for something is a very different causal process from trying to decapitate someone. But in RPGing, both action declarations expressions of desire as to the future state of the shared fiction (_I found a map_ or _I killed an orc_), they can both be declared from a purely first-person RP perspective ("actor stance", to use some jargon), and it's possible to establish rules for resolving either that don't rely on hidden backstory-based adjudication.

So if, in fact, we are going to resolve them differently - the map one by referring to the GM's notes; the orc one by rolling dice - well, it's worth asking _why_ we do it that way.



Jester David said:


> This and your above statmente assumes the NARRATIVE is pre-made along with the world. Which is two different things.



Whether or not they are two different things depends heavily on (i) what is pre-authored, and (ii) what the goal of play is.

If the pre-authorship is a whole lot of chests with gp in them and monsters guarding them, and the goal of play is to get lots of gp out of chests so as to earn XP, then the pre-authorship doesn't establish the narrative. White Plume Mountain is a well-known module that illustrates this.

But (to recycle some examples from upthread) if the goal of play is to find the map, and the pre-authroship is that the map is in the kitchen and not the study, then the pre-authorship does significantly establish the narrative. Likewise if the goal of play is to avoid arrest and conviction, and the pre-authorship is of the dispositions of the police, the attitudes of the magistracy towards bribes, etc: the attempt by the players to bribe their way out of trouble will succeed or fail based on that pre-authored content.



Jester David said:


> How does going into a pre-written location, like Candlekeep, take away player agency? The world is just the backdrop. The story of the adventure is of the PCs and they can have great agency even in a published setting.



I assume that you are referring to player agency rather than the agency of the PCs. The agency of the PCs is a purely imaginary property of purely imaginary people, and can be interesting as part of the shared fiction (one of the PCs in my BW game is dominated by a dark naga, and that's an important part of the current situation) but is completely orthogonal to player agency.

When you say "the world is just the backdrop" that is a metaphor, because RPGing does not take place on a stage with a literal backdrop. If the action of the game is constrained by the pre-established fiction of Candlekeep, so that player action declarations either (i) fail, because the GM reads the book and sees (eg) that the officials of Candlekeep cannot be bribed, and/or (ii) consist to a significant degree in trying to prompt the GM to tell them stuff about Candlekeep so they can establish the parameters for feasible successful action declarations. Neither (i) nor (ii) exhibits a great deal of player agency over the content of the shared fiction.



Jester David said:


> How?
> Either way you fail.
> 
> What if it was another player? A player passes a note to the GM describing how they hide the map. That also leads to failure.
> If that's okay, why is it wrong if the GM—who is a player of the game as well—makes that call instead?
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Player action declarations are always suggestions. They can be blocked by the dice, the actions of other players, the GM declaring the logic doesn't work, or the GM declaring it doesn't work because of information unknown to the players.
> How they are blocked is largely irrelevant.





Jester David said:


> Even leaving things to a roll involves some GM control, since they typically need to set the difficulty: picking a DC, telling the players the difficulty, setting the challenge, etc.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Shifting the decision maker to the dice is just making the efficacy of player agency random. The dice have the real agency.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But surrendering random change for DM fiat, you can paradoxically *increase* player agency. By not rolling and the DM just saying “yes” the odds increase dramatically. From <100% to 100%.
> When running a pre-authored scenario, like my aforementioned investigation adventures, I often don’t make players roll. They ask questions and I tell them “yes” or “no. Rolling is for when they lack questions, and they need to look for extra clues to potentially give them more questions to ask.



It's true that saying "yes" increases the odds of player success to 100%. Saying no, though, reduces them to zero - so I'm not sure how telling "yes" or "no" based on pre-authorship is meant to increase agency.

In "say 'yes' or roll the dice" games, there are a collection of techniques used to sustain player agency: framing that has regard to the signals (around theme, tropes, character motivation, etc) sent by the players in the build and play of their PCs; narration of failure consequences that likewise build on those signals to contribute to new framing that continues to "go where the action is"; and of course allowing the players to get what they were going for if their checks succeed.

The reason not to say "yes" all the time is to allow for a dramatic rhythm of success and failure; it's part of what distinguishes an RPG from straight-out collaborative storytelling. The reason for the framing and consequence-narration techniques is to allow player agency to feed into the game even when action declarations are not succeeding.

The idea that there is no difference between this sort of RPGing, and the GM declaring an action unsuccessful ("No, you don't find the map" "No, there are no bribeable officials") on the basis of his/her notes, is just silly. [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] has made the general point with the reference to Calvinball; but examples closer to home will do. No one thinks it makes no difference to combat resolution that the GM decides by fiat whether or not the attack hits, rather than the player rolling the dice. Very few D&D tables treat the declaration of an attack and the making of a to hit roll as simply having the status of a suggestion to the GM; it's a move in the game. Likewise for finding maps - the difference between being able to make a move, and being able to make a suggestion to the only player who actually enjoys the power to make moves, holds just the same.

That's not an argument that finding maps and attacking orcs should be resolved the same way; but it is an argument that resolving the differently has very obvious consequences for the degree of player agency in one or the other domains of action declaration.

As far as the PvP issue is concerned, there are any number of ways to resolve that: opposed checks are one common one. But two game participants competing with one another on a more-or-less level playing field is quite different from the GM - who at least notionally is not a competitor, and who enjoys vastly more authority to establish the fiction in any relatively mainstream RPG - using his/her authority to stipulate an action as unsuccessful.


----------



## pemerton

Jester David said:


> In a _good_ RPG mystery you need to collect the clues, which can be done through asking questions or skill checks. This provides the information, which the DM can extrapolate on based on what is reasonable for the character to know or be able to deduce. The players make inferences and follow up those leads.
> It's very much like it works in real life/ in detective fiction.



It's very little like real life. In real life I can, for instance, try and find foot prints and draw inferences from those; or try and dig up a new witness who might know something; or try and outwit a suspect through a clever interrogation.

In a RPG, though, _the "world" has no independent causal power_. So - in a "hidden backstory" game - if the GM hasn't authored any foot prints, there are none to draw inference from. If the GM hasn't authored any further witnesses, there are none to find. If the GM doesn't find my interrogation sufficiently clever or threatening or overbearing or whatever, then I don't outwit the suspect.

This is nothing like real life. It's very much as I described - the players declare moves for their PCs that try to trigger the narration of salient bits of info. (GUMSHOE strips out some of this through its "automatic clue" rule; but you can spend resources to get extra info narrated to you.) The GUMSHOE rules (I'm copying from p 52 of Trail of Cthulhu) actually make the process very clear:

Gathering clues is simple. All you have to do is:

1. Get your Investigator into a scene where relevant information can be gathered,
2. Have the right ability to discover the clue, and
3. Tell the Keeper that you’re using it.​
In other word, you have to (1) declare moves that establish an appropriate fictional positioning for your PC vis-a-vis the hidden backstory, and (2)+(3) declare an action that will trigger the GM to narrate you some of that hidden backstory.

I'm not saying that this is or isn't fun, but I think it's clearly not all that agentic on the part of the player. The player is not establishing the content of the shared fiction; s/he is learning it by triggering narrations on the part of the GM.



Jester David said:


> plans change in reaction to the PCs. I play the antagonist as a reactive character.



This is a description of GM agency. It doesn't show any player agency, though. To the extent that the players have a reason to try to learn who the antagonist might react, that is more obtaining of hidden backstory from the GM.



Jester David said:


> I can't parse the events in that summary for the life of me. What was the mystery? Was the solution to the mystery known ahead of time? How did player agency lead to the solution?



The principal mysteries were _what happened, and why?_ The answer to the first was known, by me as GM, ahead of time: _The manor became abandoned when the pending fall of Nerath to gnoll invaders (the downstream consequences of which have been a bit part of the campaign to date) led its wizard owner to go mad with the strain and kill his apprentices_.

The answer to the second was established during play, and the PCs learned it by piecing together clues that were also established during play: _the last work the wizard who owned the manor had been undertaking before he went mad was to try to find a way of harnessing the power of the Raven Queen without compromising the principles of his cult, in order to create more powerful defences by which Nerath might resist the invading gnolls - he snapped when his most religiously devout apprentice learned what he was doing and accused him of treachery_.

Other things that were unknown by the players and PCs at the start of the scenario, but were learned on the way through to solving the big mystery of _why?_, included that _the religion of the dead mage was a particular cult combining worship of Bahamut (god of the east wind and also of the dragonborn), Kord, Pelor and Ioun; and that the burial practices of the cult had the intention of trying to avoid the dead being dealt with by the Raven Queen, instead going directly to Mount Celestia or Hestavar as exalted.

These elements of the fiction were also established not in advance but in the course of play. Thus, as the post concludes, "I learned that while sandboxing might rely heavily upon exploration, exploration can be done without sandboxing. Most of the interesting details of the exploration were worked out by me on the fly, whether as needed or even in response to player actions (like the invisible ink)."_


----------



## prosfilaes

pemerton said:


> It's very little like real life. In real life I can, for instance, try and find foot prints and draw inferences from those; or try and dig up a new witness who might know something; or try and outwit a suspect through a clever interrogation.
> 
> In a RPG, though, _the "world" has no independent causal power_. So - in a "hidden backstory" game - if the GM hasn't authored any foot prints, there are none to draw inference from. If the GM hasn't authored any further witnesses, there are none to find. If the GM doesn't find my interrogation sufficiently clever or threatening or overbearing or whatever, then I don't outwit the suspect.




So, exactly the same as real life but with "the world" replaced by "the GM"? In real life you can try and try to find foot prints all you want, but if they aren't there, they aren't there.



> I'm not saying that this is or isn't fun, but I think it's clearly not all that agentic on the part of the player. The player is not establishing the content of the shared fiction; s/he is learning it by triggering narrations on the part of the GM.




So tossing questions at someone and getting responses back is totally different agency-wise if you're tossing questions at a suspect or a GM playing a suspect? That's close to the closest an RPG can come to literal realism.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> Well, I personally don't like "hidden backstory". Clearly plenty of D&D players and GMs do.




I guess, for me, the hidden backstory provides the 'mystery and adventure' I would desire as a player. If its just all part of a collaborative creative process amongst players and DM then it is far less mysterious. The challenge and enjoyment for me is to uncover the mystery AND survive the adventure.
It seems like the challenge in your adventures (and I do not mean to sound disparaging) is to 'win' on the skill challenge for the story (collaborative narrative) to be true AND survive the adventure. There is no mystery to be discovered, but the 'yes but complications' which need to be overcome. Again, do not mean to insult here.



> I don't necessarily think that the hobby is better served by having less hidden backstory in RPGing, but I do think it is better served by actually recognising, in literal rather than metaphorical terms, how various techniques work and what sort of play experience they might deliver.




Agree. 



> I think this helps break down ungrounded misconceptions: eg that the action declaration "I search the study for the map" is different from the action declaration "I attack the orc with my sword". Of course in _real life_, looking for something is a very different causal process from trying to decapitate someone. But in RPGing, both action declarations expressions of desire as to the future state of the shared fiction (_I found a map_ or _I killed an orc_), they can both be declared from a purely first-person RP perspective ("actor stance", to use some jargon), and it's possible to establish rules for resolving either that don't rely on hidden backstory-based adjudication.
> 
> So if, in fact, we are going to resolve them differently - the map one by referring to the GM's notes; the orc one by rolling dice - well, it's worth asking _why_ we do it that way.




*Because* the one is about the survival of combat (the tactical part of the game) and the other is part of the intrigue, the location to explore, the mystery to unravel the puzzle to solve. 
*
Because* we have hit points for combat, but don’t have social points and exploration points for the other pillars. That is not to say I'm not fond of SC mechanic. 
*
Because* that is how the game was originally envisioned. And despite the OP which is an attempt to differentiate between old and contemporary style of D&D – it is still roleplayed very much the same rather than different.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> So does [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]. The fiction is not open in the framing and resolution of any given skill challenge; the point is that when you refer to a Level 7 Complexity 5 skill challenge, you haven't at that point established any fiction; just as if you refer to a combat with two creatures having AC 12 and 20 hp and AC 14 and 50 hp, you haven't established any fiction either.




Sure you have.  You've established the fiction of, "The party will be challenged" and "there will be a fight".  The complete detail of the fiction has not been filled in, but some elements of it have been by the very nature of setting those things up.


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> Agreed except for the "go home and" part: characters are rolled up in front of at least the DM, thank you, if not the other players as well.
> 
> But yes, there's a bunch of somewhat generic character archetypes (both mechanical and backstory) that can fit, or be easily made to fit, into almost any game world unless said game world has something odd about it; and one hopes the DM will have made any such oddities clear up front before char-gen begins.




I think he's referring to point buy/array, which are common methods for character generation.  If the player isn't rolling stats, I don't really see any portion of character generation that needs to be done in front of the DM.


----------



## Sunseeker

prosfilaes said:


> I run and play Pathfinder because that's what I have and what people are interested in running and playing. That doesn't mean it's exactly what I'm looking for, especially not stock. Maybe some of the people like the epic science fiction fantasy, but would be happy to turn the grim-dark down, maybe way down.



Pathfinder, grim-dark?  But that's what I mean, Pathfinder is what _generally _appeals to you but you'd like some variation.  This can be accomplished without writing a whole campaign for you with simply tweaks on whats going to happen at the table.

IE: my DM just ran our group through one of those "hospitals gone meat-locker".  I didn't enjoy it in the slightest.  But it was a very minor element of the campaign.  Everyone's going to go through some elements in a game they don't like.  



> To start that with "reasonably speaking" is to assume what you're trying to argue. I don't want to open a preformed can of character and dump it into the game world; I want the game world to help define my character, to make him or her feel like a real character in a real world. "Poor farmer kid who dreams of being a soldier" will fit 90% of settings, but I don't want a backstory that fits 90% of settings, that I could have got out of a list of generic backstories on some website.



I think if you stop and look at your past character backstories, that if you were to remove *specific name* and *specific place* and replace them with generic terms, you'd find you had indeed written generic backstories.  Doesn't mean you can't be detailed.

I mean, if I were to write a backstory for Frodo, it would be "Hobbit who has always lived at home but dreamed of running off on a great adventure."  (because in part, the rest of the non-Hobbit Fellowship were adventurers before they joined up)  The adventures of Frodo are what matter in his life story, not the fact that he lived in Hobbiton for most of his life doing normal Hobbit things.



> I think you're conflating different things here. There are races that are hard to mesh with D&D rules that aren't hard to play, and there are human cultures that are completely alien to most of our mind sets, but system-wise, they're just humans.



No, I was talking about the world itsself.  Some people's world-building is so far outside of system expectations it makes functioning in them difficult.



> So it's hard to worldbuild a world for a group. That doesn't make it silly. I also wonder if it's a literal novel, or merely a large collection of reading material, and if the later, how large? I have no idea from this statement how much material you need, and how much is too much.



From what I've _seen _it is several full 3" 3-ring binders.


----------



## Sunseeker

Lanefan said:


> Agreed except for the "go home and" part: characters are rolled up in front of at least the DM, thank you, if not the other players as well.



I got over that early into DMing.  If people are going to cheat, they're gonna be cheaters no matter where they roll up their character.  I review all character sheets before the first session and if I see like, 6 19s I'll tell them to reroll.  But honestly, this has never happened.



> But yes, there's a bunch of somewhat generic character archetypes (both mechanical and backstory) that can fit, or be easily made to fit, into almost any game world unless said game world has something odd about it; and one hopes the DM will have made any such oddities clear up front before char-gen begins.



That's my point, unless the DM is suggesting everyone make "special" characters, most level 1 characters are pretty generic and it's their adventures that make them unique.  It's not like generic people don't have defining parts to their lives, but even those elements are generic.  (My house was robbed which made me want to join the Town Guard and clean up this place!)



> What about a campaign that'll last over a decade but during that time there'll almost certainly be slow but steady player turnover?



I would honestly advise every DM against writing this.  First: most, if not all of the people you start with are unlikely to ever see the end, and if you were to apply that logic to a book or a movie, would you really want to start reading/watching it?  If you knew you may never see the end?

My advice is to make no campaign longer than a year.  Any campaign that is longer than a year (IRL time) can likely be broken down into smaller campaigns.  Even if it ends up meaning that your campaign has 100 campaigns in it.  It'll be better for it.



> This is my situation, and my answer is to have in place a solidly-built world in decreasing detail the farther one gets from the core adventuring area; with such details of geography-culture-history as an average PC would know or can easily find out posted online on the game's site for any player to read (though whether they ever do or not is up to them).  As the adventuring enters or hears of new areas or learns previously-unknown historical information, that gets added in.
> 
> Example: for my current campaign, part of the historical write-up is a list of all the past Emperors of the (remains of the) empire in which the game began and is still largely based.  Among them are Kallios I (ruled for several decades about 350 years ago) and Kallios II (a shorter reign about 170 years ago)...but it wasn't until some PCs actually met Kallios in the present day and learned he's a not-that-evil Vampire; that he'd been so since close to the end of his first reign; and that Kallios I, Kallios II and the person they're meeting now are all in fact one and the same that I put those particular little details next to his listings.
> 
> <side note: I'm no novel writer but I think if I ever did write any they'd center on this Kallios guy - so much story to mine around him>



To the rest of this, I generally agree.



> Props for the line "...open a preformed can of character..." - love it!
> 
> *That said, something generic is always a fine place to start; which you can then flesh out as the game goes along*...and again, I posit that the future story that will arise out of the run of play is more important than the backstory anyway.
> 
> Lanefan



That's my point.  Being generic doesn't mean you have no life, it just means the interesting moments in your characters life are made through play, not before play.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> Well, I personally don't like "hidden backstory". Clearly plenty of D&D players and GMs do.
> 
> This thread wasn't started to serve as a warning or caution. The interest was in analysis of play techniques - there's a common technique of pre-authorship, what is it for?
> 
> What I feel created some struggles early in the thread was that many answers offered to that question were metaphorical (eg "The players explore the world") and it took quite a bit of time and effort to get them rendered in more literal terms (eg "The players make moves with their PCs to trigger the GM to narrate to them a certain bit of information which is recorded, either literally or notionally, in the GM's notes").
> 
> I don't necessarily think that the hobby is better served by having less hidden backstory in RPGing, but I do think it is better served by actually recognising, in literal rather than metaphorical terms, how various techniques work and what sort of play experience they might deliver. I think this helps break down ungrounded misconceptions: eg that the action declaration "I search the study for the map" is different from the action declaration "I attack the orc with my sword". Of course in _real life_, looking for something is a very different causal process from trying to decapitate someone. But in RPGing, both action declarations expressions of desire as to the future state of the shared fiction (_I found a map_ or _I killed an orc_), they can both be declared from a purely first-person RP perspective ("actor stance", to use some jargon), and it's possible to establish rules for resolving either that don't rely on hidden backstory-based adjudication.
> 
> So if, in fact, we are going to resolve them differently - the map one by referring to the GM's notes; the orc one by rolling dice - well, it's worth asking _why_ we do it that way.
> 
> Whether or not they are two different things depends heavily on (i) what is pre-authored, and (ii) what the goal of play is.
> 
> If the pre-authorship is a whole lot of chests with gp in them and monsters guarding them, and the goal of play is to get lots of gp out of chests so as to earn XP, then the pre-authorship doesn't establish the narrative. White Plume Mountain is a well-known module that illustrates this.
> 
> But (to recycle some examples from upthread) if the goal of play is to find the map, and the pre-authroship is that the map is in the kitchen and not the study, then the pre-authorship does significantly establish the narrative. Likewise if the goal of play is to avoid arrest and conviction, and the pre-authorship is of the dispositions of the police, the attitudes of the magistracy towards bribes, etc: the attempt by the players to bribe their way out of trouble will succeed or fail based on that pre-authored content.
> 
> I assume that you are referring to player agency rather than the agency of the PCs. The agency of the PCs is a purely imaginary property of purely imaginary people, and can be interesting as part of the shared fiction (one of the PCs in my BW game is dominated by a dark naga, and that's an important part of the current situation) but is completely orthogonal to player agency.
> 
> When you say "the world is just the backdrop" that is a metaphor, because RPGing does not take place on a stage with a literal backdrop. If the action of the game is constrained by the pre-established fiction of Candlekeep, so that player action declarations either (i) fail, because the GM reads the book and sees (eg) that the officials of Candlekeep cannot be bribed, and/or (ii) consist to a significant degree in trying to prompt the GM to tell them stuff about Candlekeep so they can establish the parameters for feasible successful action declarations. Neither (i) nor (ii) exhibits a great deal of player agency over the content of the shared fiction.
> 
> 
> It's true that saying "yes" increases the odds of player success to 100%. Saying no, though, reduces them to zero - so I'm not sure how telling "yes" or "no" based on pre-authorship is meant to increase agency.
> 
> In "say 'yes' or roll the dice" games, there are a collection of techniques used to sustain player agency: framing that has regard to the signals (around theme, tropes, character motivation, etc) sent by the players in the build and play of their PCs; narration of failure consequences that likewise build on those signals to contribute to new framing that continues to "go where the action is"; and of course allowing the players to get what they were going for if their checks succeed.
> 
> The reason not to say "yes" all the time is to allow for a dramatic rhythm of success and failure; it's part of what distinguishes an RPG from straight-out collaborative storytelling. The reason for the framing and consequence-narration techniques is to allow player agency to feed into the game even when action declarations are not succeeding.
> 
> The idea that there is no difference between this sort of RPGing, and the GM declaring an action unsuccessful ("No, you don't find the map" "No, there are no bribeable officials") on the basis of his/her notes, is just silly. [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] has made the general point with the reference to Calvinball; but examples closer to home will do. No one thinks it makes no difference to combat resolution that the GM decides by fiat whether or not the attack hits, rather than the player rolling the dice. Very few D&D tables treat the declaration of an attack and the making of a to hit roll as simply having the status of a suggestion to the GM; it's a move in the game. Likewise for finding maps - the difference between being able to make a move, and being able to make a suggestion to the only player who actually enjoys the power to make moves, holds just the same.
> 
> That's not an argument that finding maps and attacking orcs should be resolved the same way; but it is an argument that resolving the differently has very obvious consequences for the degree of player agency in one or the other domains of action declaration.
> 
> As far as the PvP issue is concerned, there are any number of ways to resolve that: opposed checks are one common one. But two game participants competing with one another on a more-or-less level playing field is quite different from the GM - who at least notionally is not a competitor, and who enjoys vastly more authority to establish the fiction in any relatively mainstream RPG - using his/her authority to stipulate an action as unsuccessful.




Chess vs Checkers, again.

You've chosen to focus your analysis on the endpoint declaration "I search for the map" and, in doing so, miss the larger aspects of the play that lead to that declaration.  In player-facing games, that declaration is, as you note, a big deal and will definitively resolve the action of the map or introduce new challenges.  But this is only because the scene framing allows this declaration -- ie, you're already in the right spot for that declaration to be effective.  Any previous scenes were either not appropriate for that declaration and need to be overcome prior to being properly positioned for that declaration.  This is glossed over in the narrow focus on the declaration.  However, the same issue, that in the DM-facing game the proper fictional positioning needs to be achieved for the action to be resolved successfully, is focused on because the knowing of that positioning isn't open.  However, it is open if looked at more broadly, the DM-facing game is open that you must overcome challenges to find the correct fictional positioning to locate the map.  That multiple such locations may exist is part of that presented challenge.  As such, the declaration "I search for the map" is not the same scene staking resolution that it is in more player-facing games -- it occupies a different position.  In player facing games, the play is focused on achieving the fictional positioning necessary to stake finding the map as the outcome of an action declaration.  

The GM controls the scene framing so that achieving this fictional positioning is difficult.  However, once achieved, the player can stake the map and determine if the map is found or if additional challenge is presented prior to getting another chance.  Depending on the nature of the challenges, and the results, the map may become unable to be found.  This is pretty much the same as in the DM-facing game -- the objective of play is the same, to achieve the fictional positioning necessary to find the map.  The DM sets pacing by placing challenges before that positioning, and too many bad outcomes from those challenges may result in the map becoming unable to be found (if the party dies, for instance).  

The net difference here is how those challenges are staged and addressed.  In the player-facing game, the challenges are largely random, based on the results of checks on action declarations.  Success moves you quickly to the necessary positioning, failure delays your ability to achieve that positioning.  But, then, the objective of play (finding the map) isn't fixed, it's also essentially random (with maybe some ability to affect the relative odds), with failure moving the objective further away again.  In the DM-facing game, the challenges are fixed, and so are determinable with smart play and effective mitigation of risk. The declaration of 'I search for the map' isn't the crux of the stakes here, it's just part of the larger play.  

The agency assigned to that declaration doesn't mean that player-facing games have more agency, it means that the agency is more confined to that declaration -- ie, that the agency that players have is more tightly bound to such stake-risking declarations.  In DM-facing games, that declaration doesn't contain the same amount of agency, because the agency the players have is more diffused through how they approach the challenge of finding the map.  Player-facing games have big declarations that can dramatically affect the play and fewer to no moves that aren't impacting play in significant ways.  So the agency assigned to those big moves is conversely much larger and apparent within those moves.  So declarations like 'I search for the map' do have much more agency involved than a similar statement in DM-facing games.  This is because DM-facing games spread the agency around through many more, less individually important moves.  Which room you search, for instance, isn't a move in player-facing games, because the scene set of the GM determines the available moves -- it either allows for the finding of a map or must be navigated to get to the scene where finding the map is a valid move.  If the scene allows it, it's always a valid move, but you don't ever have the move where you pick which room to search.  So, in looking at relative agency, you need to sum the total of the decisions made in GM-facing games rather than compare the "search for the map" move as equivalent moves that should contain the same agency.  They aren't, but that doesn't mean one play-style has more agency than the other.  Chess and checkers.

Can DM-facing games be easily abused to further restrict player agency?  Sure.  Calvinball as a concept (@manbearcat) is useful to describe this, but it's an abuse, not a mode of play.  (For those not following, Calvinball is a game where the rules are made up on the fly so as to confound the other players and advance yourself.  Also a reference to Calvin and Hobbes.)  Player-facing games can become degenerate, too, although the use of Calvinball tropes are not something that's possible without serious distortion of the play concepts.  The degeneracy in player-facing games are weak DMs that don't push consequences or frame useful challenges, player vs player sniping (intentional play to disrupt other players' goals), and player lock-in, where a player can dominate player to determine of other players.  These aren't unique to player-facing games, but I find it distasteful to harp on DM-facing games with degenerate play examples of the kind you can easily claim do not exist in player-facing games (like Calvinball).  That's cherry-picking flaws in play so that one looks worse than the other.

As for finding a map and killing an orc being functionally similar moves, I pointed out earlier the flaws in this thinking - it's chess vs checkers again and assuming that since such things are similar in your chosen playstyle that this is a universal truth -- it's not.  Knight takes pawn is functionally similar to Knight moves without taking in chess, but both are different from jumping a piece in checkers vs moving a piece in checkers.  Please, don't return to the 'fiction doesn't exist' argument -- I left off of that because it passed by, but it's still an incoherent argument when you're using fiction to inform the act of authoring new fiction (like trope and positioning restrictions, both things that exist in the fiction and are used to constrain writing new fiction).  If you want to get metaphysical about the existence of fiction, we can, but it will be boring, and my entry question is "How can Mickey Mouse be a pop-culture icon if he doesn't exist?"  That should, at least, inform me as to which mode of thinking on the anti-realist side of the argument you follow and allow useful counterpoints.


----------



## Lanefan

shidaku said:


> I got over that early into DMing.  If people are going to cheat, they're gonna be cheaters no matter where they roll up their character.  I review all character sheets before the first session and if I see like, 6 19s I'll tell them to reroll.  But honestly, this has never happened.



I've had a few players over the years who, while not going so blatant as the all-19s route, would consistently generate stats that trend considerably higher than the norm when left to their own devices.  Hence, a blanket rule - often enforced by the players as much as by me.



> I would honestly advise every DM against writing this.



Sorry 'bout this: I've been ignoring that advice with every campaign I've ever done. 

When I design a campaign my internal goal is that it'll last for the rest of my life provided people remain interested in playing it, and so I only have to do all this work once.  What I've found is that about ten to twelve years seems to be how long they last, in part due to the levels etc. getting high enough that the system collapses and in part because I've run out of ideas.



> First: most, if not all of the people you start with are unlikely to ever see the end, and if you were to apply that logic to a book or a movie, would you really want to start reading/watching it?  If you knew you may never see the end?



You mean, like the printed-book version of Song of Ice and Fire?



> My advice is to make no campaign longer than a year.  Any campaign that is longer than a year (IRL time) can likely be broken down into smaller campaigns.  Even if it ends up meaning that your campaign has 100 campaigns in it.  It'll be better for it.



A year is barely time to get nicely underway with a level or two under your belt.  (hint: for a long campaign, slow level advancement down to a crawl)

That said, if a campaign has 100 campaigns in it it's still just one campaign.  We have different parties we rotate through that sometimes meet and interact; I'll bake in some what-amount-to APs - these might be the mini-campaigns you're thinking of - but there's always an underlying continuity to the whole thing.



> That's my point.  Being generic doesn't mean you have no life, it just means the interesting moments in your characters life are made through play, not before play.



On this I think we completely agree.

Lan-"current campaign hits ten years next month"-efan


----------



## prosfilaes

shidaku said:


> Pathfinder, grim-dark?  But that's what I mean, Pathfinder is what _generally _appeals to you but you'd like some variation.  This can be accomplished without writing a whole campaign for you with simply tweaks on whats going to happen at the table.




No, WH40K is grim-dark. If you told me we were doing Pathfinder, but with differences on the level of Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed, I'd be thrilled. The whole Tolkien-pastiche/Greyhawk/FR thing is getting tired for me; "our gnomes are eight feet tall and launched the last dwarf into spaaaace" would get me to clear my schedule in a heartbeat to play.



> From what I've _seen _it is several full 3" 3-ring binders.




I see there's a problem, but it looks like the DM never even really tried to produce a player-managable form of the world, or at least failed. The fact they have so much material, likely not meant for player eyes, seems neither here nor there.


----------



## Sunseeker

Lanefan said:


> I've had a few players over the years who, while not going so blatant as the all-19s route, would consistently generate stats that trend considerably higher than the norm when left to their own devices.  Hence, a blanket rule - often enforced by the players as much as by me.



Sure I mean whatever works.  

I'm more on the end that, if you need to push your stats up, I'll just push up the stats of the bad guys.  Sure, it's an arms race, but I'm not terribly worried about it.  I just tack on a couple points across the board and things balance themselves out.  Also, I like higher stats because I means I can take the kid gloves off.  I _always_ enjoy that.  The players usually enjoy harder fights too.



> Sorry 'bout this: I've been ignoring that advice with every campaign I've ever done.
> 
> When I design a campaign my internal goal is that it'll last for the rest of my life provided people remain interested in playing it, and so I only have to do all this work once.  What I've found is that about ten to twelve years seems to be how long they last, in part due to the levels etc. getting high enough that the system collapses and in part because I've run out of ideas.



Lol, I apply the former concept to world-building.  I want to build one REALLY AWESOME world, and then use it as the staging grounds for lots of campaigns.  I figure, if it's a big enough world there will be enough things going on at any given time, I could run two campaigns on either side of the globe and neither would know about the other.



> You mean, like the printed-book version of Song of Ice and Fire?



Maybe, but I couldn't come up with a good comparison.  Books and movies will always be there to watch later.  Campaigns may not.  I find it disheartening to invest in something knowing I'm very likely never to see the end of it.



> A year is barely time to get nicely underway with a level or two under your belt.  (hint: for a long campaign, slow level advancement down to a crawl)
> 
> *That said, if a campaign has 100 campaigns in it it's still just one campaign*.  We have different parties we rotate through that sometimes meet and interact; I'll bake in some what-amount-to APs - these might be the mini-campaigns you're thinking of - but there's always an underlying continuity to the whole thing.
> 
> Lan-"current campaign hits ten years next month"-efan




To the bolded at least: but that's where it moves from campaign building to world-building.
You've got (IMO)
Quests>Adventures (a series of several, but not many quests)>Campaigns (a series of several adventures, maybe many)>Worlds (a place where many campaigns exist).  I mean we could simplify it all down to "A game world is really just one big quest." and it'a t_echnically true, _​but not good for the context of this discussion,


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> I don't necessarily think that the hobby is better served by having less hidden backstory in RPGing, but I do think it is better served by actually recognising, in literal rather than metaphorical terms, how various techniques work and what sort of play experience they might deliver. I think this helps break down ungrounded misconceptions: eg that the action declaration "I search the study for the map" is different from the action declaration "I attack the orc with my sword". Of course in _real life_, looking for something is a very different causal process from trying to decapitate someone. But in RPGing, both action declarations expressions of desire as to the future state of the shared fiction (_I found a map_ or _I killed an orc_), they can both be declared from a purely first-person RP perspective ("actor stance", to use some jargon), and it's possible to establish rules for resolving either that don't rely on hidden backstory-based adjudication.
> 
> So if, in fact, we are going to resolve them differently - the map one by referring to the GM's notes; the orc one by rolling dice - well, it's worth asking _why_ we do it that way.




The two things are only alike in certain ways, and you've focused on those, and I don't think they matter. There is a key difference in these two examples that I think is far more important. 

The orc has been introduced into the fiction. Not the idea of the orc, or its existence, but its actual presence as something that the PC knows is there before him. Here is the orc...I can talk to it, or hide from it, or attack it, or otherwise interact with it. 

The map has only been introduced conceptually, but its location has not been established. So in that case, it's more the PC interacting with the room to see if the map is there than it is the PC interacting with the map. 

An important distinction. And it's why this Map/Orc example is not very useful. 

I keep imagining the Council of Rivendell as an RPG scene and the player of Boromir, bored with all the talking and politicking yells that he attacks Sauron! He makes a perception check to find Sauron and succeeds! Sauron is there spying on them, and Boromir attacks! 

Wouldn't want to deny player agency in establishing the fiction!


----------



## Sunseeker

prosfilaes said:


> No, WH40K is grim-dark. If you told me we were doing Pathfinder, but with differences on the level of Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed, I'd be thrilled. The whole Tolkien-pastiche/Greyhawk/FR thing is getting tired for me; "our gnomes are eight feet tall and launched the last dwarf into spaaaace" would get me to clear my schedule in a heartbeat to play.



Oh yeah.  But that's what I mean, a Pathfinder game can do this.  A WH40K really can't get rid of the grimdark.  You can certainly choose _not_ to take the grimdark to 11, but it's still gonna be a little grimdark.  



> I see there's a problem, but it looks like the DM never even really tried to produce a player-managable form of the world, or at least failed. The fact they have so much material, likely not meant for player eyes, seems neither here nor there.



Yeah, I'd be fairly happy at this point if we had even gotten a 10-page paper documenting major kingdoms, people's and history.


----------



## Emerikol

shidaku said:


> This works for those of you who have been playing with the same group for decades.  You likely don't even need to ask.




I generally find it works for most groups but I think perhaps what it is is not clear.

I tend to have a traditional D&D setting but I vary it some across different campaigns.  What I find best is for the player to receive a basic sheet detailing the races, classes, and initial terrain in the setting.  That person then comes up with an idea for a character in a generic sense and I help them flesh it out with specific details from the actual setting.  Typically this is via a bunch of phone calls before the first session ever begins.  

For me, I am generally against using a canned setting.  I view those games with built in settings as flawed in some fundamental way.  Now again if you love them that is cool and it’s obviously not flawed for you.  I just don’t like them.  As DM or player.

I also provide a good bit of detail up front.  Common knowledge stuff is a given like the Gods for example.  At least those worshipped in the starting area if that is not all of them.  If a player realizes they think they ought to know something and I agree I just tell them right then.  If it’s possible but not certain we do an intelligence check.

I find the wargamy adventure path convention play approach to be boring.  Again that’s me.  I really want to explore.


----------



## Emerikol

shidaku said:


> Yeah, I'd be fairly happy at this point if we had even gotten a 10-page paper documenting major kingdoms, people's and history.




You’d be happy with me then as I’d provide maps, religions, kingdoms, racial relations, and your conceptual backstoey would be given life in the world.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

prosfilaes said:


> Color me unexcited. It doesn't even feel like a game at that point. I don't want to leave the fiction open; I want to entangle it in the rules. Clue/Cluedo is quite simplistic, but "by a process of elimination, find the who, how and where" is way more exciting than "make a series of fiction-disconnected dice rolls". Look at D&D combat, of just about any edition; there's a host of complex decisions to make. If an ogre and goblin attack the party, do you try and bring down the ogre first to stop him from doing more damage, or do you take out the goblin quickly to avoid having to worry about him? Every good game is filled with options that interact with each other in complex ways and the odds on each option, especially in the long run, are not clear.




Then you completely failed to understand what the point of a Skill Challenge is. Where do you get the idea that it is 'a series of fiction-disconnected dice rolls", that is THE EXACT OPPOSITE of what an SC is. The whole point of it is there's a plot and fictional positioning which is paramount, success and failure and other mechanics just provide the measure and some incentives for players to work on their positioning. 

And there's a complex set of decisions to be made in any decent SC! Do I try to woo the Princess or Intimidate the Minister? Is it time to spend my next chance to do something helping my friend win the duel or putting a sleeping draught in the guard's meal? How do we deal with the sudden appearance of the High Priest? An SC should be a thrilling sequence of scenes in an arc that relate to a goal and are thus thematically tied together, forming a scenario, but with a constantly changing and varied situation that evolves in response to each move of the PCs. If you read DMG1, really read it, (or the RC, which is even clearer) that becomes pretty clear. WHY people can't seem to read the thing is a mystery to me.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> I'm a little surprised the SC mechanic hasn't been explored properly in 5e, either in the additional 5e published material or in UA (especially the latest one). I would pay good money for a book which runs through numerous SC examples *even if that is all it was*. There really is so much content available for those in the know.
> 
> Perhaps one of the 4e luminaries should do that and sell it on the DMs Guild because WotC doesn't appear to want to go down that direction. I reckon it would sell well.




To be perfectly honest, you could whip out the Essentials Rules Compendium and run an SC right out of it in a 5e game, assuming your 5e is using skills (which most do). You'll need to adapt the concept of DCs a little, since 5e doesn't really conceive of bonuses increasing in the same way, but I think you could easily generate a chart that matrixed level to easy/medium/hard and gave the DC that would approximate their 4e success probabilities. The numbers will increase much less and so level will be a LOT less of a factor in an SC in that system, but the general framework should hold. I haven't played 5e at the highest levels, maybe there's some wonkiness there. Spells are a bit more open-ended, but 4e rituals were too. I think it can work fine.


----------



## prosfilaes

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Then you completely failed to understand what the point of a Skill Challenge is. Where do you get the idea that it is 'a series of fiction-disconnected dice rolls",






AbdulAlhazred said:


> Thus solving a mystery could be precisely defined in 4e as 'a Complexity 5 Skill Challenge of Level 7' for instance.




And searching for a Skill Challenge leads me to http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/gaming/dnd/4e/skill-challenge-broken.html . Now I would define solving a mystery as being something that the players might do by asking the right questions, no skill check needed; by finding the right places to apply skills in ways that have low difficulty; or by ridiculous DC checks against people who wouldn't talk unless they've been persuaded by the best diplomat and finding minute evidence in areas that have scoured clean. How you boil that down to two numbers and claim to be fiction-connected, I'm not sure.



> If you read DMG1, really read it, (or the RC, which is even clearer) that becomes pretty clear. WHY people can't seem to read the thing is a mystery to me.




I have somewhere around a half a million pages of printed RPGs, a shameful number of which I haven't read. I haven't really read a number of the Pathfinder expansion books, which is the game I run. I haven't _really_ read the 5th edition core rulebooks, a game it looks increasingly likely I'll spend sometime playing. I haven't really read M20 or Pugmire or Threadbare, games I Kickstarted that look very cool. Behind me, I have a bookcase, some 15 feet of books, that if I could get through I would possess a knowledge of world and English literature few, especially those of us with math degrees, can claim. Not to mention various other things I could be doing besides reading. Why does it surprise you that the 4th edition DMG is not high on my list to carefully read?


----------



## Sadras

AbdulAlhazred said:


> To be perfectly honest, you could whip out the Essentials Rules Compendium and run an SC right out of it in a 5e game, assuming your 5e is using skills (which most do). You'll need to adapt the concept of DCs a little, since 5e doesn't really conceive of bonuses increasing in the same way, but I think you could easily generate a chart that matrixed level to easy/medium/hard and gave the DC that would approximate their 4e success probabilities. The numbers will increase much less and so level will be a LOT less of a factor in an SC in that system, but the general framework should hold. I haven't played 5e at the highest levels, maybe there's some wonkiness there. Spells are a bit more open-ended, but 4e rituals were too. I think it can work fine.




Sure and I have looked at the RC which is a great book, but it offers only 1 example for complexity 1 SC. I'm was talking about a source which provides many examples of authored and on-the-spot skill challenges with varying levels of complexity and goals. I believe a resource like that would be fairly useful.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> The orc has been introduced into the fiction. Not the idea of the orc, or its existence, but its actual presence as something that the PC knows is there before him. Here is the orc...I can talk to it, or hide from it, or attack it, or otherwise interact with it.
> 
> The map has only been introduced conceptually, but its location has not been established.



I think your distinctions are not genuine ones. They trade on an illusion that "being introduced into the fiction" = "actually present". But it doesn't - fictional things dopn't really exist, and aren't present.

In the real world, _the death of a being_ is a very different sort of property from _the location of a thing_, and likewise _killing a thing_ is a different process from _finding a thing_. But the same is not true when it comes to authorship. Establishing, of an imaginary orc, that it is dead, is no different - as a process of authorship - from establishing, of an imaginary study, that it contains a map. Likewise establishing that _This character kills a previously-mentioned orc_ is no different - as a process of authorship - from establishing that _this character finds a map in a previously-mentioned study_.

To put it another way: introudcing, as a new fictional element, a death - of the previously-mentioned orc - is no different, as a process of authorship, from introducing, as a new fictional element, a discovery of a map in the previously-mentioned study.

To put it yet another way: the metaphysics of authorship does not track the metaphysics of the imaginary events that are being authored. So causal differences that are fundamental _in real life events_ are not fundamental to _imagining_ those real life events.

It is possible to introduce an additional constraint on authorship if one wishes: this person, the RPG player, can only participate in processes of authorship where the subject-matter of that authorship is an imagined event (like killing an orc) that does not involve introducing new material into the fiction that was not causally produced, in the fiction, by that player's character.

But a constraint of that sort has no metaphysical backing behind it - its justification has to be aesthetic. [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION] has provided that sort of justification in a post not far upthread of yours:



Sadras said:


> I guess, for me, the hidden backstory provides the 'mystery and adventure' I would desire as a player.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The challenge and enjoyment for me is to uncover the mystery AND survive the adventure.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> *Because* the one is about the survival of combat (the tactical part of the game) and the other is part of the intrigue, the location to explore, the mystery to unravel the puzzle to solve.
> 
> *Because* we have hit points for combat, but don’t have social points and exploration points for the other pillars. That is not to say I'm not fond of SC mechanic.
> 
> *Because* that is how the game was originally envisioned. And despite the OP which is an attempt to differentiate between old and contemporary style of D&D – it is still roleplayed very much the same rather than different.



Thanks for the reply!

I would want to differentiate social and exploration. In the context of the current discussion social strikes me as the same, in principle, as combat: after all, what's the in principle difference, from the point of view of ingame causal processes, of chopping someone's head off or making them laugh by telling a joke?

And early D&D in fact had a social resolution mechanic - the reaction roll, modified by CHA plus (in Gygax's DMG) a whole host of other modifierrs around racial preference, other allegiances, etc. I can't say I have a lot of experience using this mechanic in AD&D play, but Classic Traveller has a very similar mechanic and so far I'm finding it works quite well in my Classic Traveller game: I let my players roll the dice (to make it feel more like they are resolving their action declaration of "I broadcast such-and-such a message to the other ship"). We apply the appropriate modifiers (which in Traveller are generally more about skills or circumstances than stats) and that establishes the result. And I follow the guidelines for when a new roll is permitted (or required), to see if the initial reaction changes.

As far as exploration is concerned - uncovering the mystery in a module like B10, for instance - what you describe in this and your previous post does sound like the GM establishes the content of the shared fiction, and the players declare moves that will enable them to learn that content, by obliging the GM to tell it to them. The agency of the players, in respect of this aspect of play, seems to consist in affecting the sequence in which that material is learned (and perhaps whether or not it is learned, if they never declare the right moves for their PCs), and in drawing inferences from what the GM has told them.

The difference from, say, reading a novel seems to be that you can't just turn the pages as you wish: rather, you have to declare certain game moves in order to get access to those "pages".



Sadras said:


> If its just all part of a collaborative creative process amongst players and DM then it is far less mysterious.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It seems like the challenge in your adventures (and I do not mean to sound disparaging) is to 'win' on the skill challenge for the story (collaborative narrative) to be true AND survive the adventure. There is no mystery to be discovered, but the 'yes but complications' which need to be overcome. Again, do not mean to insult here.



No insult taken at all, but I think the description is not quite right.

"I search the map for the study" is not an act of collaborative storytelling. It is a declaration of an action for my PC. It can be done purely in the first-person perspective. This is what makes mystery possible. Eg in my Traveller game, there is a bioweapons conspiracy whose originator and motivations are unknown, and which the PCs (and players) are trying to work out. The answers to these mysteries will be generated through a combination of outcomes of skill checks and material introduced as components of framing. No one will have to engage in "collaborative storytelling", any more than they have to to resolve a D&D combat. Just as game rules can tell you whether or not your roll is good enough to kill an orc, they can tell you whether or not your roll is good enough to (eg) locate a supplier of drugs, befriend said supplier, etc.

In Traveller much of the detail of the mystery will have to be provided by free narration, either the GM's framing or as a result of the GM saying "yes" to player action declarations, Classic Traveller's mechanics for things like perception, searching, etc are a bit weak. But it will still flow from action declaration. For instance, an ealier patron encounter (the result of the action declaration "I chill at the bar of the Traveller's Aid Society hoping to meet a patron), and the way that encounter unfolded in the back-and-forth of free roleplaying, has established constraints on the logic of the conspiracy. In the session we played on Sunday the PCs elected to attack the conspirators rather than take a bribe from them. Had they taken the bribe, we would then probably have had to make a further reaction roll when discussions ensued; and (say) a good reaction would impose further constraints on tenable narration of subsequent fiction. Etc.

The only "collaboration" that is necessary is a shared sense of genre and fictional position that supports solid framing, action declartions and narration of consequences. Eg the example that [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] offers makes no sense, as nothing in the fiction makes it remotely plausible that Sauron would be in Rivendell; and even if Boromir could perceive a long way (not absurd - he went to Rivendell in response to a dream, after all) he can't attack at that distance. Similarly, if it's established that the PCs are in a cave, then "I search the study for the map" is not a reasonable action declaration. (Just as with Luke Crane's example: no roll to find beam weaponry in the Duke's toilet.)


----------



## pemerton

prosfilaes said:


> And searching for a Skill Challenge leads me to http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/gaming/dnd/4e/skill-challenge-broken.html .



Well, this statement at the end of the post you quoted is mistaken: "combat isn't an all-or-nothing situation. Careful strategy can massively swing the results. A single failure to hit is usually irrelevant. The characters can trade daily powers and action points to help. It's possible to recover from a bad situation. None of this is present in the skill challenge system. It's all or nothing."

A skill challenge isn't all or nothing - the players might lose the challenge overall, but make some important change in the fiction on the way through.

And a skill challenge _does_ permit the expenditure of resources to help - this is discussed in the DMG and further elaborated in the DMG 2 - which is one way of managing the need for more successes relative to failures in a more complex challenge. (And as [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has already indicated, the RC has further information and advice.)



prosfilaes said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> just as if you refer to a combat with two creatures having AC 12 and 20 hp and AC 14 and 50 hp, you haven't established any fiction either.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> For a simplified version of a fairly trivial combat, you've used twice as many numbers (as "Level 7 Complexity 5"), and you have established some fiction, however vague. There's two individuals, and guy one is much weaker and a little bit easier to hit than guy two.
Click to expand...


The only fiction that is established is that one of those people is harder to defeat in combat than the other. Which is equally a property of a skill challenge once DCs are set in accordance with the guidelines.

We don't know that one of the creatures is "easier to hit" in any in-fiction sense: the higher AC could be due to DEX (harder to hit) or armour (harder to hurt) or (in 5e) barbarian CON bonus (tough skin), etc. And the different hp don't mean that, in the fiction, one is weaker than the other: in AD&D the 20 hp being might be an ogre, and the 50 hp being a 13th level thief with CON 15. The ogre clearly is bigger and stronger than the thief; the thief's higher hp reflect nimbleness, luck, divine protections, etc.



prosfilaes said:


> Given an actual stat block, like from B1:
> 
> 1. Orcs (1-4)-AC 6, HD 1, hp 6,4,3,1, #AT 1, D 1-6 or by weapon, MV 90' (30'), Save F1, ML 8
> 2. Giant Centipedes (1-2)-AC 9, HD 1/2, hp 2,2, #AT 1, D poison, MV 60' (20'), Save NM, ML 7
> 
> Fiction starts to appear out of numbers.



This is no different from a skill challenge. If I make notes that, on a failed Endurance check in the course of the challenge to cross The Barrens, a PC loses a healing surge due to dehydration, that is establishing fiction.


----------



## pemerton

prosfilaes said:


> So, exactly the same as real life but with "the world" replaced by "the GM"? In real life you can try and try to find foot prints all you want, but if they aren't there, they aren't there.



The absence of foot prints is a result of causal processes that actually took place in the world (eg the person didn't go there; or the earth was very hard; or etc, etc).

The absence of foot prints in a RPG mystery resolved in a "hidden backstory" style is because the GM decided not to author any such element of the fiction. Playing a game and having the outcomes of my moves stipulated by another participant is not remotely the same thing as actually carrying out an investigation.

It may make for good or bad game design and game play to give a participant such a power of stipulation. But comparing it to the reality of engaging with an independently and objectively-existing world gets us nowhere towards considering those matters.



prosfilaes said:


> So tossing questions at someone and getting responses back is totally different agency-wise if you're tossing questions at a suspect or a GM playing a suspect? That's close to the closest an RPG can come to literal realism.



Again, it's not remotely realistic. In real life, the suspect is (say) scared of <going to jail>, <being beaten up by his/her cohorts>, <betraying his/her loved one>, etc. The GM is not scared of any of those things. Presumably, if the game is going well, the GM isn't scared at all.

The suspect can be tricked eg maybe the investigator pretends to be someone else. The GM can't be tricked in that way: s/he knows who the player is, and why s/he is asking certain questions (ie because s/he is making moves in a game).

I know some GMs are very confident in their ability to "realistically" predict the causal consequences of social interactions, such that they can predict how and to what extent the suspect would be scared, or tricked, and narrate appropriate consequences. Personally I think that a simple reaction roll system is more likely to give more verisimilitudinous results than GM predictions of this sort. And in practice, the way those GM "predictions' tend to be operationalised is via simple descriptions or checklists: If the investigator asks X, the suspect replies Y; if the investigator threatens P, the suspect does Q; etc. That's not _realistic_ - it's just stipulating the possible paths the fiction might take. Whether it's good or bad to stipulate such things is, as I've repeatedly said, an open question: but concepts of "realism" don't help us answer it.


----------



## pemerton

shidaku said:


> I think if you stop and look at your past character backstories, that if you were to remove *specific name* and *specific place* and replace them with generic terms, you'd find you had indeed written generic backstories.  Doesn't mean you can't be detailed.
> 
> I mean, if I were to write a backstory for Frodo, it would be "Hobbit who has always lived at home but dreamed of running off on a great adventure."



I don't agree with this. Frodo's home is The Shire, which is a quintessential rural idyll. His uncle has been both a central figure in this place, and yet an outsider. His gardener has no real wanderlust but an obsession with elves. Etc.

Once you fill in the details of Frodo's backstory that matter to him as a character, you get something that is not especially generic.



Emerikol said:


> I am generally against using a canned setting.  I view those games with built in settings as flawed in some fundamental way.  Now again if you love them that is cool and it’s obviously not flawed for you.  I just don’t like them.  As DM or player.



I often use pre-drawn maps for establishing basic details of geography; and settings often give names for historical figures, towns, gods etc which are useful - eg our "good" god in this setting is St Cuthbert; the town with the bazaar is Hardby; the hills where you spent your youth in a tower learning magic from your brother are the Abor-Alz; etc.

It saves having to set all this stuff up. And in terms of GMing techniques, if the important thing for the player is that his/her PC comes from a forest, or the hills, or whatever, then superimposing that over some pre-drawn map and loose backstory doesn't cost anything and just speeds up the process of getting started. One reason I like the centre of the GH maps is that it covers the full spectrum of default fantasy settings: forests for bandits and Robin Hood types; cities and towns (Dyvers, GH, Hardby); ocean (Woolly Bay); the Wild Coast for free cities and mercenary companies, as well as ports that pirates can sail from and dock in; the Pomarj for an evil empire; the Bright Desert and Abor-Alz for pyramids, nomads, and the like; Celene for an elven queen; etc, etc. All the tropes are there.

(The map on the inside cover of B10 Night's Dark Terror is fairly similar in this respect - it's really just missing ocean and desert; but it's got towns/cities, mountains, a lake, forest, hills, plains for riding across, etc.)

Of course, some campaigns don't really need this sort of detail - eg my Cortex+ Heroic vikings game happens in a generic "north" which I narrate as needed; and for Traveller random world generation has proved adequate to the task of establishing places for the PCs to be.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> in the DM-facing game the proper fictional positioning needs to be achieved for the action to be resolved successfully, is focused on because the knowing of that positioning isn't open.  However, it is open if looked at more broadly, the DM-facing game is open that you must overcome challenges to find the correct fictional positioning to locate the map.  That multiple such locations may exist is part of that presented challenge.



I don't see how this is different in any fundamental way from my description: the goal of play is to make moves that will trigger the GM to relate/narrate the relevant bit of fiction which is (actually, or at least notionally) recorded in his/her notes.



Ovinomancer said:


> In DM-facing games, that declaration doesn't contain the same amount of agency, because the agency the players have is more diffused through how they approach the challenge of finding the map.



The "diffused" agency that you describe here is, as best I can tell, the capacity to choose between narration-triggering moves. Depending on past such moves, the players may or may not have a sense of how different such choices are likely to trigger different narrations (eg a past move may have yielded a rumour, which suggests that the map is actually lost in the cave and not in the study at all).

The capacity to influence the sequence of narrations (and perhaps whether or not they occur at all) isn't agency over the content of what is narrated. That is, it's not agency over the content of the shared fiction.



Ovinomancer said:


> In player facing games, the play is focused on achieving the fictional positioning necessary to stake finding the map as the outcome of an action declaration.
> 
> The GM controls the scene framing so that achieving this fictional positioning is difficult.



That is not going to be true, in general.

Eg the very first scene in my BW game presented the PC whose goal was to find magical items to help him free his brother from balrog possession with a chance to acquire an angel feather. The "challenge" in the scene was to determine the nature of the feather, whether it was worth trying to buy, whether instead to try and steal it, etc.

In my 4e game, the most notable constraint on fictional positioning is the tiers of play ie 1st level PCs simply can't be framed, in any meaningful way, into direct conflict with Orcus. Instead it's undead and cultists. When the PCs were finally ready to confont Orcus, it wasn't hard (in mechanical terms) to establish the relevant fictional positioning; though they had to make some story choices which involved risks.

The purpose of framing in "player-facing" games is pretty simple: 

One of the players is a gamemaster whose job it is to keep track of the backstory, frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments (defined in narrativistic theory as moments of in-character action that carry weight as commentary on the game’s premise) by introducing complications. . . .

The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end.​
How this should all be paced, and how to choose what sort of framing to start with or to progress to, etc, is all completely contextual.



Ovinomancer said:


> Depending on the nature of the challenges, and the results, the map may become unable to be found. This is pretty much the same as in the DM-facing game



If a player stakes discovery of the map, and fails, that is losing at a move in a game. That is actually quiet different, I think, from the GM stipulating failure. I don't see them as "pretty much the same" at all.



Ovinomancer said:


> Player-facing games can become degenerate, too, although the use of Calvinball tropes are not something that's possible without serious distortion of the play concepts. The degeneracy in player-facing games are weak DMs that don't push consequences or frame useful challenges



A long way upthread I said that a game run in accordance with the "standard narrativistic model" can suffer if the GM's framing is weak or misjudged, so that it fails to provoke choices as it is meant to.

I don't really see how that bears on the issue of player agency: the problem with such a game is not that the players have no agency, but that it's boring and so they have no reason to exercise it.



Ovinomancer said:


> Please, don't return to the 'fiction doesn't exist' argument



You keep equivocating on the word "fiction". I have not asserted that fictions (= stories) don't exist. I have asserted that fictional things - fictions in the sense of imagined entities - don't exist.

Novels are real. _The Hound of the Baskervilles_ is a real thing, a composed story. But Sherlock Holmes is not a real thing. He doesn't exist, and he exerts no causal influence on anything (although in the story he is _imagined_ to do so). Asserting otherwise makes it almost impossible to analyse processes of authorship.

To reiterate - deciding, as an author, that character X has killed the orc you just mentioned is no different from deciding that character X has found a map in the study you just mentioned. I just proved it, in fact, by writing the two sentences! The process was the same in both cases - conceiving of a change in the fiction, by introducing a new event (a killing, a finding of a map) that links character X to the previously mentioned element (the orc, the study).

It's only by treating the authoring of a killing _as if it were actually a killing_, and the authoring of the finding of a map _as if it were actually a discovery_, that one would be led to think that they involve different processes of authorship.

But that would be a confusion; the same sort of confusion that leads to things like the suggestion that _a GM deciding how a fictional person responds to an imagined threat_ is a realistic model of _how an actual person might actually respond to an actual threat_.


----------



## prosfilaes

pemerton said:


> The only fiction that is established is that one of those people is harder to defeat in combat than the other. Which is equally a property of a skill challenge once DCs are set in accordance with the guidelines.
> 
> We don't know that one of the creatures is "easier to hit" in any in-fiction sense: the higher AC could be due to DEX (harder to hit) or armour (harder to hurt) or (in 5e) barbarian CON bonus (tough skin), etc. And the different hp don't mean that, in the fiction, one is weaker than the other: in AD&D the 20 hp being might be an ogre, and the 50 hp being a 13th level thief with CON 15. The ogre clearly is bigger and stronger than the thief; the thief's higher hp reflect nimbleness, luck, divine protections, etc.




So if you disconnect the numbers from the fiction, then it's the same as something else where the numbers are disconnected from the fiction? We've long since discovered that we see HP differently, and apparently we see AC differently as well. If having a better AC doesn't mean something in fiction, then why are we wasting all this time on a silly dice game?



> This is no different from a skill challenge. If I make notes that, on a failed Endurance check in the course of the challenge to cross The Barrens, a PC loses a healing surge due to dehydration, that is establishing fiction.




No, this is a "Level 7 Complexity 5" skill challenge. This is not a "Level 7 Complexity 5" with a note that a failed Endurance check to cross The Barrens, a PC loses a healing surge. You can make anything work with enough kludges like that, but at the same time, you're making it more complex and less predictable.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> As far as exploration is concerned - uncovering the mystery in a module like B10, for instance - what you describe in this and your previous post does sound like the GM establishes the content of the shared fiction, and the players declare moves that will enable them to learn that content, by obliging the GM to tell it to them. The agency of the players, in respect of this aspect of play, seems to consist in affecting the sequence in which that material is learned (and perhaps whether or not it is learned, if they never declare the right moves for their PCs), and in drawing inferences from what the GM has told them.
> 
> The difference from, say, reading a novel seems to be that you can't just turn the pages as you wish: rather, you have to declare certain game moves in order to get access to those "pages".




I don't think it plays like a novel at all.  Nobody is forced to find out the mysteries that are involved, nor are they required to do so in any set manner.  The party might very well decided to not bother with the mysteries, fight off the goblins, and then try to set up one of their number as mayor, with the rest as of the PCs being advisers.  That's very different from a novel of any sort.  Just because the DM is running pre-authored content, doesn't mean that the players are constrained to run a rat maze.



> "I search the map for the study" is not an act of collaborative storytelling. It is a declaration of an action for my PC. It can be done purely in the first-person perspective. This is what makes mystery possible. Eg in my Traveller game, there is a bioweapons conspiracy whose originator and motivations are unknown, and which the PCs (and players) are trying to work out. The answers to these mysteries will be generated through a combination of outcomes of skill checks and material introduced as components of framing. No one will have to engage in "collaborative storytelling", any more than they have to to resolve a D&D combat. Just as game rules can tell you whether or not your roll is good enough to kill an orc, they can tell you whether or not your roll is good enough to (eg) locate a supplier of drugs, befriend said supplier, etc.




Those things do involve a collaboration to create a story.  You can say that rolls tell you whether you can kill an orc, but those rolls fail to tell a story.  When you add in DM and Player collaborating you end up with...

Player:Grog runs up to the orc screaming, "By Vishira's foul breath, you will die!(no roll can do this)" and swings his two handed sword at the orc.  <Rolls a 15> Hit for 10 damage.
DM: The orcs attempts to dodge to the right(no roll can do this) and fails.  You sword bites deeply into its chest(no roll can do this) and it falls to the ground dead(result of the damage).

Without the collaborative story created by the player and the DM, no story exists at all.  With it, there is a story to be told at the next tavern.  The same goes for finding things.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> I don't see how this is different in any fundamental way from my description: the goal of play is to make moves that will trigger the GM to relate/narrate the relevant bit of fiction which is (actually, or at least notionally) recorded in his/her notes.



This isn't a useful description of play, though, except in narrow circumstance.  The key difference between the styles isn't that the DM reads notes in one (you read your notes when you introduce prepared fictions in play, for instance), it's that the distribution of narrative control -- in DM facing games, the DM retains most narrative control; in player-facing games, the players have some to many rights regarding narrative control.  I say some to many because the actual effect of player narrative control is not authorship of the narrative, but constraints on the DM's authorship of the narrative.  If a player declares "I search for the map" and succeeds, the DM is constrained that the next bit of narration they provide must accommodate that success and not negate it.  This is really, though, just a rules convention that enforces a manner of good play present in both styles:  if a check succeeds, the DM should not act against that check and narrate failure.  This is readily apparent in that most DMs will cite overriding check results with DM fiat to be bad play.   




> The "diffused" agency that you describe here is, as best I can tell, the capacity to choose between narration-triggering moves. Depending on past such moves, the players may or may not have a sense of how different such choices are likely to trigger different narrations (eg a past move may have yielded a rumour, which suggests that the map is actually lost in the cave and not in the study at all).
> 
> The capacity to influence the sequence of narrations (and perhaps whether or not they occur at all) isn't agency over the content of what is narrated. That is, it's not agency over the content of the shared fiction.



Of course it is.  If I control what's introduced into the shared fictions by my choices, then I have agency over the content of what is narrated.

I believe that you're again failing to effectively make your argument by being unclear.  I believe your actual argument is that unless the player can introduce entirely new elements of the fiction through action declaration, they lack agency over the shared narrative.  I believe your argument is that "we go left, is the study there?" is different from "we go left and enter the study!"  And it is, but these kinds of declarations don't really exist in the same way in both styles.  They may exist in a DM facing game, where the decision as to which way to turn at an intersection is one of the many kinds of player choice offered, but neither would occur in a player-facing game that isn't being degenerate.  This is because the GM in a player facing game isn't going to frame a scene where such choices are made -- if something like this happens it's an error in framing and it will likely be glossed as 'say yes' because it's so unimportant; ie this isn't a choice that has any agency because it shouldn't be a choice at all.  Instead, the GM is going to 'go to the action' and frame the scene in the study to begin with.  This is the element I'm pointing at - the player-facing game wraps up all of the agency into the 'search for the map' declaration because that's the only real choice the players make in the scene -- everything else is provided by the GM (possibly according to notes prepped and found useful for this situation) as framing, framing that points straight at getting to this kind of declaration.  The GM isn't even offering the ability to choose which hall to turn down to find the study, so claiming you increase agency because the GM forces situations onto players that go straight to those declarations that stake objectives is being myopic -- it's intentionally ignoring that agency is lessened by the fact that the players have no way to avoid or mitigate circumstances prior to the frame where the big question is thrust upon them.

In DM facing games, the players make many small choices over a longer period that lead up to the crux questions, and those crux questions can be repeated in multiple situations.  The scene the DM frames here isn't the study, it's the building that contains the study among other challenges.  How the players ultimately engage those challenges is up to them, and they still have the ability to go off map and introduce new states to the fiction that aren't in the DM's notes.  They can set the building on fire as well.







> That is not going to be true, in general.
> 
> Eg the very first scene in my BW game presented the PC whose goal was to find magical items to help him free his brother from balrog possession with a chance to acquire an angel feather. The "challenge" in the scene was to determine the nature of the feather, whether it was worth trying to buy, whether instead to try and steal it, etc.
> 
> In my 4e game, the most notable constraint on fictional positioning is the tiers of play ie 1st level PCs simply can't be framed, in any meaningful way, into direct conflict with Orcus. Instead it's undead and cultists. When the PCs were finally ready to confont Orcus, it wasn't hard (in mechanical terms) to establish the relevant fictional positioning; though they had to make some story choices which involved risks.
> 
> The purpose of framing in "player-facing" games is pretty simple:
> 
> One of the players is a gamemaster whose job it is to keep track of the backstory, frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments (defined in narrativistic theory as moments of in-character action that carry weight as commentary on the game’s premise) by introducing complications. . . .
> 
> The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end.​
> How this should all be paced, and how to choose what sort of framing to start with or to progress to, etc, is all completely contextual.



You completely defeated your own argument by proving what I said.  The scene you describe opening with does not address the primary goal of play for the character involved.  That goal is saving his brother.  You didn't introduce a scene where saving the brother was at stake, and any declaration of 'I save my brother from possession by a balrog!' would not have the fictional positioning to succeed and would automatically fail.  Instead, you introduced a scene who's primary purpose was establishing a challenge that had to be overcome in order to move towards gaining the fictional positioning to save the brother.

To contrast to the map in the study example, if you start that game with a scene having to bypass the guards stationed outside the building with the study in it, this is the same -- it's part of the GM's job to introduce challenges to obstruct the player's goals and provide interesting story.  The guards must be overcome to gain the fictional positioning (being in the study) to find the map.  A success with the guards may move the positioning to the study, or it may move to a new challenge -- you're now talking to the captain of the guards or the building's owner or whatever -- prior to achieving the necessary positioning.  This is how the game progresses, but this progression is inserted by the GM as needed to make the positioning difficult to obtain, else the game is too easy and the big questions are too quickly resolved.  Of course, successes will move rapidly towards the completion, but failures will cause additional complications and too many might cause possible outright failure of the objective.



> If a player stakes discovery of the map, and fails, that is losing at a move in a game. That is actually quiet different, I think, from the GM stipulating failure. I don't see them as "pretty much the same" at all.



Well, one, congratulations on the strawman.  You separated that statement from the context and answered it in a way opposite it's context.  I wasn't talking about failure on the check to search for the map, I was talking about repeated failure in attempting to achieve the necessary positioning to even attempt that declaration.  A skill challenge in which the party accrues too many failures before necessary successes fails at their objective prior to being positioned to ultimately succeeed.  A player that searches for a mace may find evidence that his ultimate goal -- rescue his brother from possession -- fails because it's discovered his brother is a willing ally and not actually possessed against his will.  This is the failure I'm talking about.  And, in a DM-facing game, this can accrue by too many failures prior to obtaining positioning for success as well.  The party may be killed.  The party may run out of time.  The party may take actions that cause the map to be destroyed (setting the building on fire) or moved (alerting the enemy to the objective).  All of these things can happen in either style, and that was the point I was making.  

As far as the point you've made, it depends on the situation.  If, in a player-facing game, you say when facing the guards outside the building prior to entering, "I search for the map", the GM has every right to negate this declaration as not appropriate for the current fictional positioning.  This is not different from the DM in a DM-facing game denying success when the fictional positioning is not right, either.  The only difference here is that the positioning contains a hidden element, but, just like an invisible opponent, that element is discoverable through play.

If you're again discussing negation of a check, we're back to bad play examples that aren't useful in analyzing the difference in playstyles.  And, again, I say the difference in playstyles revolves around how challenges are presented -- player-facing challenges go straight to 'single big move' play while DM-facing challenges are more 'multiple small move' play.  The framework in which player decisions are made is different -- you don't have as many choices to make in player-facing games because the game drives straight to 'big question' moves.   You have many choices to make in DM-facing games, with many fewer being the 'big question' moves, and most of those occur outside of a concrete scene framing (ie, broader, higher level decisions).



> A long way upthread I said that a game run in accordance with the "standard narrativistic model" can suffer if the GM's framing is weak or misjudged, so that it fails to provoke choices as it is meant to.
> 
> I don't really see how that bears on the issue of player agency: the problem with such a game is not that the players have no agency, but that it's boring and so they have no reason to exercise it.



Then there's as much agency in choosing which way to go at an intersection as in finding a map?  The former is boring, and you don't want to exercise that kind of agency, the latter is something you care about and want to exercise agency over.  The difference here is one of preference, not agency, then.

And that's great -- I fully understand that some people really prefer a style of play where everything is 'big decision' moves, the ones that really move the game along.  Other's prefer a game where small choices are often made and the frequency of big decision moves is lesser, but that doesn't necessarily mean that agency exercised by the players in these two styles is different.  This my point -- claiming that since your style of play focuses on big moves and so gives more agency fails to account that such questions still occur in DM-facing games, just mixed in with many more smaller moves.  You continue to compare a single declaration -- finding a map -- in each of the two styles as if they are the same kind of move in both.  They are not.  The framing is different.  The focus is different.  The outcomes of success and failure are different.  Therefore, you cannot compare the levels of agency available in the two styles by comparing different moves that have the same grammatical structure.



> You keep equivocating on the word "fiction". I have not asserted that fictions (= stories) don't exist. I have asserted that fictional things - fictions in the sense of imagined entities - don't exist.



I assure you that I have never once equivocated on the word fiction.  You're equivocating here that fictions that contain fictional characters and fictional events that are called stories exist but the fictional characters and fictional events do not.  This is ridiculous -- how can things that do not exist individually ever gain collective existence?

I've sblocked the rest of this, as it may be boring to others.
[sblock]


> Novels are real. _The Hound of the Baskervilles_ is a real thing, a composed story. But Sherlock Holmes is not a real thing. He doesn't exist, and he exerts no causal influence on anything (although in the story he is _imagined_ to do so). Asserting otherwise makes it almost impossible to analyse processes of authorship.



What causal influence does the story (as opposed to a physical book that contains physical words that convey the ficitonal concepts of the story _Hound of the Baskervilles_) exert then that Sherlock Holmes, as a fiction character, cannot?  This argument is self-defeating.  Either fictional things do not exist or they do.  You cannot have a work of fiction, comprised of fictional elements, exist as a collective while denying that it's components have not existence.  This is logically impossible.

To deny that Sherlock Holmes has existence because his is a fictional character, you must also deny that fictional stories that contain him also do not exist _or you must identify exactly what it is extra in the fictional story that gives it existence._  What about _Hound_ provides it existence while denying Sherlock his?




> To reiterate - deciding, as an author, that character X has killed the orc you just mentioned is no different from deciding that character X has found a map in the study you just mentioned. I just proved it, in fact, by writing the two sentences! The process was the same in both cases - conceiving of a change in the fiction, by introducing a new event (a killing, a finding of a map) that links character X to the previously mentioned element (the orc, the study).[/QUOTEis
> 
> What if I author the statement 'Character X has found a map in the study' and 'Character X has NOT found a map in the study'?  According to you, these are just as equivalent a move as above -- they both follow the same acts of imagining and authoring.  Yet they are directly contradictory, and lead to different fictional outcomes that are opposed to each other.  So, then, according to your argument the DM authoring that the PC does find a map is the same as the DM authoring the PC doesn't find a map.  If this is true, then there is no difference between a DM negating a player declaration by authoring said outcome that one permitting a player declaration by authoring that outcome.  You've neatly hamstrung your own argument, as the DM moves to negate that follow the authoring process are just as valid as move as the player making declarations.
> 
> This is the problem with your argument.  The logical foundation you're trying to relying upon is faulty.  If all acts of authoring are the same, then there's no value to any act of authorship that puts it above any other act of authorship.  If the moves are the same, because the fiction authored doesn't matter, then all outcomes from those moves are the same for the same reason.  This clearly contradicts your assertions that DMs should not use unknown fictional positioning to negate player action declarations, as the above logical framework doesn't care -- it's all the same.  The only way to go from here is to assign value to who's doing the authoring at what time, not what is authored.  Which then means that the DM is free to frame any situation he likes and the player is then free to author any actions they like regardless of the framing.  Clearly, this is not what you mean.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It's only by treating the authoring of a killing _as if it were actually a killing_, and the authoring of the finding of a map _as if it were actually a discovery_, that one would be led to think that they involve different processes of authorship.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You confuse 'I made something up' with 'I made something up in accordance with the social contract of my group and the agreed upon restrictions on my ability to make things up.'
> 
> To demonstrate: the scene is a 10'x10' (3m x 3m) room containing nothing but an orc with a pie.
> 
> In this case, the declaration of 'I kill the orc!' as an announced desire to author this fiction is allowable.  The orc is established and we're assuming the character you're playing has the means and wherewithal to accomplish this feat.  The ability to author this fiction is therefore either allowed via fiat (the GM allows it) or tested by mechanics.
> 
> However, if the player instead declares, "I find the map in the study!" we all look at him strangely, and re-iterate that we're not in a study, there's just this 10'x10' room containing nothing but an orc with a pie.
> 
> Clearly, then, these two acts of authorship are not the same thing, as one is allowed by the _*fictional *_positioning of the scene and the other is not.  Emphasis added by author.
> 
> If the fiction has a recursive effect on future acts of authorship, can we claim that since fiction doesn't exist all acts of authorship are the same?  No, clearly this is false.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> But that would be a confusion; the same sort of confusion that leads to things like the suggestion that _a GM deciding how a fictional person responds to an imagined threat_ is a realistic model of _how an actual person might actually respond to an actual threat_.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> LOL.  No, seriously, I just laughed out loud and got weird looks.  I seriously have no idea how you make arguments like 'fiction doesn't exist' and then say that 'because all fiction doesn't exist, all acts of authorship are the same' and then say that 'some acts of authorship are confused because they rely on how that author imagines the fiction'.  The latter cannot flow from the previous assertions.  You cannot say that an act of authorship is wrong because it imagines the wrong kind of non-existent fiction to base it's authorship on.'  If all acts of authorship are the same, then all reasons for authorship are irrelevant.  You cannot, on the one hand, say that it doesn't matter what's authored because fiction doesn't exist and then try to say that some things that are authored have a higher value because of the reasoning behind the authoring.  If I imagine that the fiction I authored is a realistic portrayal of how a real person might react, then, according to your argument, this is just as valid authoring that same fiction because I believe unicorns would make dragons make that person say that.
> 
> I'm beginning to seriously doubt your claims of experience in discussion of the metaphysics of fiction.  Or, rather, I'm coming around to thinking your experience is discussing it at bars over a few pints with impressionable friends.  If this is your offering, yikes.[/sblock]
Click to expand...


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> I think your distinctions are not genuine ones. They trade on an illusion that "being introduced into the fiction" = "actually present". But it doesn't - fictional things dopn't really exist, and aren't present.




So let me get this straight...you don’t like when the GM uses secret backstory to prevent the players from doing something that can’t be done?


----------



## Aenghus

I find mysteries are very hard to run in RPGs unless they are a total railroad, as the genre requires players to seek out clues and anomalies in the gameworld, and poke at the world to see what happens, and referees being human and fallible, with limited time to prepare, what they find some of the time is glitches in the simulation. Now these could be logical flaws, blind spots, errors of fact, continuity errors, etc and at least some of the time the players can't distinguish these unintended anomalies from actual clues.

Now there's a variety of ways with dealing with such errors so they don't distract the players too much. Most of them disappear into the general noise of the game, in any case, but players can happen to obsess about a spurious clue that wasn't supposed to be there at all, and spin grandiose theories around the most ephemeral of leads. Personally, I often come clean and admit it was a mistake and there's nothing there. I've seen too many referees stubbornly drive their campaign off a cliff because they were unwilling to admit they made a mistake.

IMO this is the difference between cause and effect in the real world and in a RPG, the real world doesn't glitch out over personal issues, but the gameworld might due to referee's lack of sleep, a bad day at work, or personal problems. In the real world properly conceived and executed experiments yield reliable predictable results, whereas in a conventional DM-run game that's too much to expect from most game systems or referees. RPGs aren't reliable simulations precisely because of the the squishy flawed fallible human in the loop.

So when a PC can't find footprints where she expected to, it could be because they weren't there, or because they should have been there but there was a mistake in the adventure module, or because the referee made a mistake and missed that part of the module. Mysteries call players out to investigate clues and anomalies, some of which equate to the player pointing out the mistakes in the referee's worldbuilding and plotting. The intricacies of mystery plots make presenting them a difficult process. There are often typos and errors in printed scenarios, and self-written work can have errors as well. Human error is always a possibility.

How each table deals with such errors varies a lot.


----------



## innerdude

Ovinomancer said:


> I believe your actual argument is that unless the player can introduce entirely new elements of the fiction through action declaration, they lack agency over the shared narrative.




That's . . . a pretty accurate assessment. I think that is generally @_*pemerton*_'s position. It may not veer into "introducing entirely new elements" most of the time, though, but merely "re-frame an existing element based on character action declaration and resolution."



Ovinomancer said:


> I believe your argument is that "we go left, is the study there?" is different from "we go left and enter the study!"  And it is, but these kinds of declarations don't really exist in the same way in both styles.  They may exist in a DM facing game, where the decision as to which way to turn at an intersection is one of the many kinds of player choice offered, but neither would occur in a player-facing game that isn't being degenerate.  This is because the GM in a player facing game isn't going to frame a scene where such choices are made -- if something like this happens it's an error in framing and it will likely be glossed as 'say yes' because it's so unimportant; ie this isn't a choice that has any agency because it shouldn't be a choice at all.




I think you perceive this as negative, but from my view this seems accurate. The whole point of avoiding "secret backstory" is exactly to avoid the kinds of "red herring," pixel-witching, auto-negating GM style that lead to little enjoyment for anyone except the GM, who gets to feel pleased with him/herself at how cleverly they're building a sense of "the unknown."



Ovinomancer said:


> Instead, the GM is going to 'go to the action' and frame the scene in the study to begin with.




Maybe----if the PCs have earned the right to that framing, AND it fits a dramatic need to set that framing, AND it serves to make play enjoyable for all.



Ovinomancer said:


> This is the element I'm pointing at - the player-facing game wraps up all of the agency into the 'search for the map' declaration because that's the only real choice the players make in the scene -- everything else is provided by the GM (possibly according to notes prepped and found useful for this situation) as framing, framing that points straight at getting to this kind of declaration.




Ah, see, this is where things slightly go off course, because you've forgotten what you said upstream earlier---that in player-driven play, they have the ability to add, inject, or reframe portions of the framing. And again, this all assumes they've earned the right to "act within" the framing, and it meets dramatic need. 



Ovinomancer said:


> The GM isn't even offering the ability to choose which hall to turn down to find the study, so claiming you increase agency because the GM forces situations onto players that go straight to those declarations that stake objectives is being myopic -- it's intentionally ignoring that agency is lessened by the fact that the players have no way to avoid or mitigate circumstances prior to the frame where the big question is thrust upon them.




So, I think you're starting to conflate "illusionism" with "player-driven" here. The point of player-driven play is, if the dramatic needs and prior action declarations of the PCs haven't merited framing a scene where they're looking for the map, then why are they looking for a map? If they're not even supposed to be there (based on dramatic need), does it make any difference if they're allowed to search one side of the hall versus the other? If the scene frame isn't appropriate, giving them a false sense of agency by letting them search both sides of the hall seems a pretty poor compromise. 



Ovinomancer said:


> You completely defeated your own argument by proving what I said.  The scene you describe opening with does not address the primary goal of play for the character involved.  That goal is saving his brother.  You didn't introduce a scene where saving the brother was at stake, and any declaration of 'I save my brother from possession by a balrog!' would not have the fictional positioning to succeed and would automatically fail.  Instead, you introduced a scene who's primary purpose was establishing a challenge that had to be overcome in order to move towards gaining the fictional positioning to save the brother.
> 
> To contrast to the map in the study example, if you start that game with a scene having to bypass the guards stationed outside the building with the study in it, this is the same -- it's part of the GM's job to introduce challenges to obstruct the player's goals and provide interesting story.  The guards must be overcome to gain the fictional positioning (being in the study) to find the map.  A success with the guards may move the positioning to the study, or it may move to a new challenge -- you're now talking to the captain of the guards or the building's owner or whatever -- prior to achieving the necessary positioning.  This is how the game progresses, but this progression is inserted by the GM as needed to make the positioning difficult to obtain, else the game is too easy and the big questions are too quickly resolved.  Of course, successes will move rapidly towards the completion, but failures will cause additional complications and too many might cause possible outright failure of the objective.




The idea here isn't to deny the GM the ability to frame challenges. If (s)he wants to frame a "pass the guards" challenge or a "successfully sneak through the hallways undetected" challenge, great! _As long as the scene frame represents appropriate dramatic need._

The point is to allow the players the freedom to potentially re-frame the fiction based on their action declarations and successful mechanical resolution. How many of us have played games where we've attempted to sneak past those guards, only to have the GM say, "Great, you all succeed on your Stealth checks, but you didn't see the magical trap just inside the door, so you've alerted the guards."

Yep, it's happened to me. Almost exactly like that. Huge build up to sneaking past the guards, only to have that success totally negated by hidden, unknowable GM backstory. 

Whereas, player driven play would say, "You've earned your success, and because you've earned your success, as GM, I'm to allow the next scene frame to move you past the guards, and closer to resolving your dramatic need."

It's a mindset more than anything. Yes, if you as GM _really want_ to play out that piece of hidden backstory, and the magic trap now calls down the guards, and the PCs are now farther away from fulfilling their dramatic stakes, cool. Go right ahead. Totally your call. 

I just know for me, I no longer find that kind of play interesting in the least. 




Ovinomancer said:


> I fully understand that some people really prefer a style of play where everything is 'big decision' moves, the ones that really move the game along.  Others prefer a game where small choices are often made and the frequency of big decision moves is lesser, but that doesn't necessarily mean that agency exercised by the players in these two styles is different.  This my point -- claiming that since your style of play focuses on big moves and so gives more agency fails to account that such questions still occur in DM-facing games, just mixed in with many more smaller moves.  You continue to compare a single declaration -- finding a map -- in each of the two styles as if they are the same kind of move in both.  They are not.  The framing is different.  The focus is different.  The outcomes of success and failure are different.  Therefore, you cannot compare the levels of agency available in the two styles by comparing different moves that have the same grammatical structure.




Hmm, this seems a fairly threadbare argument. In player-driven play, the player has the right to say to the GM, "I think we've earned the right to move past this small, incremental bit of minutiae that's not terribly interesting to me, and get to the heart of our dramatic stakes, don't you think?"

In a GM-driven game, the most likely response to that query is, "Stuff it."

Which of those choices offers more "player agency"?

If your group has agreed that the smaller, incremental decision style is a fit for you, great . . . but are you REALLY sure your players have agreed to that contract? Because my last Savage Worlds fantasy campaign where I was a player and not a GM, I had no say in setting the dramatic stakes, and I found large swathes of that campaign tedious and boring. 

And if the GM had asked me about it, I would have told him so.


----------



## chaochou

Ovinomancer said:


> You're equivocating here that fictions that contain fictional characters and fictional events that are called stories exist but the fictional characters and fictional events do not.  This is ridiculous -- how can things that do not exist individually ever gain collective existence?




Okay - let's try this and see how your argument stacks up when you have to try and illustrate it.

I have a giant yellow teapot full of dragons in my front garden.

Here's the question...given that those words now exist, is it your position that the teapot full of dragons now exists in my front garden?

It's a simple yes or no question, but I doubt you'll have the honesty not to try and moronically blert your way through a non-answer.

Yes or no?


----------



## Nagol

chaochou said:


> Okay - let's try this and see how your argument stacks up when you have to try and illustrate it.
> 
> I have a giant yellow teapot full of dragons in my front garden.
> 
> Here's the question...given that those words now exist, is it your position that the teapot full of dragons now exists in my front garden?
> 
> It's a simple yes or no question, but I doubt you'll have the honesty not to try and moronically blert your way through a non-answer.
> 
> Yes or no?




The fiction exists.  And if the group has agreed to address the fiction as part of a game, players' further actions must take it into account.


----------



## chaochou

Nagol said:


> The fiction exists.  And if the group has agreed to address the fiction as part of a game, players' further actions must take it into account.




This is exactly the kind of dishonesty I would expect.

Is there a yellow teapot full of dragons in my garden or not?


----------



## Nagol

chaochou said:


> This is exactly the kind of dishonesty I would expect.
> 
> Is there a yellow teapot full of dragons in my garden or not?




Who gives a *bleep*?  No one in this thread, except perhaps you, is claiming that the circumstances and situations presented at the game table are real to the players.  There is no dishonesty in my statement.  Indeed, in both player-facing and DM-facing games (to use Ovinomancer's terms), that game conceit is a requirement for play.    The framing required in player-facing games establishes the fiction the players must work within until the scene is resolved and a new framing is presented.

If I frame a scene at sea with the players operating a pirate vessel that's approaching a potential victim, the players do not get to convert the vessel into a M1 Abrams' tank on a whim.


----------



## chaochou

Nagol said:


> Utter garbage.




The topic was whether the existence of fiction means the content of that fiction must also exist.

If you'e going to butt in, try to keep up.


----------



## Nagol

chaochou said:


> The topic was whether the existence of fiction means the content of that fiction must also exist.
> 
> If you'e going to butt in, try to keep up.




I'm keeping up fine; you're going for irrelevancies.

No the topic is can fiction exist if its constituent elements have no such existence.  Holmes may not be real, but his causal influence inside the _Hound of the Baskervilles_ is as real as the fiction itself is -- not just imagined by the reader.  The fact the author made up the narrative and assigned the causal effects does not make his influence any less causal; in fact it makes it more since the reader can afford to ignore any other source of potential causation other than the viewpoint presented by the author* because that is a primary trope of fiction.



*save of course for those narratives that specifically upend that trope (by using unreliable narrators for example).


----------



## Michael Silverbane

chaochou said:


> Okay - let's try this and see how your argument stacks up when you have to try and illustrate it.
> 
> I have a giant yellow teapot full of dragons in my front garden.
> 
> Here's the question...given that those words now exist, is it your position that the teapot full of dragons now exists in my front garden?
> 
> It's a simple yes or no question, but I doubt you'll have the honesty not to try and moronically blert your way through a non-answer.
> 
> Yes or no?




Under the following assumptions, the answer is yes....

That you are the DM in a DM-facing game or that you are a dm or player in a player-facing game where the scene is framed such that establishing such elements in the narrative space makes sense.
That your front garden has been established as an element in the narrative space of that game.
That by "exists" you mean "is an established fact of the narrative space of the game."

Outside of those assumptions, the answer is no.


----------



## chaochou

Nagol said:


> I'm keeping up fine; you're going for irrelevancies.
> 
> No the topic is can fiction exist if its constituent elements have no such existence.




No. You are doing exactly what I predicted would happen and dishonestly avoiding the question.

Try again.

There is a giant yellow teapot full of dragons in my front garden.

(Fiction now exists)

Does that mean that there is a giant yellow teapot full of dragons in my garden?

(Do the constituent elements have existence?)

You're trying but failing to avoid the question that drives at the very essence of the matter because you don't want to admit the answer.

Try again - answer the question.

Or do you want to keep obfuscating and lying about 'causal power'? LOL!

Okay, just for laughs try question 2. The dragons just eat my neighbours unicorn. Are you saying they now have 'real' causal power because I wrote that?


----------



## Nagol

chaochou said:


> No. You are doing exactly what I predicted would happen and dishonestly avoiding the question.
> 
> Try again.
> 
> There is a giant yellow teapot full of dragons in my front garden.
> 
> (Fiction now exists)
> 
> Does that mean that there is a giant yellow teapot full of dragons in my garden?
> 
> (Do the constituent elements have existence?)




Is there a teapot full of dragons in your yard?  Sure.  If you say so.  What can I know from here?  No, wait my cat told me he ate them so I guess they're gone.



> You're trying but failing to avoid the question that drives at the very essence of the matter because you don't want to admit the answer.
> 
> Try again - answer the question.
> 
> Or do you want to keep obfuscating and lying about 'causal power'? LOL!
> 
> Okay, just for laughs try question 2. The dragons just eat my neighbours unicorn. Are you saying they now have 'real' causal power because I wrote that?




The sudden disappearance of unicorns has been solved though.  Good to know.  The neighbours know who to sue now.

If a player in a game I'm playing makes that statement -- and has the authority to inject such elements in the fiction -- then I as GM or as another player have to take that revelation into account for any and all actions/reactions/declarations I will make.  If a NPC acts plausibly after an in-game event, it is not appropriate for me to say "Well , that reaction is just the imagining of the GM and thus not really real."  It is appropriate for me to say "The event caused <NPC name> to react".


----------



## The Crimson Binome

pemerton said:


> The absence of foot prints is a result of causal processes that actually took place in the world (eg the person didn't go there; or the earth was very hard; or etc, etc).
> 
> The absence of foot prints in a RPG mystery resolved in a "hidden backstory" style is because the GM decided not to author any such element of the fiction. Playing a game and having the outcomes of my moves stipulated by another participant is not remotely the same thing as actually carrying out an investigation.
> 
> It may make for good or bad game design and game play to give a participant such a power of stipulation. But comparing it to the reality of engaging with an independently and objectively-existing world gets us nowhere towards considering those matters.



As far as the players are concerned, playing in a world where the backstory is authored by the DM is identical to playing in a world where the backstory is generated through internal causal processes, in every way that matters. In both cases, the agency of the player is limited to what the character can actually accomplish through their own means, and they don't have to worry about accidentally authoring backstory as a result of actions they take in the present.

If you can't understand that simple fact, then you will never understand the point of worldbuilding, or the concept of actually roleplaying _as_ a character rather than telling a story _about_ a character; and as such, this entire thread is a waste of time.


----------



## Lanefan

chaochou said:


> No. You are doing exactly what I predicted would happen and dishonestly avoiding the question.
> 
> Try again.
> 
> There is a giant yellow teapot full of dragons in my front garden.



Good.  You've just authored a bit of fiction about dragons in a teapot in a garden.  That fiction - in the form of some words on a screen - is now something that's been added to my real-world frame of reference as something I have read (though for these purposes and to make the distinction clearer the Holmes example is better, as the words are contained in a real physical book you can hold in your real physical hand).  *But the fiction also exists within itself*, and I'll get back to that in a moment.  The dragons, however, do not really exist in your real garden; and neither does the teapot.

Where things are going sideways here is the concept of the fiction existing within itself - which it does - and what happens there.  My PC exists within the fiction of the game just like Sherlock Holmes exists within the fiction as presented by Sir ACDoyle.  The key difference between my PC and Holmes, however, is that within the fiction I can direct what my PC does and how it interacts with the rest of the fiction as presented.

So if an orc comes up and attacks my PC that orc exists within the fiction, even though there's no real orc attacking me as a player at the table.  If my PC comes over a rise and sees a castle in the distance that castle now exists within the fiction, even though when I as a player pull back the curtain on my game room window there's no castles out there.

Where it gets fuzzy is when interacting with other PCs, as they in theory have vague real-world mirrors called the other players in the game; and here while I at the table am in reality talking to Joe the player what we should both be imagining is that Lanefan the character is talking to Falstaff the character.

And once it's established that the fiction exists within itself the door is open for causality and consequences and all sorts of other stuff to exist within the fiction; and then it merely becomes a question of how best to author and-or present these things in such a way that things remain believable.

So, back to the teapot full of dragons on your lawn.  Having established the fiction of their existence and of some unicorns next door, within the fiction it's entirely possible to author or present a situation where the dragons annoy the unicorns enough (_cause_) that the unicorns come over and smash the teapot with their hooves (_effect_).  This is in-fiction causality - nothing to do with reality but very relevant within the fiction itself.  Meanwhile in reality all that's happened in the time it took me to type this is that the grass on your lawn has grown by a very tiny fraction of an inch and maybe become wetter depending what the weather's doing where you are.

And a lot of this discussion has been based on the idea of this within-the-fiction causality and how - and by who - it is authored and-or presented.

Lan-"that said, if you really are seeing dragons in a giant teapot on your lawn: whatever you're smokin', I want some"-efan


----------



## Ovinomancer

innerdude said:


> That's . . . a pretty accurate assessment. I think that is generally @_*pemerton*_'s position. It may not veer into "introducing entirely new elements" most of the time, though, but merely "re-frame an existing element based on character action declaration and resolution."



Thanks, I was pretty sure I grasped the core conceit -- as I said, I've played in that style of game and have enjoyed it.  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] doesn't always do the best job at explaining his points, mostly because he uses weird vocabulary to do so.  If you're not already in the know, it's hard to parse where he's going sometimes.




> I think you perceive this as negative, but from my view this seems accurate. The whole point of avoiding "secret backstory" is exactly to avoid the kinds of "red herring," pixel-witching, auto-negating GM style that lead to little enjoyment for anyone except the GM, who gets to feel pleased with him/herself at how cleverly they're building a sense of "the unknown."



No, not at all.  If I came across as thinking this is a negative, please let me assure you that's incorrect.  I just think it's a different approach with a different conceptual model that makes it impossible to examine a single action declaration from a different context in a way that's meaningful.  You could not, for example, pull any single action declaration from a DM driven game and evaluate it with any accuracy from a player driven game viewpoint.  Hence my constant call out to chess and checkers.  The games have many similarities, but you cannot evaluate the jumping of a piece in checkers with the rules of chess.




> Maybe----if the PCs have earned the right to that framing, AND it fits a dramatic need to set that framing, AND it serves to make play enjoyable for all.




That's what I was driving at.  I'm not claiming to be better at expressing this than I say [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is.



> Ah, see, this is where things slightly go off course, because you've forgotten what you said upstream earlier---that in player-driven play, they have the ability to add, inject, or reframe portions of the framing. And again, this all assumes they've earned the right to "act within" the framing, and it meets dramatic need.



Actually... yes and no.  I was talking to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] in with the specifics he mentioned in his post that the map is known in the fiction already and is an objective of the play right now.  In that case, my statements make sense.  If we're going with the map being a spur introduction, not previously determined to be in an objective of play, then, yes, my example goes a tad off course.  It wasn't meant to be universal, as it's, again, hard to pin down the play in a way that's comparable without such artificial constraints on the play.  



> So, I think you're starting to conflate "illusionism" with "player-driven" here. The point of player-driven play is, if the dramatic needs and prior action declarations of the PCs haven't merited framing a scene where they're looking for the map, then why are they looking for a map? If they're not even supposed to be there (based on dramatic need), does it make any difference if they're allowed to search one side of the hall versus the other? If the scene frame isn't appropriate, giving them a false sense of agency by letting them search both sides of the hall seems a pretty poor compromise.



Yup, again, this is what I was using as my understanding, but I was trying to compare and contrast a similar setup of the fiction -- that the objective of the play was known -- that the objective was to find the map and everyone knows this.  I was trying to spiral out from there.  




> The idea here isn't to deny the GM the ability to frame challenges. If (s)he wants to frame a "pass the guards" challenge or a "successfully sneak through the hallways undetected" challenge, great! _As long as the scene frame represents appropriate dramatic need._



Totally, that's what I'm getting at -- that ability of the GM to introduce obstacles to the objective of play is similar in intent to the planned dungeons acting as an obstacle to the goal of play.  I'm trading on the edges here, I don't plan dungeons to any level of specificity and move things around and allow additions in play due to player declarations, but I do write down some notes so I have a framework of the general challenges I present. I'm more DM-driven when I run, but I have a number of things I do that allow the players to establish their own fictions through their actions free and clear.  I don't have a planned plot at all, and I'm not yet sure what the players are going to decide they ultimately want to do.  Right now, their focused on establishing a safe base of operations and exploring the nearby lands.  Suitable for 3rd level characters -- local issues, local goals.  If they look like they're lagging, well, ninjas attack -- or, really, an NPC provides a prompt by bringing not a quest with a goal but a problem looking for a solution -- provided by the players.



> The point is to allow the players the freedom to potentially re-frame the fiction based on their action declarations and successful mechanical resolution. How many of us have played games where we've attempted to sneak past those guards, only to have the GM say, "Great, you all succeed on your Stealth checks, but you didn't see the magical trap just inside the door, so you've alerted the guards."
> 
> Yep, it's happened to me. Almost exactly like that. Huge build up to sneaking past the guards, only to have that success totally negated by hidden, unknowable GM backstory.
> 
> Whereas, player driven play would say, "You've earned your success, and because you've earned your success, as GM, I'm to allow the next scene frame to move you past the guards, and closer to resolving your dramatic need."
> 
> It's a mindset more than anything. Yes, if you as GM _really want_ to play out that piece of hidden backstory, and the magic trap now calls down the guards, and the PCs are now farther away from fulfilling their dramatic stakes, cool. Go right ahead. Totally your call.
> 
> I just know for me, I no longer find that kind of play interesting in the least.



I don't find your example remotely interesting at all and I don't play in those games at all either.  If a DM isn't honestly presenting challenges, that's a play problem that goes outside of the styles we're talking about and addresses the social agreement in the game.  I don't mind if such a thing happens and it's immediately apparent that it happened because of rash or unwise decisions by me -- ie, I knew such a trap was likely, had the means to detect it, and chose to risk it for some reason and got burned.  I also trust that my DM won't add such things in just to punish me, and I certainly won't do so as a DM.  I run a DM-driven game, but I foreshadow the hell out of everything.  I don't do gotcha traps, I show that traps exist and that you should be wary of them and then the players ignore that it's on them.  I don't have to work hard to get my players to make mistakes like that, I just have to work just enough that when they make the mistakes they're hitting their own heads with the heels of their hands.

And I like that -- I like foreshadowing, and it's an element that I find is very hard to achieve in player-driven games.  You can foreshadow something, but it immediately becomes a play issue -- the players either run for it or they avoid it and you can't push it back in or string it out without violating the play concepts of the game.  It's hard to put a slow burn pacing into player facing games.  Not impossible, just harder.  And that's because of the playstyle.





> Hmm, this seems a fairly threadbare argument. In player-driven play, the player has the right to say to the GM, "I think we've earned the right to move past this small, incremental bit of minutiae that's not terribly interesting to me, and get to the heart of our dramatic stakes, don't you think?"
> 
> In a GM-driven game, the most likely response to that query is, "Stuff it."



I'm sorry you've played with such terrible DMs.  Not sarcastic, but if you  believe this, it's likely through experience, and I'm sorry -- those DMs sucked.  Pacing is something that's a core function of DMing, and if your players are bored by some tedium in play, it's time to add ninjas and then have a long think after the game as to why and how you screwed up that badly.  



> Which of those choices offers more "player agency"?



I think this is a flawed question, which should be apparent by now.  I don't think you can compare the agency between games because the deliver mechanisms and expectations are so different.  There's a case to be made from the player driven side that player driven games include more agency, but there's also a case from DM-driven side that DM-driven games offer more agency (that one involves the fact that player-driven games cede some control over your character to the DM to use in both framing (you show up here and this is happening) and in failure resolutions (where the DM can dictate what the character does or thinks or beleives, depending on the stakes)).  Both have points that are very important to their individual adherents but have very little meaning in the other context.



> If your group has agreed that the smaller, incremental decision style is a fit for you, great . . . but are you REALLY sure your players have agreed to that contract? Because my last Savage Worlds fantasy campaign where I was a player and not a GM, I had no say in setting the dramatic stakes, and I found large swathes of that campaign tedious and boring.
> 
> And if the GM had asked me about it, I would have told him so.



I'm not going to take offense to the implication in that question, but, yes, yes I am absolutely sure, because it's been openly discussed.  I have 2 players that dislike the additional responsibilities that player-driven games place upon them, and the rest are largely ambivalent.  Again, I apologize that you have had bad DMs that never seek player input into stakes, but that's not how I run at all.  Stakes are set by player declarations.  Even, sometimes, the introduction of new elements of fiction. 

I use a philosophy similar to some others on the board:  I set the scene, with heavy foreshadowing in favor of secret keeping.  The players declare actions in terms of what their characters do (and not "I make a perception check!"), and I either narrate the outcome without a roll or I ask for a roll with declared stakes.  I don't ask for rolls as a rule unless there's uncertainty in the outcome and there's a cost to failure.  I don't hide important play objectives, I place them behind challenges.  The running example of the map in the study instead being in the kitchen is ridiculous to me, because if the objective of play was a map, then the objective is obvious or known -- you'd never look in the study if it was in the kitchen because it would obviously be in the kitchen.  Getting to the kitchen would be the challenge, not searching for the map once you're there.  If I were to run this scenario, the party would be well aware that the map they've decided they need (and they'd decide that) would be on the wall of the study, plain as day, but you'd have to get past the guards and the owner in some manner to get there.  I'd have notes on the general layout of the house, some notes on the guards (combat stats, general attitudes), and some notes on the noble (same stuff, really), and that's about it.  The players would engage these challenges however they want, and, upon achieving the study, get the objective.  Hiding things behind 'guess the right combination  of actions and wording' is f*ing boring, and I'd never run a game like that.  Hell, I tried to run Storm King's Thunder and essentially jettisoned entire chapters and rewrote them because they were pixel bitches or had one prepared way through.  I reminded myself why I hate adventures.  I do love maps, though.

And, again, I've enjoyed my forays into player-driven games, and would gladly play again.  I'd prefer not to run one, though, as I can handle improvising one character, but having to improvise against (or with, depends on the situation) multiple other players isn't something I enjoy.


----------



## Ovinomancer

chaochou said:


> Okay - let's try this and see how your argument stacks up when you have to try and illustrate it.
> 
> I have a giant yellow teapot full of dragons in my front garden.
> 
> Here's the question...given that those words now exist, is it your position that the teapot full of dragons now exists in my front garden?
> 
> It's a simple yes or no question, but I doubt you'll have the honesty not to try and moronically blert your way through a non-answer.
> 
> Yes or no?




I do so love my honesty being questioned right off the bat, as if I've acted, in any way, in a dishonest fashion towards you or anyone else in this thread at any time.  I find your framing to be very rude and unhelpful, and would ask you moderate it.  If you can't make a point without claiming others are dishonest, do me the favor of not responding to me anymore.  Thank you.

That said, you've completely missed the point I was making, but I'll answer your question anyway.

Yes, a teapot full of dragons now exists in your front garden _in the fiction you created_.  No, there is almost certainly not a teapot full of dragons in your front garden that can be seen, touched, heard, smelled, or tasted. 

This, however, doesn't address my point, which was, in this case, specifically that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] claimed that _Hound of the Baskervilles_ existed _as a story_ but Sherlock Holmes _does not_.  To put it in your example, this would be like claiming the teapot full of dragons exists but the dragons do not.  It's nonsensical.  Either the dragons and the teapot exist or they do not, unless there's some other reason the teapot full of dragons can exist while the dragons do not and, if so, _state that reason_.  That was what I was saying in the part you quoted.  It has nothing to do with me thinking that teapots full of dragons exist in a physical sense in any way.

But, as for fiction existing, I argue that it does.  Fictions are ideas, and ideas have existence.  Not physical existence you can touch.  An imaginary orc cannot be touched or even seen by even the imaginer, but such sensations can be imagined to exist and described to others so as to share the idea.  The idea others now have of your orc isn't the same, but is can be similar enough to call it shared.  I can't share things that don't exist.  Something is there to be shared.

To return to your teapot full of dragons in your front garden, at no point do I assume that this a truthful statement about a physical reality -- I don't believe that there is a touchable, visible teapot full of touchable, visible dragons in your front garden (I do believe in your touchable and visible front garden, though, or at least that you may actually have such a real thing).  However, the fiction you created about a teapot of dragons in your front garden is a concept that you've managed to share with me -- you've given me this concept such that I can picture in my mind a teapot full of dragons in a front garden (sadly, it's a rather pathetic garden, but the teapot has a nice floral pattern and the dragons are iridescent green and adorable).  You're shared something with me, given me an idea that is, at least in the broad strokes, just like the idea you have.  That's real, that exists, else how did we share it?

Hopefully, by directly addressing your question and providing a full answer, I can avoid the return accusation of dishonesty.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Aenghus said:


> I find mysteries are very hard to run in RPGs unless they are a total railroad, as the genre requires players to seek out clues and anomalies in the gameworld, and poke at the world to see what happens, and referees being human and fallible, with limited time to prepare, what they find some of the time is glitches in the simulation. Now these could be logical flaws, blind spots, errors of fact, continuity errors, etc and at least some of the time the players can't distinguish these unintended anomalies from actual clues.
> 
> Now there's a variety of ways with dealing with such errors so they don't distract the players too much. Most of them disappear into the general noise of the game, in any case, but players can happen to obsess about a spurious clue that wasn't supposed to be there at all, and spin grandiose theories around the most ephemeral of leads. Personally, I often come clean and admit it was a mistake and there's nothing there. I've seen too many referees stubbornly drive their campaign off a cliff because they were unwilling to admit they made a mistake.
> 
> IMO this is the difference between cause and effect in the real world and in a RPG, the real world doesn't glitch out over personal issues, but the gameworld might due to referee's lack of sleep, a bad day at work, or personal problems. In the real world properly conceived and executed experiments yield reliable predictable results, whereas in a conventional DM-run game that's too much to expect from most game systems or referees. RPGs aren't reliable simulations precisely because of the the squishy flawed fallible human in the loop.
> 
> So when a PC can't find footprints where she expected to, it could be because they weren't there, or because they should have been there but there was a mistake in the adventure module, or because the referee made a mistake and missed that part of the module. Mysteries call players out to investigate clues and anomalies, some of which equate to the player pointing out the mistakes in the referee's worldbuilding and plotting. The intricacies of mystery plots make presenting them a difficult process. There are often typos and errors in printed scenarios, and self-written work can have errors as well. Human error is always a possibility.
> 
> How each table deals with such errors varies a lot.




I agree in the sense of a passive mystery -- those mysteries that don't do anything until the players engage them the correct way.  Whodunnits are passive mysteries, where you're trying to find and sort clues to find the "truth" of the events that have already taken place.  These mysteries are hard in DM-driven games because the fiction generation necessary to find the truth is held by the DM and only parceled out to the players as they clear certain fictional gates.  The problem with DM's holding information too tightly and ruining their games is apt here.  This can be overcome by using a number of techinques to a greater or lesser extent -- the triple clue method, using "ninjas attack" (any bad guy) that happen to have clear clues with them when defeated to get groups unstuck, etc., but these all just try to paper over the worse issues of the passive mysteries.

In player driven games, it's both easier and weirder.  Here, the endpoint cannot be determined, just the initial setup.  At that point it's off to the races as the players invent their own clues and test them against the mechanics.  The end result is wildly (but often entertainingly) unpredictable.  System mechanics can act to constrain and funnel some of this, but the result is that you're not really solving a mystery in the classic sense, but rather building one as you go along and finding out the ending as a surprise.  

I, in my DM-facing game, avoid passive mysteries in favor of active mysteries.  In these, the events are still unfolding, and they come to the players.  The DM can control the flow of information to achieve better pacing with the ultimate goal of having the players gain full knowledge of the mystery.  The crux of play here isn't solving the mystery, it's what the players do with the information.  I find this works well by increasingly releasing the fictional constraints and adopting player theories and actions to guide the mystery as you go along.  It's a kind of middle ground, where you start with some strong themes and push them a few times until the players are working it out on their own and you only have to keep providing framing to let them move forward.  Tight control at the beginning shifting to more and more player autonomy by the end with the players ultimately decides how they want to engage the revealed mystery as the climax.


----------



## chaochou

Lanefan said:


> Where things are going sideways here is the concept of the fiction existing within itself - which it does - and what happens there.




No. That is pure meaningless gibberish. There is no 'inside' or 'outside'.

There's a giant yellow teapot full of dragons in my garden. Your options are to add to the story or not. That's it. Add to story, in the real world. Or don't. End of options.

The words I write exist, but the things I write about don't. The dragons live in a snail. Now a shoe. Now they have turned into trampolining swans. They seem to lack causal power, those dragons. No fight at all. Look, I just turned them into an obsidian flute.

Causal power of chaochou: total  Causal power of fictional things: none

Does this fiction exist? Yes. Do the teapot or dragon or shoes or flute or trampolining swans exist? No.

Fiction existing: check. Content of fiction not existing: check.

Case closed.

If you all want to pretend your games aren't authored by people playing the game, or that books aren't written by authors, go right ahead. I got nothing against self-deception as a playstyle.

I do have something against it as a mode of rpg-analysis, though.


----------



## chaochou

Ovinomancer said:


> Yes, a teapot full of dragons now exists in your front garden _in the fiction you created_.




This is meaningless. There is no seperate existence 'in the fiction'. It is these words and nothing else.

The dragons are now a bacon sandwich. Now a children's swing. 

I type real words. Things that don't exist do non-existent stuff.

There's no inside and outside. That's the way you and Lanefan choose to lie to yourselves. Which is a fine, popular and long-standing form of play. But a garbage form of rpg theory.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> So let me get this straight...you don’t like when the GM uses secret backstory to prevent the players from doing something that can’t be done?



I don't understand your question. In particular, I'm not sure what you're envisaging can't be done.

I'll try again to explain how I see it, and perhaps that will answer your question.

Scenario 1
The established fiction - let's say - is that the PCs are hoping to find a map; that the map is lost/missing/somewhere unknown; and that one particular PC has just found him-/herself in a study.

Then - let's suppose - the player of that PC, using his/her power to make moves in the game, declares "I search the study for that map we're looking for." The shared fiction now includes the PC searching the study.

The question is: can, and if so does, the shared fiction change to include the PC finding the map in the study?

Scenario 2
The established fiction - let's say - is that the PCs are engaged in a raid of some orcs' stronghold (like, say, B2); that the orcs are very ready to fight back; and that one particular PC, armed with a sword, has just found him-/herself in a room with an orc.

Then - let's suppose - the player of that PC, using his/he power to make moves in the game, declares "I draw my sword and attack the orc!" The shared fiction now includes the PC drawing his/her sword and engaging the orc in combat.

The question is: can, and if so does, the shared fiction change to include the PC killing the orc?

My contention
The shared fiction changes by acts of authorship. In the RPGing scenarios I've described, there are two candidates to do that authoring: the player and the GM.

It is very widely accepted among RPGers that, in scenario 2, the dice are used to mediate the authorship. Rougly speaking, if the dice come up in the player's favour, the player's desire as to the content of the shared fiction is realised: it includes the PC killing the orc. If the dice come up otherwise, then the player's desire is not realised: the shared fiction will include a still-livng orc, and possibly other consequences as well (such as a wounded or dead PC).

There is no technical or metaphysical reason why scenario 1 has to be any different in the way the action declaration is resolved and hence the new ficiton is authored. That is, the dice can be used to mediate the authorship: if they come up in the player's favour, the content of the shared fiction includes the PC finding the map in the study; if not, then the shared fiction does not include discovery of a map, and possibly includes other consequences as well.

If scenario 1 nevertheless is handled differently - eg the state of the shared fiction following the action declaration is determined by the GM reading from his/her notes - then the player does not have agency over that aspect of the shared fiction. Agency in respect of that aspect of the shared fiction has been reserved to the GM alone.

Trying to explain that reservation of agency in metaphysical terms - _the map is in <the kitchen, the cave, wherever> and not in the study_, and so of course the PC can't find it in the study - is just reiterating that agency has been reserved to the GM. Because _the map being in the kitchen (or wherever)_ is itself just an authored piece of fiction. It's not an independent, objective reality in the way that the actual location of some actual map in the real world would be.


----------



## Emerikol

I think a canned setting would be fine if the players were experiencing it for the first time.  I have no problem using anything but I don’t like players coming in with expectations about the canned setting.


----------



## Emerikol

pemerton said:


> I don't understand your question. In particular, I'm not sure what you're envisaging can't be done.
> 
> I'll try again to explain how I see it, and perhaps that will answer your question.
> 
> Scenario 1
> The established fiction - let's say - is that the PCs are hoping to find a map; that the map is lost/missing/somewhere unknown; and that one particular PC has just found him-/herself in a study.
> 
> Then - let's suppose - the player of that PC, using his/her power to make moves in the game, declares "I search the study for that map we're looking for." The shared fiction now includes the PC searching the study.
> 
> The question is: can, and if so does, the shared fiction change to include the PC finding the map in the study?
> 
> Scenario 2
> The established fiction - let's say - is that the PCs are engaged in a raid of some orcs' stronghold (like, say, B2); that the orcs are very ready to fight back; and that one particular PC, armed with a sword, has just found him-/herself in a room with an orc.
> 
> Then - let's suppose - the player of that PC, using his/he power to make moves in the game, declares "I draw my sword and attack the orc!" The shared fiction now includes the PC drawing his/her sword and engaging the orc in combat.
> 
> The question is: can, and if so does, the shared fiction change to include the PC killing the orc?
> 
> My contention
> The shared fiction changes by acts of authorship. In the RPGing scenarios I've described, there are two candidates to do that authoring: the player and the GM.
> 
> It is very widely accepted among RPGers that, in scenario 2, the dice are used to mediate the authorship. Rougly speaking, if the dice come up in the player's favour, the player's desire as to the content of the shared fiction is realised: it includes the PC killing the orc. If the dice come up otherwise, then the player's desire is not realised: the shared fiction will include a still-livng orc, and possibly other consequences as well (such as a wounded or dead PC).
> 
> There is no technical or metaphysical reason why scenario 2 has to be any different in the way the action declaration is resolved and hence the new ficiton is authored. That is, the dice can be used to mediate the authorship: if they come up in the player's favour, the content of the shared fiction includes the PC finding the map in the study; if not, then the shared fiction does not include discovery of a map, and possibly includes other consequences as well.
> 
> If scenario 2 nevertheless is handled differently - eg the state of the shared fiction following the action declaration is determined by the GM reading from his/her notes - then the player does not have agency over that aspect of the shared fiction. Agency in respect of that aspect of the shared fiction has been reserved to the GM alone.
> 
> Trying to explain that reservation of agency in metaphysical terms - _the map is in <the kitchen, the cave, wherever> and not in the study_, and so of course the PC can't find it in the study - is just reiterating that agency has been reserved to the GM. Because _the map being in the kitchen (or wherever)_ is itself just an authored piece of fiction. It's not an independent, objective reality in the way that the actual location of some actual map in the real world would be.




Sorry to quote everything but I’m on my phone.  

Agency over the underlying world beyond the character is reserved to the GM.  If there is an important map to be found I as GM know where it’s at.  It can’t be found anywhere else.  That is true of most major things.  When though it’s something I hadn’t considered then I figure out a DC based on knowledge of the world and the player can roll for it.  But such a thing would be central to the game only by happenstance.  

Here is the thing.  I want my players to feel like the world is a real place and they are their characters in that place.  It’s why verisimilitude is so important to us.  Far more than most groups.  It’s also why in the past I’ve argued against dissociative mechanics.  It’s that important to me.  As soon as the world feels fake I’m out.  I’m that way about movies and books as well.  Not everyone is like me so no worries.  Do as you like.  I know why I do what I do though and it does matter to me.


----------



## The Crimson Binome

pemerton said:


> There is no technical or metaphysical reason why scenario 2 has to be any different in the way the action declaration is resolved and hence the new ficiton is authored. That is, the dice can be used to mediate the authorship: if they come up in the player's favour, the content of the shared fiction includes the PC finding the map in the study; if not, then the shared fiction does not include discovery of a map, and possibly includes other consequences as well.



The player doesn't author the orc's death, and neither do the dice. Only the DM has the power to say what actually happens within the narrative.

Players never author fiction. The DM is the only one capable of authoring fiction. The DM may rely on dice, if they are uncertain as to what happens next. 

The only agency that a player has is to make decisions for their character. That is how we know this is a role-playing game.

Which part of this do you not understand? Or do you feign ignorance because you have nothing better to do than troll an online message board?


----------



## pemerton

On fiction and existence: this is a response to  [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]r,  [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION],  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION],  [MENTION=38016]Michael Silverbane[/MENTION] and  [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION].

To begin: reading, listening, imagining etc are real processes that take place. Imagining involves causal processes in the brain. Listening also involves processes in the ears. Reading also involves processes in the eyes.

I am taking the above to be uncontenious, so if you disagree you're going to have to let me know explicitly.

There is more to these processes, too, which I will get to below.

The process in the brain when these things - reading, listening, imagining - occur involve the linguistic capacity of the person to a high degree. I'm not really across the science of this, and am going to describe it in more colloquial terms: the person who is reading, listening or imagining forms and entertains ideas. Assuming that they know what they are reading, listening to or imagining is a fiction, however, then they don't form beliefs (other than prsently irrelevant beliefs, such as "I am now reading Hound of the Baskervilles").

For instance, a person reading Hound of the Baskervilles forms ideas - such as the idea of a super-capable detective called Sherlock Holmes - but does not (unless s/he has mistaken it for a documentary report) form the belief that there exists, or once existed, a super-capable detecitve called Sherlock Holmes.

The causal process whereby those ideas are formed invovles not only the person's brain, but their eyes. But it is not confined to the brain and eyes of the reader. The causal processes also involves the use of physical materials (ink, paper) to create visually perceptible markings (writing) which - due to other causal processes around language learning - are apt to cause certain ideas to arise in the brain of the reader.

The question of how lanugage "encodes" ideas is complex, and seems largely unnecessary to address in this thread. It's probably enough to say that a book (or a speech, or an episode of quiet imagining) is a concrete thing that "eccodes" or representes an abstract thing (ie a set of ideas). The causal capacity of the book to produce ideas in a reader can't be explained simply by referring to the ink marks on the paper - it's necessary to note that they "encode" ideas in a systematic fashion (ie linguistically) _and_ also to note that the reader has a capacity to apprehend that encoding (ie the reader has learned the language in which the book is written).

This is a good part of the sense in which fictions are real. There are further interesting questions about what constitutes a given fiction (eg why does my fanfic published on a Sherlock Holmes website not count as part of Hound of the Baskervilles). Upthread, discussing RPGing, I have simply glossed this as a type of social process whereby thje participants in the episode of RPGing arrive at a consensus on what their shared fiction is.

From the fact that fictions, and ideas, are real, it doesn't follow that _their content_ is real.  [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] has given a quite straightforward example above. When I read his sentence "I have a giant yellow teapot full of dragons in my front garden" I understood it. It's a perfectly straightforward sentence of English, and I grasped its meaning - I formed the requisite idea in my brain.

That doesn't mean that there exists a dragon, a giant yellow teapot, etc - those are all purely imaginary.

There is an obvious similarity, in this respect, between fictions and false beliefs: just as fictional things don't exist, nor do (say) events that are falsely believed to have occurred. Eg if someone falsely believes that humans have travelled to Mars, that person's belief is a real thing, capable of exercising causal power (eg it migh tlead them to ask "When did humans first land on Mars?) - but obviously it doesn't follow that there ever existed such an event as _the landing of humans on Mars_. But as I said above, there is also a difference between false belief and imagintion, namely, that imagination doesn't involve belief. It's a different sort of propositional attitude.

Thus, to say that The Hound of the Baskervilles - a story - exists, but that Sherlock Holmes does not, is no more nonsensical than to say that a mistaken news report about a human landing upon Mars exists, but that no actual such landing has occured. Ie not only is it not nonsensical, it's the only tenable thing to believe! (Spoiler alert: likewise it is as obvious that a cultural practice around Santa Claus exists, as it is that Santa Claus is not real. This is not a paradox: it's common sense, as every child who has had their fantasy punctured can tell you.)

The fact that we can have stories (like Hound of the Baskervilles) that are _about_ non-existent things (like Sherlock Holmes, or the hound) and that we can have cultural practices that are _about_ and operate _around_ non-existent things (like Santa Claus or Mickey Mouse) just reinforces the point that words and ideas can deal with non-existent things.

One consequence of the (I would say obvious) fact that imaginary things don't really exist is that we can imagine impossible things. In my Traveller game, we imagine starships that travel faster than light. In my D&D game, we imagine impossible magic, imposibly large insects, impossibly heavy flying creatures like dragons, impossible socieities and economies, etc. 

If ideas could only be about existent things, then (i) false beliefs would be impossible, and (ii) so would imagination.

Finally, to say that fictional things _exist in the fiction_ or _exercise causal power in the fiction_ is not to say anything more than that we can imagine things (characters, orcs, swords, studies, maps), and we can imagine things that do things (eg we can imagine people kiling orcs with swords, or finding maps in studies). That is a pretty banal point. It tells us nothing about what might count as a useful technique for RPG action resolution.


----------



## pemerton

prosfilaes said:


> No, this is a "Level 7 Complexity 5" skill challenge. This is not a "Level 7 Complexity 5" with a note that a failed Endurance check to cross The Barrens, a PC loses a healing surge. You can make anything work with enough kludges like that, but at the same time, you're making it more complex and less predictable.



I'm not sure what your point is. You said that a creature stat block introduces fiction. And I replied that the same is true of a skill challenge "stat block", which includes (eg) notes on difficulties of various actions that might be attempted, consequences for failure (like the one I mentioned), etc.

And I'm not sure why you describe notes on consequences as a "kludge" - this is a core part of the system (see 4e DMG p 76, and further elaboration in the DMG2).


----------



## pemerton

Saelorn said:


> The player doesn't author the orc's death, and neither do the dice. Only the DM has the power to say what actually happens within the narrative.
> 
> Players never author fiction. The DM is the only one capable of authoring fiction.



This is not a general truth about RPGing. It is true in those games in which player action declarations count only as suggestions to the GM to change the fiction a certain way. But that is just a subset of RPG play.



Saelorn said:


> As far as the players are concerned, playing in a world where the backstory is authored by the DM is identical to playing in a world where the backstory is generated through internal causal processes, in every way that matters. In both cases, the agency of the player is limited to what the character can actually accomplish through their own means, and they don't have to worry about accidentally authoring backstory as a result of actions they take in the present.



This likewise is not a general truth, because your conception of what ways matter is not universally held.

If I am actually trying to solve a mystery in the real world, and can't find any footprints, that's a fact about the world that I have to deal with.

If I am playing a RPG, and the GM tells me I can't find any footprints, that's a fact about the exercise of authority over the fiction in a game which has, as an important component of play, the generation of a shared fiction. As a player I _don't_ have to just deal with that - I can find a better game! And as a GM, I'm not obliged just to deal with this either - I can run my game in a fashion that I prefer (which, in fact, is what I do).

Or to put it another way: the allocation of authority to establish the fiction is not some brute matter of fact. It's a matter of game design, and it's up for grabs. It doesn't _have to be_ one way or another.


----------



## pemerton

Emerikol said:


> I want my players to feel like the world is a real place and they are their characters in that place.  It’s why verisimilitude is so important to us.  Far more than most groups.



It depends what you mean by "is a real place" - some of my games are rather gonzo (eg Marvel Heroic; epic-tier 4e) and so in that sense could never be mistaken for documentaries.

But if you are talking about "immersion" or a sense of "inhabitation" then that it is a very high priority for me, and I think for most of my players. But the method of action resolution is rather orthogonal to that. If the player declares "I search the study for the map", that does not involve any loss of inhabitation of the character. If the roll is then made, that is no different from any other rolling of the dice that the player does in the course of play. And if it comes up successful and the GM affirms "Yes, you find the map" - well, that doesn't involve any departure from immersion, realism or verisimilitude either.


----------



## Lanefan

chaochou said:


> No. That is pure meaningless gibberish. There is no 'inside' or 'outside'.



Do you never differentiate between in-character and out-of-character during play?  It's the same thing...

Or is everything in your game done from a third-person stance, completely 'gamist' and without character immersion?



> There's a giant yellow teapot full of dragons in my garden. Your options are to add to the story or not. That's it. Add to story, in the real world. Or don't. End of options.



Says you, ignoring options other than just add or do nothing:

Change the story without adding: there's a giant red teapot full of kittens in your garden (player agency at work right there!)
Ask questions for clarification about the story: the teapot's yellow, but what colour are the dragons; and how long has this all been there? (in other words, got you to add to the story rather than me)



> The words I write exist, but the things I write about don't. The dragons live in a snail. Now a shoe. Now they have turned into trampolining swans. They seem to lack causal power, those dragons. No fight at all. Look, I just turned them into an obsidian flute.



No matter what system she's using, if a DM presented the elements of her game world to her players with that level of consistency and continuity she'd be rightfully sacked in the first session.

If a game world is to be believable and playable there has to be some internal consistency and continuity or else the players can't possibly be expected to interact with it on any meaningful level at all.  And consistency and continuity both bring about and come from causality, where one thing reasonably leads to the next.



> Does this fiction exist? Yes. Do the teapot or dragon or shoes or flute or trampolining swans exist? No.



In the real world, this is true.

But in a game setting there's another layer to it all; a layer which you choose to wilfully (and wrongly, I think) deny the existence of: the reality within the fiction.

Does the fiction about the teapot etc. exist in real life? Yes.
Do the teapot etc. exist in real life?  No.
Do the teapot etc. exist within the fiction that has been created about them?  Yes.

Now while the above is an admittedly pointless distinction in regards to the fictional teapot - in the fiction as presented it just passively sits there and holds whatever's in it - it's a very important distinction in regards to player characters in a game world, as the whole basis of the game assumes that not only do the PCs exist within the game world (i.e. the fiction) but that furthermore they can and will react independently* to elements presented within that fiction.

* - independently as directed by their players, who in the real world are also reacting via their words to elements of the fiction as presented by the words of the DM.



> If you all want to pretend your games aren't authored by people playing the game, or that books aren't written by authors, go right ahead.



I've no argument with the idea that fictional things are authored by real people.



> I do have something against it as a mode of rpg-analysis, though.



Well, when that authorship comes about via the authors immersing themselves into the imaginary world and acting or reacting as their avatars (PCs) would logically do, doesn't it only make sense to analyse it from that angle?  To see how, within the imaginary world, one thing can lead to another?

I'm not looking to analyze why Joe always rolls his dice from left to right and tries to hit the chip bowl for luck; nor am I looking to analyze why Steve always follows along with Mary's suggestions while most of the time ignoring John's and rarely making any of his own.  That's not the point here.

I'm looking in this thread to analyze and explain what worldbuilding is for.  Worldbuilding, as in the building of imaginary worlds that don't exist in real life but still need to be made internally consistent within themselves in order to be playable and at least a tiny bit more realistic than a bad LSD trip.  And that consistency comes about via internal causality - one thing leads to the next - both in the worldbuilding phase and the actual run of play.

Real world: Cause: I declare my character casting a fireball.  Effect: I roll some damage dice (along with maybe an aiming roll depending on system), add 'em up, and the DM does some arithmetic to her monsters' remaining h.p. totals.  (_I-the-player don't hear the goblins screaming_)

Game world: Cause: Amelia Xana casts a spell using the requisite components, motions and utterances that she has been taught to use.  Effect: a small bead shoots from her hand and explodes among some goblins, killing most and leaving the few screaming survivors in a world o' hurt.  (_Amelia doesn't hear the rolling dice_)



> I type real words. Things that don't exist do non-existent stuff.
> 
> There's no inside and outside. That's the way you and Lanefan choose to lie to yourselves. Which is a fine, popular and long-standing form of play. But a garbage form of rpg theory.



Call it garbage if you like but your calling of it doesn't make it so.

And, to play the same type of game, in fact here you're not typing real words at all; and neither am I.

Oh sure, our fingers are hitting keys but nothing real comes of it; just something ephemeral on a screen, put there by interacting electrons.  I can only assume the words you see on your screen after I post this will be the same as I see on mine - we have to share that mutual trust and belief.  The same is true in a shared imaginary world: we have to share a mutual trust and belief that the elements of the game world are what we think they are, as presented by the DM.

The words would only become truly real - as in physically existing - were we to send each other letters on paper.

Lan-"even a print-screen won't make the words real without the mutual trust and belief that the electrons have put your actual words on the screen"-efan


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> My PC exists within the fiction of the game just like Sherlock Holmes exists within the fiction as presented by Sir ACDoyle. The key difference between my PC and Holmes, however, is that within the fiction I can direct what my PC does and how it interacts with the rest of the fiction as presented.



This is just confused.

There is no difference between your PC and Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle authors stuff about Holmes. You and your friend author stuff about your PC. You, the human being Lanefan, do not do anything "within the fiction" - you _write_ the fiction. Or perhaps your GM does.



chaochou said:


> No. That is pure meaningless gibberish. There is no 'inside' or 'outside'.
> 
> There's a giant yellow teapot full of dragons in my garden. Your options are to add to the story or not. That's it. Add to story, in the real world. Or don't. End of options.
> 
> The words I write exist, but the things I write about don't. The dragons live in a snail. Now a shoe. Now they have turned into trampolining swans. They seem to lack causal power, those dragons. No fight at all. Look, I just turned them into an obsidian flute.
> 
> Causal power of chaochou: total  Causal power of fictional things: none
> 
> Does this fiction exist? Yes. Do the teapot or dragon or shoes or flute or trampolining swans exist? No.
> 
> Fiction existing: check. Content of fiction not existing: check.
> 
> Case closed.



Right. Fictions don't write themselves. They are authored. This is true whether the fiction is a Mickey Mouse, Santa Claus, The Hound of the Baskervilles, or the content of an RPG session.

In the context of RPG play and design, the important question is _who gets to add to the fiction_ and _subject to what parameters_. Eg most RPGs (Toon is one obvious exception; the use of wish spells in D&D is another) don't permit _the dragon turned into a trampolining swan_ as an addition to the fiction. This is a more extreme example of hoping to find beam weapons in the Duke's toilet.

Typically, these parameters are established both informally (genre expectations; table understandings) and via the detailed rules (eg maybe when a character disarms someone, a die is rolled to see how many feet away the opponent's sword lands - if that die is a d10, then the game simply doesn't permit adding to the fiction _I disarm the orc and send its sword flying 15' away_). The more the game relies on "free descriptors" for action resolution, the more the informal methods come to the fore - eg in my 4e game, there is no _rule_ that tells us whether or not the epic-tier sorcerer can make an Arcana check to seal the Abyss (whereas there is a rule - the description of the Arcana skill - that tells us that, if your action declaration is "I seal the Abyss with my magic" then Arcana is the skill that is relevant). That the answer, at our table, was "yes" followed from a set of shared understandings built up over the years of play of the game. One side effect of a multi-year, start-at-Heroic-and-gradually-move-to-Epic style of play is that, as the scope and gonzo-ness of feasible action declarations grows over time, so does the group's shared understanding of what does or doesn't fit as an action declaration. I would expect that just turning up and running epic-tier 4e for a group of strangers as a one-shot would be much more challenging in this respect, as the scope of permissible action declarations would be quite unclear.

But anyway, all this is _actual social processes_ taking place in _the actual, real world_. The fiction itself doesn't - and, obviously, can't - generate any answers as to how additional bits of it are to be authored, by whom, and what they might contain. I think that it obviously conduces to the social character of the game for the informal parameters on authorship to be established collectively (both organically as I've described for 4e, and occasionally via deliberate discussion and decision among the group); and as I've already said again and again in this thread, there's no reason at all from the point of view of technical design why rule-generated constraints have to take only the GM's ideas for the fiction as inputs.

EDIT: More confusion:



			
				Lanefan said:
			
		

> Do the teapot etc. exist within the fiction that has been created about them? Yes.
> 
> Now while the above is an admittedly pointless distinction in regards to the fictional teapot - in the fiction as presented it just passively sits there and holds whatever's in it - it's a very important distinction in regards to player characters in a game world, as the whole basis of the game assumes that not only do the PCs exist within the game world (i.e. the fiction) but that furthermore they can and will react independently* to elements presented within that fiction.



It is a premise of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about Sherlock Holmes that Holmes not only exists within the imagined London of those stories, but that he can and will react independently to other elements of that fiction: eg when Watson says "Hello" Holmes may reply, or may moodily ignore him, or may suddenly launch into a tirade of some sort, or . . .

You seem to want to say that the player's responsibility in relation to his/her PC - which is a real-world fact about the way RPGs are played - somehow manifests itself in the fiction. This is bizarre in and of itself; and it also seems to contradict your reasonably frequent assertion that PCs and NPCs are indistinguishable in the fiction.


----------



## The Crimson Binome

pemerton said:


> This is not a general truth about RPGing. It is true in those games in which player action declarations count only as suggestions to the GM to change the fiction a certain way. But that is just a subset of RPG play.



It is true of D&D, which was the specific game under discussion, and of every game which plays similarly. Whether you want to include other games under the blanket category of RPG is irrelevant.


pemerton said:


> This likewise is not a general truth, because your conception of what ways matter is not universally held.



If you hate the concept of role-playing - which should be obvious to everyone by now - then it makes sense that rules designed to facilitate role-playing (such as the whole concept of worldbuilding) would seem pointless to you. That's not a problem with the game rules, or the concept of worldbuilding. That's a problem with you trying to play games that aren't designed for you. There are plenty of games where worldbuilding isn't a thing, because players aren't expected to role-play.


pemerton said:


> If I am actually trying to solve a mystery in the real world, and can't find any footprints, that's a fact about the world that I have to deal with.



If the DM says that there aren't footprints there, then it's a fact about the game world that you have to deal with. That the DM decided this unilaterally does not make it any less true.


pemerton said:


> If I am playing a RPG, and the GM tells me I can't find any footprints, that's a fact about the exercise of authority over the fiction in a game which has, as an important component of play, the generation of a shared fiction. As a player I _don't_ have to just deal with that - I can find a better game! And as a GM, I'm not obliged just to deal with this either - I can run my game in a fashion that I prefer (which, in fact, is what I do).



If the generation of shared fiction is an important goal for you, then you should find a different hobby. Role-playing games (at least, of the type where DMs author the backstory unilaterally) aren't about collaborative story-telling. You should stop deluding yourself into thinking that they are.


pemerton said:


> Or to put it another way: the allocation of authority to establish the fiction is not some brute matter of fact. It's a matter of game design, and it's up for grabs. It doesn't _have to be_ one way or another.



Game design should support the goals of the game. If the goal of the game is to role-play, then authorial control should not go to the players or their characters. If the goal of the game is collaborative story-telling, then there might be some merit to sharing narrative control.


----------



## Imaro

pemerton said:


> I don't understand your question. In particular, I'm not sure what you're envisaging can't be done.
> 
> I'll try again to explain how I see it, and perhaps that will answer your question.
> 
> Scenario 1
> The established fiction - let's say - is that the PCs are hoping to find a map; that the map is lost/missing/somewhere unknown; and that one particular PC has just found him-/herself in a study.
> 
> Then - let's suppose - the player of that PC, using his/her power to make moves in the game, declares "I search the study for that map we're looking for." The shared fiction now includes the PC searching the study.
> 
> The question is: can, and if so does, the shared fiction change to include the PC finding the map in the study?
> 
> Scenario 2
> The established fiction - let's say - is that the PCs are engaged in a raid of some orcs' stronghold (like, say, B2); that the orcs are very ready to fight back; and that one particular PC, armed with a sword, has just found him-/herself in a room with an orc.
> 
> Then - let's suppose - the player of that PC, using his/he power to make moves in the game, declares "I draw my sword and attack the orc!" The shared fiction now includes the PC drawing his/her sword and engaging the orc in combat.
> 
> The question is: can, and if so does, the shared fiction change to include the PC killing the orc?
> 
> My contention
> The shared fiction changes by acts of authorship. In the RPGing scenarios I've described, there are two candidates to do that authoring: the player and the GM.
> 
> It is very widely accepted among RPGers that, in scenario 2, the dice are used to mediate the authorship. Rougly speaking, if the dice come up in the player's favour, the player's desire as to the content of the shared fiction is realised: it includes the PC killing the orc. If the dice come up otherwise, then the player's desire is not realised: the shared fiction will include a still-livng orc, and possibly other consequences as well (such as a wounded or dead PC).
> 
> There is no technical or metaphysical reason why scenario 1 has to be any different in the way the action declaration is resolved and hence the new ficiton is authored. That is, the dice can be used to mediate the authorship: if they come up in the player's favour, the content of the shared fiction includes the PC finding the map in the study; if not, then the shared fiction does not include discovery of a map, and possibly includes other consequences as well.
> 
> If scenario 1 nevertheless is handled differently - eg the state of the shared fiction following the action declaration is determined by the GM reading from his/her notes - then the player does not have agency over that aspect of the shared fiction. Agency in respect of that aspect of the shared fiction has been reserved to the GM alone.
> 
> Trying to explain that reservation of agency in metaphysical terms - _the map is in <the kitchen, the cave, wherever> and not in the study_, and so of course the PC can't find it in the study - is just reiterating that agency has been reserved to the GM. Because _the map being in the kitchen (or wherever)_ is itself just an authored piece of fiction. It's not an independent, objective reality in the way that the actual location of some actual map in the real world would be.




Hmmm... I guess my question would be if scenario 2 has instead of an orc...a monster the PC can't beat, no matter how well the dice roll in his favor (Let's say an ancient red dragon and a 1st level PC who can't hit it's armor class).  Is that example then comparable to the map that can't be found in the study?  

In the example I'm presenting... the only thing that stops the PC from defeating the dragon is pre-written stats, correct?  Do these take away player agency in the same way a GM with secret backstory does (is this determined by whether the player has knowledge of the creatures stats or not?)?  Or are you saying in the type of game you play the PC's could never run into something that they couldn't overcome... that there is in fact never a situation where they can't beat or do something with a high enough roll?


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> This is just confused.
> 
> There is no difference between your PC and Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle authors stuff about Holmes. You and your friend author stuff about your PC. You, the human being Lanefan, do not do anything "within the fiction" - you _write_ the fiction. Or perhaps your GM does.



The difference is this: as a consumer of Sir ACD's fiction I have no control at all over what Sherlock Holmes does next or how he reacts to a given situation; but as a consumer of the fiction presented in the game I do have control over what my PC does next or how she reacts to a given situation.



> It is a premise of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about Sherlock Holmes that Holmes not only exists within the imagined London of those stories, but that he can and will react independently to other elements of that fiction: eg when Watson says "Hello" Holmes may reply, or may moodily ignore him, or may suddenly launch into a tirade of some sort, or . . .



Yes, as directed by Sir ACD and narrated within the book.



> You seem to want to say that the player's responsibility in relation to his/her PC - which is a real-world fact about the way RPGs are played - somehow manifests itself in the fiction.



Yes.  Were this to happen in an RPG rather than a novel then NPC Watson says "Hello" (as directed and narrated by the DM, his player) and I-as-Holmes might reply, or moodily ignore him, or launch into a tirade, whatever...as directed and narrated by me as his player.

That's one of the big differences between playing an RPG and reading a novel - an RPG has multiple people including the end consumer controlling the characters and to some extent the story being told, while a novel (usually) only has one person controlling who is almost certainly not the end consumer.

But take careful note: while the end consumers (the players) have some control over the story they do not have much if any control over the setting or backdrop against which that story takes place (and in the case of a real-world-based RPG, neither does the DM).  So if Holmes and Watson are having a conversation while on a train from London to Oxford neither a player nor the DM can reasonably narrate either of them looking out the train's window and seeing the Portsmouth docks go by.

In a more traditional RPG situation, the players have control over the story that gets played through based on the in-game choices they make via their PCs but they don't have control over the land they're in having a culture and climate vaguely resembling that of ancient Greece.



> This is bizarre in and of itself; and it also seems to contradict your reasonably frequent assertion that PCs and NPCs are indistinguishable in the fiction.



No it doesn't, as the DM is doing the same thing for the NPCs.  Watson's character as narrated should in theory come across as the same to a hypothetical observer and be bound by the same game mechanics, rules and processes whether he's a DM-run NPC or a player's PC.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

Saelorn said:


> If the DM says that there aren't footprints there, then it's a fact about the game world that you have to deal with.



The problem we're up against, however, is that for some of these guys game worlds and other imaginary constructs don't have facts.  Only reality has facts.

Which makes any attempt at analysing how those game-world facts are generated - _which is the whole question behind this thread!_ - a rather hopeless exercise.

Lan-"if I beat my real head against an imaginary brick wall, does it hurt any less than this desk?"-efan


----------



## pemerton

Saelorn said:


> If the generation of shared fiction is an important goal for you, then you should find a different hobby. Role-playing games (at least, of the type where DMs author the backstory unilaterally) aren't about collaborative story-telling.



It seems odd that you feel the need to state the second sentence to me. Throughout the thread I've been posting, again and again, that RPGs in the mainstream form are not about collaborative storytelling.

But as it turns out, there are ways to have multiple authors generate a shared fiction without engaging in collaborative storytelling. Gary Gygax stumbled onto some of them. The "standard narrativistic model" sets out a different set of them.


----------



## Nagol

pemerton said:


> I don't understand your question. In particular, I'm not sure what you're envisaging can't be done.
> 
> I'll try again to explain how I see it, and perhaps that will answer your question.
> 
> Scenario 1
> The established fiction - let's say - is that the PCs are hoping to find a map; that the map is lost/missing/somewhere unknown; and that one particular PC has just found him-/herself in a study.
> 
> Then - let's suppose - the player of that PC, using his/her power to make moves in the game, declares "I search the study for that map we're looking for." The shared fiction now includes the PC searching the study.
> 
> The question is: can, and if so does, the shared fiction change to include the PC finding the map in the study?
> 
> Scenario 2
> The established fiction - let's say - is that the PCs are engaged in a raid of some orcs' stronghold (like, say, B2); that the orcs are very ready to fight back; and that one particular PC, armed with a sword, has just found him-/herself in a room with an orc.
> 
> Then - let's suppose - the player of that PC, using his/he power to make moves in the game, declares "I draw my sword and attack the orc!" The shared fiction now includes the PC drawing his/her sword and engaging the orc in combat.
> 
> The question is: can, and if so does, the shared fiction change to include the PC killing the orc?
> 
> My contention
> The shared fiction changes by acts of authorship. In the RPGing scenarios I've described, there are two candidates to do that authoring: the player and the GM.
> 
> It is very widely accepted among RPGers that, in scenario 2, the dice are used to mediate the authorship. Rougly speaking, if the dice come up in the player's favour, the player's desire as to the content of the shared fiction is realised: it includes the PC killing the orc. If the dice come up otherwise, then the player's desire is not realised: the shared fiction will include a still-livng orc, and possibly other consequences as well (such as a wounded or dead PC).
> 
> There is no technical or metaphysical reason why scenario 1 has to be any different in the way the action declaration is resolved and hence the new ficiton is authored. That is, the dice can be used to mediate the authorship: if they come up in the player's favour, the content of the shared fiction includes the PC finding the map in the study; if not, then the shared fiction does not include discovery of a map, and possibly includes other consequences as well.
> 
> If scenario 1 nevertheless is handled differently - eg the state of the shared fiction following the action declaration is determined by the GM reading from his/her notes - then the player does not have agency over that aspect of the shared fiction. Agency in respect of that aspect of the shared fiction has been reserved to the GM alone.
> 
> Trying to explain that reservation of agency in metaphysical terms - _the map is in <the kitchen, the cave, wherever> and not in the study_, and so of course the PC can't find it in the study - is just reiterating that agency has been reserved to the GM. Because _the map being in the kitchen (or wherever)_ is itself just an authored piece of fiction. It's not an independent, objective reality in the way that the actual location of some actual map in the real world would be.




Scenario 2 suffers the same fate as scenario 1.  If the GM tells the player he sees an orc in the room, GM fiat can dictate the attack's success. Perhaps the orc is an illusion and the swing cannot connect.  Perhaps an invisible wall of force separates the two and the weapon will bounce off with no effect.  Perhaps the orc goes first and flees.  Perhaps the orc was previously wounded and can offer no reasonable defence and drops immediately. 

The issue is the players want to do something using partial information.  The DM is privy to more information (perhaps from  pre-authoring [its it the bedroom! or the BBEG carries it on its person!], perhaps as a consequence of previous action [the PC's plan were uncovered and the map has been destroyed!], perhaps as a consequence of previous die rolls [the partial failure entering the home resulted in a rival thief fleeing with the map] , perhaps the GM does not believe the party has "earned" this dramatic moment whatever that means, or maybe the party has "earned" the dramatic moment and it's time to move on  -- why and how the information has been created is immaterial).  The party with more information determines what happens in a manner consistent with what is known as a whole.  Dice only come into the adjudication if an appeal to randomness is warranted. 

Now is pre-authoring different than improvisational creation in these cases?  Probably not from the player's perspective.  They know they got into the home and haven't found the map they expected.  Is the scene framing going to be different?  Maybe. It depends on what the table prefers.  Will the play after this scene vary?  Probably.  But, there are situations where the pre-authoring later scenes and the improvisational later scenes are the same.  "The dice said the map isn't here, I know! I'll give it to the rival thief they encountered 2 sessions ago!" vs.  "The party is going to kick itself when they figure out the map was stolen by that rival thief they ran into 2 days ago! Let's see what they do when they find the map isn't in the home."

DM-facing games offer players less agency than say FATE offers since they cannot inject declared additions to the world outside their player characters.  However, the players' PCs have similar levels of agency.  The DM is not restricting the PC agency any more than a fighter's agency is restricted when sees the opponent is 100 feet away on the other side of a chasm.  PCs must operate within the constraints of the scene framing and rule set.  With pre-authoring, some of the constraints may be initially hidden from the players and are included to provide something for the player to react against when discovered.  Other pre-authored constraints are not hidden and exist to provide thematic and genre landscape that the player may choose to -- or not -- engage.

Now, could scenario 1 be determined by dice?  Sure!  If the parties are operating from the same partial information and the study is a plausible location for the map roll the dice and see if its found.  But it needn't be determined by dice any more than any other situation needs to be determined by dice.  GM fiat can rely on pre-authoring, gut feelings, sudden inspiration, or listening to the players and agreeing with their ideas.  In the end why the fiat happens is immaterial to the players.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> The problem we're up against, however, is that for some of these guys game worlds and other imaginary constructs don't have facts.



This is not correct.

(I mean, as a technical matter it's probably clearer to describe a fiction as having _content_ rather than _facts_, but that's orthogonal to the main point.)

No one is disputing that the game world has content. What is being discussed is _who gets to author it_. To say that _if the GM says there are no footprints there, that's a fact you have to deal with_ is simply to say _the GM gets to author that without regard to play input_ (eg input delivered in the form of action declarations). No one is disputing that a RPG can be adjudicated in that fashion. The OP simply asks "why"? And it doesn't answer that question to say "Well, because that's how we do it." I mean, I know that's how you do it, but why do it that way?

(And to make it clear, some posters have given interesting answers to the question - most recently, [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION].)


----------



## Nagol

pemerton said:


> This is just confused.
> 
> There is no difference between your PC and Holmes. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle authors stuff about Holmes. You and your friend author stuff about your PC. You, the human being Lanefan, do not do anything "within the fiction" - you _write_ the fiction. Or perhaps your GM does.




Incorrect,  A player attempts an action to change the fiction "I try to hit him with my sword" <-- attempting something inside the fiction.  Adjudication of that attempt writes the fiction. "Sir Bargle swings and misses, nearly cutting off his own toes in the attempt" <-- the actual fiction that develops.


----------



## pemerton

Nagol said:


> DM-facing games offer players less agency than say FATE offers since they cannot inject declared additions to the world outside their player characters.  However, the players' PCs have similar levels of agency.  The DM is not restricting the PC agency any more than a fighter's agency is restricted when sees the opponent is 100 feet away on the other side of a chasm.  PCs must operate within the constraints of the scene framing and rule set.



I don't understand (i) what exactly you mean by "PC agency" and (ii) why it matters to anything.

As I've posted already upthread, in one of my active campaigns a PC is in thrall (by way of a Force of Will spell) to a dark naga. That PC, consequently, has very little agency. Howevr, the player has plenty of agency: having written a Belief for his character that reflects his ensorcellment, he plays the game in just the same way, and with just the same agency, as any other player.

If a GM frames a situation in which (a) a PC is 100' from an opponent with a great chasm in the way, and (b) it is established that the PC is equipped with, or capable with, melee weapons only, then that is a framing which reduces the agency of that player in certain respects. The extent of that reduction depends heavily on many other facets of play, though (eg in a D&D the player may have access to resources - in the fiction, they would be flight magic or teleportation magic or distance distortion or whatever - that allow him/her to change the fictional positioning).

One difference between this and the map example is that the player has the capacity to appraise the game state and express his/her agency through decisions about the use of resources to change the fictional positioning. (In the map example I'm assuming that the map is not within range of a Locate Object spell which the PCs are able to cast.)

Upthread I made some extensive posts about my own view as to when secret elements of the fictional position become burdens on player agency of the sort I personally do not prefer: I prefer the secret be (i) knowable with the current context of play (the "scene" or "encounter"), and (ii) salient, and (iii) not overly severe in its consequences if not identified. Under these conditions, it's likewise reasonable to expect players to expend their resources to fully establish, or to change, the fictional positioning. An invisible foe, and even an illusory orc, may often satisfy these desiderata.

As part of those posts I also explained why I don't think the map example (assuming that it is not within range of a Locate Object spell that the PCs are able to case) satisfies those desiderata.



Imaro said:


> I guess my question would be if scenario 2 has instead of an orc...a monster the PC can't beat, no matter how well the dice roll in his favor (Let's say an ancient red dragon and a 1st level PC who can't hit it's armor class).  Is that example then comparable to the map that can't be found in the study?
> 
> In the example I'm presenting... the only thing that stops the PC from defeating the dragon is pre-written stats, correct?  Do these take away player agency in the same way a GM with secret backstory does (is this determined by whether the player has knowledge of the creatures stats or not?)?  Or are you saying in the type of game you play the PC's could never run into something that they couldn't overcome... that there is in fact never a situation where they can't beat or do something with a high enough roll?



I don't know how much work you are intending the words "beat" and "overcome" to do in your example.

My view is that an encounter in which the players don't have a range of meaningful options as to how they engage it and might resolve it is a poorly framed encounter. Whether or not your dragon encounter fits that description depends on many points of detail or context - eg maybe the players can run from the dragon, or befriend it, or pledge fealty to it, or hide from it.

In a recent session of my Traveller game the PCs found themselves under laser bombardment from an orbiting starship. The PCs were not in a position to attack the vessel - it was in orbit, and it's forward observer was in a small craft flying quite high above the ground. But they had a range of options, some of which they exercised: they fled in their ATVs to cover (we resolved these by application of the quickie combat rules for small craft); and they called in the local air force to deal with the attackers (from memory this was a simple case of "saying 'yes'" - one of the PCs was a recently retired senior military commander on the world in question). They NPCs tried to open negotiation with the PCs (over radio) but the players (as their PCs) refused to engage (so as best I recall this didn't actually get to the reaction roll/social mechanics stage).


----------



## Sunseeker

pemerton said:


> This is not correct.
> 
> (I mean, as a technical matter it's probably clearer to describe a fiction as having _content_ rather than _facts_, but that's orthogonal to the main point.)
> 
> No one is disputing that the game world has content. What is being discussed is _who gets to author it_. To say that _if the GM says there are no footprints there, that's a fact you have to deal with_ is simply to say _the GM gets to author that without regard to play input_ (eg input delivered in the form of action declarations). No one is disputing that a RPG can be adjudicated in that fashion. The OP simply asks "why"? And it doesn't answer that question to say "Well, because that's how we do it." I mean, I know that's how you do it, but why do it that way?
> 
> (And to make it clear, some posters have given interesting answers to the question - most recently, [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION].)




To put it simply:  Because too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth.

You can see this in all manner of works, from movies to novels to video games and more.  There needs to be a cohesive vision for the end product, and no matter what level of life you function on, that cohesive vision is almost always created by top-down declaration.  Consider weddings, battle strategies, product marketing, building design.  That's not to say that the functionaries beneath the "head" do not have input into the vision, and that they may not have _significant_ input into the vision, but ultimately, they are facilitators of the vision, not creators.

The same dynamic functions at the table.  The DM determines the vision.  "A heroic campaign against The Ultimate Evil!"  The players have input on how this vision is facilitated: do they join with the lesser of two evils?  Do they stand by only the truest of the true?  Do they make their own path?  

This system exists in real life for the same reason it exists in D&D: because it is the simplest and most efficient system, and a system to which the majority of human society has practiced and finds acceptable.  Compare to communal systems: they function to a degree on the micro level only in part because the few people who take part in them have an incredibly similar vision.  

If the group has a very cohesive vision (they all like to play do-gooders, they all want to play murderhobos, they all want to do *thing*) then you can sometimes have communal games.  But getting even a handful of people together who innately share a similar vision of the game is incredibly difficult.  Which is why _most_ systems operate on the idea that someone builds a playground and lets people play around in it.

When people respond to you with statements of "Well, that's just how we do it." it is because they are having difficulty, or are perhaps in some sort of wonderment over the fact that you find this difficult to understand.  The answer to your question is obvious.  It may be the "worst system except for all the others" but it's fairly workable so it's what we go with.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> as a consumer of Sir ACD's fiction I have no control at all over what Sherlock Holmes does next or how he reacts to a given situation; but as a consumer of the fiction presented in the game I do have control over what my PC does next or how she reacts to a given situation.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Were this to happen in an RPG rather than a novel then NPC Watson says "Hello" (as directed and narrated by the DM, his player) and I-as-Holmes might reply, or moodily ignore him, or launch into a tirade, whatever...as directed and narrated by me as his player.



Yes. This isn't a difference _in the fiction_ - it's a difference in the real world! You are not an author of Hound of the Baskervilles. You are one of the authors when you play RPGs. If you were playing Holmes as your PC, then you would author his reply to Watson. Just as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was free to author Holmes's reply as the fancy took him.

Look at it another way - if some future archaeologist were to discover a manuscript of The Hound of the Baskervilles, simply from reading it s/he wouldn't be able to tell who wrote it, or by what process. Was it written by a committee? A single person? Is it in fact a retelling of a RPG episode? These different possibilities are to do with real world processes of authorship - they have nothing to do with the "agency" of Holmes, or Watson, as a character within the fiction.



Nagol said:


> A player attempts an action to change the fiction "I try to hit him with my sword" <-- attempting something inside the fiction.



"I try to hit him with my sword" is a move in the game. It's a move that is declared in the real world, at the table. Declaring the move also establishes something in the fiction (at a minimum, that the PC desires to hit the opponent with his/her sword; at most tables, probably also that the PC is performing physical movements of a sword-fighting nature).

Declaring the move also signals a desire as to the future state of the fiction, namely, the defeat of the opponent by the PC by means of swordfighting.



Nagol said:


> Adjudication of that attempt writes the fiction. "Sir Bargle swings and misses, nearly cutting off his own toes in the attempt" <-- the actual fiction that develops.



At most tables, _Sir Bargle swings_ became an element of the fiction when the player made the action declaration, and so didn't depend on eg the roll of any dice. (I think [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] is an exception to this, but I'm also pretty confident that his is a minority view.)

As I posted not too far upthread, the resolution mechanics mediate between the players' expressed desire as to the future state of the fiction -ie that his/her PC defeat the opponent by use of a sword - and the actual formation of a consensus, at the table, as to whether or not that desired fiction actually becomes part of the shared fiction.

This is why it is possible to collectively generate a shared fiction without engaging in collaborative storytelling - because the process can be mediated by way of action declarations and resolution.

Also, at the current level of description of these processes, there is nothing that makes "I try to hit him with my sword" any different from "I search the study for the map we've been looking for."



Lanefan said:


> while the end consumers (the players) have some control over the story they do not have much if any control over the setting or backdrop against which that story takes place



Well, that's the whole focus of this thread, isn't it.


----------



## pemerton

shidaku said:


> To put it simply:  Because too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The DM determines the vision.  "A heroic campaign against The Ultimate Evil!"  The players have input on how this vision is facilitated: do they join with the lesser of two evils?  Do they stand by only the truest of the true?  Do they make their own path?
> 
> This system exists in real life for the same reason it exists in D&D: because it is the simplest and most efficient system, and a system to which the majority of human society has practiced and finds acceptable.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> If the group has a very cohesive vision (they all like to play do-gooders, they all want to play murderhobos, they all want to do *thing*) then you can sometimes have communal games.  But getting even a handful of people together who innately share a similar vision of the game is incredibly difficult.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> When people respond to you with statements of "Well, that's just how we do it." it is because they are having difficulty, or are perhaps in some sort of wonderment over the fact that you find this difficult to understand.  The answer to your question is obvious.  It may be the "worst system except for all the others" but it's fairly workable so it's what we go with.



Interesting answer. It's utterly at odds with my own experience. So just as you may wonder that I can't see how obvious the need for this solution is, I wonder what sort of terrible experiences you've had that makes you think that players in a RPG can't be entrusted with agency over the content of the shared fiction lest they spoil the broth.



shidaku said:


> Which is why _most_ systems operate on the idea that someone builds a playground and lets people play around in it.



I do want to mention once again that this is metaphor. There's no _actual_ playground which the players _actually_ play in. There's a fiction established by the GM, and under certain conditions related to game moves performed by the players, the GM tells them some or other bit of that fiction.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> I guess, for me, the hidden backstory provides the 'mystery and adventure' I would desire as a player. If its just all part of a collaborative creative process amongst players and DM then it is far less mysterious. The challenge and enjoyment for me is to uncover the mystery AND survive the adventure.
> It seems like the challenge in your adventures (and I do not mean to sound disparaging) is to 'win' on the skill challenge for the story (collaborative narrative) to be true AND survive the adventure. There is no mystery to be discovered, but the 'yes but complications' which need to be overcome. Again, do not mean to insult here.



Mmmm, I don't think 'win' is a word I would ever use in an RPG, except to describe something that happened in-character. IMHO success in an SC vs failure is more about who's contribution to the narrative is going to be established next. While the CHARACTERS succeed or fail, the players just play. They may be partisan and thus try to have their PCs win, but some sort of interesting story should continue, and character development should continue, etc. regardless.

In fact even character advancement should continue regardless of failure or success, though perhaps in different pathways. In the game I run, HoML, my own self-authored hack of 4e, there isn't anything like XP or something you have to win to advance. Narratively various situations present the PCs with additional 'stuff' (boons in my lingo). Get a boon, advance a level. Now, maybe you aren't getting the finest possible loot by failing to defeat your opponents, but nothing in literature, legends, etc. actually suggests this is even a dominant trope. In fact I'd say fantasy material is FULL of instances of the Hero failing miserably, going out and acquiring some new magic or training or whatever, and coming back for more. Succeed maybe you win the fabled Zip Zap Sword, fail and you relentlessly track down the Greatest Swordsman and he teaches you some new moves, so you can go back and try again.



> *Because* the one is about the survival of combat (the tactical part of the game) and the other is part of the intrigue, the location to explore, the mystery to unravel the puzzle to solve.



Its interesting that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] talks in game structure and theory terms, and you guys come back at him with narrative concepts. The two simply don't equate. You aren't wrong by any means, but he's asking for hay for his horse and you're telling him you don't have a tire pump...


> *
> Because* we have hit points for combat, but don’t have social points and exploration points for the other pillars. That is not to say I'm not fond of SC mechanic.



Now this is SOMEWHAT more relevant, in that you are now both discussing things that are in the realm of game design. So, yes, the detailed mechanics of the two situations, at least in something like 4e D&D which you seem to be referring to mostly, are different. If we were talking about a different system, then the procedure might well be identical. Even with some mechanical difference they still summarize to pretty much the same thing, declare an intent, roll some dice, succeed or fail based on the results.



> *
> Because* that is how the game was originally envisioned. And despite the OP which is an attempt to differentiate between old and contemporary style of D&D – it is still roleplayed very much the same rather than different.




Mmmm, I think since I started playing D&D in 1975 or so, things have evolved a good bit. I mean, you can play 5e in a way that is fairly evocative of early D&D (although there are some definite significant differences) but I don't think that equates to "most everyone plays the same old game." Just look at the vastly greater amount of character options that exist in 5e vs OD&D. Clearly there's a considerable difference. Nor have I seen an adventure published in recent years that is much like B1, B2, or to go back even further, Temple of the Frog. The reference 5e module, Phandelver, is a much different affair. It does contain elements that would probably be present in most OD&D games, but in a very different mix and with a radically different structure to the adventure. 

I think character development and RP are much more important in the agenda of most groups now vs in 1970's or 80's play. Those things existed then, and could be very significant, but there was a whole mode of play that really isn't much encountered now, unless you play with people who are consciously enacting 'OSR' games. Even then the thematics and genre concepts are often much more refined. I mean OD&D is mechanically not too different from 'Lamentations of the Flame Princess', but they are still radically different games thematically.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> In player driven games, it's both easier and weirder. Here, the endpoint cannot be determined, just the initial setup. At that point it's off to the races as the players invent their own clues and test them against the mechanics. The end result is wildly (but often entertainingly) unpredictable. System mechanics can act to constrain and funnel some of this, but the result is that you're not really solving a mystery in the classic sense, but rather building one as you go along and finding out the ending as a surprise.



The players don't necessarily invent their own clues (depending, I guess, how broadly you interpret that phrase). For instance, the players might declare "We look to see if there is anything interesting in the [place XYZ]." That can then be resolved, and if the check succeeds the GM narrates something which (if the GM gets it right) will be interesting. Because what counts as interesting is going to be highly contextual, depending on what has already happened in play and what other backstory has been established; and because it has to be consistent with whatever else has been established about [place XYZ]; pre-authorship is not likely to provide much help, although preparation of some basic ideas may well be useful.

Whether the "looking for something interesting" action declaration is a permissible game move is of course a further thing. In Cortex+ Heroic it really isn't - the player has to declare what particular asset s/he is trying to establish. I've been re-reading the Fate Core rulebook over the past few days, and I think in Fate it is permissible - the player can fish for a GM-authored aspect rather than try to establish one him-/herself. In 4e it is absolutely permissible, and quite common in my 4e game. From a practical point of view, I regard the pressure point in that sort of action declaration in 4e being between asking the GM to provide more framing and backstory - all well and good - and asking the GM to provide an answer to the players' problem (eg the player of the paladin of the Raven Queen has to choose between Osterneth and Kas, and wants the GM to tell him/her which way the Raven Queen advises his PC to choose - I turn such things back on the player, as I don't regard it as my job to relive the player from the burden of thematically hard choices).

I agree that playing or GMing this sort of RPG episode is not like solving a mystery in real life - no detective work is taking place. And I agree that it is not like trying to solve a mystery in the way that watching Gosford Park or playing a CoC module is - there is no parcelling out of bits of the story from which the reader/listener/viewer might then draw inferences as to how the murder happened. It's its own thing. It can certainly result in moments of revelation, moments of surprise, recognition of foreshadowing, etc.


----------



## Sunseeker

pemerton said:


> Interesting answer.* It's utterly at odds with my own experience.* So just as you may wonder that I can't see how obvious the need for this solution is, I wonder what sort of terrible experiences you've had that makes you think that players in a RPG can't be entrusted with agency over the content of the shared fiction lest they spoil the broth.



I find that...terribly difficult to believe.  You'd either have to be in incredibly unique gaming circles or...well I don't know.

To the latter part, I never actually _said_ any of that.  Perhaps you should re-read my post and what I _did_ write, as it might give a clearer idea of how I think a game should function than ya know, whatever it is you _think_ I think.



> *I do want to mention once again that this is metaphor.* There's no _actual_ playground which the players _actually_ play in. There's a fiction established by the GM, and under certain conditions related to game moves performed by the players, the GM tells them some or other bit of that fiction.



Yes I believe I'm aware of that.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> The key difference between the styles isn't that the DM reads notes in one (you read your notes when you introduce prepared fictions in play, for instance), it's that the distribution of narrative control -- in DM facing games, the DM retains most narrative control



Hence, as I have said, the player have only modest agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction; and hence, as I have also said, a significant goal of play is for the players to make moves that will trigger the GM to narrate bits of his/her notes.

It baffles me that this is still regarded as contentious, given how many concrete examples (described at higher or lower levels of abstraction, and with more ore less metaphor involved) we have had in this thread:

* the goal of worldbuiding is to support exploration (= the players learn stuff about the GM-authored fiction by having the GM tell it to them);

* the solution to avoiding arrest is to learn whether any officials are able to be bribed, but that is _not_ to be determined as the outcome of action declarations (and hence = the players declare moves that lead the GM to tell them stuff s/he has written up about the various NPCs);

* the players can't just declare "I search the study for the map" and hope to have some chance of success; it depends on where the map _really_ is (= the players can't succeed in their goal of the map being found by their PCs until they make the right move to trigger the GM to tell them that bit of his/her notes which records the location of the map);

* etc, etc.​
This may be a fun way to play, or not, depending on taste. It's certainly very popular, as best I can tell. _What is the objection to literal descriptions of it_?



Ovinomancer said:


> the scene is a 10'x10' (3m x 3m) room containing nothing but an orc with a pie.
> 
> In this case, the declaration of 'I kill the orc!' as an announced desire to author this fiction is allowable. The orc is established and we're assuming the character you're playing has the means and wherewithal to accomplish this feat. The ability to author this fiction is therefore either allowed via fiat (the GM allows it) or tested by mechanics.
> 
> However, if the player instead declares, "I find the map in the study!" we all look at him strangely, and re-iterate that we're not in a study, there's just this 10'x10' room containing nothing but an orc with a pie.
> 
> Clearly, then, these two acts of authorship are not the same thing



Your second act of authorship doesn't exhibit the same structure as the ones I described. It is not the addition of further detail about an already established character in an already established situation (_that the character is the killer of an orc s/he encountered_; _that the character is the finder of a map in a study that s/he searched_). It's a complete non-sequitur. It also involves an action declaration that would be impermissible in every RPG I'm familiar with, though I'm sure there are some less mainstream games which would permit it: but every RPG I know would only permit "I search the study for a map". (The sorts of details that OGL Conan and Fate permit players to stipulate don't extend to discovering (what I am presuming to be) a crucial item like a sought-after map.)

Of course, if the PC has powerful scrying and teleportation magic then it may not be: "I scry to locate a study with a map in it, and then teleport there and ransack the study for it." But I'm assuming that's not what you have in mind.



Ovinomancer said:


> in player-facing games, the players have some to many rights regarding narrative control.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> the actual effect of player narrative control is not authorship of the narrative, but constraints on the DM's authorship of the narrative



This is a rather tortuous way of putting things, and again it puzzles me, as I and others have posted quite straightforwardly about this multiple times upthread.

There are some RPGs in which the players enjoy a straightforward power to stipulate elements of the shared fiction in the course of play. Fate is such a game; so is OGL Conan. But BW is not, by default, such a game (BW does permit this in the course of PC building, but not during play - of course the player can make suggestiosn that the GM goes along with, but that's true also for nearly any RPG). Neither is 4e (unless you count CaGI-style martial forced movement). And Cortex+ Heroic is not as straightforward on this matter as Fate (there are a whole lot of different ways that Cortex+ Heroic players can try and establish elements of the shared fiction, depending on the nature of the element in both story and mechanical terms).

Declaring "I search the study for the map" is not an exercise of narrative control in the manner that Fate and OGL Conan permit. It's utterly banal action declaration which goes back to D&D's origins. In a "player-facing" game, if it succeeds, then a map is found. But the player didn't exercise any direct "narrative control" - that's the whole point of having dice-based action resolution mechanics, as a tool for mediating between various expressed desires as to the content of the shared fiction, and the actual establishment of consensus as to what that content is.

(As an aside - Gygax wrote a "player-facing" mechanic for resolving checks for secret doors into the random dungeon rules in Appendix A. It's not as if this is wildly modern tech.)

Describing that consensus as a constraint on GM authorship is also odd - not because it's false, but because it seems to assume that it's constraint on the GM is more salient than its constraint on other participants. If the fiction is _shared_, then ipso facto everyone playing the game is constrained by whatever has been established.



Ovinomancer said:


> If a player declares "I search for the map" and succeeds, the DM is constrained that the next bit of narration they provide must accommodate that success and not negate it.  This is really, though, just a rules convention that enforces a manner of good play present in both styles:  if a check succeeds, the DM should not act against that check and narrate failure.  This is readily apparent in that most DMs will cite overriding check results with DM fiat to be bad play.



In BW, if a check succeeds then the PC succeeds at his/her task and the intention of the declaration is realised. Full stop. The GM has nothing to do with it, and the player enjoys the authority to veto GM embellishments if the player takes the view they are at odds with the intention.

And in the "hidden backstory" style, the GM declares action declaration's unsuccessful all the time - either allowing the dice to be rolled and saying "No, you find no map"; or just telling the players "You search and there's no map", or perhaps rolling the dice secretly him-/herself. In this thread, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has consistently advocated for secret rolls that preclude the players from knowing how the action declaration was actually adjudicated.



Ovinomancer said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The capacity to influence the sequence of narrations (and perhaps whether or not they occur at all) isn't agency over the content of what is narrated. That is, it's not agency over the content of the shared fiction.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Of course it is.  If I control what's introduced into the shared fictions by my choices, then I have agency over the content of what is narrated.
Click to expand...


Have you ever browsed a book? I have - reference books are especially good for this purpose. I choose, or perhaps by flipping pages randomly determine, which bit I read next. That is not exercising any agency over the content of the book.

If the agency of the players is confined to influencing which bits of the hidden backstory the GM tells to them; or which bits of the pre-authored storyline the GM reveals to them; that is about the same amount of agency as someone flipping through a reference book or working through a choose-your-own-adventure book. Ie relatively little.



Ovinomancer said:


> In DM facing games, the players make many small choices over a longer period that lead up to the crux questions, and those crux questions can be repeated in multiple situations.  The scene the DM frames here isn't the study, it's the building that contains the study among other challenges.  How the players ultimately engage those challenges is up to them, and they still have the ability to go off map and introduce new states to the fiction that aren't in the DM's notes.  They can set the building on fire as well.



Can the PCs set the building on fire? What if the GM decides that it's made of non-flammable materials; or under a magical ward; or that the rain is falling so heavily that no fire catches? (In a "player-facing" game, those could be elements of narrative that might be established to explain a failed arson check.)

And if the scene is the building, and the action declarations are, in effect "We enter this room and search; what do we find?", then where is the agency? This is just choose-your-own-adventure again, the players making moves that trigger the GM telling them stuff from his/her notes. It's true that we might spice things up a bit by having the players make decisions about how their PCs move from room to room (eg instead of going through the GM-authored doors, the cast Passwall) but I would describe that as, at best, rather modest agency.

And to say that the players are free to have their PCs leave the map is really just to acknowledge their lack of agency: they (I'm assuming) want to play a game that is about finding the map, but their access to that shared fiction is subordinated to GM pre-authorship. To say that they have the agency to give up on the focus of play that they want is not, in my view, to point to a substantial mode of agency.



Ovinomancer said:


> The GM isn't even offering the ability to choose which hall to turn down to find the study, so claiming you increase agency because the GM forces situations onto players that go straight to those declarations that stake objectives is being myopic -- it's intentionally ignoring that agency is lessened by the fact that the players have no way to avoid or mitigate circumstances prior to the frame where the big question is thrust upon them.



This is odd for two reasons. First, you assert that choose-your-own-adventure style action declaration is a high degree of agency. Second, you assert that having the GM engage you with stuff that speaks to the character you built, and invites you to confront the issues you signalled you wanted to engage with in play, is a negation of agency!



Ovinomancer said:


> i believe your actual argument is that unless the player can introduce entirely new elements of the fiction through action declaration, they lack agency over the shared narrative.



That's not my actual argument.

My claim is fairly simple: if all the salient fiction is authored by the GM, the players didn't exercise agency over the content of the shared fiction.

There are various ways that players can exercise agency. One is by succeeding on action declarations, which establishes, as part of the shared fiction, the contnt that, prior to the resolution of the declaration, the player _desired_ to be part of the shared fiction. Another is by establishing material - perhaps elements of the shared fiction (eg relationships with significant NPCs, which are fairly formal part of Fate and Burning Wheel and can be an informal part of most other systems), or perhaps thematic orientation (eg by choosing to play a Raven Queen devotee, the player makes Orcus and undead salient as key antagonists in the game); and there are probably other ways of establishing material that I'm not thinking of at the moment. This second mode of player agency is quiet important, because it is another way in which players can influence the content of the shared fiction without having to engage in collaborative storytelling.

None of this is rocket science. Eero Tuovinen describes it all in a blog that I've linked to several times now.



Ovinomancer said:


> the player-facing game wraps up all of the agency into the 'search for the map' declaration because that's the only real choice the players make in the scene -- everything else is provided by the GM (possibly according to notes prepped and found useful for this situation) as framing, framing that points straight at getting to this kind of declaration.



Leaving aside the fact that the scene might have more at stake then just the map, what you say is still not correct. Where does the GM get the framing material from? Where does the GM get material for narrating consequences from?

If the check to find the map fails, it's quite legitimate for the GM to declare that (say) the document hidden in the drawer is, rather, a letter from a loved one that reveals some "unwelcome truth" (to use the Dungeon World terminology). Assuming that it's the player who has established the existence of the loved one, and the orientation towards the loved one that would make the truth unwelcome, then the GM's narration of the consequence expresses not only the GM's but also the player's agency over the content of the shared fiction. This is how, as Tuovinen puts it, "choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices".



Ovinomancer said:


> A skill challenge in which the party accrues too many failures before necessary successes fails at their objective prior to being positioned to ultimately succeeed. A player that searches for a mace may find evidence that his ultimate goal -- rescue his brother from possession -- fails because it's discovered his brother is a willing ally and not actually possessed against his will. This is the failure I'm talking about. And, in a DM-facing game, this can accrue by too many failures prior to obtaining positioning for success as well. The party may be killed. The party may run out of time. The party may take actions that cause the map to be destroyed (setting the building on fire) or moved (alerting the enemy to the objective). All of these things can happen in either style, and that was the point I was making.



The failures you refer to in the "GM-facing" game - lack of time, alerting enemies, searching the wrong spot or setting the wrong spot alight, etc - are all results of GM stipulation. The only one that is not a result of Gm stipulation is the PCs being killed - at least at most tables, combat is resolved by resort to the mechanics rather than GM stipulation. And so, to repost what you replied to, "If a player stakes discovery of the map, and fails, that is losing at a move in a game. That is actually quiet different, I think, from the GM stipulating failure. I don't see them as 'pretty much the same' at all."



Ovinomancer said:


> The scene you describe opening with does not address the primary goal of play for the character involved.  That goal is saving his brother.  You didn't introduce a scene where saving the brother was at stake, and any declaration of 'I save my brother from possession by a balrog!' would not have the fictional positioning to succeed and would automatically fail.  Instead, you introduced a scene who's primary purpose was establishing a challenge that had to be overcome in order to move towards gaining the fictional positioning to save the brother.



I have linked to the actual play report several times in this thread, but maybe you haven't looked at it. Here it is again:



			
				pemerton posting as thurgon on rpg.net said:
			
		

> I had pulled out my old Greyhawk material and told them they were starting in the town of Hardby, half-way between the forest (where the assassin had fled from) and the desert hills (where Jobe had been travelling), and so each came up with a belief around that: I'm not leaving Hardby without gaining some magical item to use against my brother and, for the assassin with starting Resources 0, I'm not leaving Hardby penniless.
> 
> Some instincts were written up too: the ones that (sort of) came into play were, for the mage, _When I fall I cast Falconskin_ and, for the assassin, _I draw my sword when startled_.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I started things in the Hardby market: Jobe was looking at the wares of a peddler of trinkets and souvenirs, to see if there was anything there that might be magical or useful for enchanting for the anticipated confrontation with his brother. Given that the brother is possessed by a demon, he was looking for something angelic. The peddler pointed out an angel feather that he had for sale, brought to him from the Bright Desert.



So, to repeat what I posted earlier, "the very first scene in my BW game presented the PC whose goal was to find magical items to help him free his brother from balrog possession with a chance to acquire an angel feather. The "challenge" in the scene was to determine the nature of the feather, whether it was worth trying to buy, whether instead to try and steal it, etc." In other words, there was no challenge that had to be overcome to establish fictional positioning to pursue the player's goal.

(The choice of instinct also affected the content of the fiction: one reason for, later on in the session, establishing the NPC mage's residence as a tower was because it spoke to an instinct about falling.)

In "story now"/ "standard narrativistic model" RPGing there's no need to fiddle about and delay the onset of the real action. The first encounter in my 4e game, following the initial scene where the PCs met one another and their patron, involved a clash with Bane-ite slavers, whom most of the PCs had an established reason to oppose beyond just them being a challenge the GM threw out there.

Although [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] is mistaken when he says that your description of my argument is "a pretty accurate assessment" - because that description didn't address at all the source of material - innerdue is 100% correct to say that " If [the GM] wants to frame a "pass the guards" challenge or a "successfully sneak through the hallways undetected" challenge, great! _As long as the scene frame represents appropriate dramatic need_." Whether having guards outside the study will satisfy that criterion is an entirely contextual matter, depending on such things as (i) established fiction about the study, (ii) established fiction about the guards, (iii) elements of the framing of both, etc.

If a PC is a worshipper of Ioun, and the guards are there to stop the unworthy gaining access to valuable knowledge, then it sounds like it could be quite interesting (and also ripe for the PCs to persuade the guards to let them through, if they want, by persuading them that keeping secrets is what Vecna wants, not Ioun).

If the guards are just a roadblock, they sound a bit boring to me.

That said, system also matters here. 4e combat is very intricate, and combats that have little connection to broader dramatic concerns may still allow a group who is into that sort of thing to enjoy playing and expressing their characters. I wouldn't say that the same is true of combat in Classic Traveller. Or consider Cortex+: the dramatic needs of characters are established via their milestones, but these are often rather independent of the particular minutiae of a given scene (eg Captain America earns XP for engaging with superhero teambuilding): so the actual challenges that the PCs confront may often be secondary to the PC-to-PC interaction and character development that is taking place (much as can be the case in superhero comics). So in Cortex+ Heroic, the thing to think about in framing the guards outside the study is not so much whether the guards per se speak to dramatic need, but whether the framing establishes an opportunity for the players to pursue their PC milestones. For instance: one of Wolverine's milestones involves meeting with and interacting with old friends and old enemies. Wolverine's player is free to establish that an NPC is such a person, but this requires the GM to frame Wolverine into an encounter with a named character whom it makes sense to call out; so if Wolverine was one of the PCs, then as well as the nameless guards the GM would want there to be someone interesting leading them for Wolverine's player to hook onto in exploring that milestone.

This is another illustration of how player choices (here, choosing/building a particular character with a particular milestone) can influence material that becomes part of the shared fiction, although the player is not exercising any sort of direct narrative control.


----------



## The Crimson Binome

pemerton said:


> It seems odd that you feel the need to state the second sentence to me. Throughout the thread I've been posting, again and again, that RPGs in the mainstream form are not about collaborative storytelling.



It's not that odd. I had no idea that this thread even existed, until recently. I had to check it out to see if you were still spewing your lies and slanders against roleplayers, and lo and behold!


pemerton said:


> But as it turns out, there are ways to have multiple authors generate a shared fiction without engaging in collaborative storytelling. Gary Gygax stumbled onto some of them. The "standard narrativistic model" sets out a different set of them.



What you're saying here is that you don't understand the concept of collaborative storytelling, in addition to not understanding the concept of roleplaying. Or at least, you're pretending to be ignorant, so you can continue to troll people.

Roleplaying is when a player makes decisions for their character, from the perspective of that character.

Collaborative storytelling is when more than one person shares narrative control.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> What causal influence does the story (as opposed to a physical book that contains physical words that convey the ficitonal concepts of the story _Hound of the Baskervilles_) exert then that Sherlock Holmes, as a fiction character, cannot?



I made a long post about this and mentioned you at the top of it.

Short version: the physical words of a book are interesting (and different from, say, creases in or scribbles on the paper) because they encode ideas. A person who knows the language can read the book and have ideas caused in him/her in virtue of that knowledge and that encoding.

Sherlock Holmes does not cause the idea of Sherlock Holmes. Arthur Conan Doyle's act of authorship (which itself has a long causal history that includes his knowledge of English) together with a publishers act of printing, together with a reader's act of reading (which itself depends upon both prior causal processes like learning the language, and also immediate causal processes in the eyes and the brain), cause the idea of Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes can't cause anything: he doesn't exist. Ideas can be caused and can cause things, however; they are real things (psychological states/processes). And language - the encoding of ideas - is also a real thing.



Ovinomancer said:


> If the fiction has a recursive effect on future acts of authorship, can we claim that since fiction doesn't exist all acts of authorship are the same?  No, clearly this is false.



I don't understand what this means. Fictional things have no effects, recursive or otherwise. But works of fiction have all sorts of effects on future acts of authorship - eg it's absolutely inconceivable that _the very first work of fiction ever produced by a human being_ should be something like Waiting for Godot - that play has a complex causal history in which prior acts of authorship figure (among other things).

But I still don't know what your point is.



Ovinomancer said:


> You cannot have a work of fiction, comprised of fictional elements, exist as a collective while denying that it's components have not existence.  This is logically impossible.



The Hound of the Baskervilles is a work of fiction. It's components are words - ie encodings of ideas. Sherlock Holmes is not a constituent of The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Strictly parallel: a news report that astronauts just landed on Mars would be mistaken. The report's components are word - ie encoding of ideas. _The landing of astrounauts on Mars_ would not be a component of such a report - obviously, given that no such thing has happened. (There are some philosophical views to the contrary eg Meinong at least on some readings. I don't think those views are plausible. My point about mistaken news reports is taken straight from Bertrand Russel c 1912. My extension of it to deliberate fictions is my own, but hardly a novel move in this field.)

Moral of the story: ideas are not identical with the things they are about. This is why people can believe false things and imagine impossible things.



Ovinomancer said:


> What if I author the statement 'Character X has found a map in the study' and 'Character X has NOT found a map in the study'?  According to you, these are just as equivalent a move as above -- they both follow the same acts of imagining and authoring.  Yet they are directly contradictory, and lead to different fictional outcomes that are opposed to each other.



Of course contradictory and logically impossible things get authored all the time. For instance, I can tell you a story right now about the great but forgotten mathematician Hilda who discovered a technique for squaring the circle; and while she was at it, she also proved _every_ true statement in a system that nevertheless was strong enough to yield arithmetic.

It's not always pointless, either: most mathematicians accept the permissibility of proof by reductio, and what is the starting point for reductio, after all, but positing a contradiction!

How we manage contradictions in our fictions and our posits (and even our beliefs) is a complex question. But in any event, it is not really relevant to anything I said, as I will go on to explain:



Ovinomancer said:


> If all acts of authoring are the same
> 
> <snip>
> 
> the fiction authored doesn't matter



I've never claimed these things. You imputed these views to me in a post upthread, and I made the same point then.

What I have actually said that two particular acts of authorship, which I described in some detail, have the same structure:

(1) Adding to a fiction about a study, with a person in it looking for a map, that said person finds a map;

(2) Adding to a fiction about an orc, confronted by a sword-wielding person, that said person kills the orc.

The identify of structure is this: both take existing elements of the fiction and append a new description to those elements: the person who was in the study looking for a map _now is a map-finder_; the person who was confronting the orc while wielding a sword _now is an orc-killer_. And the new description does not introduce any contradiction into the fiction.

The salience of that structure to RPGing I take to be self-evident. But in case explanation is needed: the appending of a new description pertaining to a salient character, to existing elements of the fiction which involve (i) that character, and (ii) his/her immediate environs (the study, the orc), is the central act of mainstream RPGing, in which players declare actions for their PCs that trade on the established fictional positioning of those PCs.

Of course, if you assume that the fiction in (1) includes a GM-authored but unrevealed element like "The map is in the kitchen" then of course the finding of the map in the study would contradict that. But all that shows is what is obvious and what I have pointed out from the beginning of the thread, namely, that GM secret backstory can operate as an unrevealed bar on the success of players' action declarations. It doesn't show that there is any inherent difference between (1) and (2) as candidate action declarations. The same would be equally true if the GM had notes saying "Whatever happens, the orc can't be killed." It's just that fewer GMs use notes of that sort. (Some do, of course, and some modules suggest such approaches to adjudication.)


----------



## pemerton

Saelorn said:


> Roleplaying is when a player makes decisions for their character, from the perspective of that character.



You mean like deciding to search a study for a map?


----------



## Lanefan

shidaku said:


> I find that...terribly difficult to believe.  You'd either have to be in incredibly unique gaming circles ...



In all fairness, I think to some degree he is.

Pemerton is in Australia - more precisely Melbourne, if I'm not mistaken.

I noticed the other day that of the people posting in this thread that of those who are putting forth a more traditional side most are from north-western North America.  It's very possible we are in fact posting out of quite different gaming cultures and basing our views on accepted norms that aren't necessarily the norms in other parts of the world.

What this means, of course, is [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] needs to move up here so we can show him how it's really done. 

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

shidaku said:


> I find that...terribly difficult to believe.  You'd either have to be in incredibly unique gaming circles or...well I don't know.
> 
> To the latter part, I never actually _said_ any of that.  Perhaps you should re-read my post and what I _did_ write, as it might give a clearer idea of how I think a game should function than ya know, whatever it is you _think_ I think.



I'm going to requote your post so we're both on the same page:



shidaku said:


> To put it simply:  Because too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The same dynamic functions at the table.  The DM determines the vision.  "A heroic campaign against The Ultimate Evil!"  The players have input on how this vision is facilitated: do they join with the lesser of two evils?  Do they stand by only the truest of the true?  Do they make their own path?
> 
> This system exists in real life for the same reason it exists in D&D: because it is the simplest and most efficient system, and a system to which the majority of human society has practiced and finds acceptable.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> If the group has a very cohesive vision (they all like to play do-gooders, they all want to play murderhobos, they all want to do *thing*) then you can sometimes have communal games.  But getting even a handful of people together who innately share a similar vision of the game is incredibly difficult.  Which is why _most_ systems operate on the idea that someone builds a playground and lets people play around in it.
> 
> When people respond to you with statements of "Well, that's just how we do it." it is because they are having difficulty, or are perhaps in some sort of wonderment over the fact that you find this difficult to understand.  The answer to your question is obvious.  It may be the "worst system except for all the others" but it's fairly workable so it's what we go with.



Here are the most striking things you say that are at odds with my experience:

* That it's hard to find people who share a similar vision of the game;

* That, in RPGing, too many cooks spoil the broth;

* That it is more efficient for the GM to establish all the shared fiction, rather than be one of several people who are doing that.​
It's a long time since I've played in club groups, but back when I did I had no trouble finding players who (i) were interested in joining a player-driven game (many of the players who joined my group back in those days were refugees from various forms of railroad), and (ii) who had interesting ideas to contribute to the game in the build and play of their PCs.

On those occasions when I was a player rather than a GM I also encountered plenty of players who would fit these descriptions, although they weren't always able to live them out because the GMs of those games were typically interested in highly GM-controlled play.

As for too many cooks spoiling the broth, again I've not had that experience. I'll give one illustration: In my first long-running RM game, one PC ended up allying with Vecna. I established one of Vecna's goals as being to help the Great Kingdom conquer Rel Astra. That PC supported Vecna in that endeavour, despite it meaning he had to betray his home city. Another PC, whose long-term goal had been to be a magistrate in Rel Astra, joined with this assault on Rel Astra in return for a promise of a magistracy under the new regime.

That episode wouldn't have occurred but for (i) one of the players having his PC's goal be world domination, (ii) me introducing Vecna into the campaign as a force capable of such a feat, (iii) that player therefore making a choice to have his PC ally with Vecna, (iv) me framing a situation involving Vecna which forced that first player to choose between two loyalties for his PC (city vs Vecna), (v) another player having his PC's goal be attaining a magistracy, and therefore (vi) the first player being able to persuade the second player to sacrifice his city's independence for his own desire for promotion.

To me, this is RPGing at its best: multiple participants expressing their ideas through their various participant roles (the players playing their PCs in accordance with their understandings of dramatic need; the GM framing situations that put those dramatic needs to the test). It simply couldn't happen with a single "cook" - just to focus on one aspect of it, if the GM is the one who establishes who the PCs are to ally with, or what should be sacrificed for what (eg by giving advice on what sort of choice would conform to an alignment requirement), then where is the drama and the emotional wrenching?

Not all my RPGing moments involve such high-stakes situations - partially because I'm not as good a GM as I would like to be, partially because sometimes everyone dials it back a little bit and just coasts along for an hour or a session - but the sort of thing I've just described is undoubtedly the goal, and it _depends upon_ multiple cooks.

Finally, as for efficiency: it seems to me far more efficient to let stuff be established either by a quick collective discussion, or by engaging in action resolution, then for the GM to write out a whole lot of stuff in advance. I spend my prep time for Traveller rolling up characters, rolling up worlds and designing ships. Those give me the stuff I need when the game systems or the situation call for it; I don't need to write up a whole "atlas of the Imperium" and list of secret plots as well. That can all be worked out during, and as part of, play.

This is why I inferred that you must have had some terrible experiences with players who couldn't be trusted. Because if you'd had the sort of (non-terrible) experiences I've had then you wouldn't think that I've been in "incredibly unique gaming circles".


----------



## The Crimson Binome

Lanefan said:


> The problem we're up against, however, is that for some of these guys game worlds and other imaginary constructs don't have facts.  Only reality has facts.



Anyone who refuses to acknowledge the basic premise of a role-playing game - that we're pretending the game world is a real place, and trying our best to treat it as such - is simply not arguing in good faith. There's no point in trying to reason with them.


----------



## chaochou

Lanefan said:


> Do you never differentiate between in-character and out-of-character during play?  It's the same thing...




Playing let's pretend doesn't bring things into existence.



Lanefan said:


> Says you, ignoring options other than just add or do nothing:
> 
> Change the story without adding: there's a giant red teapot full of kittens in your garden




Adding to the fiction - one of your two options with respect the fiction.



Lanefan said:


> Ask questions for clarification about the story...




Which doesn't add to the fiction... the other of your two options with respect the fiction.



Lanefan said:


> But in a game setting there's another layer to it all; a layer which you choose to wilfully (and wrongly, I think) deny the existence of: the reality within the fiction.




I don't wrongly deny it. I understand that you are playing 'let's pretend'. I understand that all the things you pretend in your rpg are neither true nor real. When you say 'I'm Falstaff the fighter' it's a lie - you are not. You are simply inviting us to pretend that it's true for the sake of entertainment.

But you, and others, are attempting to tell me that pretending you are Falstaff the Fighter means Falstaff the Fighter now 'exists'. You claim that lying about it makes your lie 'true within itself'. "The lie is true with respect to itself" is the construction you and Ovinomancer and other clowns are attempting to deceive with.

This need to convince yourself that the things you imagine are now actually real doesn't make it so. You're playing a glorified game of let's pretend. And your argument is also a pretence.



Lanefan said:


> Well, when that authorship comes about via the authors immersing themselves into the imaginary world and acting or reacting as their avatars (PCs) would logically do, doesn't it only make sense to analyse it from that angle?




No. When people sit and play 'let's pretend'  - that is, they imagine that not true things are true to entertain themselves - the first step to analysis is to accept that the game is a pretence. Stopping playing and insisting that the things imagined now have their own lives 'within the pretence' is laughable.

And sorry tell you this, since it sounds like no-one has - but 'immersion' is self-deception. Just with a prettier name. It means playing 'let's pretend' while lying to yourself about what you're doing.

Again, that's fine. But to stop playing and then lie to me about your game of let's pretend doesn't wash. Nothing you pretended actually exists. They were just lies you chose to believe for a while.


----------



## Sword of Spirit

Basically, world-building’s purpose is because, despite traditional word choices, I am not playing a game. Nor am I telling a story. My experience is an exploration of a world of fantasy and wonder. There is no extrinsic goal to that immersive experience other than the assumed goal of pursuing happiness that drives most people’s actions most of the time.


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## The Crimson Binome

pemerton said:


> You mean like deciding to search a study for a map?



Sure, if you decide to search a study for a map, because you know that you will only find it where it already is since the world is not in a state of quantum flux whereby you may cause it to appear somewhere else as a direct result of searching for it, then that's role-playing.


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## Lanefan

I had a great long reply to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] mostly typed in and then my computer decided to shut itself down...lost the lot...sigh.

So you'll have to pretend this post is a whole lot longer than it is, and that it says many more interesting and - I hope - intelligent things than this does.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] - I don't think I agree that all "let's pretend" is _lying_. I'd rather call out lying as one particular case of pretence.

When someone says "I'm Falstaff the Fighter" then either (i) that's false (because they're really Lanefan, or Gary Gyagx, or whomever) or else (ii) it's true (which doesn't seem right, because Falstaff doesn't exist, and so can't say anything about himself) or else (iii) something more complex is going on.

In the context of RPGing, I think I go with (iii). I'll try and explain.

A lie is straightforward assertion: so the (lying) assertion "I'm Falstaff the Fighter" is simply false, as per (i).

But assertion involves an attitude of _defence_ or _commitment_. When a RPGer says "I'm Falstaff the Fighter" s/he doesn't have that attitude - s/he's not signalling any intention to defend the claim. It's much closer to stipulation: "_For present purposes_ (ie the playing of the game), I am Falstaff the Fighter."

If the other players reject the stipulation, then there is no shared fiction (at least in respect of Falstaff) and so the game doesn't get off the ground.

If the other players accept the stipulation, then other things become assertable _within the scope of the stipulation_ - eg "Because you're Falstaff the Fighter, you're probably stronger than puny Nerd Nimblefingers." And I think any truth predication is also best understood as occurring within the scope of the stipulation - so if someone says "It's true that I'm Falstaff the Fighter" they are not literally asserting the truth of that claim. They're saying that the claim "It's true that I'm Falstaff the Fighter" is permissible within the scope of a stipulation that I am Falstaff the Fighter.

(There are other reasons for pretending by stipulating besides entertainment - eg as I hinted at in a post upthread, this is how proof by reductio works.)

In light of the preceding, I would say that where  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s descriptions of play go wrong is that he says stuff in the scope of the stipulation, when his interlocutors (eg you, me) don't accept the stipulation. It's one thing to pretend to be Falstaff for the fun of RPGing - but why should I accept such a stipulation when I'm wanting to discuss techniques of RPGing? I don't want to learn what is assertable about RPGing within the scope of a stipulation that Lanefan is Falstaff; I want to learn what is assertable about RPGing simpliciter!

(For completeness - what I've suggested above isn't the only theory going around of how fictions and pretence work. It just happens to be the approach that I favour.)


----------



## pemerton

Saelorn said:


> Sure, if you decide to search a study for a map, because you know that you will only find it where it already is since the world is not in a state of quantum flux whereby you may cause it to appear somewhere else as a direct result of searching for it, then that's role-playing.



Who do the second and third "you" refer to? Presumably the PC. Who does the fourth "you" refer to? Presumably the player. What about the first "you"? It's co-referring to both player and PC. Where does the player cause things to happen? Presumably in the real world? Where does the map appear (if anywhere)? In the fiction - it's a purely imaginary appearance.

In other words, your sentence is hopelessly confused with equivocations between fiction and the real world that obscure all helpful analysis.

Here's one tenable paraphrase, using <> to signify the content of the player's decision, and using underline to signify the negated content:

If a player decides that <his/her PC decides to search a study for a map, because his/her PC knows that s/he will only find it where it already is since the world is not in a state of quantum flux whereby the player may cause the map to appear somewhere else as a direct result of the PC searching for it>, then that's role-playing.​
I think this requirement for roleplaying is going to be satisfied in most cases, as no one will be playing a PC who knows, or even believes, that the _player_ has any causal power over his/her fate. The only RPG I know of that actually plays with this sort of self-referential metagaming is Over the Edge.

It certainly doesn't violate your constraint that the content of the shared fiction concerning the location of the map is established in this way rather than that!


For fun, here's an alternative paraphrase that resolves the equivocations differently:

If a player decides that <his/her PC decides to search a study for a map>, because the player knows that his/her PC will only find the map where it is already imagined by the GM to be, since the shared fiction is not in a state of "quantum flux" whereby a player may cause details to be established as a direct result of declaring and resolving an action for his/her PC, then that's roleplaying.​
That's a strong constraint, but quiet implausible, as it doesn't turn on anything tenably connected to the playing of a role (eg the centrality of first person action declarations; the special salience of the fictional positioning of key protagonists; etc). It is simply a claim that RPGing requires GM authorship of the shared fiction.

This alternative paraphrase also makes clear how _learning the content of the GM's notes is a key goal of play_ in RPGing with a high degree of GM pre-authored backstory; because the player is only making the action declaration for his/her PC because of his/her opinions about what the GM is imagining.


----------



## The Crimson Binome

pemerton said:


> In other words, your sentence is hopelessly confused with equivocations between fiction and the real world that obscure all helpful analysis.



For the purposes of role-playing, the game world is real and the real world doesn't exist. The player should be approaching this from an in-character perspective, and making the backstory contingent upon the decisions of the player in the present (as adjudicated by dice mechanics) does not provide a firm basis for staying in character. Having the backstory be set in stone, before the player is presented with a decision, does allow that.

Look. Dude. Your question has been answered, truthfully, multiple times in the last day alone. Worldbuilding is useful for a playstyle that you don't use. You cannot possibly be so dense as to not understand that by now. This thread has served its purpose. You should thank everyone for contributing, and then move on with your life. Continuing to feign ignorance will be understood as trolling, because that's all it is.


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## Nagol

pemerton said:


> <snip>
> 
> At most tables, _Sir Bargle swings_ became an element of the fiction when the player made the action declaration, and so didn't depend on eg the roll of any dice. (I think [MENTION=6775031]Saelorn[/MENTION] is an exception to this, but I'm also pretty confident that his is a minority view.)




The player cannot assume that at the time of his declaration.  The resulting fiction could easily be something like the following: "Sir Bargles starts to raise his sword, maybe intending to strike when it turns to dust!" or "Whatever Sir Bargle's intention, it is cut short as he slumps senseless to the ground." or even "Sir Bargle cannot attack.  He is still under the peace bond effect.  What does he do instead?"

The player has indicated a direction.   No part of the fiction can form until that direction is deemed appropriate for the table and appropriate to the positioning.  "The table agreed on a no violence rule, remember?", "You can't because of X", "you need to make a saving throw to be able to attack".  "This happens to stop/interrupt you", "Go ahead and roll dice",  and "OK you attack and here's what happened..." are possible responses to the player's stated intention.  Only some generate fiction.  Others just reject the player's choice, either because the action isn't appropriate at the table or because the fiction doesn't support the stated direction -- either overtly (out of range, weapon was removed in a prior scene, the players know they are under a magical effect) or covertly (a secret was just revealed to the players).  The fiction that results depends in part on the players desire, but only becomes formed when that direction is accepted and incorporated into play.

That is why the player is trying to do something in the fiction as opposed to authoring.  His edits require approval before they are applied.


----------



## Nagol

Lanefan said:


> I had a great long reply to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] mostly typed in and then my computer decided to shut itself down...lost the lot...sigh.
> 
> So you'll have to pretend this post is a whole lot longer than it is, and that it says many more interesting and - I hope - intelligent things than this does.




I hear you!  Last night I did a large multiline reply as well but those naughty gateways are back and I lost it too.


----------



## Imaro

pemerton said:


> I don't know how much work you are intending the words "beat" and "overcome" to do in your example.




I feel like we're edging into the realm of pedantry here... but ok, I'll play along let's say "overcome the challenge successfully".  In the same way a successful roll allows the challenge of the map to be overcome by finding it in the study, success against the monster would allow it to be defeated in combat



pemerton said:


> My view is that an encounter in which the players don't have a range of meaningful options as to how they engage it and might resolve it is a poorly framed encounter. Whether or not your dragon encounter fits that description depends on many points of detail or context - eg maybe the players can run from the dragon, or befriend it, or pledge fealty to it, or hide from it.




This is avoiding the question.  No one said they didn't have meaningful (whatever that means) options for resolution, but there is no roll that will bring about the realization of successfully beating this monster in combat in the same way that there is no roll that would successfully find the map in the study if the DM did not place it there.  The PC's could research where the map is, cast a spell to find it,  pay to have an augur or diviner search it's location out, talk to thieves who may be in the know about it's location and so on... and I consider those meaningful options, but feel free to explain why you may not.  IMO it's the same way the PC's in that encounter could interact with the challenge of the monster in other ways but what they can't do (irregardless of how high they roll) is defeat it in combat because of it's pre-written stats...  



pemerton said:


> In a recent session of my Traveller game the PCs found themselves under laser bombardment from an orbiting starship. The PCs were not in a position to attack the vessel - it was in orbit, and it's forward observer was in a small craft flying quite high above the ground. But they had a range of options, some of which they exercised: they fled in their ATVs to cover (we resolved these by application of the quickie combat rules for small craft); and they called in the local air force to deal with the attackers (from memory this was a simple case of "saying 'yes'" - one of the PCs was a recently retired senior military commander on the world in question). They NPCs tried to open negotiation with the PCs (over radio) but the players (as their PCs) refused to engage (so as best I recall this didn't actually get to the reaction roll/social mechanics stage).




And here I'm unclear how this is any different from the map not being in the study...  

The ship cannot be attacked...plain and simple, due to what I assume was fictional positioning created by the DM.  The map cannot be found plain and simple due to fictional positioning created by the DM.  Both scenarios offer a plethora of alternate ways to deal with their respective challenge but I find it hard to discern why one is stopping or hindering player agency and the other is not...


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Also, at the current level of description of these processes, there is nothing that makes "I try to hit him with my sword" any different from "I search the study for the map we've been looking for."




There are some differences in the processes.

1. If the object wasn't intentionally hidden, a flat DC is assigned which can go up to 30.  AC doesn't go that high and is stat modified.  

2. If the object was intentionally hidden, the DC is set with an opposed roll.  That doesn't happen in combat.

3. Passive perception/investigation can be used to find the map.  Passive attacks with a sword don't exist.

4. Perception/investigation use different stats than a sword does.

5. The goals are different.  One process involves swinging a sword to defeat an opponent.  The other involves searching a room to find an object.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Hence, as I have said, the player have only modest agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction; and hence, as I have also said, a significant goal of play is for the players to make moves that will trigger the GM to narrate bits of his/her notes.




I think a lot of the differences in opinions in this thread boil down to your different definition of agency.

The standard definition of player agency is the ability to fully control what your character does(outside of mechanics like mind control) and have the character's actions be able affect and change the game world.  If my PC can walk into module B10 and try with the possibility of success to set himself up as Mayor of the town and the other PCs be his advisers, while ignoring the mysteries the module presents, I have full agency.

Your new definition is one where the players have to be equal to the DM in the ability to create the game world in order to have full agency.  As long as you hold to your new definition, you are going to continue to have these disconnects with other participants in discussions of this sort.


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## Ovinomancer

chaochou said:


> This is meaningless. There is no seperate existence 'in the fiction'. It is these words and nothing else.
> 
> The dragons are now a bacon sandwich. Now a children's swing.
> 
> I type real words. Things that don't exist do non-existent stuff.
> 
> There's no inside and outside. That's the way you and Lanefan choose to lie to yourselves. Which is a fine, popular and long-standing form of play. But a garbage form of rpg theory.




Well, clearly you didn't read the rest of my post where I address this.  If you're actually interested in discussion rather than childish dismissals you can go back and do so, but I'm not going to waste my time reiterating it with you.

And, what form of rpg theory did I espouse?  Being as I'm in full agreement that "I search the study for the map" and "I kill the orc" are functionally similar moves in some player-facing rpg theories, and have been open about stating that, I'm not sure what you think I'm trying to say.  Protip:  All I'm saying here is that an incoherent theory of fiction's non-existence to justify that those two moves are the same is incoherent.  I'm not saying there isn't a coherent theory that allows it, in fact, I've espoused that theory:  the fiction matters, and, if it matters, it exists.  Not as a physical object, but to things that do not exist cannot matter by definition.  Fiction may* not be _real_, but that wasn't the claim.

*This is an actual ongoing philosophical debate, so I can't claim one side has won over the other, hence the 'may'.


----------



## Sunseeker

pemerton said:


> I'm going to requote your post so we're both on the same page:
> 
> Here are the most striking things you say that are at odds with my experience:
> * That it's hard to find people who share a similar vision of the game;
> 
> * That, in RPGing, too many cooks spoil the broth;
> 
> * That it is more efficient for the GM to establish all the shared fiction, rather than be one of several people who are doing that.​
> It's a long time since I've played in club groups, but back when I did I had no trouble finding players who (i) were interested in joining a player-driven game (many of the players who joined my group back in those days were refugees from various forms of railroad), and (ii) who had interesting ideas to contribute to the game in the build and play of their PCs.
> 
> On those occasions when I was a player rather than a GM I also encountered plenty of players who would fit these descriptions, although they weren't always able to live them out because the GMs of those games were typically interested in highly GM-controlled play.
> 
> As for too many cooks spoiling the broth, again I've not had that experience. I'll give one illustration: In my first long-running RM game, one PC ended up allying with Vecna. I established one of Vecna's goals as being to help the Great Kingdom conquer Rel Astra. That PC supported Vecna in that endeavour, despite it meaning he had to betray his home city. Another PC, whose long-term goal had been to be a magistrate in Rel Astra, joined with this assault on Rel Astra in return for a promise of a magistracy under the new regime.
> 
> That episode wouldn't have occurred but for (i) one of the players having his PC's goal be world domination, (ii) me introducing Vecna into the campaign as a force capable of such a feat, (iii) that player therefore making a choice to have his PC ally with Vecna, (iv) me framing a situation involving Vecna which forced that first player to choose between two loyalties for his PC (city vs Vecna), (v) another player having his PC's goal be attaining a magistracy, and therefore (vi) the first player being able to persuade the second player to sacrifice his city's independence for his own desire for promotion.



This is decidedly _not_ what I was talking about.  It's not even, IMO, world building.  Your players are simply drinking larger helpings from the broth you have already prepared: Vecna being a real force within the gameworld (as opposed to an existential plot device) and the things she wants to do.  The rest of these things are in-character actions that affect the world around them.  I don't believe I've ever argued against _that_.  I'm pretty sure I've argued *for* that over several posts.  My only caveat was that the base world is initially presented by the DM, who therefore retains primary authorship over what is or isn't possible.  IE: if Vecna did not exist in your campaign world, then her mission to conquer Rel Astra would not exist, and therefore players could not make the choice to ally with her in that endevour.  

What I was talking about was more along the lines of if you had created a world wherein Great Kingdom and Rel Astra were at odds for *reasons* and one of your players decided that reason should be Vecna and that she was aiding Great Kingdom against Rel Astra because she wanted to conquer the latter.  

That's the sort of communal authorship I was talking about.

All I see in your example is a player playing the game with the materials they had available to them.  There's no authorship there.  Certainly these are big moves within the game, but they're not really authoring anything, they're just swinging the pendelum that you the DM had already written to be flexible in the direction they're interested in.




> To me, this is RPGing at its best: multiple participants expressing their ideas through their various participant roles (the players playing their PCs in accordance with their understandings of dramatic need; the GM framing situations that put those dramatic needs to the test). It simply couldn't happen with a single "cook" - just to focus on one aspect of it, if the GM is the one who establishes who the PCs are to ally with, or what should be sacrificed for what (eg by giving advice on what sort of choice would conform to an alignment requirement), then where is the drama and the emotional wrenching?



I think you're talking what I said a little further than what I intended.

The GM is the author of the gameworld.  The GM provides the possibilities for allies, some may have higher standards than others, some may not wish allies, some may only become allies if certain conditions are met (sigh my demonic pact!).  The GM provides who these individuals or groups or nations are at odds with, why they are at odds and then the players are given the task of resolving, worsening, or whatevering the situation.  Usually by some interested outside party at first or by background connections to the world, or simple player interest.  

This is different from where the GM is more of "the guy who knows all the rules and runs the bad guys" while everyone provides what the cities are, who can be allied with, what those people's objectives are, and so forth.  That is the kind of communal authorship I was talking about.


----------



## Arilyn

Saelorn said:


> For the purposes of role-playing, the game world is real and the real world doesn't exist. The player should be approaching this from an in-character perspective, and making the backstory contingent upon the decisions of the player in the present (as adjudicated by dice mechanics) does not provide a firm basis for staying in character. Having the backstory be set in stone, before the player is presented with a decision, does allow that.
> 
> Look. Dude. Your question has been answered, truthfully, multiple times in the last day alone. Worldbuilding is useful for a playstyle that you don't use. You cannot possibly be so dense as to not understand that by now. This thread has served its purpose. You should thank everyone for contributing, and then move on with your life. Continuing to feign ignorance will be understood as trolling, because that's all it is.




This op was started by pemerton. I am enjoying it thoroughly, as there have been interesting points on all sides. If it disgusts you so much, then don't read it, but please don't tell the rest of the posters, especially the one you happen to disagree with to basically shut up and move on.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> I don't understand your question. In particular, I'm not sure what you're envisaging can't be done.




If elements of the fiction don't exist....they aren't real....then how can players be denied introducing them? 

I was just dismissing this "things in stories aren't real" line of reasoning because in a discussion on the elements of fiction, I find it to be useless.


----------



## Kobold Boots

Arilyn said:


> This op was started by pemerton. I am enjoying it thoroughly, as there have been interesting points on all sides. If it disgusts you so much, then don't read it, but please don't tell the rest of the posters, especially the one you happen to disagree with to basically shut up and move on.




Agreed 100%.  I just wish that there was some requirement for folks to actually read what was already said in the thread before it's restated a bijillion times.  Forums aren't great for that once the thread gets more than 10 pages long.


----------



## Kobold Boots

.. and now my response to the OP after 754 other posts.  Being hypocritical, (see post 754) I'm not replying to anything other than the OP.

Given the descriptions in the OP (dungeon and wilderness adventures) I don't think I'd necessarily call those things "world-building" in considering what I feel is the widely accepted definition to modern gamers.  What I'd offer in replacement is this.

1. World-building - Creation of the larger game world and macro systems that the game adventures happen in.
2. Adventure-building - What the players actually interact with.  This can have as much or as little interaction with the material created during "world building" as desired.

The important thing here is you don't ever have to world build at all.  You can run a campaign entirely with adventure building.  Whether you do or not has to do with where you are on the next axis of story telling.

1. Serial - Adventures don't directly build on one another.  They stand alone, even if some of the characters are the same. (e.g. Flash Gordon esque)
2. Ongoing - Adventures build on each other and directly impact each other.  (LoTR, etc.)

It's easier to use what I'm calling adventure building when you're running serially.  World-building becomes more important once you move to ongoing story development as it's more likely folks are going to start operating at the margins of what any particular adventure is going to hold.  For the sake of brevity the acceptance of the margins is where I draw the line between sandbox and conformity storytelling.  I'm not going to go into that here.  (It's a herring/tangent to the original question.)

Now for the Lazy DM wisdom.

Your players need to be part of the creative team when you're world building unless you're J.R.R Tolkien and spend 20 years building a world, languages and other stuff alone in your study or you're fortunate enough to be in a book club with other authors on a regular basis.  Successful "world-building" at the table means that your players buy in to the immersive quality of what you're doing and that generally only happens when the world resonates with their sensibilities.  The "world" doesn't need to be hyper-detailed or be completely developed.  All that's necessary is for everyone at the table to find their "cool" piece of it and take part in the narrative.

What's all of this for?  - It's all to allow people to enjoy themselves in a group and make shared memories.  In my case, I've lost a lot of friends in the last year to illness.  Many of those friends were gamers.  I have memories of my friendships with them, but also a lot of memories of how they played and the silly things we said and did.  Building with them was very enjoyable but I think that effectively doubling the resilient memories I have with them through that process may have been the best thing I ever did as far as gaming goes.

Be well
KB


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> Hence, as I have said, the player have only modest agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction; and hence, as I have also said, a significant goal of play is for the players to make moves that will trigger the GM to narrate bits of his/her notes.
> 
> It baffles me that this is still regarded as contentious, given how many concrete examples (described at higher or lower levels of abstraction, and with more ore less metaphor involved) we have had in this thread:



Let me help you out then:  I disagree with that assessment because it's not an accurate description of the playstyle.  While it does have some validity with some examples, and definitely the map examples commonly used, it doesn't account for those times where the DM has no notes to cover the actions of the players.  And that's me sticking to the most extreme example of play that uses secret backstory; it's not even close to mine where notes are used for framing mainly.



> * the goal of worldbuiding is to support exploration (= the players learn stuff about the GM-authored fiction by having the GM tell it to them);



Exploration provides new scenes that need to be framed, they are not the goal of play but a new area for new challenges.  When my players elect to explore eastward, for example, they find the foothills for the mountains the can already see.  In those foothills they will find new challenges.  The result of the exploration is me framing the scene for a challenge.  The goal is to find the new challenge, not to get me to read my notes to them.



> * the solution to avoiding arrest is to learn whether any officials are able to be bribed, but that is _not_ to be determined as the outcome of action declarations (and hence = the players declare moves that lead the GM to tell them stuff s/he has written up about the various NPCs);



Only in the extreme case the DM has written they can or cannot be bribed.  If I did that, for instance, then I would foreshadow that fact prior to the question coming up, as in "the gate is guarded by Bob the Guard, and you, Bob the Rogue, know from your underground contacts (established by Bob the Rogue at character creation or during play) that Bob the Guard is generally held to be unbribable.  He is, however, known to be rather dim."

So, for me, a DM who uses heavy prep, the goal of play here would never be for the players to declare actions to find out my notes on bribing the guards, they'd either already be told in framing what to expect or they could try and I'll let the mechanics determine things.



> * the players can't just declare "I search the study for the map" and hope to have some chance of success; it depends on where the map _really_ is (= the players can't succeed in their goal of the map being found by their PCs until they make the right move to trigger the GM to tell them that bit of his/her notes which records the location of the map);



Why can't they?  Let's assume the case where the DM has notes that say the map is in the kitchen.  The players don't know this, and so they have hope that they can find the map.  This is negated, yes, but that doesn't negate the map as an objective of play, it just says that the fictional positioning is not yet right and they need to try again elsewhere.  This isn't all that dissimilar to having to get past the guards before having a chance to search for the map.  Again, broader play where agency is spread out vs narrower play where every scene focuses on the maximum agency moves.



> * etc, etc.



Not the most convincing argument.



> This may be a fun way to play, or not, depending on taste. It's certainly very popular, as best I can tell. _What is the objection to literal descriptions of it_?



That your literal description is neither literal nor a very valid description except of some aspects of that play.  Again, you insist on evaluating the play from your perspective using a different paradigm and miss the other facets of play that exist that do not exist in your paradigm of play.



> Your second act of authorship doesn't exhibit the same structure as the ones I described. It is not the addition of further detail about an already established character in an already established situation (_that the character is the killer of an orc s/he encountered_; _that the character is the finder of a map in a study that s/he searched_). It's a complete non-sequitur. It also involves an action declaration that would be impermissible in every RPG I'm familiar with, though I'm sure there are some less mainstream games which would permit it: but every RPG I know would only permit "I search the study for a map". (The sorts of details that OGL Conan and Fate permit players to stipulate don't extend to discovering (what I am presuming to be) a crucial item like a sought-after map.)



Dear god, you're so close to seeing my point but you still shy away from it.  

I'll try again:  what makes the second declaration a non-sequitur?  Answer:  it doesn't follow the _existing _fiction!  The fiction that comes before, ie the description of the scene, places hard constraints on the fiction that can be authored after.  The fiction _exists_.




> Of course, if the PC has powerful scrying and teleportation magic then it may not be: "I scry to locate a study with a map in it, and then teleport there and ransack the study for it." But I'm assuming that's not what you have in mind.



Yes, adding additional conjecture is not what I have in mind.  You may feel free to assume this is the case at all times.



> This is a rather tortuous way of putting things, and again it puzzles me, as I and others have posted quite straightforwardly about this multiple times upthread.
> 
> There are some RPGs in which the players enjoy a straightforward power to stipulate elements of the shared fiction in the course of play. Fate is such a game; so is OGL Conan. But BW is not, by default, such a game (BW does permit this in the course of PC building, but not during play - of course the player can make suggestiosn that the GM goes along with, but that's true also for nearly any RPG). Neither is 4e (unless you count CaGI-style martial forced movement). And Cortex+ Heroic is not as straightforward on this matter as Fate (there are a whole lot of different ways that Cortex+ Heroic players can try and establish elements of the shared fiction, depending on the nature of the element in both story and mechanical terms).
> 
> Declaring "I search the study for the map" is not an exercise of narrative control in the manner that Fate and OGL Conan permit. It's utterly banal action declaration which goes back to D&D's origins. In a "player-facing" game, if it succeeds, then a map is found. But the player didn't exercise any direct "narrative control" - that's the whole point of having dice-based action resolution mechanics, as a tool for mediating between various expressed desires as to the content of the shared fiction, and the actual establishment of consensus as to what that content is.
> 
> (As an aside - Gygax wrote a "player-facing" mechanic for resolving checks for secret doors into the random dungeon rules in Appendix A. It's not as if this is wildly modern tech.)
> 
> Describing that consensus as a constraint on GM authorship is also odd - not because it's false, but because it seems to assume that it's constraint on the GM is more salient than its constraint on other participants. If the fiction is _shared_, then ipso facto everyone playing the game is constrained by whatever has been established.



Nothing you say here actually contradicts what I said that you called tortuous.  



> In BW, if a check succeeds then the PC succeeds at his/her task and the intention of the declaration is realised. Full stop. The GM has nothing to do with it, and the player enjoys the authority to veto GM embellishments if the player takes the view they are at odds with the intention.



Which is what I said using terms that encompass the style of play in more than just BW.



> And in the "hidden backstory" style, the GM declares action declaration's unsuccessful all the time - either allowing the dice to be rolled and saying "No, you find no map"; or just telling the players "You search and there's no map", or perhaps rolling the dice secretly him-/herself. In this thread,  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has consistently advocated for secret rolls that preclude the players from knowing how the action declaration was actually adjudicated.



I understand that you think that you can argue for [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], and that you can use [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s arguments, but I'm not arguing with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] here -- he plays how he plays and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] (no offense Lan) is not the definition of an entire style of play.  That his style is followed by some doesn't mean that it's definitive.  In other words, confine your discussion of how [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] plays with the only expert on how [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] plays on the board:  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION].  

I have said multiple times I run in the "hidden backstory" style and I clearly say I do not ask for rolls unless the outcome is uncertain and there is a chance of failure.  If you look in a location for a non-existent map, the narration is a straight 'you don't find a map' without a roll.  

Since there is clear deviation in the playstyle right here -- between your characterization of [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s play and my characterization of my play -- then it's clear that your assumption of how that style of play works is flawed.  Can you accept that?




> Have you ever browsed a book? I have - reference books are especially good for this purpose. I choose, or perhaps by flipping pages randomly determine, which bit I read next. That is not exercising any agency over the content of the book.
> 
> If the agency of the players is confined to influencing which bits of the hidden backstory the GM tells to them; or which bits of the pre-authored storyline the GM reveals to them; that is about the same amount of agency as someone flipping through a reference book or working through a choose-your-own-adventure book. Ie relatively little.



I'm honestly at a loss that you think that playing in a hidden backstory game means that all things are set in stone and immutable just as in a book.  It's nearly insulting that you actually believe that most DMs play in a way that is actually comparable to flipping through a book.  This isn't even true of your favorite example of this style [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], who runs a game full of meaningful choices that affect the entire game in ways that are not in his notes and has provided clear examples of such numerous times in this very thread.

Whatever you may think, this example is so horribly flawed in describing anything except the most agonizing total railroad (a style of game despised by almost everyone) that it's insulting to anyone you're talking to about this -- including yourself.



> Can the PCs set the building on fire? What if the GM decides that it's made of non-flammable materials; or under a magical ward; or that the rain is falling so heavily that no fire catches? (In a "player-facing" game, those could be elements of narrative that might be established to explain a failed arson check.)



Those things should be apparent in framing, in which case they're not secret backstory.  If the DM is engaged in post hoc additions to prevent player actions from occuring, the DM is engaged in bad play, no matter what style is being discussed.

Please, take this concept and understand it, because it's a serious roadblock to understanding and reflects poorly on you.  Unless you intend to be dismissive and insulting to those that don't play as you do?



> And if the scene is the building, and the action declarations are, in effect "We enter this room and search; what do we find?", then where is the agency? This is just choose-your-own-adventure again, the players making moves that trigger the GM telling them stuff from his/her notes. It's true that we might spice things up a bit by having the players make decisions about how their PCs move from room to room (eg instead of going through the GM-authored doors, the cast Passwall) but I would describe that as, at best, rather modest agency.



Yes, if that is how play unfolds it would be a question to see what they GM will narrate, and that narration may well be from notes.  But that's not where the agency is, as I've told you repeatedly.  You're evaluating that statement from the lens that player declarations should be about resolving a crisis -- if it's not a crisis then it's something to be glossed and agreed and moved to crisis.  But, the DM-facing style of play move more broadly and includes actions that aren't addressing crisis in every scene.  The choice to go to this room to search instead of the other room to search is agency if it comes at a cost, regardless of outcome.  If there's a time limit, or chance of guards appearing, then the choice to move to this room and search has a consequence, and therefor agency as the players spend a limited resource (in this case time or danger) to achieve a goal.  It's a small agency, at this point, and a well constructed game will have ways to eliminate choices and select better ones to maximize the use of that resource, but agency in these games is rarely large at the resolution of action you're highlighting.  A fact which skews well towards your argument about there being more agency in your style for player declarations.  This is true, because the only declarations that matter in that style are ones that address crisis.  That crisis is pushed onto the players by the GM framing.  In DM-facing games, crisis occurs as well and player declarations resolve it, but the crisis comes from a series of choices by players at a lower level of agency -- ie, which room to search -- and isn't present in each declaration.

Chess vs checkers, man.



> And to say that the players are free to have their PCs leave the map is really just to acknowledge their lack of agency: they (I'm assuming) want to play a game that is about finding the map, but their access to that shared fiction is subordinated to GM pre-authorship. To say that they have the agency to give up on the focus of play that they want is not, in my view, to point to a substantial mode of agency.



This would only be true if there weren't more game off of the map.

I have lots of game off of any given map.

In that case, the ability to leave a challenge is agency.  It has consequence.  You don't get those rewards and must instead do something else.



> This is odd for two reasons. First, you assert that choose-your-own-adventure style action declaration is a high degree of agency. Second, you assert that having the GM engage you with stuff that speaks to the character you built, and invites you to confront the issues you signalled you wanted to engage with in play, is a negation of agency!



I do not, as "choose-your-own-adventure style action declaration is your terminology and I reject both that analysis and that term.

And, I do not, and never said anything of the kind.  What I said was that the players lose agency by having the GM force them into crisis of the GM's choosing.  That the GM references the notes on their characters before doing so doesn't mean the players suddenly have agency at being framed into a crisis of the GM's choosing.



> That's not my actual argument.
> 
> My claim is fairly simple: if all the salient fiction is authored by the GM, the players didn't exercise agency over the content of the shared fiction.
> 
> There are various ways that players can exercise agency. One is by succeeding on action declarations, which establishes, as part of the shared fiction, the contnt that, prior to the resolution of the declaration, the player _desired_ to be part of the shared fiction. Another is by establishing material - perhaps elements of the shared fiction (eg relationships with significant NPCs, which are fairly formal part of Fate and Burning Wheel and can be an informal part of most other systems), or perhaps thematic orientation (eg by choosing to play a Raven Queen devotee, the player makes Orcus and undead salient as key antagonists in the game); and there are probably other ways of establishing material that I'm not thinking of at the moment. This second mode of player agency is quiet important, because it is another way in which players can influence the content of the shared fiction without having to engage in collaborative storytelling.
> 
> None of this is rocket science. Eero Tuovinen describes it all in a blog that I've linked to several times now.



This is a semantic argument, where you complain that the words I use that mean the same thing aren't the words you'd use.  The player expressing a desire to introduce new fiction that is actually introduced when agreed to by the GM or when the dice indicate success of that introduction isn't a different thing that the player being able to introduce new fiction through action declaration.  Also, your phrasing fails to account for the fiat introduction of Jabal of the Cabal as part of an action declaration that is accepted regardless of the outcome of the mechanics, an act you've pointed out as being part of the expected results of player-facing game styles.  You can't have it all ways, you know.



> Leaving aside the fact that the scene might have more at stake then just the map, what you say is still not correct. Where does the GM get the framing material from? Where does the GM get material for narrating consequences from?



Again, you try to introduce new elements that support you.  The argument has focused on finding the map.  I was clear that the map was the current objective of play.  I was precise in this because I know you love to add additional details to change the state of the situation and then explain away at the new state.

Where do you get your framing?  I don't know, it's largely unimportant.  You can make it up on the spot.  You can use things that tie it to your characters for future links and challenges, you can read your notes that you prepped and are still useful.  What does it matter?  



> If the check to find the map fails, it's quite legitimate for the GM to declare that (say) the document hidden in the drawer is, rather, a letter from a loved one that reveals some "unwelcome truth" (to use the Dungeon World terminology). Assuming that it's the player who has established the existence of the loved one, and the orientation towards the loved one that would make the truth unwelcome, then the GM's narration of the consequence expresses not only the GM's but also the player's agency over the content of the shared fiction. This is how, as Tuovinen puts it, "choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices".



Yes, I believe I've been rather upfront that player-facing style games allow the GM to narrate failure in many different ways, and this is an example of narration of failure.  It's not in dispute, and it doesn't address anything I said.



> The failures you refer to in the "GM-facing" game - lack of time, alerting enemies, searching the wrong spot or setting the wrong spot alight, etc - are all results of GM stipulation. The only one that is not a result of Gm stipulation is the PCs being killed - at least at most tables, combat is resolved by resort to the mechanics rather than GM stipulation. And so, to repost what you replied to, "If a player stakes discovery of the map, and fails, that is losing at a move in a game. That is actually quiet different, I think, from the GM stipulating failure. I don't see them as 'pretty much the same' at all."



Not in my games, they aren't.  The guards arriving are a check made by me based on the events ongoing -- make a lot of noise, check gets a plus.  Quiet, check gets a minus.  Near the guard post?  Plus.  Crawling through airducts?  Minus.  These things are all susceptible to  player declarations -- not a fixed list because I cannot (and don't) anticipate what players might do.  But it's still a mechanical check based on clearly stated issues, "hey, that thunderwave spell you just cast sure was really loud, the guards probably heard it' <clatter> "you're sure of it, as you hear yells for help and the stop of hard boots running in your direction."

You can't sweep everything you want into the bin of 'DM stipulation' while claiming that you use the random generation rules of Traveller and that's a great example of not stipulating things.  You keep wanting this both ways, and also keep trying to shove an entire playstyle into a box it doesn't fit in.

You should consider stopping and listening for a bit instead.



> I have linked to the actual play report several times in this thread, but maybe you haven't looked at it. Here it is again:
> 
> ​
> So, to repeat what I posted earlier, "the very first scene in my BW game presented the PC whose goal was to find magical items to help him free his brother from balrog possession with a chance to acquire an angel feather. The "challenge" in the scene was to determine the nature of the feather, whether it was worth trying to buy, whether instead to try and steal it, etc." In other words, there was no challenge that had to be overcome to establish fictional positioning to pursue the player's goal.



Right -- the GOAL was to free his brother, the SCENE was about determining if this feather was any good at that.  The player could not save his brother in that scene as he had not yet achieved the correct fictional positioning to do that.  Instead, he was addressing a challenge you presented that had to be overcome in order to move closer to the correct fictional positioning to achieve his GOAL of saving his brother.

That you lifted the opening scene from other player information doesn't actually change this -- in fact, the system you're discussing encourages players to create their own complications that prevent moving to the fictional positioning necessary to achieve their goals.



> In "story now"/ "standard narrativistic model" RPGing there's no need to fiddle about and delay the onset of the real action. The first encounter in my 4e game, following the initial scene where the PCs met one another and their patron, involved a clash with Bane-ite slavers, whom most of the PCs had an established reason to oppose beyond just them being a challenge the GM threw out there.



I said this above and you disagreed.

And "action" is not the same as "a scene where I have the fictional positioning to accomplish my goal".  It's just, action, ie, a crisis the players have to engage.



> Although [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] is mistaken when he says that your description of my argument is "a pretty accurate assessment" - because that description didn't address at all the source of material - innerdue is 100% correct to say that " If [the GM] wants to frame a "pass the guards" challenge or a "successfully sneak through the hallways undetected" challenge, great! _As long as the scene frame represents appropriate dramatic need_." Whether having guards outside the study will satisfy that criterion is an entirely contextual matter, depending on such things as (i) established fiction about the study, (ii) established fiction about the guards, (iii) elements of the framing of both, etc.



Nothing you've said in this post contradicts what I said, though, you've just spun off into a lot of semantic spirals that say the same things using different words while pretending the outcome is actually different.



> If a PC is a worshipper of Ioun, and the guards are there to stop the unworthy gaining access to valuable knowledge, then it sounds like it could be quite interesting (and also ripe for the PCs to persuade the guards to let them through, if they want, by persuading them that keeping secrets is what Vecna wants, not Ioun).
> 
> If the guards are just a roadblock, they sound a bit boring to me.



Tastes vary, surely we're not arguing that?



> That said, system also matters here. 4e combat is very intricate, and combats that have little connection to broader dramatic concerns may still allow a group who is into that sort of thing to enjoy playing and expressing their characters. I wouldn't say that the same is true of combat in Classic Traveller. Or consider Cortex+: the dramatic needs of characters are established via their milestones, but these are often rather independent of the particular minutiae of a given scene (eg Captain America earns XP for engaging with superhero teambuilding): so the actual challenges that the PCs confront may often be secondary to the PC-to-PC interaction and character development that is taking place (much as can be the case in superhero comics). So in Cortex+ Heroic, the thing to think about in framing the guards outside the study is not so much whether the guards per se speak to dramatic need, but whether the framing establishes an opportunity for the players to pursue their PC milestones. For instance: one of Wolverine's milestones involves meeting with and interacting with old friends and old enemies. Wolverine's player is free to establish that an NPC is such a person, but this requires the GM to frame Wolverine into an encounter with a named character whom it makes sense to call out; so if Wolverine was one of the PCs, then as well as the nameless guards the GM would want there to be someone interesting leading them for Wolverine's player to hook onto in exploring that milestone.



Well, considering none of my arguments were about how you might earn XP in any given system, I'm not sure how this refutes or addresses anything I've said.  The goal of play is shifted by how XP awards, but the style of play seems to be within the descriptions I've provided regardless.

Descriptions that aren't demeaning or dismissive of the style of play, mind.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with defining agency as the ability to introduce new fiction through action declarations -- nothing dismissive or insulting or bad either implicitly or explicitly.  It's a useful touchstone to understand the core difference in play:  player-facing games allow more of this kind of play while DM-facing games restrict that kind of play.  This whole thing you have about notes, while worth discussing, isn't the actual difference in playstyles.



> This is another illustration of how player choices (here, choosing/building a particular character with a particular milestone) can influence material that becomes part of the shared fiction, although the player is not exercising any sort of direct narrative control.



But they are -- if the DM is constrained to provide situations that revolve around these player introduced concepts and then the player declarations introduce new fictions that are allow either by DM fiat agreement or a success on a mechanical test (and even possibly on a failure, depending on how the DM narrates the failure) which then binds the DM to accept this new fiction, then the players are exerting direct narrative control.  Their actions lead to new fiction according to their actions.

I think this is place where you do care about some precise semantic definition.  It's so odd that you publicly declare you don't care about semantics and then keep making these precise semantic arguments.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] - I don't think I agree that all "let's pretend" is _lying_. I'd rather call out lying as one particular case of pretence.
> 
> When someone says "I'm Falstaff the Fighter" then either (i) that's false (because they're really Lanefan, or Gary Gyagx, or whomever) or else (ii) it's true (which doesn't seem right, because Falstaff doesn't exist, and so can't say anything about himself) or else (iii) something more complex is going on.



I suppose (ii) might hold water in LARPing, where one is somewhat expected to assume the persona of one's character - much like stage or screen acting, where George Clooney might well answer "Right now I'm Danny Ocean" if asked his name during filming of one of the Ocean's nn movies because at that moment that answer is true in his mind.

A truly immersive RPGer (sometimes unfairly disparaged as the "method actor" type) might do the same thing - try as far as possible to assume their character's identity during the game, then when the game is done leave it behind until next session.



> In the context of RPGing, I think I go with (iii). I'll try and explain.
> 
> A lie is straightforward assertion: so the (lying) assertion "I'm Falstaff the Fighter" is simply false, as per (i).
> 
> But assertion involves an attitude of _defence_ or _commitment_. When a RPGer says "I'm Falstaff the Fighter" s/he doesn't have that attitude - s/he's not signalling any intention to defend the claim. It's much closer to stipulation: "_For present purposes_ (ie the playing of the game), I am Falstaff the Fighter."
> 
> If the other players reject the stipulation, then there is no shared fiction (at least in respect of Falstaff) and so the game doesn't get off the ground.
> 
> If the other players accept the stipulation, then other things become assertable _within the scope of the stipulation_ - eg "Because you're Falstaff the Fighter, you're probably stronger than puny Nerd Nimblefingers." And I think any truth predication is also best understood as occurring within the scope of the stipulation - so if someone says "It's true that I'm Falstaff the Fighter" they are not literally asserting the truth of that claim. They're saying that the claim "It's true that I'm Falstaff the Fighter" is permissible within the scope of a stipulation that I am Falstaff the Fighter.



With you up to here, friend. 



> In light of the preceding, I would say that where  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s descriptions of play go wrong is that he says stuff in the scope of the stipulation, when his interlocutors (eg you, me) don't accept the stipulation. It's one thing to pretend to be Falstaff for the fun of RPGing - but why should I accept such a stipulation when I'm wanting to discuss techniques of RPGing? I don't want to learn what is assertable about RPGing within the scope of a stipulation that Lanefan is Falstaff; I want to learn what is assertable about RPGing simpliciter!



Er...the last quoted word here...what is it?

Let's go step by step and you can tell me where you start to disagree with me.  I'll try to make this as mechanics/system-neutral as I can, and focus on what happens rather than how.

Once we all accept the stipulation that I'm Falstaff the Fighter and you're Gutboy Barrelhouse the Dwarf and Joe is Mialee the Wizard it's a very short step to also jointly accepting the stipulation that we're in the same imagined place (a tavern in a game world somewhere) having a conversation with each other about someday going out adventuring and seeing the world.  With me so far?

From here it's another very short step to jointly accepting these stipulations regarding the scene around us:
- that this tavern we're in has a reputation for fine food, dubious ale and a rough clientele, and also has a rather shady history
- the tavern is in a moderate-size harbour town permanently populated mostly by humans with a wide scattering of other races coming and going on the ships
- within the town the tavern is located a few streets inland from the docks, still in the sailors' part of town
With me so far?  Nothing very controversial yet...so let's put things in motion.

From here it's another short step to jointly accepting the general premise of things happening within the stipulation: in this case the conversation we three are having being interrupted by Mialee noticing someone trying to pick her pocket.  She grabs the Thief's arm and pulls him around in front of her, whereupon Gutboy reaches up and grabs him by the hair to make sure he stays put.  Falstaff meanwhile looks around to make sure everyone else is minding their own business, which so far they are.  Now we've got some in-game action and we've all jointly bought in to the scene - with me so far?

And from here it's a short step to finding examples of cause and effect within the scope of the stipulation.  The tavern's bouncers notice the disturbance and come over to take a look (Falstaff, observant clod that he is, doesn't see them coming); and quickly decide the simplest option is to throw all four of us out [this result was pre-planned by the DM if events allowed for it, see below for why].  Result: we're firmly escorted out the door, with Gutboy still grimly clinging to the poor Thief's hair!  Now we've got cause and effect within the scene: cause being the Thief provoking a disturbance, result being we're now out in the street with a captive Thief.  With me so far?

So let's go a step further into the murk - assuming by now we're all fully bought in to the scene I'll let that one go and move to part two: hidden elements.  The Thief, tired of having his hair pulled, makes all kinds of promises that if released he'll be the best friend we three have ever had, he'll share his stealings with us, he'll never ever ever steal from us again, blah blah blah...and it slowly occurs to the three of us that this Thief might in fact make a good addition to our group.  So we take him somewhere quiet, sit him down, and get to know him.  End result: we take him in and our group grows by one.  Seems innocuous enough from a play perspective, right?  But here's the catch: though the Thief thus far has been played by the DM as if it was an NPC, unknown to anyone else except the DM this is in fact Mary's character Keyes; and she now steps in and takes him over.  Mary had this idea to start with, and acting on this idea she and the DM had pre-planned this as an unusual method of introducing her to the budding party; with Mary fully aware of the risk that Keyes' approach might be rejected (in which case there were plans B, C and D in the works to get him in later) or Keyes even killed outright (in which case Mary has another character on standby and ready to rock).

This also explains the bouncers throwing us all out (a bit unusual, given the tavern is known to be a rough place anyway and our little disturbance was pretty minor): to isolate the four of us and thus give the Thief an opportunity to make his case.

So to sum up: in a short sequence we've seen in-fiction cause and effect, we've seen hidden elements at work, we've seen DM pre-authorship at work, and we've got a party started!

Where in your view does any of this go wrong?

Lanefan


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> The agency of the players, in respect of this aspect of play, seems to consist in affecting the sequence in which that material is learned (and perhaps whether or not it is learned, if they never declare the right moves for their PCs), and in drawing inferences from what the GM has told them.




Agree. The sequence of  PC declarations might also affect secret backstory. For instance, PC declarations going after the goblins would probably not affect the Iron Ring, they have gotten what they wanted they have no further use for the goblins, however should they go to the ruins and bring down an Iron Ring outpost that is likely to get the attention of the organisation and repercussions in the story would not be out of the ordinary. 



> "I search the map for the study" is not an act of collaborative storytelling. It is a declaration of an action for my PC. It can be done purely in the first-person perspective. This is what makes mystery possible.




Sure, for this action to be declared I would imagine that the possible existence of the map at the location (whether it be a dungeon/manor or a specific room) has already been conferred to the PCs.

It would be collaborative storytelling if the existence of a map was established by player authorship as part of the success of a SC.



> Eg in my Traveller game, there is a bioweapons conspiracy whose originator and motivations are unknown, and which the PCs (and players) are trying to work out. The answers to these mysteries will be generated through a combination of outcomes of skill checks and material introduced as components of framing.




Is the originator/s and his/her/their motivations secret backstory (by the GM)?  



> The only "collaboration" that is necessary is a shared sense of genre and fictional position that supports solid framing, action declartions and narration of consequences.




Understood. Have you ever had the experience where a PC's desired authorship was merely to establish someone as the culprit in order to justify entering combat?
i.e. Fingers falling out of the pocket of the Big Evil Bad Guy to establish that he was in fact the murder (the victim had lost their fingers) to justify combat.

How do you as DM manage such player authorship?



> The absence of foot prints in a RPG mystery resolved in a "hidden backstory" style is because the GM decided not to author any such element of the fiction.




In your game would you be averse to the _absence of foot prints _if it were due to an ability (magical or otherwise) or is that ability perhaps only alluded to (created) due to a failed SC?


----------



## Stalker0

*Mod Warning: Seeing a lot of unkind language in this thread.

 Fair warning, keep it civil.*


----------



## pemerton

Nagol said:


> the player is trying to do something in the fiction as opposed to authoring.



The suggestion that the player is trying to do something "in the fiction" makes no sense. It would be better to say that the player is trying to do something _to_ the fiction: the player is hoping, or if you prefer is trying, to establish some new fiction (eg that Sir Bargle swings his sword). The player's hope may or may not be realised - your post considers some esamples of possible grounds for failure - but that is all about actual social processes in the actual world.



hawkeyefan said:


> If elements of the fiction don't exist....they aren't real....then how can players be denied introducing them?
> 
> I was just dismissing this "things in stories aren't real" line of reasoning because in a discussion on the elements of fiction, I find it to be useless.



Upthread, [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] introduced, as a topic of discussion, the dragons living in a teapot in his front yard. That doesn't mean said dragon, or teapot, or even yard, exist.

When we're actually playing an RPG, we pretend that the imaginary stuff we're all talking about is real. But when we're talking about how to play, how to design, etc, the first step has to be a recognition that the gameworld is not real. It's impossible to talk sensibly about RPGing if we don't begin by acknowledging that it involves authorship of fictions. 

Otherwise we get unhelpful metaphor, like "exploring the gameworld" - as if having someone read me excerpts from the FRCG about a forest that Ed Greenwood made up was the same sort of thing as actually wandering through a forest and looking around!

This pertains also to the analysis of agency. Walking through a forest, exploring it, discovering an echidna (as I did a few weeks ago) - that's exercising my agency. But having someone read to me about a forest and echidna that s/he made up - that's the author exercising agency, me not su much.

That's not to say that it's not sometimes fun to have someone read me a story. It's just to be clear that they are the one who is exercising agency in those circumstances, not me. 



Maxperson said:


> The standard definition of player agency is the ability to fully control what your character does(outside of mechanics like mind control



Well, I think I've made it pretty clear throughout tthis thread that I am talking about _player agency in respect of the shared fiction_ - mostly because that is the phrase I have repeatedly used!



Maxperson said:


> If my PC can walk into module B10 and try with the possibility of success to set himself up as Mayor of the town and the other PCs be his advisers, while ignoring the mysteries the module presents, I have full agency.



I don't even know what this means. How does a PC "walk into" a module? Do you mean that you, the player, get to decide which module the group is playing?

And what establishes the "possiility of success" of becoming mayor of some town? If you mean that the GM thinks that this is a good idea, or would make for a fun story, that would be the GM exercising agency. If you mean that the player has to learn what is an effective pathway to mayoralty - as established by the GM - that would be an instance of the player playing to lean what is in the GM's notes. That doesn't seem like very much player agency to me.

If you mean that the player is able to make action declarations whose resolution is not just a matter of GM fiat, and those can result in the PC becomeing mayor, then the player would seem to be exercising agency at that point. But is the player dependent upon the GM to allow that there is a town and mayoral office at all? In that case, the player is back to relying on the GM to exercise agency.


----------



## pemerton

shidaku said:


> Vecna being a real force within the gameworld (as opposed to an existential plot device)



I don't understand what you mean by this. I don't know what you mean by "real force" and what you mean by "existential plot device".

I have two players whose PCs, as those players have built and played them, are citizens of Rel Astra. One has the goal of world domination. Another has the goal of becoming a magistrate. I establish a situation that forces some choices: _if you want to dominate the world, you'll hve to ally with Vecna; but that means betraying your city_; _if you want to become a magistrate, all oou have to do is join yuor freind and his new ally Vecna in betrraying your city_.

Vecna is not the big deal here. In different circumstances it could be Iuz, or Graz'zt, or 13th Age's Archlich, or whatver. The big deal is the choice that each PC (and ecah player) has to make. You say that "Your players are simply drinking larger helpings from the broth you have already prepared". But I'm not the one who made loyalty to the city, or gaining a magistracy, or allying with Vecna to dominate the world, salient topics of choice. The players did that.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> it's a short step to finding examples of cause and effect within the scope of the stipulation. The tavern's bouncers notice the disturbance and come over to take a look (Falstaff, observant clod that he is, doesn't see them coming); and quickly decide the simplest option is to throw all four of us out [this result was pre-planned by the DM if events allowed for it, see below for why]. Result: we're firmly escorted out the door, with Gutboy still grimly clinging to the poor Thief's hair! Now we've got cause and effect within the scene: cause being the Thief provoking a disturbance, result being we're now out in the street with a captive Thief. With me so far?
> 
> So let's go a step further into the murk - assuming by now we're all fully bought in to the scene I'll let that one go and move to part two: hidden elements.  The Thief, tired of having his hair pulled, makes all kinds of promises that if released he'll be the best friend we three have ever had, he'll share his stealings with us, he'll never ever ever steal from us again, blah blah blah...and it slowly occurs to the three of us that this Thief might in fact make a good addition to our group.  So we take him somewhere quiet, sit him down, and get to know him.  End result: we take him in and our group grows by one.  Seems innocuous enough from a play perspective, right?  But here's the catch: though the Thief thus far has been played by the DM as if it was an NPC, unknown to anyone else except the DM this is in fact Mary's character Keyes; and she now steps in and takes him over.  Mary had this idea to start with, and acting on this idea she and the DM had pre-planned this as an unusual method of introducing her to the budding party; with Mary fully aware of the risk that Keyes' approach might be rejected (in which case there were plans B, C and D in the works to get him in later) or Keyes even killed outright (in which case Mary has another character on standby and ready to rock).
> 
> This also explains the bouncers throwing us all out (a bit unusual, given the tavern is known to be a rough place anyway and our little disturbance was pretty minor): to isolate the four of us and thus give the Thief an opportunity to make his case.
> 
> So to sum up: in a short sequence we've seen in-fiction cause and effect, we've seen hidden elements at work, we've seen DM pre-authorship at work, and we've got a party started!
> 
> Where in your view does any of this go wrong?



"In-fiction cause and effect" here means that the GM told you that the bouncers are angry and throw the PCs out. And "hidden elements" here doesn't mean hidden elements of the fiction. It means hidden elements of the actual play: the GM has pretended that s/he authored all this, but in fact it was a collaborative effort between the GM and Mary.

What you describe doesn't sound like my sort of thing - eg Why is Mary not just playing her character? Why are the GM and Mary playing a game in which the rest of us seem to be primarily bystanders? I'm not seeing very much agency on the parts of the players of Gutboy, Mialee and Falstaff.


----------



## Nagol

pemerton said:


> The suggestion that the player is trying to do something "in the fiction" makes no sense. It would be better to say that the player is trying to do something _to_ the fiction: the player is hoping, or if you prefer is trying, to establish some new fiction (eg that Sir Bargle swings his sword). The player's hope may or may not be realised - your post considers some esamples of possible grounds for failure - but that is all about actual social processes in the actual world.





I'm, not going to quibble about using the word 'to' instead of the word 'in'.  One phrase is common; the other may be more correct from a particular point of view, but it is not common.  The common phrase is unambiguous in meaning so I'll keep using it.

I suspect the reason 'in' is used is because the player is playing a role and is attempting to affect that character's world though that character's action.  A player would attempt to do something 'to' the fiction when acting outside that role such as through a FATE declaration.

Regardless, until the player's proposal for action is accepted, nothing is authored.  The player makes a suggestion, it is vetted to account for table expectation, rules adherence, and fictional acceptability.  A fortune mechanic may be called for and used as part of the adjudication if the suggestion is acceptable.  Then and only then will the table see the fiction changed -- typically through GM narration.

Some of the failure points are player or table issues. Others are not.  If the player of Sir Bargle announces he is attacking and the GM informs the player he can't because the proposed victim is running a previously unknown _Sanctuary_ spell then that's reflective of fictional positioning.  If the GM announces Sir Bargle will make no attack because he is now held by a cleric with a readied action, that's a result of fictional positioning.  If the player is informed Sir Bargle has been dominated since morning tea and may not take offensive action that is entirely fictional positioning.  If the player is informed he can't attack because Sir Bargle is merely a figment in another PC's dream, that's entirely from fictional positioning.

Ultimately, players do not get to author directly into games -- even player-facing ones.  The GM, or table if there is no GM, must accept the player's suggestion before the fiction is updated.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Eg in my Traveller game, there is a bioweapons conspiracy whose originator and motivations are unknown, and which the PCs (and players) are trying to work out. The answers to these mysteries will be generated through a combination of outcomes of skill checks and material introduced as components of framing.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Is the originator/s and his/her/their motivations secret backstory (by the GM)?
Click to expand...


No. I'll sblock the rest of this for length.

[sblock]Here is an extract from my post about the first session of the campaign:



pemerton said:


> I then rolled for a patron on the random patron table, and got a "marine officer" result. Given the PC backgrounds, it made sense that Lieutenant Li - as I dubbed her - would be making contact with Roland. The first thing I told the players was that a Scout ship had landed at the starport, although there it has no Scout base and there is no apparent need to do any survey work in the system; and that the principal passenger seemed to be an officer of the Imperial Marines. I then explained that, while doing the rounds at the hospital, Roland received a message from his old comrade Li inviting him to meet her at the casino, and to feel free to bring along any friends he might have in the place.
> 
> In preparation for the session I had generated a few worlds - one with a pop in the millions and a corrosive atmosphere; a high-pop but very low-tech world with a tainted atmosphere (which I had decided meant disease, given that the world lacked the technological capacity to generate pollution); and a pop 1 (ie population in the 10s) world with no government or law level with a high tech level - clearly some sort of waystation with a research outpost attached.
> 
> Given that I had these worlds ready-to hand, and given that the players had a ship, I needed to come up with some situation from Lt Li that would put them into play: so when Roland and Vincenzo (just discharged from medical care) met up with her she told the following story - which Methwit couldn't help but overhear before joining them!
> 
> Lt Li wondered whether Vincenzo would be able to take 3 tons of cargo to Byron for her. (With his excellent education, Roland knew that Byron was a planet with a large (pop in the millions) city under a serious of domes, but without the technical capabilities to maintain the domes into the long term.) When the PCs arrived on Byron contact would be made by those expecting the goods. And payment would be 100,000 for the master of the ship, plus 10,000 for each other crew member.
> 
> Some quick maths confirmed that 100,000 would more than cover the fuel costs of the trip, and so Vincenzo (taking advice from Roland - he knows nothing about running a ship) agreed to the request.
> 
> Methwit thought all this sounded a bit odd - why would a high-class (Soc A) marine lieutenant be smuggling goods into a dead-end world like Byron - and so asked Li back to his hotel room to talk further. With his Liaison-1 and Carousing-1 and a good reaction roll she agreed, and with his Interrogation-1 he was able to obtain some additional information (although he did have to share some details about his own background to persuade her to share).
> 
> The real situation, she explained, was that Byron was itself just a stop-over point. The real action was on another world - Enlil - which is technologically backwards and has a disease-ridden atmosphere to which there is no resistance or immunity other than in Enlil's native population. So the goods to be shipped from Ardour-3 were high-tech medical gear for extracting and concentrating pathogens from the atmosphere on Enlil, to be shipped back to support a secret bio-weapons program. The reason a new team was needed for this mission was because Vincenzo had won the yacht from the original team - who were being dealt with "appropriately" for their incompetence in disrupting the operation.
> 
> (I had been planning to leave the real backstory to the mission pretty loose, to be fleshed out as needed - including the possibility that Li was actually going to betray the PCs in some fashion - but the move from Methwit's player forced my hand, and I had to come up with some more plausible backstory to explain the otherwise absurd situation I'd come up with. And it had to relate to the worlds I'd come up with in my prep.)



Since then, some more information has been established - this is from a post about the fourth session of the game:



> Before the session I'd done a reasonable amount of prep.
> 
> First, I wrote up a list of established facts - that is, information that had emerged over the course of the first three sessions and so was settled truth for the campaign:
> 
> * Lt Li (the PCs' original patron, who got them involved in her bioweapons operation) had a team on Ardour-3 (the starting world for the campaign) who had flown hi-tech medical equipment to Byron (the world the PCs currently are on);
> 
> * Those NPCs lost their spaceship to the PC noble Vincenzo in a gambling game (hence Vincenzo started the game with a Type Y starship);
> 
> * Hence Li had to recruit the PCs - including one whom she knew from his time in the service, the naval enlistee Roland - to fly a further load of equipment to Byron;
> 
> * Li had recruited a bunch of NPCs (whom the PCs captured and interrogated in the previous session) at the naval base on Shelley, a world in the general vicinity of Byron;
> 
> * The PC Alissa had been in the naval hospital on Shelley (forcibly mustered out of the Marines due to failing her first term survival check by 1), but had then - about the same time that Li was travelling to Ardour-3 to meet the other PCs in the first session - found herself in a cold sleep berth in a warehouse in Byron, infected with the Enlil virus (before being found and cured by the other PCs in a previous session);
> 
> * Li was the one who had brought Alissa in a cold sleep berth from Shelley to Byron, and the other NPCs on Byron didn't know that Alissa was infected with the virus (this came out under interrogation of said NPCs);
> 
> * The operation on Byron involved experimenting on bodies (both live and dead) acquired by some NPC rogues (who were among the NPCs the PCs captured), using samples that had been brought from Enlil (the world where the virus is endemic) to Byron by another team headed by the retired merchant first officer Leila Lo (who, we had decided last session, had a backstory with Tony, a PC retired merchant third officer), and with hi-tech medical gear integrated into the cold sleep berths;
> 
> * Materials had also been taken by Leila's team from Byron to a Scout base on the world of Olyx;
> 
> * The Byron-based group (ie the NPCs the PCs had captured and interrogated) had decided to break away from Li's operation and try to set up their own independent bioweapons franchise, which was why they had taken the hi-tech gear the PCs had flown to Byron to the out-of-dome decommissioned army outpost that the PCs had assaulted in the previous session.​
> That's a reasonable amount of backstory for three sessions of play (at least it feels to me like it is), but it still leaves a lot of questions unanswered, like What is Li's agenda? Who is she working for? How did Alissa get infected on Shelley? Etc?
> 
> Second, therefore, I wrote a list of possibilities/conjectures, reflecting both player speculation from the previous session and some of my own ideas:
> 
> * Alissa has expertise of 4 in cutlass, whereas the ambitious Lt Li has only expertise 2 - maybe they were fencing rivals, and Li infected Alissa both to (i) get an experimental subject and (ii) get rid of an unwanted rival! She could have done that, and taken Alissa to Byron, right before she then flew on to Ardour-3 and recruited the PCs;
> 
> * How did Alissa escape from the warehouse on Byron? Most likely just carelessness and/or malfunction, with the cold sleep unit having stopped working (perhaps damaged by the corrosive atmosphere of the world);
> 
> * Is Li working for (some branch of) the Imperium? Or is one of the players correct in speculating that she is running an entirely private operation, with the Scout base on Olyx having become - in effect - her own fiefdom.​



More information has since been established - eg in that fourth session, another patron encounter roll turned up a "diplomat" result, an official of the Imperium who recruited the PCs to travel to Olyx to inspect operations there under the cover of the Planetary Rescue Systems Inspectorate. And in the fifth session, more backstory was established about the nature of life on Enlil, and alien origins of both the Enlilians and their virus.

In the fifth session the PCs encountered a patrol cruiser that had jumped from Olyx to Enlil, and I had written up a crew for it which could have generated more backstory about the conspiracy - but in session six (last Sunday) the players decided that they would take advantage of the ship's absence from Olyx to jump there themselves and try and check it out, so those NPC crew membes didn't come into play.[/sblock]



Sadras said:


> Have you ever had the experience where a PC's desired authorship was merely to establish someone as the culprit in order to justify entering combat?
> i.e. Fingers falling out of the pocket of the Big Evil Bad Guy to establish that he was in fact the murder (the victim had lost their fingers) to justify combat.
> 
> How do you as DM manage such player authorship?



So the action declaration here would have to be something like "I search him for the fingers of the victim". (Unless you're using a system which allows flat-out player fiat of key plot elements - I don't play any systems like that.) And I'm not 100% sure what you have in mind by "justifying combat". Are you meaning that the NPC's guilt is clearly established in the eyes of others?

In any event, I don't recall any situation exactly like that in my games. In this episode, a player made a check to find clues on a bit of paper. And in this episode, the PCs successfully goaded their nemesis into revealing his villainy in public.



Sadras said:


> In your game would you be averse to the _absence of foot prints _if it were due to an ability (magical or otherwise) or is that ability perhaps only alluded to (created) due to a failed SC?



It would depend on system and context.

In 4e, an absence of footprints could be part of the framing of a situation, eg to indicate that the villain can fly or teleport. That would be an obvious exercise of GM agency. But if the GM hasn't exercised such agency, and the investigation is being resolved by a skill challenge as you suggest, then the discovery of footprints would be an open possibility, sure.

In Cortex+ Heroic the GM could establish a scene distinction like No Signs of Passage - but the players could make rolls to eliminate that scene distinction if they wanted, and to establish an asset like Faint Footprints Discovered. Cortex+ Heroic is much closer to Fate than is 4e, in these sorts of respects.


----------



## pemerton

Imaro said:


> No one said they didn't have meaningful (whatever that means) options for resolution, but there is no roll that will bring about the realization of successfully beating this monster in combat in the same way that there is no roll that would successfully find the map in the study if the DM did not place it there.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> And here I'm unclear how this is any different from the map not being in the study...
> 
> The ship cannot be attacked...plain and simple, due to what I assume was fictional positioning created by the DM.  The map cannot be found plain and simple due to fictional positioning created by the DM.



The example with the dragon and with the starship don't involve any secret/hidden backstory. The players aren't trying to have their PCs shoot down the ship, or kill the dragon, but failing due to the GM's adjudication by reference to unrevealed elements of the backstory. Indeed, they are not examples where the current goal of play is to kill a dragon or shoot down a ship at all.


----------



## pemerton

Nagol said:


> Some of the failure points are player or table issues. Others are not.  If the player of Sir Bargle announces he is attacking and the GM informs the player he can't because the proposed victim is running a previously unknown _Sanctuary_ spell then that's reflective of fictional positioning.  If the GM announces Sir Bargle will make no attack because he is now held by a cleric with a readied action, that's a result of fictional positioning.  If the player is informed Sir Bargle has been dominated since morning tea and may not take offensive action that is entirely fictional positioning.  If the player is informed he can't attack because Sir Bargle is merely a figment in another PC's dream, that's entirely from fictional positioning.



The authority of the GM to establish those elements of fictional positioning is all about actual social processes.

Eg in Cortex+ Heroic, the GM doesn't have that sort of authority. The GM can spend a doom pool die to have a NPC interrupt the player's action declaration, but the best that will get is a roll, which the player may beat, and then spend a "plot point" to be able to impose the desired consequence on the NPC in any event.

And I've never played a game where the GM has the authority to tell a player that his/her PC is a figment of anothr PC's imagination.


----------



## Sunseeker

pemerton said:


> I don't understand what you mean by this. I don't know what you mean by "real force" and what you mean by "existential plot device".
> 
> I have two players whose PCs, as those players have built and played them, are citizens of Rel Astra. One has the goal of world domination. Another has the goal of becoming a magistrate. I establish a situation that forces some choices: _if you want to dominate the world, you'll hve to ally with Vecna; but that means betraying your city_; _if you want to become a magistrate, all oou have to do is join yuor freind and his new ally Vecna in betrraying your city_.
> 
> Vecna is not the big deal here. In different circumstances it could be Iuz, or Graz'zt, or 13th Age's Archlich, or whatver. The big deal is the choice that each PC (and ecah player) has to make. You say that "Your players are simply drinking larger helpings from the broth you have already prepared". But I'm not the one who made loyalty to the city, or gaining a magistracy, or allying with Vecna to dominate the world, salient topics of choice. The players did that.




You really make me want to bang my head against me desk you know that?  I mean like I'm tempted, right now, to _literally_ hit my head on my keyboard because it would be more productive than continuing this conversation.  Because you peeled out ONE FREAKING LINE from my post and IGNORED all the rest of my post explaining what I wrote.

Go back, re-read my post.  Respond again when you understand it.  This may take more than one re-read, I'll be patient.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> When my players elect to explore eastward, for example, they find the foothills for the mountains the can already see. In those foothills they will find new challenges.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> If I did that, for instance, then I would foreshadow that fact prior to the question coming up, as in "the gate is guarded by Bob the Guard, and you, Bob the Rogue, know from your underground contacts (established by Bob the Rogue at character creation or during play) that Bob the Guard is generally held to be unbribable. He is, however, known to be rather dim."
> 
> So, for me, a DM who uses heavy prep, the goal of play here would never be for the players to declare actions to find out my notes on bribing the guards, they'd either already be told in framing what to expect or they could try and I'll let the mechanics determine things.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Let's assume the case where the DM has notes that say the map is in the kitchen. The players don't know this, and so they have hope that they can find the map. This is negated, yes, but that doesn't negate the map as an objective of play, it just says that the fictional positioning is not yet right and they need to try again elsewhere. This isn't all that dissimilar to having to get past the guards before having a chance to search for the map. Again, broader play where agency is spread out vs narrower play where every scene focuses on the maximum agency moves.



To me, this all speaks of very heavily GM-driven play.

The GM has established that there are foothills. The GM estabilshes the material for the challenges in said foothills. The GM estabilshes the personality of Bob the Guard, and determines what it is that Bob the Rogue's contacts have told him about Bob the Guard. The GM establishes where the map is, and the players have to work ther way through the GM's pre-established fiction until they make the right move to find the map.

As you are describing these things, I am not seeing a great deal of player agency over the shared fiction.



Ovinomancer said:


> The choice to go to this room to search instead of the other room to search is agency if it comes at a cost, regardless of outcome. If there's a time limit, or chance of guards appearing, then the choice to move to this room and search has a consequence, and therefor agency as the players spend a limited resource (in this case time or danger) to achieve a goal.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The guards arriving are a check made by me based on the events ongoing -- make a lot of noise, check gets a plus. Quiet, check gets a minus. Near the guard post? Plus. Crawling through airducts? Minus.



From the OP:



> In classic D&D, the dungeon was a type of puzzle. The players had to map it, by declaring moves (literally) for their PCs. The players, using their PCs as vehicles, had to learn what was in there: this was about inventory - having enough torches, 10' poles, etc - and about game moves too - searching for secret doors, checking ceilings and floors, and so on. And finally, the players had to try and loot it while either avoiding or defeating the monsters guarding the treasures and wandering around the place - this is what the combat mechanics were for.
> 
> The game is something of a cross between a wargame and a complex refereed maze. And *worldbuilding* is all about making the maze. I get that.



Perhaps your game is something like that? So player agency is really in beating the maze/puzzle?

It' s not clear, though. Eg in classic D&D, the "time limit" comes from a known-to-the-players wandering monster mechanic, plus known-to-the-players rules about torches burning down, light spells running out, etc. So the "time limit" isn't anything like a story element - it's a parameter of the puzzle that has to be taken into account in arriving at a solution.

Here's another way a "time limit" can work: (i) there are 5 rooms; (ii) you can search 3 of them for the map; (iii) then you're done. That doesn't seem to allow much player agency - it's just a gamble. Suppose there is an extra rule: use your Passwall resource and you can search an extra room. (In the fiction, the spell creates a shortcut.) That's a very modest bit of agency, but not as much as in classic D&D.

It's not clear to me what you haVE in mind when you talk about a time limit. Likewise with the guards, which perhaps are like wandering monsters but perhaps not.




Ovinomancer said:


> There's absolutely nothing wrong with defining agency as the ability to introduce new fiction through action declarations
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The player expressing a desire to introduce new fiction that is actually introduced when agreed to by the GM or when the dice indicate success of that introduction isn't a different thing that the player being able to introduce new fiction through action declaration. Also, your phrasing fails to account for the fiat introduction of Jabal of the Cabal as part of an action declaration that is accepted regardless of the outcome of the mechanics



As far as Jabal is concerned, a long way upthread I already distinguished between two different Circles declarations:

* Jabal is a leader of my cabal. I reach out to him.

* As we travel, I look for signs of any members of my knightly order.​
The first involves establishing a new element of the fiction; the second does not. Establsihing a new element of the fiction is not a canonical element of a Circles check.

And I do not define player agency as "the ability to introduce new fiction through action declaration". I have repeatedly talked about "player agency over the content of the shared fiction", and have pointed to multiple ways that can be exercised. Action declaration is one. Providing material for GM narration of framing and consequences is another.

The exanmples you gave, that I quoted above, illustrate this. How does the GM decide what challenges will be found in the foothils? Who decided that foothilss would figure in the game at all? Why has the GM framed a scene with Bob the Guard, and established that Bob the Guard can't be bribed? Who made acquisition of the map a goal of play?

At least as you describe these things, I get an impression that you regard all this as very GM-driven. Here's a furtehr cause of that impression:



Ovinomancer said:


> Where do you get your framing? I don't know, it's largely unimportant. You can make it up on the spot. You can use things that tie it to your characters for future links and challenges, you can read your notes that you prepped and are still useful. What does it matter?



In the "standard narrativistic model", the source and content of the framing is hugely important. The players build characters; those characters have dramatic needs; the GM's job is to frame those characters into situations that will speak to those dramatic needs and provoke choices, which lead to consequences, which feed into further framing, and so on until the game is done.

This is an important mode of player agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction, which has nothing to do with action declaration.



Ovinomancer said:


> the players lose agency by having the GM force them into crisis of the GM's choosing. That the GM references the notes on their characters before doing so doesn't mean the players suddenly have agency at being framed into a crisis of the GM's choosing.



Are you envisaging the players framing their own situations? That really does sound like "collaborative storytelling".

But in any event I simply can't agree. A player who signals "I want to play a game in which my PC tries to free his brother from possession by a balrog, starting with the attempt to find items that will help that task" is not having his/her agency negated by the GM saying "OK, you're in a market, and a peddler is offering to sell you an angel feather." That player's agency is being affirmed!


----------



## pemerton

shidaku said:


> you peeled out ONE FREAKING LINE from my post and IGNORED all the rest of my post explaining what I wrote.



You said this "Your players are simply drinking larger helpings from the broth you have already prepared: Vecna being a real force within the gameworld (as opposed to an existential plot device) and the things she wants to do."

As I said, I don't know exactly what it means, but my point is that _I_ didn't prepare the broth.

Here's another bit of your post: "My only caveat was that the base world is initially presented by the DM, who therefore retains primary authorship over what is or isn't possible. IE: if Vecna did not exist in your campaign world, then her mission to conquer Rel Astra would not exist, and therefore players could not make the choice to ally with her in that endevour."

As I indicated (or tried to) in my reply to your post, that is completely backwards. "Vecna is not the big deal here." Vecna wouldn't have featured as a significant part of the gameworld _but for_ there being a player whose PC had a goal of world domination. Vecna's mission to conquer Rel Astra wouldn't have been authored, by me as GM, _but for_ the fact that it generated pressure on these two PCs (and, thereby, their players).

It's not like I had all this backstory involving Vecna, and the Great Kingdom, and plots to conquer Rel Astra, etc - my broth - and the players started drinking from it. My players had their PCs - _their broth_ - and I introduced all this stuff into the fiction that spoke to their PCs - _I was drinking from their broth_.

Now if you think I've misunderstood your metaphor, well maybe I have. But you're going to have to give it to me literally. Because at the moment I don't think I'm misunderstanding you. I think you're misunderstanding the actual dynamic of the episode of play that I described, and are making mistaken assumptions about the causal relationship between "world building" and player choices.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> I keep imagining the Council of Rivendell as an RPG scene and the player of Boromir, bored with all the talking and politicking yells that he attacks Sauron! He makes a perception check to find Sauron and succeeds! Sauron is there spying on them, and Boromir attacks!
> 
> Wouldn't want to deny player agency in establishing the fiction!




Now you're being silly. If a player wanted to focus on a character that is a 'sleuth' or has some sort of super senses or something and then wants to bring that out by staking that he can detect something well-hidden against a spy making off with information, then bring on the spy! I mean, that's PERFECTLY AWESOME. It doesn't have to be 'Sauron' (the main big bad of the whole story arc) but there's nothing wrong with Sauron (or maybe Saruman, hard to say he isn't just an agent of Sauron anyway) spending in somebody to spy on Rivendell is there? Nothing like this happened in the novel, but it certainly could have.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

prosfilaes said:


> And searching for a Skill Challenge leads me to http://www.highprogrammer.com/alan/gaming/dnd/4e/skill-challenge-broken.html . Now I would define solving a mystery as being something that the players might do by asking the right questions, no skill check needed; by finding the right places to apply skills in ways that have low difficulty; or by ridiculous DC checks against people who wouldn't talk unless they've been persuaded by the best diplomat and finding minute evidence in areas that have scoured clean. How you boil that down to two numbers and claim to be fiction-connected, I'm not sure.



I don't think his math is actually super RELEVANT. He is correct, to an extent, in math terms, but I'd first note that this is an OLD article and the updates to the SC system continued long after it was written, so all the DCs changed again (and their rate of change changed too), the +5 for using a skill disappeared, and a few other things. Now, those alone would only move you around on his chart, but the problem is he doesn't seem to grasp how it all fits together.

PCs (players really) are intended to have a good number of options at their disposal. This is a lot like combat, where a PC could spend Second Wind and burn an HS, or not, or spend a Daily, or not, or an AP, or not, etc. You have a LOT of choices of resource use in combat. You also have most of the same kinds of choices in an SC, its just that they have to fit appropriately into the fictional positioning. Since an SC can cover ANY sort of activity (outside of a fight presumably) its not as highly specified as to how, when, or where you can do what. This is no worse than in any other system in that respect, most D&D is no more specific IN combat than 4e is out of it, so I don't see it as an ACTUAL issue.

In other words, by the RC system you've probably got something in the 70-90% success rate on SCs of your level. In really adverse conditions that might drop, and of course there could be higher than party level SCs too, which clearly get RAPIDLY harder (but then you probably just burn more resources to bring the success rate back in line). Additionally SCs are often less than life-and-death. They may, and should, have significant stakes, but its usually not quite so necessary to have the party so likely to win each one. Honestly the 4e DMG1 seems to assume that SCs will be more 'plot decision points' and not likely to be lethal in and of themselves.



> I have somewhere around a half a million pages of printed RPGs, a shameful number of which I haven't read. I haven't really read a number of the Pathfinder expansion books, which is the game I run. I haven't _really_ read the 5th edition core rulebooks, a game it looks increasingly likely I'll spend sometime playing. I haven't really read M20 or Pugmire or Threadbare, games I Kickstarted that look very cool. Behind me, I have a bookcase, some 15 feet of books, that if I could get through I would possess a knowledge of world and English literature few, especially those of us with math degrees, can claim. Not to mention various other things I could be doing besides reading. Why does it surprise you that the 4th edition DMG is not high on my list to carefully read?




I think anyone who's played and talked about 4e much has had this same discussion though with people who are both less than knowledgeable on the subject and uninterested in actually discussing the actual game vs some warped nonsense version they heard about 3rd hand. There's no reason you SHOULD be familiar with it, but you did, IMNSHO opinion seem to misstate it. Anyway, now its all clear


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I don't see how this is different in any fundamental way from my description: the goal of play is to make moves that will trigger the GM to relate/narrate the relevant bit of fiction which is (actually, or at least notionally) recorded in his/her notes.
> 
> The "diffused" agency that you describe here is, as best I can tell, the capacity to choose between narration-triggering moves. Depending on past such moves, the players may or may not have a sense of how different such choices are likely to trigger different narrations (eg a past move may have yielded a rumour, which suggests that the map is actually lost in the cave and not in the study at all).




I know this discussion has moved on rapidly and I'm 9 pages behind now, lol, but I think there IS a point here that you're kind of papering over.

There are INFINITE possible responses to the narration of the DM, that's in fact what characterizes an RPG more than anything else (aside from the particularization of being assigned one specific character) is the open-ended nature of the interactions between the characters and the DM/fiction.

In other words, while 'Caves of Chaos' (B2) is a pretty cut-and-dried sandboxy location-based adventure (IE you describe where you go, certain things will be there, you interact with them) you can still do a ton of different things. For example, you could simply brick up the hobgoblin's tunnel. Now, maybe that plan won't work, there are many obvious ways it could go wrong, but the scenario that results WILL be completely different from the scenario that results from entering the cave and trying to clean it out in the fashion most likely expected by the module's author. 

Beyond that, the scenario, as published, doesn't in any way help you to figure WHAT will happen when the PCs try to brick up the hobgoblins. Will they all muster and pour out of the cave at once for a huge battle in the open? Will they snipe at the PCs from the dark shadows? Will they beat their wardrums and signal willingness to pay the ogres 500gp to come over from their cave and slaughter the PCs? We just don't know. The players don't know either; much like they don't know what will happen when the King is assassinated in a previous example. Its a complex situation. 

Now, some GMs might resolve it effectively by thinking up every obstacle to the plan and throwing it at the party. Others might simply let the players express their desires to build a wall, and let the hobgoblins be walled in, big deal, right? OK, now some new thing will happen, maybe related to that, maybe not, depending on what the PCs do next. 

I guess what I'm saying is, there's less 'air' between the two kinds of play in many cases than is being acknowledged. It depends on the GM and the players, and of course you can use 'Pemertonian' principles to run B2, although it isn't exceptionally well-adapted to that there's certainly enough embodied within the setup there to cater to a fairly wide variety of player agendas given the genre and whatnot. 

In other words I think, in practice, if you could go back to 1975 and play with EGG in the Kitchen you'd probably have a decent amount of agency, though maybe not so much until you established some creds in the dungeon crawling skill game.


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## Ancalagon

pemerton said:


> The authority of the GM to establish those elements of fictional positioning is all about actual social processes.
> 
> Eg in Cortex+ Heroic, the GM doesn't have that sort of authority. The GM can spend a doom pool die to have a NPC interrupt the player's action declaration, but the best that will get is a roll, which the player may beat, and then spend a "plot point" to be able to impose the desired consequence on the NPC in any event.
> 
> And I've never played a game where the GM has the authority to tell a player that his/her PC is a figment of anothr PC's imagination.



Perhaps you have heard the line "rocks fall, everybody dies"?

The GM can do anything at any time.  BUT a GM that does "rock falls everybody dies" every 3 sessions will quickly lose players.  So yes the social aspect is important.  

*IF the GM is fair* in adjudicating the effects of the player's actions, I'm not sure that a in-game mechanism is necessary.


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## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> There are INFINITE possible responses to the narration of the DM, that's in fact what characterizes an RPG more than anything else (aside from the particularization of being assigned one specific character) is the open-ended nature of the interactions between the characters and the DM/fiction.
> 
> In other words, while 'Caves of Chaos' (B2) is a pretty cut-and-dried sandboxy location-based adventure (IE you describe where you go, certain things will be there, you interact with them) you can still do a ton of different things. For example, you could simply brick up the hobgoblin's tunnel. Now, maybe that plan won't work, there are many obvious ways it could go wrong, but the scenario that results WILL be completely different from the scenario that results from entering the cave and trying to clean it out in the fashion most likely expected by the module's author.
> 
> Beyond that, the scenario, as published, doesn't in any way help you to figure WHAT will happen when the PCs try to brick up the hobgoblins. Will they all muster and pour out of the cave at once for a huge battle in the open? Will they snipe at the PCs from the dark shadows? Will they beat their wardrums and signal willingness to pay the ogres 500gp to come over from their cave and slaughter the PCs? We just don't know. The players don't know either; much like they don't know what will happen when the King is assassinated in a previous example. Its a complex situation.



I agree that the player moves not being limited except by the shared fiction is a significant part of what distinguishes a RPG from a boardgame.

But with bricking up the hobgoblins we also start to see possible limits. The players have an infinite number of ways of provoking the GM to tell them new stuff. But if it is the GM who is deciding what all that stuff is, I'm not sure that there is a lot of player agency there.

Systems like reaction rolls, morale checks etc help fill the gap here, but you can see them breaking down even in Gygax's DMG, as he gives advice on how different sorts of dungeon inhabitants will respond to incursions with that advice being largely divorced from the game's social mechanics, and relying very heavily on GM extrapolation of the fiction. I can accept that free kriegsspiel is a thing, but once we're at the level of bricking up hobgoblin tunnels, or assassinating kings, I feel that we've moved beyond a referee model - an independent narrator of knowable consequences of player moves - to a situation of one party (the "storyteller"?) having the authority to establish the content of the fiction that results from action declarations.

In my view, this is the impetus behind systems like skill challenges, or "stakes"-type approaches to resolution, which try to reintroduce finality of outcome into these sorts of situations. And of course there are less perfect systems too - I've used RM's rather feeble social mechanics to establish finality in social resolution, and I'm sure there's a way of using reaction and morale mechanics to adjudicate the hobgoblin's response to the wall.


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I agree that the player moves not being limited except by the shared fiction is a significant part of what distinguishes a RPG from a boardgame.
> 
> But with bricking up the hobgoblins we also start to see possible limits. The players have an infinite number of ways of provoking the GM to tell them new stuff.



And it's that infinte number of ways which gives them their agency.  



> But if it is the GM who is deciding what all that stuff is, I'm not sure that there is a lot of player agency there.



I've finally, after all this, realized why what you're saying just doesn't compute to me on a basic level: you're defining "the fiction" in which players may/may not have agency differently than I am.

There's two types of fiction in a typical RPG: 

First is the background or setting or game world or whatever term you want to give it, which ranges in scope from the overall setting choice or design all the way down to whether the treasure map is hidden in the study or the kitchen.  Constructing this (or even just deciding which canned setting to use), populating it, placing things within it, etc. etc. is the 'worldbuilding' you ask about in post 1.  In most cases players have very limited agency over any of this for offscreen stuff and pretty much none at all during the run of play...and as they don't have this agency I fail to see why you keep bringing it up.  This side of the fiction nearly all belongs to the DM; and as there's a lot of it, she keeps notes.

Second is the players' characters themselves, and the ongoing story (i.e. the fiction) they generate as they move around within the setting, and interact with both the setting and each other.  Here in most cases* the players have all kinds of agency, starting with the 'fluff' and 'crunch' of the characters they create and continuing with the - as noted above - infinite number of run-of-play choices they can make once the puck is dropped and play begins.  And while the DM may have some ideas as to what story she'd like to see grow out of her game and can have input and influence in various ways, the end decisions here all rest with the players no matter what the DM does or says short of running a hard railroad.  This side of the fiction largely belongs to the players and this is where they have their agency over the shared fiction; though they still need a DM (it's what she's there for) to help bring it to life.

That said, when the characters are only interacting with each other the DM doesn't really need to - and probably shouldn't - do anything.

* - i.e. if you're not playing in a hard-edged AP, but most of the time all involved are cool with it or else they'd be playing something else.

And without doubt it's the second type of fiction - the one the players hold the most agency over - that matters more when all is said and done.  Five years later the stories aren't likely to be about how well-drawn and pretty the DM's map of Spieadeia city was; hell, no.  The stories are going to be about brave Sir Grailen's thundering charge against the orcs at the gates; or when low-wisdom Drosa picked up that wand and tried it without IDing it first just to see what it did; or how fast that 2nd-level party fled when they suddenly realized they really couldn't take on that Frost Giant they'd been taunting....

Lanefan


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## Kobold Boots

shidaku said:


> You really make me want to bang my head against me desk you know that?  I mean like I'm tempted, right now, to _literally_ hit my head on my keyboard because it would be more productive than continuing this conversation.  Because you peeled out ONE FREAKING LINE from my post and IGNORED all the rest of my post explaining what I wrote.
> 
> Go back, re-read my post.  Respond again when you understand it.  This may take more than one re-read, I'll be patient.




Speaking openly, there are a few things that happen in any thread that Pem is involved with.

1. It's guaranteed to go 40 pages.  Which lowers anyone's desire to read it, eventually.
2. It's going to read like a book.  Again, which lowers anyone's desire to read it, eventually.
3. His replies are going to be low on understanding what anyone else is saying and big on creating the kind of arguments that keep the thread going.

The reason I blocked him briefly was because I came to the conclusion that one of two things was happening.

1. He was getting paid by the site owners to drive traffic through his threads OR
2. His hobby was being argumentative just to give him something to do.

However, the trade off to block is his volume of posting causes a serious disruption to many threads when you can no longer see what he's writing.  He's got some good ideas but it's tough to get a point across when talking to him seems like you're clapping with one hand.

This post is a little stronger than I'm generally comfortable posting.  However, with any luck it'll help change things for the better.  Passion is definitely there.  If he'd take some advice to really try and understand what others are saying, we'd have some tighter conversations.

Be well
KB


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## Sadras

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Mmmm, I don't think 'win' is a word I would ever use in an RPG, except to describe something that happened in-character. IMHO success in an SC vs failure is more about who's contribution to the narrative is going to be established next. While the CHARACTERS succeed or fail, the players just play.




I agree win was a poorly selected word for my sentence. I merely meant that through successes on the SC, players get to contribute on the narrative in such a meaningful way that it would feel like collaborative storytelling which would lessen the intrigue/mystery for me. That is perhaps not how I'd *perfer* to be challenged. Then again I have not had much experience with 'player-facing' games. I have played a game using the fate system but enjoyed it not so much because of the mechanics (which I liked) but more so for the intrigue/mystery which came in the form of a secret backstory (it also was a different genre than D&D which made the experience more novel).



> Its interesting that @_*pemerton*_ talks in game structure and theory terms, and you guys come back at him with narrative concepts. The two simply don't equate. You aren't wrong by any means, but he's asking for hay for his horse and you're telling him you don't have a tire pump...




LOL. Fair. I suppose we (and this is a broad we), don't envision the entire roleplaying 'exercise' as tactical i.e. introducing mechanics to acquire a resolution for action declarations. It certainly can be, but from my experience online and in real it is usually a mix, with combat requiring the mechanics more than the other two pillars. Hence my tire pump.



> Mmmm, I think since I started playing D&D in 1975 or so, things have evolved a good bit.




I think I may have not been clear - from 1975 to today, action declarations are still very much (for the majority of us) adjudicated by the DM. Hence I have an issue with the OP raising the difference issue of classical vs contemporary.

Character development, mechanics..etc that might change but on the whole we play the same with a little more polish and hopefully better DMs.


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## hawkeyefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Now you're being silly. If a player wanted to focus on a character that is a 'sleuth' or has some sort of super senses or something and then wants to bring that out by staking that he can detect something well-hidden against a spy making off with information, then bring on the spy! I mean, that's PERFECTLY AWESOME. It doesn't have to be 'Sauron' (the main big bad of the whole story arc) but there's nothing wrong with Sauron (or maybe Saruman, hard to say he isn't just an agent of Sauron anyway) spending in somebody to spy on Rivendell is there? Nothing like this happened in the novel, but it certainly could have.




Yes, I was being silly with my example. It was an extreme. However, it seems like it could happen in the type of game Pemerton is advocating. Not that it should happen...I’m sure he’d say something about the scene being framed properly and the players having clear ideas on genre and setting....but that’s kind of the point, I think. 

Whatever playstyle any of us want to advocate, it’s possible to describe a crappy example of play. And to then use that example to criticize the entire playstyle. 

I was really tired of this vague contextual-less map example, so I gave an equally crappy example of play with pretty specific context most of us woukd understand. 

I honestly don’t have any issue with his stance that there can be more player agency in his type of game. Certainly the ability to author some fictional elements through actuon declaration increases player agency. I get that. I don’t even think it’s controversial so much as the way it’s presented seems to be rubbing folks the wrong way. 

But I also think that framing scenes can also limit player agency. Would you agree with that? My understanding of the term is that it’s the *GM* trying to *force* a decision by a player, right? To go where the action is. Here’s the situation, what do you do? 

So I feel like it’s really just a matter of which playstyle promotes agency in what way. Or limits it in what way. It’s not this binary “you allow player agency or else you’re just reading then a story” insult that’s being put forth.


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## Sunseeker

pemerton said:


> You said this "Your players are simply drinking larger helpings from the broth you have already prepared: Vecna being a real force within the gameworld (as opposed to an existential plot device) and the things she wants to do."
> 
> As I said, I don't know exactly what it means, but my point is that _I_ didn't prepare the broth.
> 
> Here's another bit of your post: "My only caveat was that the base world is initially presented by the DM, who therefore retains primary authorship over what is or isn't possible. IE: if Vecna did not exist in your campaign world, then her mission to conquer Rel Astra would not exist, and therefore players could not make the choice to ally with her in that endevour."
> 
> As I indicated (or tried to) in my reply to your post, that is completely backwards. "Vecna is not the big deal here." Vecna wouldn't have featured as a significant part of the gameworld _but for_ there being a player whose PC had a goal of world domination. Vecna's mission to conquer Rel Astra wouldn't have been authored, by me as GM, _but for_ the fact that it generated pressure on these two PCs (and, thereby, their players).
> 
> It's not like I had all this backstory involving Vecna, and the Great Kingdom, and plots to conquer Rel Astra, etc - my broth - and the players started drinking from it. My players had their PCs - _their broth_ - and I introduced all this stuff into the fiction that spoke to their PCs - _I was drinking from their broth_.
> 
> Now if you think I've misunderstood your metaphor, well maybe I have. But you're going to have to give it to me literally. Because at the moment I don't think I'm misunderstanding you. I think you're misunderstanding the actual dynamic of the episode of play that I described, and are making mistaken assumptions about the causal relationship between "world building" and player choices.




In short, you are missing the forest of my post for the tree of one or two lines I wrote.  Focusing on what Vecna is or isn't, focusing on if _you_ or someone else was the DM, focusing on if you sniped the idea from the players.  YOU wrote it into the game.  Which speaks to _exactly_ what the rest of my post was talking about.

Fundamentally YOU and _only_ YOU had the authority to include something that would play to their backstory.  The fact that it came player recommended is largely irrelevant.

I think you're misunderstanding either on purpose, or _something_.  Because I can't be much clearer with what I wrote, and nobody else seems to have read my post and been confused by it.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I don't even know what this means. How does a PC "walk into" a module? Do you mean that you, the player, get to decide which module the group is playing?




Most people, when they use a module, place it within their campaign world somewhere.  B10 gets placed into the map somewhere and the PCs walk into that area.



> And what establishes the "possiility of success" of becoming mayor of some town? If you mean that the GM thinks that this is a good idea, or would make for a fun story, that would be the GM exercising agency.




No.



> If you mean that the player has to learn what is an effective pathway to mayoralty - as established by the GM - that would be an instance of the player playing to lean what is in the GM's notes.




No.



> That doesn't seem like very much player agency to me.




We agree on something!  



> If you mean that the player is able to make action declarations whose resolution is not just a matter of GM fiat, and those can result in the PC becomeing mayor, then the player would seem to be exercising agency at that point




Yes.



> But is the player dependent upon the GM to allow that there is a town and mayoral office at all?




Why would there need to be an office of Mayor for the PCs to try and become Mayor?  As for the town, I just glanced at the module and thought the homestead was a town.  My bad.  My point remains valid, though, because I was just using that error to point out how my style of play allows agency.  Let's pretend that either there is already a town in B10, or that I was talking about B10.5 which has a town called Sukiskyn.  It can either have or not have the office of Mayor, since that doesn't really matter.

Look, most DMs(the vast majority really) are reasonable and aren't going to shoot down player ideas just because.  The players can have the PCs look for the secrets, or not look for the secrets.  They can go in any direction they want for just about any reason they want.  Fighting goblins to save the town will win them brownie points.  If one of the players then wants to try and become Mayor of the town, he will come up with a way to attempt it.  Perhaps he goes around putting himself forward to the grateful townsfolk.  He might or might not suggest that having a powerful Mayor with powerful advisers(the other PCs) is good for them.  Or maybe he has his rogue friend run around in disguise subtly planting rumors and ideas, guiding the town to ask his buddy to be Mayor.  There are many ways to try it.  

It's the job of the DM to not only allow that attempt, but also fairly judge the chances of success.  Probably setting skill challenges, individual skill rolls, and other reasonable obstacles in the way.  The result is that there is a chance that the PCs can succeed, and that's what I meant.

There really will be no automatic failure or reliance on DM fiat unless the DM is a bad one.  There is no discovery of a DM path to success, because the DM has no path and it's the PCs that are forging that path as they go with their ideas.  There is no reliance on whether the DM thinks it's a good idea or would make a fun story, because that doesn't matter to even an average DM.  When the players tell me that one of them is going to sneak into the dragon's lair to look around, I usually think that's a bad idea, but it's allowed anyway.  And as long as the players are having fun, that's what is important.  

As far as I'm concerned, that affords the players full agency, despite the inability to author sections of the world as they go.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I have two players whose PCs, as those players have built and played them, are citizens of Rel Astra. One has the goal of world domination. Another has the goal of becoming a magistrate. I establish a situation that forces some choices: _if you want to dominate the world, you'll hve to ally with Vecna; but that means betraying your city_; _if you want to become a magistrate, all oou have to do is join yuor freind and his new ally Vecna in betrraying your city_.




What if there are other avenues of success that the Players/PCs see?  Are they free to engage in those, or do they now have to follow he situation you set up that forces those choices?


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> "In-fiction cause and effect" here means that the GM told you that the bouncers are angry and throw the PCs out.



Which in-game was caused by the disturbance around the attempted theft, and out-of-game was caused by - you guessed it - the disturbance around the attempted theft, as played out at the table.  In this instance it's a direct mirror.


> And "hidden elements" here doesn't mean hidden elements of the fiction. It means hidden elements of the actual play: the GM has pretended that s/he authored all this, but in fact it was a collaborative effort between the GM and Mary.



Yes, in this case it's both the DM and Mary doing the hiding rather than just the DM - I was trying to concatenate examples of two different types of hidden elements (those hidden by the DM and those hidden by another player) into one, as I'd already gone on long enough in that post.



> What you describe doesn't sound like my sort of thing - eg Why is Mary not just playing her character?



Because Mary doesn't want the other players to take Keyes into the party just on the meta-basis of Keyes being her character; she thinks instead it'd be fun and interesting to see what happens if Keyes is presented as an NPC. (I've both done this same thing as a player and had it done in games I DM - it's not at all unheard of in our crew)


> Why are the GM and Mary playing a game in which the rest of us seem to be primarily bystanders?



In the scene I presented it's in fact Mary who's the bystander...a role she would have agreed to as part of setting this up.  She doesn't get to do anything except watch until the scene is resolved one way or another.


> I'm not seeing very much agency on the parts of the players of Gutboy, Mialee and Falstaff.



The only time they don't have agency is where it's kind of locked in that during their conversation in the tavern Keyes WILL try to steal from one of them; and I think you'd call that scene-framing.  After that they've got agency all over the place: the very fate of Mary's character is in their hands, for crying out loud; though they don't yet know about the "Mary's character" bit.  The only further influence the DM can have on Mary's behalf (and in this instance would intentionally wield if the situation allows) is to try to at some point frame the four characters into a situation where they are more or less alone and can talk if they want to - the bouncers throwing them all out of the tavern together is an easy option here.

Lan-"another simple example of player-hidden information is bringing in a PC purporting to be one class where in fact it is another"-efan


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## Emerikol

pemerton said:


> It depends what you mean by "is a real place" - some of my games are rather gonzo (eg Marvel Heroic; epic-tier 4e) and so in that sense could never be mistaken for documentaries.
> 
> But if you are talking about "immersion" or a sense of "inhabitation" then that it is a very high priority for me, and I think for most of my players. But the method of action resolution is rather orthogonal to that. If the player declares "I search the study for the map", that does not involve any loss of inhabitation of the character. If the roll is then made, that is no different from any other rolling of the dice that the player does in the course of play. And if it comes up successful and the GM affirms "Yes, you find the map" - well, that doesn't involve any departure from immersion, realism or verisimilitude either.




I assumed your players knew your style.  That they knew you didn't have it written down and that the die roll would truly decide randomly if the map exists in that place.  If you are tricking them and telling them you have it written down then of course your approach may work for a while at least.  

In my games, the players truly believe I have things figured out in advance and on those rare occasions I have to determine the existence of something randomly I do so behind the screen and I never admit I didn't have it written down.  Again, if I have to roll then it's something odd that I couldn't foresee that I do think is a distinct possibility anyway.  Otherwise I say yes or no directly.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Saelorn said:


> As far as the players are concerned, playing in a world where the backstory is authored by the DM is identical to playing in a world where the backstory is generated through internal causal processes, in every way that matters. In both cases, the agency of the player is limited to what the character can actually accomplish through their own means, and they don't have to worry about accidentally authoring backstory as a result of actions they take in the present.
> 
> If you can't understand that simple fact, then you will never understand the point of worldbuilding, or the concept of actually roleplaying _as_ a character rather than telling a story _about_ a character; and as such, this entire thread is a waste of time.




I would argue that there is no such world, even fictionally. That is to say, no GM is capable of creating consistent backstory. GMs may create backstory which is suitably consistent for the purposes of play, where it isn't going to be rigorously examined by most players who simply want to suspend disbelief and get on with playing. However, there are infinite ways in which GMs attempts to generate backstory that could pass as 'internal causal process' are doomed to failure. 

Thus the whole argument falls. The REAL argument is aesthetic, and it is merely being cloaked in some other argument at times. It is always plainly evident to the players that the story isn't plausible, and its plausibility, and maybe more importantly their possession of enough information and understanding of the putative causal relationships to draw conclusions, is so limited to non-existent that any facts revealed by GMs via hidden backstory are simply arbitrary. If players DO predict them it is merely by knowledge of the GM, or perhaps due to conventions based on genre tropes, etc which the GM is following.

I would argue that any agency of the players which is predicated on this basis is exceedingly limited at best.


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## Kobold Boots

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I would argue that there is no such world, even fictionally. That is to say, no GM is capable of creating consistent backstory. GMs may create backstory which is suitably consistent for the purposes of play, where it isn't going to be rigorously examined by most players who simply want to suspend disbelief and get on with playing. However, there are infinite ways in which GMs attempts to generate backstory that could pass as 'internal causal process' are doomed to failure.
> 
> Thus the whole argument falls. The REAL argument is aesthetic, and it is merely being cloaked in some other argument at times. It is always plainly evident to the players that the story isn't plausible, and its plausibility, and maybe more importantly their possession of enough information and understanding of the putative causal relationships to draw conclusions, is so limited to non-existent that any facts revealed by GMs via hidden backstory are simply arbitrary. If players DO predict them it is merely by knowledge of the GM, or perhaps due to conventions based on genre tropes, etc which the GM is following.
> 
> I would argue that any agency of the players which is predicated on this basis is exceedingly limited at best.




Any argument pivoting on an absolute in order to make a point is flawed.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> For instance, a person reading Hound of the Baskervilles forms ideas - such as the idea of a super-capable detective called Sherlock Holmes - but does not (unless s/he has mistaken it for a documentary report) form the belief that there exists, or once existed, a super-capable detecitve called Sherlock Holmes.
> 
> The causal process whereby those ideas are formed invovles not only the person's brain, but their eyes. But it is not confined to the brain and eyes of the reader. The causal processes also involves the use of physical materials (ink, paper) to create visually perceptible markings (writing) which - due to other causal processes around language learning - are apt to cause certain ideas to arise in the brain of the reader.




One thing that should be reiterated here in this excellent essay is that there IS NO CAUSAL PROCESS WITHIN THE FICTION. The fact is no such person as Sherlock Holmes, no person with characteristics similar to him, can exist in the real world. This isn't even limited by just ordinary physical constraints (IE nobody can focus their attention well enough or remember things so reliably as to perform the feats attributed to him). It extends to LOGICAL POSSIBILITY as well, fiction need not even abide by the basic tenants of logic. Things can both exist and not exist, be in two places at once, have mutually exclusive characteristics, etc. within fiction. Not only that, but this HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. Mostly we don't notice. We suspend disbelief and we simply accept the fiction's conceits as given.

There's nothing remarkable about this when we're talking about a fixed passive form of story where the reader simply participates by reading and imagining what is told by the author. However, when we get into RPG THEORY then its VERY VERY IMPORTANT to understand this! What it means is that the ONLY THING THAT MATTERS is who, by rule/convention/whatever, is able to assert elements of the fiction. There is no 'fictional causation', it doesn't exist, it is, at best, a convention to pretend that it exists, and that only certain participants are bound by it. It is this convention, the practice of RPG game play, which is the subject of RPG game theory, which is what we are discussing here. 

Every time people talk about what is 'in the fiction' except as it pertains to how they will relate it to play procedures, is just not significant. What is significant is 'what are those procedures and how do they work?' In particular how does pre-authoring content work, why is it done, and what effect does it have on play processes? (since that was the question of the OP).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> Hmmm... I guess my question would be if scenario 2 has instead of an orc...a monster the PC can't beat, no matter how well the dice roll in his favor (Let's say an ancient red dragon and a 1st level PC who can't hit it's armor class).  Is that example then comparable to the map that can't be found in the study?
> 
> In the example I'm presenting... the only thing that stops the PC from defeating the dragon is pre-written stats, correct?  Do these take away player agency in the same way a GM with secret backstory does (is this determined by whether the player has knowledge of the creatures stats or not?)?  Or are you saying in the type of game you play the PC's could never run into something that they couldn't overcome... that there is in fact never a situation where they can't beat or do something with a high enough roll?




Do you think its a good idea to put an unbeatable monster into a combat with a PC? I doubt it (granted that there can be some particular cases where this may be acceptable, but as a general concept its frowned upon by all), right?

So isn't that an indication that there's an agency problem associated with creating no-win situations where a character will presumably die? I would say they DO take away player agency (again accepting some cases where this may actually be a price that a player accepted as part of stakes). In classic D&D a player would of course not be upset by the appearance of an unbeatable monster if they had deliberately put themselves in a situation where this was known/likely to come up. For example if a level 1 PC in OD&D insists on trekking into the mountains and gets eaten by a 10HD dragon that would provoke nothing but shrugs, but if that dragon appeared on level 1 of the dungeon and simply ate the character without any possible recourse, then it would be considered not 'kosher'. The player had no chance to exercise skill in saving the character, thus the cost extracted was against conventions of play.

So clearly the overwhelming majority of D&Ders would IMHO think that an unkillable monster violated player agency, though they might arrive at that conclusion by different routes.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> in this case it's both the DM and Mary doing the hiding rather than just the DM



My point was that they're not hiding any backstory. There is no hidden backstory, no unrevealed fiction, in your example. What the GM and Mary are hiding is that the thief in question is Mary's player character.



Lanefan said:


> Mary doesn't want the other players to take Keyes into the party just on the meta-basis of Keyes being her character; she thinks instead it'd be fun and interesting to see what happens if Keyes is presented as an NPC.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> In the scene I presented it's in fact Mary who's the bystander
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The only time they don't have agency is where it's kind of locked in that during their conversation in the tavern Keyes WILL try to steal from one of them; and I think you'd call that scene-framing.  After that they've got agency all over the place: the very fate of Mary's character is in their hands, for crying out loud; though they don't yet know about the "Mary's character" bit.  The only further influence the DM can have on Mary's behalf (and in this instance would intentionally wield if the situation allows) is to try to at some point frame the four characters into a situation where they are more or less alone and can talk if they want to - the bouncers throwing them all out of the tavern together is an easy option here.



As far as I can tell, the only interesting thing about the episode you describe is that the NPC is, in fact, a PC. Mary is the one who has sent that up - so she is not a bystander, she is the instigator of the whole thing - and the players don't actually know what it is that it is interesting about the scene. It's an in-joke between Mary and the GM.

The fact that the players can declare attacks against Keyes strikes me as really neither here nor there. Presumably they could have declared attacks against the people in the bar, too, or gone on a rampage in the town committing arson on all the buildings and taking on any NPC who tries to stop them. But if that's the measure of agency, then every RPG grants every player unlimited agency. When I refer to "agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction", I've got in mind more than just declaring actions more-or-less at random until your PC is killed.



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The players have an infinite number of ways of provoking the GM to tell them new stuff.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And it's that infinte number of ways which gives them their agency.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> the players have all kinds of agency, starting with the 'fluff' and 'crunch' of the characters they create and continuing with the - as noted above - infinite number of run-of-play choices they can make once the puck is dropped and play begins.  And while the DM may have some ideas as to what story she'd like to see grow out of her game and can have input and influence in various ways, the end decisions here all rest with the players no matter what the DM does or says short of running a hard railroad.  This side of the fiction largely belongs to the players and this is where they have their agency over the shared fiction; though *they still need a DM (it's what she's there for) to help bring it to life*.
Click to expand...


Having an infinite range of ways to provoke someone else to author stuff doesn't mean that you have a lot of agency.

I've bolded what I think is the key phrase in your post where the point I've just made is hidden: _the players need the GM to help bring it to life_. There are a very large variety of techniques available, across the corpus of roleplaying games and roleplaying approaches, to a GM who want to "help the players bring it to life". Some of them are more conducive to player agency than others.

Your example, upthread, of a GM establishing a whole lot of unrevealed consequences playing out "behind the scenes" and resulting in the PCs (and, thereby, their players) suffering consequences which the players never contemplated, intended or deliberately put into play in the game, illustrates the point. The players took advantage of their freedom to make moves in the game. The GM helped them "bring it to life". But what agency did the players exercise? None that I can see. All the significant choices were made by the GM.


----------



## pemerton

shidaku said:


> Fundamentally YOU and _only_ YOU had the authority to include something that would play to their backstory.  The fact that it came player recommended is largely irrelevant.
> 
> I think you're misunderstanding either on purpose, or _something_.  Because I can't be much clearer with what I wrote, and nobody else seems to have read my post and been confused by it.



I don't know that anyone else has really responded to your post, have they? (If Saelorn has, then I can't read it because he's blocked me again.)

In any event, I don't think accusations of insincerity are very helpful. You think I've misunderstood you. I think you've misunderstood me.

For instance, you say "YOU and _only_ YOU had the authority to include something that would play to their backstory". But I think it was the other PC, not Vecna, who offered the would-be magistrate PC the prize of a magistracy in return for joining with the attack on Rel Astra. Earlier in the campaign it was the player of the would-be magistrate PC who came up with the idea of a PC whose aspiration was to be a magistrate - I can't remember now if he suggested Rel Astra as the place for this, or if I did, or if the action of the game was already based in Rel Astra and we both just took it for granted that Rel Astra had a magistracy along the lines of classical city states in Greece and Italy. And it was the player of the world-domination PC who made contact with Vecna to try and establish an alliance, and hence brought what could otherwise have been a throwaway PC into front and centre in the game.

You think there is something you can clearly see which makes the setting "my broth". I'm not seeing it.



shidaku said:


> The fact that it came player recommended is largely irrelevant.



To me, it seems that this may be a reason that you're misunderstanding me. (To you, this may be the reason why I don't get what your point is.) Because, far from being irrelevant, the intertwining of player-authored backstories and PC motivations, various elements of the fiction introduced by the GM, and the sbusequent role those play in player action declarations, GM decisions about framing, etc, _is at the heart of the game_. It's not largely irrelevant - in fact, it's nearly everything in RPGing.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> @_*chaochou*_ - I don't think I agree that all "let's pretend" is _lying_. I'd rather call out lying as one particular case of pretence.
> 
> ...
> 
> (For completeness - what I've suggested above isn't the only theory going around of how fictions and pretence work. It just happens to be the approach that I favour.)




And now Immanuel Kant is spinning in his grave.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> What if there are other avenues of success that the Players/PCs see?  Are they free to engage in those, or do they now have to follow he situation you set up that forces those choices?



I don't think I understand the question. When you ask "are they free to engage in those", are you asking about the scope of permissible action declarations? In which case it will depend on the details of the action in question, and whether the fictional positioning supports them.

I'm also not sure what you mean by "follow the situation you set up that forces those choices." When Xanthos says to Xialath, "Vecna and I are going to conquer Rel Astra in the name of the Great Kingdom. If you join with us, we'll make sure you're awarded a magistracy once Rel Astra is ours," Xialath has to do _something_ in response. The obvious possibilities are to agree to join with them in exchange for the prize (as happened in my game), or to refuse the offer (in which case the PCs presumably find themselves at war - not unheard of in that campaign). There's also scope to try and negotiate for some change in the offer (and maybe Xialath did extract additional concessions - I don't remember all the details anymore).

But Xialath's player doesn't have any authority to just stipulate that Xanthos has not asked that question; or that Vecna is _not_, in fact, planning an assault on Rel Astra. 



hawkeyefan said:


> framing scenes can also limit player agency. Would you agree with that? My understanding of the term is that it’s the *GM* trying to *force* a decision by a player, right? To go where the action is. Here’s the situation, what do you do?



Well, here's a summary of the "standard narraivistic model":

One of the players is a gamemaster whose job it is to keep track of the backstory, frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments . . . [O]nce the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory . . . the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character . . .​
In contrast to the GM, the player's role "is simple advocacy", that is, "they naturally allow the character’s interests to come through based on what they imagine of the character’s nature and background." When presented with a situation, "[t]he player is ready . . . as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character."

The example under discussion earlier in this post is a bit more complex than that, because the pressure on Xialath's player is coming not just from the GM component of the framing (Vecna's attack on Rel Astra) but another player's contribution via that player's PC (Xialath can have a magistracy if he goes along with the attack). I think this sort of thing is not that uncommon in RPGing.

But in any event, the player built a character with certain dramatic needs. Now those are being engaged. Where is the limit on agency?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

shidaku said:


> This is decidedly _not_ what I was talking about.  It's not even, IMO, world building.  Your players are simply drinking larger helpings from the broth you have already prepared: Vecna being a real force within the gameworld (as opposed to an existential plot device) and the things she wants to do.  The rest of these things are in-character actions that affect the world around them.  I don't believe I've ever argued against _that_.  I'm pretty sure I've argued *for* that over several posts.  My only caveat was that the base world is initially presented by the DM, who therefore retains primary authorship over what is or isn't possible.  IE: if Vecna did not exist in your campaign world, then her mission to conquer Rel Astra would not exist, and therefore players could not make the choice to ally with her in that endevour.
> 
> What I was talking about was more along the lines of if you had created a world wherein Great Kingdom and Rel Astra were at odds for *reasons* and one of your players decided that reason should be Vecna and that she was aiding Great Kingdom against Rel Astra because she wanted to conquer the latter.
> 
> That's the sort of communal authorship I was talking about.
> 
> All I see in your example is a player playing the game with the materials they had available to them.  There's no authorship there.  Certainly these are big moves within the game, but they're not really authoring anything, they're just swinging the pendelum that you the DM had already written to be flexible in the direction they're interested in.




Its been 25 years since I perused my copy of WoG, so I don't remember exactly what was established by Gygax about The Great Kingdom WRT Vecna or if this was all generated in the course of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s game, but IN MY GAMES at least the existence of Vecna and his goals would only be introduced as a factor in response to a player's establishment of a goal (as a player) and a consequent dramatic need of a character (IE the player wants to play conquest of the world and the character thus is established as desiring to conquer Rel Astra for whatever reasons). Subsequent to that the player would presumably desire to have her character discover a way to effectuate this narrative in play, which would lead to the establishment of Vecna as an avenue (and here the DM chooses to establish an avenue which threatens the character by being an agency of evil, thus thrusting the character onto the horns of a moral dilemma). 

What I'm saying is, I don't think this is an example of World Building particularly. It MAY be taking some advantage of elements of a pre-existing setting in order to achieve dramatic ends, but unless I'm badly mistaken no such existing content would stand as a barrier to using the techniques of play Pemerton is espousing. Certainly no such element which hasn't been established actively in play would be treated as 'canonical' and thus established in fiction and bound to be respected as such. 

I'd note that playing in your own highly persistent world can create a bit of an issue here. Over decades MANY facts have been established during different story arcs/campaigns within this one fictional setting. MANY of them, most even, don't relate to anyone actively playing in that setting. Are they established? I mean, I amuse myself by continuing to build on things authored in earlier fictions, but I have the same issue as any GM engaged in World Building, what is the actual purpose of that material in game terms? I find the topic interesting to some degree for this reason...


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> there IS NO CAUSAL PROCESS WITHIN THE FICTION. The fact is no such person as Sherlock Holmes, no person with characteristics similar to him, can exist in the real world. This isn't even limited by just ordinary physical constraints (IE nobody can focus their attention well enough or remember things so reliably as to perform the feats attributed to him). It extends to LOGICAL POSSIBILITY as well, fiction need not even abide by the basic tenants of logic. Things can both exist and not exist, be in two places at once, have mutually exclusive characteristics, etc. within fiction. Not only that, but this HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. Mostly we don't notice. We suspend disbelief and we simply accept the fiction's conceits as given.
> 
> There's nothing remarkable about this when we're talking about a fixed passive form of story where the reader simply participates by reading and imagining what is told by the author. However, when we get into RPG THEORY then its VERY VERY IMPORTANT to understand this! What it means is that the ONLY THING THAT MATTERS is who, by rule/convention/whatever, is able to assert elements of the fiction. There is no 'fictional causation', it doesn't exist, it is, at best, a convention to pretend that it exists, and that only certain participants are bound by it. It is this convention, the practice of RPG game play, which is the subject of RPG game theory, which is what we are discussing here.
> 
> Every time people talk about what is 'in the fiction' except as it pertains to how they will relate it to play procedures, is just not significant. What is significant is 'what are those procedures and how do they work?' In particular how does pre-authoring content work, why is it done, and what effect does it have on play processes? (since that was the question of the OP).



Agreed. If you're still working through the past 50-100 posts, you may come across one of mine that talks about contradictions in fiction.

I don't know about your super-mathematician PC, but _mine_ has the power to square a circle with compass and ruler! And if there is some downtime, spends it drawing up plans for ever-cheaper-to-build perpetual motion machines.

Fictional causation is interesting only for the same reason any other fiction is interesting: it's part of the story.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I amuse myself by continuing to build on things authored in earlier fictions, but I have the same issue as any GM engaged in World Building, what is the actual purpose of that material in game terms?



I think the ultimate answer is "none", isn't it?

I have little essays I wrote on the theology of the main religion in my GH game (a fairly elaborate variation on St Cuthbert, Pholtus, Tritherion and others as branches of a monotheistic religion). What was the point? Self-amusement. Taking my readings on Christology and metaphysics out for a bit of a spin. Some of the _political_ differences between branches of the church turned out to matter in play, but I don't think the intricacies of the the theology ever came up!

On the flip side: in my 4e game it is well-established that there are theological and doctrinal divisions among adherents of the Raven Queen, because the paladin PC, who is a Marshall of Letherna, and the ranger/cleric demigod who also serves the Raven Queen, disagree over these things from time to time. I don't know if either player has any real details in mind, but at the table the differences tend to emerge in fairly course-grained ways. But it actually matters to play much more than my essays ever did!



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Its been 25 years since I perused my copy of WoG, so I don't remember exactly what was established by Gygax about The Great Kingdom WRT Vecna or if this was all generated in the course of  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s game
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I don't think this is an example of World Building particularly. It MAY be taking some advantage of elements of a pre-existing setting in order to achieve dramatic ends, but unless I'm badly mistaken no such existing content would stand as a barrier to using the techniques of play Pemerton is espousing. Certainly no such element which hasn't been established actively in play would be treated as 'canonical' and thus established in fiction and bound to be respected as such.



All this is true. This is what I was trying to get at when I said that "Vecna isn't the big deal", and in another context it could have been Iuz or Graz'zt or whomever.

Because we're playing D&D there's obviously a certain pleasure in using (recycling?) these old tropes, but they're means to an end, not the ends in themselves. Vecna in my current 4e game is a different being from Vecna in my old RM game (although they both fit the "sinister archlich with ancient secrets" role); Graz'zt was one thing in that RM game, and a different thing playing a different role in my long-running OA game (though in both had six fingers, and was a sinister manipulator with demon servants).


----------



## Sunseeker

pemerton said:


> To me, it seems that this may be a reason that you're misunderstanding me. (To you, this may be the reason why I don't get what your point is.) Because, far from being irrelevant, the intertwining of player-authored backstories and PC motivations, various elements of the fiction introduced by the GM, and the sbusequent role those play in player action declarations, GM decisions about framing, etc, _is at the heart of the game_. It's not largely irrelevant - in fact, it's nearly everything in RPGing.




My point is that the GM chose to intertwine those backstories.  You could have disregarded them.  You have the authority to say "Yes, I am going to pick up on this element of your backstory and include it in the game." or "No, I'm not interested in including this element of your backstory in the larger gameworld."  That authority is yours and yours alone.  The players do not have the authority to say "We are going to include this element of my backstory in the game."  Maybe you _let them_ but this is, to take a political example (since I'm a political scientist, sue me) the fundamental difference between Liberty and Freedom.

You have the authority to give your players certain Liberties.  That may mean allowing them to say "We are going to include XYZ from by backstory in the game." but they fundamentally do not have the Freedom to make that declaration on their own.  Some systems give the players "Essential Liberties" to author elements of the game in an _author_itative manner, some systems (I'd argue the majority of well-known ones) do not.  Some systems _suggest_ that players have Fundamental Freedom to author elements of the game, but since we're dealing with rules, we're usually dealing with Liberties, not Freedoms.  

But at the end of the day, in most systems, it falls to the DM to grant those Essential Liberties.  Most systems favor towards _author_itarianism.  A few systems explicitly enable a Republic.  VERY few systems are Communal.  

Maybe it is best surmised as: The GM is playing to what the characters want is not the same as the players authoring the fiction.  That is still the GM retaining authorship, they're just _outsourcing_.


----------



## Sunseeker

AbdulAlhazred said:


> And now Immanuel Kant is spinning in his grave.




Ugh.  Thanks for making me refresh myself on Kant.  Bleh.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> And now Immanuel Kant is spinning in his grave.





shidaku said:


> Ugh.  Thanks for making me refresh myself on Kant.



I'd let the Kant reference just go through to the keeper - I'm not the biggest fan (either of the metaphysics or the moral theory); but nothing very central to Kantians seemed to be at issue in this thread.

But now I'm curious - is there some Kantian subtext that I'm missing?


----------



## pemerton

shidaku said:


> My point is that the GM chose to intertwine those backstories.  You could have disregarded them.  You have the authority to say "Yes, I am going to pick up on this element of your backstory and include it in the game." or "No, I'm not interested in including this element of your backstory in the larger gameworld."  That authority is yours and yours alone.



What you say here isn't true of the game I was running. In fact, its failure to be true was the basis on which most of the players joined the game! They were looking for a game where player choices and signals in PC build and play _would_ matter.


----------



## Sunseeker

pemerton said:


> I'd let the Kant reference just go through to the keeper - I'm not the biggest fan (either of the metaphysics or the moral theory); but nothing very central to Kantians seemed to be at issue in this thread.
> 
> But now I'm curious - is there some Kantian subtext that I'm missing?




Maybe.  I admit to being rough on Kant, but I could certainly see a very Kantian take on some of this thread's discussion.


----------



## Sunseeker

pemerton said:


> What you say here isn't true of the game I was running. In fact, its failure to be true was the basis on which most of the players joined the game! They were looking for a game where player choices and signals in PC build and play _would_ matter.




That has nothing to do with what I said.

I said, _again_ that fundamentally those choices matter because the GM allows them to matter.  The GM (you in this context) could have chosen to _not_ allow them to matter.  Making those choices matter is within the domain of the GM, not the players (in the majority of systems).  Assuming you were playing some form of D&D, then it is _absolutely_ within the domain of the GM and not the players.  

Look lets walk through this:
Players come to you, they want to Explore Ancient Ruins.
You, the DM, decide to let them explore some ancient ruins.  But you don't have a good idea for which ones, so you solicit ideas from your players.
Your players provide you with ideas, material, or whole APs worth of ruins they could explore.
You, the DM pick through those, perhaps getting votes of approval on which ones the players like the most.

Who had *final* authorship in this scenario?  The DM.  All player contributions are filtered through the DM.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I don't think I understand the question. When you ask "are they free to engage in those", are you asking about the scope of permissible action declarations? In which case it will depend on the details of the action in question, and whether the fictional positioning supports them.
> 
> I'm also not sure what you mean by "follow the situation you set up that forces those choices." When Xanthos says to Xialath, "Vecna and I are going to conquer Rel Astra in the name of the Great Kingdom. If you join with us, we'll make sure you're awarded a magistracy once Rel Astra is ours," Xialath has to do _something_ in response. The obvious possibilities are to agree to join with them in exchange for the prize (as happened in my game), or to refuse the offer (in which case the PCs presumably find themselves at war - not unheard of in that campaign). There's also scope to try and negotiate for some change in the offer (and maybe Xialath did extract additional concessions - I don't remember all the details anymore).




In the post that I quoted, you said that the situation forced some choices.  Then you said that to conquer the world, the PC has to join Vecna.  If he has to join Vecna to succeed, that eliminates any other way to achieve that goal.  However, there may be possible ways to achieve that goal without joining Vecna.  If the player can see one of those ways, is he forced to join Vecna to succeed, or can he attempt another route?



> But Xialath's player doesn't have any authority to just stipulate that Xanthos has not asked that question; or that Vecna is _not_, in fact, planning an assault on Rel Astra.




It wasn't clear from the post I quoted that it was a PC question to another PC.   You said you established the situation that forced choices and then just listed the second player joining the first player in order to become magistrate.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> In the post that I quoted, you said that the situation forced some choices.



Yes: the player has to choose to ally with Vecna (helps with world domination, bad for his hometown) or choose to stay loyal to his city (doesn't betray his hometown, but puts a bit of a roadblock in his plans for world domination).



Maxperson said:


> Then you said that to conquer the world, the PC has to join Vecna.  If he has to join Vecna to succeed, that eliminates any other way to achieve that goal.  However, there may be possible ways to achieve that goal without joining Vecna.



In the abstract, sure. In practice, turning against Vecna at this point probably means that the immediate focus of play is going to be on dealing with the fallout from that, and perhaps trying to save Rel Astra from Vecna's attempt to conquer it.

Given that play time is finite, and given that - up to this point - the player had put his PC's eggs in the Vecna basket, hoping to find some other path to world domination would be likely to be a rather long-term thing. More realistic would be to try and find a way to wriggle out of the hard choice by somehow persuading Vecna to turn away from Rel Astra - although as best I recall I don't think the player tried that, because (again, as best I recall) he was happy to have the offer of a magistracy as a lure to bring the other PC back into compliance with his and Vecna's goals. (That other PC had been getting a little "unreliable" in the view of the Vecna-allied PC.)


----------



## pemerton

shidaku said:


> The GM (you in this context) could have chosen to _not_ allow them to matter.  Making those choices matter is within the domain of the GM, not the players (in the majority of systems).  Assuming you were playing some form of D&D, then it is _absolutely_ within the domain of the GM and not the players.



Well, to me this is like saying I could start each session by hurling personal abuse at the players. I mean, I guess so, but that would probably be the end of the game.

The campaign I'm starting about was _deliberately started_ as the upshot of a player revolt against a GM who was not interested in even a hint of player-driven RPGing. So it was understood from the start of the campaign that the players' concerns/focuses/desires/themes for their PCs would be an element of play. As I said, this was a club campaign, and so over time players come and go. New players were attracted because they knew that this was a campaign which was player-driven in that sort of way.

The system used was RM, which doesn't have formal devices for establishing player signals like (say) Fate or Burning Wheel. But that doesn't change the facts about the actual play of the game and the expectations of the participants.



shidaku said:


> Players come to you, they want to Explore Ancient Ruins.
> You, the DM, decide to let them explore some ancient ruins. But you don't have a good idea for which ones, so you solicit ideas from your players.
> Your players provide you with ideas, material, or whole APs worth of ruins they could explore.
> You, the DM pick through those, perhaps getting votes of approval on which ones the players like the most.
> 
> Who had final authorship in this scenario? The DM. All player contributions are filtered through the DM.



You've just described a process whereby the GM chairs a meeting, doesn't seem to have actually cast a vote, and the result of the meeting is that someone else's idea is adopted. I don't see that as a case of GM authorship. The resulting ancient ruins aren't the GM's broth. Someone else cooked it - the players who provided the ideas and material.

(Even if I grant that the GM has veto power - and that's not clear in your example and not straightforwardly true in the campaign I ran - I don't think that changes it. To give an example drawn from political practice, the fact that the President could have vetoed a bill that passes both chambers, and didn't, doesn't mean that the president is the author of the bill and the legislators were not its authors.)

EDIT:

There is a practical, gameplay-related reason to put the GM in charge of actually deciding how particular elements are introduced into the shared fiction (as framing, as consequences, etc), namely, the Czege Principle:

The “Czege principle” is a proposition by Paul Czege that it’s not exciting to play a roleplaying game if the rules require one player to both introduce and resolve a conflict. It’s not a theorem but rather an observation; where and how and why it holds true is an ongoing question of some particular interest.​
There are posters in this thread - eg [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION], [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] - who give less credence to this than I do. And I'm certainly happy to admit to being very conservative in my approach to RPGing as far as this matter is concerned. So I am the one who decides that Vecna's plans include conquering Rel Astra; that isn't the result of taking a poll of my players. But it is the player who has made Vecna's plans for conquering anything actually of relevance to play; and it is the player who has made Rel Astra matter, by establishing his character as (to whatever degree) a Rel Astran patriot.

This is a practical illustration of something I posted about upthread: that player agency over the content of the shared fiction can manifest not only in the outcomes of successful action declaration, but also in the contribution of material that is used by the GM in framing situations and narrating consequences.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I agree that the player moves not being limited except by the shared fiction is a significant part of what distinguishes a RPG from a boardgame.
> 
> But with bricking up the hobgoblins we also start to see possible limits. The players have an infinite number of ways of provoking the GM to tell them new stuff. But if it is the GM who is deciding what all that stuff is, I'm not sure that there is a lot of player agency there.
> 
> Systems like reaction rolls, morale checks etc help fill the gap here, but you can see them breaking down even in Gygax's DMG, as he gives advice on how different sorts of dungeon inhabitants will respond to incursions with that advice being largely divorced from the game's social mechanics, and relying very heavily on GM extrapolation of the fiction. I can accept that free kriegsspiel is a thing, but once we're at the level of bricking up hobgoblin tunnels, or assassinating kings, I feel that we've moved beyond a referee model - an independent narrator of knowable consequences of player moves - to a situation of one party (the "storyteller"?) having the authority to establish the content of the fiction that results from action declarations.
> 
> In my view, this is the impetus behind systems like skill challenges, or "stakes"-type approaches to resolution, which try to reintroduce finality of outcome into these sorts of situations. And of course there are less perfect systems too - I've used RM's rather feeble social mechanics to establish finality in social resolution, and I'm sure there's a way of using reaction and morale mechanics to adjudicate the hobgoblin's response to the wall.




Yeah, and I agree that things like 4e SCs and even the reaction/morale/loyalty rules of classic D&D are attempts to fill that gap. I think a LOT of 4e in its entirety can be interpreted as an attempt to fill that gap with at least strong hints and guidelines. I'd note that this was very much interpreted when 4e came out as a way to increase player agency within the game! In fact, at that time, the argument was pretty much "player agency is a bad thing, GMs should have absolute power and use it!" to paraphrase most of what was said on the GA forum at the 4e WotC boards. 

I also agree that this was all a natural evolution of the movement of the game from dungeon maze puzzle to a vehicle for heroic action stories of a generalized nature. Once the actions of the PCs are played out on a wider stage things get VERY open-ended really fast. OD&D (and certainly 1e) can still handle the B2 hobgoblin scenario as you suggest, using the morale rules, but it still leaves a LOT of open territory.

Now, more 'classical' DMs might well take hints from their players and the sorts of equipment, backstory, previous activities, etc. in order to draw in elements that speak to those player's desires (and thus dramatic needs of their PCs which those desires may express). Of course this technique is not really defined or often well-understood in classic D&D play. I mean, I didn't understand it in any formal sense until 10 years ago, even after GMing all sorts of games for many years, and often using those techniques. 

I think its hard to judge what people are doing in such situations. Imprecise language is used, and analysis is lacking. You are probably correct, along with [MENTION=6682826]CH[/MENTION]auchou, in trying to get everyone to clarify and get on a page about terminology and meta-theory, but it obviously won't happen. Still, I think most really successful GMs have had to learn to bend somehow and address the things that, at least their more demanding players, want.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> Yes, I was being silly with my example. It was an extreme. However, it seems like it could happen in the type of game Pemerton is advocating. Not that it should happen...I’m sure he’d say something about the scene being framed properly and the players having clear ideas on genre and setting....but that’s kind of the point, I think.
> 
> Whatever playstyle any of us want to advocate, it’s possible to describe a crappy example of play. And to then use that example to criticize the entire playstyle.
> 
> I was really tired of this vague contextual-less map example, so I gave an equally crappy example of play with pretty specific context most of us woukd understand.
> 
> I honestly don’t have any issue with his stance that there can be more player agency in his type of game. Certainly the ability to author some fictional elements through actuon declaration increases player agency. I get that. I don’t even think it’s controversial so much as the way it’s presented seems to be rubbing folks the wrong way.
> 
> But I also think that framing scenes can also limit player agency. Would you agree with that? My understanding of the term is that it’s the *GM* trying to *force* a decision by a player, right? To go where the action is. Here’s the situation, what do you do?
> 
> So I feel like it’s really just a matter of which playstyle promotes agency in what way. Or limits it in what way. It’s not this binary “you allow player agency or else you’re just reading then a story” insult that’s being put forth.




Yeah, I think it is fair to say that each style of play includes and excludes some sorts of games. In a game run by [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] its not likely that the PCs will spend a lot of time futzing around, wandering the countryside trying to find something to do, or just watching the world go by. OTOH they won't likely see their successes undone and they likely will find that the game focuses on their backstory elements and whatever deeds they seem to be intent on. In a more 'classic sandbox' sort of game that wouldn't be true. There the game might end up with a focus on the player's interests because THEY would move to some point of interest to them.

In the end I almost think that each style of play, if well-executed, leads to some interesting focus of play by different paths, which seems to me to be what you're getting at. In [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s game the whole thing is ABOUT the PCs, the game will always revolve around them and bring action to them. In some other game, maybe [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s, the characters will have to track down or systematically initiate what they're interested in, and then clearly that will be a focus. 

There's still the issue of how direct the focus on player interests is. IMHO in the older classic process there were a LOT of possible ways things would often go off the rails. It really is hard to avoid the GM driving play. Most mediocre DMs will end up doing that to one extent or another. OTOH if you follow a narrativist/story telling kind of process, like Pemerton's scene-framing approach, you'd be at least focused on the PCs, and they would be relating to the player's interests directly. It could still be done badly, and I guess one question is which is really the easier process to execute? I don't really know an answer to that, except it would be best in each case to have a system where that process is made very explicit. D&D never did that really well.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I'd let the Kant reference just go through to the keeper - I'm not the biggest fan (either of the metaphysics or the moral theory); but nothing very central to Kantians seemed to be at issue in this thread.
> 
> But now I'm curious - is there some Kantian subtext that I'm missing?




Subtext? In essence there is Philosophy BEFORE Kant, and Philosophy AFTER Kant, there is no fundamental element of it that Kant doesn't touch on. Aesthetics and theory of knowledge are both central themes in Kant's work.

Truthfully though, you can't talk about what 'Kant believed' or what 'Kant said' because there isn't a single Emmanuel Kant. He was a thinker who's ideas evolved drastically over time, though within certain prescribed limits. So you could probably draw various different points of view depending on which works you drew from. So you might say Kant could be spinning both clockwise AND widdershins. Anyway, I was just being silly, nothing very deep there. Me brain is a shallow pool...


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> there is Philosophy BEFORE Kant, and Philosophy AFTER Kant, there is no fundamental element of it that Kant doesn't touch on. Aesthetics and theory of knowledge are both central themes in Kant's work.



Perhaps heretically, I regard Kant as the most overrated of the great philosophers. (Oops - did I post that out loud?)

Of the 18th century philosophers I'm a great admirer of Hume. And, as might have come through in my posts about fiction etc, I'm a great admirer of the 19th/20th century analytic philosophers, whose starting point was undoing all the damage done by Kant! (Especially in his theories of knowledge and mathematics - I hesitate to say his theory of semantics, because part of the problem was that he didn't have one.)


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> more 'classical' DMs might well take hints from their players and the sorts of equipment, backstory, previous activities, etc. in order to draw in elements that speak to those player's desires (and thus dramatic needs of their PCs which those desires may express). Of course this technique is not really defined or often well-understood in classic D&D play. I mean, I didn't understand it in any formal sense until 10 years ago, even after GMing all sorts of games for many years, and often using those techniques.
> 
> I think its hard to judge what people are doing in such situations. Imprecise language is used, and analysis is lacking. You are probably correct, along with Chauchou, in trying to get everyone to clarify and get on a page about terminology and meta-theory, but it obviously won't happen. Still, I think most really successful GMs have had to learn to bend somehow and address the things that, at least their more demanding players, want.



I agree that it can be hard to judge what's going on.

Sometimes I'm reminded of these comments from Ron Edwards:

[Heck]! I'm playing Narrativist 
In Simulationist play, morality cannot be imposed by the player or, except as the representative of the imagined world, by the GM. Theme is already part of the cosmos; it's not produced by metagame decisions. Morality, when it's involved, is "how it is" in the game-world, and even its shifts occur along defined, engine-driven parameters. The GM and players buy into this framework in order to play at all. . . .

[W]hen you-as-player get proactive about an emotional thematic issue, poof, you're out of Sim. Whereas enjoying the in-game system activity of a thematic issue is perfectly do-able in Sim, without that proactivity being necessary. . . .

Many people mistake . . . techniques like Director stance, shared narration, etc, for Narrativism, although they are not defining elements for any GNS mode. Misunderstanding this key issue has led to many people falsely identifying themselves as playing Simulationist with a strong Character emphasis, when they were instead playing quite straightforward Narrativist without funky techniques.​
and

Jesse: I'm just still a little confused between Narrativism and Simulationism where the Situation has a lot of ethical/moral problems embedded in it and the GM uses no Force techniques to produce a specific outcome. I don't understand how Premise-expressing elements can be included and players not be considered addressing a Premise when they can't resolve the Situation without doing so.

Me: There is no such Simulationism. You're confused between Narrativism and Narrativism, looking for a difference when there isn't any.​
Like you, I was running player-driven games before I had an analytic vocabulary to describe what was going on. The lack of vocabulary didn't stop me doing it, although I think it sometimes meant I was confused about what techniques were having what effect in my games. To give a couple of concrete examples:

(1) I read a lot of GM advice books - RM ones, but others too (eg WSG) - which emphasised the importance of strong world-design (maps, pantheons, etc) as important to a good RPG experience. To the extent that I did some of this stuff, it didn't actually seem to pay off. When I ignored this stuff, and just focused on play, nothing bad happened and often good things happened. The basic geography tended to be public knowledge (eg I would lay out my maps of GH and not keep them secret), and the "secret" geography tended to be introduced as part of framing particular situations (an example I can think of is when I decided that the PCs, flying on a demon skiff through the Crystalmist Mountains, came across the Brass Stair from the RM Shadow World module "Sky Giants of the Brass Stair"). Having the tools to think more systematically about the function of backstory, framing etc in the game has helped me get better at this.

(2) RM has a lot of mechanics - <pause for laughter> - that make it almost impossible to draw an end to a scene: spell durations, spell point recovery, injury recovery, even quite a bit of magical healing that requires tracking the time spent concentrating on restoring (say) 1 concussion hit per round, etc, etc. Without an analytic vocabulary for thinking about scenes, framing, etc, while it was obvious to me that some of this stuff was a bit clunky, it wasn't obvious exactly where it was causing problems. (A little-remarked upon feature of 5e is that it has got rid of all those X minutes per level durations, and breaks them down into "1 fight", "1 exploration scene" and "until next rest" durations, just without telling anyone!)​
So anyway, if we were doing it probably others were and are. On the other hand, it can be very hard to tell. Multiple posters in the past few days of this thread have said that the source of framing material is irrelevant - are they GMing in accordance with their professed principles, or are they misdescribing their own approach to play?

It also seems clear that a lot of non-combat stuff is being resolved through free roleplaying. But in the absence of any actual play examples, and concrete accounts of how GM pre-authored understandings of the situation factored in (like eg who is amenable to being bribed, and who isn't), it's almost impossible to tell what's going on. Which is where the issue of vocabulary comes in again: a recount of the fiction doesn't take us anywhere in terms of understanding how the game actually happened. But there are very few accounts in this thread of actual episodes of play that illustrate how a GM working from notes, together with the players expressing their agency, actually generated some episode of play by way of free roleplaying.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, I think it is fair to say that each style of play includes and excludes some sorts of games. In a game run by  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] its not likely that the PCs will spend a lot of time futzing around, wandering the countryside trying to find something to do, or just watching the world go by. OTOH they won't likely see their successes undone and they likely will find that the game focuses on their backstory elements and whatever deeds they seem to be intent on. In a more 'classic sandbox' sort of game that wouldn't be true. There the game might end up with a focus on the player's interests because THEY would move to some point of interest to them.
> 
> In the end I almost think that each style of play, if well-executed, leads to some interesting focus of play by different paths, which seems to me to be what you're getting at. In  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s game the whole thing is ABOUT the PCs, the game will always revolve around them and bring action to them. In some other game, maybe [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s, the characters will have to track down or systematically initiate what they're interested in, and then clearly that will be a focus.



A good analysis, but I think even being this broad it only ends up applying to a somewhat small-ish segment of the overall population of games out there being played.

Why is that?

Because it overlooks and thus ignores three important segments of the population of games: one of which is huge, the other two significant but not so huge.  So, in ascending order of size we have:

1. Games run in AL or other organized play environments.  These games tend towards running what's fed to them, and both players and DMs can't wander too far off script.  The action arrives when a) the module says it will, and b) when the PCs find it.

2. Games that are run as full-on hard adventure paths, where they go through the AP from start to finish and the end of the AP means the end of the campaign.  These games are often more or less railroads, albeit railroads that everyone involved has kind of agreed to ride.  The action arrives when the train gets to it.

3. Games where the players (and maybe even the DM!) just don't care about any of this and simply want to kick back and have some fun.  These are the casual games, and I think they make up the majority of all games being run at any given time.  The DM doesn't focus on the PCs to anywhere remotely near the extent of, say, a [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] game, and nor do the players "systematically initiate" what they're interested in as is posited might be happening in my game - certainly not intentionally, at any rate.  Often in these sort of games the DM either sets hooks or just runs a module, and the players largely go along with it because it gives them a game to play in and a reason to get together and shoot the breeze every week or two.  Sometimes one or more players will for a while become engaged enough in some aspect of the game world or backstory to drive the game in that direction, otherwise what adventures etc. get played are pretty much set by the DM mostly by default.  These games also generally tend toward less "action", sometimes due to a focus on bookkeeping, sometimes due to table chatter dominating half the session, sometimes due to excess caution and planning and focus on detail both in and out of character, or a host of other reasons.

And of course all three of these game types can be made or broken by either or both of the quality of the DM and the quality of the players involved.

Lanefan


----------



## chaochou

Kobold Boots said:


> Any argument pivoting on an absolute in order to make a point is flawed.




Which is itself an argument pivoting on an absolute.

Doesn't seem so clever now, does it?


----------



## chaochou

pemerton said:


> There is a practical, gameplay-related reason to put the GM in charge of actually deciding how particular elements are introduced into the shared fiction (as framing, as consequences, etc), namely, the Czege Principle:
> The “Czege principle” is a proposition by Paul Czege that it’s not exciting to play a roleplaying game if the rules require one player to both introduce and resolve a conflict. It’s not a theorem but rather an observation; where and how and why it holds true is an ongoing question of some particular interest.​
> There are posters in this thread - eg @_*chaochou*_, @_*AbdulAlhazred*_, @_*Manbearcat*_ - who give less credence to this than I do.




From my point of view, it's not that I don't give credence to it. Rather, I see it as a fairly banal statement that sets a boundary which in reality nothing ever actually reaches.

'Play' which breaches the Czege principle looks like this:
Player 1: I need cash, so I steal a load of cash from the dragon, but now the dragon is mad at me so I kill it.

No mechanical resolution, no external input. Just player-side resolution of player-side problems. In other words, it's just daydreaming.

D&D play often looks like this:
GM: You need cash. It's rumoured there's dragon sitting on a big pile of treasure in the caves.

Here The GM presupposes the character goal (player agency = dead) as well as the method of resolving it (player agency = buried). We assume that game mechanics will resolve the action, although often they are extremely weak to the point of acting as a limit on players but not on the GM (player agency = laughable).

A player-driven game will more likely look like this:
Player: I need cash, and there's dragon sitting on a big pile of treasure in the caves.

Here the player defines their goal and solution, but it doesn't breach the Czege principle, as nothing is resolved. We assume a series of more detailed action propositions will be made, resolved though the game mechanics, with robust controls on the GMs power to counteract the dice.


----------



## Kobold Boots

chaochou said:


> Which is itself an argument pivoting on an absolute.
> 
> Doesn't seem so clever now, does it?




By definition an argument is disputable, where as my statement is a fact and therefore not an argument.

Plenty clever, unfortunately not all who try to be, are.

Be well
KB


----------



## pemerton

pemerton said:
			
		

> There is a practical, gameplay-related reason to put the GM in charge of actually deciding how particular elements are introduced into the shared fiction (as framing, as consequences, etc), namely, the  Czege Principle





chaochou said:


> 'Play' which breaches the Czege principle looks like this:
> Player 1: I need cash, so I steal a load of cash from the dragon, but now the dragon is mad at me so I kill it.
> 
> No mechanical resolution, no external input. Just player-side resolution of player-side problems. In other words, it's just daydreaming.
> 
> D&D play often looks like this:
> GM: You need cash. It's rumoured there's dragon sitting on a big pile of treasure in the caves.
> 
> Here The GM presupposes the character goal (player agency = dead) as well as the method of resolving it (player agency = buried). We assume that game mechanics will resolve the action, although often they are extremely weak to the point of acting as a limit on players but not on the GM (player agency = laughable).
> 
> A player-driven game will more likely look like this:
> Player: I need cash, and there's dragon sitting on a big pile of treasure in the caves.
> 
> Here the player defines their goal and solution, but it doesn't breach the Czege principle, as nothing is resolved. We assume a series of more detailed action propositions will be made, resolved though the game mechanics, with robust controls on the GMs power to counteract the dice.



I think your example of the player-driven dragon can be made consistent with what I said: as those more detailed action declarations are made, it will be the GM who oversees the framing and the introduction of consequences for failure.

That said, I still think I'm more conservative than you - probably quite a bit! - in terms of where I tend to treat the transition from player to GM content-introduction.

On the other hand, I can think of (perhaps fairly petty cases) where I probably contradict my own self-description. One is the Jabal of the Cabal episode already discussed upthread:

Player: I need to make contact with the cabal, and Jabal is a leader of it, so I reach out to him.​
This fed straight into a Circles check, which failed - so no GM content introduction until consequences of failure were needed (namely, Jabal sends a thug to run the PCs out of town).

A different sort of example, which I'm not quite sure how to classify: the invoker/wizard PC in my main 4e game has a feat that gives him a +2 bonus to skill checks made for rituals. I think that, as written, this is intended to affect only rituals in the literal mecahanical sense. But my player applies the bonus to other checks that he deems to be the performing of magical rituals (eg some, but not all, Arcana checks in a skill challenge). I let the player decide and police all that himself: he's the one playing the MU character, and so if he's got a view as to what is or isn't a ritual I'm not interested in second-guessing that.

Also, re your D&D example: that's especially why I hate fetch quests, MacGuffin hunting, and the suggestion that it makes for good play to make the players hunt down the (GM-authored in nature, location etc) ingredients for making magic items, lifting curses, etc. And the whole notion of "side quests" I think is inimical to player-driven RPGing.


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## chaochou

Kobold Boots said:


> By definition an argument is disputable, where as my statement is a fact and therefore not an argument.




Not a statement of fact. An assertion. Although your claim to the facts perfectly illustrates your self-righteousness.


----------



## Imaro

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Do you think its a good idea to put an unbeatable monster into a combat with a PC? I doubt it (granted that there can be some particular cases where this may be acceptable, but as a general concept its frowned upon by all), right?
> 
> So isn't that an indication that there's an agency problem associated with creating no-win situations where a character will presumably die? I would say they DO take away player agency (again accepting some cases where this may actually be a price that a player accepted as part of stakes). In classic D&D a player would of course not be upset by the appearance of an unbeatable monster if they had deliberately put themselves in a situation where this was known/likely to come up. For example if a level 1 PC in OD&D insists on trekking into the mountains and gets eaten by a 10HD dragon that would provoke nothing but shrugs, but if that dragon appeared on level 1 of the dungeon and simply ate the character without any possible recourse, then it would be considered not 'kosher'. The player had no chance to exercise skill in saving the character, thus the cost extracted was against conventions of play.
> 
> So clearly the overwhelming majority of D&Ders would IMHO think that an unkillable monster violated player agency, though they might arrive at that conclusion by different routes.




You're assuming I put them in this situation... why, if they have agency? In other words if they have true agency am I not removing it if I only ever allow them to encounter level appropriate envounters... irregardless of the actions and intentions they have?


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## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> Well, here's a summary of the "standard narraivistic model":
> 
> One of the players is a gamemaster whose job it is to keep track of the backstory, frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments . . . [O]nce the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory . . . the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character . . .​
> In contrast to the GM, the player's role "is simple advocacy", that is, "they naturally allow the character’s interests to come through based on what they imagine of the character’s nature and background." When presented with a situation, "[t]he player is ready . . . as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character."
> 
> The example under discussion earlier in this post is a bit more complex than that, because the pressure on Xialath's player is coming not just from the GM component of the framing (Vecna's attack on Rel Astra) but another player's contribution via that player's PC (Xialath can have a magistracy if he goes along with the attack). I think this sort of thing is not that uncommon in RPGing.
> 
> But in any event, the player built a character with certain dramatic needs. Now those are being engaged. Where is the limit on agency?




I don’t know....my comment was not made in reference to that specific example. Instead, it’s about the possibility of framing limiting agency. 

Would you say that it’s possible?

It seems to me that it is. The hope is that the GM frames scenes “responsibly”. 

In this sense, I think it’s similar to GM backstory. It can reduce player agency, but it also may not. It depends on how the GM chooses to use it. I think that certain game mechanics or rules systems may skew things one way or the other, so that is likely a big factor, too.

I think the essay you linked to also supports what I’m saying.


----------



## Sunseeker

hawkeyefan said:


> I don’t know....my comment was not made in reference to that specific example. Instead, it’s about the possibility of framing limiting agency.
> 
> Would you say that it’s possible?




I don't see how anyone rationally could say otherwise.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Perhaps heretically, I regard Kant as the most overrated of the great philosophers. (Oops - did I post that out loud?)
> 
> Of the 18th century philosophers I'm a great admirer of Hume. And, as might have come through in my posts about fiction etc, I'm a great admirer of the 19th/20th century analytic philosophers, whose starting point was undoing all the damage done by Kant! (Especially in his theories of knowledge and mathematics - I hesitate to say his theory of semantics, because part of the problem was that he didn't have one.)




Ah, spoken like a true philosopher, no hair may remain unsplit!  Its not that I don't actually share some of your disdain for Kant, I think he's overrated perhaps (and Hume is certainly an interesting figure in his own right, but if you are at that level you have many choices, Descartes, HEGEL!!!! etc. 

What distinguishes Kant is that he overturned the whole classically inspired system of philosophical thought. There is before Kant, and after Kant. Not to espouse a 'great man' theory of history, particularly of a field of thought, but you can profitably divide philosophy into 'Before Thales', 'Before Socrates', 'Before Kant', and 'After Kant'. You may even consider him to be a mediocre thinker in many respects, but his writing does signal a wholesale change in the approach and content of a subject who's main topics and approach had largely been defined by a single small group of individuals more than 2000 years earlier.

So, this is fun material for world building, right!


----------



## hawkeyefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, I think it is fair to say that each style of play includes and excludes some sorts of games. In a game run by [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] its not likely that the PCs will spend a lot of time futzing around, wandering the countryside trying to find something to do, or just watching the world go by. OTOH they won't likely see their successes undone and they likely will find that the game focuses on their backstory elements and whatever deeds they seem to be intent on. In a more 'classic sandbox' sort of game that wouldn't be true. There the game might end up with a focus on the player's interests because THEY would move to some point of interest to them.
> 
> In the end I almost think that each style of play, if well-executed, leads to some interesting focus of play by different paths, which seems to me to be what you're getting at. In [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s game the whole thing is ABOUT the PCs, the game will always revolve around them and bring action to them. In some other game, maybe [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s, the characters will have to track down or systematically initiate what they're interested in, and then clearly that will be a focus.
> 
> There's still the issue of how direct the focus on player interests is. IMHO in the older classic process there were a LOT of possible ways things would often go off the rails. It really is hard to avoid the GM driving play. Most mediocre DMs will end up doing that to one extent or another. OTOH if you follow a narrativist/story telling kind of process, like Pemerton's scene-framing approach, you'd be at least focused on the PCs, and they would be relating to the player's interests directly. It could still be done badly, and I guess one question is which is really the easier process to execute? I don't really know an answer to that, except it would be best in each case to have a system where that process is made very explicit. D&D never did that really well.




Yes, this is largely my point. I like player agency. I don’t think it needs to be ubiquitous. In fact, I think that too much is probably a bad thing. This applies to the authorship as well. As much as an RPG is a story, I prefer it still also remain a game.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I agree that it can be hard to judge what's going on.
> 
> Sometimes I'm reminded of these comments from Ron Edwards:
> ...



True, though I am loathe to cite Ron Edwards, or at least anything that invokes 'GNS'. Its true that we often fall into using his terminology (or some bastardization of it) but I long ago dismissed the theory itself! I think even Ron has...

The posts are lost somewhere in the mass of stuff I've posted on EnWorld over the years, but somewhere there's a thread where I demolished the very concept of 'Simulationism' as a method/approach to play, so how can GNS even stand without that? Anyway, I still agree with the thought expressed.



> (1) I read a lot of GM advice books - RM ones, but others too (eg WSG) - which emphasised the importance of strong world-design (maps, pantheons, etc) as important to a good RPG experience. To the extent that I did some of this stuff, it didn't actually seem to pay off. When I ignored this stuff, and just focused on play, nothing bad happened and often good things happened. The basic geography tended to be public knowledge (eg I would lay out my maps of GH and not keep them secret), and the "secret" geography tended to be introduced as part of framing particular situations (an example I can think of is when I decided that the PCs, flying on a demon skiff through the Crystalmist Mountains, came across the Brass Stair from the RM Shadow World module "Sky Giants of the Brass Stair"). Having the tools to think more systematically about the function of backstory, framing etc in the game has helped me get better at this.



Well, I read the 1e DMG, which is basically the UR-source of GM advice. Even in 1979 I was skeptical of much that was said there, but I didn't really have a response. In those days we all thought that if we could make a 'more authentic' game then somehow that would fix our main issues. It was a very naive idea to say the least, but such are 16yr olds... 

Then I recall our 1e play largely broke down into high level stuff where the character's agendas ARE paramount because they can escape from any railroad (as long as they're spell-casters) pretty easily unless the GM is willing to either invoke ridiculous amounts of force to create a railroad. That pretty well clarified what the options are.

Next we played some of the nascent story-driven games of the day, like Gangster! and Toon. I guess you could also include some elements of Top Secret, and you've argued rather well Traveler if you play it a certain way (not to say we did at the time). 

I remember then STILL attempting to set up one super campaign that would have an overarching meta-plot which I spent some huge amount of time working out. That pretty much didn't work at all (though it spawned a lot of background material to flesh out parts of the campaign world which amused me greatly). 

The next time I actually got interested in D&D at all was 10 yrs later when 4e finally appeared. After reading and playing some of the newer systems of that era I assumed it would be mostly a throwback to the old days, but it proved to be a great revelation in play...



> (2) RM has a lot of mechanics -  <pause for laughter> - that make it almost impossible to draw an  end to a scene: spell durations, spell point recovery, injury recovery,  even quite a bit of magical healing that requires tracking the time  spent concentrating on restoring (say) 1 concussion hit per round, etc,  etc. Without an analytic vocabulary for thinking about scenes, framing,  etc, while it was obvious to me that some of this stuff was a bit  clunky, it wasn't obvious exactly where it was causing problems. (A  little-remarked upon feature of 5e is that it has got rid of all those X  minutes per level durations, and breaks them down into "1 fight", "1  exploration scene" and "until next rest" durations, just without telling  anyone!)



I think RM (plus my one super meta-plot campaign of 2e) is what convinced me that no attempt to make 'better rules for the game world' would ever lead to a better game. Perhaps enduring my brother-in-law's Aftermath campaign helped too (a game with like 100 pages of rules that distinguish every conceivable minute detail about every gun ever made). 

4e has the same characteristic, all durations are in 'plot terms' effectively. There are a few places where it talks about '5 minutes' being the duration of a power outside of combat, but the intent always seemed to be 'until you end the short rest in which you invoked this'. I mean, 4e doesn't have a way of measuring time really, or any strong non-narrative reason to do so once you leave combat. Admittedly, 5e is more explicit about this and contains a lot more "exploration focused" details about such things. Of course 4e's agenda just doesn't care about them so much, in the context of an SC all that matters is you expended the resource and got the benefit, a vague statement like 5 minutes or a ritual that lasts 'until you break camp' is perfectly adequate.



> So anyway, if we were doing it probably others were and are. On the other hand, it can be very hard to tell. Multiple posters in the past few days of this thread have said that the source of framing material is irrelevant - are they GMing in accordance with their professed principles, or are they misdescribing their own approach to play?
> 
> It also seems clear that a lot of non-combat stuff is being resolved through free roleplaying. But in the absence of any actual play examples, and concrete accounts of how GM pre-authored understandings of the situation factored in (like eg who is amenable to being bribed, and who isn't), it's almost impossible to tell what's going on. Which is where the issue of vocabulary comes in again: a recount of the fiction doesn't take us anywhere in terms of understanding how the game actually happened. But there are very few accounts in this thread of actual episodes of play that illustrate how a GM working from notes, together with the players expressing their agency, actually generated some episode of play by way of free roleplaying.




Well, there's a great bit of sensitivity on certain points. I didn't push the point on the incoherence of the very concept of 'simulation' or 'cause and effect within a non-existent game world'. To do so is to generally invite a flamewar (I think there was one poster that dismissed my one foray onto that ground out of hand without addressing it, that's the mildest it gets). I recall having that debate with the guy that claimed his personal D&D hack that he wrote literally resolved all possible game-world situations in a completely objective causally plausible way rather than admit even the possibility that no such thing exists in RPGs! That was a very strange thread... 

So, yeah, there's kind of a pall of conceptual smoke over the subject, and it almost seems like you can't try to lift it without the discussion breaking down. I guess you can go to someplace like The Forge, but the little I ever perused of posting there it seemed like it was just WORSE in a different direction... lol.  Anyway, we muddle onwards.


----------



## hawkeyefan

shidaku said:


> I don't see how anyone rationally could say otherwise.




I don’t really see it either, but I’m willing to listen. I’m hoping for an answer that at least begins with a clearly stated yes or no.

I’m also curious how framing is viewed in the sense of multiple players. I’m sure most character groups....adventuring parties, investigators, super teams, starship crews, what have you...have at least some shared goals. But in this story now approach, it seems very likely that each player will also have personal goals for his character.

So if a GM decides to frame a scene where the personal goal of one character is at stake, then what does that do for the agency of the other players? 

Surely in a game that has such expectations by the players, there is the risk of not paying equal attention to the character goals. Of focusing more on one character’s story than another. Wouldn’t the player of the character in focus have more agency than the others?

Whereas a more traditional approach along the lines of [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]’s described playstyle, the players are all operating with the same level of agency. That agency may be less than the player for the focal character in the story now game, but it seems like it’s more than the other players in that game are likely to have at that moment.


----------



## hawkeyefan

chaochou said:


> D&D play often looks like this:
> GM: You need cash. It's rumoured there's dragon sitting on a big pile of treasure in the caves.
> 
> Here The GM presupposes the character goal (player agency = dead) as well as the method of resolving it (player agency = buried). We assume that game mechanics will resolve the action, although often they are extremely weak to the point of acting as a limit on players but not on the GM (player agency = laughable).
> 
> A player-driven game will more likely look like this:
> Player: I need cash, and there's dragon sitting on a big pile of treasure in the caves.




But isn’t that the principle in action? Or does it only apply upon realization of the solution. The player introduced the solution of the dragon hoard. It’s only a possible solution, but it is a solution. 

What about play that goes more like the below? I’m curious how you’d classify it.

Player: I need cash.
GM: You’ve heard that there’s a dragon in the hills who has a massive treasure hoard.
Player: Okay...good to know. Not sure if I need cash that bad. Have we heard about any other opportubities?
GM: Make a (relevant skill) roll. 
Player: Okay....(rolls)
GM (checks results): You’ve also heard that there are bandits in the forest and they’ve been waylaying merchants. There is a bounty being offered for their leader. And, you’ve heard that the northern outpost has been having issues with orcs, and they need folks to help hunt the creatures down. The captain there will pay for help.

Here the GM introduces the possible solution...or solutions, in this case...based on the player’s indication of what the character wants. How would you categorize this example? Agency dead, laughable, alive, limited?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> A good analysis, but I think even being this broad it only ends up applying to a somewhat small-ish segment of the overall population of games out there being played.
> 
> Why is that?
> 
> Because it overlooks and thus ignores three important segments of the population of games: one of which is huge, the other two significant but not so huge.  So, in ascending order of size we have:
> 
> 1. Games run in AL or other organized play environments.  These games tend towards running what's fed to them, and both players and DMs can't wander too far off script.  The action arrives when a) the module says it will, and b) when the PCs find it.
> 
> 2. Games that are run as full-on hard adventure paths, where they go through the AP from start to finish and the end of the AP means the end of the campaign.  These games are often more or less railroads, albeit railroads that everyone involved has kind of agreed to ride.  The action arrives when the train gets to it.
> 
> 3. Games where the players (and maybe even the DM!) just don't care about any of this and simply want to kick back and have some fun.  These are the casual games, and I think they make up the majority of all games being run at any given time.  The DM doesn't focus on the PCs to anywhere remotely near the extent of, say, a @_*pemerton*_ game, and nor do the players "systematically initiate" what they're interested in as is posited might be happening in my game - certainly not intentionally, at any rate.  Often in these sort of games the DM either sets hooks or just runs a module, and the players largely go along with it because it gives them a game to play in and a reason to get together and shoot the breeze every week or two.  Sometimes one or more players will for a while become engaged enough in some aspect of the game world or backstory to drive the game in that direction, otherwise what adventures etc. get played are pretty much set by the DM mostly by default.  These games also generally tend toward less "action", sometimes due to a focus on bookkeeping, sometimes due to table chatter dominating half the session, sometimes due to excess caution and planning and focus on detail both in and out of character, or a host of other reasons.
> 
> And of course all three of these game types can be made or broken by either or both of the quality of the DM and the quality of the players involved.
> 
> Lanefan




Well, I have no idea how big groups 1 and 2 are. I think group 1 is probably overall relatively small. In terms of 'theory of gaming' or 'practice of gaming' they seem fairly similar to me as well (IE in both cases the practice is to present a fairly cut-and-dried scenario of some length). In case 1 the length is less, the play is more constrained, and maybe characterization is nominal at best. In case 2 the scenario is much longer and to whatever extent the game can diverge from it (though at the cost of sacrificing at least some of the utility of the AP, very similar to the situation with a heavily prepped campaign). I'm not sure what to make of 3, it doesn't seem mutually exclusive to 2 (IE most of these casual groups probably fall into 2, or at least into 'we run modules' even if not a full AP, which seems pretty much like the same thing to me, conceptually).

Still, within 2 and 3 every sort of type of play can, and probably does, exist  to one extent or another. I would venture that game mostly start in some sort of mode like this where any idea of RPG practice or theory is non-existent, outside of whatever the rule set in play might convey. I'd note that WotC always seems to trot out some form of their 'types of gamers' theory, which they've rehashed in 3.x, 4e, and now 5e as a type of 'play to the player's interests' kind of advice! They don't go as far as anything like 'scene framing' or narrative play concepts like that, but the advice given is generally consonant with such play. 4e went even further, espousing a type of 'go to the action', although it was never quite couched in terms of player's narrative agenda (instead in terms of player types where these needs were examined at all). 

Anyway, I don't disagree that most people play RPGs in an unsystematic way. I'd say, however, that most people who play for a while at least have some idea of "playing to the game at hand", that is acknowledging the theory and conceits of the designers of a particular game. I know that was always true for the people I played with. We always tried to figure out how exactly to play D&D "in the way it was written" for example. Not that we did this very systematically or didn't change things to please ourselves, but I at least always felt like it was worth 'going with the flow of the game'.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Kobold Boots said:


> By definition an argument is disputable, where as my statement is a fact and therefore not an argument.
> 
> Plenty clever, unfortunately not all who try to be, are.
> 
> Be well
> KB




It is certainly a commonly used rhetorical technique, making a statement and then simply treating it like a fact. However I see nothing in your statement which provides either evidenciary or logical support for it, thus it is at best unproven and at worst simply opinion.

At least I stated my proposition in a form which can be construed to be a hypothetical. You could certainly afford to do the same


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> You're assuming I put them in this situation... why, if they have agency? In other words if they have true agency am I not removing it if I only ever allow them to encounter level appropriate envounters... irregardless of the actions and intentions they have?




In my, and I think [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION]'s and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s methods of play a choice made by a player where the consequences of the choice were hidden at the time it was made, so that no cost/benefit analysis or assessment of the choice's significance in terms of player agenda was possible does not exhibit player agency to any high degree. 

Thus if, hypothetically, there's a dungeon maze and the character can go left or right at the intersection, and left leads to a certain-death encounter while right leads to something else, there's no agency on the player's part in making a blind choice. The player might just as well roll a d6 and pick left or right based on the result, or simply follow an 'always go left' rule, etc. Obviously if there is some sort of evidence the player could obtain via action declarations as to the consequences of the choice, then some degree of agency comes into existence. 

This is still a lesser form of agency than one in which the player was empowered to suggest a reason for visiting the dungeon and whatever room was explored contained some content related to that suggestion (that is the GM framed the scene in terms of expressed player interest and character need).

I would say it would be UNUSUAL for a character's need to be "get killed by an invincible opponent" but I guess its possible! I would say that if the GM provided the player with information, or at least a chance to get information, indicating that going left would lead to certain death then the player cannot REALLY complain too much if doing so leads to the advertised certain death. Obviously a blind choice leading to certain death is simply a GOTCHA! which I can't see any reason to invoke in any game unless the theme of the game is some sort of bathos (IE maybe this would work fine in Paranoia!, but that's a game where the theme is the utter lack of character agency, and even in that game player agency ala [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is perfectly feasible, though not anticipated much).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> I don’t really see it either, but I’m willing to listen. I’m hoping for an answer that at least begins with a clearly stated yes or no.



I think my basic answer is "yes, anything can be done badly." lol. 



> I’m also curious how framing is viewed in the sense of multiple players. I’m sure most character groups....adventuring parties, investigators, super teams, starship crews, what have you...have at least some shared goals. But in this story now approach, it seems very likely that each player will also have personal goals for his character.
> 
> So if a GM decides to frame a scene where the personal goal of one character is at stake, then what does that do for the agency of the other players?
> 
> Surely in a game that has such expectations by the players, there is the risk of not paying equal attention to the character goals. Of focusing more on one character’s story than another. Wouldn’t the player of the character in focus have more agency than the others?



See my previous answer, anything can be done badly!

Beyond that, balancing different character's needs in the narrative and resolving the various different conflicts can go in different directions. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s example of the Rel Astra scenario illustrates one possibility (IE the agendas of the players and their characters can reach a point where a choice is made to align them or not and that choices forms part of the stakes and consequences of the situation for at least one player).

Its also possible that the agenda of one player will predominate. This isn't all that uncommon in any sort of game (see more below). Part of the GM's job is to help players get some 'face time' in the game so they all get what they want to out of it. Again, it can be done well or badly. Is it possible that some scenarios represent situations which inherently cannot address everyone and may even be dilemmas where some needs CANNOT be met if others are? Its possible. This is sort of like the old time 'Paladin problem' though, the players maybe should work that out and the GM should probably not deliberately force things in that direction unless that's what everyone wants.



> Whereas a more traditional approach along the lines of @_*Lanefan*_’s described playstyle, the players are all operating with the same level of agency. That agency may be less than the player for the focal character in the story now game, but it seems like it’s more than the other players in that game are likely to have at that moment.




I don't see any reason to believe that 'classical' approaches are more likely to address everyone's agenda than other approaches. I recall the 5e game I was in. I created a character with a pretty strong agenda. I played the character to that agenda and the GM mostly let me do so. At the same time I wasn't trying to monopolize the game, but I think there was a sense in which a lot of it did revolve around stuff that particular character wanted to do. A couple of the other player's didn't seem to really be too wrapped up in their characters, they played and went along, but I will note they also eventually stopped playing. A couple other players simply asserted what they wanted, and it was cool, but the game itself and its nature didn't make this any easier. It required the players and the GM to have a sense of what would be fun for everyone. 5e didn't either help or hinder this. A 'go to the action' narrative focus for the game might have changed the equation some. OTOH the GM of that game wasn't exactly hard-core on any particular way of playing, we just did 'whatever' in terms of technique. It was fine, that table is good, but if it wasn't then things could get borked quickly.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> Yes: the player has to choose to ally with Vecna (helps with world domination, bad for his hometown) or choose to stay loyal to his city (doesn't betray his hometown, but puts a bit of a roadblock in his plans for world domination).
> 
> In the abstract, sure. In practice, turning against Vecna at this point probably means that the immediate focus of play is going to be on dealing with the fallout from that, and perhaps trying to save Rel Astra from Vecna's attempt to conquer it.




You provided the solution, which is not very much different to...



Chaochou said:


> D&D play often looks like this:
> GM: You need cash. It's rumoured there's dragon sitting on a big pile of treasure in the caves.
> 
> Here The GM presupposes the character goal (player agency = dead) as well as the method of resolving it (player agency = buried). We assume that game mechanics will resolve the action, although often they are extremely weak to the point of acting as a limit on players but not on the GM (player agency = laughable).




According to @_*chaochou*_ player agency = buried and laughable in that scenario.



> Given that play time is finite, and given that - up to this point - the player had put his PC's eggs in the Vecna basket, hoping to find some other path to world domination would be likely to be a rather long-term thing.




This sentence appears to go against your style of play or at least the one your advocate for. Why would it _have_ to be a long-term thing, isn't this you exercising GM force over player agency?



> ....(snip)... in that fourth session, another patron encounter roll turned up a "diplomat" result, an official of the Imperium who recruited the PCs to travel to Olyx to inspect operations there under the cover of the Planetary Rescue Systems Inspectorate. And in the fifth session, more backstory was established about the nature of life on Enlil, and alien origins of both the Enlilians and their virus.
> 
> In the fifth session the PCs encountered a patrol cruiser that had jumped from Olyx to Enlil, and I had written up a crew for it which could have generated more backstory about the conspiracy - but in session six (last Sunday) the players decided that they would take advantage of the ship's absence from Olyx to jump there themselves and try and check it out, so those NPC crew membes didn't come into play.




As I have understood your play in Traveller - you roll for an encounter on some table (I presume) and you then you creatively tie the result into the on-going storyline thereby establishing/generating the backstory/mystery?



> In 4e, an absence of footprints could be part of the framing of a situation, eg to indicate that the villain can fly or teleport. That would be an obvious exercise of GM agency.




Could the lack of a map in the study not be viewed as part of the framing of a situation and an obvious exercise of GM agency, in that it is discovered through action declaration? Can framing a scene not be revealed in stages/checkpoints?



> If the guards are just a roadblock, they sound a bit boring to me.
> 
> That said, system also matters here. 4e combat is very intricate, and combats that have little connection to broader dramatic concerns may still allow a group who is into that sort of thing to enjoy playing and expressing their characters.




In one of your posts I read you had introduced doppelgangers as a combat challenge. Were they in any way connected to the story, because it didn't seem so? Or I probably missed it, I was skimming over it pretty fast.


----------



## Imaro

AbdulAlhazred said:


> In my, and I think [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION]'s and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s methods of play a choice made by a player where the consequences of the choice were hidden at the time it was made, so that no cost/benefit analysis or assessment of the choice's significance in terms of player agenda was possible does not exhibit player agency to any high degree.
> 
> Thus if, hypothetically, there's a dungeon maze and the character can go left or right at the intersection, and left leads to a certain-death encounter while right leads to something else, there's no agency on the player's part in making a blind choice. The player might just as well roll a d6 and pick left or right based on the result, or simply follow an 'always go left' rule, etc. Obviously if there is some sort of evidence the player could obtain via action declarations as to the consequences of the choice, then some degree of agency comes into existence.
> 
> This is still a lesser form of agency than one in which the player was empowered to suggest a reason for visiting the dungeon and whatever room was explored contained some content related to that suggestion (that is the GM framed the scene in terms of expressed player interest and character need).
> 
> I would say it would be UNUSUAL for a character's need to be "get killed by an invincible opponent" but I guess its possible! I would say that if the GM provided the player with information, or at least a chance to get information, indicating that going left would lead to certain death then the player cannot REALLY complain too much if doing so leads to the advertised certain death. Obviously a blind choice leading to certain death is simply a GOTCHA! which I can't see any reason to invoke in any game unless the theme of the game is some sort of bathos (IE maybe this would work fine in Paranoia!, but that's a game where the theme is the utter lack of character agency, and even in that game player agency ala [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is perfectly feasible, though not anticipated much).




Now You're changing the scenario... No one said it was a certain death scenario... only one in which combat is not a viable option... that leaves plenty of other options open.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> I don’t know....my comment was not made in reference to that specific example. Instead, it’s about the possibility of framing limiting agency.
> 
> Would you say that it’s possible?



I guess I'm wondering what you have in mind.

For instance, are you thinking of something like this (say as an extreme case): _You wake up bound and gagged, paralysed by nerve toxin and unable to move or even blink your eyes_?



hawkeyefan said:


> I’m hoping for an answer that at least begins with a clearly stated yes or no.



Well, I'm trying to figure out what you have in mind. Do you mean something like the above?

Or do you have  in mind examples like the peddler with the angel feather? Or Vecna making an offer the PC can hardly refuse . . .?

The reason I am asking is because the (conjectured) burden on agency would come from quite different places. In the first example, it's just the fictional positioning - it's not clear what actions are actual able to be declared.

In the second example, and going on what you and some others have posted upthread, the (conjectured) burden on agency would come from the fact that the situation puts pressure on the player to think about how to pursue PC goals, how to trade off, etc.



hawkeyefan said:


> I’m also curious how framing is viewed in the sense of multiple players. I’m sure most character groups....adventuring parties, investigators, super teams, starship crews, what have you...have at least some shared goals. But in this story now approach, it seems very likely that each player will also have personal goals for his character.
> 
> So if a GM decides to frame a scene where the personal goal of one character is at stake, then what does that do for the agency of the other players?



Both Fate and Burning Wheel have discussions on "spotlight" ie the exepctations on players when another player's issues are more to the fore in play.

Burning Wheel also has advice for players which I agree with: the player has an obligation to play his/her PC so that his/her stuff comes out in play.

And as a GM, I try to draw connections between different PCs' stuff. So eg in my Traveller game, the same planet that is the source of bioweapons material is also the place where there are signs of alien life.


----------



## Kobold Boots

AbdulAlhazred said:


> It is certainly a commonly used rhetorical technique, making a statement and then simply treating it like a fact. However I see nothing in your statement which provides either evidenciary or logical support for it, thus it is at best unproven and at worst simply opinion.
> 
> At least I stated my proposition in a form which can be construed to be a hypothetical. You could certainly afford to do the same






chaochou said:


> Not a statement of fact. An assertion. Although your claim to the facts perfectly illustrates your self-righteousness.




Double quoting here for efficiency.

Guys, it's pretty simple really.  I don't have a tenuous grip on my reality.  Therefore, I have no problem stating my facts.  I know what they are and there's no changing them.  If somehow your "real" is more complicated, good on you.  Have fun with it.

Be well
KB


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> Now You're changing the scenario... No one said it was a certain death scenario... only one in which combat is not a viable option... that leaves plenty of other options open.




I guess I don't see what is remarkable about such a situation. The character lacks fictional positioning to successfully engage in combat. That is an imposition on available options, but every wall, every tree, every anything in the game imposes those! So I don't think the argument that "only a game with no defined parameters at all grants player's agency" is cogent, and thus there should be no point to be made here.


----------



## Sadras

Kobold Boots said:


> Double quoting here for efficiency.
> 
> Guys, it's pretty simple really.  I don't have a tenuous grip on my reality.  Therefore, I have no problem stating my facts.  I know what they are and there's no changing them.  If somehow your "real" is more complicated, good on you.  Have fun with it.
> 
> Be well
> KB




Hmmm, this 3-way conversation between you @_*chaochou*_ and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] is now reminding me of the conversation between Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson on their discussion of _truth_.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> You provided the solution, which is not very much different to...
> 
> 
> 
> According to @_*chaochou*_ player agency = buried and laughable in that scenario.



I don't see any similarity here. In [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s scenario the player chose a backstory and goals for his character. As part of meeting the character's dramatic need a scene was framed. In [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION]'s example the GM stated the need for cash, not the player! And then fed the player a single option himself, which doesn't appear (as far as we can tell) to reference anything substantive about the character or expressed agenda of the player aside from his coin supply. This is even clear in his post where he goes on to contrast it with another example where the player expresses the need and asserts an element of fiction that provides the GM with a framing for it! There's nothing at all incompatible between their two positions, nothing whatsoever. 



> This sentence appears to go against your style of play or at least the one your advocate for. Why would it _have_ to be a long-term thing, isn't this you exercising GM force over player agency?



If the participants in the game expended a lot of effort on establishing certain fiction, goals, etc. and the character invested a lot in that fiction, then simply abandoning it is presumably costly! Its conceivable the GM could simply pop up a replacement strategy for the character gratis in 2 minutes flat at no cost. This isn't usually considered interesting play is it? The INTERESTING play is that the character is now on the horns of a dilemma of serious proportions! Now, perhaps the player can 'up the stakes' in some fashion and hoist his character off those horns. 

I can make something up. The character spits in the eye of Vecna, and is rent apart. His spirit returns to Rel Astra to take up the unfinished business of defeating Vecna's plans and becomes housed in a new body as a Revanant! Priests in the city divine that his mission is critical to the survival of their city and he's invested with a special status! Now he's given up world conquest, at least in the form originally envisaged, he's now undead, but he's asserting his now primary agenda of protecting the City. Heck, maybe later he becomes a lich and tries to take over the world, now he's exactly what he was defending against before! (but of course he doesn't see it that way, the road to Hell is paved with gold bricks as they say).



> Could the lack of a map in the study not be viewed as part of the framing of a situation and an obvious exercise of GM agency, in that it is discovered through action declaration? Can framing a scene not be revealed in stages/checkpoints?




In isolation its hard to actually judge any specific situation. Sure, the lack of a map in the study COULD potentially be an answer to a player statement of agenda, so could almost anything...


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Kobold Boots said:


> Double quoting here for efficiency.
> 
> Guys, it's pretty simple really.  I don't have a tenuous grip on my reality.  Therefore, I have no problem stating my facts.  I know what they are and there's no changing them.  If somehow your "real" is more complicated, good on you.  Have fun with it.
> 
> Be well
> KB




OK, I won't waste my time then, thx.


----------



## chaochou

hawkeyefan said:


> Or does it only apply upon realization of the solution? The player introduced the solution of the dragon hoard. It’s only a possible solution, but it is a solution.




Yes, this. There's a huge gulf, and tremendously rich gameplay between knowing a solution and making it happen, such that it offers the players a lot of agency and buy-in with very little overhead. The only real requirement is for the GM to let go of 'their precious', relax and participate in the discovery of the world.



hawkeyefan said:


> What about play that goes more like the below? I’m curious how you’d classify it.
> 
> Player: I need cash.
> GM: You’ve heard that there’s a dragon in the hills who has a massive treasure hoard.
> Player: Okay...good to know. Not sure if I need cash that bad. Have we heard about any other opportubities?
> GM: Make a (relevant skill) roll.
> Player: Okay....(rolls)
> GM (checks results): You’ve also heard that there are bandits in the forest and they’ve been waylaying merchants. There is a bounty being offered for their leader. And, you’ve heard that the northern outpost has been having issues with orcs, and they need folks to help hunt the creatures down. The captain there will pay for help.
> 
> Here the GM introduces the possible solution...or solutions, in this case...based on the player’s indication of what the character wants. How would you categorize this example? Agency dead, laughable, alive, limited?




Ha! I may often be grumpy and abrasive, but I really prefer not to classify specific instances of other people's play 

So your example features interesting points of discussion. And points to reflect on as well, which is always a good habit to be in.

This exchange: 

_Player: I need cash.
GM: You’ve heard that there’s a dragon in the hills who has a massive treasure hoard._

Is just the kind of thing I might say in a game. Not because I have a lot of prep done with a dragon _which I want to show off_, but to ask the character the question... "just how badly do you need cash?".

And in fact your character answers exactly that question. We learn something about the character... not their skills or their stats, but something about their personality - cautious, or maybe lacking confidence. If I'm the GM, that's an interesting exchange... it makes me want to see this character in situations which put pressure on their caution or confidence.

Okay, so we get to this:

_
Player: ...Have we heard about any other opportubities?
GM: Make a (relevant skill) roll. 
Player: Okay....(rolls)
GM (checks results): _

Does the player know why they're rolling? Do they know what number equals success? Do they know what hitting that number means for the fictional outcome? Does failure do anything interesting?

My instinct from your example is the answers are: not precisely, no, no, no. Of course, that may be a doing it an injustice. But that kind of action resolution exchange sends up a lot of smoke signals of GM control and player passivity.

Then the list of 'jobs' looks a bit generic and scripted. I'd be looking for the player to be generating a lead that interested them and then engaging the mechanics to see how much of what they want actually happens.

So, instead, what would you make of this?

Player: Have we heard of any other opportunities?
GM: Who are you asking?
Player: Well, I know this vagabond Harskold who kicks round the streets. He usually knows plenty.
GM: True enough, he does. Not the most reputable sort, though. Sometimes keeps the wrong company.
Player: Yeah. Well maybe that's the sort of work I'm looking for. I'll go look for him.
GM: Okay, Streetwise 16+. If you make it you find him somewhere quiet and comfortable. If you fail - he's going to be  somewhere compromised or uncomfortable. You still want to roll?

I would say the player has created a new character in the streets, the GM used a 'Yes.. and...' to flesh out that character with a bit of an edge which let the player know what sort of work they're likely to get. And then the stakes of the roll have been set - not absolutely nailed down, but enough to work with so that we know we're going to get a new situation from the roll; either negotiation over work, or maybe Harskold in the stocks or a gibbet, or a cell and we each get some new ideas for conflict, risk and reward.


----------



## hawkeyefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think my basic answer is "yes, anything can be done badly." lol.
> 
> See my previous answer, anything can be done badly!
> 
> Beyond that, balancing different character's needs in the narrative and resolving the various different conflicts can go in different directions. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s example of the Rel Astra scenario illustrates one possibility (IE the agendas of the players and their characters can reach a point where a choice is made to align them or not and that choices forms part of the stakes and consequences of the situation for at least one player).
> 
> Its also possible that the agenda of one player will predominate. This isn't all that uncommon in any sort of game (see more below). Part of the GM's job is to help players get some 'face time' in the game so they all get what they want to out of it. Again, it can be done well or badly. Is it possible that some scenarios represent situations which inherently cannot address everyone and may even be dilemmas where some needs CANNOT be met if others are? Its possible. This is sort of like the old time 'Paladin problem' though, the players maybe should work that out and the GM should probably not deliberately force things in that direction unless that's what everyone wants.




I agree. Everything can be done badly. Part of my struggle in this conversation and others like it is that very often each “side” presents an example of poor GMing and then uses that example to point out the flaw in that style. Hence the very elaborate examples of play in support of one style, and then a poorly drawn example against another...eg, the map isn’t there because GM. 

Essentially, the GM is expected to perform well for the preferred playstyle (framing responsibly), and poorly for the non-preferred playstyle (wielding secret backstoey like a club).

So rather than provide an example, I’m asking simply if it’s possible for scene framing to limit player agency. I think you’ve clearly said you think it can. 



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I don't see any reason to believe that 'classical' approaches are more likely to address everyone's agenda than other approaches. I recall the 5e game I was in. I created a character with a pretty strong agenda. I played the character to that agenda and the GM mostly let me do so. At the same time I wasn't trying to monopolize the game, but I think there was a sense in which a lot of it did revolve around stuff that particular character wanted to do. A couple of the other player's didn't seem to really be too wrapped up in their characters, they played and went along, but I will note they also eventually stopped playing. A couple other players simply asserted what they wanted, and it was cool, but the game itself and its nature didn't make this any easier. It required the players and the GM to have a sense of what would be fun for everyone. 5e didn't either help or hinder this. A 'go to the action' narrative focus for the game might have changed the equation some. OTOH the GM of that game wasn't exactly hard-core on any particular way of playing, we just did 'whatever' in terms of technique. It was fine, that table is good, but if it wasn't then things could get borked quickly.




Well when I said classical, I meant in the “we want to explore and get into trouvke and loot some dungeons” where all the players are on board. The characters aren’t the focus, and the players are all fine with that. With such shared goals, most players agency is unaffected, so in a way it’s a more baseline level of agency. 

Of course it’s always possible (and likely preferable for many) in a player driven game to connect stories together so that certain elements become points of interest for more than one character. But then isn’t that an exercise in GM force? Or at least, couldn’t it be so?


----------



## Lanefan

chaochou said:


> 'Play' which breaches the Czege principle looks like this:
> Player 1: I need cash, so I steal a load of cash from the dragon, but now the dragon is mad at me so I kill it.
> 
> No mechanical resolution, no external input. Just player-side resolution of player-side problems. In other words, it's just daydreaming.
> 
> D&D play often looks like this:
> GM: You need cash. It's rumoured there's dragon sitting on a big pile of treasure in the caves.
> 
> Here The GM presupposes the character goal (player agency = dead) as well as the method of resolving it (player agency = buried). We assume that game mechanics will resolve the action, although often they are extremely weak to the point of acting as a limit on players but not on the GM (player agency = laughable).
> 
> A player-driven game will more likely look like this:
> Player: I need cash, and there's dragon sitting on a big pile of treasure in the caves.
> 
> Here the player defines their goal and solution, but it doesn't breach the Czege principle, as nothing is resolved. We assume a series of more detailed action propositions will be made, resolved though the game mechanics, with robust controls on the GMs power to counteract the dice.



What wrong with both having input, as in:

Player-as-PC: I need cash. (states goal)
DM: It's rumoured there's a dragon sitting on a big pile of treasure in the caves. (provides a possible route to achieving said goal)
Player-as-PC: [either accepts or declines this option, or postpones deciding until a later time]

Lanefan

EDIT: Already asked and answered above - I'm late to the party again, it seems.


----------



## Sadras

I'm going to break this up for clarity.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> In  @_*pemerton*_'s scenario the player chose a backstory and goals for his character.




Agree.



> As part of meeting the character's dramatic need a scene was framed.




I'm going to agree with this based on the fact that the player exercised his option to pursue that dramatic need using Vecna. If he didn't and the scene was framed anyways, then that would be GM force (i.e. lessening player agency)



> In  @_*chaochou*_'s example the GM stated the need for cash, not the player!




This is not in contention by me. I never said player agency was dead (using @_*chaochou*_'s own terminology). 



> And then fed the player a single option himself, which doesn't appear (as far as we can tell) to reference anything substantive about the character or expressed agenda of the player aside from his coin supply.




Okay but @_*pemerton*_ did feed the player a single option himself which again according to @_*chaochou*_, player agency = buried. 



> This is even clear in his post where he goes on to contrast it with another example where the player expresses the need and asserts an element of fiction that provides the GM with a framing for it!




Yes, BUT, in @_*pemerton*_'s game the player did not assert any element of fiction, only the need was expressed.



> There's nothing at all incompatible between their two positions, nothing whatsoever.




Do not agree, based on my above responses. 



> If the participants in the game expended a lot of effort on establishing certain fiction, goals, etc. and the character invested a lot in that fiction, then simply abandoning it is presumably costly! ...(snip)...
> 
> This isn't usually considered interesting play is it? The INTERESTING play is that the character is now on the horns of a dilemma of serious proportions! Now, perhaps the player can 'up the stakes' in some fashion and hoist his character off those horns.




Agree. 



> This isn't usually considered interesting play is it? The INTERESTING play is that the character is now on the horns of a dilemma of serious proportions!




Are you saying GM-force 'buring' (using @_*chaochou*_'s word) player agency is okay when it is interesting play for the DM (presumably)?



> Its conceivable the GM could simply pop up a replacement strategy for the character gratis in 2 minutes flat at no cost. ...(snip)... I can make something up. (something cool made up)




From @_*pemerton*_'s own words it sounded like it would take long.



> In isolation its hard to actually judge any specific situation.




But have we not been using this find-the-map-in-the-study example (in isolation) to show how its not hard to hammer home how the some group of DMs supposedly limit player agency. I'm saying the framing is broken up between many rooms and that player agency still exists. Now I'm being told this example in isolation is too hard to judge a specific situation.

I'm pretty sure [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] was stating something similar with his 'smaller moves' example further back in the thread.


----------



## Sadras

chaochou said:


> Player: Have we heard of any other opportunities?
> GM: Who are you asking?
> Player: Well, I know this vagabond Harskold who kicks round the streets. He usually knows plenty.
> GM: True enough, he does. Not the most reputable sort, though. Sometimes keeps the wrong company.
> Player: Yeah. Well maybe that's the sort of work I'm looking for. I'll go look for him.
> GM: Okay, Streetwise 16+. If you make it you find him somewhere quiet and comfortable. If you fail - he's going to be  somewhere compromised or uncomfortable. You still want to roll?
> 
> I would say the player has created a new character in the streets, the GM used a 'Yes.. and...' to flesh out that character with a bit of an edge which let the player know what sort of work they're likely to get. And then the stakes of the roll have been set - not absolutely nailed down, but enough to work with so that we know we're going to get a new situation from the roll; either negotiation over work, or maybe Harskold is the stocks or a gibbet, or a cell and we each get some new ideas for conflict, risk and reward.




 @_*pemerton*_ has often spoken about setting the stakes before the roll with the 'yes but complication', and I'm pretty sure he has probably listed something like this so openly before, but I have never actually seen it. This is a whole new way of roleplaying D&D for me. It makes understanding the handling of the 4e SC mechanic much easier. Thanks for the detailed example.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> Of course it’s always possible (and likely preferable for many) in a player driven game to connect stories together so that certain elements become points of interest for more than one character. But then isn’t that an exercise in GM force? Or at least, couldn’t it be so?




If the GM only allows for certain scenes and/or outcomes REGARDLESS OF THE EXPRESSED DESIRE OF THE PLAYERS then its GM force. If all the players agree to address certain elements jointly, then no, its player agency. If some players get their way and others don't, then some mix of things is going on, but we can classify this as problematic and hope to improve on it.

The key point is it isn't 'GM force' when the GM frames a scene which is responsive to the players. It is just the GM doing 'GM stuff'.


----------



## Lanefan

chaochou said:


> So your example features interesting points of discussion. And points to reflect on as well, which is always a good habit to be in.
> 
> This exchange:
> 
> _Player: I need cash.
> GM: You’ve heard that there’s a dragon in the hills who has a massive treasure hoard._
> 
> Is just the kind of thing I might say in a game. Not because I have a lot of prep done with a dragon _which I want to show off_, but to ask the character the question... "just how badly do you need cash?".



With the added pleasant side effect of putting the dragon-in-the-hills hook out there for later, if the player doesn't take it up right away.



> And in fact your character answers exactly that question. We learn something about the character... not their skills or their stats, but something about their personality - cautious, or maybe lacking confidence. If I'm the GM, that's an interesting exchange... it makes me want to see this character in situations which put pressure on their caution or confidence.
> 
> Okay, so we get to this:
> 
> _
> Player: ...Have we heard about any other opportubities?
> GM: Make a (relevant skill) roll. _



_

Here, were I the DM, instead of going straight to a roll I'd try to think of at least one more possible money-making option for the PC and lob it out there; maybe something like:

DM: there's also been some rumblings of late that new information has surfaced regarding the possible whereabouts of Mad Wizard Trevellian's reputedly-immense treasure hoard.  Or, depending how much cash you're looking to raise, on a somewhat lesser scale there's a nice reward from the King for whoever brings the outlaw Spack Jarrow to justice; it's rumoured he's been seen in the woods not far south of town, and it's almost certain other people or groups are also looking for him.  So, there's three potential money-making options you've heard of - the dragon, the wizard's hoard, and ol' Spacky-boy; and there may or may not be others."

If the player's response is to go with one of the options presented then away we go.

If the player's response is a variant of "look for more options" then it gets into some dice-rolling, as no matter what system's in use we've hit a point of uncertainty.



			Does the player know why they're rolling? Do they know what number equals success? Do they know what hitting that number means for the fictional outcome? Does failure do anything interesting?
		
Click to expand...


In order: yes (the roll is happening at the player's request); no (as the PC has no way of knowing whether any other options are even out there, nor should the player); yes in theory (at least one more option will come to light); and impossible to say (failure may just mean the three options are all that's out there, or it could mean complications arise from asking the wrong questions of the wrong people, or it could lead to some other mission or adventure that's not as lucrative as desired, or...too many possibilities).

Lanefan_


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> I'm going to break this up for clarity.
> 
> 
> 
> Agree.
> 
> 
> 
> I'm going to agree with this based on the fact that the player exercised his option to pursue that dramatic need using Vecna. If he didn't and the scene was framed anyways, then that would be GM force (i.e. lessening player agency)
> 
> 
> 
> This is not in contention by me. I never said player agency was dead (using @_*chaochou*_'s own terminology).
> 
> 
> 
> Okay but @_*pemerton*_ did feed the player a single option himself which again according to @_*chaochou*_, player agency = buried.
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, BUT, in @_*pemerton*_'s game the player did not assert any element of fiction, only the need was expressed.
> 
> 
> 
> Do not agree, based on my above responses.



OK, I'm going to retreat slightly from my statement that there's NOTHING different between [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6682826]CH[/MENTION]aochau in their positions.

Pemerton doesn't have players introducing fiction de-novo. They have to play for it, whereas I believe chaochau allows for (at least in some games) players to introduce something, like the dragon example. So I BELIEVE Pemerton would always have the GM suggest the dragon in response to a player's expression of need for money, but then he might also introduce other options of various levels of risk (this was also discussed at some point and seemed quite reasonable). 

Now, maybe there's daylight here too between the two of them in terms of what techniques they think are acceptable, chaochau already said that he's fine with letting the PLAYER suggest the dragon because actually engaging in the challenge is going to be handled by the GM and there's a lot of intervening steps building up to some hypothetical dragon fight (where presumably the GM can exert a lot of control over exactly what the content of that fight entails, insuring the player isn't simply authoring his own challenge). Pemerton expressed a distaste for this procedure, claiming to be 'much more conservative' IIRC. He did say he agreed though that it was an example of the general style of play, just that he wouldn't do it exactly the same way.



> Are you saying GM-force 'buring' (using @_*chaochou*_'s word) player agency is okay when it is interesting play for the DM (presumably)?



I'm saying Pemerton didn't agree that player agency is 'buried', and I don't think I do either. However there are details we weren't provided with in this scenario that can materially change my perceptions, potentially. For example Pemerton never stated that OTHER options weren't presented, he was entirely silent on that. Nor did he provide all significant details of the Vecna option. Was it presented as a possibility that the character had to pursue? Was it dropped on him as a take this or face the consequences (IE Vecna showed up and said "join me or perish!")? I don't know! The character might have very well had a 'third way' option (IE ignore Vecna and just go about his business and let Rel Astra take care of itself, though I think this might be seen as an abnegation of the character itself in this case). Were I that player I might well work to find some middle way, like betraying Vecna or something like that. I think these all fall under my rubrik of 'hoist himself off the horns of the dilemma' and they would all presumably entail great risks! 

Anyway, I think this sort of thing is the ESSENCE of great play! As a player how much more delicious can it be then to portray the actions of my character in a profound situation of moral danger! Nothing can allow strong characterization as well as this! Others talk about exploring the fantasy world, but this is a whole dimension of it, the personalities of its inhabitants, particularly of the PC I'm playing. 



> But have we not been using this find-the-map-in-the-study example (in isolation) to show how its not hard to hammer home how the some group of DMs supposedly limit player agency. I'm saying the framing is broken up between many rooms and that player agency still exists. Now I'm being told this example in isolation is too hard to judge a specific situation.
> 
> I'm pretty sure @_*Ovinomancer*_ was stating something similar with his 'smaller moves' example further back in the thread.




Taken on its face, the example of 'the map cannot be found in the study because its hidden in some other non-obvious place.' doesn't leap out as being an example of player agency. The GM is simply describing some element of the setting established unilaterally. That MIGHT NOT be an issue, but in the cases where it isn't, at least in my own play, the game wouldn't present the check as 'look in the study for the map'. Lets say there's time pressure, then a check in an SC dealing with resolving the conflict might be something like "Make a check to see if you can quickly find the map in the <NPC>'s abode." A failure wastes time and might be narrated as "you failed to look in the kitchen!" (if the map is a blocker and thus is found regardless) or "you find no map!" otherwise. 

So, given my style of play, as presented the map scenario doesn't contain any player agency. In fact in my own game system it could only exist in that form as an 'interlude' a segment of descriptive play in which nothing is being staked (but which might act as a transition and scene setting device for later challenges). Thus not finding the map is perfectly OK, but no check would ever be made. The map simply isn't important and agency isn't addressed by it.


----------



## chaochou

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, I'm going to retreat slightly from my statement that there's NOTHING different between pemerton and Chaochou in their positions.
> 
> Pemerton doesn't have players introducing fiction de-novo. They have to play for it, whereas I believe chaochau allows for (at least in some games) players to introduce something, like the dragon example. So I BELIEVE Pemerton would always have the GM suggest the dragon in response to a player's expression of need for money, but then he might also introduce other options of various levels of risk (this was also discussed at some point and seemed quite reasonable).
> 
> Now, maybe there's daylight here too between the two of them in terms of what techniques they think are acceptable...




Yes, I think this is fair. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and I have discussed this, and our goals tend to converge although we use our own sets of techniques to get there. I don't think Pemerton would mind if I said his style was more traditional than mine. I know my style isn't the most hippy freeform going, but my games are quite improvisational, GM-reactive, and challenging for my players.

I run games which demand a high degree of player input, with a lot of leading questions, a lot of pressure. I don't think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] drives his players quite as hard! However, fundamentally we both value player-agency over GM scripting as the driving force in our games.


----------



## Imaro

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I guess I don't see what is remarkable about such a situation. The character lacks fictional positioning to successfully engage in combat. That is an imposition on available options, but every wall, every tree, every anything in the game imposes those! So I don't think the argument that "only a game with no defined parameters at all grants player's agency" is cogent, and thus there should be no point to be made here.




Go back to the original post. Two situations were compared and I asked the difference (if there was one) between the two... there was no point being made only a question being asked...


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> I guess I'm wondering what you have in mind.
> 
> For instance, are you thinking of something like this (say as an extreme case): _You wake up bound and gagged, paralysed by nerve toxin and unable to move or even blink your eyes_?
> 
> Well, I'm trying to figure out what you have in mind. Do you mean something like the above?
> 
> Or do you have  in mind examples like the peddler with the angel feather? Or Vecna making an offer the PC can hardly refuse . . .?
> 
> The reason I am asking is because the (conjectured) burden on agency would come from quite different places. In the first example, it's just the fictional positioning - it's not clear what actions are actual able to be declared.
> 
> In the second example, and going on what you and some others have posted upthread, the (conjectured) burden on agency would come from the fact that the situation puts pressure on the player to think about how to pursue PC goals, how to trade off, etc.




I’m just asking if it’s possible for framing to limit player agency. I didn’t want to give a specific example because I was speaking generally. Is it possible? If you’d like, we can use the example you gave of framing a scene where the PCs have been captured. The 5E adventure Out of the Abyss is a recent example of this. 

Now, I want to make it clear that I have no real problem with this kind of start. I think it’s a perfectly valid approach to a game. 

But I would have to describe this framing as being pretty GM driven. It certainly puts pressure on the players to do things...but it also forces the story down a certain path, at least for a bit.

Would you agree? 

I’m sure that ideally the GM would have the captors be antagonists that at least one player has indicated would be interesting and incorporated them into his character’s goals, and so on. But what if that’s not the case? 



pemerton said:


> Both Fate and Burning Wheel have discussions on "spotlight" ie the exepctations on players when another player's issues are more to the fore in play.
> 
> Burning Wheel also has advice for players which I agree with: the player has an obligation to play his/her PC so that his/her stuff comes out in play.
> 
> And as a GM, I try to draw connections between different PCs' stuff. So eg in my Traveller game, the same planet that is the source of bioweapons material is also the place where there are signs of alien life.




About the second item quoted above...how can players do that? Or how can they do that at all times? Surely if Tim’s warlock has the spotlight and the story has become about a struggle between Tim’s patron and another entity, how can Bob the fighter seek revenge for the death if his brother? Wouldn’t Bob’s attempts to bring that up distract from Tim’s story? Are they supposed to take turns? 

Or perhaps as you indicate in the third item, perhaps Bob’s brother was killed by followers of the rival of Tim’s patron. Nice and convenoent....I do tend to try to do this where I see such connections. But...isn’t that potentially an example of GM force? Let me take these two stories and make them one. Or, if it’s not, isn’t such an approach prone to overuse? Won’t the players start to expect all their problems to dovetail into one another? If so, must that be bad? 

These questions are all the kinds I think about for my game. And ultimately, I’m not afraid of the story being GM driven from time to time because I know my players really well and what they are interested in seeing come up in the game. I add some other elements beyond those things because I think that helps balance things out and keeps things from being predoctable. 

But honestly, I’m not seeing how my use of “worldbuilding” or backstory is doing what you claim it does.


----------



## hawkeyefan

chaochou said:


> Yes, this. There's a huge gulf, and tremendously rich gameplay between knowing a solution and making it happen, such that it offers the players a lot of agency and buy-in with very little overhead. The only real requirement is for the GM to let go of 'their precious', relax and participate in the discovery of the world.




I would have thought that the principle applied in this way because as you said, a case of the player actually adding the realized solution into the game never happens.

I can see how it’s something to be cautious about, but generally when my players come up with a solution to a problem their characters are facing and I hadn’t even thought of it, I get psyched. 




chaochou said:


> Ha! I may often be grumpy and abrasive, but I really prefer not to classify specific instances of other people's play
> 
> So your example features interesting points of discussion. And points to reflect on as well, which is always a good habit to be in.
> 
> This exchange:
> 
> _Player: I need cash.
> GM: You’ve heard that there’s a dragon in the hills who has a massive treasure hoard._
> 
> Is just the kind of thing I might say in a game. Not because I have a lot of prep done with a dragon _which I want to show off_, but to ask the character the question... "just how badly do you need cash?".
> 
> And in fact your character answers exactly that question. We learn something about the character... not their skills or their stats, but something about their personality - cautious, or maybe lacking confidence. If I'm the GM, that's an interesting exchange... it makes me want to see this character in situations which put pressure on their caution or confidence.
> 
> Okay, so we get to this:
> 
> _
> Player: ...Have we heard about any other opportubities?
> GM: Make a (relevant skill) roll.
> Player: Okay....(rolls)
> GM (checks results): _
> 
> Does the player know why they're rolling? Do they know what number equals success? Do they know what hitting that number means for the fictional outcome? Does failure do anything interesting?
> 
> My instinct from your example is the answers are: not precisely, no, no, no. Of course, that may be a doing it an injustice. But that kind of action resolution exchange sends up a lot of smoke signals of GM control and player passivity.
> 
> Then the list of 'jobs' looks a bit generic and scripted. I'd be looking for the player to be generating a lead that interested them and then engaging the mechanics to see how much of what they want actually happens.
> 
> So, instead, what would you make of this?
> 
> Player: Have we heard of any other opportunities?
> GM: Who are you asking?
> Player: Well, I know this vagabond Harskold who kicks round the streets. He usually knows plenty.
> GM: True enough, he does. Not the most reputable sort, though. Sometimes keeps the wrong company.
> Player: Yeah. Well maybe that's the sort of work I'm looking for. I'll go look for him.
> GM: Okay, Streetwise 16+. If you make it you find him somewhere quiet and comfortable. If you fail - he's going to be  somewhere compromised or uncomfortable. You still want to roll?
> 
> I would say the player has created a new character in the streets, the GM used a 'Yes.. and...' to flesh out that character with a bit of an edge which let the player know what sort of work they're likely to get. And then the stakes of the roll have been set - not absolutely nailed down, but enough to work with so that we know we're going to get a new situation from the roll; either negotiation over work, or maybe Harskold in the stocks or a gibbet, or a cell and we each get some new ideas for conflict, risk and reward.




Well, for the mechanics I didn’t go into specifics because I didn’t want to assume a specific game...a Streetwise check, Contacts roll, Diplomacy, Gather Information....whatever would be relevant. I personally would share the kind of check. Perhaps not the target number because I like to use degrees of success on those kinds of actions; I offered two alternate rumors assuming a decent result. But just as easily I could see a lower result only offering equally difficult options (“other than the dragon, you hear about a beholder nearby” or something similar). 

My example was simply sketched, but yes in actual games may be more in line with your more detailed example. I don’t mind if my players come up with the contact in question...don’t really see the difference so may as well use theirs. And then I try to keep those kinds of characters around.


----------



## hawkeyefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> If the GM only allows for certain scenes and/or outcomes REGARDLESS OF THE EXPRESSED DESIRE OF THE PLAYERS then its GM force. If all the players agree to address certain elements jointly, then no, its player agency. If some players get their way and others don't, then some mix of things is going on, but we can classify this as problematic and hope to improve on it.
> 
> The key point is it isn't 'GM force' when the GM frames a scene which is responsive to the players. It is just the GM doing 'GM stuff'.




Okay, fair enough. 

For me, when all the problems start to conveniemtly commect to one another, that seems a bit forced. I get it that the players may all be cool with it (and ultimately i would say that’s all that matters), but what if one player is uninterested in the elements of another player character’s story? 

Examining only the ideal seems wrong. So what happens when things get problematic in that way? Tim the warlock wants to deal with his patron’s goals and desires, but he doesn’t care about Bob wanting to (yaaaawn) hunt down the drow that murdered his brother. 

This kind of situation could easily come up in my game, which I would not categorize as player driven (not solely, anyway), so I don’t think it’s specific to such games, but seems like it would be more likely to come up in such games. 

Has that kind of thing come up? How did/would you handle it?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> Okay, fair enough.
> 
> For me, when all the problems start to conveniemtly commect to one another, that seems a bit forced. I get it that the players may all be cool with it (and ultimately i would say that’s all that matters), but what if one player is uninterested in the elements of another player character’s story?
> 
> Examining only the ideal seems wrong. So what happens when things get problematic in that way? Tim the warlock wants to deal with his patron’s goals and desires, but he doesn’t care about Bob wanting to (yaaaawn) hunt down the drow that murdered his brother.
> 
> This kind of situation could easily come up in my game, which I would not categorize as player driven (not solely, anyway), so I don’t think it’s specific to such games, but seems like it would be more likely to come up in such games.
> 
> Has that kind of thing come up? How did/would you handle it?




I think you basically suggested one solution up thread, let the goals of the two PCs come into consonance with each other, so they can pursue them through a single narrative. Is it 'contrived'? Mmmm, moreso than characters who have murdered relatives they want to avenge (and actually WILL try to avenge)? I mean I can't judge the frequency of warlocks getting tangled up in their patron's goals, that's something that we can only invent in our minds. I DO think I can reason about people running off to get revenge. It almost never happens in the real world. Of the several people I've ever encountered who might theoretically have reasons to seek revenge on someone, none of them was willing to do so, nor desired to do so. Thus I have to conclude that 'Bob' is a VERY VERY unusual person to start with! So, how much more of a stretch is it that his brother was killed by someone that Tim's patron is tangled up with? I don't feel like I need to be too worried about this! 

Beyond that, this is not some world, this is a game of heroic adventure. This sort of thing just happens in heroic adventures. Fate is not just random chance, heroes arise under special circumstances and have unusual luck and special fates. These guys are potentially legends. It happens that Bob stumbles upon Tim and it turns out their fates are intertwined? This isn't 'stretching' anything, its how the heroic Universe works!


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Beyond that, this is not some world, this is a game of heroic adventure.



Please keep in mind that this statement is not true in all cases.  Not everyone plays D&D - or any other RPG - as a game of heroic adventure all the time, if ever at all.

Which means any analysis based on this assumption runs the risk of quickly becoming at best only applicable to some games and at worst somewhat irrelevant.


----------



## pemerton

EDIT (and call out to  [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION]) - this post is best read together with the one just subsequent to it, which tries to catch up on some more of the thread action over the course of the (Australian) day.

  [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION],   [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] - re actual and hypothetical play examples.

   [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] gave two hypothetical examples:

(1) GM establishes dramatic need, GM provides solution.

(2) Player establishes dramatic need, player provides (ultimate) solution.

I've already posted multiple times in this thread that I am more conservative than chaochou on the boundary between GM and player content introduction. So it's proabably not surprising that my actual play example falls somewhere between (1) and (2)!

The player builds and plays a PC who (i) seeks world domination, (ii) is a wizard who is part of an ancient group of wizards with connections to the now-long-lost Suel Empire, and (iii) isn't afraid to traffic in dark arts.

I offer up a pathway to the possibility of world domination in the form of Vecna, a wizard of the same order who has returned to life out of the long-lost Suel Empire, and is certainly not shy of using a dark art or two.

It is the player who actually chooses to approach Vecna and make an alliance. That is already a significant choice (given that the other PCs, and the generic gameworld NPCs, regard Vecna as a villain and a threat). My main contribution at that point is to connect the alliance to a need to betray the character's home town.

Upthread I've posted more than once that one important form of player agency over the fiction is to contribute material other than by way of succesful action resolution, I would regard this as a case in point. Vecna is my "repackaging" of the player's material into a form that permits and eventually that calls for significant choices to be made, that will tell us something about the PC as a character. I don't think that player agency is buried,

As far as the map is concerned, every hypothetical example has its limits, and rests on some unstated assumptions. I've been assuming at least (i) tbat the map's existence in the fiction is already established, (ii) that (somehow or other, in the course of play) acquiring the map has become important to the PCs (and their players), and (iii) that it is salient that the map might be in the study (ie this is _not_ like Boromir searching Rivendell for Sauron).

In the footprint example, I'm taking it that the goal is to find the villain, and that answering "no" to the inquiry "Are there footprints" is part of establishing the framing. The analogue in the map example would be "We're in the library, looking for the map - is there a catalogue?" If the GM answers "yes", that's an invitation to (say) a Research check; if the GM answers "no" then we're back to Perception (or whatever) to try and find the map in the library.

To see the hunt for the map in the study itself in the same sort of way, it would have to be something like this: the players have as their goal the location of the map, the PCs find themselves in a study (as narrated by the GM in the course of framing), the players say, "Hey, maybe the map's in this study!" and the GM replies "No, the study's not the big deal here, there's no map, let's move on to . . . <whatever comes next that _is_ the big deal>."

When is it good rather than bad GMing to answer "no" and shut down some avenue of inquiry (footprints, catalogues, looking for the map in a not-a-big-deal study, etc)? I would say that's highly contextual, but in my own case generally I'm trying to (i) avoid play drifting into areas where I have nothing useful to offer as a GM (thus, everything else being equal, I tend to avoid encouraging long wilderness journeys), and/or (ii) the avoided avenue does not speak to any establsihed or evinced player concern. If one of the PCs is a devotee of Ioun, or is an expert tracker, or really is treating the studyu as a big deal, then saying "no catalogue" or "no footprints" or "no map" looks like bad GMing to me.


----------



## pemerton

The post just upthread of this one was written this morning but only got posted now when I reacquired internet access. This post tries to pick up some more of what has gone on in the meantime.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Pemerton doesn't have players introducing fiction de-novo. They have to play for it, whereas I believe chaochau allows for (at least in some games) players to introduce something, like the dragon example. So I BELIEVE Pemerton would always have the GM suggest the dragon in response to a player's expression of need for money, but then he might also introduce other options of various levels of risk (this was also discussed at some point and seemed quite reasonable).



This is generally true. But, as I posted in response to [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] upthread in our discussion of the "Czege principle", the Jabal episode in my BW game did have the same structure as his dragon example (player says "I need help from the cabal: Jabal is a leader of the cabal in Hardby, and might help me"). And I can remember another Circles check that looked like this too - when the PCs were shipwrecked following their complete failure to stop a haunted ship being sunk by ghouls (an adaptation to our BW game of the Penumbra module Maiden Voyage), the elf princess made a Circles check to see if the elven sea captain whom that player had written up while playing around with the PC gen rules was out on the ocean looking for her. This was another case where the player had written up the story element (the sea captain) and the existence of said NPC was taken as a given prior to actually making the check.

I'm trying now to see if I can think of example from my 4e game. This might count as one: early in the campaign (1st or 2nd level) one of the PCs - the wizard devotee of the Raven Queen - died. I asked the player whether he wanted to stick with the character, and he did - he felt the PC's story wasn't fully told yet. So then I asked him why the Raven Queen would send him back - the death had happened fighting in the vicinity of an old Nerathi ruin, and so the PC decided that Erathis and the Raven Queen would send the character back into life to recover an important item from that ruin - the Sceptre of Erathis, also known as the Sceptre of Law, which - some time later - I decided to treat as the first stage of the Rod of Seven Parts. The player there established the need of some NPCs (Erathis and the Raven Queen) and the answer to that need (send Malstaph back into the world to restore the Sceptre of Law and thereby restore order to the land).

So maybe I'm not as conservative as I thought! (But still more than [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION], I daresay.)



AbdulAlhazred said:


> there are details we weren't provided with in this scenario that can materially change my perceptions, potentially. For example Pemerton never stated that OTHER options weren't presented, he was entirely silent on that. Nor did he provide all significant details of the Vecna option. Was it presented as a possibility that the character had to pursue? Was it dropped on him as a take this or face the consequences (IE Vecna showed up and said "join me or perish!")? I don't know! The character might have very well had a 'third way' option (IE ignore Vecna and just go about his business and let Rel Astra take care of itself, though I think this might be seen as an abnegation of the character itself in this case). Were I that player I might well work to find some middle way, like betraying Vecna or something like that. I think these all fall under my rubrik of 'hoist himself off the horns of the dilemma' and they would all presumably entail great risks!
> 
> Anyway, I think this sort of thing is the ESSENCE of great play! As a player how much more delicious can it be then to portray the actions of my character in a profound situation of moral danger! Nothing can allow strong characterization as well as this! Others talk about exploring the fantasy world, but this is a whole dimension of it, the personalities of its inhabitants, particularly of the PC I'm playing.



Your last paragraph is what I was getting at quite a bit upthread, when I said that _I_ want to play my character, rather than be driven by the GM.

As far as the Vecna scenario is concerned, I'm trying to recall things from over 20 years ago (it was back when I was GMing a University club game) and so memory is not perfect. I've said some stuff in other recent posts in this thread, but to summarise: the player was playing a mage who was part of an ancient and surviving Sueloise order, and (as was often the default for this player) was seeking world domination; Vecna was introduced into the situation by me, as a member of the same order but who had gone into sleep (or lichdom or whatever - details are forgotten!) back in the time when the Suel Empire was a real thing - and when the PCs woke him he was surprised by the changes that had happened in the intervening millenium or so; the PC tracked down Vecna (I think - or at least answered an invitation) and sort an alliance; and then the whole Rel Astra thing fell out of that.

I don't remember what other options were on the table at the time, but I know it was controversial with the other players that the PC should make this alliance with Vecna - especially because, while he was off doing that in the general vicinity of the Baklun lands (the west of the GH double map), the other PCs got into strife following an operation in the Wild Coast or Pomarj (middle of the double map) and felt that, had Xanthos been there, things would have worked out much better!

It felt relatively agentic at the time, and I don't think my contemporary glasses are too rose-coloured, though I would guess that my handling of some of the elements of it probably wasn't quite as elegant as I would hope to be able to pull off these days.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Taken on its face, the example of 'the map cannot be found in the study because its hidden in some other non-obvious place.' doesn't leap out as being an example of player agency.



Agreed. 



AbdulAlhazred said:


> In fact in my own game system it could only exist in that form as an 'interlude' a segment of descriptive play in which nothing is being staked (but which might act as a transition and scene setting device for later challenges). Thus not finding the map is perfectly OK, but no check would ever be made. The map simply isn't important and agency isn't addressed by it.



This is not too different from what I posted just above this post, though I discussed it in terms of how I would frame it and handle narration, rather than as part of a discrete "interlude" mechanic. But like you, no check!



Sadras said:


> pemerton has often spoken about setting the stakes before the roll with the 'yes but complication', and I'm pretty sure he has probably listed something like this so openly before, but I have never actually seen it. This is a whole new way of roleplaying D&D for me. It makes understanding the handling of the 4e SC mechanic much easier. Thanks for the detailed example.



The example [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] posted made me think first of Dungeon World (which itself is based on Apocalypse World, but I know DW better as a system, though have only limited play experience with it): DW is a 2d6 system, and adds are generally fairly modest, and the default spread for any check is 10+, get what you want; 7 to 9 either miss out, or take what you want but get a complication to go with it; 6 or less, sucks to be you. That's the generic structure: there are a lot of detailed versions of it (eg for fighting, for searching, for avoiding dange, etc) and they put more detail into the sorts of complications or upsets the GM is empowered to establish on the results below 10.

Burning Wheel (which I know better than DW, and have a lot more play experience with) has as the official rule that every check has explicit failure consequences established (the consequences of success are also explicit: the player's intention is realised). But in his GM advice book for the system - the Adventure Burner (which I think is a first rate advice book for non-BW GMs also) - Luke Crane admits that at his table he doesn't always follow the official rule. Often he just allows the consequence of failure to be implicit in the situation, relying on his players' knowledge of him as a GM plus the shared knowledge everyone has of what's going on in the game and what it is that would count - given where the play is at - as "sucks to be you". In my own BW GMing I often use a similar approach, letting the situation carry the weight of signalling consequences.

Sometimes this is a bit lazy - there have been occasions when a player's check fails, and it turns out, now that we're all forced to look at it, that the situation wasn't quite as fraught in quite as clear a way as it seemed going in, and so establishing the proper consequence takes more effort and is perhaps a little more strained than it should be. But more often, I find that the adverse consequence flows pretty naturally out of the situation.

So when the Circles check to meet Jabal was failed, none of the players was remotely surprised or taken aback by Athog - Jabal's hired help - turning up at the inn where they were taking lunch and telling them to move on, while looking warily at the feather that Jobe was carrying. Or when the PCs got lost in the catacombs trying to get to Jabal's tower to protect Jobe's brother from the assassin (whom they had drugged with a sleeping potion, to help make sure they were able to get there first), it was clear that a failed check was going to cause them to get lost and so lose time. And when I then told them that, as they come up to a street-level grille to try and get their bearings, they saw the assassin their looking down and taunting them, they were horrified but not (as players) shocked - when you set up your headstart, but then squander it wandering through the catacombs, well you might lose it again.

One thing that I personally think is important - and I try to be much more systematic about it than I would ever have been back in the Xanthos, Xialath and Vecna days - is letting the players know what number they need to roll.

In a game like BW or 4e this is absolutely crucial, so they can decide what resources to throw at the problem (action points and powers in 4e, fate points in BW, etc). In Cortex+ Heroic everything is also done in the open, but often the players have to go first and so only get to choose what target number to set the GM (everything in that system is an opposed roll, with the GM rolling the Doom Pool if there is no NPC opponent involved) - this sets my players on edge as they have to decide blind how much to spend, but I think without it the GM would win even fewer rolls!

In Traveller we're doing all rolls in the open too (except for the Psionics Institute ones - a strange rule, but I'm following it). The players don't have resources to spend like in some of those other games, but I still like the feel it gives. Even treating reaction rolls as player checks to exert social influence - which is how I handle it - makes it feel like the players are driving things, if only through it being about their luck rather than mine!


----------



## pemerton

chaochou said:


> Yes, I think this is fair. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and I have discussed this, and our goals tend to converge although we use our own sets of techniques to get there. I don't think Pemerton would mind if I said his style was more traditional than mine. I know my style isn't the most hippy freeform going, but my games are quite improvisational, GM-reactive, and challenging for my players.
> 
> I run games which demand a high degree of player input, with a lot of leading questions, a lot of pressure. I don't think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] drives his players quite as hard!



I think this is fair. What [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] has called "traditional", I called "conservative" in a couple of recent posts. Same thing.

I like to push my players, but not as hard as I know from his posts [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] does! Maybe not even as hard as [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] (I'm a bit less sure there). And I have players who like different things. So one guy _absolutely loves_ Burning Wheel, but some of the others don't always like how demanding and gritty it can get.

Then I have another one - the player of the wizard/invoker from the 4e game - who (to meet him at a wargame meet-up or RPG club or whatever) you would think is the most traditional player ever - he's been carrying his dice in the same bag for the 20-something years I've known him - but when doing some Arcana thing in 4e, or trying to establish some asset in Cortex+ Heroice, he will just narrate all this backstory (about how magic works, about what the runes in a cave mean, about how the NPC motives hook together) and build his action declaration around it. And when all this implicit fiction counts against him rather than for him he takes it absolutely without complaint: he was the first in the party to work out they'd found the Sword of Kas, because as soon as I told him that it damaged him when he picked it up, he knew what that was about! (As his PC has always had a bit of a Vecna-revering edge to him, even though Erathis, the Raven Queen and Ioun are his main sponsors.) And when, much later on, he chose to send souls liberated from the Soul Abattoir into the care of the Raven Queen rather than Vecna, he didn't even flinch when I told him that Vecna struck down his imp (in whom the Eye of Vecna was implanted) in retaliation. Of course, when a little time later the PCs defeated an Aspect of Vecna, this same player then invented his own ritual to restore his imp to life and free the Eye from Vecna's influence.



chaochou said:


> fundamentally we both value player-agency over GM scripting as the driving force in our games.



Absolutely!

For me, some of it is big stuff (deciding that your gods have sent you back into the world to find the Sceptre of Erathis) and some of it is small stuff (deciding that you can use a defeated Aspect of Vecna as the focus for a ritual to permanently sever Vecna's connection to his Eye), but it all cumulates to make the game and the shared fiction what it is.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> I’m just asking if it’s possible for framing to limit player agency. I didn’t want to give a specific example because I was speaking generally. Is it possible? If you’d like, we can use the example you gave of framing a scene where the PCs have been captured. The 5E adventure Out of the Abyss is a recent example of this.
> 
> Now, I want to make it clear that I have no real problem with this kind of start. I think it’s a perfectly valid approach to a game.
> 
> But I would have to describe this framing as being pretty GM driven.



I think it depends where it comes from.

The one time I can recall doing a fully-fledged "total party capture" was around 3rd level in my main 4e game. The PCs were defeated in a combat, but only one was fully dead (dropped below negative bloodied hp by "friendly fire"). I asked who wanted to keep going, who wanted to change PCs, etc - the warlock player wanted to change to sorcerer (feylocks are a _hard_ build to play) and the others all wanted to stick with their PCs. So 3 of the PCs awake in their goblin cell; they can smell roasing half-elf (the unhappy fate ot the warlock); there's a strange drow in the cell with them (the new sorcerer); and meanwhile, the paladin PC surges back to life on the altar where the goblin shaman has been trying to use his body as an ingredient of an undead-summoning ritual.

I don't see that as agency-negating. It's a consequence of the earlier failure - which was a pretty hard failure, the first TPK for our group in over 10 years - and where it puts the continuity of the PCs into question, the details of that have been discussed with the players.

A hard frame into a capture without any context resuling from prior play and consequences I think might be a different thing. It would depend on context, of course.

I think an important feature of the "standard narrativistic model" - and it's coming out in a lot of  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s posts too, about how he would handle various things - is that there's a general transparency about what's going on. So if the GM misjudges, and the framing is experienced by the players as agency-negating, or not speaking to their concerns, this will come out - because either it will fall flat (and so you move on, establishing whatever narrative continuity, or even retcon if necessary, will get things to somewhere where the game picks up again), or the players will take hold of it and turn it their way and then you'll see that agency re-emerge.

I guess that a continual back-and-forth power struggle is conceivable. That would be a degenerate game. And the degeneracy would be pretty obvious to the participants!



hawkeyefan said:


> I’m sure that ideally the GM would have the captors be antagonists that at least one player has indicated would be interesting and incorporated them into his character’s goals, and so on. But what if that’s not the case?



Well, for my part, I probably wouldn't be framing a capture then!

Though again context is just about everything. In my Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy Hack game, the PCs were fighting a crypt thing. The doom pool got to 2d12, and in this system if the doom pool has 2d12 in it then the GM can spend those dice to end the scene. So I did - and given that the scene-ending was one with the PCs fighting a crypt thing, I had it teleport them to some distant room in the dungeon.

So they weren't captured, but they were lost - and so all started the scene with a d12 Lost in the Dungeon complication.

Pretty soon, as they commenced wandering the dungeon looking for a way out, I framed a scene in which they found themselves in a large chamber with Sigils on the wall (a scene distinction). One of the players - the same one who plays the invoker/wizard - declared an action to eliminate his Lost in the Dungeon complication, resting on the premise that the Sigils were actually a map/description of the dungeon. His check succeeded, and so indeed the PC was able to decipher the sigils, and work out where he was in the dungeon, and hence ceased to be lost.

That's not strictly a capture scenario, but it's in the neighbourhood. It wasn't a big thematic thing - the system is pretty romp-y, and that particular episode was more about me getting to use a crpyt thing for the first time in a _long_ time (like, decades)! But it didn't shut down player agency, and because of how the system works, and the way it expects the players to engage the fiction, it left plenty of opportunity for the players to do the things they wanted to do with their PCs.



hawkeyefan said:


> It certainly puts pressure on the players to do things...but it also forces the story down a certain path, at least for a bit.



I can see why you say this, but I don't think I agree. The example I just gave probably explains that a bit, but I'll say some more.

In real life, being in prison obviously is pretty different, and far more constraining, than being in (say) a tavern. But when we're talking about a shared fiction, it's just another bit of fictional positioning.

In my 4e game, the PCs broke out of the cell and killed all the goblins (whom they had their eyes on in any event); but then later on, when some were rather house-bound "guests" of the duergar, they made friend with them and (sort-of) tried to save them from the doom that they (sort-of, a bit but not completely inadvertantly) brought down upon them.

In my BW game, the wizard Jobe has spent the last couple of sessions in prison. Some failed checks have meant he hasn't been able to escape, but various personages keep coming to visit him - first the Gynarch of Hardby, and now Jabal (whom I think he is likely to try and kill the next time we get a chance to play). The fact that the action has been confined to a prison hasn't stopped the player being able to drive things.

I think framing the PCs into capture isn't as wildly different from other situations as is sometimes thought - but perhaps it throws some questions around technique, agency etc into particularly sharp relief.



hawkeyefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Burning Wheel also has advice for players which I agree with: the player has an obligation to play his/her PC so that his/her stuff comes out in play.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> how can players do that? Or how can they do that at all times? Surely if Tim’s warlock has the spotlight and the story has become about a struggle between Tim’s patron and another entity, how can Bob the fighter seek revenge for the death if his brother? Wouldn’t Bob’s attempts to bring that up distract from Tim’s story? Are they supposed to take turns?
> 
> Or perhaps as you indicate in the third item, perhaps Bob’s brother was killed by followers of the rival of Tim’s patron. Nice and convenoent....I do tend to try to do this where I see such connections. But...isn’t that potentially an example of GM force?
Click to expand...


Establishing connections is one way of doing it, but I don't really see where GM force comes in - the players can work this stuff out for themselves! In my BW game it turned out that the PC assassin's sinister master, who tormented her until she fled from him into the forest, was the balrog-possessed brother of the wizard PC. That possibility was pretty obviously on the table as soon as one player wrote a Belief "I'll free my [wizard] brother from evil possession" and another "I'm going to flay my [wizard] former master and send his soul to . . .", and I took it as given from the get-go, but the players didn't actually confirm it, in play, until quite a few sessions in (I think it might have been triggered by the finding of the black arrows when hoping to find the mace), when the player of the assassin PC finally decided that she had learned enough, in character, to arrive at the realisation that her evil master was the same wizard that the other PC was trying to save.

And I guess that up until that point it was always open for it to go a different way, although I don't think that was ever a realistic likelihood.

But as well as this sort of interlinking, which I aim for just by generic GMing techniques, and which (say) Fate establishes by default as part of the PC build process, I thik it's reasonable to expect players to engage the fiction with an eye on their stuff even if the GM hasn't put it clearly in front of them. (This is an individualised application of the idea that "the players will take hold of it and turn it their way and then you'll see that agency re-emerge.")

So in my Traveller game, when the PCs were at the manse of the bishop trying to learn about alien artefacts on Enlil, and various religious-type topics were being discussed, one of the PCs asked (not quite so blatantly, but not very subtly either) whether practitioners of the world's religion have psychic powers. This is because that PC has no real interest in aliens, but is ultra-keen on learning psionics. It was a pretty provocative question, and I called for a reaction check (with a bonus for the previous successful interaction) which didn't go too well, and so the PC didn't get to learn exactly what she wanted. But it wasn't a complete dead end either, and it certainly took her closer to her goal - she now wants to go to Ashar, which is another world that seems to be connected to, or perhaps the source of, Enlil's religion.

That's not a particularly profound example, but it shows how a player can play for his/her stuff even if the GM hasn't really put it front and centre. Another example I can think of is from my 4e game, and involved a confrontation with Yan-C-Bin. This was first and foremost about the Emergent Primordial PC, who is a worshipper of Corellon as well as a devotee of Chan, the Queen of Good Air Elementals (who sided with Corellon and other gods during the Dawn War) - he had been tempted by Yan-C-Bin, and Pazrael, and chaotic forces more generally, early in the campaign, and this was something of a culmination of those earlier episodes. But ultimately it was the player of the fighter PC who seized control of this situation with both hands. The character is an Eternal Defender in service to Moradin, and the only PC with "Good" in the alignment box on his PC shet; and he also (following Torog's death) has taken on the portfolio of imprisonment, pain and torture. When Yan-C-Bin started reciting a litany of wrongs done to the djinni since the Dawn War, including their jailing, the player of the fighter PC gave a powerful speech in reply. Here's an excerpt from my actual play report of this session:



pemerton said:


> Both in the fiction and at the table this was the pivotal moment. The player gave an impassioned and quite eloquent speech, which went for several minutes with his eyes locked on mine. (We tend to be quite a causal table as far as performance, in-character vs third person description of one's PC vs out-of-character goes.) He explained (in character) that he would personally see to it that no djinni would be unjustly imprisoned, if they now refrained from launching the Dusk War; but that if they acted rashly and unjustly they could look forward to imprisonment or enslavement forever.



I think that proactive players actively look for ways to engage with the fiction, to get their stuff out there, and make it speak to them. Sometimes there can be a bit of turn-taking or spotlight sharing, but for me the game is at its best when multiple players are each engaging with a given situation and trying to do something with it.

EDIT: I just saw this post, which is closely related:



hawkeyefan said:


> For me, when all the problems start to conveniemtly commect to one another, that seems a bit forced. I get it that the players may all be cool with it (and ultimately i would say that’s all that matters), but what if one player is uninterested in the elements of another player character’s story?
> 
> Examining only the ideal seems wrong. So what happens when things get problematic in that way? Tim the warlock wants to deal with his patron’s goals and desires, but he doesn’t care about Bob wanting to (yaaaawn) hunt down the drow that murdered his brother.



Well, Tim's player and Bob's player are both sitting at the table together, so they're already committed to doing this thing together. What actual form that takes can be pretty varied, though.

In my old RM game (with Vecna et al), Xanthos and Xialath were two of the main PCs - both wizards of an ancient order, both happy to engage in a bit of demon summoning and black magic. Xanthos was a very standard wizard build for our game - good lore skills, good meditation (helpful for quick recovery of spell points), OK perception, excellent Duping and Lie Perception but otherwise mediocre social skills (he relied on his enchantment magic!) Xialath, on the other hand, had been built a bit differently - excellent perception, excellent all-round social, lawyering as well as other lore, engineering (to help with his Rock to Mud spells) - but, as a result, no meditation.

So when Xialath's player found himself falling behind in respect of spell point recovery, he leveraged his other PC assets - good Streetwise, for instance - and made contact with drug dealers in the shadier parts of the Rel Astran bazaars, and bought himself some hugar - a spell point recovery enhancing drug on the RM equipment tables, but quite expensive and highly addictive. So Xialath ended up addicated to hugar, and had to forego the lease on his estate because he ran out of money, and ended up utterly wretched and destitute (there were some other factors in there as well, but the hugar was the beginning of the slippery slope).

The upshot was that we had these two PCs, one trying to arrange world domination, the other hoping to be a magistrate but instead - while a powerful wizard - broke, homeless, addicated to a mind-altering drug, and really at the end of his tether. How did these two character arcs intersect? Well sometimes simply through Xanthos turning up in the morning (after the PCs rested for spell points) and making sure Xialath was ready to leave for whatever mission they had planned. Sometimes it meant Xanthos buying Xialath the hugar he needed to function. And ultimately it meant that Xanthos offered Xialath a return to status and influence in Rel Astra - and a magistracy! - if he would join with Vecna in the conquest of Rel Astra.

Ultimately it's a social game, and so people have to be able to get along in their play. And at least in my group, the players use the standard range of social techniques for trying to make sure this works out, just like in any other ongoing collective enterprise. We had one player who probably once a year or so could get pretty heated if he thought another player was being a d*ck, but I'm not talking about anything more than a few harsh words.

But what I'm trying to show with some of these examples is that there are a lot of different ways that players can connect and intertwine their PCs - and that's even before the GM starts looking to do the same with framing - to make the game work smoothly for everyone involved.


----------



## hawkeyefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think you basically suggested one solution up thread, let the goals of the two PCs come into consonance with each other, so they can pursue them through a single narrative. Is it 'contrived'? Mmmm, moreso than characters who have murdered relatives they want to avenge (and actually WILL try to avenge)? I mean I can't judge the frequency of warlocks getting tangled up in their patron's goals, that's something that we can only invent in our minds. I DO think I can reason about people running off to get revenge. It almost never happens in the real world. Of the several people I've ever encountered who might theoretically have reasons to seek revenge on someone, none of them was willing to do so, nor desired to do so. Thus I have to conclude that 'Bob' is a VERY VERY unusual person to start with! So, how much more of a stretch is it that his brother was killed by someone that Tim's patron is tangled up with? I don't feel like I need to be too worried about this!
> 
> Beyond that, this is not some world, this is a game of heroic adventure. This sort of thing just happens in heroic adventures. Fate is not just random chance, heroes arise under special circumstances and have unusual luck and special fates. These guys are potentially legends. It happens that Bob stumbles upon Tim and it turns out their fates are intertwined? This isn't 'stretching' anything, its how the heroic Universe works!




No, you’re right in that regard. That’s not my area of concern....I realize that the characters and events in the story are most likely extraordinary (though not always, as [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] points out). But I mean more from the player and GM view. If everyone is “playing to find out”, then I don’t know how much room there may be for surprise when you all know that Tim’s patron will somehow tie into Bob’s drow issues, and that Mary’s quest for the Eye of Maguffin is somehow going to come into it too. You may not know exactly how the finished dish will taste, but you certainly have the list of ingredients. 

Not that playing to see exactly how these elements tie together can’t be fun, but perhaps an additoonal answer to the OP would be “to introduce an element to the story entirely unanticipated by thhe players”?


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Please keep in mind that this statement is not true in all cases.  Not everyone plays D&D - or any other RPG - as a game of heroic adventure all the time, if ever at all.
> 
> Which means any analysis based on this assumption runs the risk of quickly becoming at best only applicable to some games and at worst somewhat irrelevant.




Well, obviously any look at any GAME is subject to "when used like this..." qualifications. Techniques and procedures may have various purposes as well, etc. I think we all understand this. 2 points are worth touching on:

1) D&D (refer to any of the various prefaces and introductory material for pre-2e versions of D&D) is explicitly described as a heroic adventure game. This would reasonably be the expectation of anyone who looked at the material and decided to play pretty much ANY edition, but Gygax certainly stated it this way with no reservations. (I agree, mechanically it doesn't always live up to this).

2) The subject of the thread itself was to elicit answers to the question "what is world building for." It wasn't really stated this was limited to certain types of play.

Beyond that, I don't really think that the idea that PCs in D&D are anything less than very special (whether you use the word 'hero' or not for this is your choice) is viable. They are spell casters, very skilled warriors, accomplished thieves, etc right from level 1. Its pretty clear that AT WORST they have skills that only maybe one in a thousand people possess even at their initial levels of ability. Beyond that they are outright stated to be almost unique in their ability to advance and participate in the adventuring life. In 1e you can hire henchmen who have the ability to advance in level, if lead by a PC and then at half the normal PC rate, but again these are quite rare, a whole city might have single-digit numbers of such people in it (going by the charts in the DMG). 

So, I think it IS justified, going by the material in D&D specifically, to expect that characters lead unusual lives and are likely to be singled out by fate. Rare enough that we cannot even point out equivalent sorts of people in the real world, which indicates to me that they ARE special.

I just don't buy the assertion that some people have made that somehow the vast majority of players want to pretend to be just any old guy. I think most players actually want to play 'special' characters. They may want to identify with them and connect them to everyday life in some sense, but I don't think that's the same thing as the idea that somehow the world cannot single them out. In all my years of running campaigns I never heard someone say such a thing at the table, and I've played with a pretty good variety of people.


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## hawkeyefan

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]
I think you make many great points, and I agree with a lot of your preferences in regard to character connections to each other and the world and story. 

But I also think that a lot of what you say presumes a high level of coordination by players. I’m lucky enough to have a dedicated group of close friends for whom this kind of preparation is pretty much assumed as a default. I am guessing your situation is similar.

But for many folks, this may not be the case. They may be playing with a group that is entirely new to them, either in public play or through an online host. In those cases, such coordination may not be possible. 

So perhaps in these cases, having a GM who has worked out some ideas ahead of time is a good idea. 

Also, see my reply above to [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] for another possible answer to your initial question.


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> When is it good rather than bad GMing to answer "no" and shut down some avenue of inquiry (footprints, catalogues, looking for the map in a not-a-big-deal study, etc)? I would say that's highly contextual, but in my own case generally I'm trying to (i) avoid play drifting into areas where I have nothing useful to offer as a GM (thus, everything else being equal, I tend to avoid encouraging long wilderness journeys), and/or (ii) the avoided avenue does not speak to any establsihed or evinced player concern. If one of the PCs is a devotee of Ioun, or is an expert tracker, or really is treating the studyu as a big deal, then saying "no catalogue" or "no footprints" or "no map" looks like bad GMing to me.




Yeah, I rarely, almost never, shut players down. The only time would be if they REALLY want to dig right into something that just doesn't at all engage anyone else. Even then it should be OK if its not too lengthy and represents a reasonable amount of spotlight. Otherwise if something is just not too important, but bears on some conflict, then its probably a single check in an SC, at some level of abstraction high enough to produce a resolution and advancement of the plot. 

So, if you are a 'devotee of Ioun' and want to find information in the study (IE the map) then it might be a mere check, but this would be something like using some technique learned as a part of Ioun worship (maybe magical or maybe just a research skill) to do so. This is minimal engagement, but still SOMETHING, and provides the player with some fodder for character development, and an illustration of what their life choices mean for them.


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## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> No, you’re right in that regard. That’s not my area of concern....I realize that the characters and events in the story are most likely extraordinary (though not always, as [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] points out). But I mean more from the player and GM view. If everyone is “playing to find out”, then I don’t know how much room there may be for surprise when you all know that Tim’s patron will somehow tie into Bob’s drow issues, and that Mary’s quest for the Eye of Maguffin is somehow going to come into it too. You may not know exactly how the finished dish will taste, but you certainly have the list of ingredients.
> 
> Not that playing to see exactly how these elements tie together can’t be fun, but perhaps an additoonal answer to the OP would be “to introduce an element to the story entirely unanticipated by thhe players”?




Well, the GM's primary role is not putting forward an agenda, but obviously the framing function leaves a huge amount of room for GM agendas to appear. Chances are the GM established the general parameters of the setting and agreed to the genre/tone of the game as well, just like the players.

As for the players, they brought the ingredients, so the flavor of the stew should come as little surprise to them in some general sense. That being said, there are likely to be many twists. I would say that an ingenious GM is likely to introduce those at times. Maybe the Drow offer Mary the McGuffin in return for killing Bob? I don't know, I don't have a creative stroke of genius to apply to that right now. Obviously, setting the PCs directly against each other is tricky business, but its always possible to create SOME tension there. Less central issues could be in play, maybe some NPC that could help with Tim or Mary's agendas is Bob's bad guy. They can debate ways to deal with that, or Bob can be a dork and take unilateral action (but remember, that doesn't imply a rift between the PLAYERS).


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## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> @_*pemerton*_
> I think you make many great points, and I agree with a lot of your preferences in regard to character connections to each other and the world and story.
> 
> But I also think that a lot of what you say presumes a high level of coordination by players. I’m lucky enough to have a dedicated group of close friends for whom this kind of preparation is pretty much assumed as a default. I am guessing your situation is similar.
> 
> But for many folks, this may not be the case. They may be playing with a group that is entirely new to them, either in public play or through an online host. In those cases, such coordination may not be possible.
> 
> So perhaps in these cases, having a GM who has worked out some ideas ahead of time is a good idea.
> 
> Also, see my reply above to @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ for another possible answer to your initial question.




I actually think that playing in a more player-centered way is naturally easier, assuming that people can drop any preconceived notions they acquired from previous games. I think that playing RPGs is a very 'passed down' kind of a thing. Its very engaging, but surprisingly hard to just invent (in a real RPG form like we have now, obviously kids play make-believe). Someone new to the game encounters, pretty much inevitably, D&D and people that are or have played D&D. The fundamentals of D&D play are garnered usually via other players going all the way back to the early days of the mid-70's, and spread widely via cons, modules, the presentation in the rules, and just 'stuff people heard' (if nothing else). 

Yet, if you introduce someone to RPGs in the form that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] or [MENTION=6682826]CH[/MENTION]auchou, or [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] play, its really no harder to pick up. Yes, players can be jerks and not play along, but classic D&D-style GM-centered play has that problem too! 

I do think there are actually ECONOMIC reasons why a game like D&D thrives though. You can't really write adventures, let alone detailed settings, for a game where the premise is basically "the players decide where to take things and the GM engages with their agenda." How do you write a module for that? I mean, yeah, you could generate some forms of material, encounter ideas, NPCs, even a degree of world building (but there's always a danger of meta-plot and getting too detailed and nailed-down here). It seems to me that the most characteristic type of product is the module, and I literally never buy them! I sort of appreciated Dungeon as a feature of DDI that I could steal a few elements from now and then, but mostly those were in the Compendium anyway (4e online database that holds all monsters, spells, NPCs, etc in it). 

I also think that narratively focused games tend to thrive more as niche products, and really not too many casual gamers delve into those. I don't think they're harder to play, its just there's a network effect and a bandwagon effect, and so a game where its fairly easy to replicate the same narrative reliably over and over and thus write a module that embodies it is the ideal vehicle for that. In that sense maybe playing 'classic' DM-centered games IS an easier way to find players, though I don't seem to have a hard time doing it when I'm motivated.


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> 2 points are worth touching on:
> 
> 1) D&D (refer to any of the various prefaces and introductory material for pre-2e versions of D&D) is explicitly described as a heroic adventure game. This would reasonably be the expectation of anyone who looked at the material and decided to play pretty much ANY edition, but Gygax certainly stated it this way with no reservations. (I agree, mechanically it doesn't always live up to this).



Gygax stated it this way and then proceeded to provide all kinds of perhaps-unintentional encouragement to play it a bit less than heroically.

Exhibit A: giving x.p. for treasure, thus encouraging looting and pillaging over heroism every time: advice our crew has gleefully followed for 35 years or more, even though we dumped the xp-for-gp rule in about year 2. 



> 2) The subject of the thread itself was to elicit answers to the question "what is world building for." It wasn't really stated this was limited to certain types of play.



I was specifically replying to your analysis that I quoted, which seemed to be restricted to only a couple of types of play and thus imply those were the only ones that mattered.



> Beyond that, I don't really think that the idea that PCs in D&D are anything less than very special (whether you use the word 'hero' or not for this is your choice) is viable. They are spell casters, very skilled warriors, accomplished thieves, etc right from level 1. Its pretty clear that AT WORST they have skills that only maybe one in a thousand people possess even at their initial levels of ability. Beyond that they are outright stated to be almost unique in their ability to advance and participate in the adventuring life.



These (quoted) are a series of assumptions which may be true in some settings and games and people's points of view but not in others.

I've always seen PCs as adventurers; a step or two above the normal commoner but by no means unique: there's lots of other adventurers out there.  There has to be, or else where do all the levelled villains come from, and where do all the higher-level people who train the PCs come from, not to mention all the replacement PCs you might need if you do a good job grinding the meat. 


> In 1e you can hire henchmen who have the ability to advance in level, if lead by a PC and then at half the normal PC rate, but again these are quite rare, a whole city might have single-digit numbers of such people in it (going by the charts in the DMG).



See above.  And if the charts show there's so few, that kinda clashes with the number of henches allowed by one's Charisma score (a high-Charisma character can have a dozen henches or more, if memory serves)



> So, I think it IS justified, going by the material in D&D specifically, to expect that characters lead unusual lives and are likely to be singled out by fate. Rare enough that we cannot even point out equivalent sorts of people in the real world, which indicates to me that they ARE special.



I think societal and legal pressures would tend to keep such people tightly under wraps in the real world.

That said, once the zombie apocalypse has come and gone and it's everyone for him/herself.... 



> I just don't buy the assertion that some people have made that somehow the vast majority of players want to pretend to be just any old guy. I think most players actually want to play 'special' characters.



I think most players want to do both: start with one - the 'everyman', perhaps, or the novice at its class - and end up with the other: the special hero.


> They may want to identify with them and connect them to everyday life in some sense, but I don't think that's the same thing as the idea that somehow the world cannot single them out. In all my years of running campaigns I never heard someone say such a thing at the table, and I've played with a pretty good variety of people.



While it can be fun to play a special snowflake once in a while, always playing one gets boring fast; even more so if you've got a DM who gives the PCs plot protection so they just about can't die or have anything else really bad happen to them.

Lanefan


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## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> One thing that should be reiterated here in this excellent essay is that there IS NO CAUSAL PROCESS WITHIN THE FICTION. The fact is no such person as Sherlock Holmes, no person with characteristics similar to him, can exist in the real world. This isn't even limited by just ordinary physical constraints (IE nobody can focus their attention well enough or remember things so reliably as to perform the feats attributed to him). It extends to LOGICAL POSSIBILITY as well, fiction need not even abide by the basic tenants of logic. Things can both exist and not exist, be in two places at once, have mutually exclusive characteristics, etc. within fiction. Not only that, but this HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. Mostly we don't notice. We suspend disbelief and we simply accept the fiction's conceits as given.
> 
> There's nothing remarkable about this when we're talking about a fixed passive form of story where the reader simply participates by reading and imagining what is told by the author. However, when we get into RPG THEORY then its VERY VERY IMPORTANT to understand this! What it means is that the ONLY THING THAT MATTERS is who, by rule/convention/whatever, is able to assert elements of the fiction. There is no 'fictional causation', it doesn't exist, it is, at best, a convention to pretend that it exists, and that only certain participants are bound by it. It is this convention, the practice of RPG game play, which is the subject of RPG game theory, which is what we are discussing here.
> 
> Every time people talk about what is 'in the fiction' except as it pertains to how they will relate it to play procedures, is just not significant. What is significant is 'what are those procedures and how do they work?' In particular how does pre-authoring content work, why is it done, and what effect does it have on play processes? (since that was the question of the OP).




Most of the recent thread has passed me by, but I wanted to touch on this argument as it seems foundational to many.

I fail to understand how saying fiction has no causal process is remotely relevant when the argument then becomes 'except as stipulated in the rules of the RPG.'  The first argument may be true (there's still an open philosophical debate as to whether fictional things are real), but it fails to remain relevant when it's then accepted that RPGs treat some fictions as causal by convention.

If the argument is that the exact fiction authored is meaningless and it's the authoring the matters seems very, very premature when you then limit the nature of what is authored by already authored fiction.  If "fictional positioning" has any meaning, it's causal to what can be authored to the fiction at that point.  If "genre tropes" has any meaning, it's causal to what can be authored to the fiction at that point.  If you use fiction, even by convention, to constrain how new fiction can be authored (and even who can author the fiction, characters not involved in a scene have little input in most RPGs) then you're accepting that fiction has causal power.

I can see a rebuttal that takes the form: ah, but it isn't the fiction that does this, it's the agreement on rules that does this.  And that gets around a good bit of it, but it doesn't account for the fact that we still check the fiction to see what's allowed.  You can't say, for instance, "new fiction must not contradict the existing fictional positioning" and stop there -- you still need the existing fictional positioning, which is still fiction.  The rules define which bits of fiction gain causal power over new fiction, but there's still fiction involved that is doing work.  I don't see a coherent position that excludes fiction as having any causal power that then utilizes existing fiction to limit future fiction.

What am I missing, here?  Because, at the moment, this seems like one of those things that sounds really smart and relevatory, but it actually isn't.  If you want to say that fiction has no causal power then you cannot reference fiction as a limit of authorship, as that's using fiction to apply causal power.  And you can't cut the fiction out of that by saying it's convention or rules, as the actual limits on authorship depend on the nature of the fiction referenced.


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## pemerton

The number two, being an abstract object, has no causal effect on anything. Yet the number 2 is a limit that will be approached by y = ((x^2)/x) +2, as x approaches zero.

The time my super-mathematician spent yesterday squaring the circle, being an impossible event, has no causal effect on anything. But a consistent story about my super-mathematician would have to allow that while that series of geometric figures was being drawn, my super-mathematician cannot also have been designing yet another perpetual motion machine. Only one set of plans can be drawn at a time.

Lesson? Consistency is a logical and/or conceptual relation between abstract objects, not a causal relation between physical objects.


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## Aenghus

Lanefan said:


> I think most players want to do both: start with one - the 'everyman', perhaps, or the novice at its class - and end up with the other: the special hero.




I think this has changed over time, a lot of players want to skip the vulnerable early levels, especially when they have played through them a lot before. Some people want to start with the special hero.



> While it can be fun to play a special snowflake once in a while, always playing one gets boring fast; even more so if you've got a DM who gives the PCs plot protection so they just about can't die or have anything else really bad happen to them.
> 
> Lanefan




IMO a PC who's a special snowflake in one game might be a good fit for a different game table with different standards. In a game where PCs are expected to have backstories and personal goals a rootless orphan with no background could be the special snowflake, it all depends on expectations.

A game with plot protection for PCs needs other stakes rather than mere PC survival to play for. A lot of game tables don't feature casual PC death any more, but feature plenty of meaningful success and failure nethertheless. PCs may be more complex starting off, have significant backstories or game goals they expect to be relevant to play.

There are legitimate reasons for plot protection, such as games for children, and groups that specifically ask for such game. If I run games for children I apply content filters as appropriate, simplify the game rules, and run short sessions. Running for teens I would have laxer content filters and expect to spend more time keeping order.

If players request I avoid certain themes or plotlines I will at the very least consider such requests carefully, and probably go along. If a particular player is having personal difficulties, I am going to go easy on them in the game.

There are lots of legitimate reasons to apply various sorts of plot protection, content filters and reduced or increased game focus on particular activities.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Gygax stated it this way and then proceeded to provide all kinds of perhaps-unintentional encouragement to play it a bit less than heroically.
> 
> Exhibit A: giving x.p. for treasure, thus encouraging looting and pillaging over heroism every time: advice our crew has gleefully followed for 35 years or more, even though we dumped the xp-for-gp rule in about year 2.



Yeah, and I have said the same thing a few times here too. So I think we agree that the messaging was a little confusing, but just reading the 'wrapper on the tin' you would certainly expect a game of heroes and heroic adventure. 

I will add, as an aside sort of, that I started in 1975 with OD&D, and it was less like that. There wasn't a clear message. It was more like "look at this neat variation of a wargame!" and we were all just struck by the infinitely flexible nature of play where the rules were only a starting point and not the whole story. I GUESS we kind of expected some sort of fantastical experience, but I don't recall that what I got was somehow surprisingly different from what was advertised. The oeuvre seemed to be more 'delving into dungeons is stupid dangerous, you will probably die!' 


> I was specifically replying to your analysis that I quoted, which seemed to be restricted to only a couple of types of play and thus imply those were the only ones that mattered.



I think its hard to say how many types of play there really are! Probably depends on how you draw the lines.



> These (quoted) are a series of assumptions which may be true in some settings and games and people's points of view but not in others.
> 
> I've always seen PCs as adventurers; a step or two above the normal commoner but by no means unique: there's lots of other adventurers out there.  There has to be, or else where do all the levelled villains come from, and where do all the higher-level people who train the PCs come from, not to mention all the replacement PCs you might need if you do a good job grinding the meat.
> 
> See above.  And if the charts show there's so few, that kinda clashes with the number of henches allowed by one's Charisma score (a high-Charisma character can have a dozen henches or more, if memory serves)



I was just going by what the game presents. Your fighter is a 'hero' at level 4, the illusionist a 'Master Trickster', the thief is a 'Robber' and the cleric a 'Curate' (these are 1e level titles, but I think the earlier ones are about the same). Now, maybe I came to D&D by a different route than later folks, but TO ME the portrayal of NPCs with levels was a simple convenient convention. It stems from Chainmail where normal figures are basically equated to levels 1-3 (10 characters to a figure). That makes a level 1 fighter the equivalent of 10 veteran soldiers (though when you do that fight in D&D itself using the d20 combat system it obviously doesn't quite work out that way). The point is making the town guards 'level 2 fighting men' is just a way to create an elite warrior with 2 hit dice, it doesn't imply that they are heroic figures who advance in level. In fact 1e explicitly states that such people are not in fact eligible to advance, not being heroic material.

Yes, there must, of necessity, be an endless supply of heroes for D&D's meat grinder, and so for henchmen as well (though its VERY hard to get many in any one place, you have to move around a LOT by the DMG). I would argue this has more to do with the incoherence of D&D (heroic concept, meat grinder low level cannon fodder implementation) than it does with what is stated as the intent.

I mean, I don't think you're wrong about what game Gygax was actually designing, just that people certainly don't EXPECT it to be that game when they read it! 



> I think societal and legal pressures would tend to keep such people tightly under wraps in the real world.



I think it is literally impossible for such people to exist! What we call in reality an 'adventurer' is someone who's traveled to 5 or 10 exotic locales and done a few memorable and mildly (by D&D standards) dangerous things. No real world human being would survive the travails of a D&D character for even a month, it would break you even if you managed to actually survive the danger itself.



> That said, once the zombie apocalypse has come and gone and it's everyone for him/herself....



BRAINSSSSSSSSSS.....



> I think most players want to do both: start with one - the 'everyman', perhaps, or the novice at its class - and end up with the other: the special hero.
> 
> While it can be fun to play a special snowflake once in a while, always playing one gets boring fast; even more so if you've got a DM who gives the PCs plot protection so they just about can't die or have anything else really bad happen to them.
> 
> Lanefan




Now, see I see it the opposite way. I'm an average guy in real life, in my gaming time, I want to be special. Sure, I want to make up and play out what really makes me special, but I never want to be a feckin level 1 AD&D character again as long as I live, BORING! 

As for what the challenge is, I just don't see dying as being a part of it. I mean, death happens, that's fine, its part of the story, but one more character death, maybe number 846 or so, don't mean much! It means something though if its me dying to save my friends, or failing to do so BY dying. Now its interesting! I don't give player's 'plot protection', I give them the chance to shape the plot, and if they don't play well or get really unlucky, it will shape in the form of a tragedy!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> Most of the recent thread has passed me by, but I wanted to touch on this argument as it seems foundational to many.
> 
> I fail to understand how saying fiction has no causal process is remotely relevant when the argument then becomes 'except as stipulated in the rules of the RPG.'  The first argument may be true (there's still an open philosophical debate as to whether fictional things are real), but it fails to remain relevant when it's then accepted that RPGs treat some fictions as causal by convention.
> 
> If the argument is that the exact fiction authored is meaningless and it's the authoring the matters seems very, very premature when you then limit the nature of what is authored by already authored fiction.  If "fictional positioning" has any meaning, it's causal to what can be authored to the fiction at that point.  If "genre tropes" has any meaning, it's causal to what can be authored to the fiction at that point.  If you use fiction, even by convention, to constrain how new fiction can be authored (and even who can author the fiction, characters not involved in a scene have little input in most RPGs) then you're accepting that fiction has causal power.
> 
> I can see a rebuttal that takes the form: ah, but it isn't the fiction that does this, it's the agreement on rules that does this.  And that gets around a good bit of it, but it doesn't account for the fact that we still check the fiction to see what's allowed.  You can't say, for instance, "new fiction must not contradict the existing fictional positioning" and stop there -- you still need the existing fictional positioning, which is still fiction.  The rules define which bits of fiction gain causal power over new fiction, but there's still fiction involved that is doing work.  I don't see a coherent position that excludes fiction as having any causal power that then utilizes existing fiction to limit future fiction.
> 
> What am I missing, here?  Because, at the moment, this seems like one of those things that sounds really smart and relevatory, but it actually isn't.  If you want to say that fiction has no causal power then you cannot reference fiction as a limit of authorship, as that's using fiction to apply causal power.  And you can't cut the fiction out of that by saying it's convention or rules, as the actual limits on authorship depend on the nature of the fiction referenced.




OK, here's my attempt at a cogent response. 

First I would note that D&D (as an example) never calls out what the fiction proscribes, or what it prescribes, except specifically where it intersects a mechanic (I will use 1e as my example if it matters since I'm most familiar with it). So, for example the rules state that every 10' a character falls deals 1d6 damage. Likewise when your hit points reach 0, you die (or at least go unconscious, rules are flexible!). I'd note that SOMETIMES, always in the DMG in a place separate from the rule itself, Gygax tries to describe what, fictionally, would best be represented by certain game constructs. So he talks about what sort of walls a thief could climb, and even suggests rules adjustments for them. 

Now, you might take all this to indicate 'rules describe how the world behaves', but note that these descriptions are ONLY in terms of how things affect characters, their possessions, and other elements that are part of the direct fiction. The only time this gets blurry is for high level PCs who have class features which are narrative in nature (IE strongholds, where he talks about taxation systems and such, but they are only rules BECAUSE they intersect with character class features). In other places things are specifically called out as 'guidelines' or recommendations, or just procedures which can be used in the course of play, like random generators.

So, I maintain that the rules of the game are about the GAME, and not about regulating the fiction. This is underlined by the way 1e, again and again, calls them all 'guidelines' and specifically instructs the DM to use any means he finds suitable to adjudicate the game.

In terms of the narrative 'being' rules... I don't think it is. I think the narrative is intended to be coherent. You are supposed to be able to hear it, or read it, or experience it as a player, and be able to construct a mental image of the action, much like you would construct a mental image of Moria when you read the chapter of Fellowship of the Ring where they enter Kazhad Dum etc. 

The players, presumably in some sort of consensus, are free to decide HOW, or even IF the narrative, the fictional positioning, binds them. This isn't a matter of rules, specifically. There's no rule in D&D that gravity exists. There's a convention, and a falling damage rule accompanies that convention, but there's no rule! In fact, if the players are in the Ethereal Plane, then falling doesn't happen at all. Presumably they're free to make up other such locales, and a whole game could hypothetically take place in such a locale. 

So, I think there are CONVENTIONS, what we often call 'genre assumptions' or 'tropes', and even just 'common sense assumptions' (IE gravity) which we assume and use because they are convenient, yet they only take on binding force by consensus in play. A game designer is free to establish some of these are rules, thus staking his game's claim to a certain territory, but it would be impossible for games to actually try to spell them all out. MOST of what we play is what we decide to play, not what is in the book. 'Causality' is simply a convention we may use, or even more likely, just a lampshade we hang on certain plot devices.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> The number two, being an abstract object, has no causal effect on anything. Yet the number 2 is a limit that will be approached by y = ((x^2)/x) +2, as x approaches zero.
> 
> The time my super-mathematician spent yesterday squaring the circle, being an impossible event, has no causal effect on anything. But a consistent story about my super-mathematician would have to allow that while that series of geometric figures was being drawn, my super-mathematician cannot also have been designing yet another perpetual motion machine. Only one set of plans can be drawn at a time.
> 
> Lesson? Consistency is a logical and/or conceptual relation between abstract objects, not a causal relation between physical objects.




Careful there, you will soon discover the Heart Sutra and we'll lose you in endless repetitions of 

"Om, gate gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi soha!"


----------



## Sadras

> So, I maintain that the rules of the game are about the GAME, and not about regulating the fiction.




Okay so gravity is not spell out.
 [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] - what about specific spell effects when casting underwater (fictional positioning)? It does appear like these effects/rules were created due to the causal nature of the fiction.


----------



## pemerton

On causation - prompted by [MENTION=6688277]Sadras[/MENTION], and (I think) consistent with what [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has been posting.

In AD&D, a dragon gets combat bonuses when defending its young. Does that mean that, in the world of D&D, _only_ dragons are driving to great effort to protect their children? No, it means that the designers, who lavished a _lot_ of attention on dragons, thought this was an interesting idea to call out in respect of them, and so wrote in the bonus.

Again in AD&D, a fireball can't be cast underwater, while a lightning bolt turns into a sphere rather than a bolt. But can a fireball still be cast with full effect in a raging cyclone? Why does an electric eel's "lightning" attack work normally underwater?

Again, this isn't about causation in any meaningful sense - it's about using mechanics to try and convey some idea that seems interesting and fun. The designers cared about underwater, but not so much about tropical storms. And were not all that interested in trying to model the actual physical behaviour of bolts of electricity.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> Okay so gravity is not spell out.
> @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ - what about specific spell effects when casting underwater (fictional positioning)? It does appear like these effects/rules were created due to the causal nature of the fiction.




What 'causation', can you (or me or anyone) describe why magical fire is affected by being underwater? Fires don't burn underwater because water denies them oxygen, but magical fire doesn't (perhaps, nobody knows) use oxygen. If it does, then would a fireball work in an atmosphere lacking oxygen? Would it work in a vacuum? I mean, really, there's some consistency here?

No, there's no 'causality' involved, there's a TROPE. I'm not saying the trope doesn't loosely originate in the observation that water puts out fires (note that even in the real world there are things which burn underwater). Its just a convention. 

And here's my issue with relying on these conventions as the basis of how you STEER the narrative; how does anyone really know what they are? I mean, some of them are pretty basic, like gravity, or that people need air, etc. Even so these can cause problems sometimes because we have different understandings of HOW they work, and why. When it comes to magic fire underwater all bets are off. All the player can do is either ask, or hope it works how they need it to work.

Now, if you steer the narrative on the basis of dramatic need and player agenda, you don't have this problem. Yes, you still deal with fictional positioning to some extent, but now you have a strong guide as to how it should work, which is basically the 'rule of cool' (which 4e explicitly states, an interesting observation as it turns out). If something furthers the goals of the game, then make it work that way (notwithstanding some reasonable degree of consistency, which is itself just an aid to figuring out what fictional positioning is going to be needed).

That's my take on it anyway


----------



## Lanefan

I find it immensely sad that we've somehow gone from this...


			
				AbdulAlhazred said:
			
		

> The oeuvre seemed to be more 'delving into dungeons is stupid dangerous, you will probably die!'



...to this


Aenghus said:


> I think this has changed over time, a lot of players want to skip the vulnerable early levels, especially when they have played through them a lot before. Some people want to start with the special hero.




Low level play is great!  The lucky survive and move on, and the unlucky die.  Just like it'd be in real life, were real life to have adventurers like this.

Lan-"other replies below"-efan


----------



## Lanefan

Aenghus said:


> IMO a PC who's a special snowflake in one game might be a good fit for a different game table with different standards. In a game where PCs are expected to have backstories and personal goals a rootless orphan with no background could be the special snowflake, it all depends on expectations.
> 
> A game with plot protection for PCs needs other stakes rather than mere PC survival to play for. A lot of game tables don't feature casual PC death any more, but feature plenty of meaningful success and failure nethertheless. PCs may be more complex starting off, have significant backstories or game goals they expect to be relevant to play.



I call that a system fault - a bug, not a feature.  Fortunately, I've enough knowledge to handle the debugging required. 



> There are legitimate reasons for plot protection, such as games for children, and groups that specifically ask for such game. If I run games for children I apply content filters as appropriate, simplify the game rules, and run short sessions.



I don't DM for children and don't want children in games I play in.  When they're old enough to handle the content and to have attention spans longer than that of the average chicken, then fine; but that stage doesn't usually hit until the early-to-mid teens.


> Running for teens I would have laxer content filters and expect to spend more time keeping order.



I'd have pretty much the same content filters I have for adults (i.e. not much filtering!) and only worry about keeping order when (not if) the in-character conflicts spilled over into player-at-the-table conflicts.

And though it may sound harsh I expect people to leave their personal problems at the door.  Failing that they can choose to skip a session or two or play as usual and deal with whatever comes along, just like any other session. (and I've had players tell me in the past that having the game just keep going as usual has provided a nice break from whatever else is going on)

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, and I have said the same thing a few times here too. So I think we agree that the messaging was a little confusing, but just reading the 'wrapper on the tin' you would certainly expect a game of heroes and heroic adventure.



Perhaps.

Keep in mind, however, that we weren't just reading the PH and DMG back in the day.  Every month another Dragon magazine would come out, and it didn't take much reading of those to realize just how flexible the game could be to suit different styles.



> I was just going by what the game presents. Your fighter is a 'hero' at level 4, the illusionist a 'Master Trickster', the thief is a 'Robber' and the cleric a 'Curate' (these are 1e level titles, but I think the earlier ones are about the same). Now, maybe I came to D&D by a different route than later folks, but TO ME the portrayal of NPCs with levels was a simple convenient convention. It stems from Chainmail where normal figures are basically equated to levels 1-3 (10 characters to a figure). That makes a level 1 fighter the equivalent of 10 veteran soldiers (though when you do that fight in D&D itself using the d20 combat system it obviously doesn't quite work out that way).



In 4e this might be true but in 1e the 10 soldiers would, while likely sustaining a few casualties, take down the 1st-level guy - every - single - time. 


> The point is making the town guards 'level 2 fighting men' is just a way to create an elite warrior with 2 hit dice, it doesn't imply that they are heroic figures who advance in level. In fact 1e explicitly states that such people are not in fact eligible to advance, not being heroic material.



Which struck me as an astonishingly dumb rule probably the first time I read it.  The way I see it, anyone can advance in level if they've got the skills and willingness to do so, and some are going to advance no matter what just as a feature of what they do for a living.  Soldiers who see actual battle are an obvious example.

And, as the game kinda requires it once you look carefully at how things work e.g. training rules etc., I also have it that people like stay-at-home temple clerics, street thieves, lab research mages, and so forth can and will also advance in levels as they go along, although much more slowly than a typical adventurer does...maybe a level every few years at best, with some vague upper limits set by their stats.



> Yes, there must, of necessity, be an endless supply of heroes for D&D's meat grinder, and so for henchmen as well (though its VERY hard to get many in any one place, you have to move around a LOT by the DMG). I would argue this has more to do with the incoherence of D&D (heroic concept, meat grinder low level cannon fodder implementation) than it does with what is stated as the intent.
> 
> I mean, I don't think you're wrong about what game Gygax was actually designing, just that people certainly don't EXPECT it to be that game when they read it!



I never expected it to be all that heroic when I first read it. 



> Now, see I see it the opposite way. I'm an average guy in real life, in my gaming time, I want to be special. Sure, I want to make up and play out what really makes me special, but I never want to be a feckin level 1 AD&D character again as long as I live, BORING!



The game I'm playing in right now has an average PC level around 10th, which is at the extreme high end (i.e. record high) for our crew.  I'm quite looking forward to dropping back to 1st someday and starting over; though as this game still looks to have a few years worth of legs to it I might have to wait a while. 

Hell, even as a 1st level 1e character - no matter what class - I'm doing things I can't do in reality.

Lanefan


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> What 'causation', can you (or me or anyone) describe why magical fire is affected by being underwater? Fires don't burn underwater because water denies them oxygen, but magical fire doesn't (perhaps, nobody knows) use oxygen. If it does, then would a fireball work in an atmosphere lacking oxygen? Would it work in a vacuum? I mean, really, there's some consistency here?
> 
> No, there's no 'causality' involved, there's a TROPE. I'm not saying the trope doesn't loosely originate in the observation that water puts out fires (note that even in the real world there are things which burn underwater). Its just a convention.
> 
> And here's my issue with relying on these conventions as the basis of how you STEER the narrative; how does anyone really know what they are? I mean, some of them are pretty basic, like gravity, or that people need air, etc. Even so these can cause problems sometimes because we have different understandings of HOW they work, and why. When it comes to magic fire underwater all bets are off. All the player can do is either ask, or hope it works how they need it to work.
> 
> Now, if you steer the narrative on the basis of dramatic need and player agenda, you don't have this problem. Yes, you still deal with fictional positioning to some extent, but now you have a strong guide as to how it should work, which is basically the 'rule of cool' (which 4e explicitly states, an interesting observation as it turns out). If something furthers the goals of the game, then make it work that way (notwithstanding some reasonable degree of consistency, which is itself just an aid to figuring out what fictional positioning is going to be needed).
> 
> That's my take on it anyway




There are different definitions of causality.  It seems that you and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] are focusing on the one that says every effect has a cause.  [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] seems to be focusing the one that says that it's the relationship between cause and effect.  For the second definition, there is causation in D&D fiction that drives the rules.  A wizard casts fireball(fictional cause) and a fireball appears doing fire damage(rules effect).  A rogue attempts use a wand of fireballs in the fiction(cause) and if the use magic device is successful(rules effect) a fireball appears doing fire damage(rules effect).  That's causation.  There is a direct relationship between cause and effect.

Also, just because as you point out above we can't describe why magic fire is affected by being underwater, doesn't mean that there is no causation involved.  Here in the real world there isn't a single person on Earth who can tell us why everything happens the way it does.  We have to guess at things, too.  That doesn't mean that there is no causation going on, but only that we don't understand it yet.  The game rules cannot be as detailed about the game fiction as what we know here on Earth, so there is more of causation that DMs and players have to guess at, but that doesn't mean that causation doesn't exist in D&D.


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> The game I'm playing in right now has an average PC level around 10th, which is at the extreme high end (i.e. record high) for our crew.  I'm quite looking forward to dropping back to 1st someday and starting over; though as this game still looks to have a few years worth of legs to it I might have to wait a while.
> 
> Hell, even as a 1st level 1e character - no matter what class - I'm doing things I can't do in reality.
> 
> Lanefan



On this I have to agree with [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION].  I found the first few levels of AD&D(1e and 2e) and even 3e to be be boring.  I much prefer to start at level 3 and go from there.


----------



## TwoSix

pemerton said:


> Pretty soon, as they commenced wandering the dungeon looking for a way out, I framed a scene in which they found themselves in a large chamber with Sigils on the wall (a scene distinction). One of the players - the same one who plays the invoker/wizard - declared an action to eliminate his Lost in the Dungeon complication, resting on the premise that the Sigils were actually a map/description of the dungeon. His check succeeded, and so indeed the PC was able to decipher the sigils, and work out where he was in the dungeon, and hence ceased to be lost.



If you ever need an example to illustrate the difference between Gygaxian play and narrative play, here it is.  I'm trying to imagine the expression on [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] 's face if a player suggested this in his game.


----------



## hawkeyefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, the GM's primary role is not putting forward an agenda, but obviously the framing function leaves a huge amount of room for GM agendas to appear. Chances are the GM established the general parameters of the setting and agreed to the genre/tone of the game as well, just like the players.




Sure, this is very likely the case. But then this is more about the GM using the game mechanics responsibly, so to speak. Ideally, he won’t be pushing an agenda. But it certainly seems possible, no?

This goes back to it being more a case of GM performance. Separate of the rules or mechanics or even the chosen style, the GM can perform well or poorly. 

Pemerton’s premise and much of the discussion presumes that the GM in examples of his chosen style will perform per the ideal, and that GMs in examples of a more GM driven style will of course perform poorly. 

Now, we can discuss how a player driven style leaves less room for the GM to fully take hold and drive the game as the sole creative force...that’s fine. I can see how sone of the mechhanics of such games make that less likely. 

But by the same token, a GM driven game need not be a case of the GM thwarting player creativity. I feel my style as described seems very much in line with the folks in the thread who are arguing in favor of player driven play. Yet my game contains “worldbuilding” in the sense that I do have GM authored elements that I introduce into play.

However, the elements I introduce do not rob my players of agency. 

Ultimately, I feel he’s eatablished a false dichotomy based on trends. They are not the absolutes he portrays.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> As for the players, they brought the ingredients, so the flavor of the stew should come as little surprise to them in some general sense. That being said, there are likely to be many twists. I would say that an ingenious GM is likely to introduce those at times. Maybe the Drow offer Mary the McGuffin in return for killing Bob? I don't know, I don't have a creative stroke of genius to apply to that right now. Obviously, setting the PCs directly against each other is tricky business, but its always possible to create SOME tension there. Less central issues could be in play, maybe some NPC that could help with Tim or Mary's agendas is Bob's bad guy. They can debate ways to deal with that, or Bob can be a dork and take unilateral action (but remember, that doesn't imply a rift between the PLAYERS).




Sure, a clever GM can surprise players even when they know ahead of time the kinds of things that will come up in play. I wouldn’t argue otherwise.

But I don’t think that the GM adding something entirely mew and separate of what the players have pre-established as desires for play must be bad. In fact, I think such things can add quite a bit to a game.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> The number two, being an abstract object, has no causal effect on anything. Yet the number 2 is a limit that will be approached by y = ((x^2)/x) +2, as x approaches zero.



You switched from 'fictional' to 'abstract'.  That's a pretty big switch, as 'abstract' includes thoughts and emotions which have clear causal properties (they are caused and they do cause).  The number 2 is an abstract object, and, in some ways, a fictional one, but, as an engineer, I can use the number 2 to cause many things to happen.  There isn't a physical representation of the number 2 that does this, but my concept and ideas about the number 2 cause me to take physical action that cause things.  The number two is in the causal chain a number of my daily actions, as a matter of fact.

So, this concept, while possibly a fun diversion into the reality of numbers, actually cuts against your arguments.



> The time my super-mathematician spent yesterday squaring the circle, being an impossible event, has no causal effect on anything. But a consistent story about my super-mathematician would have to allow that while that series of geometric figures was being drawn, my super-mathematician cannot also have been designing yet another perpetual motion machine. Only one set of plans can be drawn at a time.
> 
> Lesson? Consistency is a logical and/or conceptual relation between abstract objects, not a causal relation between physical objects.



So, your ideas (abstract objects) about consistency (another abstract object) cause you to alter how you author fiction?  See why broaching into abstract as a general category doesn't support your argument?

If, instead, we remove and replace abstract with fictional and ignore your numbers argument, then you're still saying that you're using a fictional construct of time in fiction to dictate how you author the fiction.  Here's a test:  provide your example again without ever referring to any fiction whatsoever and see if you can actually construct an example that isn't a wordier version of "I authored some fiction."  This goes back to my argument that the fiction has to exist because it's used to construct new fiction and engage game mechanics.  If the fiction doesn't exist, then there's nothing there to engage.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, here's my attempt at a cogent response.
> 
> First I would note that D&D (as an example) never calls out what the fiction proscribes, or what it prescribes, except specifically where it intersects a mechanic (I will use 1e as my example if it matters since I'm most familiar with it). So, for example the rules state that every 10' a character falls deals 1d6 damage. Likewise when your hit points reach 0, you die (or at least go unconscious, rules are flexible!). I'd note that SOMETIMES, always in the DMG in a place separate from the rule itself, Gygax tries to describe what, fictionally, would best be represented by certain game constructs. So he talks about what sort of walls a thief could climb, and even suggests rules adjustments for them.
> 
> Now, you might take all this to indicate 'rules describe how the world behaves', but note that these descriptions are ONLY in terms of how things affect characters, their possessions, and other elements that are part of the direct fiction. The only time this gets blurry is for high level PCs who have class features which are narrative in nature (IE strongholds, where he talks about taxation systems and such, but they are only rules BECAUSE they intersect with character class features). In other places things are specifically called out as 'guidelines' or recommendations, or just procedures which can be used in the course of play, like random generators.
> 
> So, I maintain that the rules of the game are about the GAME, and not about regulating the fiction. This is underlined by the way 1e, again and again, calls them all 'guidelines' and specifically instructs the DM to use any means he finds suitable to adjudicate the game.
> 
> In terms of the narrative 'being' rules... I don't think it is. I think the narrative is intended to be coherent. You are supposed to be able to hear it, or read it, or experience it as a player, and be able to construct a mental image of the action, much like you would construct a mental image of Moria when you read the chapter of Fellowship of the Ring where they enter Kazhad Dum etc.
> 
> The players, presumably in some sort of consensus, are free to decide HOW, or even IF the narrative, the fictional positioning, binds them. This isn't a matter of rules, specifically. There's no rule in D&D that gravity exists. There's a convention, and a falling damage rule accompanies that convention, but there's no rule! In fact, if the players are in the Ethereal Plane, then falling doesn't happen at all. Presumably they're free to make up other such locales, and a whole game could hypothetically take place in such a locale.
> 
> So, I think there are CONVENTIONS, what we often call 'genre assumptions' or 'tropes', and even just 'common sense assumptions' (IE gravity) which we assume and use because they are convenient, yet they only take on binding force by consensus in play. A game designer is free to establish some of these are rules, thus staking his game's claim to a certain territory, but it would be impossible for games to actually try to spell them all out. MOST of what we play is what we decide to play, not what is in the book. 'Causality' is simply a convention we may use, or even more likely, just a lampshade we hang on certain plot devices.




I think the impact here is that you're arguing that since the conventions do not have binding force outside of what we give them, that they cannot therefor ever be causes of new fiction.  I find that argument unpersuasive.  That a thing can have a property in some cases doesn't mean it never has that property.  Hair, for instance, can be red, but I cannot make the claim that since it can be red in some cases it's red in all cases.  This is similar to fictional causation on new fiction in that it's trivial to provide an example where there is no fictional causation on new fiction but this doesn't mean fiction cannot ever have causal effects on new fiction.  In fact, your examples are all of cases where fiction does have causal impacts.  "In the fiction this character is authored to be have fallen 50'"  causes, in reality and based on conventions, the DM to pick up 5d6 and roll them and use that outcome to narrate new fiction of "and takes 18 damage" which can then cause new fiction to be authored of "and kills the character."  There's a causal chain there, and yes, that causal chain exists because we agree it exists and we can change our minds, but that doesn't affect the fact that _this _causal chain occurred.  And that fictional narration can have many real world events that are caused by it:  the player of that character may now pick up pencil and paper and dice and books and undergo a process involving a bunch of interactions to create a new fictional character.

In fact, that's an excellent example:  if the fiction is authored that a character dies, real world consequences follow.  And you can't separate the specific fiction authored from the act of authoring because it doesn't follow that authoring fiction causes real world consequences.  If I author some random bit of fiction, the consequences aren't predictable as if I author a character death.  The fiction matters, it exists, and we rely on both of these to continue to play the game.

We don't tell people we're trying to encourage to play with us tales that go "we have a bunch of fun!  Bob narrates some stuff, then John narrates some stuff, then Fred narrates some stuff, and then Bob narrates some more!  It's a blast!"  Instead, we tell the fiction we came up with together, and that fiction has a lot of 'and then's and 'because of that's because stories only work if they have at least a passing acquaintance with reality.  "Bob said there's a teapot full of dragons and then John said it's a teapot full of unicorns and then Fred said it's a housecoat full of unicorns and then Bob said there's no housecoat at all!  Totally awesome game!" makes no sense and we don't play for this outcome.  We instead agree to hold the fiction as causal, and, because of that agreement, the fiction is causal and we take concrete and fictional actions because of what's already happened in the fiction.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> There are different definitions of causality.  It seems that you and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] are focusing on the one that says every effect has a cause.  [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] seems to be focusing the one that says that it's the relationship between cause and effect.  For the second definition, there is causation in D&D fiction that drives the rules.  A wizard casts fireball(fictional cause) and a fireball appears doing fire damage(rules effect).  A rogue attempts use a wand of fireballs in the fiction(cause) and if the use magic device is successful(rules effect) a fireball appears doing fire damage(rules effect).  That's causation.  There is a direct relationship between cause and effect.
> 
> Also, just because as you point out above we can't describe why magic fire is affected by being underwater, doesn't mean that there is no causation involved.  Here in the real world there isn't a single person on Earth who can tell us why everything happens the way it does.  We have to guess at things, too.  That doesn't mean that there is no causation going on, but only that we don't understand it yet.  The game rules cannot be as detailed about the game fiction as what we know here on Earth, so there is more of causation that DMs and players have to guess at, but that doesn't mean that causation doesn't exist in D&D.




Nope.  Not my arguments at all.


----------



## hawkeyefan

TwoSix said:


> If you ever need an example to illustrate the difference between Gygaxian play and narrative play, here it is.  I'm trying to imagine the expression on [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] 's face if a player suggested this in his game.




It would probably be similar to the expression on Pemerton's face if someone tried to swap places with their king and rook in his game. 

You know....since that's a move for another game entirely.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Nope.  Not my arguments at all.




I didn't say anything about your arguments.  I just said that it seemed like you were using the second definition.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> I didn't say anything about your arguments.  I just said that it seemed like you were using the second definition.




It wasn't a slam, man, it's just an open statement that my arguments aren't using the definition you said they were.  I'm assuming honest misunderstanding, not nefarious purposes.  Don't take it personally.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> It wasn't a slam, man, it's just an open statement that my arguments aren't using the definition you said they were.  I'm assuming honest misunderstanding, not nefarious purposes.  Don't take it personally.




Heh.  Text sucks for tone 

I wasn't taking it personally.  Just making a clarification.


----------



## Lanefan

TwoSix said:


> If you ever need an example to illustrate the difference between Gygaxian play and narrative play, here it is.  I'm trying to imagine the expression on [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] 's face if a player suggested this in his game.



My expression probably wouldn't be anywhere near as shocked as you might think. 

If I've put a room in the dungeon with walls covered with sigils I'm already going to know what - if anything - those sigils represent.  So, were a player-as-PC to suggest they might represent a map I'd respond much the same way as if they'd suggested they represented a coded message or a pictorial history or the beer menu in the local pub.

Of course, a simple casting of _Comprehend Language_ or the language-reading ability of a decent-level Thief would eliminate many possibilities... 



			
				hawkeyefan said:
			
		

> It would probably be similar to the expression on Pemerton's face if someone tried to swap places with their king and rook in his game.
> 
> You know....since that's a move for another game entirely.



I don't think it's quite that clear-cut in that with the sigil example if the players-as-PCs want to decipher any message they in theory have to investigate it; and before they do, any suggestion as to what the sigils might contain is just as valid as any other.

The difference between my game and maybe [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's is that player suggestions and ideas are most likely not going to change what I've already determined the sigils represent (if anything), with a lesser but still existent chance of their suggestions leading them completely astray if they come up with what seems like a brilliant idea and never bother to verify it (I've seen this happen many times). 

Lanefan


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> My expression probably wouldn't be anywhere near as shocked as you might think.
> 
> If I've put a room in the dungeon with walls covered with sigils I'm already going to know what - if anything - those sigils represent.  So, were a player-as-PC to suggest they might represent a map I'd respond much the same way as if they'd suggested they represented a coded message or a pictorial history or the beer menu in the local pub.
> 
> Of course, a simple casting of _Comprehend Language_ or the language-reading ability of a decent-level Thief would eliminate many possibilities...
> 
> I don't think it's quite that clear-cut in that with the sigil example if the players-as-PCs want to decipher any message they in theory have to investigate it; and before they do, any suggestion as to what the sigils might contain is just as valid as any other.
> 
> The difference between my game and maybe [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's is that player suggestions and ideas are most likely not going to change what I've already determined the sigils represent (if anything), with a lesser but still existent chance of their suggestions leading them completely astray if they come up with what seems like a brilliant idea and never bother to verify it (I've seen this happen many times).
> 
> Lanefan




Well I was being a bit cheeky, sure. But ultimately, to make it a bit specific...Permerton is playing Burning Wheel, and you're playing some form of D&D (maybe AD&D 2E based on your comments and descriptions?). 

So why would someone playing D&D try to play it like Burning Wheel? Or why would someone playing Burning Wheel try to play it like D&D? I would expect such a deviation from expectations would be out of the ordinary. Whatever these games may have in common, they very clearly function differently. They are different games. So like I said, it would be like trying a chess move in D&D....it would be out of place. 

Now, could one or both of those games be made to play like the other? Probably at least a bit, sure. And could the table play the game with that change understood? Absolutely. But generally speaking, one player trying to play one game like the other would probably cause a bit of an issue.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> Well I was being a bit cheeky, sure. But ultimately, to make it a bit specific...Permerton is playing Burning Wheel, and you're playing some form of D&D (maybe AD&D 2E based on your comments and descriptions?).



1e, with 35 years worth of tweaks and modifications.  To an outsider it would probably resemble 2e as much as it does 1e, these days.



> So why would someone playing D&D try to play it like Burning Wheel? Or why would someone playing Burning Wheel try to play it like D&D? I would expect such a deviation from expectations would be out of the ordinary. Whatever these games may have in common, they very clearly function differently. They are different games.



If they're that different, no wonder these discussions go in ever-expanding circles as we try to apply their conceits to RPGing in general. 



> Now, could one or both of those games be made to play like the other? Probably at least a bit, sure. And could the table play the game with that change understood? Absolutely. But generally speaking, one player trying to play one game like the other would probably cause a bit of an issue.



Yeah, I think I'd last about ten minutes in a BW game before I started playing it wrong...and by 'wrong' I mean playing it like I've played D&D for several decades. 

Lanefan


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> I find it immensely sad that we've somehow gone from this...
> 
> ...to this
> 
> 
> Low level play is great!  The lucky survive and move on, and the unlucky die.  Just like it'd be in real life, were real life to have adventurers like this.




Yeah, except in real life people just don't relish that sort of thing. PCs are NOT like real people, not at all. If you've ever lived through something horribly dangerous, you'll have a vast appreciation of that. Even if it was something you got yourself into. 

Anyway, there's nothing wrong with playing low level meat grinder dungeon delver. I just did it. I did it a LOT, before 1980 I did it a LOT. It got old after a while. Now, if you came along and said "hey, lets play old school just for some fun and laughs" and the people were cool, and the DM was cool, and we were just doing it because we just wanted to do that thing, that would be OK. I'd probably do it. I THINK I'd probably want to advance fairly quickly to some more interesting levels, but I 'get' what you want from this. I just don't want to spend my entire gaming lifetime in the same activity that was engaging at age 12! I'm a lot older than that now, and I have a somewhat different agenda. Its not tragic that I moved on. OTOH, its just a diversion, its not tragic if you want to keep doing it the same old way.


----------



## Sunseeker

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, except in real life people just don't relish that sort of thing. PCs are NOT like real people, not at all. If you've ever lived through something horribly dangerous, you'll have a vast appreciation of that. Even if it was something you got yourself into.



Not to mention real life _was_ like D&D.  Except with all those horrible disease charts, death in childbirth charts, oppressive governments, roving bands of murderers...

Yeah, humanity sort of collectively said "this sucks" and so now we don't have that.

Living or dying on luck doesn't *IMO* make for a terribly interesting game.  We might as well just throw d20's against the wall and take shots every time we roll a nat 1.  I think on average, that would be more fun than a D&D game based entirely on luck.  



> Anyway, there's nothing wrong with playing low level meat grinder dungeon delver. I just did it. I did it a LOT, before 1980 I did it a LOT. It got old after a while. Now, if you came along and said "hey, lets play old school just for some fun and laughs" and the people were cool, and the DM was cool, and we were just doing it because we just wanted to do that thing, that would be OK. I'd probably do it. I THINK I'd probably want to advance fairly quickly to some more interesting levels, but I 'get' what you want from this. I just don't want to spend my entire gaming lifetime in the same activity that was engaging at age 12! I'm a lot older than that now, and I have a somewhat different agenda. Its not tragic that I moved on. OTOH, its just a diversion, its not tragic if you want to keep doing it the same old way.



Games like that sort of remind me of the Minimum Wage Crank.





Yeah, we've all got to turn it for a while, but to turn it for a long time?  Nah, hard pass.

And this is coming from a fairly brutal DM.  I just prefer being brutal when my players can take it.  Murdering a bunch of low-level characters is about as fun on the DM side as it is on the PC side.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Its hard to even critique this, as it lacks any logical coherence as a  meta-physical position, an ethical position, etc. I guess maybe we could  approach it in the realm of aesthetics? Maybe??? I'll try to  comment....



Maxperson said:


> There are different definitions of causality.  It seems that you and @_*pemerton*_ are focusing on the one that says every effect has a cause.  @_*Ovinomancer*_ seems to be focusing the one that says that it's the relationship between cause and effect.  For the second definition, there is causation in D&D fiction that drives the rules.  A wizard casts fireball(fictional cause) and a fireball appears doing fire damage(rules effect).  A rogue attempts use a wand of fireballs in the fiction(cause) and if the use magic device is successful(rules effect) a fireball appears doing fire damage(rules effect).  That's causation.  There is a direct relationship between cause and effect.



Where to even begin. First your 'second definition of causality' is utter gibberish. Its self-referential to start with 'causality is the relationship between cause and effect' except 'cause' means 'the thing which is responsible for an effect (which is itself a condition of being or quality, a state of the universe at a time) definitionally after the cause. So your definition doesn't make sense, it cannot be analyzed. There may be a relationship between cause and effect, but it is definitional what that relationship IS.

A rogue attempts to use a want of fireballs in the fiction - This is simply a story told by a participant in an RPG, probably an action declaration.

A UMD check is made, successfully, a fireball appears in the fiction - OK that COULD HAPPEN, but it is NOT CONDITIONAL ON THE FIRST PART OF THE NARRATIVE. A convention of the RPG being played is that a declaration by a PC of the first type should be followed by a declaration and a check, etc. However one does not lead inevitably, causally to the other. The actual chain of causation (at least in common parlance, I won't get into higher metaphysics) is a series of social conventions and shared concepts being exchanged between minds of people playing a game. They are not obliged to do one thing vs another, and no one thing they do is any more a 'cause and effect' relationship (in terms of the fictional narrative) than any other!



> Also, just because as you point out above we can't describe why magic fire is affected by being underwater, doesn't mean that there is no causation involved.  Here in the real world there isn't a single person on Earth who can tell us why everything happens the way it does.  We have to guess at things, too.  That doesn't mean that there is no causation going on, but only that we don't understand it yet.  The game rules cannot be as detailed about the game fiction as what we know here on Earth, so there is more of causation that DMs and players have to guess at, but that doesn't mean that causation doesn't exist in D&D.




No no no no no!!!!! Even by YOUR concept of causation this is bunkum! BECAUSE you cannot describe why the fireball won't work underwater you have PROVEN that it isn't 'causation', but mere convention. There is no chain of proximal effect which can bridge from one state to the other, merely a social convention "in this game, fire doesn't burn underwater." IT COULDN'T BE MORE CLEAR. 

The fact that things happen on Earth for reasons we have not determined (and may not be able to determine in specific) doesn't mean the same thing at all! It just means we don't have all knowledge. There is still a complete reality in which we can express conservation laws, symmetries, etc which would describe why these things happened, if we DID have that perfect information. Reality is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT IN CHARACTER from your RPG fiction. In fact they have virtually nothing in common. No causation of any kind exists in D&D, except at the table in the real physical world!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> Sure, this is very likely the case. But then this is more about the GM using the game mechanics responsibly, so to speak. Ideally, he won’t be pushing an agenda. But it certainly seems possible, no?



I think a GM who is learning to play in the 'Pemertonian scene framing' technique should probably hold off on creating an agenda for himself, at least on purpose. I mean, once you've been around that tree a few times, sure, experiment, figure it out! I'd say as a start, make all the elements generally supporting of and directed at establishing, contextualizing, and focusing on the player's agendas as described by the conflicts their characters get into and the needs they express.



> This goes back to it being more a case of GM performance. Separate of the rules or mechanics or even the chosen style, the GM can perform well or poorly.
> 
> Pemerton’s premise and much of the discussion presumes that the GM in examples of his chosen style will perform per the ideal, and that GMs in examples of a more GM driven style will of course perform poorly.



Eh, I don't know about that. I think GM-centered play puts a LOT of weight on the GM's shoulders. I think its pretty hard to pull off well. I think a collaborative narrative type of play is probably no easier, but poor or good GMing helps/hurts in both styles. Obviously if you play in a specific way, you point out the flaws you found when you played a different way, that explains your choice! I think we all chose, so we all have experiences of issues with alternate ways of playing. I don't think anyone is particularly trying to be biased. I mean, I KNOW I can run a pretty decent game in traditional style. Its a proven thing for me. I just like the other style better.




> But by the same token, a GM driven game need not be a case of the GM thwarting player creativity. I feel my style as described seems very much in line with the folks in the thread who are arguing in favor of player driven play. Yet my game contains “worldbuilding” in the sense that I do have GM authored elements that I introduce into play.
> 
> However, the elements I introduce do not rob my players of agency.
> 
> Ultimately, I feel he’s eatablished a false dichotomy based on trends. They are not the absolutes he portrays.



One could argue that to the extent your game has those virtues you are converging on [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s style of play, or mine, etc. It really IS a continuum. I think its possible to find strengths in GM centered play, although I also think that a lot of games aren't really leveraging those, and might be even more cool if they tried to mix in some player agenda. 



> But I don’t think that the GM adding something entirely mew and separate of what the players have pre-established as desires for play must be bad. In fact, I think such things can add quite a bit to a game.




I wouldn't argue that it is. I argue that it is what it is, but that often it DOES get in the way of player agendas, at which time it becomes detrimental, and a LOT of GM's don't seem to know better.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> I think the impact here is that you're arguing that since the conventions do not have binding force outside of what we give them, that they cannot therefor ever be causes of new fiction.  I find that argument unpersuasive.  That a thing can have a property in some cases doesn't mean it never has that property.  Hair, for instance, can be red, but I cannot make the claim that since it can be red in some cases it's red in all cases.  This is similar to fictional causation on new fiction in that it's trivial to provide an example where there is no fictional causation on new fiction but this doesn't mean fiction cannot ever have causal effects on new fiction.



I don't find this to be a cogent line of reasoning. Gravity isn't a convention in the real world. It happens. We describe it as a 'law of nature'. Take 100' fall onto a concrete surface, there's nothing like "just because I got 42 fractures last time doesn't mean it will hurt this time." People get locked up for their own good when they reason like this. So clearly there is something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT about the causality that exists in the real world vs whatever you are talking about, which is simply "some people agreed to pretend to believe that their characters fell 100' and took 10d6 damage." I'm arguing that PHYSICALLY THE FICTIONS ARE NOT the cause of other fictions, period, full stop. Its absolute. We aren't arguing about an opinion or something here, this is just reality talking. You can make up a story under which fiction A FICTIONALLY caused fiction B, and that's fine, I am totally all for you doing that, but when you say that one fiction actually caused another, you have left the reservation. The two things are qualitatively different and should not be named using the same name.



> In fact, your examples are all of cases where fiction does have causal impacts.  "In the fiction this character is authored to be have fallen 50'"  causes, in reality and based on conventions, the DM to pick up 5d6 and roll them and use that outcome to narrate new fiction of "and takes 18 damage" which can then cause new fiction to be authored of "and kills the character."  There's a causal chain there, and yes, that causal chain exists because we agree it exists and we can change our minds, but that doesn't affect the fact that _this _causal chain occurred.  And that fictional narration can have many real world events that are caused by it:  the player of that character may now pick up pencil and paper and dice and books and undergo a process involving a bunch of interactions to create a new fictional character.



Again, this is apples vs oranges. Causation isn't a convention, not in the real world, its an absolute objective property of the Universe we inhabit (@Pemerton, and all other philosophers in this thread, NOT A PEEP!!!!). 



> In fact, that's an excellent example:  if the fiction is authored that a character dies, real world consequences follow.  And you can't separate the specific fiction authored from the act of authoring because it doesn't follow that authoring fiction causes real world consequences.  If I author some random bit of fiction, the consequences aren't predictable as if I author a character death.  The fiction matters, it exists, and we rely on both of these to continue to play the game.



Huh? Fiction is fiction! Experiencing fiction can of course have, WILL have I should say, some sort of real-world consequences, but the fictional narrative and its fictional causality is only very tangentially related to any ACTUAL causality in the real world. 



> We don't tell people we're trying to encourage to play with us tales that go "we have a bunch of fun!  Bob narrates some stuff, then John narrates some stuff, then Fred narrates some stuff, and then Bob narrates some more!  It's a blast!"  Instead, we tell the fiction we came up with together, and that fiction has a lot of 'and then's and 'because of that's because stories only work if they have at least a passing acquaintance with reality.  "Bob said there's a teapot full of dragons and then John said it's a teapot full of unicorns and then Fred said it's a housecoat full of unicorns and then Bob said there's no housecoat at all!  Totally awesome game!" makes no sense and we don't play for this outcome.  We instead agree to hold the fiction as causal, and, because of that agreement, the fiction is causal and we take concrete and fictional actions because of what's already happened in the fiction.




I don't entirely agree even with the aesthetic element of this argument. I think there are plenty of times when we agree (often, maybe even typically in a silent understood fashion) to just 'let it go' and make a narrative that has some aesthetically pleasing character to it (a moral tale, or just a pleasing story of revenge, survival, whatever) and not even worry about some critical thing would make the narrative utterly unbelievable if you attempted to pass it off as a description of events in the real world. I don't mean some spell or monster, I mean just basic stuff we know about how the world works. I don't even think D&D worlds FAINTLY RESEMBLE something that anyone would agree, on careful observation, can exist. The ecology is crazy, the economics are crazy, the politics are crazy, everything is crazy and pretty much exists to service telling a certain kind of story. Creating a certain narrative logic, rising and falling tension, etc. Those are the things that matter, not pretend causality that we mostly turn a blind eye to anyway except when people mysteriously get hung up on one tiny detail even though the whole forest is really paper mache.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Here in the real world there isn't a single person on Earth who can tell us why everything happens the way it does.  We have to guess at things, too.  That doesn't mean that there is no causation going on, but only that we don't understand it yet.  The game rules cannot be as detailed about the game fiction as what we know here on Earth, so there is more of causation that DMs and players have to guess at, but that doesn't mean that causation doesn't exist in D&D.



In the real world there exist real things that are really connected by real causal processes.

This morning in my bathroom something was making a dripping noise. Based on visual inspection I don't think it was a tap, so I infer that there must have been some water that had got "stuck" in some place (a soap holder; a plug hole) and was dripping out of there, making the noise. Clearly there was some process going on, although I don't know exactly what it was.

But a fiction doesn't have an existence independent of whatever is authored in respect of it. If I read a story, and a drip is mentioned, but the author doesn't tell me where the drip came from, there is no independent and objective truth of the matter.

In the real world, if I see a throng of people on the street then there is a true proposition that states the number of people in the throng. This is so whether or not I personally work out what that number is. But if a GM tells the players "You see a crowd outside the palace," there is _no true proposition about the number of people in that crowd_. Because the crowd has no objective existence. It's just something that someone made up! Likewise, there is no answer to the question "How long is the spout of the teapot in  [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION]'s front garden that had a dragon living in it?"

One obvious consequence of this is that the players and GM can't _guess_ at causation in the imaginary world of D&D. Any more than I can guess how many threads of cotton there are in Sherlock Holmes' shirt. I can ask the author. I can make up my own fanfic. But there's nothing for me to guess about!



Maxperson said:


> there is causation in D&D fiction that drives the rules.  A wizard casts fireball(fictional cause) and a fireball appears doing fire damage(rules effect).  A rogue attempts use a wand of fireballs in the fiction(cause) and if the use magic device is successful(rules effect) a fireball appears doing fire damage(rules effect).  That's causation.  There is a direct relationship between cause and effect.



The rules effect is not caused by an imaginary wizard casting an imaginary spell. It is caused by a real person - the player of said wizard (or the GM if its a NPC) making an action declaration "I cast Fireball!"


EDIT: I just saw that [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] posted much the same not far upthread. I agree with what he said.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> Pemerton’s premise and much of the discussion presumes that the GM in examples of his chosen style will perform per the ideal, and that GMs in examples of a more GM driven style will of course perform poorly.



I have not made any such presumption.

It's inherent to a GM-driven style of game that the GM drive. Hence, the players have less agency over the content of the shared fiction. This is evidenced by the fact that action declarations may fail not in virtue of the resolution mechanics, but because the GM has already established some unrevealed backstory in virtue of which the action can't succeed. It is further evidence by the fact that the GM will not be drawing the material for framing and consequence narration from stuff provided by the players themselves in the build and play of their PCs.

That's what a GM-driven style means! Of course if the GM-driven game is less GM-driven (eg the GM draws material from stuff provided by the players; the GM does not rely on unrevealed backstory for adjudication; etc) then the game will have more player agency, but precisely because it is less GM-driven!


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> when you say that one fiction actually caused another, you have left the reservation.



This, 100%!



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Causation isn't a convention, not in the real world, its an absolute objective property of the Universe we inhabit (@Pemerton, and all other philosophers in this thread, NOT A PEEP!!!!).



Well, it should be pretty clear from my posts that I think causal processes are real things. But I'll save it for another time to tell you how I think this can be reconciled with Hume . . .


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> You switched from 'fictional' to 'abstract'.  That's a pretty big switch, as 'abstract' includes thoughts and emotions which have clear causal properties



Thoughts aren't abstract objects. They are concrete - located in time and space.

(Well, "thought" is ambiguous. Sometimes it is used to mean "meaning" or "proposition" or "content" - that's abstract. But the state of your brain that constitutes the fact that you're thinking whatever you're thinking right now - that's a concrete physical process in your brain.)

Likewise emotions.



Ovinomancer said:


> The number 2 is an abstract object, and, in some ways, a fictional one, but, as an engineer, I can use the number 2 to cause many things to happen.



No. You can use your brain to make things happen. You can use two (hammers, cables, kilograms of concrete, etc) to make things happen. The number 2 itself does not do anything, because it does not participate in causal processes, because (for starters) it's not located in time or space.



Ovinomancer said:


> my concept and ideas about the number 2 cause me to take physical action that cause things.



Correct. But your concept of the number 2 is not the same thing as the number 2. The general point is that an idea of something isn't the same thing as the thing itself. I have an idea of Godzilla. That idea exists - it's in my brain. I'm prepared to say that the content/meaning of that idea exists - it's an abstract object. The idea in my brain expresses that content. So does the idea of Godzilla in someone else's brain - that's why it is possible for us to have "the same idea" ie to both have an idea that has the same content meaning.

But Godzillla doesn't exist. And is not the same as the idea of Godzilla. The idea of Godzilla can fit in my head. Even if Godzilla did exist, it's too big to fit in my head. 



Ovinomancer said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The time my super-mathematician spent yesterday squaring the circle, being an impossible event, has no causal effect on anything. But a consistent story about my super-mathematician would have to allow that while that series of geometric figures was being drawn, my super-mathematician cannot also have been designing yet another perpetual motion machine. Only one set of plans can be drawn at a time.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> you're still saying that you're using a fictional construct of time in fiction to dictate how you author the fiction.
Click to expand...


My story about my super-mathematician had a couple of points.

First was to point out that it's trivial to tell a story about impossible things.

Second was to point out that it's trivial to tell a story about inconsistent/contradictory things - the idea that any person squared the circle is _contradictory_; the idea that any _person_ designed a perpetual motion machine is inconsistent, as the same causal processes that are necessary conditions of anyone being a person (eg basic physical and chemical processes constitutive of and necessary for the continuing existence of all living things) make it impossible that there should be such a things as a perpetual motion machine.

Third was to point out that I can draw a line on consistency or inconsistency whereever I want. So I'm happy to tell a story about my super-mathematician doing these impossible things that involve self-contradiction and are actually inconsistent with my mathematician even existing, but I draw the line at my mathematician being in two places at once, and so insist that _first_ the circle was squared, and _then_ the perpetual motion machine designed.

The relevant constraints are (as [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has already pointed out) aesthetic ones - what conventions do I wish to follow, or perhaps to flout, in my storytelling? It's just laughable to say that _a fictional construct of time in fiction to dictated how I authored the fiction_. I mean, which construct do you even have in mind - the one that says the mathematician can't be in two places at once, or the one that says that perpetual motion machines are possible?

No fictional construct dictated anything. I decided to tell a story which conforms to some but not other ideas about what is possible in relation to time.



Ovinomancer said:


> Here's a test:  provide your example again without ever referring to any fiction whatsoever and see if you can actually construct an example that isn't a wordier version of "I authored some fiction."  This goes back to my argument that the fiction has to exist because it's used to construct new fiction and engage game mechanics.  If the fiction doesn't exist, then there's nothing there to engage.



I don't really understand this, but in any event here is what I did in my example: I told a story about a super-mathematician who squares the circle and who designs perpetual motion machines, but who is unable to do both at once.

If this was a RPG, presumably we would have rules which say things like "Whenever a player declares that his/her PC is trying to perform a feat of impossible mathematics or science, follow procedureX XYZ." Much like the spellcasting rules found in many fantasy RPGs.

(As I said, I don't understand what you mean by "without ever referring to any fiction whatsoever". If you mean "tell your story without telling your story", well that seems rather hard and I haven't done that. If you mean "tell your story about imaginary things without talking about any imaginary things" well I haven't done that either, for much the same reason. If you are assuming that to talk or think about something implies that it exists, well I refer you once again to Godzilla: from the fact that I've mentioned Godzilla several times in this post, it doesn't mean that Godzilla exists. From the fact that I've told a story about a super-mathemtician who can square the circle and design perpetual motion machines, it doesn't follow that any rule for constructing a square from a circle exists - there is no such rule - nor that any perpetual motion machine exists - there are no such machines.)


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> In the real world there exist real things that are really connected by real causal processes.
> 
> This morning in my bathroom something was making a dripping noise. Based on visual inspection I don't think it was a tap, so I infer that there must have been some water that had got "stuck" in some place (a soap holder; a plug hole) and was dripping out of there, making the noise. Clearly there was some process going on, although I don't know exactly what it was.
> 
> But a fiction doesn't have an existence independent of whatever is authored in respect of it. If I read a story, and a drip is mentioned, but the author doesn't tell me where the drip came from, there is no independent and objective truth of the matter.




The causal process cannot continue without the fiction.  It's impossible for you to use the UMD skill to ignite a fireball in 3.5 without the causal process going through the fiction.  It can't be done and still be playing the roleplaying game.  Player declares his PC is using UMD on the wand of fireballs.  There is no next step of roll and check the numbers as both the skill and the wand require fictional existence within a PC AND for the PC to attempt to use the wand via the skill.  So the next step in the process must be for the fictional character to have those things and make an attempt.  Once that attempt is made within the fiction, THEN you can engage the mechanics to see what happens, but you still aren't done.  The effect takes place within the fiction, so you have to back there to continue or finish the process.  The fireball goes off in the fiction if the skill is successful, and often the process continues back to the real world for some book keeping, but that isn't always the case.  Cause and effect



> In the real world, if I see a throng of people on the street then there is a true proposition that states the number of people in the throng. This is so whether or not I personally work out what that number is. But if a GM tells the players "You see a crowd outside the palace," there is _no true proposition about the number of people in that crowd_. Because the crowd has no objective existence. It's just something that someone made up! Likewise, there is no answer to the question "How long is the spout of the teapot in  @_*chaochou*_'s front garden that had a dragon living in it?"
> 
> One obvious consequence of this is that the players and GM can't _guess_ at causation in the imaginary world of D&D. Any more than I can guess how many threads of cotton there are in Sherlock Holmes' shirt. I can ask the author. I can make up my own fanfic. But there's nothing for me to guess about!




There is a true number within the fiction.  It just requires the DM to let the players know what that is.  Once he does, that number given will have been the correct one the entire time.  And while the DM can't guess it it, being for the purposes of the game a god who knows all, the players can guess at it all day long.  The DM knows the objective answer having determined it, and he doesn't have to tell the players who can guess and guess and guess.  There's nothing that says that a causal process is invalidated if it is created or involves fiction, rather than discovered and entirely in the real world.  All that is required is that cause lead to effect.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The causal process cannot continue without the fiction.  It's impossible for you to use the UMD skill to ignite a fireball in 3.5 without the causal process going through the fiction.  It can't be done and still be playing the roleplaying game.  Player declares his PC is using UMD on the wand of fireballs.  There is no next step of roll and check the numbers as both the skill and the wand require fictional existence within a PC AND for the PC to attempt to use the wand via the skill.  So the next step in the process must be for *the fictional character to have those things and make an attempt.  *Once that attempt is made within the fiction, THEN you can engage the mechanics to see what happens, but you still aren't done.  *The effect takes place within the fiction, so you have to back there to continue or finish the process*.  The fireball goes off in the fiction if the skill is successful, and often the process continues back to the real world for some book keeping, but that isn't always the case.  Cause and effect



Like [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] said upthread, if you think that imaginary things are engaging in causal relations, you're off the reservation!

I've bolded the two key bits you've said about the fiction. The first is a game rule: _in order to be permitted to make the "use a magic device" move_, everyone has to agree that the shared fiction includes your PC holding a wand etc. If the fiction includes that, then the player of the character is allowed to say "I try and use the wand." _The cause, here, is that everyone agrees on a story which includes the content of the player's act of authorship_. The events of the story are not real, and are not causing anything.

As for "the effect takes place in the fiction" - what that means is that there is another game rule: _if the UMD roll succeeds, then everyone has to agree that the shared ficiton includes a fireball shooting from the wand_. That is, there is a rule about creating new fiction. The causal process, once again, is a social process which involves everyone agreeing on what a rule requires, and then following that rule.

If people decide to break the rule - eg the GM applies the 2nd ed AD&D/White Wolf "golden rule" advice to ignore the mechanics, because s/he thinks it would be more fun if the fireball didn't happen - then the fiction won't contain a fireball being shot from the wand. Because the GM has authored it differently.

To reiterate: the cause and effect you are identifying are game rules that actual people in the real world are following: rules about what to do when a certain bit of fiction is authored; and rules about what fiction to author following a certain mechanical process being resolved.



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In the real world, if I see a throng of people on the street then there is a true proposition that states the number of people in the throng. This is so whether or not I personally work out what that number is. But if a GM tells the players "You see a crowd outside the palace," there is no true proposition about the number of people in that crowd. Because the crowd has no objective existence.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There is a true number within the fiction.  It just requires the DM to let the players know what that is.  Once he does, that number given will have been the correct one the entire time.  And while the DM can't guess it it, being for the purposes of the game a god who knows all, the players can guess at it all day long.  The DM knows the objective answer having determined it, and he doesn't have to tell the players who can guess and guess and guess.
Click to expand...


This is equally nonsense.

In a Traveller session I GMed a few weeks ago, the PCs were at a market on a low-tech world, buying trinkets. How many stalls were there at the market? I don't know. The players don't know. They can't try and guess, as there is nothing _too_ guess.

You say "It just requires the DM to let the players know what that is." But I can't do that, as I DON'T KNOW IT. I could _make it up_, but the only causation at work there is causation in my brain.

You also say "Once he does, that number given will have been the correct one the entire time." Which is absolutely confused. Because the bolded phrase clearly refers to _real time in the real world_, not imaginary time within the fiction.

To elaborate: Suppose that I make up, now, that there were 17 stalls at the market. It's simpely not true that, yesterday, the story included there being 17 stalls. That's a bit of the story that I wrote just now. (Authorship is a process that happens in time. That's why sometimes authors die with unfinished books, which have correspondingly gappy stories.)

But it makes no sense to say that "Yesterday, within the fiction, there were 17 stalls just as now, within the fiction, there were 17 stalls." Because, within the fiction, the "yesterday" and "now" of the real world have no purchase. 

As [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] posted upthread, playing "let's pretend" can be fun. But trying to maintain the stories you imagined have real causal power, and trying to suggest that the author is _really_ coming to know them - so that players _wondering what the GM will decide_ should really be described as _trying to guess the truth about the story_ - is deluded.

Fiction is fiction. It's imaginary. Made up. You can make it be whatever you want. You can agree to whatever rules you want in respect of how you author it. It's all under you control, as author; or your collective control, as a group of authors. It doesn't, and can't, control you.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> There is a true number within the fiction.



Here's another go at this.

In my Traveller game, the world of Olyx - where there PCs have just arrived -  has population 1 (ie in the 10s, and less than 100). I've told my players that the number of people on the world is 50-odd. Suppose I get hit by a truck on the way to work tomorrow. What is the "true number", within the fiction, of people on Olyx?

Answer: none. That bit of the fiction hasn't even been written.

And you can't extrapolate from the established fiction. How would you even do that? It's a sci fi game - it's chock full of impossibilities, like human/alien hybrids, FTL travel, gravitic propulsion (complete with grav plates and inertial stabilisers to make starship interiors feel just like home), etc. Among all that, how can we say that the number of people on a world _must _be a natural number? Or even a rational one?


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Like [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] said upthread, if you think that imaginary things are engaging in causal relations, you're off the reservation!
> 
> I've bolded the two key bits you've said about the fiction. The first is a game rule: _in order to be permitted to make the "use a magic device" move_, everyone has to agree that the shared fiction includes your PC holding a wand etc. If the fiction includes that, then the player of the character is allowed to say "I try and use the wand." _The cause, here, is that everyone agrees on a story which includes the content of the player's act of authorship_. The events of the story are not real, and are not causing anything.
> 
> As for "the effect takes place in the fiction" - what that means is that there is another game rule: _if the UMD roll succeeds, then everyone has to agree that the shared ficiton includes a fireball shooting from the wand_. That is, there is a rule about creating new fiction. The causal process, once again, is a social process which involves everyone agreeing on what a rule requires, and then following that rule.
> 
> If people decide to break the rule - eg the GM applies the 2nd ed AD&D/White Wolf "golden rule" advice to ignore the mechanics, because s/he thinks it would be more fun if the fireball didn't happen - then the fiction won't contain a fireball being shot from the wand. Because the GM has authored it differently.
> 
> To reiterate: the cause and effect you are identifying are game rules that actual people in the real world are following: rules about what to do when a certain bit of fiction is authored; and rules about what fiction to author following a certain mechanical process being resolved.




So here's a test for you then.  Using the 3.5 rules.  While playing D&D, come up with a way to go from the player declaration of UMD on the wand to the fireball happening, without having to go to the fiction during the process.  If you you can do that, I'll concede the point that the fiction isn't part of the cause and effect.


----------



## hawkeyefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think a GM who is learning to play in the 'Pemertonian scene framing' technique should probably hold off on creating an agenda for himself, at least on purpose. I mean, once you've been around that tree a few times, sure, experiment, figure it out! I'd say as a start, make all the elements generally supporting of and directed at establishing, contextualizing, and focusing on the player's agendas as described by the conflicts their characters get into and the needs they express.




Sure, that sounds like reasonable advice. 



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Eh, I don't know about that. I think GM-centered play puts a LOT of weight on the GM's shoulders. I think its pretty hard to pull off well. I think a collaborative narrative type of play is probably no easier, but poor or good GMing helps/hurts in both styles. Obviously if you play in a specific way, you point out the flaws you found when you played a different way, that explains your choice! I think we all chose, so we all have experiences of issues with alternate ways of playing. I don't think anyone is particularly trying to be biased. I mean, I KNOW I can run a pretty decent game in traditional style. Its a proven thing for me. I just like the other style better.




I agree with most of what you say here. I was not saying that GM driven play doesn't rely heavily on the GM. I just don't think it must mean an absence of player agency. I think that for the most obvious example of D&D, yes, player agency is not present in the sense of authoring things into the fiction through action declaration. Players cannot author the presence of an object by declaring that their character searches for said object. 

But does that mean that player agency is therefore absent from the game? Of course not. 

I don't mind flaws being pointed out about a particular style. I'm willing to point them out myself. It's just when none are seen on the other side...that gets a bit frustrating. 



AbdulAlhazred said:


> One could argue that to the extent your game has those virtues you are converging on [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s style of play, or mine, etc. It really IS a continuum. I think its possible to find strengths in GM centered play, although I also think that a lot of games aren't really leveraging those, and might be even more cool if they tried to mix in some player agenda.




The first part here is all I am really trying to say. There can be strengths in GM centered play. And I also like your reference to play being a continuum. I feel that I use methods of both player driven and GM driven play, depending on what it is we're trying to do, and what aspects of the game are involved. 

The fact that some games don't leverage those strengths may indeed be true. But then that's a matter of preference and what one's desired goal is for play. For someone playing a very Gygaxian kind of "classic" D&D, I doubt that they see the lack of leverage for player input on the fiction beyond advocating and acting for their character all that much. 



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I wouldn't argue that it is. I argue that it is what it is, but that often it DOES get in the way of player agendas, at which time it becomes detrimental, and a LOT of GM's don't seem to know better.




Right. This is what I mean by GM performance being the issue. If the GM and the players want a different kind of experience than the default, then they need to do things differently. If they decide at the start of a D&D 5E game that the elements of the story are going to be based on what the players bring to the table during character generation, then yes, the DM needs to incorporate those ideas into the game.


----------



## hawkeyefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> You can make up a story under which fiction A FICTIONALLY caused fiction B, and that's fine, I am totally all for you doing that, but when you say that one fiction actually caused another, you have left the reservation.




Is anyone really doing that? Or are we all just talking about the fiction and how events within the fiction SEEM to influence each other? 

Why did Boromir die? (oops spoiler alert!!!) 

Because he was shot by orcs while trying to usher the hobbits to safety. That, or something very like it, is the answer you'll get if you ask that question. 

The fact that the character died in the story was actually because Tolkein wanted to establish the stakes, and he wanted to break up the group of characters, and he wanted to set up Faramir's later introduction and struggle are the real answers.....but is anyone really confusing that? 

Fictional continuity can be a desire in play. I don't think that having such a desire means one has "left the reservation". At worst, perhaps an argument has been constructed on shaky logic or wording. 

No one is mistaking these events for real life.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> I have not made any such presumption.




Perhaps you've not outright stated it, but it certainly seems to be the case. 

I asked simply if a GM playing Burning Wheel could introduce his own agenda into the narration...and you could not even acknowledge that such was possible. Instead, you asked what I was aiming for and then gave an example where the GM of course did not do it. 



pemerton said:


> It's inherent to a GM-driven style of game that the GM drive. Hence, the players have less agency over the content of the shared fiction. This is evidenced by the fact that action declarations may fail not in virtue of the resolution mechanics, but because the GM has already established some unrevealed backstory in virtue of which the action can't succeed. It is further evidence by the fact that the GM will not be drawing the material for framing and consequence narration from stuff provided by the players themselves in the build and play of their PCs.




Who says the GM will not be drawing on the material from stuff provided by the players? This is going to vary by table. 

The action declaration "failing" is something I disagree with you about, but ultimately, it does reduce player ability to introduce fictional elements to the game, so a game that does allow it will likely have more agency than a game without. But that's presuming all other areas of the games are balanced. 



pemerton said:


> That's what a GM-driven style means! Of course if the GM-driven game is less GM-driven (eg the GM draws material from stuff provided by the players; the GM does not rely on unrevealed backstory for adjudication; etc) then the game will have more player agency, but precisely because it is less GM-driven!




Yes, this is my point....I don't think that it's a binary situation. I think all games contain elements of both "styles". In the past, I've been told I am wrong in that regard....that the game must be either one or the other. This thread seems to be putting forth that same concept. 

Am I misunderstanding? Do you think that a game can be both player driven and GM driven? Or that it can contain elements of each?


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> Thoughts aren't abstract objects. They are concrete - located in time and space.
> 
> (Well, "thought" is ambiguous. Sometimes it is used to mean "meaning" or "proposition" or "content" - that's abstract. But the state of your brain that constitutes the fact that you're thinking whatever you're thinking right now - that's a concrete physical process in your brain.)
> 
> Likewise emotions.



Bafflegab.  We clearly aren't discussing brain function, and I don't concede this argument, either.  I'm uninterested in the side discussion it would entail, though.



> No. You can use your brain to make things happen. You can use two (hammers, cables, kilograms of concrete, etc) to make things happen. The number 2 itself does not do anything, because it does not participate in causal processes, because (for starters) it's not located in time or space.



Having a location in time or space is not the full criterion of the Way of Negation for abstract vs concrete objects.  In fact, using the first principle of physicality to satisfy the second criteria of causation is expressly bad logic.  That entire argument even accepts that some things may not have a location in time and space but may still have causal properties.



> Correct. But your concept of the number 2 is not the same thing as the number 2. The general point is that an idea of something isn't the same thing as the thing itself. I have an idea of Godzilla. That idea exists - it's in my brain. I'm prepared to say that the content/meaning of that idea exists - it's an abstract object. The idea in my brain expresses that content. So does the idea of Godzilla in someone else's brain - that's why it is possible for us to have "the same idea" ie to both have an idea that has the same content meaning.
> 
> But Godzillla doesn't exist. And is not the same as the idea of Godzilla. The idea of Godzilla can fit in my head. Even if Godzilla did exist, it's too big to fit in my head.



I can also have ideas about things that do exist.  This isn't an argument that works -- you cannot find one example of a thing and then import the properties of that example to the entire class. 



> My story about my super-mathematician had a couple of points.
> 
> First was to point out that it's trivial to tell a story about impossible things.



Not argued.



> Second was to point out that it's trivial to tell a story about inconsistent/contradictory things - the idea that any person squared the circle is _contradictory_; the idea that any _person_ designed a perpetual motion machine is inconsistent, as the same causal processes that are necessary conditions of anyone being a person (eg basic physical and chemical processes constitutive of and necessary for the continuing existence of all living things) make it impossible that there should be such a things as a perpetual motion machine.



Also not argued.



> Third was to point out that I can draw a line on consistency or inconsistency whereever I want. So I'm happy to tell a story about my super-mathematician doing these impossible things that involve self-contradiction and are actually inconsistent with my mathematician even existing, but I draw the line at my mathematician being in two places at once, and so insist that _first_ the circle was squared, and _then_ the perpetual motion machine designed.



Again, not argued.

What was argued is that I can imagine possible things, consistent things, and have an objective line on that consistency.  This becomes difficult the more complex a situation I imagine, but a simple statement like, "The boy walked up the hill" can meet all of those criteria and _still be fiction_.

Again, you cannot take an example of impossible, inconsistent things and say that all such things are impossible and inconsistent.  This is a basic logical failure -- going from the specific to the general.  



> The relevant constraints are (as [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has already pointed out) aesthetic ones - what conventions do I wish to follow, or perhaps to flout, in my storytelling? It's just laughable to say that _a fictional construct of time in fiction to dictated how I authored the fiction_. I mean, which construct do you even have in mind - the one that says the mathematician can't be in two places at once, or the one that says that perpetual motion machines are possible?
> 
> No fictional construct dictated anything. I decided to tell a story which conforms to some but not other ideas about what is possible in relation to time.



And yet, you authored the fiction that the mathematician cannot be in two places at once because he cannot be in two places at once.  You used fictional concepts applied to your scenario (ie, I imagine the fictional world my mathematician inhabits spa has spatial properties consistent with the real world in this regard) to constrain the fiction you authored.  Can you author you fiction about the mathematician without such constraints?  Sure, but you didn't, you used another fictional concept to modify how you authored the fiction of you mathematician.  The constraint you imagined caused you to author your fiction in a certain way.

Did it cause you to author the fiction?  No.  Just like a rock doesn't cause a window to break.  But, absent the rock, the results change, just like absent your fictional constraint, the results change.



> I don't really understand this, but in any event here is what I did in my example: I told a story about a super-mathematician who squares the circle and who designs perpetual motion machines, but who is unable to do both at once.
> 
> If this was a RPG, presumably we would have rules which say things like "Whenever a player declares that his/her PC is trying to perform a feat of impossible mathematics or science, follow procedureX XYZ." Much like the spellcasting rules found in many fantasy RPGs.



Question:  do rules exist?  According to your arguments, they cannot, as they are concepts.  Note, there's a difference between the rules of an RPG and the physical arrangement of woodpulp and ink laid out in patterns so that you can transport those concepts.

If rules are concepts, and so abstract and non-existent, then they are like fiction (and, arguably, as they don't describe real events they are fictions) and you're arguing that this fiction defines how you can author fiction in an RPG.



> (As I said, I don't understand what you mean by "without ever referring to any fiction whatsoever". If you mean "tell your story without telling your story", well that seems rather hard and I haven't done that. If you mean "tell your story about imaginary things without talking about any imaginary things" well I haven't done that either, for much the same reason. If you are assuming that to talk or think about something implies that it exists, well I refer you once again to Godzilla: from the fact that I've mentioned Godzilla several times in this post, it doesn't mean that Godzilla exists. From the fact that I've told a story about a super-mathemtician who can square the circle and design perpetual motion machines, it doesn't follow that any rule for constructing a square from a circle exists - there is no such rule - nor that any perpetual motion machine exists - there are no such machines.)




Godzilla does exist -- not as a 80 story tall atomic lizard, but as the concept of an 80-foot tall lizard.  That concept exists, else how would I know what you're talking about.  Is it a concrete object?  No, clearly.  It's an abstract one.  But that doesn't eliminate it's existence because abstract objects exist, and can have causality.  

But, thank you for admitting that you cannot discuss fiction without the fiction being involved.  This means that your story must exist, else you should be able to discuss non-existent things by just referring to the set of things that doesn't exist.


NOTE:  it occurs to me that your penchant for abusing the definition of words may again be at the forefront, so, what do you mean when you say 'exists.'


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I don't find this to be a cogent line of reasoning. Gravity isn't a convention in the real world. It happens. We describe it as a 'law of nature'. Take 100' fall onto a concrete surface, there's nothing like "just because I got 42 fractures last time doesn't mean it will hurt this time." People get locked up for their own good when they reason like this. So clearly there is something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT about the causality that exists in the real world vs whatever you are talking about, which is simply "some people agreed to pretend to believe that their characters fell 100' and took 10d6 damage." I'm arguing that PHYSICALLY THE FICTIONS ARE NOT the cause of other fictions, period, full stop. Its absolute. We aren't arguing about an opinion or something here, this is just reality talking. You can make up a story under which fiction A FICTIONALLY caused fiction B, and that's fine, I am totally all for you doing that, but when you say that one fiction actually caused another, you have left the reservation. The two things are qualitatively different and should not be named using the same name.



What causes you to reach for the dice to roll fall damage?  I'll wait.



> Again, this is apples vs oranges. Causation isn't a convention, not in the real world, its an absolute objective property of the Universe we inhabit (@Pemerton, and all other philosophers in this thread, NOT A PEEP!!!!).



Cool.  What was the first cause?  Oh, sorry, did I step across the philosopher line?

Again, I ask, what causes you to reach for the dice to roll fall damage?



> Huh? Fiction is fiction! Experiencing fiction can of course have, WILL have I should say, some sort of real-world consequences, but the fictional narrative and its fictional causality is only very tangentially related to any ACTUAL causality in the real world.



If you're argument is "the tale of the Red Wedding cannot break a window!" then, sure, we agree.  But that's an extremely narrow view of causation.  Especially if, while reading about the Red Wedding, I become upset by those fictional events and throw the book across the room and into the window, which breaks (actually, it was my wife that did this, and it wasn't a window, it was a vase).  Did the fiction have any part of that causal chain?  What if I read a lie that says that windows are actually aliens spying on us and I believe it and begin to break all the windows I see?  The lie is fiction.

Clearly, there's a bit more to causation, even in the real world, than 'the book broke the window'.  The book can't break the window by itself, either.




> I don't entirely agree even with the aesthetic element of this argument. I think there are plenty of times when we agree (often, maybe even typically in a silent understood fashion) to just 'let it go' and make a narrative that has some aesthetically pleasing character to it (a moral tale, or just a pleasing story of revenge, survival, whatever) and not even worry about some critical thing would make the narrative utterly unbelievable if you attempted to pass it off as a description of events in the real world. I don't mean some spell or monster, I mean just basic stuff we know about how the world works. I don't even think D&D worlds FAINTLY RESEMBLE something that anyone would agree, on careful observation, can exist. The ecology is crazy, the economics are crazy, the politics are crazy, everything is crazy and pretty much exists to service telling a certain kind of story. Creating a certain narrative logic, rising and falling tension, etc. Those are the things that matter, not pretend causality that we mostly turn a blind eye to anyway except when people mysteriously get hung up on one tiny detail even though the whole forest is really paper mache.



Again, that an example exists where you do not do a thing doesn't mean that, at all other times, you also do not do that thing.  This is a flawed argument -- going from the specific to the general, from an example to assuming it's all just like the examples.  Examples illuminate general concepts, they do not define them (generally).  

To ask again:  what causes you to reach for the dice to roll fall damage?


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I don't find this to be a cogent line of reasoning. Gravity isn't a convention in the real world. It happens. We describe it as a 'law of nature'. Take 100' fall onto a concrete surface, there's nothing like "just because I got 42 fractures last time doesn't mean it will hurt this time." People get locked up for their own good when they reason like this. So clearly there is something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT about the causality that exists in the real world vs whatever you are talking about, which is simply "some people agreed to pretend to believe that their characters fell 100' and took 10d6 damage." I'm arguing that PHYSICALLY THE FICTIONS ARE NOT the cause of other fictions, period, full stop. Its absolute. We aren't arguing about an opinion or something here, this is just reality talking. You can make up a story under which *fiction A FICTIONALLY caused fiction B*, and that's fine, I am totally all for you doing that, but when you say that one *fiction actually caused another*, you have left the reservation.



No, I'm still here on the reservation, thanks; but to me the two bits I've bolded here are in effect the same thing.  In the fiction, event A caused event B to happen; and in reality the narration or mechanics of event A caused the subsequent narration or mechanics of event B at the table.

They mirror.

Now, I'll re-quote an excerpt from the above quote:



			
				AbdulAlhazred said:
			
		

> PHYSICALLY THE FICTIONS ARE NOT the cause of other fictions, period, full stop. Its absolute.



Not from an immersive standpoint, a valid means of both play and analysis of said play which you seem to be completely and very intentionally rejecting.

From the character's point of view event A caused event B, and the character's immersed player would in theory also see it as such and react to it on that level.  Who cares what happens at the real-world table?  That's a minor irrelevant distraction - OK, dice get rolled, game mechanics get involved, blah, blah - to what's more important at this point: the events unfolding in the collective imagination of the players and DM.



> Again, this is apples vs oranges. Causation isn't a convention, not in the real world, its an absolute objective property of the Universe we inhabit



Which by default means that if the game world is to reflect any sort of reality (which IMO it should try to where and how it can) then causation within the fiction is going to be every bit as much an absolute objective property as seen by those within the fiction - the inhabitants of the game world.  And as it's those eyes through which the immersive player is looking.....

We as real-world players and DMs (myself included!) just need to learn better how to use this in-game logic and causality to provide a more consistent play experience and more engaging (and believable, and immersive) narration.

Lanefan


----------



## innerdude

Lanefan said:


> From the character's point of view event A caused event B, and the character's immersed player would in theory also see it as such and react to it on that level.  Who cares what happens at the real-world table?  That's a minor irrelevant distraction - OK, dice get rolled, game mechanics get involved, blah, blah - to what's more important at this point: the events unfolding in the collective imagination of the players and DM.
> 
> Which by default means that if the game world is to reflect any sort of reality (which IMO it should try to where and how it can) then causation within the fiction is going to be every bit as much an absolute objective property as seen by those within the fiction - the inhabitants of the game world.  And as it's those eyes through which the immersive player is looking.....
> 
> We as real-world players and DMs (myself included!) just need to learn better how to use this in-game logic and causality to provide *a more consistent play experience and more engaging (and believable, and immersive) narration.*




At one point in my RPG play and GM-ing experience, I would have felt that the bolded part of the quote above was paramount to my enjoyment of RPG play. "Believable" and "immersive" play was the whole purpose in playing. I've always been a very "actor stance" player, more so than anyone else in the groups with which I've played. The best moments playing RPGs for me were the times I felt like I could really stay in the character's head. 

The problem for me eventually became, it didn't matter how much I could "stay in my character's head" when my character never actually seemed to be pursuing something relevant to their framed fictional positioning. There was always tension between the things my character would _do_ in the game, and the things that should have been intrinsic to their circumstances.

So at points throughout play, the immersion would dim, as my character would be led from one GM plot hook to another, because that's what was in front of us.

Too, my enjoyment would wane significantly when the party would get "stuck"---we somehow missed the GM's clues, and then he'd get exasperated and have to throw in some random bit of "deus ex machina" to get things back on track. One of the issues of GM-led games is that GMs---myself included---can rarely conceive of all of the potential connections between pieces in the game world. One of the most common logical fallacies is "narrow framing." The world is generally much more interconnected than we comprehend, and the problem of narrow framing only grows in an RPG when the GM is the sole arbiter of what exists in the fiction. As an "actor stance" player, I've often, OFTEN felt that my character would be significantly more self-aware and comprehending of their own circumstances than what was being presented by the GM.

The ability for a player to author fiction becomes immersive when the player is able to set their character into the fictional frame in ways that they feel are important.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> In the fiction, event A caused event B to happen; and in reality the narration or mechanics of event A caused the subsequent narration or mechanics of event B at the table.
> 
> They mirror.



At the table:

Player: "I draw my knife and throw it at the orc!"
GM: "OK, make an attack roll"

<dice are rolled, numbers compared, rules applied, etc>

GM: "Your knife lodges in the orc's chest. It falls down dead."​
That is a causal process, primarily social in its character but there is also the rolling of dice in there - a more simple bio-mechanical process - which provides triggers for varioius parts of the social process (eg one part of the social process involves comparing the number rolled on a die to another number that is salient in the social context).

As part of the social events described, the participants all imagine a knife being thrown and killing an orc. To describe this as "mirroring" doesn't seem to add anything.

Another example:

Player: "I cast a Death Spell!"

<player rolls dice; GM consults charts, notes, etc>

GM: "All of the orcs are dead - your magic snuffs out their spirits. But the ogre that was with them survives."​
This is similar to the first example, except that it is far less clear what the participants are imagining. What is _casting a spell_? Given that (unlike throwing a knife) that is a purely imaginary, impossible thing, each player probably evnisages it differently. And why did the orcs die? The AD&D PHB (p 82) tells us that the victims are slain instantly and irrevocably. But by what process? The GM has embellished it as "snuffing out their spirits" - but what does that even mean? What causal process does it describe?

Talking of "mirroring" here seems to presuppose that the imaginary causation can be reflected somehow - but given that we don't even know what that was, I'm pretty confident I'm not seeing any reflection of it anywhere. There's just storytelling.

Another example:

GM rolls wandering monster die. It comes up 6. GM rolls on a table. The result is "6 orcs".

GM: "You hear a noise ahead of you - round the corner of the dungeon corridor come 6 orcs."

Player of the half-orc PC: "I call out to them in Orcish - 'What are you doing here? Maybe we can help you!'"

<reaction dice are rolled, tables consulted, etc - the net results is "favourable reaction">

GM: "The lead orc replies in Orcish - 'I am Grusk of the Vile Rune tribe. We are searching for the Hidden Grotto of Luthic. If you can tell us how to find it, we will let you live!'"​
Again, the principle causal process here is social, but again there are interspersed moments of dice-rolling. Notice that _the presence of the orcs in the dungeon_ is established, as part of the fiction, before _the reason for them being there_ is established. This is typical of any random encounter generation process - the rules first tell us that something is encountered, and _then_ require the game participants - typically the GM - to author some further fiction that establishes elements of backstory for the encountered creature.

To describe this as "mirroring" seems positively misleading: acts of authorship that occur in time order A, B describe events which, in the fiction, occur in time order B, A.

"Mirroring" is, at best, an uohelpful metaphor. As the second and third examples show, though, it's more than that. It's an exercise in obscurantism.



Lanefan said:


> AbdulAlhazred said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> PHYSICALLY THE FICTIONS ARE NOT the cause of other fictions, period, full stop. Its absolute.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Not from an immersive standpoint, a valid means of both play and analysis of said play which you seem to be completely and very intentionally rejecting.
> 
> From the character's point of view event A caused event B, and the character's immersed player would in theory also see it as such and react to it on that level.  Who cares what happens at the real-world table?  That's a minor irrelevant distraction - OK, dice get rolled, game mechanics get involved, blah, blah - to what's more important at this point: the events unfolding in the collective imagination of the players and DM.
Click to expand...


The "immersive standpoint" is not a valid means of analysing play. That is to say, you CANNOT explain how roleplaying works by pretending you're Falstaff the Fighter. Just the same as Robert Downey Jr can't explain to you how he played the character of Iron Man by pretending to be Iron Man. Or JRRT can't tell you how he wrote LotR by pretending to be Bilbo or Frodo.

I've had an interesting experience of this matter in my own household quite recently. My daughter recently received a copy of The Princess Bride. As you may know, the book contains an introuction in which the author explains how his (grand?)father read him the story, how he (the author) abridged the book by getting rid of all the boring bits, etc.

That introduction is a fiction. A story. Just as, in the movie version, Peter Falk as the grandfather is just as fictional as the evetns involving Buttercup, Westley and the rest.

Now my daughter thinks that introduction is real, and when I try to explain to her that it is, itself, a literary device, she get's quite angry at me, asking "Why would the author lie?" It's kind of cute, but until my daughter comes to realise that the introduction _is_ a device, and that there _is_ no unabrdiged version of The Princess Bride, she is not going to be capable of offering a fully coherent analysis of the book.

When playing a RPG, the player can - if s/he wishes - ignore the fact that the GM made up a reason for the orcs to be in the dungeon _after_ rolling the wandering monster dice that told everyone that there are orcs in the dungon. But the player can't give any coherent account of how the game actually works until s/he recognises that fact. For instance, you can't write GM advice about how to use wandering monsters until you are prepared to write something like "After rolling on the table to determine what creature is encountered, it is your job as GM to determine the backstory of the encountered creatures, their reason for wandering the dungeon corridors, etc."

Obviously the language of "mirroring" has absolutely nothing to offer in writing that instructional text for GMs. And it's equally obvious that you can't just tell the GM to focus on  "the events unfolding in the collective imagination of the players and DM." After rolling on the wandering monster charts the GM can focus on those imaginary events as much as s/he likes, but that is not going to tell her what the orcs are doing in the dungeon. S/he's going to have to make something up!

(The same thing applies to    [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s idea that the players can "guess" how many people are in the crowd. The GM can "guess" as much as s/he likes, but until s/he actually performs an act of autorship there will be no particular number which is the number of people in the crowd.)



Lanefan said:


> We as real-world players and DMs (myself included!) just need to learn better how to use this in-game logic and causality to provide a more consistent play experience and more engaging (and believable, and immersive) narration.



"Using this in-game logic and causality to provide a play experince" is just an obscure way of saying "making things up". Whisch is    [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s point: the "in-game logic" is convention and genre conceit. So it is a convetion that we allow stories about dragons, even though from many points of view (biomecahnics, aerodynamics, etc) they are impossible.

Or return to the example of the fireball cast underwater. With a fireball spell, we are already talking about an event that is literally impossible: from nowhere, energy is conjured which has the superficial markers of combustion (eg flames) but is not actuallly combusting any material. Does it consume oxygen? Who knows?! There's certainly never been any rule I'm aware of for oxygen dperivation resulting from casting fireballl spells in enclosed spaces. So will the fireball burn underwater? This is a decision about genre, flavour, colour - call it what you like - but the idea that it's more "realistic" that the fire can't burn underwater, than that (say) water caues a penalty to attack with fire spells (which is the 4e approach), or that it doesn't make any difference that the spell is being cast underwater (which is a perfectly viable if less flavoursome approach) is just bizrre.



Lanefan said:


> if the game world is to reflect any sort of reality (which IMO it should try to where and how it can) then causation within the fiction is going to be every bit as much *an absolute objective property as seen by those within the fiction* - the inhabitants of the game world.



All that bolded bit means is that you're telling a story about characters who believe in causation, and who live in a world governed by causal laws. Which is somewhat implausible for a fantasy RPG, if you think about it - those characters know that uncaused events (ie magic), or events caused by subjective concerns like the will of the gods, happen all the time!


----------



## pemerton

innerdude said:


> One of the issues of GM-led games is that GMs---myself included---can rarely conceive of all of the potential connections between pieces in the game world. One of the most common logical fallacies is "narrow framing." The world is generally much more interconnected than we comprehend, and the problem of narrow framing only grows in an RPG when the GM is the sole arbiter of what exists in the fiction. As an "actor stance" player, I've often, OFTEN felt that my character would be significantly more self-aware and comprehending of their own circumstances than what was being presented by the GM.



This is another, very clear way of putting the point I tried to make in the OP - the dungeon is a very (I woudl say artificially) constrained environment, which makes it possible (if the GM and players share the same basic conceits of play) for the GM to manage the connections that you talk about.

But as soon as we start having adventurese take place in what is (notionally, at least) a "real" world it breaks down.

It's not a surprise that so much fantasy RPGing involves characters who are more like Conan - strangers in the worlds they travel through, with few or no connections to the society in which they live (although this is true only for some Conan stories; in others he encounters characters - NPCs, in RPG terms - with whom he has had past dealings) - than like the Dragonlance or LotR heroes, who are already strongly embedded in rich social situations, which they draw upon to give themselves strength, knowledge, etc.



innerdude said:


> The problem for me eventually became, it didn't matter how much I could "stay in my character's head" when my character never actually seemed to be pursuing something relevant to their framed fictional positioning. There was always tension between the things my character would _do_ in the game, and the things that should have been intrinsic to their circumstances.
> 
> So at points throughout play, the immersion would dim, as my character would be led from one GM plot hook to another, because that's what was in front of us.



If you've never read Christopher Kubasik's "interactive toolkit" you might find it interesting - among other things, he talks directly about this issue of disconnect between character as conceived by the player, and the actual events of play as dictated by the GMing techniques used, which seem to contracit that self-conception.

This is also why when, upthread, I have said that _as a player I want to play my character_ I have not just been saying "I want to make my own action declarations." I mean what I take you to be getting at - if my character is all about family and loyalty to the order, then I want to play a game where family and loyalty to the order matter. Not a game where I'm going on some fetch quest to get a NPC wizard the mushroom he needs for his magic soup, fighting random myconids and bullywugs along the way.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> So here's a test for you then.  Using the 3.5 rules.  While playing D&D, come up with a way to go from the player declaration of UMD on the wand to the fireball happening, without having to go to the fiction during the process.  If you you can do that, I'll concede the point that the fiction isn't part of the cause and effect.



_Going to the fiction_ here means performing an act of imagining stuff while talking to your friends.

Here is the process, in rough outline:

Player: "I take the wand out of my backpack and concentrate on it - I want to activate it's magic."

GM: "OK, make a Use Magic Device check."

<dice are rolled, tables consulted, etc>

GM: "OK, your check succeeds. A fireball blasts out of the wand!"

Player: "Cool!"​
The fiction does not play any causal role. The player and GM are engaged in a relatively complex social process, which itself is - at certain points - mediated through simpler bio-mechanical processes like rolling dice.

The fact that the player and GM both agree that, in the shared fiction, the player's character is holding the wand and concentrating on it, is a part of the causal process. That doesn't mean that _the PC, the wand, the backpack, the fireball, etc_ play any causal role.

Similarly: a production of Othello won't get very far if those on the stage can't agree who is being Othello, who Iago and so on. Just like RPGers, they have to coordinate their imaginations to establish a shared fiction. But that doesn't mean that the purely imaginary characters _Othello_, _Iago_ etc are exercising any causal power.

These imaginary things are imaginary. They don't make us do things. We make ourselves do things, in part because we agree with others to engage in various feats of imagination.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> Who says the GM will not be drawing on the material from stuff provided by the players? This is going to vary by table.



You're the one who said we were talking about GM-driven games - I'm just following your lead!

If, in fact, the players are contributing the key material (eg the stakes, the context, the motivations that are going to be actually salient in play - see my reply just above to [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] - etc) then why would you describe it as GM-driven?



hawkeyefan said:


> I think all games contain elements of both "styles". In the past, I've been told I am wrong in that regard....that the game must be either one or the other. This thread seems to be putting forth that same concept.
> 
> Am I misunderstanding? Do you think that a game can be both player driven and GM driven? Or that it can contain elements of each?



I think that saying that "all games contain elements of both "styles"" is, in the context of a thread like this, mostly unhelpful. It adds nothing to the analysis, and tends to make everything dissolve into porridge. It makes it impossible, for instance, for [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] to make the point he just made in his most recent post. It means that we can't talk about the difference between [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s example of the GM making up all this off-screen fiction about the harlot, and the way that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] might conceivably have produced similar fiction using DungeonWorld.

I honestly don't know much about how you run your game. I haven't read a lot of actual play examples from it. You persist in calling it GM-driven (as best I can tell from your posts and my recollection of them) but you also say that the players have a lot of agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction, and I am left trying to understand what you have in mind.

All I can say is stuff like this: if, at key moments of crunch (eg trying to find the important map; trying to persuade an NPC to accept a bribe; etc) the outcome depends to a significant extent on what the GM decided about the fiction in advance (eg s/he wrote in her notes that the map is in the kitchen; she has already made a note that the only official in town who will take a bribe is Old Ludo the cemetery gatekeeper; etc), or what the GM secretly decides about the fiction at that moment; then the players are, at that key moment of play, exercising little agency over the content of the shared fiction.

Or stuff like this: if your game is run in a similar way to what the Alexandrian describes with his "three clue rule" and "node based design", then you are running a game in which most of the agency over the content of the shared fiction resides with the GM.

If sometimes your game is like that, but sometimes like something else, then that means that sometimes the GM is the predominant author of the shared fiction, and at other times the players have agency over it. That sort of precision is - in the context of a thread whose aim is analysis - far more helpful than a bland statement that tries to average everything out. (For the same reason that, when you're analysing human thermal comfort, it sheds little light on the matter to describe the person whose head is in the fridge and feet are in the oven as having the same overall thermal experience as the person who is in a room heated to 40 degrees.)


----------



## Lanefan

innerdude said:


> At one point in my RPG play and GM-ing experience, I would have felt that the bolded part of the quote above was paramount to my enjoyment of RPG play. "Believable" and "immersive" play was the whole purpose in playing. I've always been a very "actor stance" player, more so than anyone else in the groups with which I've played. The best moments playing RPGs for me were the times I felt like I could really stay in the character's head.
> 
> The problem for me eventually became, it didn't matter how much I could "stay in my character's head" when my character never actually seemed to be pursuing something relevant to their framed fictional positioning. There was always tension between the things my character would _do_ in the game, and the things that should have been intrinsic to their circumstances.
> 
> So at points throughout play, the immersion would dim, as my character would be led from one GM plot hook to another, because that's what was in front of us.



Where I've always felt free to ignore hooks and go my own way if that made more sense to the character...and this has included role-playing myself right out of games now and then; not because I-as-player wanted to quit, but because what the party was doing made no sense to the character I was playing, and in character I couldn't talk them into doing something else.

So what I'd often do would be come back with a different character, sometimes one who had more reason to do whatever was being done but more often a throwaway...though sometimes those 'throwaways' ended up becoming really interesting characters in their own right!  



> Too, my enjoyment would wane significantly when the party would get "stuck"



I just see this as being immersed, as your PC is also probably frustrated at being unable to determine what comes next.



> ---we somehow missed the GM's clues, and then he'd get exasperated and have to throw in some random bit of "deus ex machina" to get things back on track.



This can work well or badly, depending on the situations and just how the DM handles it. 


> One of the issues of GM-led games is that GMs---myself included---can rarely conceive of all of the potential connections between pieces in the game world. One of the most common logical fallacies is "narrow framing." The world is generally much more interconnected than we comprehend, and the problem of narrow framing only grows in an RPG when the GM is the sole arbiter of what exists in the fiction. As an "actor stance" player, I've often, OFTEN felt that my character would be significantly more self-aware and comprehending of their own circumstances than what was being presented by the GM.



I've hit this now and then also (I just fill in the missing bits with my own imagination until-unless contradicted by the DM's narration), and am probably guilty of causing the same headache to my own players when I DM. 



> The ability for a player to author fiction becomes immersive when the player is able to set their character into the fictional frame in ways that they feel are important.



To a point.  My problem comes when that fictional frame isn't consistent from one day-week-month to the next; far less likely if the DM has built a solid stage (game world) on which we can do our thing.

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> Is anyone really doing that? Or are we all just talking about the fiction and how events within the fiction SEEM to influence each other?
> 
> Why did Boromir die? (oops spoiler alert!!!)
> 
> Because he was shot by orcs while trying to usher the hobbits to safety. That, or something very like it, is the answer you'll get if you ask that question.



What people are really doing is suggesting that _the story about how Boromir died_ (ie he was shot by orcs) can explain _how a fiction was created in which Boromir was shot by orcs_.

Similarly, people are saying that _the story about the map being hidden in the kitchen_ can explain _why a fiction is not created in which the map is found in the study_.

And that is what I, [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION],  [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] and perhaps others are contesting.

If you want to understand where the shared fiction in a RPG comes from, you need to look at the (sometimes quite complex) practices that govern the processes of authorship. If you want to talk about who has agency over the content of that shared fiction, again you have to look at those practices.

And saying that _a player has the same agency in the game as a person does in the real world_ as if that _explains _why the GM, rather than the players, gets to decide that the shared fiction is about a map being hidden in the kitchen rather than a map being found in the study, is confused and obscurantist.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> if, while reading about the Red Wedding, I become upset by those fictional events and throw the book across the room and into the window, which breaks (actually, it was my wife that did this, and it wasn't a window, it was a vase). Did the fiction have any part of that causal chain?



No.

Someone wrote the book. That brought into being (through a complex series of causal processes) a volume in the hands of your wife, with words in a language that she was able to understand, with the result that your wife was caused to imagine the events that those words described. Imagining those events caused your wife to get upset. Your wife being upset caused her to throw the book, which then - via fairly straightforward mechanical processes - caused book to strike the window, in turn causing the glass in the window to shatter.

We could simplify this by saying "Your wife read some things that upset her, and therefore threw the book which broke a window."

The imaginary stuff plays no causal role. The event of imagining the stuff - what [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] called "experiencing fiction" - played a causal role.

This is not rocket science; it's a pretty basic distinction (between a thing and the idea of a thing). As I said upthread, this is what makes false beliefs, imagination, fantsy etc possible. It also explains why I can imagine Godzilla even though Godzilla is too big to fit in my head.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> My problem comes when that fictional frame isn't consistent from one day-week-month to the next; far less likely if the DM has built a solid stage (game world) on which we can do our thing.



Have you done any empirical work to verify this intuition? I don't know of any reason to think that it is true.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> At the table:
> 
> Player: "I draw my knife and throw it at the orc!"
> GM: "OK, make an attack roll"
> 
> <dice are rolled, numbers compared, rules applied, etc>
> 
> GM: "Your knife lodges in the orc's chest. It falls down dead."​



Mirrored in the fiction by Falstaffe drawing a knife, throwing it into the orc's chest, and the orc dropping dead as a result of this wound.



> That is a causal process, primarily social in its character but there is also the rolling of dice in there - a more simple bio-mechanical process - which provides triggers for varioius parts of the social process (eg one part of the social process involves comparing the number rolled on a die to another number that is salient in the social context).
> 
> As part of the social events described, the participants all imagine a knife being thrown and killing an orc. To describe this as "mirroring" doesn't seem to add anything.



I'm not so concerned with the social stuff at the table as I am with internal cause and effect within the game world as seen/felt/experienced by the characters.  Why?  It all comes back to my 'falling dominoes' idea, where one thing leads to another within the game world on a nice simple cause-effect basis.  That's what I want to look at - the validity of in-game causes-effects that reasonably and logically allow the DM to narrate event K as a later result of action A and all the subsequent actions and reactions and events B through J that the players (and PCs) don't know about.



> Another example:
> 
> Player: "I cast a Death Spell!"
> 
> <player rolls dice; GM consults charts, notes, etc>
> 
> GM: "All of the orcs are dead - your magic snuffs out their spirits. But the ogre that was with them survives."​
> This is similar to the first example, except that it is far less clear what the participants are imagining. What is _casting a spell_? Given that (unlike throwing a knife) that is a purely imaginary, impossible thing,



Never done any circle magic or been a member of a fraternal order, have you. 


> each player probably evnisages it differently. And why did the orcs die? The AD&D PHB (p 82) tells us that the victims are slain instantly and irrevocably. But by what process? The GM has embellished it as "snuffing out their spirits" - but what does that even mean? What causal process does it describe?



Yes the DM has embellished the narration (nothing wrong with that) of the effects caused by the Death spell.

Magic in the game is not immune to cause-effect.



> Another example:
> 
> GM rolls wandering monster die. It comes up 6. GM rolls on a table. The result is "6 orcs".
> 
> GM: "You hear a noise ahead of you - round the corner of the dungeon corridor come 6 orcs."
> 
> Player of the half-orc PC: "I call out to them in Orcish - 'What are you doing here? Maybe we can help you!'"
> 
> <reaction dice are rolled, tables consulted, etc - the net results is "favourable reaction">
> 
> GM: "The lead orc replies in Orcish - 'I am Grusk of the Vile Rune tribe. We are searching for the Hidden Grotto of Luthic. If you can tell us how to find it, we will let you live!'"​
> Again, the principle causal process here is social, but again there are interspersed moments of dice-rolling. Notice that _the presence of the orcs in the dungeon_ is established, as part of the fiction, before _the reason for them being there_ is established. This is typical of any random encounter generation process - the rules first tell us that something is encountered, and _then_ require the game participants - typically the GM - to author some further fiction that establishes elements of backstory for the encountered creature.
> 
> To describe this as "mirroring" seems positively misleading: acts of authorship that occur in time order A, B describe events which, in the fiction, occur in time order B, A.



Seems very realistic, though.  

Some guy walks around the corner in front of real-world me on the street - I've no idea why he's there or what he's doing, but he's become a part of my reality; and his presence there has been established before (in my view) his reason for being there.  Now obviously he HAS a reason for being there...and the same is true of the orcs in the game world...but neither I-as-me in the street nor I-as-character in the game world knows what that reason is, to begin with, and might never know.



> "Mirroring" is, at best, an uohelpful metaphor. As the second and third examples show, though, it's more than that. It's an exercise in obscurantism.



Well, I can't think of a better way to put forward the concept I'm trying to get across.



> The "immersive standpoint" is not a valid means of analysing play. That is to say, you CANNOT explain how roleplaying works by pretending you're Falstaff the Fighter. Just the same as Robert Downey Jr can't explain to you how he played the character of Iron Man by pretending to be Iron Man. Or JRRT can't tell you how he wrote LotR by pretending to be Bilbo or Frodo.



Either one can offer all kinds of insight for why those characters did certain things by explaining it from the character's point of view, however; and that's more what I'm after.



> I've had an interesting experience of this matter in my own household quite recently. My daughter recently received a copy of The Princess Bride. As you may know, the book contains an introuction in which the author explains how his (grand?)father read him the story, how he (the author) abridged the book by getting rid of all the boring bits, etc.
> 
> That introduction is a fiction. A story. Just as, in the movie version, Peter Falk as the grandfather is just as fictional as the evetns involving Buttercup, Westley and the rest.



I've never read the book but I've seen the movie about a gajillion times; and perhaps it's reflective of my immersion preferences that I unfailingly find the scenes where they cut to the kid and his grand-dad to be no more than a jarring and annoying interruption in the story.



> When playing a RPG, the player can - if s/he wishes - ignore the fact that the GM made up a reason for the orcs to be in the dungeon _after_ rolling the wandering monster dice that told everyone that there are orcs in the dungon. But the player can't give any coherent account of how the game actually works until s/he recognises that fact. For instance, you can't write GM advice about how to use wandering monsters until you are prepared to write something like "After rolling on the table to determine what creature is encountered, it is your job as GM to determine the backstory of the encountered creatures, their reason for wandering the dungeon corridors, etc."



Of course, if the DM's doing it right the player shouldn't be able to tell whether these orcs are 'wandering monsters' or not; and also shouldn't be able to tell whether the DM made up their backstory after rolling their existence or had it pre-authored all along.



> Obviously the language of "mirroring" has absolutely nothing to offer in writing that instructional text for GMs. And it's equally obvious that you can't just tell the GM to focus on  "the events unfolding in the collective imagination of the players and DM." After rolling on the wandering monster charts the GM can focus on those imaginary events as much as s/he likes, but that is not going to tell her what the orcs are doing in the dungeon. S/he's going to have to make something up!



Yes she is, and if she's any good what she makes up will be indiscernable from what she had pre-authored.

If she's really on her game she'll build in their reason for being there right in the initial narration of their presence: "You hear a noise ahead just before three orcs come around a corner about 20 feet ahead of you.  Two of them are carrying large buckets, probably empty, while the third holds some sort of metal implement - a crank handle, perhaps?"



> "Using this in-game logic and causality to provide a play experince" is just an obscure way of saying "making things up". Whisch is    [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s point: the "in-game logic" is convention and genre conceit. So it is a convetion that we allow stories about dragons, even though from many points of view (biomecahnics, aerodynamics, etc) they are impossible.



Pretty much everything I've said here assumes all-round acceptance of that convention; otherwise what's the point?



> All that bolded bit means is that you're telling a story about characters who believe in causation, and who live in a world governed by causal laws. Which is somewhat implausible for a fantasy RPG, if you think about it - those characters know that uncaused events (ie magic), or events caused by subjective concerns like the will of the gods, happen all the time!



Even something bizarre that happens at the will of the gods still has internal cause and effect: the cause is the deity exerting its will, and the effect is (usually) exactly what the deity wants it to be. 

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> We clearly aren't discussing brain function
> 
> <snip>
> 
> What was argued is that I can imagine possible things, consistent things, and have an objective line on that consistency.



I don't know what you mean by "an objective line on that consistency" - but imagining things clearly is a "brain function" ie an event that occurs in someone's brain.



Ovinomancer said:


> a simple statement like, "The boy walked up the hill" can meet all of those criteria and _still be fiction_.



I don't know what criteria you have in mind. Are you simply meaning that it is possible that a boy walked up a hill?



Ovinomancer said:


> you authored the fiction that the mathematician cannot be in two places at once because he cannot be in two places at once.



_I decided_ that the mathematician can't be in two places at once. I also decided that the mathematician can invent perpetual motion machines. Your _because_ does no work here. I have to decide what bits of reality I am going to stick to, and what bits I'm going to reject. This is not about consistency, it's about authorship.

In the boy story, what stops you from going on "And the hill was on the moon"? (Think of, say, Le Petit Prince.) Only a decision not to. There is no objective constraint.



Ovinomancer said:


> Question:  do rules exist?  According to your arguments, they cannot, as they are concepts.



As I said in the post to which you replied, "I have an idea of Godzilla. That idea exists - it's in my brain. I'm prepared to say that the content/meaning of that idea exists - it's an abstract object. The idea in my brain expresses that content."

So I've already said that concepts exist. They are abstract objects. They don't exercise causal power. And they are not identical with the things that they are "of" or "about". The idea of Godzilla is not Godzilla. The idea of a mathematician who can square the circle is not a mathematician who can square the circle. 



Ovinomancer said:


> Godzilla does exist -- not as a 80 story tall atomic lizard, but as the concept of an 80-foot tall lizard.  That concept exists'



Godzilla is not identical with the concept of him.

Immanuel Kant thought that the concept of a triangle has 3 parts, the concept of a square 4 parts, the concept of a chiliagon 1000 parts. Kant was wrong.

Likewise, I can write the word "red" in black ink with no loss of meaning.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], if you don't want to talk about how authorship takes place, that's fine. If you think that Robert Downey Jr telling you about his character's motivation is the same as talking to Iron Man, that's fine too but a bit weird.

But you can't talk coherently about the processes of RPGing without talking about authorship, and without acknowledging that _an author describing a character's motivations_ isn't the same things as _actually talking to someone and learning his/her motivations_.

In your post, you say - in response to my remark that the GM will have to make something up "Yes she is, and if she's any good what she makes up will be indiscernable from what she had pre-authored." That is all that matters in this discussion. The GM is authoring things; they are not being "caused by the fiction" (whatever that would mean). If the players want to ignore those moments of authorship, that's their prerogative, but you can't say that players who are completely disengaged from the authorship of the shared fiction nevertheless exercise significant agency in that respect. That's a contradiction.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], if you don't want to talk about how authorship takes place, that's fine. If you think that Robert Downey Jr telling you about his character's motivation is the same as talking to Iron Man, that's fine too but a bit weird.



No, I don't think talking to Robert Downey Jr. is the same as talking to Iron Man.

I also don't know how immersed he gets in his roles, but it's reasonable to say that if asked why Iron Man (or Tony Stark) did something he might begin his response with "Well, put yourself in Tony Stark's shoes for a moment in that situation..." - the answer is based out of the character perspective.

Now he could just as easily flippantly say something like "Because that's what the writers wanted him to do." and leave it at that; but even from there if he goes on to say something like "even though it's out of character for him" he's gone back into the character-based perspective.



> But you can't talk coherently about the processes of RPGing without talking about authorship, and without acknowledging that _an author describing a character's motivations_ isn't the same things as _actually talking to someone and learning his/her motivations_.



Except in the case of Robert Downey Jr./Tony Stark we're not talking about an author (at least I don't think RDJ writes any of the scripts), we're talking about a middle step - a player, as it were; tasked with taking someone else's authorship, infusing it with personality, and bringing it to life on the screen.  He has to deal with the processes of movie-making while he's at it, just like a D&D player has to deal with game mechanics while she's playing her character; but if he likes he can as far as possible leave all that in the hands of the director (DM) and just focus on his character.



> In your post, you say - in response to my remark that the GM will have to make something up "Yes she is, and if she's any good what she makes up will be indiscernable from what she had pre-authored." That is all that matters in this discussion.



Yes it is, but not for the reason you might think. 



> The GM is authoring things; they are not being "caused by the fiction" (whatever that would mean).



Who says?  What she's authoring now may be a direct result of something that happened in the fiction half an hour ago.  The orcs are going to the underground well now because the PCs cut off their surface water supply this morning.



> If the players want to ignore those moments of authorship, that's their prerogative, but you can't say that players who are completely disengaged from the authorship of the shared fiction nevertheless exercise significant agency in that respect. That's a contradiction.



So?  That's not where player agency lies, so why worry about it?

Player agency, or the exercise thereof, is what got the PCs here into this orc-infested castle in the first place.  They didn't have to come here*.  They could have gone to any number of other places and-or done any number of other things; yet they decided to come here.  And they decided to stay here, even though they've lost both their henches down a chasm and a fair bit of their adventuring gear went with them - they could have turned around and gone home after this setback, but decided not to.

Every such decision is where players get their agency.  They don't get to write the game-world, just like an actor (most of the time) doesn't get to write the movie script.  But they - unlike an actor - do get to decide what they're going to do within that game-world; and how they're going to approach it; and - along with the DM - what story will end up being told.

* - unless the DM isn't any good and has railroaded them here despite their intentions otherwise

Lanefan


----------



## Emerikol

pemerton said:


> W
> And saying that _a player has the same agency in the game as a person does in the real world_ as if that _explains _why the GM, rather than the players, gets to decide that the shared fiction is about a map being hidden in the kitchen rather than a map being found in the study, is confused and obscurantist.




I don't see why.  I really don't.  In my approach to gaming, the GM is tasked with establishing the state of the world.  The players are free then to "live" in that world and make things happen.  The players have the same agency as people do in this world which seems like a lot.  I mean we are used to being people and taking actions in this world.  So for me at least, it's comfortable being a character.  Naturally we often try out being someone a bit different from ourselves but we still want to be a character.  We want to make character level decisions.  It really does feel like cheating if I as a player can decide things outside of my character.  And I'm describing my feelings not saying you really are cheating if your group plays differently.

So as a player, I feel like the campaign is a good one when I feel like I'm immersed in the world and I'm being some fictional character.  The more I feel like I'm inside that characters head the more fun it is for me.  

I'm not saying you can't like different sorts of agency and if you do all power to you.  But I am resistant to the idea that the agency in my games is somehow not fun because it is limited to being in character.  For a lot of us that is a lot of fun.


----------



## Emerikol

pemerton said:


> In your post, you say - in response to my remark that the GM will have to make something up "Yes she is, and if she's any good what she makes up will be indiscernable from what she had pre-authored." That is all that matters in this discussion. The GM is authoring things; they are not being "caused by the fiction" (whatever that would mean). If the players want to ignore those moments of authorship, that's their prerogative, but you can't say that players who are completely disengaged from the authorship of the shared fiction nevertheless exercise significant agency in that respect. That's a contradiction.




Obviously, when I DM, I just speak as the character and I don't narrate.  And while I may make up things that I don't know, I base what I make up on what I believe is reasonable for how I've defined that character.  If I'm doubtful, I will secretly dice for a decision.  If it's something trivial, then I just go ahead and choose something.

As a player playing a character you do the same thing, right?  When your character is spoken to, you speak for your character.  You make that up.  It's not your personality necessarily.  It's the personality you have conceived for your character.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> Sure, that sounds like reasonable advice.
> 
> 
> 
> I agree with most of what you say here. I was not saying that GM driven play doesn't rely heavily on the GM. I just don't think it must mean an absence of player agency. I think that for the most obvious example of D&D, yes, player agency is not present in the sense of authoring things into the fiction through action declaration. Players cannot author the presence of an object by declaring that their character searches for said object.
> 
> But does that mean that player agency is therefore absent from the game? Of course not.
> 
> I don't mind flaws being pointed out about a particular style. I'm willing to point them out myself. It's just when none are seen on the other side...that gets a bit frustrating.
> 
> The first part here is all I am really trying to say. There can be strengths in GM centered play. And I also like your reference to play being a continuum. I feel that I use methods of both player driven and GM driven play, depending on what it is we're trying to do, and what aspects of the game are involved.
> 
> The fact that some games don't leverage those strengths may indeed be true. But then that's a matter of preference and what one's desired goal is for play.



I think there aren't sides. There's a continuum, but to the extent that the player's exercise agency in a game, that's a move in the direction of player-centered play, to whatever degree. I mean, I think the continuum is like, at one extreme is a GM authored narrative with no actual player input. The players simply make choices where they have no idea what the consequences of the choices are and they might as well be coin-flips (no real game is like this obviously). At the other end is some sort of collective free-association exercise where everything is a suggestion and anyone can establish any 'move' in the game simply by asserting it (honestly I'm not even sure this IS the other end of the spectrum, its actually hard to be sure where you go past a certain point). Again, this doesn't exist, or isn't really meaningfully an RPG anymore.

So, REAL games have an element in which the GM addresses the player's agenda. They make decisions in (and maybe out) of character that have some impact on the narrative. To the extent that the narrative is shaped in a way that reflects their agendas, which is addressing the fictional topics which the players are attempting to bring forth, as opposed to those being suggested by the GM purely for her own reasons, these are player-facing games. 

Likewise, even if the players are driving basically every aspect of the game, they are going to still have to rely on a GM to be some sort of 'bringer of frames', someone who establishes how the genre logic of the situation will be applied and which possibility becomes new fictional position, at least when the players cannot do so. Most games have some 'zone' in which the GM always does this. Again, I'm not sure how weak the GM's influence can become before the game stops being a game. Maybe some of the other people in this thread have something to say on that point.



> For someone playing a very Gygaxian kind of "classic" D&D, I doubt  that they see the lack of leverage for player input on the fiction  beyond advocating and acting for their character all that much.




Well, the question might be, is 'Gygaxian play' on this continuum, is it a totally different sort of game, and if it is on the continuum, where? I think that Gygaxian Play is 'game over all else', that is, it is an ultimately and virtually completely gamist enterprise. Is RP important in that mode of play? No, not really, or the rules wouldn't just gank off characters left and right, nor emphasize being able to create a new one in 1 minute flat. There's even a place in OD&D where the rules say to introduce the new character immediately, logic be damned. This is fine as a game concept, just pop in the new guy! As RP its incoherent. Now, maybe in another place Gygax says "yeah, come up with some sort of lampshade for this, maybe wait till the PCs get to a new room and put the character there" or something like that. 

I'd note that all the advice in DMG about time tracking is a must and etc is all in the same vein. Its not about REALISM, its about making time into a fungible sort of currency that characters have to spend in order to get certain things done! If you don't track it, then its not really a resource, just like if you told the PCs "hey, don't worry about gold, you can have whatever stuff you want." I guess "keep track of money" was too obvious to actually make into advice though! 

So, I'm loath to draw too many conclusions from dungeon crawling OD&D. I think it has deliberate elements to add player agency, but it is also intended to act as a test of skill and not a story telling experience, at least in its most archetypal form. I believe that as soon as Gygax went beyond that then things were added to the game like "let the player find a blank spot on the map for his fighter to build a keep on and let him decide what the spot looks like, etc. within reason"



> Right. This is what I mean by GM performance being the issue. If the GM and the players want a different kind of experience than the default, then they need to do things differently. If they decide at the start of a D&D 5E game that the elements of the story are going to be based on what the players bring to the table during character generation, then yes, the DM needs to incorporate those ideas into the game.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> What causes you to reach for the dice to roll fall damage?  I'll wait.



My desire to participate in an activity with other people that I'm playing a game with? Its no different from the cause of me rolling dice if the game was craps, that's what the social convention of the game indicates is my 'move' at that point. NOTHING else is causal. Concepts DO NOT CAUSE THINGS TO HAPPEN. Our brain state, the thoughts we have, which are the result of thinking about these concepts (and of many other things) lead to our taking actions (IE cause those actions).



> Cool.  What was the first cause?  Oh, sorry, did I step across the philosopher line?



Lol, perhaps, but we'll let it slide... 

I don't think 'first cause' is really relevant here. We are DEEP (billions of years at the very least) into a vast network of causes and effects. I don't think the nature of a putative first cause has very much bearing on anything taking place at my kitchen table right now, except in a very remote sense.

If we were to consider actually bringing out the philosophical guns though, I beg you to consider the Principle of Dependent Origination...



> If you're argument is "the tale of the Red Wedding cannot break a window!" then, sure, we agree.  But that's an extremely narrow view of causation.  Especially if, while reading about the Red Wedding, I become upset by those fictional events and throw the book across the room and into the window, which breaks (actually, it was my wife that did this, and it wasn't a window, it was a vase).  Did the fiction have any part of that causal chain?  What if I read a lie that says that windows are actually aliens spying on us and I believe it and begin to break all the windows I see?  The lie is fiction.




I think its fuzzy thinking when you use the same term to describe how your thinking evolved, in a psychological sense, and how physical object's interactions are related. I'm going to leave [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] to invoke Hume, but I highly suspect such an invocation would be instructive. 



> Clearly, there's a bit more to causation, even in the real world, than 'the book broke the window'.  The book can't break the window by itself, either.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Again, that an example exists where you do not do a thing doesn't mean that, at all other times, you also do not do that thing.  This is a flawed argument -- going from the specific to the general, from an example to assuming it's all just like the examples.  Examples illuminate general concepts, they do not define them (generally).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Examples are teaching instruments, but one thing they can teach us are generalizations. This is called 'reasoning by induction'. Inductive reasoning is not 'flawed', that is a generalization which is itself flawed!
> 
> Further, I think you fail to understand the true gist of my argument. It is such, "Imagined fictional worlds are not coherent enough to truly talk about causation WITHIN them" so the arguments you make about one fiction causing another are simply not valid IMHO. This is really regardless of any of these arguments you make about fiction causing us to do things in the real world. There is simply no way to gauge what the effect of any cause is in a fictional world, or to even know enough about the cause itself to know if it would create the putative effect, even if we had a complete description of what happened.
> 
> We can use our sense of drama and our aesthetic sensibilities to decide what would be a pleasing, or conventionally expected (ie following the conventions of the game) outcome and imagine that. Its not the same thing, at all. This is the actual argument I used to disassemble Ron Edward's whole theory of games (GNS). There is simply no such thing as 'S'. Its all really aesthetic and I don't think that his categories work for describing aesthetic preferences.
Click to expand...


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Another example:
> GM rolls wandering monster die. It comes up 6. GM rolls on a table. The result is "6 orcs".
> 
> GM: "You hear a noise ahead of you - round the corner of the dungeon corridor come 6 orcs."
> 
> Player of the half-orc PC: "I call out to them in Orcish - 'What are you doing here? Maybe we can help you!'"
> 
> <reaction dice are rolled, tables consulted, etc - the net results is "favourable reaction">
> 
> GM: "The lead orc replies in Orcish - 'I am Grusk of the Vile Rune tribe. We are searching for the Hidden Grotto of Luthic. If you can tell us how to find it, we will let you live!'"​
> Again, the principle causal process here is social, but again there are interspersed moments of dice-rolling. Notice that _the presence of the orcs in the dungeon_ is established, as part of the fiction, before _the reason for them being there_ is established. This is typical of any random encounter generation process - the rules first tell us that something is encountered, and _then_ require the game participants - typically the GM - to author some further fiction that establishes elements of backstory for the encountered creature.
> 
> To describe this as "mirroring" seems positively misleading: acts of authorship that occur in time order A, B describe events which, in the fiction, occur in time order B, A.
> 
> "Mirroring" is, at best, an uohelpful metaphor. As the second and third examples show, though, it's more than that. It's an exercise in obscurantism.
> 
> The "immersive standpoint" is not a valid means of analysing play. That is to say, you CANNOT explain how roleplaying works by pretending you're Falstaff the Fighter. Just the same as Robert Downey Jr can't explain to you how he played the character of Iron Man by pretending to be Iron Man. Or JRRT can't tell you how he wrote LotR by pretending to be Bilbo or Frodo.




Now, all the dialog back and forth about whether or not a fictional event 'caused' a player in the real world to roll some dice COULD all be seen in some light as being a semantic argument, but THIS is the real nut of the thing. Once you hare off into the land of thinking that fictional events matter, that they relate to each other in a 'causal' way, you CANNOT even have a productive discussion and analysis. You have to be able to step back and take apart the process FROM THE OUTSIDE to really understand it. Clearly [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has a lot better pedagogy skills than I do...


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Have you done any empirical work to verify this intuition? I don't know of any reason to think that it is true.




You know, you need to stop bringing up such good points 

This actually brings up a whole OTHER point about world building. In a sense HOW CAN the players help to create a consistent fiction about a world THEY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT? They also really have no stake in that world, by default (they could have or develop one, but the GM would need to foster that process I would think). Once you switch from constructing a shared fiction in which the elements focus on what the players are doing and wanting, then there's really no way for them to take the lead at all. They must, almost by definition, lose most of their practical ability to lead things along. 

This is how I see it, and coupled with the way I see fiction, as an aesthetic exercise and wholly inadequate as a means of describing any sort of, even fictional, causality, players can't really sink their hooks into the fiction unless they have some degree of authorial function, so that they 'own' both the narrative and the setting to some degree. And so that they are authorities in terms of what the decisions are about what is deemed to 'cause' what and to be 'possible' within that fiction. Only then does the world around the character have any hope of really coming alive.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> I'm not so concerned with the social stuff at the table as I am with internal cause and effect within the game world as seen/felt/experienced by the characters.  Why?  It all comes back to my 'falling dominoes' idea, where one thing leads to another within the game world on a nice simple cause-effect basis.  That's what I want to look at - the validity of in-game causes-effects that reasonably and logically allow the DM to narrate event K as a later result of action A and all the subsequent actions and reactions and events B through J that the players (and PCs) don't know about.




Now, maybe one reason I don't end up at the same place you do is a philosophical one. Having been exposed to Buddhist theories of causality and come to understand this very 'nonpersonal' conception of how the universe works, I just don't see any similarity between a fictional game world and the real one.

Just to give you an idea of how that works. Strip away all the conceptual framework, all the categories of things, all the sense perceptions, everything. Om gate gate, paragate "It is empty, empty, TOTALLY empty." This means that all semantics, all ontology, all what we think is 'reality' is nothing. What is real? As a physical naturalist I see nothing but a single universal quantum field, or you could say "nothing but quarks, gluons, and leptons." All the 'things' we conceive of existing, cats, dogs, people, Earth, stars, galaxies, RPG books, all of it is just convenient labels we've created. It has no fundamental objective existence. Parasamgate, bodhi soha "beyond total emptiness, wisdom lies." That is the ultimate truth IS this non-existence of the world of 'concept things'. 

At the core of things are simply the fundamentals, and the interactions between them are of infinite complexity. Nothing can be said to be truly caused except by the sum total of everything else. Its meaningless to say "the cat caused the big glass fish to fall off the end table and smash on the floor." What 'caused the cat?' or the fish? or the floor? They're all just more quarks, gluons, and leptons. To try to tease out some specific strand of narrative from this is fruitless. Even REALITY is a story we tell ourselves, RPG fictional reality? Please, just make up what pleases you, that's what IS happening, we're just pleasing ourselves. 

Its always best to keep the true nature of things in mind. You can get lost in that vision too, its not the only final word "all wisdom is just something we made up to tell ourselves" is also equally true. However it does help to clarify your analysis of things at times and bring a new focus.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> _Going to the fiction_ here means performing an act of imagining stuff while talking to your friends.
> 
> Here is the process, in rough outline:
> 
> Player: "I take the wand out of my backpack and concentrate on it - I want to activate it's magic."
> 
> GM: "OK, make a Use Magic Device check."
> 
> <dice are rolled, tables consulted, etc>
> 
> GM: "OK, your check succeeds. A fireball blasts out of the wand!"
> 
> Player: "Cool!"​
> The fiction does not play any causal role. The player and GM are engaged in a relatively complex social process, which itself is - at certain points - mediated through simpler bio-mechanical processes like rolling dice.
> 
> The fact that the player and GM both agree that, in the shared fiction, the player's character is holding the wand and concentrating on it, is a part of the causal process. That doesn't mean that _the PC, the wand, the backpack, the fireball, etc_ play any causal role.
> 
> Similarly: a production of Othello won't get very far if those on the stage can't agree who is being Othello, who Iago and so on. Just like RPGers, they have to coordinate their imaginations to establish a shared fiction. But that doesn't mean that the purely imaginary characters _Othello_, _Iago_ etc are exercising any causal power.
> 
> These imaginary things are imaginary. They don't make us do things. We make ourselves do things, in part because we agree with others to engage in various feats of imagination.




This is all well and good, but it's overly complicated and misses the simplicity of the situation. It all can be boiled down to one simnple question.  Can the effect happen without the fiction?  If the answer is yes, then the fiction is not a causal factor.  If the answer is no, then the fiction must be a causal factor.  Being imaginary, unknown, or whatever is irrelevant other than to make for fun to read posts.  If the effect cannot happen without something, that thing(imaginary or otherwise) a causal factor.


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Now, all the dialog back and forth about whether or not a fictional event 'caused' a player in the real world to roll some dice COULD all be seen in some light as being a semantic argument, but THIS is the real nut of the thing. Once you hare off into the land of thinking that fictional events matter, that they relate to each other in a 'causal' way, you CANNOT even have a productive discussion and analysis.



Well, you can't, maybe; but that's your choice.  Me, I think I can. 


> You have to be able to step back and take apart the process FROM THE OUTSIDE to really understand it.



Looking from the outside, as in from the perspective of a non-participant observer standing at a distance, only provides one part of the information.  Looking from the inside, as in from the perspective of a real-world participant in an RPG, provides another; while looking from the perspective of within the shared fiction itself provides a third.

Fictional events matter, in an RPG situation, in two ways:

 - in how they relate to and affect other parts of the fiction (cause: I accurately swing my sword; effect: my orc opponent howls and starts bleeding from a cut it didn't have a moment before)
 - in what they cause real people to do outside the fiction (in-fiction cause: my character attempts to swing her sword again; out-of-fiction effect: I pick up a d20 and roll it)

And all of this comes well before we decide who is authoring any of this fiction, which was the reason for this thread in the first place.



> Now, maybe one reason I don't end up at the same place you do is a philosophical one. Having been exposed to Buddhist theories of causality and come to understand this very 'nonpersonal' conception of how the universe works, I just don't see any similarity between a fictional game world and the real one.



I've yet to encounter this...



> Just to give you an idea of how that works. Strip away all the conceptual framework, all the categories of things, all the sense perceptions, everything. Om gate gate, paragate "It is empty, empty, TOTALLY empty." This means that all semantics, all ontology, all what we think is 'reality' is nothing. What is real? As a physical naturalist I see nothing but a single universal quantum field, or you could say "nothing but quarks, gluons, and leptons." All the 'things' we conceive of existing, cats, dogs, people, Earth, stars, galaxies, RPG books, all of it is just convenient labels we've created. It has no fundamental objective existence. Parasamgate, bodhi soha "beyond total emptiness, wisdom lies." That is the ultimate truth IS this non-existence of the world of 'concept things'.
> 
> At the core of things are simply the fundamentals, and the interactions between them are of infinite complexity. Nothing can be said to be truly caused except by the sum total of everything else. Its meaningless to say "the cat caused the big glass fish to fall off the end table and smash on the floor." What 'caused the cat?' or the fish? or the floor? They're all just more quarks, gluons, and leptons. To try to tease out some specific strand of narrative from this is fruitless. Even REALITY is a story we tell ourselves, RPG fictional reality? Please, just make up what pleases you, that's what IS happening, we're just pleasing ourselves.



 ...and if it always ends up this severe and emotionless I think I'll indefinitely postpone the experience, thank you. 

Lanefan


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Can the effect happen without the fiction?  If the answer is yes, then the fiction is not a causal factor.  If the answer is no, then the fiction must be a causal factor.



Yes, the effect can happen without the fiction - because the fiction doesn't exist yet the effect happens!

(Demonstration: I am now going to make you think about Barnaby Joyce as Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. I can do that even though Barnaby may, for all I know, have resigned by now - I haven't followed the news since this morning, when he was still hanging on. The effect my words have on you can occur _whether or not Barnaby Joyce is Deputy PM_ - this is why you can't tell whether or not someone is lying, or whether or not a statement is false, just be identifying the effect that it has on you. Bertrand Russell made this point in a series of essays published around 1910-12.)

The effect can't happen without _thinking about the fiction_. But that's a real event, not an imaginary one. And in the context of a RPG, it's a highly social event with a pretty complex structure..


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Fictional events matter, in an RPG situation, in two ways:
> 
> - in how they relate to and affect other parts of the fiction (cause: I accurately swing my sword; effect: my orc opponent howls and starts bleeding from a cut it didn't have a moment before)



Agatha Christie's crime stories aren't news reports. She's not _discovering_ whodunnit, by following the clues and tracing back the causes.

She's making it up!

In the context of your PC's sword swing, _the only way anyone knows that the sword was swung true_ is because there is a social process, which includes rolling dice and looking up to hit charts and the like, which tells us what the next bit of the fiction is to be: we all agree that f the dice come up a hit, then the fiction includes the sword swinging true; if the dice come up a miss, the the fiction includes a failed attempt to hurt the orc.

So the "causal relationship" between sword swing and injured orc is authored in response to the dice rolls. 



Lanefan said:


> in what they cause real people to do outside the fiction (in-fiction cause: my character attempts to swing her sword again; out-of-fiction effect: I pick up a d20 and roll it)



The fictional event doesn't cause you to roll a d20. Your action declaration "I attack the orc", perhaps followed by a nod from the GM, is what causes you to roll the die.

This is what I am saying about analysis: no one is obliged to analyse, but once you do you have to at least try and get it right. Saying that events in the fiction cause people to do stuff is obviously not right. Look at the actual procedures of the game - it is people talking to one another that causes them to pick up dice, consult charts, etc. It is these actual social processes that lead to the creation of some fiction. The fiction doesn't create the social processes!


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## pemerton

Emerikol said:


> I don't see why.  I really don't.



Because the real world is not a fiction that someone authored. Asking _who has agency over the content of the real world_ doesn't make any sense. The real world isn't _content/I], it's actual stuff that enters into actual causal processes.

But a fiction is authored. So if the GM writes the bulk of the fiction, and the players principal relationship with it is to learn it from the GM, then player agency over the content of the fiction is close to zero. Describing that as the same as their agency in the real world is just obscuring what is really going on, which is that they are learning the content of a fiction written by someone else.



Emerikol said:



			In my approach to gaming, the GM is tasked with establishing the state of the world.  The players are free then to "live" in that world and make things happen.  The players have the same agency as people do in this world which seems like a lot.
		
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What does making things happen mean? In the real world, I can throw a rock and break a window.

At the RPG table, the players can declare "I pick up a rock and throw it at the window." Who decides what happens? Who decides if there is even a rock or a window ready to hand? Until we know how these things are established, how can we work out who has what sort of agency?

Eg if the GM gets to decide whether or not there are rocks, and whether or not there are windows, and whether or not any given thrown rock hits and smashes any given window, then what is the agency of the players? They can force the GM to make some decisions (about whether or not there are rocks and windows about; and about whether or not any rock smashes any window); but that is not very much agency.

Now maybe that's not your game. Maybe the player gets to make a roll to find a rock. Maybe the player gets to make a roll to find a window. Maybe the player gets to make a roll to have a thrown rock break a window. But then it's no longer true to say that the GM is tasked with establishing the state of the world - because in fact the player can do that, by making the rolls just described.



Emerikol said:



			Obviously, when I DM, I just speak as the character and I don't narrate.  And while I may make up things that I don't know, I base what I make up on what I believe is reasonable for how I've defined that character.  If I'm doubtful, I will secretly dice for a decision.  If it's something trivial, then I just go ahead and choose something.

As a player playing a character you do the same thing, right?  When your character is spoken to, you speak for your character.  You make that up.  It's not your personality necessarily.  It's the personality you have conceived for your character.
		
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What you say about how I play my character is correct (subject to mechanics like morale checks etc).

When the GM does the same thing in respect of some NPC the players are trying to have their PCs relate to, or get some benefit from, etc, that is another mode of the GM exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction.

An example of the difference here would be the GM deciding that a certain NPC won't take a bribe; compared to Classic Traveller, which resolves that issue through a mix of a reaction roll and a Bribery check. The latter allows a degree of player agency that the former doesn't.



Emerikol said:



			I feel like the campaign is a good one when I feel like I'm immersed in the world and I'm being some fictional character.  The more I feel like I'm inside that characters head the more fun it is for me.
		
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This is true for me too - I suspect just as much as it is true for you - but that is neither here nor there for the current conversation.

When I'm in the head of my character, and I look around for a rock to throw through a window, there needs to be a way of working out what my character can see and hence what s/he can do. There are a lot of possibilities, but the main ones discussed in this thread are (i) the GM decides or (ii) the player makes a roll. One gives agency to the GM. The other permits some agency to the player.

Also: there is no judgement in the above, just analysis._


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## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> is 'Gygaxian play' on this continuum, is it a totally different sort of game, and if it is on the continuum, where? I think that Gygaxian Play is 'game over all else', that is, it is an ultimately and virtually completely gamist enterprise. Is RP important in that mode of play? No, not really, or the rules wouldn't just gank off characters left and right, nor emphasize being able to create a new one in 1 minute flat. There's even a place in OD&D where the rules say to introduce the new character immediately, logic be damned. This is fine as a game concept, just pop in the new guy! As RP its incoherent. Now, maybe in another place Gygax says "yeah, come up with some sort of lampshade for this, maybe wait till the PCs get to a new room and put the character there" or something like that.
> 
> I'd note that all the advice in DMG about time tracking is a must and etc is all in the same vein. Its not about REALISM, its about making time into a fungible sort of currency that characters have to spend in order to get certain things done! If you don't track it, then its not really a resource, just like if you told the PCs "hey, don't worry about gold, you can have whatever stuff you want." I guess "keep track of money" was too obvious to actually make into advice though!
> 
> So, I'm loath to draw too many conclusions from dungeon crawling OD&D. I think it has deliberate elements to add player agency, but it is also intended to act as a test of skill and not a story telling experience, at least in its most archetypal form. I believe that as soon as Gygax went beyond that then things were added to the game like "let the player find a blank spot on the map for his fighter to build a keep on and let him decide what the spot looks like, etc. within reason"



This is basically a restatement of the OP!

Gygaxian dungeon crawling isn't about story or character, except as a byproduct which is fun to muck around with (like the "story" that results from playing Talisman).

Another important thing about Gygaxian dungeon-crawling is that the dungeon isn't _just_ a fiction: it's an actual physical artefact, a map, which is analogous to a board that the players move their pieces on. Choosing where to go on the board is an exercise in agency: at first it might be blind choice, but as you get better, and have repeated forays, you learn more and more and so make better and better choices.

Modern games don't have the world as physical artefact; they don't have the repeat play so that players gradually learn the maze; etc. They're quite different. (Bracketing some OSR play, obviously.)


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Except in the case of Robert Downey Jr./Tony Stark we're not talking about an author (at least I don't think RDJ writes any of the scripts), we're talking about a middle step - a player, as it were; tasked with taking someone else's authorship, infusing it with personality, and bringing it to life on the screen.



Who writes the script for players in a RPG? Who writes all the narration, the stage directions, etc?

This is why I think that under your preferred model of RPGing the players have only modest agency at best



Lanefan said:


> That's not where player agency lies, so why worry about it?
> 
> Player agency, or the exercise thereof, is what got the PCs here into this orc-infested castle in the first place.  They didn't have to come here*.  They could have gone to any number of other places and-or done any number of other things; yet they decided to come here.



Well, this takes me back to something I said a _long_ way upthread: having six APs to choose from, or being able to mix-and-match bits and pieces of APs, doesn't make it a player-driven rather than GM driven game. If it did, then a really long choose your own adventure, with lots and lots of options, would be a highlight for player agency. Which they clearly it wouldn't be, as no matter how long it is, someone else wrote it all down!



Lanefan said:


> What she's authoring now may be a direct result of something that happened in the fiction half an hour ago.  The orcs are going to the underground well now because the PCs cut off their surface water supply this morning.



I'll try again.

Here's a story: _half an hour ago, the PCs cut off the orcs' surface water supply_.

Now, what happens next in the story? Do the orcs (i) _go to the underground well_, or (ii) _go to the PCs and try and steal their waterskins_?

Which "effect" follows from the "cause" of the PCs cutting off their water supply?

Answer: until the GM makes it up we don't know! And the very fact that the GM has to make it up shows that _what the GM is authoring now is not a direct result of something that happened in the fiction half an hour ago_. Rather, it's a direct result of some mental process the GM goes through when s/he imagines what might happen if some orcs had their water supply cut off.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Yes, the effect can happen without the fiction - because the fiction doesn't exist yet the effect happens!




Show me an example of the effect of a successful fireball effect coming AFTER a use magic device declaration by the player with no fiction happening at any point prior to the fireball.



> (Demonstration: I am now going to make you think about Barnaby Joyce as Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. I can do that even though Barnaby may, for all I know, have resigned by now - I haven't followed the news since this morning, when he was still hanging on. The effect my words have on you can occur _whether or not Barnaby Joyce is Deputy PM_ - this is why you can't tell whether or not someone is lying, or whether or not a statement is false, just be identifying the effect that it has on you. Bertrand Russell made this point in a series of essays published around 1910-12.)
> 
> The effect can't happen without _thinking about the fiction_. But that's a real event, not an imaginary one. And in the context of a RPG, it's a highly social event with a pretty complex structure..



This is not the same as the situation I am talking about.  Try the situation I laid out above.  If you are thinking about the fiction, the fiction does in fact exist, even if it exists in an intangible state.


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Show me an example of the effect of a successful fireball effect coming AFTER a use magic device declaration by the player with no fiction happening at any point prior to the fireball.



I gave you an example.

Here's another:

Player: I'm a rouge - I pull the fireball wand out of my backapck and use my UMD to activate it!
GM: OK, roll the d20.

<die is rolled, table consulted>

GM: OK, you succeed - a fireball blasts from the wand!​
No fiction happened - only real things in the real world (eg the player pretending to be a rogue who pulls a wand from a backpack, some dice being rolled, some tables being read, the GM telling a story that follows on from the player's "let's pretend", etc).


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Who writes the script for players in a RPG? Who writes all the narration, the stage directions, etc?
> 
> This is why I think that under your preferred model of RPGing the players have only modest agency at best




The players write their own script.  They have full control over their PCs words and attempted actions.  What they don't control, and which has nothing to do with player agency, is the stage setting(game world) and the results of their attempted actions(unless they have an mechanical ability that gives such control).



> Well, this takes me back to something I said a _long_ way upthread: having six APs to choose from, or being able to mix-and-match bits and pieces of APs, doesn't make it a player-driven rather than GM driven game. If it did, then a really long choose your own adventure, with lots and lots of options, would be a highlight for player agency. Which they clearly it wouldn't be, as no matter how long it is, someone else wrote it all down!




No.  What gives them agency is the ability to leave the paths and go or do what they want within the power of their PCs.  Sure, if they are being railroaded down an AP, their agency is limited.  I don't think anyone here is suggesting that they railroad their players.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I gave you an example.
> 
> Here's another:
> Player: I'm a rouge - I pull the fireball wand out of my backapck and use my UMD to activate it!
> GM: OK, roll the d20.​





Okay, see.  Now you've gone and made me imagine a piece of moving make-up.  



> <die is rolled, table consulted>
> 
> GM: OK, you succeed - a fireball blasts from the wand!





> No fiction happened - only real things in the real world (eg the player pretending to be a rogue who pulls a wand from a backpack, some dice being rolled, some tables being read, the GM telling a story that follows on from the player's "let's pretend", etc).



I disagree with that statement.  As soon as the player says he is a rogue that pulls out the wand and attempts to use it, that event has to happen in the fiction BEFORE you can roll the D20. If it doesn't happen inside the fiction, no mechanics are used to see the result because nothing happened to initiate those mechanics.  Then also inside the fiction the rogue has to attempt to use his skill to activate the wand.  THEN, and only then, do you leave the fiction to roll the D20 and consult the skill table.

The process goes like this.  Declaration by player initiates the action inside the fiction.  The action inside the fiction initiates the use of the mechanics.  The result of the mechanics determines success or failure with the fireball.  Success with the fireball might initiate book keeping on the part of the DM and/or players.

The part I don't think you are understanding is that the skill and the wand do not exist in any usable form outside of the fiction.  Outside of the fiction they are only mechanics that sit there like a lump.  To get those mechanics moving and usable requires the in-fiction PC to do something.


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## innerdude

pemerton said:


> Here's a story: _half an hour ago, the PCs cut off the orcs' surface water supply_.
> 
> Now, what happens next in the story? Do the orcs (i) _go to the underground well_, or (ii) _go to the PCs and try and steal their waterskins_?
> 
> Which "effect" follows from the "cause" of the PCs cutting off their water supply?
> 
> Answer: until the GM makes it up we don't know! And the very fact that the GM has to make it up shows that _what the GM is authoring now is not a direct result of something that happened in the fiction half an hour ago_. Rather, it's a direct result of some mental process the GM goes through when s/he imagines what might happen if some orcs had their water supply cut off.




To carry it a bit further --- let's suppose that there's far more options available to "forward" the fiction than even that.


The orcs immediately band together and go on a raiding rampage to a nearby village.
The orcs are okay with it, because they didn't really like the taste of that water anyway, and can sustain healthful hydration from the demonic fountain that's spouting blood on Level 19 of the dungeon.
The orcs are convinced that it was a sign from Gruumsh, and they should immediately evacuate the area.
The orcs laugh and smile and eat apple pies together with their pet winter wolf, while wearing sombreros and stilts because clearly these orcs are acrobats. 


Now of course the argument here might be, "Well none of those are _realistic_! None of those follow-up results seem to follow from the authored fictional cause!"

And this is true---but it doesn't change the fact that no matter what result is chosen by the GM, he or she is still the one authoring the fiction.


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Agatha Christie's crime stories aren't news reports. She's not _discovering_ whodunnit, by following the clues and tracing back the causes.
> 
> She's making it up!



Sure she is, but repeatedly bringing novels into this to use as examples doesn't help at all; as novels don't have players directing where the story goes and can - unlike just about any RPG campaign I've ever heard of - be written from the end forward if that's what the author wants to do (e.g. Ms. Christie could in theory start her thought process with the end scene in the plot and work backwards from there - this isn't really possible in an RPG unless it's a very hard railroad).

Movies or plays are a better example, though still not perfect; as there we have actors between the author and the finished product.  However, except in improv theater the actors don't have much if any say in where the story goes, unlike an RPG where the players do.



> In the context of your PC's sword swing, _the only way anyone knows that the sword was swung true_ is because there is a social process, which includes rolling dice and looking up to hit charts and the like, which tells us what the next bit of the fiction is to be: we all agree that f the dice come up a hit, then the fiction includes the sword swinging true; if the dice come up a miss, the the fiction includes a failed attempt to hurt the orc.



 [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] summed this up very nicely a few posts above, where he points out how the fiction and reality kinda bounce back and forth in affecting each other.  You're only looking at how reality affects the fiction.



> So the "causal relationship" between sword swing and injured orc is authored in response to the dice rolls.



But it's still authored, and it's still causal.



> The fictional event doesn't cause you to roll a d20. Your action declaration "I attack the orc", perhaps followed by a nod from the GM, is what causes you to roll the die.



Were there no orc present in the fiction at that moment neither the action declaration nor subsequent roll would happen...



> This is what I am saying about analysis: no one is obliged to analyse, but once you do you have to at least try and get it right. Saying that events in the fiction cause people to do stuff is obviously not right. Look at the actual procedures of the game - it is people talking to one another that causes them to pick up dice, consult charts, etc. It is these actual social processes that lead to the creation of some fiction. The fiction doesn't create the social processes!



Social processes are required to get the ball rolling, to set up the initial foundation for the fiction (the players roll up characters, the DM builds a world and sets some sort of initial scene for the PCs to start in); but once the PCs start moving through the game world and doing things in the fiction then those actions and that fiction starts creating and-or modifying social processes at the table.  If the fiction during that first session* leads, say, to a meeting with the local mayor then the words and actions of the players at the table are extremely likely to be quite different than had the fiction led to, say, a battle against a band of orcs.

* - here it doesn't matter how the fiction is generated, or by who; only that it is generated at all.



> Because the real world is not a fiction that someone authored. Asking who has agency over the content of the real world doesn't make any sense. The real world isn't _content/I], it's actual stuff that enters into actual causal processes. _



_I suspect [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] might beg to differ, based on his post #925 above. 




			At the RPG table, the players can declare "I pick up a rock and throw it at the window." Who decides what happens? Who decides if there is even a rock or a window ready to hand? Until we know how these things are established, how can we work out who has what sort of agency?
		
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Sigh.

You're defining player agency quite differently than I am, I think; and looking for it in places where it should not be found while ignoring its existence (or, where you do occasionally choose to acknowledge it, doing so in a demeaning and dismissive manner) in the various places where it in fact exists.  Exhibit A: your constant reference to players being able to decide what to do within the game world as being no better than a choose-your-own-adventure book.




			Another important thing about Gygaxian dungeon-crawling is that the dungeon isn't just a fiction: it's an actual physical artefact, a map, which is analogous to a board that the players move their pieces on. Choosing where to go on the board is an exercise in agency: at first it might be blind choice, but as you get better, and have repeated forays, you learn more and more and so make better and better choices.

Modern games don't have the world as physical artefact; they don't have the repeat play so that players gradually learn the maze; etc. They're quite different.
		
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Yikes.

First off, who says 'modern games' don't have maps or other physical representations of the game world or parts thereof?  How, without a map, is a DM (or the players, for that matter) supposed to remember where everything geographically is in the game world; how long it takes to get from place to place; where the mountains and rivers and seas and cities (and adventure sites!) are; which halls and doors in the mansion are trapped and which aren't, and so on?

Second off, who says 'repeat play' doesn't exist in modern games?  Do PCs in modern games never fail on a mission and try again, learning more about it each time until they succeed?

Lanefan_


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## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> You're the one who said we were talking about GM-driven games - I'm just following your lead!
> 
> If, in fact, the players are contributing the key material (eg the stakes, the context, the motivations that are going to be actually salient in play - see my reply just above to @_*innerdude*_ - etc) then why would you describe it as GM-driven?




I actually am only describing it that way because my understanding of your views is that is how you would see it. 

I don't necessarily allow player authorship of fictional elements through action declaration. I'm not necessarily against that in theory, and I may allow it in some ways (establishing a contact through some kind of Diplomacy or Gather Information check would be a good example). But it really depends on the action and goal in question. 



pemerton said:


> I think that saying that "all games contain elements of both "styles"" is, in the context of a thread like this, mostly unhelpful. It adds nothing to the analysis, and tends to make everything dissolve into porridge. It makes it impossible, for instance, for @_*innerdude*_ to make the point he just made in his most recent post. It means that we can't talk about the difference between @_*Lanefan*_'s example of the GM making up all this off-screen fiction about the harlot, and the way that @_*Manbearcat*_ might conceivably have produced similar fiction using DungeonWorld.




So it is a binary choice in your opinion.

I disagree with that, and with the idea that thinking the opposite makes discussions or examples impossible. I think my game contains both elements, yet I could follow the D&D/Dungeon World comparison done by Manbearcat, and Innerdude's point just above is equally clear. I agree with him that when a player can add to the fictional world, they become more involved in the game. 




pemerton said:


> I honestly don't know much about how you run your game. I haven't read a lot of actual play examples from it. You persist in calling it GM-driven (as best I can tell from your posts and my recollection of them) but you also say that the players have a lot of agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction, and I am left trying to understand what you have in mind.
> 
> All I can say is stuff like this: if, at key moments of crunch (eg trying to find the important map; trying to persuade an NPC to accept a bribe; etc) the outcome depends to a significant extent on what the GM decided about the fiction in advance (eg s/he wrote in her notes that the map is in the kitchen; she has already made a note that the only official in town who will take a bribe is Old Ludo the cemetery gatekeeper; etc), or what the GM secretly decides about the fiction at that moment; then the players are, at that key moment of play, exercising little agency over the content of the shared fiction.




This god-awful map example again. Devoid of any sense of context or why it matters or anything else. A hastily sketched example that unsurprisingly does not hold up to scrutiny. 

Now, I know other folks have defended the GM denying the player the ability to author the map into existence. And that's fine. I may or may not agree. But without a more meaningful example, it's hard to say. The bribery issue is simpler....unless I had a compelling reason to have pre-determined all the guards in the location and their disposition toward bribery, then I would leave that up to the results of the player's roll. I'm all for that. I don't like to thwart players' ideas when it comes to solving their problems. 

But that map example....how can one say? If the map is important to the players.....let's say it holds the location of one PC's father's sword, the recovery of which is an important stated goal for that character....then I would imagine that the discovery of the map is some kind of goal. Allowing the player to simply produce the map in a kitchen is horrible from a story point of view, and I woudl not allow that at all. Agency be damned at that point, although I don't think any of my players would actually attempt such a thing, so no agency would actually be harmed in the making of this example. 

This is why I used the somewhat cheeky example of Boromir authoring the presence of Sauron at the Council of Rivendell. The player knows the goal, so the character wills it into being. It seems a horrible way to play, and I believe is the kind of play the Czege Principle points out as being unfun. 

In my game, such a specific goal for the players would not be sitting in some random kitchen. It would likely have a specified location. In this sense, I realize I am being very "GM driven", but I don't really see the reason to avoid this. I don't really think it actually robs players of agency, either, except in the sense that they cannot author the presence of the map wherever they may like. Which to me, is a pretty broad application of agency. I also don't allow players to kick me in the nethers....but I don't think anyone would say that's denying them agency. Maybe a few people, but not most. 

Now, if you're talking about a map that the player has suggested, that's different. Not something the GM has in mind beforehand, but an idea that occurs to the player and they run with it. So they find themselves in the gnoll warmaster's quarters, having killed him and secured the location. And one of the player says "I'd like to see if there are any maps that may show the areas the gnolls might be targeting?" In such a case, I'd likely be happy they suggested this and allow them to search, and have the result of the check reveal the presence or usefulness of the maps. 

In this sense, my game would be very "Player Driven" I believe. 

So it is a situational thing, depending on the needs of the game and the story. I don't know if granting players carte blanche to introduce elements into the fiction through action declaration is always a good idea. Or that it's agency in the sense that we typically ascribe to the kind desired in a game. Of course, principled use of such techniques can likely produce a great game experience...I wouldn't say it cannot. But generally, I don't think that having certain elements of the fiction being the GM's purview is a bad thing. 



pemerton said:


> Or stuff like this: if your game is run in a similar way to what the Alexandrian describes with his "three clue rule" and "node based design", then you are running a game in which most of the agency over the content of the shared fiction resides with the GM.
> 
> If sometimes your game is like that, but sometimes like something else, then that means that sometimes the GM is the predominant author of the shared fiction, and at other times the players have agency over it. That sort of precision is - in the context of a thread whose aim is analysis - far more helpful than a bland statement that tries to average everything out. (For the same reason that, when you're analysing human thermal comfort, it sheds little light on the matter to describe the person whose head is in the fridge and feet are in the oven as having the same overall thermal experience as the person who is in a room heated to 40 degrees.)




I believe perhaps you missed my exchange with AbdulAlhazred some pages back where we talked about a skill check establishing a new player contact NPC. 

I do move from one to the other. Almost everything that is happening in my game is based on elements my players have introduced through character backstory and connections they've established in play. But there is also a story I've come up with that connects all their stories, and weaves in and out of them. The actual play tends to depend on what they want to do. I wait until they've narrowed in on an area of interest, and that's what we explore. I occasionally, but not very often, introduce events that may occur that demand their attention, but when I do so, these are usually drawn from player cues rather than invented whole cloth by me. 

So I do have "worldbuilding" elements as you describe them. Most of these don't come into play when it comes to action declaration and resolution, but are more macro and story related; e.g. Iggwilv has formed an alliance with Yug-Anark and Eclavdra, and what that may mean for the world (or words, really). 

I don't really tend to think of my game as player driven or GM driven....it contains elements of both. What it may lack when compared to Burning Wheel or even Dungeon World is mechanics that support a more player driven style of play. Instead it's all in how we've come to play and the expectations that we have now.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Who writes the script for players in a RPG? Who writes all the narration, the stage directions, etc?



The players write their own script for their characters' lines (i.e. what their characters actually say) and provide stage direction for what the characters do (their in-game actions) and how they move (where they go within the game world).  That's almost infintely more agency than an actor has on a movie set or a stage.



> This is why I think that under your preferred model of RPGing the players have only modest agency at best



Yet again, you're falsely seeing player agency level only in terms of how much of the stage or set they get to build; where stage-building is in fact not even a part of their job description.  Get over this - or at least step back from it a ways - and this discussion will go a lot further.



> Well, this takes me back to something I said a _long_ way upthread: having six APs to choose from, or being able to mix-and-match bits and pieces of APs, doesn't make it a player-driven rather than GM driven game. If it did, then a really long choose your own adventure, with lots and lots of options, would be a highlight for player agency. Which they clearly it wouldn't be, as no matter how long it is, someone else wrote it all down!



Sigh, again.

See above post regarding dismissal of actual player agency in favour of your own definition of it.



> I'll try again.
> 
> Here's a story: _half an hour ago, the PCs cut off the orcs' surface water supply_.
> 
> Now, what happens next in the story? Do the orcs (i) _go to the underground well_, or (ii) _go to the PCs and try and steal their waterskins_?
> 
> Which "effect" follows from the "cause" of the PCs cutting off their water supply?



Either is valid; and either (or both) could happen or try to happen.



> Answer: until the GM makes it up we don't know! And the very fact that the GM has to make it up shows that _what the GM is authoring now is not a direct result of something that happened in the fiction half an hour ago_. Rather, it's a direct result of some mental process the GM goes through when s/he imagines what might happen if some orcs had their water supply cut off.



Yet it's the fictional cutting off of that fictional water supply that has caused the DM to go through those real-world mental processes that she otherwise quite likely would not have...and around and around we go. 

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

innerdude said:


> To carry it a bit further --- let's suppose that there's far more options available to "forward" the fiction than even that.
> 
> 
> The orcs immediately band together and go on a raiding rampage to a nearby village.
> The orcs are okay with it, because they didn't really like the taste of that water anyway, and can sustain healthful hydration from the demonic fountain that's spouting blood on Level 19 of the dungeon.
> The orcs are convinced that it was a sign from Gruumsh, and they should immediately evacuate the area.
> The orcs laugh and smile and eat apple pies together with their pet winter wolf, while wearing sombreros and stilts because clearly these orcs are acrobats.
> 
> 
> Now of course the argument here might be, "Well none of those are _realistic_! None of those follow-up results seem to follow from the authored fictional cause!"



The first three each could be quite realistic, depending on circumstance and context of course.  I'm a little dubious about the sombreroed stilt-wearing dudes, however; though if on finishing the pie they then ate the winter wolf we might be back on track. 



> And this is true---but it doesn't change the fact that no matter what result is chosen by the GM, he or she is still the one authoring the fiction.



Yes she is; and in this case she should be, as it's both her place and her job to determine* how the various elements of the game world (in this case, some orcs) react to actions performed by the PCs (in this case, cutting their water off).  When and if they become observable by the PCs it's also her job to narrate these reactions.

* - by whatever means she likes - could be pre-authored, could be dice rolls, could be off the top of her head, some combination of these, or whatever.

Lanefan


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## hawkeyefan

Deleted post, it doesn't matter.


----------



## innerdude

I think my idea here, though, was to demonstrate that the number of ways the fiction can be constructed and still maintain widely plausible "causality" are generally much, much greater than we often allow. 

And I don't disagree with you, @_*Lanefan*_, that depending on context, the GM could choose any of my presented options (yes, even our sombrero, stilt wearing, apple-pie-eating orcs  ).

So why then, if the range of possibilities is generally much more broad than we often allow, is it so verboten for the players to have input? It's mostly tradition, right? It's just not _expected_ that the players should ask to have input, so it's not offered. Over the past 4-5 years, I've become much more in line with @_*pemerton*_'s idea that this "tradition" is problematic and regularly leads to poor GM-ing habits and un-enjoyable play.


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## Aenghus

For a while as a player and referee I thought comprehensive accurate simulation was a goal to aim for in a RPG gameworld. 

At some point after more refereeing experience I came to the conclusion that such an accurate simulation was (a) impossible and (b) not something most players wanted or needed. That the work I put into generating background stats and tweaking rules was often not productive, and cut into time that I could have used to work on npcs and plots which were far more likely to be relevant to the game as played.

My extensive view from behind the scenes of various gameworlds suggests at least to me that from the referee's point of view the gameworld is fictional and to some extent malleable. There are always unknowns and placeholders, some of which players unerringly seem to home in on, ignoring the surrounding pre-prepared content. I do less preparation nowadays, but then I know my setting very well and have got much better at improvisation in recent years.

As I see it, in a conventional GM-run RPG, my job as referee is to present a believable gameworld to the players and facilitate them playing their characters in a hopefully-enjoyable way. I know the gameworld is fictional, fake, made up and that knowledge can IMO help me run it better because I work hard to present a dynamic, interactive setting to my players, and I'm willing to change details of the gameworld when it's necessary. Most changes are off camera, but I do rarely retcon previously established details for various reasons I feel are legitimate.

I devised large parts of my gameworld, and my players contributed a lot of it, subject to my editorial control. 

I prefer clear transparent rules, as I found obfuscated or deceptive adjudication, as a player ,extremely annoying and 
discouraging. That said, I've found that so long as players are presented with sufficient real choices, it's possible to remove temporarily a lot of the the conventional trappings of fantasy RPGs. In my campaigns, particular in trips to other planes where cause and effect work differently, I've experimented with a mixture of real choices and railroaded narration. It can work well in short doses for an otherworldly feel.

For a long time I though rules as physics was a worthy goal, but I have come to the conclusion that it's impossible, as rules are imperfect and generally not written to produce viable simulations of cause and effect. It's still possible to produce "good enough" gameworlds and I do like to extrapolate some findings from the rules, but I no longer feel obliged to accept dodgy extrapolations that aren't clearly stated in the setting.

From behind the GM screen, I create the illusion of cause and effect for the benefit of the players. I as a referee know it's an illusion, I don't have numbers for a bunch of stuff I describe until it's clear I need them and then I make them up. But now I try to create only what I actually need and leave out stuff I don't need right now. My NPCs and monsters don't need to follow player rules, as they serve a different purpose to PCs in my game, and simplifying them significantly reduces the prep workload on me.


----------



## chaochou

Lanefan said:


> Yet again, you're falsely seeing player agency level only in terms of how much of the stage or set they get to build; where stage-building is in fact not even a part of their job description.  Get over this - or at least step back from it a ways - and this discussion will go a lot further.




The people who disagree with you, myself included, have years of experience of that type of play - so we know it has zero player agency. There's no 'false seeing' about it.

You, on the other hand, don't have a single minute of play experience of the type of game which I, and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] say does offer player agency.

In other words, you approach this topic from a position of complete and profound ignorance, while we do not.

Educate yourself, and this discussion will go a lot further.


----------



## Sadras

chaochou said:


> The people who disagree with you, myself included, have years of experience of that type of play - so we know it has zero player agency.
> 
> You, on the other hand, don't have a single minute of play experience of the type of game which I, and  @_*pemerton*_ and  @_*Manbearcat*_ and  @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ say does offer player agency.
> 
> In other words, you approach this topic from a position of complete and profound ignorance, while we do not.




This is fair, however it is painfully obvious that the two camps define _player agency_ differently and this is what seems to be causing the disconnect in the debate. @_*Maxperson*_, @_*Lanefan*_ @_*hawkeyefan*_ and others (including myself) have not hidden the fact that player authorial control is limited in our games, we just do not equate _player agency_ with authorial control over the setting.

Step 0 is agreeing to the definition of *agency*



			
				Merriam-Webster said:
			
		

> 2 : the capacity, condition, or state of acting or of exerting power : OPERATION
> 3 : a person or thing through which power is exerted or an end is achieved : INSTRUMENTALITY




and *authorial power*



> Ability to author elements into the fiction





As a first step, I propose for the sake of the debate that @_*pemerton*_'s camp (i) Defines _player agency_ as the ability to declare action declarations only and NOT exercise authorial power (again just for the sake of the debate);

The second step, is for @_*Lanefan*_'s camp to (ii) Acknowledge that due to the DM's authorial power, his/her NPCs have greater agency (able to declare a greater number of actions) than the PC's. This point seems like a fairly obvious one to accept.

Finally, the resultant conclusion being (iii) If the authorial power of the players is increased, then by the acknowledgement of (ii) above, _player agency_ would be increased. 

i.e. Players with authorial power naturally have a larger degree of _player agency_ than players that have a limited or lesser degree of authorial power, because a greater number of action declarations (options) are now open to them due to the ability to establish/create elements into the fiction.

EDIT: So yes, I'm willing to accept players at my table have a lesser degree of player agency than players at @_*pemerton*_'s table because of the greater degree of authorial power his players possess over mine. Now how much _player agency_ his players have over mine - one can only guess. Based on what we have read @_*chaochou*_'s players have an even greater amount of _player agency_ than @_*pemerton*_'s given the authorial power they possess. 
So yes, _player agency_ varies across the board from the so-called GM-driven games to the Player-driven games.


----------



## Maxperson

Sadras said:


> This is fair, however it is painfully obvious that the two camps define _player agency_ differently and this is what seems to be causing the disconnect in the debate. @_*Maxperson*_, @_*Lanefan*_ @_*hawkeyefan*_ and others have not hidden the fact that player authorial control is limited in their games, they just do not equate _player agency_ with authorial control over the setting.
> 
> Step 0 is agreeing to the definition of *agency*




That's probably not going to happen, as the other side has literally created a fictional definition for player agency and are using it to support their view on the topic.  Hmm.  If their definition is fiction, does that mean that their agency can't *cause* anything to happen? 



> As a first step, I propose for the sake of the debate that @_*pemerton*_'s camp (i) Defines _player agency_ as the ability to declare action declarations only and NOT authorial power (again just for the sake of the debate);
> 
> The second step, is for @_*Lanefan*_'s camp to (ii) Acknowledge that due to the DM's authorial power, his/her NPCs have greater agency (able to declare a greater number of actions) than the PC's. This one seems fairly obvious.




I don't give my NPCs fantastic abilities just because, and I allow players leeway to do things outside the set rules if they seem reasonable.  Also, NPCs even if they have different options than the PCs available to them, usually have far fewer total options, so I don't think my NPCs have greater agency than PCs.  The PCs will have more feats, magic items, spells, skills, etc. to use than I do with my NPCs.


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## Sadras

Maxperson said:


> I don't give my NPCs fantastic abilities just because, and I allow players leeway to do things outside the set rules if they seem reasonable.  Also, NPCs even if they have different options than the PCs available to them, usually have far fewer total options, so I don't think my NPCs have greater agency than PCs.  The PCs will have more feats, magic items, spells, skills, etc. to use than I do with my NPCs.




No take a step back from feats and abilities. As an author (DM) you can establish (create) history, relationships, allies, assign wealth, equipment, magical items even artifacts to your NPCs, nevermind secret backstory knowledge which should expand the options available to your NPCs over that of the PCs.


----------



## Sadras

innerdude said:


> So why then, if the range of possibilities is generally much more broad than we often allow, is it so verboten for the players to have input? It's mostly tradition, right? It's just not _expected_ that the players should ask to have input, so it's not offered. Over the past 4-5 years, I've become much more in line with @_*pemerton*_'s idea that this "tradition" is problematic and regularly leads to poor GM-ing habits and un-enjoyable play.




Good points, but let us not pigeon whole this, there are many factors at play besides _tradition_* such as the type of game and mechanics, genre, preferred style of play by the players, published AP or module or free-style play, published setting or homebrew world...etc 

*I believe tradition is probably the largest contributing factor and this might be due to the fact that D&D which promotes this style of play is also the largest RPG and more importantly the gateway RPG for the hobby.


----------



## Maxperson

Sadras said:


> No take a step back from feats and abilities. As an author (DM) you can establish (create) history, relationships, allies, assign wealth, equipment, magical items even artifacts to your NPCs, nevermind secret backstory knowledge which should expand the options available to your NPCs over that of the PCs.



The role of DM is different than the role of player.  It's the DM's job to create the campaign world, NPCs, etc. that become the backdrop for the collaborative story that is created through game play.  Let's call it DM agency.  The players aren't supposed to do things like that, other than to create the history of their PCs.  Player agency isn't increased by giving players more authorial power.  Their player agency is the same as in my game, but they are additionally granted some level DM agency.


----------



## Sadras

Maxperson said:


> The role of DM is different than the role of player.  It's the DM's job to create the campaign world, NPCs, etc. that become the backdrop for the collaborative story that is created through game play.  Let's call it DM agency. The players aren't supposed to do things like that, other than to create the history of their PCs.  Player agency isn't increased by giving players more authorial power.  Their player agency is the same as in my game, but they are additionally granted some level DM agency.




I'm going to illustrate what I mean by using an example. We can stick to 5e and incorporate the Plot Points from the DMG which, if you agree, essentially provide this DM agency you refer to.

Your character wishes to seek an audience with a rather recluse noble-person. As a player you can come up with a wild number of possibilities for your character to achieve that goal. With a Plot Point (DM agency) you can expend it to establish that the noble-person's employee has a criminal history that you are privy to and upon exposure that employee would lose his job, perhaps be arrested or worse sentenced to death. Your character can now use that knowledge against him to coerce him to set up an audience with his employer.


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## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> Allowing the player to simply produce the map in a kitchen is horrible from a story point of view, and I woudl not allow that at all.



That would be an example of what I would call a lack of player agency. The GM decides what is best for the story.


----------



## Sunseeker

Sadras said:


> I'm going to illustrate what I mean by using an example. We can stick to 5e and incorporate the Plot Points from the DMG which, if you agree, essentially provide this DM agency you refer to.
> 
> Your character wishes to seek an audience with a rather recluse noble-person. As a player you can come up with a wild number of possibilities for your character to achieve that goal. With a Plot Point (DM agency) you can expend it to establish that the noble-person's employee has a criminal history that you are privy to and upon exposure that employee would lose his job, perhaps be arrested or worse sentenced to death. Your character can now use that knowledge against him to coerce him to set up an audience with his employer.




I think I wrote about this a while back: while things like Plot Points increase player agency, allowing (as some people call it) "stage setting" by the players, they are at least in 5E, an _optional_ part of the game and therefore subject to DM approval.

Which is sort of the "trick" to player agency, (and always has been, in D&D at least) that D&D provides _very little_ hard-coded player agency.  4E was probably the strongest on providing player agency and as I recall there was quite a bit of lament over "taking away power from the DM" or something.  To 5E rolled that back and now player agency is largely in the hands of the DM, _if_ the DM wants to give players brownie points the Dm and ONLY the DM has that power.

Fundamentally, the players have no agency (freedom) but can be granted a great deal of agency (liberty).  

The problem, I think with some of the discussion, as the latest post by [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] suggests is *not* that there are diverging viewpoints on player agency, I think fundamentally we all are using the same definition, but some people believe that anything under a certain _amount_ of player agency is tantamount to *no* player agency.

And as I think you pointed out, we can't have a healthy discussion like that.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> As soon as the player says he is a rogue that pulls out the wand and attempts to use it, that event has to happen in the fiction BEFORE you can roll the D20. If it doesn't happen inside the fiction, no mechanics are used to see the result because nothing happened to initiate those mechanics.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The process goes like this. Declaration by player initiates the action inside the fiction



This doesn't make any sense. You write as if there are two things that are causally related - first, the player says that s/he is a rogue pulling a wand out a backpack; second, in the fiction a rogue pulls a wand out of a backpack.

But _all there is_ is that the player makes the action declaration. That in and of itself establishes the fiction. We don't all sit around with our crystal balls waiting to find out if the player's action declaration will or won't successfully bring a fantasy world into being!



Maxperson said:


> the skill and the wand do not exist in any usable form outside of the fiction.  Outside of the fiction they are only mechanics that sit there like a lump.  To get those mechanics moving and usable requires the in-fiction PC to do something.



There are two possibilities: the player plays the game; or an imaginary person makes the player play the game. I know which I think is the case!

Playing the game doesn't invovle using a wand. The wand isn't real; it's pretend. Playing the game does involve pretending that someone has a wand. That act of pretense is something that a real person does in the real world. The game rules are triggered by making various moves in the course of that pretense.

No one thinks that a school kid's stick is _really_ a gun; or that the explanation for why another kid drops to the ground when the first kid says "Bang! I shot you," is that a bullet was fired. It's playing a game - a social process.

The social processes in a RPG are different - eg the rules for declaring "I take the wand from my backpack" are not structured around physical location and possessions as in a schoolyard game of cops and robbers - but the basic idea is the same.



Maxperson said:


> The players write their own script.  They have full control over their PCs words and attempted actions.  What they don't control, and which has nothing to do with player agency, is the stage setting(game world) and the results of their attempted actions(unless they have an mechanical ability that gives such control).



As I've said, this is at best extremely modest agency over the content of the shared fiction.

For instance, a game in which _every outcome of action declaration is decided by the GM based on what s/he thinks makes sense or would be fun_ would fit your description of player agency.

It also relates to what I posted upthread, which I took   [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] to be in broady sympathy with in a recent post: what you describes opens up the scope for a very big gap between playing the character I want to play, and what actually happens in the game.



Maxperson said:


> What gives them agency is the ability to leave the paths and go or do what they want within the power of their PCs.



But they can't do any of these things. They can't find the map in the study if the GM doesn't allow it. They can't bribe a guard if the GM doesn't allow it. They can't meet a long-lost friend in the village if the GM doesn't allow it.

"The power of their PCs" is a red herring here. Because the power of a person depends primarily on the opportunities by which they are surrounded, and what you describe is an approach to play where that is all controlled by the GM.



Lanefan said:


> novels don't have players directing where the story goes



But a choose-your-own adventure does. Nevertheless, the player doesn't have very much agency over the content of the shared fiction.

And if you think this is not a fair comparison, then tell me why not? If the players of a RPG cannot establish or influence what is actually written on the pages - if the opportunities that are open to them all depend on what the GM has written - then how is it different?



Lanefan said:


> the fiction and reality kinda bounce back and forth in affecting each other.  You're only looking at how reality affects the fiction.



That's because FICTION CAN'T AFFECT REALITY. Obi-Wan Kenobi didn't have any effect on Alec Guiness. _Pretending to be Obi-Wan Kenobi_ did have some effect on Alec Guiness - eg it led him to say "Only a master of evil, Darth" - but pretending to be Obi-Wan Kenobi is something that happened in the real world, and did not involve any imaginary person.




Lanefan said:


> If the fiction during that first session* leads, say, to a meeting with the local mayor then the words and actions of the players at the table are extremely likely to be quite different than had the fiction led to, say, a battle against a band of orcs.



All this means is that pretending to talk to a mayor is different from pretending to fight some orcs. That's obvious. It doesn't prove that imaginary things make real things happen!



Lanefan said:


> Social processes are required to get the ball rolling, to set up the initial foundation for the fiction (the players roll up characters, the DM builds a world and sets some sort of initial scene for the PCs to start in); but once the PCs start moving through the game world and doing things in the fiction then those actions and that fiction starts creating and-or modifying social processes at the table.





Lanefan said:


> Were there no orc present in the fiction at that moment neither the action declaration nor subsequent roll would happen...



But all "orc present in the fiction" means here is that _everyone at the table agreed to imagine an episode involving an orc_.

There is nothing here but social processes. Agreements to imagine this and not that. Agreements that, under certain conditions, dice will be rolled, charts looked up, and new imaginings take place.

Consider the example of school ground play: it is not _a soldier being present in the fiction_ that explains why the kid dropped. It's that _the kid's friend was pretending to be a soldier and pretending to shoot_. Playing the game is a social process.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> That would be an example of what I would call a lack of player agency. The GM decides what is best for the story.




I don’t know if it’s so clear cut. Do you only define player agency by the ability of the player to author fictional elements? What about when the players do something that creates a boring story? What about the other examples I discussed?

To pull just that bit out of my post and comment on it out of context seems pretty lousy on your part.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Fictional events matter, in an RPG situation, in two ways:
> 
> - in how they relate to and affect other parts of the fiction (cause: I accurately swing my sword; effect: my orc opponent howls and starts bleeding from a cut it didn't have a moment before)
> - in what they cause real people to do outside the fiction (in-fiction cause: my character attempts to swing her sword again; out-of-fiction effect: I pick up a d20 and roll it)
> 
> And all of this comes well before we decide who is authoring any of this fiction, which was the reason for this thread in the first place.




No, that's the point YOU CAN'T! Because each one of those events which you are discussing as 'in game fiction' is related to the others by way of the game happening at the table in the real world! They cannot be analyzed on their own. 

This is also why my somewhat 'far out' comment about dependent origination is germane, because it points out that you cannot determine what was a chain of causality without understanding the TOTALITY of the context. In the case of an RPG narrative that totality simply doesn't exist. There is no world in which it happens. The context, AT BEST, is so fragmentary and threadbare that we could propose almost any outcome to events and it would be equally plausible.

For example, in reference to the fiction you just created there any of 1000's of things could result from an attempt to swing a sword at someone. You could slip on a banana peel (sorry, patch of green slime!) and fall on your arse. Your blow could be deflected by the orc's steel collar. Your grip on the sword could falter (for any of many reasons). The sword itself could break (for any of 1000's of reasons). All of these things are possibilities (and I'm just naming things I can imagine that could happen which are reasonably mundane and plausibly could be part of a real-world narrative, aside from the target being an 'orc'). BUT we don't know enough about the game world, and EVEN IF WE PLAYED vs just this exercise of examples, we wouldn't know. We don't know how slippery the floor is, maybe an ogre hockered on the spot the character puts his forward foot last week and the character slips on it. That's the sort of thing the real world is made up of. 

Now, what we CAN do, and what both you and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] are doing basically all the time as a GM, your constant function, is to simply make up these causes to explain the dice, or to engineer the fictional positioning so that the players continue 'on track' instead of wandering off into some place that isn't prepared for them, or, in Pemerton's case, to frame the next scene to address character needs and player agenda. 

Nor did you really exclude the people at the table, you still had to refer to the guy rolling a d20 to make the narrative complete and totally coherent. If you leave that part out of your analysis you are really missing the whole nut of the entire thing!


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> To pull just that bit out of my post and comment on it out of context seems pretty lousy on your part.



The bit I quoted was what stood out in my first read through a long post. I was wanting to cut to that chase.



hawkeyefan said:


> Do you only define player agency by the ability of the player to author fictional elements? What about when the players do something that creates a boring story? What about the other examples I discussed?



What about when the GM does something that creates a boring story?

As you yourself have stressed, it's not particularly helpful to focus on ideal cases. I am trying to talk about procedures for play. A rule that says "The GM can veto/block/manipulate-backstory-to-defeat any action declaration that will lead to a boring story is (in my view) a rule that is at odds with player agency over the content of the shared fiction. As I posted way upthread, it tends to reduce all player action declarations for their PCs to suggestions.

If, in a high player agency game, you're worried that you're going to get a lot of silly stuff like maps being found in kitchens, then my own advice - derived from a mix of experience and reading - would be to work on your framing as GM, and encourage your players to work on their PC building (especially to do with goals, etc).

In the first few weeks of my first RM campaign, one of the players - perhaps intoxicated by the player agency? - played his character as a type of anti-Jack-the-Ripper ie the PC would pick up customers looking for sex and kill them. As a GM I adjudciated this in a relatively light touch, off screen fashion - it's not at the core of what I'm looking for in a RPG, which is at least a little bit more 4-colour - and it was fairly clear from me and the other players that this was not what were especially interested in. The player himself realised that for those extrinsic reasons, and perhaps some intrinsic ones as well, he was probably better off coming up with a different sort of PC, and so we wrote out one characer and wrote in another.

But there's also the question of _who gets to decide what's silly_. In the BW game where I'm a player, my PC is a knight of a religious order has relationships with some family members, and has cooking skill. Of course there's no guarantee that any action for this PC will take place in a kitchen, but it wouldn't be absurd either.

In a player-driven game, the question of whether or not it's silly for important stuff to happen in the kitchen isn't a unilateral matter for the GM.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

innerdude said:


> To carry it a bit further --- let's suppose that there's far more options available to "forward" the fiction than even that.
> 
> 
> The orcs immediately band together and go on a raiding rampage to a nearby village.
> The orcs are okay with it, because they didn't really like the taste of that water anyway, and can sustain healthful hydration from the demonic fountain that's spouting blood on Level 19 of the dungeon.
> The orcs are convinced that it was a sign from Gruumsh, and they should immediately evacuate the area.
> The orcs laugh and smile and eat apple pies together with their pet winter wolf, while wearing sombreros and stilts because clearly these orcs are acrobats.
> 
> 
> Now of course the argument here might be, "Well none of those are _realistic_! None of those follow-up results seem to follow from the authored fictional cause!"
> 
> And this is true---but it doesn't change the fact that no matter what result is chosen by the GM, he or she is still the one authoring the fiction.




Now, see, my argument would be "there's no meaningful definition of cause and effect here because there simply isn't a complete world state to derive all the causal process from." You could think of it like any of the 1st three of your examples are plausible, but SO ARE ABOUT A BILLION OTHERS (actually the number is probably close to a googleplex of others, though some of them may be so similar that we wouldn't even distinguish them in fiction). 

It is meaningless to say that one of those was 'caused' when we cannot distinguish it as being any more causally related to the initial world state or the PC's actions than any of the others. The whole notion is absurd!


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> This doesn't make any sense. You write as if there are two things that are causally related - first, the player says that s/he is a rogue pulling a wand out a backpack; second, in the fiction a rogue pulls a wand out of a backpack.
> 
> But _all there is_ is that the player makes the action declaration. That in and of itself establishes the fiction. We don't all sit around with our crystal balls waiting to find out if the player's action declaration will or won't successfully bring a fantasy world into being!




Yes you do.  It might take .0001 second, but you sit around until you all imagine the fiction that the declaration creates.  The fiction comes after the declaration and nothing can progress forward without it.



> Playing the game doesn't invovle using a wand. The wand isn't real; it's pretend. Playing the game does involve pretending that someone has a wand. That act of pretense is something that a real person does in the real world. The game rules are triggered by making various moves in the course of that pretense.




Playing the game involves using the wand inside the fiction.  Without that in fiction use, there is no mechanic that is used.



> No one thinks that a school kid's stick is _really_ a gun; or that the explanation for why another kid drops to the ground when the first kid says "Bang! I shot you," is that a bullet was fired. It's playing a game - a social process.




You keep repeating this as if being social prevents cause and effect.  If I walk up to someone and call him names, that's a social(or antisocial) cause that will generally have the effect of pissing that person off.



> As I've said, this is at best extremely modest agency over the content of the shared fiction.



Right, but we aren't using the invented definition that you use.  In your invented definition, sure, there's less agency.  In the actual definition, player agency doesn't involve being able to alter the content without some sort of set ability to do so, like a wish or rock to mud or something.  Your definition is basically player agency + DM agency in the hands of players.



> For instance, a game in which _every outcome of action declaration is decided by the GM based on what s/he thinks makes sense or would be fun_ would fit your description of player agency.




No it would not.  At least not automatically.  The DM is obligated to be as neutral as possible with his rulings.  That's part of the social contract.  If the DM is only doing what he thinks is fun, he is violating the social contract, being an asshat of a bad DM, and probably railroading the players, which is the opposite of what we are talking about.



> But they can't do any of these things. They can't find the map in the study if the GM doesn't allow it. They can't bribe a guard if the GM doesn't allow it. They can't meet a long-lost friend in the village if the GM doesn't allow it.




First, they can do it because the players decide what they do, not me.  Second, and this is very important, it doesn't matter in the slightest whether they find that map or not.  If they find it, great.  If they don't find it, great.  There are other options they could take to find out that information, and I am often surprised by the ideas that they come up with.  Maybe the decide to go find a seer.  Maybe they look for a guide that knows the area inside and out.  Who knows?  Not me.  That's up to them.



> "The power of their PCs" is a red herring here. Because the power of a person depends primarily on the opportunities by which they are surrounded, and what you describe is an approach to play where that is all controlled by the GM.
> 
> But a choose-your-own adventure does. Nevertheless, the player doesn't have very much agency over the content of the shared fiction.




This is the real red herring here.  You keep trying to convince us that just because the DM can be an asshat and railroad the game any way he wants, that he will.....and to the point where it's just a choose your own adventure.  I don't know what kind of horrible gaming experience you had in the past with this style of game play, but it's not a part of my game or the games of other people here in this discussion.  The decisions are not about what the DM finds to be fun, or even about what the DM wants.  He's there to make reasonable, neutral and fair decisions.  If he does that, the game will often go in directions that maybe he didn't want it to go, but oh well, the DM doesn't always get what he wants.



> And if you think this is not a fair comparison, then tell me why not? If the players of a RPG cannot establish or influence what is actually written on the pages - if the opportunities that are open to them all depend on what the GM has written - then how is it different?




Dude.  We've been telling you for a dozen pages how it's not like that at all, and how it isn't like that.  If you don't understand it by now, our telling you another time isn't going to help.


----------



## Maxperson

Sadras said:


> I'm going to illustrate what I mean by using an example. We can stick to 5e and incorporate the Plot Points from the DMG which, if you agree, essentially provide this DM agency you refer to.
> 
> Your character wishes to seek an audience with a rather recluse noble-person. As a player you can come up with a wild number of possibilities for your character to achieve that goal. With a Plot Point (DM agency) you can expend it to establish that the noble-person's employee has a criminal history that you are privy to and upon exposure that employee would lose his job, perhaps be arrested or worse sentenced to death. Your character can now use that knowledge against him to coerce him to set up an audience with his employer.




I'm not trying to be difficult here, but I don't understand the point of this.  I understand how [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s style works, and that you can enact optional rules in 5e to give players that additional DM agency.  For that matter  , you can do it with any edition.  It's just not spelled out in the game itself as an option in all editions.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> I don't give my NPCs fantastic abilities just because, and I allow players leeway to do things outside the set rules if they seem reasonable.  Also, NPCs even if they have different options than the PCs available to them, usually have far fewer total options, so I don't think my NPCs have greater agency than PCs.  The PCs will have more feats, magic items, spells, skills, etc. to use than I do with my NPCs.




Well, its a bit incoherent to talk about 'NPC Agency' to start with, but you and I didn't start that... I will take it as it is meant and just say that in terms of 'agency' here that the NPCs have a lot more 'options'. Heck, the GM could just add reinforcements to their numbers at any time! Lets see the players do THAT! (I mean sans some magic or something that they already have available). 

Nor can the objection 'where did the reinforcements come from' hold any weight. Not when we've already heard all about how GM's can extemporize and that content generated on the spot is indistinguishable from content pre-authored. This is just a small example of how the GM has a vast agency that players in a game of the sort you espouse simply do not have, at all.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> That would be an example of what I would call a lack of player agency. The GM decides what is best for the story.




Another way to look at it is, we're comparing PLAYER agency, the ability to change the course of the way things go at the table (IE in the procedures of the game) vs 'PC Agency', the freedom of the PC to act in certain prescribed ways which don't introduce new fiction. Because PCs are fictional, their agency is also fictional, and thus not real, and doesn't accrue to the players (any more than the PC's gold does).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> I don’t know if it’s so clear cut. Do you only define player agency by the ability of the player to author fictional elements? What about when the players do something that creates a boring story? What about the other examples I discussed?
> 
> To pull just that bit out of my post and comment on it out of context seems pretty lousy on your part.




I think that in, at least [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s case, agency isn't quite defined like that. He's not letting players simply decree fiction, like you can't just say "my character pulls the Wand of Orcus out of his backpack and slays the high priest with it!" (unless it was already fictionally established that he had said wand). Its more about the player's agenda being the thing which the fiction addresses.

So, when the player wanted to conquer the world, that was his agenda, his character met Vecna and was offered a chance to take a step in the direction of achieving his goal. In other words the player said "I want to conquer the world" and in the fiction of the game "conquest of the world" became an activity which was being pursued by the player's character. 

It may also be that agency is expressed in generating fiction by means of a check, like "I roll streetwise to see if I can contact Vinny the Weasel, my fence." Maybe if the check succeeds then Vinny will be established to be in the area, otherwise the GM could presumably say "you don't know any Vinny" but would instead probably resort to "he's in prison now..." or something like that. This is a more contingent kind of player authorship which is treated as an extension of a character ability (a player resource). Skills like Streetwise in 4e would essentially be worthless without this, and we can suppose from their existence at least a nominal idea that 4e intended this kind of thing.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> The bit I quoted was what stood out in my first read through a long post. I was wanting to cut to that chase.




Well I would hope you might see how frustrating it is considering you removed the larger context. 

I did say that I would not allow a player to introduce the solution to a major goal in such a mundane way. Would you allow that in your game? If the characters are looking for the pieces of the Rod if Seven Parts, would you allow the player to place it in some random kitchen through a Perception check?

If so, it doesn’t sound like a compelling story that’s being crafted. If not, then how do you handle it? 



pemerton said:


> What about when the GM does something that creates a boring story?




Sure, this happens all the time. Everyone can fail to contribute meaningfully. It’s especially tough for the GM in many cases. But let’s say a game is very GM driven and it’s failing to engage the players all that much...isn’t this a problem that will likely be addressed? Won’t the GM realize they’re not that engaged? Or if not, won’t they simply tell him?

I think collaboration is the best way to avoid this, and in that I expect we likely agree. Lean on the other participants more. 



pemerton said:


> As you yourself have stressed, it's not particularly helpful to focus on ideal cases. I am trying to talk about procedures for play. A rule that says "The GM can veto/block/manipulate-backstory-to-defeat any action declaration that will lead to a boring story is (in my view) a rule that is at odds with player agency over the content of the shared fiction. As I posted way upthread, it tends to reduce all player action declarations for their PCs to suggestions.
> 
> If, in a high player agency game, you're worried that you're going to get a lot of silly stuff like maps being found in kitchens, then my own advice - derived from a mix of experience and reading - would be to work on your framing as GM, and encourage your players to work on their PC building (especially to do with goals, etc).
> 
> In the first few weeks of my first RM campaign, one of the players - perhaps intoxicated by the player agency? - played his character as a type of anti-Jack-the-Ripper ie the PC would pick up customers looking for sex and kill them. As a GM I adjudciated this in a relatively light touch, off screen fashion - it's not at the core of what I'm looking for in a RPG, which is at least a little bit more 4-colour - and it was fairly clear from me and the other players that this was not what were especially interested in. The player himself realised that for those extrinsic reasons, and perhaps some intrinsic ones as well, he was probably better off coming up with a different sort of PC, and so we wrote out one characer and wrote in another.
> 
> But there's also the question of _who gets to decide what's silly_. In the BW game where I'm a player, my PC is a knight of a religious order has relationships with some family members, and has cooking skill. Of course there's no guarantee that any action for this PC will take place in a kitchen, but it wouldn't be absurd either.
> 
> In a player-driven game, the question of whether or not it's silly for important stuff to happen in the kitchen isn't a unilateral matter for the GM.




Well I suggested the veto power only in reference to a ludicrous example of Boromir and Sauron at Rivendell. I generally don’t think it’s wise for a GM to veto player ideas, but I do actually think that it is something within the GM’s ability. Of everyone involved, his role is unique.

To go back to the map...if the very idea of the map was introduced by a player in hopes of aiding the PCs in some way, I think that’s something else, and I explained that in my previous post. In such a case, I would not sinply dismiss this idea because the room description did not mention a map. 

But hey, I think we’re going in c ircles and you’re obviously not interested, so I’ll leave it at that.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, its a bit incoherent to talk about 'NPC Agency' to start with, but you and I didn't start that... I will take it as it is meant and just say that in terms of 'agency' here that the NPCs have a lot more 'options'. Heck, the GM could just add reinforcements to their numbers at any time! Lets see the players do THAT! (I mean sans some magic or something that they already have available).
> 
> Nor can the objection 'where did the reinforcements come from' hold any weight. Not when we've already heard all about how GM's can extemporize and that content generated on the spot is indistinguishable from content pre-authored. This is just a small example of how the GM has a vast agency that players in a game of the sort you espouse simply do not have, at all.




Well, the DM and players have very different roles.  DM agency is supposed to be different.  That agency doesn't take away from player agency, though, unless the DM is abusing his power or makes a mistake.


----------



## Sadras

shidaku said:


> The problem, I think with some of the discussion, as the latest post by  @_*pemerton*_ suggests is *not* that there are diverging viewpoints on player agency, I think fundamentally we all are using the same definition, but some people believe that anything under a certain _amount_ of player agency is tantamount to *no* player agency.




You seem to be agreeing with this rather rigid view of the term, given the below line. 



> Fundamentally, the players have no agency (freedom) but can be granted a great deal of agency (liberty).






Maxperson said:


> I'm not trying to be difficult here, but I don't understand the point of this.  I understand how  @_*pemerton*_'s style works, and that you can enact optional rules in 5e to give players that additional DM agency.  For that matter  , you can do it with any edition.  It's just not spelled out in the game itself as an option in all editions.




What I'm trying to illustrate in the example is that if the player has the ability to inject fiction on that level (what you referred to as DM agency), more options become available to the player and so naturally this increases the number of action declarations he/she can make and is thus able to drive the story more directly towards his/her stated goal. i.e. an increased amount of player agency.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Another way to look at it is, we're comparing PLAYER agency, the ability to change the course of the way things go at the table (IE in the procedures of the game) vs 'PC Agency', the freedom of the PC to act in certain prescribed ways which don't introduce new fiction. Because PCs are fictional, their agency is also fictional, and thus not real, and doesn't accrue to the players (any more than the PC's gold does).




Agree.


----------



## Sadras

hawkeyefan said:


> What about when the players do something that creates a boring story?




I'm not following you here, what does this have to do with the definition or degree of _player agency_?

I agree with you that the 'boring story' is certainly a risk attributable to anyone who is allowed to author the fiction.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> That would be an example of what I would call a lack of player agency. The GM decides what is best for the story.




The issue I have by making a claim like that is that it does seem you do not take the playstyle into consideration which is a callback I believe to Ovi's posts (chess vs checkers) and a conversation I shared with  @_*AbdulAlhazred*_. .

Whereas in your game you frame the entire dungeon as a whole and then cut straight through to the room with the map, the other style is to frame the dungeon as a boardgame* which requires/challenges players to find the map in the dungeon while providing smaller framings (by the DM) for each corridor, hallway and room...etc

This is why I disagree with your premise in the OP as the boardgame style is still VERY prevalent today (in particular in D&D games) and this is clearly evident given the AP and modules which are being published by WotC.

EDIT: The type of _player agency _you require for your games is just not as important in the (for lack of a better term) boardgame style where fictional positioning of the map is done by the DM.

*using one of your analogies for ease


----------



## Lanefan

Sadras said:


> No take a step back from feats and abilities. As an author (DM) you can establish (create) history, relationships, allies, assign wealth, equipment, magical items even artifacts to your NPCs,



All true. 







> nevermind secret backstory knowledge which should expand the options available to your NPCs over that of the PCs.



Only so far as the particular NPC I'm running at that time has extra knowledge, if any.

Simple example: the vizier is secretly plotting to take down the king; both are NPCs.  If the PCs talk to both, what they hear from the king will be in blissful ignorance of any such plot while what they hear from the vizier may well be tainted with that knowledge.

If done right (and I freely admit it isn't always) any NPC is only operating with the knowledge it would reasonably have in any given situation, and the DM has to thus constrain herself when running an NPC whose knowledge is incomplete e.g. the king, above.



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> For instance, a game in which every outcome of action declaration is decided by the GM based on what s/he thinks makes sense or would be fun would fit your description of player agency.



And also be a badly-run game, if the DM isn't being consistent with what she decides and-or isn't consistent with the already-established fiction.



> It also relates to what I posted upthread, which I took @innerdude to be in broady sympathy with in a recent post: what you describes opens up the scope for a very big gap between playing the character I want to play, and what actually happens in the game.



This gap can happen in any game or system - the character I want to play just doesn't suit the party or the story, or violates the morals of the DM and-or other players, or simply can't be made (or made well) in that system.

I mean, I'm willing to bet that if I came into your game wanting to play a happy-go-lucky character without really a care in the world who just wanted to go out adventuring for the fun of it (I've played this one), that might not work out so well.  Your game is looking for characters with well-defined goals and, dare I say, a certain amount of angst to them.

Side question that came up in a chat with a friend/fellow DM tonight: how in your game do you handle it when during char-gen or at session 1 two players present you with goals for their characters that are vastly different in scope and scale?  For example:
- character one has placed lots of importance on home and family and thus its goal in life is to save the family farm from foreclosure (a nice, small-scale goal likely achievable at low PC level after not too many game sessions) 
- character two is all about religion and has made its goal in life to completely change the faith of the entire realm from one pantheon over to another using means up to and including killing the currently-worshipped deities (a huge-scale goal likely unachievable until very high PC level and after years of play, and maybe not even then)



> All this means is that pretending to talk to a mayor is different from pretending to fight some orcs. That's obvious. It doesn't prove that imaginary things make real things happen!



Speaking to the imaginary mayor causes real words to come out of my mouth which wouldn't come out were I not speaking to the imaginary mayor...



			
				AbdulAlhazred said:
			
		

> No, that's the point YOU CAN'T! Because each one of those events which you are discussing as 'in game fiction' is related to the others by way of the game happening at the table in the real world! They cannot be analyzed on their own.
> 
> This is also why my somewhat 'far out' comment about dependent origination is germane, because it points out that you cannot determine what was a chain of causality without understanding the TOTALITY of the context. In the case of an RPG narrative that totality simply doesn't exist.



Why do I ever EVER need to look at the entire forever endless chain of causality when all I'm after is the simple link or two or three between cause A and effect B, whether in fiction or in reality?

I don't at this point care what causes brought about A to begin with, nor do I care about what B might itself cause later.  If something forces me to look at either of these, then I will; otherwise I'm happy not caring.

Lan-"it's too late at night to dig in to the rest of all this"-efan


----------



## hawkeyefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think that in, at least [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s case, agency isn't quite defined like that. He's not letting players simply decree fiction, like you can't just say "my character pulls the Wand of Orcus out of his backpack and slays the high priest with it!" (unless it was already fictionally established that he had said wand). Its more about the player's agenda being the thing which the fiction addresses.




Well, the map example implies otherwise, to some extent. If it’s bad for a GM to deny the introduction of the map through action declaration, then it stands that it is good to allow it. But does allowing it come with its own set of drawbacks? 

This is what I’ve been trying to understand, but I don’t think that it’s been clearly addressed.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> So, when the player wanted to conquer the world, that was his agenda, his character met Vecna and was offered a chance to take a step in the direction of achieving his goal. In other words the player said "I want to conquer the world" and in the fiction of the game "conquest of the world" became an activity which was being pursued by the player's character.
> 
> It may also be that agency is expressed in generating fiction by means of a check, like "I roll streetwise to see if I can contact Vinny the Weasel, my fence." Maybe if the check succeeds then Vinny will be established to be in the area, otherwise the GM could presumably say "you don't know any Vinny" but would instead probably resort to "he's in prison now..." or something like that. This is a more contingent kind of player authorship which is treated as an extension of a character ability (a player resource). Skills like Streetwise in 4e would essentially be worthless without this, and we can suppose from their existence at least a nominal idea that 4e intended this kind of thing.




Sure, I understand all that and I agree with it. I’ve no problem with any of this.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Sadras said:


> I'm not following you here, what does this have to do with the definition or degree of _player agency_?
> 
> I agree with you that the 'boring story' is certainly a risk attributable to anyone who is allowed to author the fiction.




It was said in context of a specific example, that of the map that had been brought up throughout the thread. I gave a couple of different examples of the map situation. I’ll share again because it seems I was not clear.

Bob the Fighter’s goal is to recover his father’s sword. It was stolen years before, but Bob is unsure by whom or why. So through the course of play, the characters learn that a noble who is suspected of illicit and dark dealings may have a map that indicates where the sword may be. So the PCs are going to the noble’s manor to try and find this map.

Now, in a player driven game, the GM would frame this and then ask “what do you do?” Going off of Pemerton’s earlier comments, it seems that the players can indicate that they search the kitchen for the map, and if their Perception or Search roll indicates a success, then the map is found in the kitchen. 

This just seems boring to me. Which is why I’ve been citing this example as not being particularly useful without context. Now, I’ve added context to it, but perhaps this is far different context than what Pemerton had in mind. And I’m sure that if asked, Pemerton might say that this would not happen because the players in his game are not likely to attempt such an action. They are experienced players and their thoughts are focused on the dramatic impact of the narrative. In which case, the example seems not very useful to describe play.

Now, the same example applied to a more GM driven, D&D style game is equally useless. The players are not likely to try and manufacture the map through a search of the kitchen. Instead, they would simply indicate that they search the kitchen, and leave the results of their search up to the GM. So in this case, the GM is not actually denying any agency on the players’ part because none is expected in this manner wen playibg this type of game. This goes back to Ovinomancer’s chess move in a checkers game analogy.

So my question is if players can author elements to the game, what is to stop them from manufacturing their goals in an undramatic and unsatisfying way? Is it the GM’s framing? If so, then what is the difference between that and a GM relying on his notes? If they both prevent the players from concocting a simple solution to their problem, then are they really all that different? 

Or is it principled play by the players? Where the agency exists for them to add elements to the game, but they limit themselves to only the elements that add dramatic weight?


----------



## Nagol

hawkeyefan said:


> It was said in context of a specific example, that of the map that had been brought up throughout the thread. I gave a couple of different examples of the map situation. I’ll share again because it seems I was not clear.
> 
> Bob the Fighter’s goal is to recover his father’s sword. It was stolen years before, but Bob is unsure by whom or why. So through the course of play, the characters learn that a noble who is suspected of illicit and dark dealings may have a map that indicates where the sword may be. So the PCs are going to the noble’s manor to try and find this map.
> 
> Now, in a player driven game, the GM would frame this and then ask “what do you do?” Going off of Pemerton’s earlier comments, it seems that the players can indicate that they search the kitchen for the map, and if their Perception or Search roll indicates a success, then the map is found in the kitchen.
> 
> This just seems boring to me. Which is why I’ve been citing this example as not being particularly useful without context. Now, I’ve added context to it, but perhaps this is far different context than what Pemerton had in mind. And I’m sure that if asked, Pemerton might say that this would not happen because the players in his game are not likely to attempt such an action. They are experienced players and their thoughts are focused on the dramatic impact of the narrative. In which case, the example seems not very useful to describe play.
> 
> Now, the same example applied to a more GM driven, D&D style game is equally useless. The players are not likely to try and manufacture the map through a search of the kitchen. Instead, they would simply indicate that they search the kitchen, and leave the results of their search up to the GM. So in this case, the GM is not actually denying any agency on the players’ part because none is expected in this manner wen playibg this type of game. This goes back to Ovinomancer’s chess move in a checkers game analogy.
> 
> So my question is if players can author elements to the game, what is to stop them from manufacturing their goals in an undramatic and unsatisfying way? Is it the GM’s framing? If so, then what is the difference between that and a GM relying on his notes? If they both prevent the players from concocting a simple solution to their problem, then are they really all that different?
> 
> Or is it principled play by the players? Where the agency exists for them to add elements to the game, but they limit themselves to only the elements that add dramatic weight?




Most games don't even mention that form of consideration as a player obligation. 

As a player of many types of RPGs, I despise being "focused on the dramatic impact of the narrative".  If there is drama, _I'm failing to keep the situation under control_.  A lot of my table time is devoted to investigation and planning phases as opposed to execution so as to reduce or eliminate dramatic impact.  I do not care if the narrative is boring.  I do not care the table play makes a good story.  I care about accomplishing the tasks at hand -- preferably with aplomb and deftness.  I would be the type to say 'the first room we come to' when asked 'where are you searching?'.  A confrontation in the den with the roaring fireplace, towering bookshelves, and hung weaponry culminating in grabbing for the map as it's tossed into the fire may be more dramatic than finding the map in the spare cold kitchen, but I wouldn't care.


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## Maxperson

Sadras said:


> What I'm trying to illustrate in the example is that if the player has the ability to inject fiction on that level (what you referred to as DM agency), more options become available to the player and so naturally this increases the number of action declarations he/she can make and is thus able to drive the story more directly towards his/her stated goal. i.e. an increased amount of player agency.




I guess it just boils down to terms.  My players already have 100% agency, so it can't go any higher by adding DM agency.  Those are two different agencies with two different roles within the game.  Adding DM agency can't increase player agency, because they are apples and oranges.


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## Aenghus

Some players are content with PC-limited actions, some want more and a bunch of players don't know and just go with the flow. Players don't obsess about this stuff as much as we do.

IMO time and the huge variety of game styles and RPGs out there has made it more difficult in some cases for groups to recruit new compatible players. There is a huge variation in player expectations now.

Some players have been active for decades in the hobby and often have referee experience. Expecting such players not to have creative opinions on a game they are participating in as players seems unrealistic to me.

One issue GM-driven games have is that player feedback can be discouraged to such an extent that it's suppressed. Players can be cowed into passivity, and older games can actively encourage such tactics. 

At the same time I know there are games out there which effectively have the referee narrating a story and the group consuming it, and so long as everyone has made an informed choice to participate that can be OK.

I have had to spend time in my group retraining a number of players, establishing trust so they can feel safe taking risks in the game. 

Player-game mismatches are possible in many combinations. A complex PC with a deep backstory and multiple long term goals doesn't belong in deathtrap dungeon where lifespan is measured in rooms cleared. A bloody-handed adventurer whose skills all related to dungeon delving will likely be out of place at a diplomatic party.


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## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> So my question is if players can author elements to the game, what is to stop them from manufacturing their goals in an undramatic and unsatisfying way? Is it the GM’s framing? If so, then what is the difference between that and a GM relying on his notes? If they both prevent the players from concocting a simple solution to their problem, then are they really all that different?
> 
> *Or is it principled play by the players? Where the agency exists for them to add elements to the game, but they limit themselves to only the elements that add dramatic weight?*



And to take that one step further.  If it is principled play by the players which keeps his style in check, then why isn't principled play by the DM not to railroad the players into a choose your own adventure book equally sufficient?


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## Sunseeker

Sadras said:


> You seem to be agreeing with this rather rigid view of the term, given the below line.




In D&D they don't, at least not in the context of authorship.  By the RAW of _most_ editions, they can only declare things their PCs are capable of it, none of which has any author agency.  Even then, "what their PC is capable of" can, in some cases, be limited to little more than swinging a sword.  Even some high-powered spellcasters of old had class abilities that granted near-authorship of the world, or at least took their agency to a substantially higher degree.

But no, what you are missing in the takeaway from my line is that I believe players can have strong player agency without having any author agency, while others like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] believe that you cannot have strong player agency without some author agency.  I view these as two different things, he doesn't.


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## hawkeyefan

Nagol said:


> Most games don't even mention that form of consideration as a player obligation.
> 
> As a player of many types of RPGs, I despise being "focused on the dramatic impact of the narrative".  If there is drama, _I'm failing to keep the situation under control_.  A lot of my table time is devoted to investigation and planning phases as opposed to execution so as to reduce or eliminate dramatic impact.  I do not care if the narrative is boring.  I do not care the table play makes a good story.  I care about accomplishing the tasks at hand -- preferably with aplomb and deftness.  I would be the type to say 'the first room we come to' when asked 'where are you searching?'.  A confrontation in the den with the roaring fireplace, towering bookshelves, and hung weaponry culminating in grabbing for the map as it's tossed into the fire may be more dramatic than finding the map in the spare cold kitchen, but I wouldn't care.




That’s kind of odd. Do you mean as a player or as te GM? 

And when you say you don’t care if the story is boring, do you mean adhering to the mechanics is the more important goal? Or am I misunderstanding?


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## hawkeyefan

Aenghus said:


> Some players have been active for decades in the hobby and often have referee experience. Expecting such players not to have creative opinions on a game they are participating in as players seems unrealistic to me.
> 
> One issue GM-driven games have is that player feedback can be discouraged to such an extent that it's suppressed. Players can be cowed into passivity, and older games can actively encourage such tactics.




I think this is likely a large part of the conflict. Such entrenched views can make it tough to even discuss the idea of playing another way. 

And I do think that there is a risk of such with those games. I play a lot of D&D 5E, and we have to actively work at making it more player driven than what I would consider the default expectation. For a group playing that game who has expectations of more player driven elements, it takes some effort.



Aenghus said:


> I have had to spend time in my group retraining a number of players establishing trust,  so they can feel save taking risks in the game.




I found this to he true as well. Not so much in the PC background and connections, but when I lean on the players to add things to the game, I was initially met with blank stares. “You see a grizzled old warrior amidst the throng of people in the market. He seems to be watching your group with some intent. Bob, you recognize this man. Why do you recognize him?”

I do things like this to add character hooks periodically during play. At first, my players didn’t even know what I was trying to do. And these are people I’d describe as experienced players. But their experience is almost entirely with D&D and a few similar games. Once I kind of broke through that initial reaistance, it became a much easier process that they’ve come to enjoy.


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## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> And to take that one step further.  If it is principled play by the players which keeps his style in check, then why isn't principled play by the DM not to railroad the players into a choose your own adventure book equally sufficient?




Yes, exactly. I’m all about trusting the players. But I feel like there is little trust being afforded to the GM throughout much of this discussion. I’m not sure why. 

Does it boil down to game mechanics? If you introduce a game that uses more player driven elements and takes the weight off the GM, that’s fine. And I can understand that as a preferred style. 

I just don’t know if that’s the only way to achieve it.


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## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> Yes, exactly. I’m all about trusting the players. But I feel like there is little trust being afforded to the GM throughout much of this discussion. I’m not sure why.
> 
> Does it boil down to game mechanics? If you introduce a game that uses more player driven elements and takes the weight off the GM, that’s fine. And I can understand that as a preferred style.
> 
> I just don’t know if that’s the only way to achieve it.




I've said many, many times that if you don't trust the DM, you shouldn't be playing that game.  I can't imagine being able to have fun in a game where I couldn't trust the DM.


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## Aenghus

Maxperson said:


> I've said many, many times that if you don't trust the DM, you shouldn't be playing that game.  I can't imagine being able to have fun in a game where I couldn't trust the DM.




Trust isn't a single numerical value, it's complex, multifaceted and ideally reciprocal. You can trust people on some issues and not on others. You can trust someone and still have issues with them when they have a bad day.

I can't count the number of times as a player that a game has been going wrong, and the referee made an appeal to just trust him and the game would work out, often without taking any steps to improve the situation, just sticking to their guns to the bitter end. This is entirely anecdotal but my impression is that the player's perception of trouble in the game was generally accurate, and mostly the referee was being over ambitious, or hadn't left any room for the players and the game quickly failed. Occasionally the game was able to recover from a nose dive but only when the GM attempted to address the issues causing player unhappiness.

IMO trust is more difficult in an adversarial game IMO, as it is in a game that values intra-party conflict. Monolithic parties are to some eyes unrealistic but they are an attempt to sidestep some of the trust issues, and streamline play by avoiding a bunch of the drama such conflict creates. I realise some people like such drama and conflict, but there are others who don't and are willing to take steps to avoid it.


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## Emerikol

pemerton said:


> Because the real world is not a fiction that someone authored. Asking _who has agency over the content of the real world_ doesn't make any sense. The real world isn't _content/I], it's actual stuff that enters into actual causal processes._



_

Well we could debate this as it relates to God but that would be a sidetrack .   I do feel the GM is tasked with creating this world to the best of their ability.  




pemerton said:



			But a fiction is authored. So if the GM writes the bulk of the fiction, and the players principal relationship with it is to learn it from the GM, then player agency over the content of the fiction is close to zero. Describing that as the same as their agency in the real world is just obscuring what is really going on, which is that they are learning the content of a fiction written by someone else.
		
Click to expand...


In a properly created world, there are three possibilities.  The GM has specifically authored that a rock is present or not, the GM has authored that the area could have rocks but it's not certain so their is some chance.  No matter the answer if the GM has created a world and actually knows the location of rocks I'm fine with it.  If he doesn't then the second option comes into play.  Perhaps a building having a window is a better example.  If I detailed out the building in advance then I tell the player what is seen.  If not then I'd have to dice for the chance that side of the building had a window.  Either way, the player should be unaware of how that fact is known.  The player character just gets told continuously the state of affairs of the world as the player interacts.  Perhaps allow the PC to roll is where things go wrong.  I don't have the PC's rolling for what they see.  I roll it secretly and sometimes I roll even when I don't need to roll.  

I want my player characters to feel as if every single solitary atom of this imaginary world already exists.  Logically we know that is not possible.  Still a fair GM will do a lot of detail in the gaming area and less detail about far away places but enough.  The GM will also know enough about the world in general to make good estimations on things he doesn't know for certain.  Wandering monster tables for example are an example.  No I the GM do not know at any second if a monster will be wandering through this area but I do know they are through here about 10% of the time or whatever.




pemerton said:



			What does making things happen mean? In the real world, I can throw a rock and break a window.

At the RPG table, the players can declare "I pick up a rock and throw it at the window." Who decides what happens? Who decides if there is even a rock or a window ready to hand? Until we know how these things are established, how can we work out who has what sort of agency?
		
Click to expand...


I think the mistake you are making is calling it agency.  Your concern is likely valid for a particular playstyle.  I'm not questioning that.   If though as a player, you can ask what you see and then affect what you see in meaningful ways you have agency.  So it might be an argument about semantics.  

Now I will agree with you (I think) on one thing.  If a GM just says Yes or No without prior design and without any recourse to a die roll based on some probability then I think that is not good.  If though the GM has designed a building and one side has no windows, then answering "You see no windows" is not taking any agency away from players.  It's a mere conveying of facts about the actual state of the imaginary world.  Just like if I said to you "My house has no windows on the north side"



pemerton said:



			Now maybe that's not your game. Maybe the player gets to make a roll to find a rock. Maybe the player gets to make a roll to find a window. Maybe the player gets to make a roll to have a thrown rock break a window. But then it's no longer true to say that the GM is tasked with establishing the state of the world - because in fact the player can do that, by making the rolls just described.
		
Click to expand...


The GM will roll if the state of something is not certain.  This is a concession to the fact GM's can't establish the location of every rock.  In a perfect world, at least to me, the GM could do that.  We know that is not possible.  So instead we establish what we perceive are the important things about an area, and we establish reasonable probabilities for anything not thought of.





pemerton said:



			What you say about how I play my character is correct (subject to mechanics like morale checks etc).

When the GM does the same thing in respect of some NPC the players are trying to have their PCs relate to, or get some benefit from, etc, that is another mode of the GM exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction.

An example of the difference here would be the GM deciding that a certain NPC won't take a bribe; compared to Classic Traveller, which resolves that issue through a mix of a reaction roll and a Bribery check. The latter allows a degree of player agency that the former doesn't.
		
Click to expand...


When it comes to NPC's which are a GM's greatest challenge, I think you set probabilities based upon various factors.  Even so I am sure there are cases where practically that probability is zero.  I do think it is worth a GM's efforts to learn about his NPCs but again there will always be the "red shirts" of the game who perhaps you only know a little.  In those cases of course you roll.  Again, there are very few NPC situations where I wouldn't roll.  




pemerton said:



			This is true for me too - I suspect just as much as it is true for you - but that is neither here nor there for the current conversation.

When I'm in the head of my character, and I look around for a rock to throw through a window, there needs to be a way of working out what my character can see and hence what s/he can do. There are a lot of possibilities, but the main ones discussed in this thread are (i) the GM decides or (ii) the player makes a roll. One gives agency to the GM. The other permits some agency to the player.

Also: there is no judgement in the above, just analysis.
		
Click to expand...



I think agency again is the wrong word usage here.  I think I agree with you though that GMs who just arbitrarily decide everything based on whim is not my idea of a good GM.  I do though think a GM who builds his world and carefully develops his NPCs etc.... will not have to resort to a roll in every case.  This is why in "dungeons" I develop my NPCs and how they will react and their plans when attacked.  I determine those plans based on the intelligence score.  Then when the PCs enter the dungeon and develop their own plans I follow my original plan and I'm unaffected by what the PC's do (thus avoiding bias).  That doesn't mean I never dice for anything.  I do all the time.  I roll a morale check often off camera for whether the residents will stay and fight or run away.  That roll is based on how formidable the PCs seem and how difficult the fight has been on the bad guys.   My monsters don't stupidly die.  They act according to their intelligence.  

As a GM, I feel my job is to present a "realistic" world given it's a fantasy setting.  I want my NPCs to act in believable ways.  Success to me is when my players hate one NPC and love another and I'm playing both as GM.  It takes real effort and commitment to be a good GM.  You won't lack for a group though if you make the commitment. (And I'm not saying that you are or aren't a good GM.  That last statement was just in general.)_


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## Emerikol

Also as it relates to the map.  I believe as GM I would ALWAYS know the location of something so important ahead of time.  I may not know about every rock or every window in every building every single time.  I will know where a primary treasure is located.  So I would never allow a successful roll to find a map when the map is not present.


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## Maxperson

Aenghus said:


> Trust isn't a single numerical value, it's complex, multifaceted and ideally reciprocal. You can trust people on some issues and not on others. You can trust someone and still have issues with them when they have a bad day.




I'm not talking about a bad day.  It generally takes more than that to break trust.  If I'm in a game and I cannot trust the DM, I'm going to leave it.  I have better things to do than worry when the DM is going to screw me.



> I can't count the number of times as a player that a game has been going wrong, and the referee made an appeal to just trust him and the game would work out, often without taking any steps to improve the situation, just sticking to their guns to the bitter end. This is entirely anecdotal but my impression is that the player's perception of trouble in the game was generally accurate, and mostly the referee was being over ambitious, or hadn't left any room for the players and the game quickly failed. Occasionally the game was able to recover from a nose dive but only when the GM attempted to address the issues causing player unhappiness.




So that was a DM that couldn't be trusted, which is why the game failed.  Look, I'm not talking about some mythical perfect DM who never makes mistakes and only makes players feel like happy rainbows.  DMs make mistakes.  The ones that work to correct them and bring back the fun can be trusted.  When entering a new game I will extend trust from the beginning and let the DM prove me wrong.  If he does, I will leave. 



> IMO trust is more difficult in an adversarial game IMO, as it is in a game that values intra-party conflict. Monolithic parties are to some eyes unrealistic but they are an attempt to sidestep some of the trust issues, and streamline play by avoiding a bunch of the drama such conflict creates. I realise some people like such drama and conflict, but there are others who don't and are willing to take steps to avoid it.




D&D is not an adversarial game.  If it was, the players lose......always.  The DM can drop a dragon on them at first level and win the game.  D&D is collaborative, but with different roles for the players and the DM.  If the DM, or players for that matter, are viewing the game as adversarial, something has gone terribly wrong.  The goal of the collaboration is enjoyment for those playing it.  It makes it really easy to trust the DM if you realize that you are all working towards a common goal.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> I've said many, many times that if you don't trust the DM, you shouldn't be playing that game.  I can't imagine being able to have fun in a game where I couldn't trust the DM.




Well, I can understand the desire for player driven play, and therefore for mechanics that limit GM responsibility. I feel like such a game isn’t so much about a lack of trust than it is for mechanics that will support a preferred style of play.

But I agree with you that if the GM is and can be trusted, that even a game that lacks such mechanics can be player driven.


----------



## Nagol

hawkeyefan said:


> That’s kind of odd. Do you mean as a player or as te GM?
> 
> And when you say you don’t care if the story is boring, do you mean adhering to the mechanics is the more important goal? Or am I misunderstanding?




Success at whatever task I choose is much more important than how dramatic the story would sound on retelling.  I don't care whether the narrative would be considered good literature or story-telling -- developing the story is tertiary to having fun at the table as a group and being true to the character I'm trying to portray.

As a player, I am more concerned about acting as I think the character would act.  Would the character try to generate drama?  Possible, but not likely.  Because of my nature, it is more likely the character would try to be competent and effective in his role.  If I think my PC has the capability to stop a bomb in 10 seconds, but we're at the two minute mark, would I delay trying until the time becomes more dramatic to enhance the narrative? No.  Would I strive for a dramatic confrontation if I think I can win more quietly? No.  Would I as a player seek out or attempt to inject any form of dramatic impact on the narrative?  Only so much as the character would.  Competent and effective characters tend to avoid drama save that which directly suits their purpose; dramatic moments tend to be messy and unpredictable.

I don't care if the narrative ends up being a good story.  Let's face it: we're not professional story-tellers by and large.  Most times tables can at best pull off cheesy, cliché ridden, and corny stories anyway.  And that's OK.  We're not trying to make a wonderful story with appropriate narrative highs and lows in a 3 or 4 act structure with a strong beginning, middle, and end.  We're trying to have fun at the table while portraying people/things that aren't us. If I have fun raiding a temple that ends up being a cakewalk because the group did a good job investigating and planning, hey, that's great. Better in fact than if we spent the time to do a crappy job investigating and planning and the raid ended up more suspenseful and climactic 'by the skin of the teeth' win because we weren't prepared.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Well, the DM and players have very different roles.  DM agency is supposed to be different.  That agency doesn't take away from player agency, though, unless the DM is abusing his power or makes a mistake.




Sure, there is no inherent conflict between the two. They should be able to complement each other ideally.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> Well, I can understand the desire for player driven play, and therefore for mechanics that limit GM responsibility. I feel like such a game isn’t so much about a lack of trust than it is for mechanics that will support a preferred style of play.




Yeah.  I wasn't suggesting that player driven play is about distrust for the DM.  It just seems like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has a sour taste in his mouth about standard play, and from the way he talks about those DMs, it seems like he's had some bad experiences.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Sure, there is no inherent conflict between the two. They should be able to complement each other ideally.




Yes, they can absolutely complement each other.  My issue with this is how [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is saying that there is limited to no player agency in my style of play, when player agency is at 100% in my game.  It's a little insulting. The DM agency he grants to his players doesn't change their player agency at all, it just blends the two agencies into a new playstyle.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> The issue I have by making a claim like that is that it does seem you do not take the playstyle into consideration which is a callback I believe to Ovi's posts (chess vs checkers) and a conversation I shared with  @_*AbdulAlhazred*_. .
> 
> Whereas in your game you frame the entire dungeon as a whole and then cut straight through to the room with the map, the other style is to frame the dungeon as a boardgame* which requires/challenges players to find the map in the dungeon while providing smaller framings (by the DM) for each corridor, hallway and room...etc
> 
> This is why I disagree with your premise in the OP as the boardgame style is still VERY prevalent today (in particular in D&D games) and this is clearly evident given the AP and modules which are being published by WotC.
> 
> EDIT: The type of _player agency _you require for your games is just not as important in the (for lack of a better term) boardgame style where fictional positioning of the map is done by the DM.
> 
> *using one of your analogies for ease




I'm not entirely sure this is so. I think that there's a great qualitative difference between the typical mid-80's TSR module and a Gygaxian dungeon in the style popular 10 years earlier. 

As an example: In 1976 I purchased a copy of Holme's Basic. My copy didn't come with a module (there were various permutations of 'extras' in the boxes at different times). Instead it came with a 'Monster and Treasure Assortment' (a series of 3-hole-punched pages filled with tables of pregenerated monster and treasure pulled from the tables in the MM (IE number appearing and such, plus the results of rolling on the treasure type tables). I assume these were generated from material in OD&D as they went on up to higher levels than Holme's covered. Anyway, there was also a product called 'Dungeon Geomorphs' in the package, which was just sheets of endless corridors, rooms, doors, etc filling 8.5x11 sheets of (also punched) light cardstock. They were printed in such a way that they could be cut up and rearranged so that they would (mostly) connect together in various permutations, allowing a budding DM to almost instantly produce a vast maze. 

Combining these two products together almost literally created a sort of random generated dungeon maze. You would almost certainly provide a lot of additional creative input, maybe custom map sections, secret doors, special encounter areas, etc. The result would be a workable dungeon in the tradition of (presumably) things like Blackmoor Castle and Castle Greyhawk dungeons (I don't believe that either Gary nor Dave every ACTUALLY published the exact maps they used in their early games, so its hard to say they looked a certain way, but I suspect they were similar dense mazes of rooms and corridors and whatnot based on the evidence I have from their writings). 

This was early D&D. A completely drawn up Maze, stocked with hazards, patrolled by wandering monsters, and ready for the DM to, relatively objectively, adjudicate the player's exploration thereof by way of their PCs. This is how my first D&D campaign was structured. There was a 'castle' beneath which was a vast maze of dungeon into which the PCs plunged in search of treasure and magic. When they were sufficiently depleted they would return to the 'town' and buy whatever they needed from the equipment list in Holme's Basic, or other materials we had (The Dragon, hand copied bits and hand-me-downs of OD&D stuff, Judges Guild another 3PP stuff, and our own 'rules' we wrote to fill in the blanks). 

There was no story, no progression of an arc of any kind. At that point there was no world into which this locale was set, no logic to why it existed, nothing. The game was purely encapsulated in dungeon exploration and now and then some sort of ancillary to that like some sort of 'town adventure' (IE trying to hire henchmen, getting characters resurrected and paying for it with quests, etc). 

So there really IS a pure Gygaxian dungeon crawl (or maybe we should really call it Arnesonian since he made the first dungeon). I won't say that it is always 100% pregenerated, but it is, as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] alluded to, a very specific and set format of game. In a sense it is almost transitional between tabletop wargames and RPGs. Imagine what was happening in Dave Arneson's basement (or whatever). He was making up this thing, cobbled together from his experiences with 'Kriegspiel' and Chainmail, with some other wargames mixed in. Each foray into the dungeon was a game, each player picked a character, perhaps an ongoing one from previous games, and they followed a set of tactical rules to explore a region of dungeon map prepared by the referee. There were two unique features, having one PC as your 'game piece', and an explicitly open-ended set of exploration options that would be mediated against the environment by the referee, soon to be called DM.

The sorts of extended adventures, specific quests, elaborate NPCs, and linear storylines, which are features of later modules didn't really exist in these things. If you look at B2 it is PRETTY CLOSE to what they were doing in 1974. There's a castle, there's a dungeon (Caves of Chaos), and the PCs are expected to clean out the dungeon and refresh themselves in the town, the Keep. Maybe now and then they can have some bit of adventure in the Keep, but its inhabitants are largely mundane. There are a few who can offer a service or two, you can hire a few hirelings, buy a healing potion or three, get a remove curse thrown on you for a steep price, etc. Otherwise it just serves as a place to rest while you heal, store spare loot, and plausibly pick up the replacement PCs that will be required to finish the adventure.


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## Aenghus

Maxperson said:


> D&D is not an adversarial game.  If it was, the players lose......always.  The DM can drop a dragon on them at first level and win the game.  D&D is collaborative, but with different roles for the players and the DM.  If the DM, or players for that matter, are viewing the game as adversarial, something has gone terribly wrong.  The goal of the collaboration is enjoyment for those playing it.  It makes it really easy to trust the DM if you realize that you are all working towards a common goal.




That isn't what I meant by "adversarial game", I find the definition you use above not useful as that would be a style of play the vast majority would label bad, and we don't need another term for it.

What I meant is a game with a competitive element between players and referee. Perhaps the referee boasts about his PC body count, perhaps the players compete to be the first to survive to a particular level of the dungeon, or kill a particular monster. The referee and players may trashtalk each other for fun and to angle for advantage. The players may compete building new PCs to find effective tactics, exploits and loopholes in the rules. To some this might be their default style of D&D.

But a common downside of this style of play is communication problems. The competition between participants can discourage communications and increase the amount of misinformation. Acceptance of trashtalking can prevent the players from hearing warnings when they are about to go over their heads, because the referee always exaggerates the danger of the foes, so a real warning disappears into the noise.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> All true. Only so far as the particular NPC I'm running at that time has extra knowledge, if any.
> 
> Simple example: the vizier is secretly plotting to take down the king; both are NPCs.  If the PCs talk to both, what they hear from the king will be in blissful ignorance of any such plot while what they hear from the vizier may well be tainted with that knowledge.
> 
> If done right (and I freely admit it isn't always) any NPC is only operating with the knowledge it would reasonably have in any given situation, and the DM has to thus constrain herself when running an NPC whose knowledge is incomplete e.g. the king, above.



But this is, again, IMHO, a very dicey proposition indeed. Given the vast number of possible ways that different NPCs could know things, and the possible relationships between them, even in a setting where the GM has created a lot of detail, it beggars the imagination to believe that you can judge on any other basis than narrative/aesthetic concerns who knows what. I mean, yes, that means you can play each NPC in terms of what they know and don't know, relative to others, but you're not really constrained in terms of what that is, nor can you really reason about it in any causal way beyond some very trivial "this is common sense" possibilities (IE my ally probably knows my plan kind of thing).  



> And also be a badly-run game, if the DM isn't being consistent with what she decides and-or isn't consistent with the already-established fiction.



I don't think this observation is relevant. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s point is that the GM would be deciding EVERYTHING in that situation, yet your definition of player agency considers the players to have 'agency' of some sort. As I said in an earlier post yesterday, I think this is confusing fictional PC agency with real player agency. The later can be completely lacking, or exist to whatever degree, and the former can be complete. I can imagine a game where the PC's actions are totally unconstrained, and yet the player makes no meaningful decisions at all. Consistency with fiction isn't even related to this. As to what is a 'good' or 'bad' game, that's totally a matter of taste.



> This gap can happen in any game or system - the character I want to play just doesn't suit the party or the story, or violates the morals of the DM and-or other players, or simply can't be made (or made well) in that system.
> 
> I mean, I'm willing to bet that if I came into your game wanting to play a happy-go-lucky character without really a care in the world who just wanted to go out adventuring for the fun of it (I've played this one), that might not work out so well.  Your game is looking for characters with well-defined goals and, dare I say, a certain amount of angst to them.



Well, you have to posit some sort of motivation or goal that makes your character interesting enough to play. I mean, if you want to just play the town drunk who sits in the bar all evening and never does a thing is that really something anyone would bother to do? Its OK as a hypothetical, but its really sort of a 'spherical cow' kind of a thing.



> Side question that came up in a chat with a friend/fellow DM tonight: how in your game do you handle it when during char-gen or at session 1 two players present you with goals for their characters that are vastly different in scope and scale?  For example:
> - character one has placed lots of importance on home and family and thus its goal in life is to save the family farm from foreclosure (a nice, small-scale goal likely achievable at low PC level after not too many game sessions)
> 
> - character two is all about religion and has made its goal in life to completely change the faith of the entire realm from one pantheon over to another using means up to and including killing the currently-worshipped deities (a huge-scale goal likely unachievable until very high PC level and after years of play, and maybe not even then)



Its a reasonable question. My reaction is that surely the 2nd PC's goal will have some effect on the family farm! This might create tension between the two, or their aims might be aligned. There's still the question of what might happen 'in the middle' to keep them both hooked, but I think there are likely a range of threats to the farm which cover all levels. The first PC might also 'grow' in terms of her ambitions, so that once she saves the farm then she saves the town, the barony, the kingdom, and eventually the whole of creation! This would be a VERY 4e-type of conception of heroic story arc.

Likewise the character with the grandiose plans probably doesn't start with that as their main focus. Clearly they're not out there god-killing in episode one. In 4e terms they're going to spend heroic tier maybe struggling against the evils of the current faith (at least as they perceive it), and maybe in paragon they overthrow the kingdom's religious institution and institute the new one, and in epic they deal with the repercussions of that leading up to a necessary war against the 'old gods' or something like that. 



> Why do I ever EVER need to look at the entire forever endless chain of causality when all I'm after is the simple link or two or three between cause A and effect B, whether in fiction or in reality?
> 
> I don't at this point care what causes brought about A to begin with, nor do I care about what B might itself cause later.  If something forces me to look at either of these, then I will; otherwise I'm happy not caring.




Because, if you examine how things work in the real world, any given effect has many complex causes, and these causes are themselves interrelated in complex ways because they share earlier causes with other things, and each other. The point isn't that you care about them, but that you can pretty much decree anything and construct some causal process that is compatible with that outcome and your initial world state. That state and that outcome are simply not tightly enough constrained to bind you in any appreciable degree. 

Go back to the example of the sword being swung at the orc. I can create an almost unimaginably large number of narratives which describe an equally large number of outcomes to that act which are all plausible. Thus the idea of 'causality' in the fictional world isn't ACTUALLY binding on the GM. It doesn't form any meaningful constraint on the narrative he can describe at any point, and it has almost no value to the players as a means of predicting what will come next. All that we are left with is narrative sensibility, genre tropes, table conventions, and a willingness to stick to whatever rules the game may present which apply in a given situation. Fictional causality is powerless, it has no teeth, it is an illusion, nothing more.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> It was said in context of a specific example, that of the map that had been brought up throughout the thread. I gave a couple of different examples of the map situation. I’ll share again because it seems I was not clear.
> 
> Bob the Fighter’s goal is to recover his father’s sword. It was stolen years before, but Bob is unsure by whom or why. So through the course of play, the characters learn that a noble who is suspected of illicit and dark dealings may have a map that indicates where the sword may be. So the PCs are going to the noble’s manor to try and find this map.
> 
> Now, in a player driven game, the GM would frame this and then ask “what do you do?” Going off of Pemerton’s earlier comments, it seems that the players can indicate that they search the kitchen for the map, and if their Perception or Search roll indicates a success, then the map is found in the kitchen.
> 
> This just seems boring to me. Which is why I’ve been citing this example as not being particularly useful without context. Now, I’ve added context to it, but perhaps this is far different context than what Pemerton had in mind. And I’m sure that if asked, Pemerton might say that this would not happen because the players in his game are not likely to attempt such an action. They are experienced players and their thoughts are focused on the dramatic impact of the narrative. In which case, the example seems not very useful to describe play.
> 
> Now, the same example applied to a more GM driven, D&D style game is equally useless. The players are not likely to try and manufacture the map through a search of the kitchen. Instead, they would simply indicate that they search the kitchen, and leave the results of their search up to the GM. So in this case, the GM is not actually denying any agency on the players’ part because none is expected in this manner wen playibg this type of game. This goes back to Ovinomancer’s chess move in a checkers game analogy.
> 
> So my question is if players can author elements to the game, what is to stop them from manufacturing their goals in an undramatic and unsatisfying way? Is it the GM’s framing? If so, then what is the difference between that and a GM relying on his notes? If they both prevent the players from concocting a simple solution to their problem, then are they really all that different?
> 
> Or is it principled play by the players? Where the agency exists for them to add elements to the game, but they limit themselves to only the elements that add dramatic weight?




OK, so this is a general type of question about the technique of 'scene framing' and how you generate an interesting narrative using a player-driven approach. 

First of all, I'd say that the players are assumed to have SOME interest in an interesting narrative. If they don't, why are they playing? 

To expostulate a bit on this and how this fits into D&D as a game, in the beginning Arnesonian play involved a GM putting players through a 'skill test gauntlet' and there was a fundamental opposition. The player's goal was to amass treasure and gain XP to go up in levels. Clearly the GM had to act as a foil to this, to an extent. Consider the much-maligned 'Monty Haul Dungeon' where the GM just gives away the store. But this isn't material to a narrative fiction where character development and the story itself are primary goals! This is why 2e is incoherent. It has the structure of OD&D, the opposed DM and players and the mechanics to go with that, and an avowed agenda of story-telling which doesn't fit with that. 

So, what do we actually have to fear? If the players simply give themselves the whole store, then its their own fault if the game is boring and pointless! What the exact balance is and how the relationship between GM and players works can be structured in numerous ways. I could run, say, 4e D&D as pretty much classic D&D, and I can run it with the players dicing to add elements to the story, like Vinny the Weasel, or I could even just let them insert stuff any way they want whenever they want, though some people will prefer specific structures (@Pemerton sticks strictly to the Czege Principle as he calls it, maybe [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] doesn't). 

Personally, I think its fun if the players set the general agenda based on their character backstory and build choices, and then indicate the direction to go in by introducing elements to play which are plausible and connect with their action declarations. This is one reason I added the 'Inspiration' mechanic to HoML, it provides a specifically measured element of player manipulation of the plot which is mechanically constrained. I find this is easier for a lot of players to handle than simply "do anything you want with the story" as it keeps them more focused on doing relevant things (my version of this requires that the player relate any narrative element they produce to an existing character trait, and if they wish to exercise this option more than once per session they have to generate some kind of narrative element that is related to the character but contrary to their interests in order to regain Inspiration). I find this rule works pretty well, and its rather similar to how things like FATE and (I suppose) BW and Cortex+ work in some degree.


----------



## Lanefan

Nagol said:


> Most games don't even mention that form of consideration as a player obligation.
> 
> As a player of many types of RPGs, I despise being "focused on the dramatic impact of the narrative".  If there is drama, _I'm failing to keep the situation under control_.  A lot of my table time is devoted to investigation and planning phases as opposed to execution so as to reduce or eliminate dramatic impact.  I do not care if the narrative is boring.  I do not care the table play makes a good story.  I care about accomplishing the tasks at hand -- preferably with aplomb and deftness.  I would be the type to say 'the first room we come to' when asked 'where are you searching?'.  A confrontation in the den with the roaring fireplace, towering bookshelves, and hung weaponry culminating in grabbing for the map as it's tossed into the fire may be more dramatic than finding the map in the spare cold kitchen, but I wouldn't care.



Now this is a very interesting approach.

4e D&D and (from what I can tell) some of the 'indie' games referenced in this thread have an underlying philosophy of 'go where the action is'.  The DM is expected to frame dramatic scenes and the players are expected to deal with these scenes via means appropriate to their characters. 

Yet here we have a player who would rather use exploration and wise information gathering in order to _go where the action isn't_; in effect mitigating or sometimes entirely denying the DM the opportunity to frame these dramatic scenes as long as doing so allows character goals to be met, missions accomplished, etc.

This to me is an important form of player agency that is entirely denied by 'go where the action is'.  I rather badly waved at this idea a long way upthread; I'll try again here, using the example from  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's game where the PCs were looking for a reliquary, and met some angels en route that showed them the way to get there.  As written, the PCs conversed with the angels after which pemerton-as-GM went where the action is and framed the scene in the reliquary; and things proceeded from there. (note this might not be the best example to use but it's one I can remember the gist of without having to dig around)

A player using  [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION] 's approach loses out on gobs of agency here:
 - s/he doesn't get the opportunity to explore the approaches to and surroundings of the reliquary before arriving at the drama; which means
 - - s/he doesn't get a chance to explore the area around the reliquary to determine whether there's more than one possible approach or exit
 - - s/he doesn't get an opportunity to pre-scout the reliquary itself via stealth or scrying or whatever other means might be available in order to assess its occupants, threats, hazards, etc.
 - - because of this lack of knowledge s/he isn't able to mitigate potential risks or prepare for a potential encounter via pre-casting spells, downing potions, or whatever other means might be available
 - before all this, s/he also loses out on any opportunity to explore whatever might lie between the angel encounter site and the reliquary - by bypassing this the GM has arbitrarily decided there's nothing there of relevance rather than allowing the players to find out for themselves

In short, there's no opportunity given for the players to force the GM to change his initial framing of the reliquary scene from what it ended up being; or delay it until more information could be gathered.

Now pemerton's players are probably fine with this as it's what they're used to: cut to the action and skip the rest.  But I wonder if they even realize how much agency they're giving up in the process?

Lanefan


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## Lanefan

Aenghus said:


> IMO trust is more difficult in an adversarial game IMO, as it is in a game that values intra-party conflict.



Not IME, and our games are both of these.

That said, I'm playing with people I know as friends outside the game; so the trust is kind of already there to begin with.  When playing with strangers, yeah, there's going to be a feeling-out period during which some stuff will by necessity have to be downplayed.


> Monolithic parties are to some eyes unrealistic but they are an attempt to sidestep some of the trust issues, and streamline play by avoiding a bunch of the drama such conflict creates. I realise some people like such drama and conflict, but there are others who don't and are willing to take steps to avoid it.



Why are people always so concerned with streamlining play?

I mean hell, if something doesn't get done in this session there's always next week, and the week after that, and...  

Most games aren't playing to a schedule "this campaign has to be over by June", are they?


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## Lanefan

Aenghus said:


> That isn't what I meant by "adversarial game", I find the definition you use above not useful as that would be a style of play the vast majority would label bad, and we don't need another term for it.



Seconded.



> What I meant is a game with a competitive element between players and referee. Perhaps the referee boasts about his PC body count, perhaps the players compete to be the first to survive to a particular level of the dungeon, or kill a particular monster. The referee and players may trashtalk each other for fun and to angle for advantage.



With smiles on our faces, we do this all the time. 


> The players may compete building new PCs to find effective tactics, exploits and loopholes in the rules.



But this, not so much.  We're not really a crunch-driven group.



> But a common downside of this style of play is communication problems. The competition between participants can discourage communications and increase the amount of misinformation. Acceptance of trashtalking can prevent the players from hearing warnings when they are about to go over their heads, because the referee always exaggerates the danger of the foes, so a real warning disappears into the noise.



This happens surprisingly infrequently IME - mostly because it's easy to tell when the DM is joking and when he isn't.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> And to take that one step further.  If it is principled play by the players which keeps his style in check, then why isn't principled play by the DM not to railroad the players into a choose your own adventure book equally sufficient?




I think this misses the entire point of the whole thread from the start. Nobody argued that GM-centered play, and any attendant world building, couldn't be 'principled'. The assertion is that it HAS A DIFFERENT AGENDA. There are different characteristics inherent to these techniques. In a GM-centered play system it is axiomatic that the focus is in terms of what the GM is presenting. In a player-centric game it is axiomatic that the focus is on the agenda brought to the table by the players. This is a qualitative difference that is not related to how well each GM sticks to his principles. If such a qualitative difference does not exist, then what are we discussing here?

It seems to me that the controversial point, to some of you, is the assertion by [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] et al that, to the extent that a game addresses player concerns, it becomes a player-driven game. I think there are finer points that can be discussed, but this too seems kind of self evident. The counter assertion seems to be that as long as the CHARACTERS are fictionally not depicted as being forced to do something, and their choices appear meaningful from character stance, that the players have agency. This seems to be IMHO incoherent, if the players choices of moves cannot produce fiction of the player's choosing, then they're really only choosing between the GM's options, and they are dependent on the GM to address their agenda, entirely. 

I think its reasonable to ask your question "given that player's power is not unlimited, to what extent is the game still dependent on the GM for the agenda?" and this is a GOOD question! In some systems, like Cortex+ and BW there are actual rules that stipulate that the GM only has a specific amount of power over the fiction, so clearly if you play a game like that then the answer must be "there's a balance of power between them and they share it." In D&D, with its 'rule 0' type of structure, that isn't the case from pure mechanics, the GM could just steamroller everyone in mechanical terms, even if that GM is [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]. So, yes, it requires principled play by a GM in D&D, NO MATTER WHAT way you play it! That's just a characteristic of D&D! It isn't a characteristic of Cortex+...


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> But this is, again, IMHO, a very dicey proposition indeed. Given the vast number of possible ways that different NPCs could know things, and the possible relationships between them, even in a setting where the GM has created a lot of detail, it beggars the imagination to believe that you can judge on any other basis than narrative/aesthetic concerns who knows what. I mean, yes, that means you can play each NPC in terms of what they know and don't know, relative to others, but you're not really constrained in terms of what that is, nor can you really reason about it in any causal way beyond some very trivial "this is common sense" possibilities (IE my ally probably knows my plan kind of thing).



Like I said (and you quoted), I don't always get it right.  But at least I make the attempt, which is all one can ask.




> I don't think this observation is relevant. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s point is that the GM would be deciding EVERYTHING in that situation, yet your definition of player agency considers the players to have 'agency' of some sort. As I said in an earlier post yesterday, I think this is confusing fictional PC agency with real player agency. The later can be completely lacking, or exist to whatever degree, and the former can be complete. I can imagine a game where the PC's actions are totally unconstrained, and yet the player makes no meaningful decisions at all.



Seeing as how in theory the players are being represented by their PCs, I'd say 'PC agency' and player agency are joined at the hip.



> Well, you have to posit some sort of motivation or goal that makes your character interesting enough to play. I mean, if you want to just play the town drunk who sits in the bar all evening and never does a thing is that really something anyone would bother to do? Its OK as a hypothetical, but its really sort of a 'spherical cow' kind of a thing.



Ah, but now you're taking a playable example (a happy-go-lucky chap who wants to adventure for the fun and excitement of it) and throwing back an unplayable example (the town drunk who does nothing) to try and prove me wrong.

A happy-go-lucky character is very playable, believe me!  Arguably the best character I've ever had was like this: her wisdom was so low that she just thought most of the time adventuring was all just good fun (except when her friends died, then the tears came); and afterwards spending the treasure was wonderful!   She lasted for years, in a 3e game that wasn't always nice to its PCs.



> Its a reasonable question. My reaction is that surely the 2nd PC's goal will have some effect on the family farm! This might create tension between the two, or their aims might be aligned. There's still the question of what might happen 'in the middle' to keep them both hooked, but I think there are likely a range of threats to the farm which cover all levels. The first PC might also 'grow' in terms of her ambitions, so that once she saves the farm then she saves the town, the barony, the kingdom, and eventually the whole of creation! This would be a VERY 4e-type of conception of heroic story arc.



Assuming the player was cool with that, sure.  But if the player (in character) takes the attitude of "OK, farm's saved, I'm done here - and they need help with the harvest, besides", then what?  I'd hazard a guess games like this don't handle PC turnover quite as easily as a more traditional system.



> Likewise the character with the grandiose plans probably doesn't start with that as their main focus. Clearly they're not out there god-killing in episode one. In 4e terms they're going to spend heroic tier maybe struggling against the evils of the current faith (at least as they perceive it), and maybe in paragon they overthrow the kingdom's religious institution and institute the new one, and in epic they deal with the repercussions of that leading up to a necessary war against the 'old gods' or something like that.



Very true.  My point was more that character one can fulfill its goals without ever leaving heroic tier while character two has to get to epic and even then might be up against it.



> Because, if you examine how things work in the real world, any given effect has many complex causes, and these causes are themselves interrelated in complex ways because they share earlier causes with other things, and each other. The point isn't that you care about them, but that you can pretty much decree anything and construct some causal process that is compatible with that outcome and your initial world state. That state and that outcome are simply not tightly enough constrained to bind you in any appreciable degree.



So strip away all that and just look only at cause A and effect B.  Your brain will thank you for it. 



> Go back to the example of the sword being swung at the orc. I can create an almost unimaginably large number of narratives which describe an equally large number of outcomes to that act which are all plausible. Thus the idea of 'causality' in the fictional world isn't ACTUALLY binding on the GM. It doesn't form any meaningful constraint on the narrative he can describe at any point, and it has almost no value to the players as a means of predicting what will come next. All that we are left with is narrative sensibility, genre tropes, table conventions, and a willingness to stick to whatever rules the game may present which apply in a given situation. Fictional causality is powerless, it has no teeth, it is an illusion, nothing more.



I think it's binding not only on the DM but the players as well.  If I swing my sword at an orc and the sword turns into a bunch of flowers in mid-swing there'd better be a cause behind that: a curse, a spell, a hallucination, whatever.  If it just happens 'because' then there's little point in playing further.

Lan-"this has just given me a wonderful idea for a curse on a weapon"-efan


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, so this is a general type of question about the technique of 'scene framing' and how you generate an interesting narrative using a player-driven approach.
> 
> First of all, I'd say that the players are assumed to have SOME interest in an interesting narrative. If they don't, why are they playing?



Oh, I don't know...beer, chips, hang out with friends, kick some fictional butt, haul home some loot, and tell war stories about it later.  

Sure, a good narrative might well improve the whole thing but it's not always essential.


----------



## Maxperson

Aenghus said:


> That isn't what I meant by "adversarial game", I find the definition you use above not useful as that would be a style of play the vast majority would label bad, and we don't need another term for it.
> 
> What I meant is a game with a competitive element between players and referee. Perhaps the referee boasts about his PC body count, perhaps the players compete to be the first to survive to a particular level of the dungeon, or kill a particular monster. The referee and players may trashtalk each other for fun and to angle for advantage. The players may compete building new PCs to find effective tactics, exploits and loopholes in the rules. To some this might be their default style of D&D.




So you say that isn't what you meant by adversarial game, and then posted examples if it being like I said.  There is no competitive element built into D&D between the players and the DM.  It's not at all one vs. the other in any way.  You are describing PvP, and It's really PvE.

If a DM bragged about his PC body count to me, I wouldn't play in that game, because he couldn't be trusted to act fairly.  Winning against the players is too important to him.  The same if they bragged about building killer dungeons.  Fun trash talk is not competitive at all.  It's just having a good time.  Building PCs for tactics, etc. is competitive, but not against the DM.  It's against the environment.

D&D was not designed to be the DM vs. the players.  It was designed as players vs. the game world, with the DM as the one who sets up the game world challenges for the enjoyment of the players.  



> Acceptance of trashtalking can prevent the players from hearing warnings when they are about to go over their heads, because the referee always exaggerates the danger of the foes, so a real warning disappears into the noise.



That's not trash talk.  That's deception by DM to the players in an out of game adversarial way, and is another sign of a horrible DM, and one that I wouldn't play with again.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think this misses the entire point of the whole thread from the start. Nobody argued that GM-centered play, and any attendant world building, couldn't be 'principled'. The assertion is that it HAS A DIFFERENT AGENDA. There are different characteristics inherent to these techniques. In a GM-centered play system it is axiomatic that the focus is in terms of what the GM is presenting. In a player-centric game it is axiomatic that the focus is on the agenda brought to the table by the players. This is a qualitative difference that is not related to how well each GM sticks to his principles. If such a qualitative difference does not exist, then what are we discussing here?




 [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is constantly talking about the DM railroading(being unprincipled) the players by giving them choose your own adventure novels to play in, which doesn't at all describe our style of game play.  And when challenged about players abusing their authorial powers, people on his side of things(can't remember if he's done it or not, but [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] has) fall back on the social contract(being principled) preventing players from doing that.  I'm just saying that the social contract(principled) argument works for both playstyles.  



> It seems to me that the controversial point, to some of you, is the assertion by  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] et al that, to the extent that a game addresses player concerns, it becomes a player-driven game. I think there are finer points that can be discussed, but this too seems kind of self evident. The counter assertion seems to be that as long as the CHARACTERS are fictionally not depicted as being forced to do something, and their choices appear meaningful from character stance, that the players have agency. This seems to be IMHO incoherent, if the players choices of moves cannot produce fiction of the player's choosing, then they're really only choosing between the GM's options, and they are dependent on the GM to address their agenda, entirely.




This I take exception to a little bit.  We aren't countering with "CHARACTERS are fictionally not depicted as being forced to do something,".  They are not ever forced to do something unless some game mechanic or game play dictates it, like being imprisoned or a domination spell.  That and "their choices appear meaningful from character stance".  Their choices are meaningful.  You don't have to have authorial power to make a meaningful character decision.  Moral dilemmas and character growing roleplay/situations come up very often in my games.  Often where I had no idea they would be there.  Lastly, my game never, EVER boils down to players "only choosing between the GM's options" or being "dependent on the GM to address their agenda,".   They dictate it to me.  While I prepare things in advance, they can go with those things or strike off on their own whenever they wish.  Once they walked into a town and barbarian tribes in the north were mentioned in passing.  One player decided his PC wanted to go take one over and become chief.  The other players supported him and off they went away from what I had prepared.  It was great.  Most of my game is reacting to what they do, not proactively directing them with any sort of agenda of my own.  They choose their agenda and go for it.  They may or may not succeed, and in this case the PC did succeed, but they dictated that agenda to me and did not at all choose between GM options.



> I think its reasonable to ask your question "given that player's power is not unlimited, to what extent is the game still dependent on the GM for the agenda?" and this is a GOOD question! In some systems, like Cortex+ and BW there are actual rules that stipulate that the GM only has a specific amount of power over the fiction, so clearly if you play a game like that then the answer must be "there's a balance of power between them and they share it." In D&D, with its 'rule 0' type of structure, that isn't the case from pure mechanics, the GM could just steamroller everyone in mechanical terms, even if that GM is  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]. So, yes, it requires principled play by a GM in D&D, NO MATTER WHAT way you play it! That's just a characteristic of D&D! It isn't a characteristic of Cortex+...




The player is partially dependent on the DM only in so far as the DM will come up with ways for the player to attempt success and possibly fail to achieve the player's agenda.  If the player is abiding by the social contract(being principled), then they aren't going to attempt agendas that are wildly inappropriate, such as putting together a nuclear warhead and missile to launch at Waterdeep.  Outside of inappropriate agendas, the DM has an obligation not to say no or set up the world to outright thwart the attempt, so the players are free to pursue their agendas without fear that the DM will be unprincipled AND knowing that they are not dependent on the DM for those agendas to come into being.  The players are the ones who dictate the agendas.


----------



## pemerton

There are about 60 posts (including 20+ "pemerton" quote and mention tags) that I haven't caught up on. I am responding as I read through them.



hawkeyefan said:


> In my game, such a specific goal for the players would not be sitting in some random kitchen. It would likely have a specified location. In this sense, I realize I am being very "GM driven", but I don't really see the reason to avoid this. I don't really think it actually robs players of agency, either, except in the sense that they cannot author the presence of the map wherever they may like. Which to me, is a pretty broad application of agency. I also don't allow players to kick me in the nethers....but I don't think anyone would say that's denying them agency. Maybe a few people, but not most.
> 
> Now, if you're talking about a map that the player has suggested, that's different. Not something the GM has in mind beforehand, but an idea that occurs to the player and they run with it. So they find themselves in the gnoll warmaster's quarters, having killed him and secured the location. And one of the player says "I'd like to see if there are any maps that may show the areas the gnolls might be targeting?" In such a case, I'd likely be happy they suggested this and allow them to search, and have the result of the check reveal the presence or usefulness of the maps.



You contrast here _a specific goal for the players_ with _a map that a player has suggested_.

Where did the "specific goal" come from? If the goal of play is something that comes from the GM rather than the players, then (everything else being equal) that to me suggests a lower rather than a higher degree of player agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction.

And if this is a specific goal with location authored by the GM, more broadly in a setting authored by the GM, then the players' search for it is going to involve - as far as I can tell, and unless I've misunderstood something - a number of moves that trigger the GM to tell them about that authored setting. Again, to me, and everything else being equal, that suggests a lower rather than a higher degree of player agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction.

What it looks like, to me - again, everything else being equal and doing my best to make sense of the example - is that the GM has established a gameworld and established a quest for the players, with the map as a part of that. To me that looks like a GM-driven game with a relatively modest degree of player agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction.


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> The players write their own script for their characters' lines (i.e. what their characters actually say) and provide stage direction for what the characters do (their in-game actions) and how they move (where they go within the game world).  That's almost infintely more agency than an actor has on a movie set or a stage.



But is not infinitely more agencyu than the reader of a choose-your-own adventure book has. It's actually quite comparable.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> Yes, exactly. I’m all about trusting the players. But I feel like there is little trust being afforded to the GM throughout much of this discussion. I’m not sure why.
> 
> Does it boil down to game mechanics? If you introduce a game that uses more player driven elements and takes the weight off the GM, that’s fine. And I can understand that as a preferred style.
> 
> I just don’t know if that’s the only way to achieve it.




It isn't about TRUST, it is about "what is the most reliable and useful process by which to translate the player's agenda and wants into the narrative so they get to play characters that address those things?" That's all it is about. Why go through the roundabout process of having a GM devise an entire setting in detail without reference to the players, and then try to translate that into addressing what they are interested in? Why make every element of the plot and setting the sole responsibility of the GM so that he has to figure out a way to understand what the players want and then do it, instead of just having the player say "My character is interested in overthrowing the Duke, I think I know a guy that has some dirt on him <throws Streetwise check>. YUP! OK, so now I know that the Duke actually had an older brother, but he mysteriously disappeared before their father died..." What is really wrong with that? I don't get it. Its just a lot more reliable and less work in my long experience than hoping that the GM will 'get' your suggestions and deign to add said NPC to the game. 

I mean, its not as if the GM can't say after the player's declaration above, "yes, but the guy you want has just been sent on campaign, so you can't ask him about it, and all you heard was a rumor that his wife gave you. If you want to find out the truth, you're going to have to dig deeper. As you return from your friend's house <check made behind screen> you get the feeling someone is watching you..." 

Its not like the GM is ceding all his role in constructing the plot here. He's just not the only one anymore that can introduce some element of narrative into the fiction. 

Now, lets say the character finds out that he needs a map in order to figure out where to look for another clue (something the wife said keyed him in on this, which required a history check, note that in my process this is ALL an SC). So the map is searched for, and maybe its found in the kitchen, lucky break! Maybe it isn't found, and the player is left failing to advance this element of the plot. OK, that's fine, there's always some other direction to go in, he can take a journey to find that guy that knows the stuff. He can try to nab one of the people following him. He can just find some other way to undermine the Duke.


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## pemerton

Sadras said:


> @_*Maxperson*_, @_*Lanefan*_ @_*hawkeyefan*_ and others (including myself) have not hidden the fact that player authorial control is limited in our games, we just do not equate _player agency_ with authorial control over the setting.
> 
> Step 0 is agreeing to the definition of *agency*



I have constantly referrred to "player agency over the content of the shared fiction". And have equally made it clear that if the player's sole agency is to declare line for their PCs, and to declare actions whose actual resolution is significantly or primarily hostage to unrevealed backstory authored by the GM, then the players have only very modest agency in the respect that I'm talking about.



Sadras said:


> Based on what we have read @_*chaochou*_'s players have an even greater amount of _player agency_ than @_*pemerton*_'s given the authorial power they possess.
> So yes, _player agency_ varies across the board from the so-called GM-driven games to the Player-driven games.



I think this is all true.


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## pemerton

shidaku said:


> The problem, I think with some of the discussion, as the latest post by [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] suggests is *not* that there are diverging viewpoints on player agency, I think fundamentally we all are using the same definition, but some people believe that anything under a certain _amount_ of player agency is tantamount to *no* player agency.



Well, terms like "little" or "modest" aren't simply synonyms or euphemisms for "none".

 [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] seems to think that it is an important aspect of player agency that the players provide colour (what their PCs say, wear, etc). I personally don't agree, as a player can do this in the most egregious railroad imaginable.

Lanefan likewise seems to think that it is an important aspect of player agency that the players can declare actions for their PCs ("I move from A to B"; "I attack the orc"; "I look for the map"). I regard this as only very modest agency: except in the most dysfunctional game players have enjoy this sort of agency in any RPG. What is significant, in my view, is _what happens in the resolution of these action declarations_. If the fiction that will be encountered at B, that will result from the attempt to search the map, and even that will result from attacking the orc (see [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s example upthread of the fiction that results from charming the harlot) are all authored by the GM on the basis of unrevealed notes and ideas about the setting, then the player is exercising very little agency - all s/he is doing is triggering the GM to narrate and perhaps first to make up some fiction.


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> YYou keep repeating this as if being social prevents cause and effect.



No. I have repeatedly referred to social processes as a complex form of causal process. My point is that imaginary orcs and imaginary wands and imaginary maps are not elements of social processes.

Also, _imagining an orc_ and then doing something in response to that _does not mean_ that an imaginary orc made you do it.


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## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> you’re obviously not interested, so I’ll leave it at that.



I replied to one of your posts before reading this. Feel free to disregard that reply if you like.


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## pemerton

Sadras said:


> This is why I disagree with your premise in the OP as the boardgame style is still VERY prevalent today (in particular in D&D games) and this is clearly evident given the AP and modules which are being published by WotC.
> 
> EDIT: The type of _player agency _you require for your games is just not as important in the (for lack of a better term) boardgame style where fictional positioning of the map is done by the DM.



I think this is an important point. The boardgame type play does involve a very different sort of agency.

But [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] doesn't describe a boardgame type of play in his posts - he talks about PCs in a town, talking to NPCs to be assigned missions which involve travelling overland and interacting with various other beings.

I don't think [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] plays in the boardgame style, either.

The boardgame style depends upon a very high degree of austerity in the setting, so that everything that is salient and relevant is not only _known_ by the GM, but is relatively straightforwardly knowable/learnable by the players (this will obviously vary across tables - for Gygax GMing Rob Kuntz the standardf for learnability is pretty liberal, but that's because the latter is a very experienced player who has a very high familiarity with the former as a GM).

Repeated exploration of the dungeon, strong and knowable conventions around how the dungeon-state evolves in response to PC incursions, etc are all part of it. Meaningful scope for player choice in how to explore and clear the board is also a part of it.

I don't think a module like Sunless Citadel meets these standards - just to give one real-world example. I think that White Plume Mountain does.


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## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> If it’s bad for a GM to deny the introduction of the map through action declaration, then it stands that it is good to allow it. But does allowing it come with its own set of drawbacks?



Look, I'm probably the wrong person to ask. I like that way of playing. Eg if less GM control over the direction of the story is a drawback, then yes it has that drawback. But GM control over the direction of the story isn't something I'm personally looking for in RPGing?

What drawbacks do you have in mind?

EDIT: OK, so this post suggested one drawback that you have in mind:



hawkeyefan said:


> if players can author elements to the game, what is to stop them from manufacturing their goals in an undramatic and unsatisfying way? Is it the GM’s framing? If so, then what is the difference between that and a GM relying on his notes? If they both prevent the players from concocting a simple solution to their problem, then are they really all that different?
> 
> Or is it principled play by the players? Where the agency exists for them to add elements to the game, but they limit themselves to only the elements that add dramatic weight?



Well, most RPGs that I'm familiar with try to deal with this in character creation, and also in the general conventions for play that they establish.

Part of PC build in BW is establishing your PC's Beliefs. It is understood that these will be tested and challenged in play. Part of PC build in Cortex+ Heroic is establishing milestones. It is understood that these will require engaging in heroic derring-do in order to be met. Part of PC build in 4e is creating a PC with a class and race and alignment that establish a certain orientation towards heroic fantasy adventuring. And you can't earn XP except by engaging in such activity.

In my 4e game the PCs were searching for a map to the Soul Abattoir. But the players understood that the Soul Abattoir is an epic-tier thing - going there = fighting Torog, a god. So there is equally an understanding that the map is not itself a focus of play: it is more like a plot device, that will emerge in due course - and when it does, the choices will be (i) now that they can go there, do they?, (ii) if so, how do they get there?, (iii) if they go there, how will they beat Torog?, and (iv) if they beat Torog, what do they do once he is beaten? In my own game, they went there, making a bargain with some devils to help with that; they did beat Torog, and once he was beaten (a) they sent the freed souls to the Raven Queen rather than Vecna, and (b) one of the PCs - a paladin of Moradin - took on Torog's portfolio of pain, torture and imprisonment.

I'm sure it's possible to run 4e in other ways, but as I've experienced it has this strong _pacing_ dimension to it, which is driven by the steep levelling curve that is part of the "tiers of play". Some options simply don't open up in a meaningful way until the PCs reach the appropriate level, and once they do the interesting question is not "can we?" but "do we?"

In my BW game there have been two searches that I can remember - for a mace, and for a vessel to catch blood. I've mentioned both of them extensively in this thread, and so won't repeat in this post but am happy to do if requested to. What made the mace search dramatic was that (in the fiction) it was the first return to the ruined tower since the brother was possessed by a balrog 14 years earlier; and (at the table) it was the first time in play the PC was in the ruined tower. What made the vessle search dramatic was that if all the blood is lost, the PC can't fulfill the command given to him by the dark naga that has dominatd him.

There is nothing to stop a BW player establishing as a Belief for his/her PC "I will live a boring but satisfying life" - but the player has to understand that the GM is going to frame situations that will put this to the test, that being the whole point of the game.

As for the difference between framing in response to player-authored Beliefs, action declarations, etc; and working from pre-authored notes - the mace and vessel example , the angel feather example, the Soul Abattoir example, the example of travelling down to Enlil to look for alien artefacts on sale in a marketplace - all should be enough to illustrate the point. The player moves establish the focus of the action, and the GM is responding to and going back-and-forth with the players' cues, rather than the GM telling the players something that s/he thought might be interesting independently of all that.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> the same example applied to a more GM driven, D&D style game is equally useless. The players are not likely to try and manufacture the map through a search of the kitchen. Instead, they would simply indicate that they search the kitchen, and leave the results of their search up to the GM. So in this case, the GM is not actually denying any agency on the players’ part because none is expected in this manner wen playibg this type of game.



Well, the GM hasn't _denied_ agency because the players haven't sought to exercise any. That is not an argument that the players have agency! It seems to agree with me that, at this particular moment of play, they do not have agency over the content of the shared fiction.


----------



## Sunseeker

pemerton said:


> Well, terms like "little" or "modest" aren't simply synonyms or euphemisms for "none".



They sure read like it.



> [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] seems to think that it is an important aspect of player agency that the players provide colour (what their PCs say, wear, etc). I personally don't agree, as a player can do this in the most egregious railroad imaginable.



I both agree with him on this, and don't see how the latter is relevant.  There are a hundred degrees to player agency.  This is part of (as someone termed it above) the "golden box" of the player.  I'm a VERY strong proponent of a player being able to define their character's appearance in whatever degree they want provided there are no specific mechanical implications.  IE: the design of footwear in D&D is never specified.  Certain items have certain looks, but generally it is unmentioned, and different styles of shoes have nothing more than flavor impacts on the game, so if a player wanted to specify that they wore high-heels or flip-flops or geta (japanese sandals), that's within their realm of determining since specific style of footwaear has no impact on gameplay.

I'm ALSO a very strong proponent of players being able to say the words they want to say.  There are _always_ exceptions, but I have held a long hatred for video games where the button says "I agree with Bob." and what really comes out is "I think Bob's mother is a Orc!".  The players are in charge of what they say and how they say it, is a die roll is required, it doesn't change what they say, it determines how well it sounds to the other players/NPCs.

In games like D&D where players have very little Fundamental Freedom, it is important to allow them that freedom as often as possible.  It is psychologically very impactful to have this sort of control, even if that control has fundamentally little impact on the gameworld.  Indeed when people have fewer freedoms they can become quite fierce in holding on to them.  

You may argue that players should have _more_ Freedom, and that's fine, but don't undersell the value of the Freedom they have.



> Lanefan likewise seems to think that it is an important aspect of player agency that the players can declare actions for their PCs ("I move from A to B"; "I attack the orc"; "I look for the map"). I regard this as only very modest agency: except in the most dysfunctional game players have enjoy this sort of agency in any RPG. What is significant, in my view, is _what happens in the resolution of these action declarations_. If the fiction that will be encountered at B, that will result from the attempt to search the map, and even that will result from attacking the orc (see [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s example upthread of the fiction that results from charming the harlot) are all authored by the GM on the basis of unrevealed notes and ideas about the setting, then the player is exercising very little agency - all s/he is doing is triggering the GM to narrate and perhaps first to make up some fiction.



Yes, again, we have come through this many pages to finally establish that you believe Authorial Agency is necessary for players to have true Player Agency.  I mean you can say that's not what you mean, but the way you write, the way you disparage Player Agency that lacks Authorial Agency makes it, IMO, pretty clear that you really don't think Player Agency without Authorial Agency is true agency.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> when I lean on the players to add things to the game, I was initially met with blank stares. “You see a grizzled old warrior amidst the throng of people in the market. He seems to be watching your group with some intent. Bob, you recognize this man. Why do you recognize him?”



Well, as I've already said multiple times upthread, this is not a technique that is significant in the games that I GM. I think it's largely a red-herring in discussions about player agency, because it turns the focus on to collaborative storytelling rather than the core of traditional RPGing, which is player authoring of a PC and player declarations of action for that PC.



shidaku said:


> In D&D they don't, at least not in the context of authorship.  By the RAW of _most_ editions, they can only declare things their PCs are capable of it, none of which has any author agency.



"I search the study for the map" and "I hit the streets hoping to meet up with one of my contacts" are both declarations of actions that the PC is capable of.

But that tells us nothing about how those action declarations are to be resolved. They don't have to be resolved by reference to GM-authored, unrevealed backstory (like _the map isn't there_ or _all your contacts are either dead or too scared to speak_). In Classic Traveller (1977), it is clear that Streetwise checks are _not_ to be resolved that way.



hawkeyefan said:


> I feel like there is little trust being afforded to the GM throughout much of this discussion. I’m not sure why.



There was an extensive discussion of this c 500 posts upthread. It's nothing to do with trust. I'm sure as a GM I could tell a somewhat interesting story. But it's not what I want out of RPGing.

The point generalises: the reason I want to exercise agency as a player is not because I don't trust the GM, but because _the GM isn't me_, and _I_ want to play _my_ character. [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] made a nice post about this around 80-odd posts upthread.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Now this is a very interesting approach.
> 
> 4e D&D and (from what I can tell) some of the 'indie' games referenced in this thread have an underlying philosophy of 'go where the action is'.  The DM is expected to frame dramatic scenes and the players are expected to deal with these scenes via means appropriate to their characters.
> 
> Yet here we have a player who would rather use exploration and wise information gathering in order to _go where the action isn't_; in effect mitigating or sometimes entirely denying the DM the opportunity to frame these dramatic scenes as long as doing so allows character goals to be met, missions accomplished, etc.
> 
> This to me is an important form of player agency that is entirely denied by 'go where the action is'.  I rather badly waved at this idea a long way upthread; I'll try again here, using the example from  @_*pemerton*_ 's game where the PCs were looking for a reliquary, and met some angels en route that showed them the way to get there.  As written, the PCs conversed with the angels after which pemerton-as-GM went where the action is and framed the scene in the reliquary; and things proceeded from there. (note this might not be the best example to use but it's one I can remember the gist of without having to dig around)
> 
> A player using  @_*Nagol*_ 's approach loses out on gobs of agency here:
> - s/he doesn't get the opportunity to explore the approaches to and surroundings of the reliquary before arriving at the drama; which means
> - - s/he doesn't get a chance to explore the area around the reliquary to determine whether there's more than one possible approach or exit
> - - s/he doesn't get an opportunity to pre-scout the reliquary itself via stealth or scrying or whatever other means might be available in order to assess its occupants, threats, hazards, etc.
> - - because of this lack of knowledge s/he isn't able to mitigate potential risks or prepare for a potential encounter via pre-casting spells, downing potions, or whatever other means might be available
> - before all this, s/he also loses out on any opportunity to explore whatever might lie between the angel encounter site and the reliquary - by bypassing this the GM has arbitrarily decided there's nothing there of relevance rather than allowing the players to find out for themselves
> 
> In short, there's no opportunity given for the players to force the GM to change his initial framing of the reliquary scene from what it ended up being; or delay it until more information could be gathered.
> 
> Now pemerton's players are probably fine with this as it's what they're used to: cut to the action and skip the rest.  But I wonder if they even realize how much agency they're giving up in the process?
> 
> Lanefan




It is just another sort of player agenda. Why can it only be served by a GM-centered system of play? I would phrase this as "player wants to be a careful strategist." OK, so when you describe the orcs that are menacing town as part of your framing of a situation for this to be brought out, then the player can say "what about their water supply?" and either GM or player centered process can determine that there is indeed a well and where it is, and some plan can be hatched to poison it instead of trying to fight some ugly battle with the main force of the orcs. 

Now, my bet is, having both run and played this sort of scenario a number of times, that the well ain't going to be located and poisoned with a couple of tosses of the dice! It is going to be guarded, hard to find, inside some dungeon, cursed, poisoning it will entail also harming someone that you don't want pissed at you, or whatever. This is all well-within the realm of what I can do using my techniques. In fact it is all quite likely.

My experience with GMs and playing inside THEIR agenda is that a lot of them don't like this kind of thing too much. They feel like its a cheap way to get rid of the orcs. Maybe they allow it, but they punish it or they just decide that the orcs have some other water supply or whatever. They already decided on a story arc where the orcs menace the town and there's a battle, which they're invested in. I'm not saying this GM is a 'bad' GM, just that this is VERY typical and the weakness of GM-centered play is this tendency to want to stick to their story arc because they've put a lot of work into it. Moderately good GMs will maybe give some ground, some of the orcs are poisoned, or you win the first round but more orcs come back later, although you now maybe get some other new options too as a reward. Still, things tend to get stuck in certain patterns VERY easily. I know it doesn't HAVE to be that way, the technique is not hopeless or even bad, it just has its weaknesses.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> here we have a player who would rather use exploration and wise information gathering in order to _go where the action isn't_; in effect mitigating or sometimes entirely denying the DM the opportunity to frame these dramatic scenes as long as doing so allows character goals to be met, missions accomplished, etc.



I've discussed this at length upthread. "Gathing information" means learning stuff that the GM has authored. That is not player agency over the content of the shared ficiton - practically by definition!


----------



## Nagol

AbdulAlhazred said:


> It isn't about TRUST, it is about "what is the most reliable and useful process by which to translate the player's agenda and wants into the narrative so they get to play characters that address those things?" That's all it is about. Why go through the roundabout process of having a GM devise an entire setting in detail without reference to the players, and then try to translate that into addressing what they are interested in? Why make every element of the plot and setting the sole responsibility of the GM so that he has to figure out a way to understand what the players want and then do it, instead of just having the player say "My character is interested in overthrowing the Duke, I think I know a guy that has some dirt on him <throws Streetwise check>. YUP! OK, so now I know that the Duke actually had an older brother, but he mysteriously disappeared before their father died..." What is really wrong with that? I don't get it. Its just a lot more reliable and less work in my long experience than hoping that the GM will 'get' your suggestions and deign to add said NPC to the game.
> 
> I mean, its not as if the GM can't say after the player's declaration above, "yes, but the guy you want has just been sent on campaign, so you can't ask him about it, and all you heard was a rumor that his wife gave you. If you want to find out the truth, you're going to have to dig deeper. As you return from your friend's house <check made behind screen> you get the feeling someone is watching you..."
> 
> Its not like the GM is ceding all his role in constructing the plot here. He's just not the only one anymore that can introduce some element of narrative into the fiction.
> 
> Now, lets say the character finds out that he needs a map in order to figure out where to look for another clue (something the wife said keyed him in on this, which required a history check, note that in my process this is ALL an SC). So the map is searched for, and maybe its found in the kitchen, lucky break! Maybe it isn't found, and the player is left failing to advance this element of the plot. OK, that's fine, there's always some other direction to go in, he can take a journey to find that guy that knows the stuff. He can try to nab one of the people following him. He can just find some other way to undermine the Duke.




There's nothing wrong with that.  Except. It. Doesn't. Work. For. All. Types. Of. Games.  Specifically, exploratory play or play where the players are expected to maintain actor stance -- you know, the games I like to play.  Those are the games where world-building really shines.

Heck, I run player-led games much of the time even though I don't like to play them.  I restrict such gaming to game systems that offer strong support for player input mind you (like FATE, my favourite RPG Champions, Teenagers from Outer Space, and others) where the focus is absolutely nowhere near exploratory play in the typical sense.  Even in other game systems that don't specifically offer player (as opposed to PC) agency, I often include it through house rules/ other game mechanics like the use of Whimsy Cards.  On the other hand, my current campaign was sold to the players as a massive set of mysteries to uncover: the players have zero agency outside their character actions and the players seem quite pleased with the ongoing investigations -- it's in its 5th year now.  

For games with strong player-led roots, world-building is very helpful.  It gives something to inspire the players/for the players to riff off of.  It is harder to build in a vacuum than to alter an existing element.


----------



## Nagol

AbdulAlhazred said:


> It is just another sort of player agenda. Why can it only be served by a GM-centered system of play? I would phrase this as "player wants to be a careful strategist." OK, so when you describe the orcs that are menacing town as part of your framing of a situation for this to be brought out, then the player can say "what about their water supply?" and either GM or player centered process can determine that there is indeed a well and where it is, and some plan can be hatched to poison it instead of trying to fight some ugly battle with the main force of the orcs.
> 
> Now, my bet is, having both run and played this sort of scenario a number of times, that the well ain't going to be located and poisoned with a couple of tosses of the dice! It is going to be guarded, hard to find, inside some dungeon, cursed, poisoning it will entail also harming someone that you don't want pissed at you, or whatever. This is all well-within the realm of what I can do using my techniques. In fact it is all quite likely.
> 
> My experience with GMs and playing inside THEIR agenda is that a lot of them don't like this kind of thing too much. They feel like its a cheap way to get rid of the orcs. Maybe they allow it, but they punish it or they just decide that the orcs have some other water supply or whatever. They already decided on a story arc where the orcs menace the town and there's a battle, which they're invested in. I'm not saying this GM is a 'bad' GM, just that this is VERY typical and the weakness of GM-centered play is this tendency to want to stick to their story arc because they've put a lot of work into it. Moderately good GMs will maybe give some ground, some of the orcs are poisoned, or you win the first round but more orcs come back later, although you now maybe get some other new options too as a reward. Still, things tend to get stuck in certain patterns VERY easily. I know it doesn't HAVE to be that way, the technique is not hopeless or even bad, it just has its weaknesses.




Depends strongly on the DM type.  For a sandbox DM like myself, I never invest in a story arc.  I establish situations.  I probably have a good idea what will happen absent player action.  PCs will find difficulties that are plausible and defined without reference to specific character strengths or weaknesses.  Sometimes this can make a situation a cakewalk for a particular party.  Other times it can make the situation almost impossible to achieve for the same party.  It is up the players to decide what to become involved in, what actions to take, what stakes to wager.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Ah, but now you're taking a playable example (a happy-go-lucky chap who wants to adventure for the fun and excitement of it) and throwing back an unplayable example (the town drunk who does nothing) to try and prove me wrong.
> 
> A happy-go-lucky character is very playable, believe me!  Arguably the best character I've ever had was like this: her wisdom was so low that she just thought most of the time adventuring was all just good fun (except when her friends died, then the tears came); and afterwards spending the treasure was wonderful!   She lasted for years, in a 3e game that wasn't always nice to its PCs.



I don't think this character is unplayable in my type of game at all. I've seen them as well. They're usually all about loyalty and team spirit or something like that. I mean, there is going to be something in everyone's personality that makes them agonistic, right? There are things you like and don't like. Happy the Half-orc likes his friends. When they're in trouble he gets roused! It isn't just 'tears come when things go bad' its "I'm going to rescue my friends!" and now you have a story hook...



> Assuming the player was cool with that, sure.  But if the player (in character) takes the attitude of "OK, farm's saved, I'm done here - and they need help with the harvest, besides", then what?  I'd hazard a guess games like this don't handle PC turnover quite as easily as a more traditional system.



OK, you want to declare your character's needs met and conflicts over, then so be it! I don't understand how this is a problem. A player in any kind of game could choose to switch characters, or at least lose interest in what they're playing. I suggest that there's no reason to think one way of playing makes this more fraught than another. Obviously it can cause some impact on the game, but in a case where the player's are largely driving things, it certainly isn't going to mess up all the GM's carefully laid plans... 



> Very true.  My point was more that character one can fulfill its goals without ever leaving heroic tier while character two has to get to epic and even then might be up against it.



Yeah, I can accept that this could be true. I am only countering that 'fundamental concerns are eternal' in a sense. If your character's core motivation is true, then it can always be tapped in some way. Lets suppose you're motivated by a desire for revenge against a villain who's 10th level and you become his equal and gank him. There's still a more fundamental thing going on, your character is angry about injustice, he feels like something unfair happened, or maybe his attitude is just 'life sucks and then you die', but those are still highly suggestive of continued agenda that COULD drive you in higher level play. Obviously if the players only want to play to 10th level, then that's cool! 



> So strip away all that and just look only at cause A and effect B.  Your brain will thank you for it.



I'm perfectly happy, in an aesthetic narrative sense, to do so. My point is that INFINITE narratives can be justified in any game situation due to the complexity of causative process. Its a fig leaf to say that the GM is bound by some one specific possible narrative or even by some finite number of possibilities. Nor can we even really judge, beyond the very shortest time scale, even the probabilities of different things being likely in any realistic sense. This is what I mean by "causality has no bite", it just isn't binding.



> I think it's binding not only on the DM but the players as well.  If I swing my sword at an orc and the sword turns into a bunch of flowers in mid-swing there'd better be a cause behind that: a curse, a spell, a hallucination, whatever.  If it just happens 'because' then there's little point in playing further.



OK, you make up an entirely implausible and silly-sounding example, but you must admit that 1000's of possible narrative outcomes of a sword swing can be generated. We could probably list 100 of them right here in this thread in the next half hour without breaking a sweat. That's enough for me! 

And if you want to get technical IN THE REAL WORLD the example you give is not forbidden by the laws of physics. Quantum mechanics doesn't rule out ANYTHING, it just states what the chances are of seeing different kinds of outcomes. That's rather trite given that we can be safe in assuming we'll never see the sword turn into flowers even in 100,000 goggleplex years, but my point is that causality is REALLY THIN ICE to skate on (and now Jethro Tull has stuck in my mind's ear).


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## AbdulAlhazred

Nagol said:


> There's nothing wrong with that.  Except. It. Doesn't. Work. For. All. Types. Of. Games.  Specifically, exploratory play or play where the players are expected to maintain actor stance -- you know, the games I like to play.  Those are the games where world-building really shines.



OK, I suspect it must be REALLY hard to find games to play in if you only like to play in games where you stay in character every moment and even a relatively brief pause to add some element to the situation which relates to your character is unacceptable. I've played a lot of games at a lot of tables in 40-some years, and maybe run into that once. I mean, I yield the point, and I just literally have to take your word for it as I think this is beyond the experience of almost everyone else here.

Now, the question of 'exploratory play' is very much worthy of more discussion. I'd propose that it is heavily characterized by imaginary exploration, but that isn't a very revelatory statement. Naturally, in the context of the current discussion what difference does authorship make here?



> For games with strong player-led roots, world-building is very helpful.  It gives something to inspire the players/for the players to riff off of.  It is harder to build in a vacuum than to alter an existing element.




OK, this is another interesting point to discuss. I personally think that strong and distinct THEMES are most useful. So, for instance, I had a 'player centered' game which we all mutually agreed would be set in a sort of fantasy pseudo-Arthurian milieu. This is a very strong theme with a lot of associated tropes and archetypes, knights, damsels, tournaments, curses, quests, magical items, spells, sorcerers, etc. There wasn't a really strong NEED to have a GM defined setting in detail. We did all agree together before starting play on the existence of some specific characters and possible plot elements and how they related to the characters the players were creating. It was a pretty decent game.

Likewise I did a space-opera themed one. It was somewhat similar, except I (for whatever reason) generated a more elaborate starting milieu of my own devising. It was pretty thematic, but it didn't go as well. The whole pregenerated aspect got in the way of what the players were really wanting to do. I must say that what I find is its hard to KNOW what that is right off. Often you really have to play to find out what the important conflicts really are. This game was OK, but less world building probably would have been better.


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## Sunseeker

pemerton said:


> "I search the study for the map" and "I hit the streets hoping to meet up with one of my contacts" are both declarations of actions that the PC is capable of.
> 
> But that tells us nothing about how those action declarations are to be resolved. They don't have to be resolved by reference to GM-authored, unrevealed backstory (like _the map isn't there_ or _all your contacts are either dead or too scared to speak_). In Classic Traveller (1977), it is clear that Streetwise checks are _not_ to be resolved that way.




Yes that's why I was referring _specifically_ to D&D in my post about how it has low player agency by default.  I never suggested it was how all games did things, or even how all games _should_ do things.

Context is key.


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## pemerton

shidaku said:


> I'm a VERY strong proponent of a player being able to define their character's appearance in whatever degree they want provided there are no specific mechanical implications.  IE: the design of footwear in D&D is never specified.  Certain items have certain looks, but generally it is unmentioned, and different styles of shoes have nothing more than flavor impacts on the game, so if a player wanted to specify that they wore high-heels or flip-flops or geta (japanese sandals), that's within their realm of determining since specific style of footwaear has no impact on gameplay.
> 
> I'm ALSO a very strong proponent of players being able to say the words they want to say.  There are _always_ exceptions, but I have held a long hatred for video games where the button says "I agree with Bob." and what really comes out is "I think Bob's mother is a Orc!".  The players are in charge of what they say and how they say it, is a die roll is required, it doesn't change what they say, it determines how well it sounds to the other players/NPCs.



Is any of the above controversial? I don't think so.

But given that what you describe is basically inherent in RPGing (except perhaps _the_ most degenerate games imaginable), it seems to set a baseline for player agency. So it can't really count as a large amount of it.



shidaku said:


> Yes, again, we have come through this many pages to finally establish that you believe Authorial Agency is necessary for players to have true Player Agency.  I mean you can say that's not what you mean, but the way you write, the way you disparage Player Agency that lacks Authorial Agency makes it, IMO, pretty clear that you really don't think Player Agency without Authorial Agency is true agency.



I have talked repeatedly about "agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction". That's what I'm talking about. It doesn't require authorial agency.

Declaring "I search the study for the map" isn't an act of authorship. And the outcome, as far as the shared fiction is concerned, can be mediated via mechanics. That's one difference between a RPG and a collaborative storytelling game.

 [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has, in some recent posts, pointed to other ways that players can enjoy agency in respect of the shared fiction, such as Streetwise checks, or establishing the agenda for play. These aren't authorship either, in any straightforward sense.

To go back to the example of going from A to B: there are any number of ways a player can exercise agency over what it is that will be encountered at B without authoring it. For instance, if the player's PC is on a quest to find signs of the coming apocalypse, than in a player-driven game artefacts or events at B will somehow be connected to said apocalpyse. This doesn't require the player to author anything.


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## pemerton

Nagol said:


> There's nothing wrong with that.  Except. It. Doesn't. Work. For. All. Types. Of. Games.  Specifically, exploratory play or play where the players are expected to maintain actor stance



I still think "actor stance" is a red herring. You don't need to step out of actor stance to declare "I search the study for the map" or "I look around the room for a vessel to catch the blood."

But that doesn't tell us how to resolve those action declarations.


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## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> It isn't about TRUST, it is about "what is the most reliable and useful process by which to translate the player's agenda and wants into the narrative so they get to play characters that address those things?" That's all it is about. Why go through the roundabout process of having a GM devise an entire setting in detail without reference to the players, and then try to translate that into addressing what they are interested in? Why make every element of the plot and setting the sole responsibility of the GM so that he has to figure out a way to understand what the players want and then do it, instead of just having the player say <snip hypothetical example>



I think this relates to [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] upthread asking "Is it binary?" (ie player- vs GM-driven play).

I guess it can be non-binary in the sense that the GM adapts whatever it was s/he wrote in advance to respond to the player agendas - but then what work is the GM-driven stuff doing on that occasion of play?

I think this also relates to the distinction between prep and pre-authorship. Having some stuff ready in advance (eg in Traveller, given that's what I've been GMing recently, some worlds, some ships, some NPCs good to go) can be handy. That's different from having a setting that already answers the questions that are likely to come up in play (like "Who hear can be bribed?" or "What can we learn about aliens?").


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## pemerton

In our session today we had only 3 players (others couldn't make it) and so I suggested we try something different. I bought A Penny for My Thoughts years ago now - it has very catching visual design - but had never played it. But for whatever reason I've been re-reading it over the past week, and knowing that our crew would be a bit short I brought it along.

The premise of the game is that everyone at the table is an amnesiac undergoing treatment to recover his/her memories - all have taken a drug, Mnemosyne, that allows glimpses into the subconscious minds of others. The default framing is rather melodramatic, based on recovering first a pleasant memory, than an unpleasant one, then the reason that you lost your memories.

But an appendix has a Cthulhu-esque variant, where the first memory is one of a small victory against the darkness, the second of a horrible defeat, and the third of the events that blasted your mind so that you lost your memory. This seemed like the more fun version, and was what we played!

The basic structure of the game is simple: at the start everyone writes down 5 "memory triggers" which are then all put in a bag/bowl. For each of the three memories to be recovered, the player first draws a memory trigger. Then each other player in turn asks one yes-or-no question about the events that the memory trigger is related to, which the player whose memory is being recovered must answer "Yes, and . . .".  With some context established, the main player then starts to "recall" his/her memory, but at key moments of action must ask another "What did I do or say then?" An answer is offered, and the player then turns to another and says "Or was it . . .?" and an alternative answer is offered. The main player then "recalls" which is the true memory ("Yes, I remember now . . ."), and goes on until the appropriate number of crunch points have been dealt with (there is a penny collecting-and-spending mechanic that decides how many crunch points in each recovered memory).  At which point the player rounds things off and concludes "And that's what I remember."

So this is not a RPG, it's a pure cooperative storytelling game. It's relevance to this thread is the way in which a strong sense of shared setting was very quickly developed, even though one (and perhaps another) of the players had never read HPL or come across Cthulhu, deep ones, mi-go, Nyarlathotep, etc before. It was also interesting to see the setting evolve, as the weird science got increasingly more weird.

The game uses a device called a "Facts and Reassurances" sheet, to be read by the patients at the beginning of the treatment session, to establish genre. For the Cthulhu-esque version, that tells us that the setting is early 20th century, and that there may be aliens, spirits, terrible gods, and horrific surgery. But all the details emerged in play.

One example: a player drew the memory trigger "Something slimy on the back of my hand" and the resulting questions with "yes, and . . ." responses had established that he was being experimented on by deep ones in a laboratory. Later narration in response described a sense of the laboratory getting warmer; and another player's contribution in response to "What did I do or say then?" included a reference to the laboratory being in a volcano and the heat shields failing. The player chose that response, and went on to establish his escape from the laboratory (a small victory against the forces of darkness).

The next player first memory had established that he had a precognitive brain implant which allowed him to see places of sanctuary. It had ended with him escaping on a train from Paris to Marseilles. He now had, as his second memory trigger, "Flickering lights and lightning flashes". The first question was "Were you on the Eiffel Tower" - "Yes, and I was trying to harness the power of the lightning with my lightning catching device". THe next was "Was the flickering of the lights due to your sight wavering as a result of the implant?" Which also had to produce a "Yes, and . . ." response. And then either the next question, or maybe a "Yes, I remember . . ." following "What did I do or say then?" meant that he fell from the tower - into a net that (as another answer led to) his precognition had led him to place there. He went on to recall the failure of the lightning catching device, and the reaslisation that he needed a more powerful device - so he travelled south to Naples to harness the power of a volcano.

So a "memory trigger" written at the start of the game, before volcanoes had even been mentioned, turns into an idea for a device on the Eiffel Tower to harness the power of lightning, which connects to the idea of secret laboratories in volcanoes to harness even greater power.

This experience, plus similar experiences in the tamer context of RPGing, are what make me think concerns that GM control over setting is necessary to maintin consistency (of causation, of story events more generally) are exaggerated.

EDIT: I also thought I would try and say something about _how quickly_ setting and character emerge in this game.

THe first memory trigger I drew was "Flowers on a grave" - which led to "Was it an ancestor of yours?" "Yes, it was the grave of my Great Aunt Gwendolyn, and I wanted to make sure she did not come back as a zombie"; "Had the protective symbols been erased?" "Yes, and they had been replaced by sigils from the Necronomicon"; "Had a portal to the Far Realm been opened in the coffin?" "Yes, and I was trying to make sure her body didn't get sucked into it".

I then ended up remebering that I threw the gravedigger through the portal instead, so that it would not take the body of my Great Aunt; and that when I got back to my house the person who had tampered with the gravestone was sitting on my doorstep - so I shot him. The questionairre on which one records one's recovered memory asks a question after each one. For the first memory (A small victory) it asks "To what did you owe the victory?" And I had to answer "Ruthlessness".

It took 3 questions + "yes, and . . ." replies, plus 3 moments of crunch with the two options for "What did I do or say then?", to establish that backstory and personality for my "character".

That's not completely dissimilar to how a GM's framing can interact with a player's establishment of theme/agenda in the context of a RPG.


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## Nagol

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, I suspect it must be REALLY hard to find games to play in if you only like to play in games where you stay in character every moment and even a relatively brief pause to add some element to the situation which relates to your character is unacceptable. I've played a lot of games at a lot of tables in 40-some years, and maybe run into that once. I mean, I yield the point, and I just literally have to take your word for it as I think this is beyond the experience of almost everyone else here.




It is true I rarely get to play.  That's more the result of being asked to run constantly.  When I do get to play I really enjoy the luxury of inhabiting a single character.  Often to the point where I forget about manipulating the game environment as a player (like using bennies in Deadlands or what Whimsy Card I was dealt).  The joy of Champions is almost all the player authoring happens during character creation and between sessions for character advancement so it is easier to deal with than in the midst of play.



> Now, the question of 'exploratory play' is very much worthy of more discussion. I'd propose that it is heavily characterized by imaginary exploration, but that isn't a very revelatory statement. Naturally, in the context of the current discussion what difference does authorship make here?




The answer is pretty straightforward, I think.  The lure of exploratory play is to inhabit a role to act and react as the individual would.  See something unacceptable in the world?  What is the character going to do about it?  The PC has the agency to act so take a stand.  Pick a goal and work toward it.  Find allies, destroy enemies, gather resources and strike... What difference can one person make in the presented world? What difference does your character want to make?

For strong exploratory play, the game world is much like a puzzle.  Things that exist need to exist so that things that happen can happen for a reason for the players to accumulate sufficient information about the black box that the PCs can activate specific reactions in response to their actions.  Exploratory play needs to suppress random 'crap happens' events because they interfere with information gathering.  Having a single vision helps maintain the consistency of the fiction and its reaction to PC action.  Having the players know that vision undercuts the world puzzle.



> OK, this is another interesting point to discuss. I personally think that strong and distinct THEMES are most useful. So, for instance, I had a 'player centered' game which we all mutually agreed would be set in a sort of fantasy pseudo-Arthurian milieu. This is a very strong theme with a lot of associated tropes and archetypes, knights, damsels, tournaments, curses, quests, magical items, spells, sorcerers, etc. There wasn't a really strong NEED to have a GM defined setting in detail. We did all agree together before starting play on the existence of some specific characters and possible plot elements and how they related to the characters the players were creating. It was a pretty decent game.
> 
> Likewise I did a space-opera themed one. It was somewhat similar, except I (for whatever reason) generated a more elaborate starting milieu of my own devising. It was pretty thematic, but it didn't go as well. The whole pregenerated aspect got in the way of what the players were really wanting to do. I must say that what I find is its hard to KNOW what that is right off. Often you really have to play to find out what the important conflicts really are. This game was OK, but less world building probably would have been better.




Strong and distinct themes are useful in most games regardless of who injects action.  They help the players maintain an understanding of the gaming expectation and help drive genre play.    

For player-led games I do need to keep a lot of "empty space" in the world that's ready to accept someone else's paint.  In many ways, the player-led worlds are "bigger" in that the world is less knowable and its reactions to PC action cannot be learned to be used as a PC resource (they become a player resource).  For a space opera game, I'd suggest the initial tone, expected tech, type of society, and role of the group is probably enough frame to build initially.


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## Nagol

pemerton said:


> I still think "actor stance" is a red herring. You don't need to step out of actor stance to declare "I search the study for the map" or "I look around the room for a vessel to catch the blood."
> 
> But that doesn't tell us how to resolve those action declarations.




No, but actor stance does prevent "I play my 'Unexpected Aid' card.  Who would have thought the map is in the kitchen of all places!".  It also prevents "No, the bandit king doesn't attack. His attitude suffers a 'Sudden Reversion' and now he likes us much more."

If the answer lies within base player play then the declaration was incorrect or at least incomplete.  Complete declarations would be "I find the map in the study for the map while searching"  and "I catch the blood in a handy nearby vessel".

If we assume the declarations are complete for the type of play then there are two remaining possibilities: the answer is going to consume player resources or the GM the arbiter of answers.

I'm not going to address the first case because I consider it trivial.

In the second case, the GM has a few possible modes of preparation:
1) Prepare the position of objects considered meaningful to the game ahead of time.  For the first declaration, having decided where the map is, for the second, having a inventory of room contents.
2) Develop a model (random or not) that an be applied to answer any declaration dependent on the environment
3) Respond to how the table "feels" at that particular moment in the game.

Are any of these modes objectively wrong?  No, of course not.  Will the consistent (or inconsistent I guess) use of one of these mode give a different feel to the game? I propose yes.  And that's the answer to why world-build.  It gives a different feel to the game.


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## hawkeyefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> So, what do we actually have to fear? If the players simply give themselves the whole store, then its their own fault if the game is boring and pointless! What the exact balance is and how the relationship between GM and players works can be structured in numerous ways. I could run, say, 4e D&D as pretty much classic D&D, and I can run it with the players dicing to add elements to the story, like Vinny the Weasel, or I could even just let them insert stuff any way they want whenever they want, though some people will prefer specific structures (@Pemerton sticks strictly to the Czege Principle as he calls it, maybe [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] doesn't).




I think what I’m trying to say is that in the event that the play has become boring, that the GM has the ability to try and right the ship, so to speak. I mean, layibg the blame only matters in that it may help reaolve the problem. I don’t think that as GM I’d be happy if play had become boring and pointless. 

So if the GM has some material in mind ahead of time that can help correct that if it were to go that way, then I’d view it as a good thing. 



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Personally, I think its fun if the players set the general agenda based on their character backstory and build choices, and then indicate the direction to go in by introducing elements to play which are plausible and connect with their action declarations. This is one reason I added the 'Inspiration' mechanic to HoML, it provides a specifically measured element of player manipulation of the plot which is mechanically constrained. I find this is easier for a lot of players to handle than simply "do anything you want with the story" as it keeps them more focused on doing relevant things (my version of this requires that the player relate any narrative element they produce to an existing character trait, and if they wish to exercise this option more than once per session they have to generate some kind of narrative element that is related to the character but contrary to their interests in order to regain Inspiration). I find this rule works pretty well, and its rather similar to how things like FATE and (I suppose) BW and Cortex+ work in some degree.




I thibk it’s fun when the players establish what te game will be about as well. I just also like to have some input as the GM. I feel like dismissing any GM input to the story simply because there can be risk involved in that type of play is not all that different from dismissing player input. 

Why limit things in either way?


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## hawkeyefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> It isn't about TRUST, it is about "what is the most reliable and useful process by which to translate the player's agenda and wants into the narrative so they get to play characters that address those things?" That's all it is about. Why go through the roundabout process of having a GM devise an entire setting in detail without reference to the players, and then try to translate that into addressing what they are interested in? Why make every element of the plot and setting the sole responsibility of the GM so that he has to figure out a way to understand what the players want and then do it, instead of just having the player say "My character is interested in overthrowing the Duke, I think I know a guy that has some dirt on him <throws Streetwise check>. YUP! OK, so now I know that the Duke actually had an older brother, but he mysteriously disappeared before their father died..." What is really wrong with that? I don't get it. Its just a lot more reliable and less work in my long experience than hoping that the GM will 'get' your suggestions and deign to add said NPC to the game.
> 
> I mean, its not as if the GM can't say after the player's declaration above, "yes, but the guy you want has just been sent on campaign, so you can't ask him about it, and all you heard was a rumor that his wife gave you. If you want to find out the truth, you're going to have to dig deeper. As you return from your friend's house <check made behind screen> you get the feeling someone is watching you..."
> 
> Its not like the GM is ceding all his role in constructing the plot here. He's just not the only one anymore that can introduce some element of narrative into the fiction.
> 
> Now, lets say the character finds out that he needs a map in order to figure out where to look for another clue (something the wife said keyed him in on this, which required a history check, note that in my process this is ALL an SC). So the map is searched for, and maybe its found in the kitchen, lucky break! Maybe it isn't found, and the player is left failing to advance this element of the plot. OK, that's fine, there's always some other direction to go in, he can take a journey to find that guy that knows the stuff. He can try to nab one of the people following him. He can just find some other way to undermine the Duke.




Well here’s the thing....the GM need not decide everything about the world ahead of time. I’m just saying he should not be excluded from afding story elements. 

For me, this thread started with a criticism of GM authored story elements, so I’ve been approaching the conversation from that angle. The potential positives of the GM adding to the story. I’m not criticizing player driven story at all, except to compare the two approaches at times. 

So yes, the GM may have the ability to shoot down a player idea just because. But should he? I don’t think so....not without good reason. 

I am simply saying that this concern about the GM thwarting player ideas need not be a concern if the GM is happy with player introduced elements. So in that sense, I feel your post above very much is about trust.

The GM may or may not put the kibosh on the player introduced contact. You prefer a method wherw he cannot because you don’t like the risk that he could. You don’t trust that he won’t.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Nagol said:


> It is true I rarely get to play.  That's more the result of being asked to run constantly.  When I do get to play I really enjoy the luxury of inhabiting a single character.  Often to the point where I forget about manipulating the game environment as a player (like using bennies in Deadlands or what Whimsy Card I was dealt).  The joy of Champions is almost all the player authoring happens during character creation and between sessions for character advancement so it is easier to deal with than in the midst of play.



Well, I'm a 80% GM type of guy myself, though I have found I can play in MOST games and have fun. I just don't set some crazy high expectations from a game with people I don't know well and maybe play a different sort of game than I would ideally prefer. Still, most games are fun. Being in character is good, OTOH I think its fine to step back and assume a different point of view every now and then. A LOT of 'player facing' stuff CAN be done in character though, so its not like the players in my game are forced OOC a whole lot (@Pemerton noted this as well, but it can depend on the amount of authoring the players do, and when).



> The answer is pretty straightforward, I think.  The lure of exploratory play is to inhabit a role to act and react as the individual would.  See something unacceptable in the world?  What is the character going to do about it?  The PC has the agency to act so take a stand.  Pick a goal and work toward it.  Find allies, destroy enemies, gather resources and strike... What difference can one person make in the presented world? What difference does your character want to make?



That seems pretty general. It could describe MOST RPGs. I mean, there are some tightly focused ones where exploration is perhaps only in service to an end, or secondary in consideration (I'm thinking of Gangster!, Paranoia, stuff like that), but other than that I think 95% of all RPG play would qualify, wouldn't it? 



> For strong exploratory play, the game world is much like a puzzle.  Things that exist need to exist so that things that happen can happen for a reason for the players to accumulate sufficient information about the black box that the PCs can activate specific reactions in response to their actions.  Exploratory play needs to suppress random 'crap happens' events because they interfere with information gathering.  Having a single vision helps maintain the consistency of the fiction and its reaction to PC action.  Having the players know that vision undercuts the world puzzle.



I'm not entirely convinced about the vision part requiring ONE PERSON to have that vision. Like I said, my group (there were 3 players, 2 of whom are long term players of mine and one was a guy who was less experienced but pretty savvy and had no trouble catching on) did this 'Arthurian Knights' thing. It was VERY tightly themed, and if some element was a little outside the typical milieu then we discussed it or adjusted it as needed. The story which resulted was perhaps a bit more cohesive than most of the folk tales, which tend to be pretty episodic, but it sure had a lot of authentic feeling to it. It was fun (though the genre is a bit limited for really long term play).

My problem with these black boxes is they so often go wrong. As I said about 'game causality' its hard to know what really all the options are. I think if you play to a very strong genre (say super heroes or something like that) and really don't leave the reservation, and keep the 'puzzle' relatively straightforward, then its feasible. I just think puzzle games are pretty niche. Also it may well be possible to do them with player input! I mean, elements of many of my games have involved hidden knowledge of a type, like "exactly who killed the Mayor? Was it the Alderman, the Baron, the Priest, or the Cleaning Lady?" Now, its possible in some systems that a player could 'solve' that by authorship or even success in a check, but its easy enough to establish a convention against that if you want. 

I'm not sure why 'crap happens' is particularly endemic to player-led games. I'd say those are usually pretty tightly focused simply due to the fact that the object is to drive towards action which resolves conflicts that matter to the players. Sandbox games, IME, are much more prone to the sort of weird side-tracking where some trivial bit of description gets latched onto by the players and assumes some much greater importance than was intended. That is OK in a lot of cases, but it can really bollix up a game where there's a mystery to solve or something.

Anyway, I think its an area that still could be explored in more detail. I'm especially interested in what sorts of techniques could be employed in a game with significant player input to produce a real sense of mystery that holds up. I think it can be done, and I think its happened, maybe by accident, in some of our games, but I'm not sure I have a definite technique to share to accomplish it.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> I think what I’m trying to say is that in the event that the play has become boring, that the GM has the ability to try and right the ship, so to speak. I mean, layibg the blame only matters in that it may help reaolve the problem. I don’t think that as GM I’d be happy if play had become boring and pointless.
> 
> So if the GM has some material in mind ahead of time that can help correct that if it were to go that way, then I’d view it as a good thing.



Yeah, I would say that GM in any game would want to, and should be able to, make the game more interesting if it has become stale or boring. They might do that by focusing more on what the player's want, etc. Maybe a GM plot line is a good idea at that point, the GM is really a 'player' too, it isn't automatically a bad thing. I guess you could say the Czege Principle applies here, but generally its the players that address whatever the challenge is, not the GM, so I don't think that counts.



> I thibk it’s fun when the players establish what te game will be about as well. I just also like to have some input as the GM. I feel like dismissing any GM input to the story simply because there can be risk involved in that type of play is not all that different from dismissing player input.
> 
> Why limit things in either way?




In [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s technique, for 4e at least, the GM is actually authoring almost all of the content, just at the behest of the players, so I think GMs have probably STILL the majority of the input. Player wants to conquer the world, the GM brings in a cult of Vecna to facilitate that (maybe the player suggested that particular detail, but I'm guessing most of the particulars and how it was brought into the scenes was on the GM). Anyway, its usually pretty easy for a GM to address a character as well, by say presenting an idea to the player, or by just outright dangling something in game. This happens a lot.

I remember our first 4e campaign. [MENTION=2093]Gilladian[/MENTION] was running an Eladrin Wizard. The character's story was she was a youngster who was rebelliously fleeing to the world, and IIRC there was something about some sibling rivalry with an older sister or something. The party was adventuring and following in the footsteps of a previous set of adventurers (from a 2e campaign almost 20 years before). At various times they heard about this paladin from that group, and the Eladrin character conceived a fixation on this guy. Eventually they found him, trapped for 20 years in a magical trap deep in some dwarven mine. After that she chased after the paladin and acted like he was her boyfriend for a long time. It was a natural outgrowth of the original character backstory and agenda, but the exact form it took was shaped by GM produced backstory (or in this case it was produced 20 years earlier by a totally different group of players, to some extent). Anyway, it was certainly a GM-contrived thing in part. She took that bait, and then evolved that plot line from there.


----------



## darkbard

pemerton said:


> In our session today we had only 3 players (others couldn't make it) and so I suggested we try something different. I bought A Penny for My Thoughts years ago now - it has very catching visual design - but had never played it. But for whatever reason I've been re-reading it over the past week, and knowing that our crew would be a bit short I brought it along.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> So this is not a RPG, it's a pure cooperative storytelling game.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> This experience, plus similar experiences in the tamer context of RPGing, are what make me think concerns that GM control over setting is necessary to maintin consistency (of causation, of story events more generally) are exaggerated.
> 
> EDIT: I also thought I would try and say something about _how quickly_ setting and character emerge in this game.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> That's not completely dissimilar to how a GM's framing can interact with a player's establishment of theme/agenda in the context of a RPG.




Super instructive post about how the principles of games in entirely different genres can be used to shed light on what's possible in RPGs, generally. Especially useful wrt how multiple authors and no preauthored story/plot, beyond genre tropes, can nevertheless allow a cohesive story to emerge.


----------



## pemerton

Nagol said:


> actor stance does prevent "I play my 'Unexpected Aid' card.  Who would have thought the map is in the kitchen of all places!".



But that is not an essential element of player-driven RPGIng. Eg I've repeatedly pointed out that it is not a part of any game that I GM. 



Nagol said:


> If the answer lies within base player play then the declaration was incorrect or at least incomplete. Complete declarations would be "I find the map in the study for the map while searching" and "I catch the blood in a handy nearby vessel".
> 
> If we assume the declarations are complete for the type of play then there are two remaining possibilities: the answer is going to consume player resources or the GM the arbiter of answers.
> 
> I'm not going to address the first case because I consider it trivial.
> 
> In the second case, the GM has a few possible modes of preparation:
> 1) Prepare the position of objects considered meaningful to the game ahead of time.  For the first declaration, having decided where the map is, for the second, having a inventory of room contents.
> 2) Develop a model (random or not) that an be applied to answer any declaration dependent on the environment
> 3) Respond to how the table "feels" at that particular moment in the game.



I don't follow.

I GMed a session where the player declared "I look around the room fov a vessel to catch the blood." In BW that is a complete action declaratoin. I (as GM) set a difficulty. The check was made and succeeded. So the PC saw a vessel.

That did not require the player to step out of actor stance.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> Well here’s the thing....the GM need not decide everything about the world ahead of time. I’m just saying he should not be excluded from adding story elements.





hawkeyefan said:


> I feel like dismissing any GM input to the story simply because there can be risk involved in that type of play is not all that different from dismissing player input.





AbdulAlhazred said:


> In [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s technique, for 4e at least, the GM is actually authoring almost all of the content, just at the behest of the players, so I think GMs have probably STILL the majority of the input. Player wants to conquer the world, the GM brings in a cult of Vecna to facilitate that (maybe the player suggested that particular detail, but I'm guessing most of the particulars and how it was brought into the scenes was on the GM).



What AbdulAlhazred said.

No one in this thread that I can recall has talked about "excluding the GM from adding story elements" nor "dismissed any GM input". I, at least, have repeatedly posted actual play examples which illustrate such input (eg a wizard's tower; a dark naga; black arrows in a mage's workroom; a duergar stronghold; components of the Rod of Seven Parts; etc).

_Framingt_ is, by default in a mainstream RPG, GM authorship of story elements.

The thread is expressly about _worldbuilding_, or - for those who don't like that use of that term - about the role of GM pre-authorship of setting. Which is not a synonym for GM authorship of story elements - it's a quite distinctive mode of that.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> My experience with GMs and playing inside THEIR agenda is that a lot of them don't like this kind of thing too much. They feel like its a cheap way to get rid of the orcs. Maybe they allow it, but they punish it or they just decide that the orcs have some other water supply or whatever. They already decided on a story arc where the orcs menace the town and there's a battle, which they're invested in. I'm not saying this GM is a 'bad' GM, just that this is VERY typical and the weakness of GM-centered play is this tendency to want to stick to their story arc because they've put a lot of work into it. Moderately good GMs will maybe give some ground, some of the orcs are poisoned, or you win the first round but more orcs come back later, although you now maybe get some other new options too as a reward. Still, things tend to get stuck in certain patterns VERY easily. I know it doesn't HAVE to be that way, the technique is not hopeless or even bad, it just has its weaknesses.




See, this hasn't been my experience at all.  Including myself, the last 10 DMs that I've played with all use my style of DMing and would not have punished or countered that.  Depending the DM, there would have been varying levels of difficulty, but not as much as you described.  We would have had to get past the orc sentries and there probably would be a few guards who may or may not be sleeping while guarding the water.  It would have been a challenge, but not impossible.  There also probably would have been some sort of roll to see just how effective the poisoning was(ie how many orcs drank before it was discovered).  Maybe here in Los Angeles we have a more enlightened sort of DM.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> What AbdulAlhazred said.
> 
> No one in this thread that I can recall has talked about "excluding the GM from adding story elements" nor "dismissed any GM input". I, at least, have repeatedly posted actual play examples which illustrate such input (eg a wizard's tower; a dark naga; black arrows in a mage's workroom; a duergar stronghold; components of the Rod of Seven Parts; etc).
> 
> _Framingt_ is, by default in a mainstream RPG, GM authorship of story elements.
> 
> The thread is expressly about _worldbuilding_, or - for those who don't like that use of that term - about the role of GM pre-authorship of setting. Which is not a synonym for GM authorship of story elements - it's a quite distinctive mode of that.




So backstory created by the GM is acceptable?


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> So backstory created by the GM is acceptable?



What have you got in mind?

The PCs arrive in a duergar stronghold. The duergar who has accompanied them there warns them "Our ruler, Murkelmor, and I don't always see eye to eye." That's backstory, and is part of framing. When the PCs in my main 4e game arrived in the duergar stronghold I narrated a reasonable amount of backstory of this general sort. Two PCs - the wielder of the Sceptre of Law, and the tiefling paladin - were treated more favourably by the duergar than the other PCs, and the reasons for this (eg the duergar are devil worshippers who hate chaos) were clearly established at that point.

If you mean the GM establishing unrevealed backstory to use as a constraint on the success of action declarations - well, that's a different thing.


----------



## darkbard

pemerton said:
			
		

> <snip>
> 
> That's backstory, and is part of framing. When the PCs in my main 4e game arrived in the duergar stronghold I narrated a reasonable amount of backstory of this general sort.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> If you mean the GM establishing unrevealed backstory to use as a constraint on the success of action declarations - well, that's a different thing.




I think it's really telling of the obstinacy to engage the concepts of this thread beyond their preconceived notions by many posters that this still needs restating after more than 1000 posts on the topic!


----------



## pemerton

darkbard said:


> I think it's really telling of the obstinacy to engage the concepts of this thread beyond their preconceived notions by many posters that this still needs restating after more than 1000 posts on the topic!



I was a bit surprised that someone would think that I am dismissing all GM contributions to the fiction, when I've posted multiple examples of such contributions over and over in the thread, plus set out a general principle for governing GM contributions: GM establishes framing and narrates consequences of failed actions (ie the "standard narrativistic model").

But I was also surprised upthread when the contrast between _pre-authorship of the setting_ and _preparation_ seemed to generate a lot of contention.

For me, in the context of this thread, it also comes back to how actions are resolved: if unrevealed GM-authored backstory is used to settle the outcome of action declarations, as a type of secret fictional positioning, that betokens - at that moment of play - a low degree of player agency over the content of the shared fiction. Likewise if play is focused on making moves that trigger narration of established setting by the GM. And likewise (and often related to that) if play involves making moves that will trigger pre-established responses in the GM's pre-authored backstory (eg finding the NPC whom the GM has noted will respond to a bribe).

fPart of the reason for posting about my recent A Penny For My Thoughts session is to try and illustrate how content can emerge in a back-and-forth where it's hard to say exactly who is the author (one player wrote the "memory trigger" about lightning, another that the warmth of the deep ones' laboratory was due to failing heat shields within the volcano, another that the lightning and a volcano in Naples could serve as sources of power for some weird science device). But it's crystal clear that pre-authorship isn't part of it.

I'm sure this is fairly common in a lot of people's RPGing. One aim of this thread is to try and think about this method, and others, more self-consciously.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I was a bit surprised that someone would think that I am dismissing all GM contributions to the fiction, when I've posted multiple examples of such contributions over and over in the thread, plus set out a general principle for governing GM contributions: GM establishes framing and narrates consequences of failed actions (ie the "standard narrativistic model").
> 
> But I was also surprised upthread when the contrast between _pre-authorship of the setting_ and _preparation_ seemed to generate a lot of contention.




It's human nature for people who are repeatedly insulted to resist what the one doing the insulting is trying to say.  Perhaps if you stopped saying that our style of play amounts to a choose your own adventure book(and other similar statements), you'd get less resistance.  That characterization is false and insulting.


----------



## darkbard

Maxperson said:


> It's human nature for people who are repeatedly insulted to resist what the one doing the insulting is trying to say.




And it astounds me that, despite [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's consistently measured tone, sometimes in the face of blatant hostility, that some continue to mistake honest analysis for insult.


----------



## Ovinomancer

darkbard said:


> And it astounds me that, despite  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's consistently measured tone, sometimes in the face of blatant hostility, that some continue to mistake honest analysis for insult.




I find this strange, given how you've shown upset at some descriptions of your playstyle that you find offensive due to a lack of understanding or due to the description involving non-principled play examples.  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is using a model to describe hidden backstory in a similar way, despite numerous posters showing that his analysis is flawed because it lacks understanding and uses examples that are non-principled.  Not that their impossible, but the common cases he presents show that he's fixated on play that is abusive of the social contract and doesn't actually reflect how all DMs use the technique.

After many 10's of pages, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] hasn't budged from his initial position, and, frankly, has on occasion engaged in very specious arguments to attempt to defend his position against all comers.  Secret backstory HAS to a lesser form of play, period, and no discussion will deviate from that.  

So, if you're astounded, it's because you have the same blinkers on. 

And I say this as someone that's played, and very much enjoyed, both styles and runs in a 'middle path' style where I have both secret backstory and players are allowed to introduce fiction through action declaration.  I'm also starting a Blades in the Dark game alongside my 5e game, and, in my opinion, that's also a middle path game where the DM has veto power over player introduced fictions.  Much more limited than 5e, but the rules clearly say the DM has final say on whether an action declaration is appropriate.  It also suggests never using that veto if you can help it, to let the story build as the players play, but this goes straight to the principled play argument that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] employs:  you CAN do it, therefore agency is denied, principles be damned.


----------



## darkbard

Ovinomancer said:


> I find this strange, given how you've shown upset at some descriptions of your playstyle that you find offensive due to a lack of understanding or due to the description involving non-principled play examples.




I'm not really sure what you mean about my "show[ing] upset." Though I've read every post in this thread, I think I've only poste five or six times, and most of those posts have been to praise pemerton's equanimity in the face of ruthless assault.



> [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is using a model to describe hidden backstory in a similar way, despite numerous posters showing that his analysis is flawed because it lacks understanding and uses examples that are non-principled.  *Not that their impossible, but the common cases he presents show that he's fixated on play that is abusive of the social contract and doesn't actually reflect how all DMs use the technique.*




This gets at the heart of the initial post: if worldbuilding (as subsequently defined as secret backstory to preclude PC action declarations) can possibly be used to curtail player agency (for all the reasons ennumerated throughout the thread), but principled play demands that it not be used so (that would result in an abusive GM), what purpose does it hold beyond this possibility.

And if player-centered games provide all the same depth of play experiences (as I hope this thread has adequately demonstrated) as secret backstory games, then what other possible purpose can secret backstory hold other than to serve as a GM's ace-in-the-hole to negate player agency and move the game to preauthored concerns?



> After many 10's of pages, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] hasn't budged from his initial position, and, frankly, has on occasion engaged in very specious arguments to attempt to defend his position against all comers.  Secret backstory HAS to a lesser form of play, period, and no discussion will deviate from that.
> 
> So, if you're astounded, it's because you have the same blinkers on.
> 
> And I say this as someone that's played, and very much enjoyed, both styles and runs in a 'middle path' style where I have both secret backstory and players are allowed to introduce fiction through action declaration.  I'm also starting a Blades in the Dark game alongside my 5e game, and, in my opinion, that's also a middle path game where the DM has veto power over player introduced fictions.  Much more limited than 5e, but the rules clearly say the DM has final say on whether an action declaration is appropriate.  It also suggests never using that veto if you can help it, to let the story build as the players play, but this goes straight to the principled play argument that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] employs:  *you CAN do it, therefore agency is denied, principles be damned.*




What is the purpose of having the capability of doing something if one never exercises that right? Isn't this just another way of reframing the OP?

Generally, I'm a huge critic of absolutist frameworks, but I have a hard time negating the idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely. It's too easy to convince oneself that juuust this one time nudging things to my GM agenda will make for a better game for everyone. And thus the floodgates may open.


----------



## innerdude

darkbard said:


> . . . what other possible purpose can secret backstory hold other than to serve as a GM's ace-in-the-hole to negate player agency and move the game to preauthored concerns?




This is a good question. But it does tie in somewhat for the need to define just what the difference is between "worldbuilding" and "secret backstory." Where is the line drawn between them? I think you can do many kinds of worldbuilding that don't directly veer into secret backstory. 

A possible useful delineation might be a twist on the old adage, "Never put something in front of the players that you don't actually intend them to interact with." In most cases this is in reference to NPCs, meaning, "Never put an NPC in physical proximity to the PCs unless you're fully willing for that NPC to be attacked and killed."

But there's a hint there of the line to draw between worldbuilding and secret backstory---_As a GM, no entity state or state of being within the fiction should ever be assumed when there's the potential for the party to interact with it._

It sounds pretty bold to put it like that, but in my head it rings true. 

In other words, do worldbuilding to your heart's content. Create backstories for nations and cultures, create new locations and MacGuffins, create NPCs and treasures to find. Just don't hard code anything that the PCs may actually interact with. Worldbuilding ends the second it intersects with the PCs, even if indirectly.

"But, but, I already decided that the Marquis De Flambon is sending his guards out to hunt the PCs, no matter what!"

"But, but, I already decided that the holy grail is in the castle Aaaaugh, and only the old man from Scene 24 knows where it is!"

"But, but, I already decided that the trap in Hallway 88 in the dungeon is impossible to disarm, no matter how high the thief rolls!"

"But, but, I already decided that Globulus the Demon Blood Gnome can't be killed when he encounters the party at the marketplace, because it will ruin my plot!"


By contrast, when I'm GM-ing, my thoughts usually run along these lines---"So I previously wrote down that Event X / End State Y is a possibility here. But is that still the case? Would it make more sense, based on what the PCs have declared and accomplished, for something else to happen? Or is it okay for it to happen anyway, but the _reasons_ for it to happen have changed? Does Event X / End State Y take away from the accomplishments of the PCs? Does it negate some aspect of play or element of the fiction that's already been established? If yes, is that fair to the players? If no, does it still make sense in context here? Or would it make more sense for another, different set of scene frames to open up, based on what's happening in-game and what my players seem to be driving toward?"

Those are the kinds of thoughts I want my GM to be thinking when I'm a player.

The absolute last thing I want my GM to be thinking is, "Well, that's the way I wrote it up and decided it would happen, so . . . yep, that's exactly what's going to happen."


----------



## Ovinomancer

darkbard said:


> I'm not really sure what you mean about my "show[ing] upset." Though I've read every post in this thread, I think I've only poste five or six times, and most of those posts have been to praise pemerton's equanimity in the face of ruthless assault.



Ruthless... assault...? 



> This gets at the heart of the initial post: if worldbuilding (as subsequently defined as secret backstory to preclude PC action declarations) can possibly be used to curtail player agency (for all the reasons ennumerated throughout the thread), but principled play demands that it not be used so (that would result in an abusive GM), what purpose does it hold beyond this possibility.
> 
> And if player-centered games provide all the same depth of play experiences (as I hope this thread has adequately demonstrated) as secret backstory games, then what other possible purpose can secret backstory hold other than to serve as a GM's ace-in-the-hole to negate player agency and move the game to preauthored concerns?




1) principles play would be to curtail action negation through secret backstory.  If it's never used, there's not point.  No, instead, that was about the mere existence of secret backstory being enough to mean that the DM will not only occasionally veto a declaration, but that they will instead veto every declaration that doesn't fit their 'choose-your-own-adventure' novel backstory.  This is clearly false.

2) I don't think player-centered games provide all of the same depth of play experience.  I think they provide a different play experience, one that can also be deep.  This is a point that many have agreed upon, the chess vs checkers argument.  The playstyles incorporate different approaches and goals and so can't provide the same experience because they aren't tuned to do so.  You can mix and match a bit, but it's mostly importing some traits into a mostly DM or mostly player driven game.

3) the words you used here 'DM ace-in-the-hole' is exactly the kind of phrasing I'm talking about.  This wording implies that the DM is using their backstory not to further play, but to arbitrarily restrict play in a way that is intentional to limit player action declaration.  It implies an adversarial relationship where the DM is using the game to control the players, rather than a game where the DM is trying to enable players.  You've chosen to frame your argument in a way that says anyone playing that way is just looking to screw over the players and don't want to let go of that power.  It's false and exactly why the arguments are rebutted so strongly.





> What is the purpose of having the capability of doing something if one never exercises that right? Isn't this just another way of reframing the OP?



See above -- it's not about never doing it, it's about doing it in pursuit of aiding players, not punishing them.  Yet every example presented is one that assumes the DM will use secret backstory to punish players.



> Generally, I'm a huge critic of absolutist frameworks, but I have a hard time negating the idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely. It's too easy to convince oneself that juuust this one time nudging things to my GM agenda will make for a better game for everyone. And thus the floodgates may open.




A few people have mentioned the matter of trust and this has always been loudly dismissed as unimportant, but I can't read this argument as anything other than a lack of trust.  And also a lack of imagination that many DMs don't want to run that kind of game.  I mean, if you can find DMs that enjoy running player facing games (many of which incorporation DM fiat rules but then provide principles to not use them arbitrarily) that would imply there are DMs that aren't interested in the kind of degenerate play you argue is inevitable.  Why can't there be similar DMs that play in a different style?

When you shift to imagining that those that do not play like you do are all slowly devolving into the worst examples of play because you dislike their playstyle, why are you remotely surprised when your arguments for that are met with strong disagreement?  Why are you surprised when those, like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], make those same arguments they're met with strong disagreement?


----------



## Aenghus

I used to use lots of adventure modules, and still use parts of them. While it's possible to adapt and change such modules to some extent, at some point the cost of extensive changes exceeds the benefit of using the printed module. In all cases the players have specifically agreed to play through the module.

So using printed modules generally involves either placing constraints on character generation, or expecting some PC wastage as players find out the hard way the PC doesn't suit the module, or the PC is killed/crippled/retired/removed from play. The PCs need to be compatible with the module, which might mean having certain generic qualities like "Good or Neutral aligned" or all being enemies of a  particular faction. The more cagey the referee is about revealing secrets within the module or game setting, the less specific they can be about the PC restrictions. 

Many of the difficulties I have seen in GM-driven gaming is when the GM doesn't properly vet character concepts for the intended game, and so some players end up with incompatible expectations for the game. Things like a rude barbarian concept in a gameworld where it turns out rudeness can be fatal, or a sickly scholar concept in what turns out to be a brutal survival march. 

A player might reasonably say that the referee either shouldn't allow character concepts which just don't fit in a setting, or won't be fun for the player, or at a stretch, figure out ways to allow the character to be viable in the setting. 

Some referees don't spend care about character concepts much and expect these issues to be resolved in game. Others place various restrictions on PC concepts and generation.

But with modern PCs often being complex and/or with extensive backstories, possibly with links to other PCs and NPCs, dropping characters and introducing new ones gets more difficult. I've certainly been in the position of trying to persuade a player to keep playing a PC in a long term campaign when they were getting reluctant or wanted to retire them (to play for a little longer, or permanently). Sometimes this means allowing character alterations or dealing with issues within the game.

Similarly, in a GM-driven game with extensive pre-prepared gameworld content, where the referee wants the players to access the gameworld through the eyes of their PCs,  the players need to be content with that limited interface, and have player and PC goals that are compatible with such a style of play. This may be no sacrifice at all, many players have this as their preferred style of game.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> What AbdulAlhazred said.
> 
> No one in this thread that I can recall has talked about "excluding the GM from adding story elements" nor "dismissed any GM input". I, at least, have repeatedly posted actual play examples which illustrate such input (eg a wizard's tower; a dark naga; black arrows in a mage's workroom; a duergar stronghold; components of the Rod of Seven Parts; etc).
> 
> _Framingt_ is, by default in a mainstream RPG, GM authorship of story elements.
> 
> The thread is expressly about _worldbuilding_, or - for those who don't like that use of that term - about the role of GM pre-authorship of setting. Which is not a synonym for GM authorship of story elements - it's a quite distinctive mode of that.




I meant the GM having backstory in mind ahead of play. Given your use of the term "world building" to mean something much different than its standard use, I'm sure you'll forgive my use of a more broad term in conversation. 



pemerton said:


> What have you got in mind?
> 
> The PCs arrive in a duergar stronghold. The duergar who has accompanied them there warns them "Our ruler, Murkelmor, and I don't always see eye to eye." That's backstory, and is part of framing. When the PCs in my main 4e game arrived in the duergar stronghold I narrated a reasonable amount of backstory of this general sort. Two PCs - the wielder of the Sceptre of Law, and the tiefling paladin - were treated more favourably by the duergar than the other PCs, and the reasons for this (eg the duergar are devil worshippers who hate chaos) were clearly established at that point.
> 
> If you mean the GM establishing unrevealed backstory to use as a constraint on the success of action declarations - well, that's a different thing.




I mean pre-authored campaign material that the GM comes up with prior to play, but which is used not to thwart the players introducing story elements or declaring actions for their characters. 

So my players gave me a good idea of what each of them wanted for their characters. This was not actually prior to start of play, but at a point when we decided to keep playing after playing the initial adventure module in the 5E starter set to familiarize ourselves with the game. Everyone like it, and liked their characters, so we decided to keep going. So they provided me some background info and goals (some of which had been established in play, some of which had not). 

I then took those ideas and some that I had, and weaved them together. Some of my ideas were inspired, or further inspired, by ideas of the players. I also had some storiess that I wanted to bring about in play, so I connected those to the players' stories. The ideas I had and the ideas my players had have blended quite a bit. There are some elements about which I can honestly not say who came up with them. Others I know are mine, or a specific player, or the group. 

So there is a larger story at play, some of which the players are unaware of, and they discover through play. I don't use the pre-authored material to force them down certain paths, or to thwart their ideas. I use it to hopefully enhance the story and play. 



pemerton said:


> I was a bit surprised that someone would think that I am dismissing all GM contributions to the fiction, when I've posted multiple examples of such contributions over and over in the thread, plus set out a general principle for governing GM contributions: GM establishes framing and narrates consequences of failed actions (ie the "standard narrativistic model").
> 
> But I was also surprised upthread when the contrast between _pre-authorship of the setting_ and _preparation_ seemed to generate a lot of contention.
> 
> For me, in the context of this thread, it also comes back to how actions are resolved: if unrevealed GM-authored backstory is used to settle the outcome of action declarations, as a type of secret fictional positioning, that betokens - at that moment of play - a low degree of player agency over the content of the shared fiction. Likewise if play is focused on making moves that trigger narration of established setting by the GM. And likewise (and often related to that) if play involves making moves that will trigger pre-established responses in the GM's pre-authored backstory (eg finding the NPC whom the GM has noted will respond to a bribe).
> 
> fPart of the reason for posting about my recent A Penny For My Thoughts session is to try and illustrate how content can emerge in a back-and-forth where it's hard to say exactly who is the author (one player wrote the "memory trigger" about lightning, another that the warmth of the deep ones' laboratory was due to failing heat shields within the volcano, another that the lightning and a volcano in Naples could serve as sources of power for some weird science device). But it's crystal clear that pre-authorship isn't part of it.
> 
> I'm sure this is fairly common in a lot of people's RPGing. One aim of this thread is to try and think about this method, and others, more self-consciously.




I know that I have not criticized player driven play at all. I understand it, and why it is enjoyable, and that it is your preferred method of play. However, your stance in this thread seems to criticize GM driven play. Which is fine....but if you criticize that mode of play, and you ask what it is useful for, then that's what I am going to talk about. 

So your stance on framing, and on player backstory and goals, and all these other elements....you have a very clear understanding of why you like them. What I struggle with is how you fail to see any use for GM driven story elements. Pre-written backstory as a tool like those others and not as an obstacle to players.


----------



## hawkeyefan

darkbard said:


> I think it's really telling of the obstinacy to engage the concepts of this thread beyond their preconceived notions by many posters that this still needs restating after more than 1000 posts on the topic!




Since permerton was replying to me in the bit you quoted above, I'll assume you're directing that at me, and I will say that I am not being obstinate so much as trying to understand the nuance of permerton's views. Because I don't think that the GM is limited to either framing in the sense that pemerton mentions, or in using backstory to deny player agency. I think that there are a range of uses for it in between those two examples. 



darkbard said:


> And it astounds me that, despite [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's consistently measured tone, sometimes in the face of blatant hostility, that some continue to mistake honest analysis for insult.




Perhaps no insult is meant....but when people say they feel insulted, it's usually a better approach to acknowledge that rather than question it. I mean, if people are saying they're insulted, questioning that seems to be implying they're lying, which only serves to further the insult, intended or not.


----------



## hawkeyefan

darkbard said:


> This gets at the heart of the initial post: if worldbuilding (as subsequently defined as secret backstory to preclude PC action declarations) can possibly be used to curtail player agency (for all the reasons ennumerated throughout the thread), but principled play demands that it not be used so (that would result in an abusive GM), what purpose does it hold beyond this possibility.
> 
> And if player-centered games provide all the same depth of play experiences (as I hope this thread has adequately demonstrated) as secret backstory games, then what other possible purpose can secret backstory hold other than to serve as a GM's ace-in-the-hole to negate player agency and move the game to preauthored concerns?




I think your first paragraph above is the crux of my issue with Permerton's stance. Essentially, does "worldbuilding" in the sense of the GM concocting backstory for the campaign serve only to deny player agency? Does it offer anything else? 

I think the clear answer is that it can. If we can imagine a GM who creates an interesting and compelling story that incorporates or at the very least does not contradict or suppress player goals, then I think that's all that is needed in order for the idea to have merit. Perhaps the Gm has come up with a villain that he has worked into each character's stories in some way, connecting them all but without forcing them along certain paths. The GM has a loose idea of where things will go or what some characters may or may not do, but leaves plenty of room for change along the way. There are pre-authored elements in this case, but I don't think of this as the same thing as a linear style adventure where the characters move along the pre-defined path and do not deviate from it. 

Perhaps there is a chance that it could be done poorly....but I think the same can be said of any style of play or method of GMing. 

I think a couple of possible answers to this question may be: 

- to take many story threads offered by the players and make a cohesive narrative out of them
- to introduce an element wholly unexpected by the players because it is not directly connected to their stated desires

I think more have been offered in the thread, but those are the couple that seem the most relevant to me at the moment. Neither may be necessary....it's quite possible for the players to have goals that dovetail nicely with each other, or which are more group oriented, and a GM may not need to work to weave them together. It's also perfectly fine for a game to not have a cohesive narrative, and to be more episodic. It's also quite possible that through the course of play, something wholly unexpected is introduced spontaneously. Those moments are great and I'd never want my game to be without them. 

So I would never say that anyone's game must have a certain level of GM direction happening; I've played games along the lines of Penny For Your Thoughts, and I understand the value and enjoyment of collaborative storytelling. All I am saying is that it is a method that can be useful, and need not devolve into the negative version that is being put forth.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I was a bit surprised that someone would think that I am dismissing all GM contributions to the fiction, when I've posted multiple examples of such contributions over and over in the thread, plus set out a general principle for governing GM contributions: GM establishes framing and narrates consequences of failed actions (ie the "standard narrativistic model").
> 
> But I was also surprised upthread when the contrast between _pre-authorship of the setting_ and _preparation_ seemed to generate a lot of contention.



What contrast?

Pre-authoring the setting is nothing more than preparation of a scene, only on a bigger scale and with a lot more moving parts.



> For me, in the context of this thread, it also comes back to how actions are resolved: if unrevealed GM-authored backstory is used to settle the outcome of action declarations, as a type of secret fictional positioning, that betokens - at that moment of play - a low degree of player agency over the content of the shared fiction.



Thing is; you keep saying this like it's a bad thing, when it isn't.

Mystery is good.  Hidden elements are good.  Foes working in the shadows doing unknown-to-the-PCs-yet nefarious deeds are good.  Being able to peel off the layers to discover the underlying forces that have been at work all along is good.


> Likewise if play is focused on making moves that trigger narration of established setting by the GM. And likewise (and often related to that) if play involves making moves that will trigger pre-established responses in the GM's pre-authored backstory (eg finding the NPC whom the GM has noted will respond to a bribe).



This is how it works, sometimes.  Other times the player moves trigger narration of not-yet-established setting by the GM, when the PCs decide to go where the map is blank.  Same applies to the backstory - sometimes the player moves fit right in and other times they force changes to what would otherwise have been narrated (eg the one NPC who will respond to a bribe is the one NPC the party killed last night for no particular reason).



> Part of the reason for posting about my recent A Penny For My Thoughts session is to try and illustrate how content can emerge in a back-and-forth where it's hard to say exactly who is the author (one player wrote the "memory trigger" about lightning, another that the warmth of the deep ones' laboratory was due to failing heat shields within the volcano, another that the lightning and a volcano in Naples could serve as sources of power for some weird science device). But it's crystal clear that pre-authorship isn't part of it.



In and of itself that looked like a really fun and interesting session.

But how sustainable is it over the long term?  Could something like this be kept going for one or two or ten years?



> I'm sure this is fairly common in a lot of people's RPGing.



Complete lack of pre-authorship?  I very much doubt it's all that common overall; in fact I'd say it's fairly rare.



> One aim of this thread is to try and think about this method, and others, more self-consciously.



Fair enough, and it has been thought-provoking.

Lanefan


----------



## Nagol

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, I'm a 80% GM type of guy myself, though I have found I can play in MOST games and have fun. I just don't set some crazy high expectations from a game with people I don't know well and maybe play a different sort of game than I would ideally prefer. Still, most games are fun. Being in character is good, OTOH I think its fine to step back and assume a different point of view every now and then. A LOT of 'player facing' stuff CAN be done in character though, so its not like the players in my game are forced OOC a whole lot (@Pemerton noted this as well, but it can depend on the amount of authoring the players do, and when).
> 
> 
> That seems pretty general. It could describe MOST RPGs. I mean, there are some tightly focused ones where exploration is perhaps only in service to an end, or secondary in consideration (I'm thinking of Gangster!, Paranoia, stuff like that), but other than that I think 95% of all RPG play would qualify, wouldn't it?




No, not really.  For example, superhero play is rarely exploratory in the sense of trying to understand and decode the environment.  It tends to be reactive in style (PCs react to prevent environmental changes threatened by the opposition) and focused more on the interpersonal (rivalries, relationships, mind set) when not tactical.  I do run such games with some exploratory components using relationships and attitudes in place of maps, but I wouldn't call them exploratory focused games.  A lot of comedic games also are not exploratory; either the setting can't be explored because it isn't stable (Macho Women with Guns), it isn't unknown (Teenagers from Outer Space), or it is just set dressing and doesn't count for advantage or disadvantage for PCs (Toon) .



> I'm not entirely convinced about the vision part requiring ONE PERSON to have that vision. Like I said, my group (there were 3 players, 2 of whom are long term players of mine and one was a guy who was less experienced but pretty savvy and had no trouble catching on) did this 'Arthurian Knights' thing. It was VERY tightly themed, and if some element was a little outside the typical milieu then we discussed it or adjusted it as needed. The story which resulted was perhaps a bit more cohesive than most of the folk tales, which tend to be pretty episodic, but it sure had a lot of authentic feeling to it. It was fun (though the genre is a bit limited for really long term play).




Did I say one person? [Goes back and checks] Nope.  I've run with multiple GMs cooperatively so it'd be pretty foolish of me to say so.  The vision needs to be kept separate form the players otherwise you have a situation where the group that needs to find a solution already knows all the information.  That pretty much negates puzzle solving.  Now there are playstyles where the players are playing to find out "what happens next" as opposed to "how it works and what do we do with it" where having all the (partial) available information in advance isn't a problem, but I find puzzle solving is the opposite if fun if I already know where every piece goes.



> My problem with these black boxes is they so often go wrong. As I said about 'game causality' its hard to know what really all the options are.



Mileage, varying.  



> I think if you play to a very strong genre (say super heroes or something like that) and really don't leave the reservation, and keep the 'puzzle' relatively straightforward, then its feasible. I just think puzzle games are pretty niche. Also it may well be possible to do them with player input! I mean, elements of many of my games have involved hidden knowledge of a type, like "exactly who killed the Mayor? Was it the Alderman, the Baron, the Priest, or the Cleaning Lady?" Now, its possible in some systems that a player could 'solve' that by authorship or even success in a check, but its easy enough to establish a convention against that if you want.




Causality should (a) follow genre convention and (b) remain plausible.  If both (a) and (b) are true then having a model that allows for all possible results is immaterial.



> I'm not sure why 'crap happens' is particularly endemic to player-led games. I'd say those are usually pretty tightly focused simply due to the fact that the object is to drive towards action which resolves conflicts that matter to the players. Sandbox games, IME, are much more prone to the sort of weird side-tracking where some trivial bit of description gets latched onto by the players and assumes some much greater importance than was intended. That is OK in a lot of cases, but it can really bollix up a game where there's a mystery to solve or something.




Crap happens isn't pejorative; it's a grandma friendly version of a common saying about life.  It's particularly endemic to player-led games because you have a bunch of people introducing narrative elements that feel right at the time.  The problem with a bunch of people introducing such elements into a puzzle solving game is pretty straightforward.  The elements introduced will randomly support and undercut the puzzle framework.  Such element introduction works better in games where puzzle solving isn't a desired trait i.e. where behaviours and happenings can be explained post hoc.  



> Anyway, I think its an area that still could be explored in more detail. I'm especially interested in what sorts of techniques could be employed in a game with significant player input to produce a real sense of mystery that holds up. I think it can be done, and I think its happened, maybe by accident, in some of our games, but I'm not sure I have a definite technique to share to accomplish it.




It is a hard problem.  I think it could be done too, but it requires great care to not introduce contradictions and paradoxes (unless the game features those of course but I hate time travel games in general).  One of the cooperative GMing games I was involved with had a exploratory focus and an undefined world.  Each GM could take the world as currently defined and develop an adventure that offered further definition so long as nothing previously set was contradicted.  GMing duties passed back and forth.  The game fell apart mainly because the GMs ended up losing interest since we couldn't effectively lay groundwork.  It was like trying to build a house you lay the foundation and come back to find a shed where the living room was going to go so you start laying a new floor over the over guy's garden plot.  We agreed that the GMing experiment was better suited for other gaming types and probably for short runs rather than an open-ended campaign.


----------



## Lanefan

darkbard said:


> This gets at the heart of the initial post: if worldbuilding (as subsequently defined as secret backstory to preclude PC action declarations) can possibly be used to curtail player agency (for all the reasons ennumerated throughout the thread), but principled play demands that it not be used so (that would result in an abusive GM), what purpose does it hold beyond this possibility.



At first, it sets the scene.  After that, it makes sure the scene remains consistent within itself from session to session and gives the moving parts (PC, NPC, historical, geographical, environmental, etc.) a framework on which to operate.



> And if player-centered games provide all the same depth of play experiences (as I hope this thread has adequately demonstrated) as secret backstory games, then what other possible purpose can secret backstory hold other than to serve as a GM's ace-in-the-hole to negate player agency and move the game to preauthored concerns?



Those two types of games might provide similar depth-of-play experiences, but I think they're at different ends of the pool.

Secret backstory can provide an avenue to mystery-solving (a major element in most types of play), exploration (one of the three pillars as defined by 5e), discovery (there's nothing better than the 'aha!' moment when the pieces finally come together), and longevity in the campaign.

To expand on that last item: if a DM can spin out the hidden backstory in such a way as to allow the players/PCs to discover bits of it as they go along but always have the sense there's still more to it if they only dig a little deeper, the players - assuming they were engaged in the first place - are likely to remain engaged; and the campaign can go on for ages.



> Generally, I'm a huge critic of absolutist frameworks, but I have a hard time negating the idea that absolute power corrupts absolutely. It's too easy to convince oneself that juuust this one time nudging things to my GM agenda will make for a better game for everyone. And thus the floodgates may open.



Reading this bit gives me a sense that you not only don't trust DMs in general, you don't even trust yourself as a DM.

As a player, I trust that if the DM wants to bounce us around a bit or force the story she's got a good reason for doing so and is in her own view trying to make a better game for us.  I'm also willing to accept that it's not going to work every time, and to shrug it off when it doesn't and just move on within that same campaign.  (oftentimes IME the DM will realize something was a bad idea long before the players do anyway, and already be prepared to move on at the fisrt opportunity)

Lan-"DMs are imperfect people too"-efan


----------



## Nagol

pemerton said:


> But that is not an essential element of player-driven RPGIng. Eg I've repeatedly pointed out that it is not a part of any game that I GM.




Maybe not, but is is an element that exists in many types of player-led gaming.  That you don't experience it is immaterial.



> I don't follow.
> 
> I GMed a session where the player declared "I look around the room fov a vessel to catch the blood." In BW that is a complete action declaratoin. I (as GM) set a difficulty. The check was made and succeeded. So the PC saw a vessel.
> 
> That did not require the player to step out of actor stance.




That's the trivial case I didn't bother with.  The player made a action declaration in a game where he has the resources to determine success himself.  A full declaration would be "I look for a vessel to hold the blood...<dice roll> and find it.  So blood has been collected." 

And it was immediate world-building on your part!  The player did not insert the vessel.  You as GM agreed such a vessel had a probability to exist and provided the appropriate guidance (the DC) for determination.  The players now have a sense of the likelihood of finding similar items in similar places.


----------



## Nagol

darkbard said:


> I think it's really telling of the obstinacy to engage the concepts of this thread beyond their preconceived notions by many posters that this still needs restating after more than 1000 posts on the topic!




Obstinacy flows both ways.  The force is pulled thin here.


----------



## Nagol

innerdude said:


> This is a good question. But it does tie in somewhat for the need to define just what the difference is between "worldbuilding" and "secret backstory." Where is the line drawn between them? I think you can do many kinds of worldbuilding that don't directly veer into secret backstory.
> 
> A possible useful delineation might be a twist on the old adage, "Never put something in front of the players that you don't actually intend them to interact with." In most cases this is in reference to NPCs, meaning, "Never put an NPC in physical proximity to the PCs unless you're fully willing for that NPC to be attacked and killed."
> 
> But there's a hint there of the line to draw between worldbuilding and secret backstory---_As a GM, no entity state or state of being within the fiction should ever be assumed when there's the potential for the party to interact with it._
> 
> It sounds pretty bold to put it like that, but in my head it rings true.
> 
> In other words, do worldbuilding to your heart's content. Create backstories for nations and cultures, create new locations and MacGuffins, create NPCs and treasures to find. Just don't hard code anything that the PCs may actually interact with. Worldbuilding ends the second it intersects with the PCs, even if indirectly.
> 
> "But, but, I already decided that the Marquis De Flambon is sending his guards out to hunt the PCs, no matter what!"
> 
> "But, but, I already decided that the holy grail is in the castle Aaaaugh, and only the old man from Scene 24 knows where it is!"
> 
> "But, but, I already decided that the trap in Hallway 88 in the dungeon is impossible to disarm, no matter how high the thief rolls!"
> 
> "But, but, I already decided that Globulus the Demon Blood Gnome can't be killed when he encounters the party the marketplace, because it will ruin my plot!"
> 
> 
> By contrast, when I'm GM-ing, my thoughts usually run along these lines---"So I previously wrote down that Event X / End State Y is a possibility here. But is that still the case? Would it make more sense, based on what the PCs have declared and accomplished, for something else to happen? Or is it okay for it to happen anyway, but the _reasons_ for it to happen have changed? Does Event X / End State Y take away from the accomplishments of the PCs? Does it negate some aspect of play or element of the fiction that's already been established? If yes, is that fair to the players? If no, does it still make sense in context here? Or would it make more sense for another, different set of scene frames to open up, based on what's happening in-game and what my players seem to be driving toward?"
> 
> Those are the kinds of thoughts I want my GM to be thinking when I'm a player.
> 
> The absolute last thing I want my GM to be thinking is, "Well, that's the way I wrote it up and decided it would happen, so . . . yep, that's exactly what's going to happen."




A lot of secret backstory in my case isn't created before the players act: it is created in reaction to PC action.  The PCs just haven't discovered it yet.  The stuff that is created in advance is stuff like where valuable are stored and what they are, where key items may be, what attitudes a NPC holds, and where things are in relation to one another.  

I won't decide the Marquis sends agents after the PCs until the PCs act in a way that induces him to do so.  

Is this the only style of gaming? No.  Is it a valid style of gaming? Yes.   

Is there a reason this style of gaming shouldn't be used?  Note I did not ask must everyone use this style of gaming.


----------



## Lanefan

Aenghus said:


> I used to use lots of adventure modules, and still use parts of them. While it's possible to adapt and change such modules to some extent, at some point the cost of extensive changes exceeds the benefit of using the printed module. In all cases the players have specifically agreed to play through the module.
> 
> So using printed modules generally involves either placing constraints on character generation, or expecting some PC wastage as players find out the hard way the PC doesn't suit the module, or the PC is killed/crippled/retired/removed from play. The PCs need to be compatible with the module, which might mean having certain generic qualities like "Good or Neutral aligned" or all being enemies of a  particular faction. The more cagey the referee is about revealing secrets within the module or game setting, the less specific they can be about the PC restrictions.



None of this sounds like 'neutral DMing'.

A neutral DM either frames the PCs into the module or lets them frame themselves, and then runs it the same no matter what the players have for PCs.  This is realistic in that oftentimes the PCs wouldn't know what they were getting into, and if they did somehow have foreknowledge they could make the necessary adjustments while still in town.



> Many of the difficulties I have seen in GM-driven gaming is when the GM doesn't properly vet character concepts for the intended game, and so some players end up with incompatible expectations for the game. Things like a rude barbarian concept in a gameworld where it turns out rudeness can be fatal, or a sickly scholar concept in what turns out to be a brutal survival march.



So it gets retired or killed and the player rolls up a new PC.



> A player might reasonably say that the referee either shouldn't allow character concepts which just don't fit in a setting, or won't be fun for the player, or at a stretch, figure out ways to allow the character to be viable in the setting.



A word of caution* during initial char-gen is all that's needed: "yeah, the idea here is this is going to be a game-of-houses type of campaign with lots of court intrigue and not much warfare", then let the players roll up whatever they want as allowed by the system and-or houserules.

* - of course, this assumes a system where the DM can even make such a declaration going in; i.e. where the DM can set the direction of a campaign like that.



> But with modern PCs often being complex and/or with extensive backstories, possibly with links to other PCs and NPCs, dropping characters and introducing new ones gets more difficult.



That's a system problem. 

Solution: don't use those systems.

It should be mechanically quite easy to generate a new PC almost on the fly and get it in the game; backstory and other stuff can wait till later.


> I've certainly been in the position of trying to persuade a player to keep playing a PC in a long term campaign when they were getting reluctant or wanted to retire them (to play for a little longer, or permanently). Sometimes this means allowing character alterations or dealing with issues within the game.



Here it's best if each player has more than one PC out there in the gameworld, and can cycle them in and out as the situation (or their own preference) demands.

Lanefan


----------



## darkbard

Ovinomancer said:


> Ruthless... assault...?




I wasn't characterizing your posts as such. But I don't think this is an unfair characterization of some of the strong pushback. 



> 1) principles play would be to curtail action negation through secret backstory.  If it's never used, there's not point.  No, instead, that was about the mere existence of secret backstory being enough to mean that the DM will not only occasionally veto a declaration, but that they will instead veto every declaration that doesn't fit their 'choose-your-own-adventure' novel backstory.  This is clearly false.




I don't think anyone is making claims about such extreme cases as vetoing every action declaration that deviates from a preauthored secret backstory. But even if several such deviations are _allowed_ by a GM in GM-centered play, as soon as one pushes too far to threaten all the hard work the GM devoted in crafting such secret backstory, is there not the temptation to draw the limit somewhere as to _what deviations_ are permissible?



> (2) I don't think player-centered games provide all of the same depth of play experience.  I think they provide a different play experience, one that can also be deep.  This is a point that many have agreed upon, the chess vs checkers argument.  The playstyles incorporate different approaches and goals and so can't provide the same experience because they aren't tuned to do so.  You can mix and match a bit, but it's mostly importing some traits into a mostly DM or mostly player driven game.




The two approaches can provide different play experiences--and they do, for sure--while still providing the depths of experience. 

But I disagree that there is any consensus with regard to your checkers-and-chess analogy. I would say it's more like Chinese checkers vs. a variant Chinese checkers wherein one can jump gaps as well as marbles, i.e, variants on the same game, not different games at all.



> (3) the words you used here 'DM ace-in-the-hole' is exactly the kind of phrasing I'm talking about.  This wording implies that the DM is using their backstory not to further play, but to arbitrarily restrict play in a way that is intentional to limit player action declaration.  It implies an adversarial relationship where the DM is using the game to control the players, rather than a game where the DM is trying to enable players.  You've chosen to frame your argument in a way that says anyone playing that way is just looking to screw over the players and don't want to let go of that power.  It's false and exactly why the arguments are rebutted so strongly.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> See above -- it's not about never doing it, it's about doing it in pursuit of aiding players, not punishing them.  Yet every example presented is one that assumes the DM will use secret backstory to punish players.
> 
> 
> 
> A few people have mentioned the matter of trust and this has always been loudly dismissed as unimportant, but I can't read this argument as anything other than a lack of trust.  And also a lack of imagination that many DMs don't want to run that kind of game.  I mean, if you can find DMs that enjoy running player facing games (many of which incorporation DM fiat rules but then provide principles to not use them arbitrarily) that would imply there are DMs that aren't interested in the kind of degenerate play you argue is inevitable.  Why can't there be similar DMs that play in a different style?
> 
> When you shift to imagining that those that do not play like you do are all slowly devolving into the worst examples of play because you dislike their playstyle, why are you remotely surprised when your arguments for that are met with strong disagreement?  Why are you surprised when those, like  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], make those same arguments they're met with strong disagreement?




And yet the brief example I provided was definitively not one of adversarial play but rather the GM believing that vetoing player action declaration due to secret backstory would make for a better play experience for the whole table.

When the issue of trust has arisen, it has been dismissed when it is interpersonal, i.e. between players and GM at the table. What I'm suggesting here--and perhaps I differ from [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], and others--is that any real human being would be tempted to steer play in a certain direction (including, potentially, negating PC action declarations), even unconsciously, if hours of hard work had gone into crafting a secret backstory. Removing secret backstory keeps the GM agenda free of entanglements that may come at odds with player goals in this way. It's not really a trust issue at all.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> It's human nature for people who are repeatedly insulted to resist what the one doing the insulting is trying to say.  Perhaps if you stopped saying that our style of play amounts to a choose your own adventure book(and other similar statements), you'd get less resistance.  That characterization is false and insulting.



I've not said anything about your game. As far as I know, you've posted no examples of your own play.

I've talked about some approaches to play eg "collecting information", in the context of a TTRPG, means "making moves that trigger the GM to say some stuff". If collecting information or "exploration" means something different in your game, then post about it.


----------



## Nagol

Aenghus said:


> I used to use lots of adventure modules, and still use parts of them. While it's possible to adapt and change such modules to some extent, at some point the cost of extensive changes exceeds the benefit of using the printed module. In all cases the players have specifically agreed to play through the module.
> 
> So using printed modules generally involves either placing constraints on character generation, or expecting some PC wastage as players find out the hard way the PC doesn't suit the module, or the PC is killed/crippled/retired/removed from play. The PCs need to be compatible with the module, which might mean having certain generic qualities like "Good or Neutral aligned" or all being enemies of a  particular faction. The more cagey the referee is about revealing secrets within the module or game setting, the less specific they can be about the PC restrictions.
> 
> Many of the difficulties I have seen in GM-driven gaming is when the GM doesn't properly vet character concepts for the intended game, and so some players end up with incompatible expectations for the game. Things like a rude barbarian concept in a gameworld where it turns out rudeness can be fatal, or a sickly scholar concept in what turns out to be a brutal survival march.
> 
> A player might reasonably say that the referee either shouldn't allow character concepts which just don't fit in a setting, or won't be fun for the player, or at a stretch, figure out ways to allow the character to be viable in the setting.




To a point I agree, but only to a point.  If I see a Pc design I think will be highly problematic or contains elements the player may not have considered, I'll point it out to the player.  But ultimately it is his character.  Some players *want* to struggle in specific ways.  I won't stop them so long as I believe they made the choice with their eyes open.  

Other times, a player will decide to change a character because although he thought he had a niche in the group, actual campaign play varied from his (and my)  expected play.  The most recent example of this was by modern X-Files' style game where two of the PCs were really strong combatants in what turned into a minimal combat-oriented game.  I expected more combat, but the players deliberately go out of their way to avoid and/or defuse tense situations that would otherwise result in combat.  One of the two combat PCs retired and a strong psychic investigator replaced it.



> Some referees don't spend care about character concepts much and expect these issues to be resolved in game. Others place various restrictions on PC concepts and generation.
> 
> But with modern PCs often being complex and/or with extensive backstories, possibly with links to other PCs and NPCs, dropping characters and introducing new ones gets more difficult. I've certainly been in the position of trying to persuade a player to keep playing a PC in a long term campaign when they were getting reluctant or wanted to retire them (to play for a little longer, or permanently). Sometimes this means allowing character alterations or dealing with issues within the game.




In an old Champions campaign, one player was having difficulty finding a character he felt comfortable with.  On about his third character, he remarked that the current situation would have been great for his last character and lamented he dropped it a couple of sessions prior.  I agreed and pointed out it takes me about 2-3 sessions to integrate all the moving parts from the PCs and I typically create adventures over the course of 2-3 sessions.  He stuck with that character and everything fell into place... 2-3 sessions later.



> Similarly, in a GM-driven game with extensive pre-prepared gameworld content, where the referee wants the players to access the gameworld through the eyes of their PCs,  the players need to be content with that limited interface, and have player and PC goals that are compatible with such a style of play. This may be no sacrifice at all, many players have this as their preferred style of game.




Any style of game requires the players to be comfortable with that style.


----------



## darkbard

hawkeyefan said:


> Since permerton was replying to me in the bit you quoted above, I'll assume you're directing that at me




Not just you, hawkeyefan, but several others here too. I'm home sick with the flu, so perhaps my patience is more limited than usual, but it feels like at several points this thread has clearly articulated ideas only to have it backslide into questions that have already been addressed numerous times. 

But your participation has been thoughtful and polite throughout, so I certainly didn't intend to insult you in turn.




> Perhaps no insult is meant....but when people say they feel insulted, it's usually a better approach to acknowledge that rather than question it. I mean, if people are saying they're insulted, questioning that seems to be implying they're lying, which only serves to further the insult, intended or not.




Again, my apologies if you feel I have insulted you in any way. I guess I just don't understand why many posters in this thread seem to think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is insulting their gameplay when he has gone out of his way to articulate his position as a _personal preference_ and to express his opposition to GM-centered secret backstory gameplay as born not of an inherently flawed gameplay mode but rather one that limits player agency. One can certainly disagree with his position (although I think the analysis herein proves pretty convincing), but why take offense at such analysis?



hawkeyefan said:


> If we can imagine a GM who creates an interesting and compelling story that incorporates or at the very least does not contradict or suppress player goals, then I think that's all that is needed in order for the idea to have merit. Perhaps the Gm has come up with a villain that he has worked into each character's stories in some way, connecting them all but without forcing them along certain paths. The GM has a loose idea of where things will go or what some characters may or may not do, but leaves plenty of room for change along the way. There are pre-authored elements in this case, but I don't think of this as the same thing as a linear style adventure where the characters move along the pre-defined path and do not deviate from it.




It all depends on how these are implemented at the table. If the GM uses such _preparation_ as scene framing or the outcome of failed player action, then we're talking about the same thing: no secret backstory, player-centered gaming. If they're kept secret from the players until such a time as they nullify player goals and actions, then [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION], myself, and other advocates for player-driven "story now" games would take issue, questioning what purpose this serves (as in the OP).


----------



## Ovinomancer

darkbard said:


> I wasn't characterizing your posts as such. But I don't think this is an unfair characterization of some of the strong pushback.



No, dude, just no.  You can't defend reckless hyperbole by saying that "ruthless assault," in any way, resembles "strong pushback."  You should walk this one back a bit more -- it certainly doesn't elevate the rhetoric in any way.




> I don't think anyone is making claims about such extreme cases as vetoing every action declaration that deviates from a preauthored secret backstory. But even if several such deviations are _allowed_ by a GM in GM-centered play, as soon as one pushes too far to threaten all the hard work the GM devoted in crafting such secret backstory, is there not the temptation to draw the limit somewhere as to _what deviations_ are permissible?



No, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] explicitly made this claim. He introduced "choose-your-own-adventure" as a descriptor of secret backstory games.  He's been pretty consistent with examples that explicitly go to this.

And, yes, there are "temptations".  Are you really claiming that there's no temptation to engage in the Czege Principle in player-facing games?  Are you honestly insisting that DM-facing games be utterly free of potential abuse?  




> The two approaches can provide different play experiences--and they do, for sure--while still providing the depths of experience.
> 
> But I disagree that there is any consensus with regard to your checkers-and-chess analogy. I would say it's more like Chinese checkers vs. a variant Chinese checkers wherein one can jump gaps as well as marbles, i.e, variants on the same game, not different games at all.




This fails to get to the common problem with examples in this thread:  it's extremely difficult to propose a play example that works both in DM-facing games and in player-facing games.  The map is a prime example of this:  the action declaration 'I search for the map' isn't the same in both playstyles.  In a player facing game, this only occurs when the DM frames a scene where the map can exist -- ie, the declaration is appropriate because the scene framing allows for it to be appropriate, and the DM has obligations to frame the scene so that the declaration is appropriate.  At no time with the players in this style game ever be framed into the study when such a declaration isn't permissible.  The game 'moves to the action' so to speak, and get right to where you look for the map as a point of crisis.

In a DM facing game, such a declaration can occur in multiple places, and the players are managing other factors of agency in how and where they look for the map among many locations available.  They can bring their resources to bear to reduce the available choices and improve success, but if the map isn't where they look (this time) they don't find it. 

In a player facing game, the scenes are more like warping to crisis points, so all of the agency is placed in the action declarations to engage those crisis points.  In DM facing games, the play is different, as you play the puzzle of the map to find your goals, managing your resources and negotiating the obstacles.  Crisis points occur through the play of the puzzle, often in surprising places.  Again, player facing games go straight to crisis, while DM facing games allow players to move through multiple locations and allow crisis to generate through player decisions on resource usage and multiple action declarations.

These two styles are pretty different.  And I'm going to say that as I think on it more, I'm coming to the conclusion that you can mix and match a good bit, but the core of play exists in one or the other camp -- there's a spectrum, but it's broken into two sides and there's no clear true middle ground. At least, I can't think of a true middle ground, perhaps someone else can show me wrong.



> And yet the brief example I provided was definitively not one of adversarial play but rather the GM believing that vetoing player action declaration due to secret backstory would make for a better play experience for the whole table.



I'm sorry, but I don't know what example you're speaking of. I scrolled back up and re-read the post I responded to, and see no example of play.  I see you saying that action negation is the DM's ace-in-the-hole to negate player agency and move the game to pre-authored concerns, perhaps that's what you meant?

If so, I, again, point to the usage of loaded phrases as a hindrance to discussion.  If you would rather say "DM's ace in the hole to negate player agency" rather than "the DM using action negation in those cases where it leads to better play outcomes" then we may have zeroed in on one of the big issues in the "strong pushback" going on.



> When the issue of trust has arisen, it has been dismissed when it is interpersonal, i.e. between players and GM at the table. What I'm suggesting here--and perhaps I differ from  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], and others--is that any real human being would be tempted to steer play in a certain direction (including, potentially, negating PC action declarations), even unconsciously, if hours of hard work had gone into crafting a secret backstory. Removing secret backstory keeps the GM agenda free of entanglements that may come at odds with player goals in this way. It's not really a trust issue at all.



I'm tempted to run people off the road for cruising along below the speed limit in the passing lane, but, to date, no one has been run off the road.  And you've, again, moved into claiming that your playstyle is superior because it avoids this problem (it doesn't, but okay).  The DM is a player as well, so it's not improper that the DM also has goals for play.  The issue is when the DM's goals and the players goal _diverge_.  This can happen, but it is not a necessary outcome of secret backstory.  Trying to argue that it is it part of the pushback.

Since play examples seem to be a strange currency for some in this thread, let me relate one from last night:

I prepared an orc encampment.  Due to previously established in play information, this orc encampment needed to be threatening to the area (not the characters specifically) but not overwhelming.  I prepped a large (60x60) map with a ruined keep (previously established at the base of the orcs) and a ruined village just outside (not previously established).  I placed a group of orcs in the keep, and a group in the village.  Those in the village were all regular orcs, but the ones in the keep included a shaman of Gruumsh.  I did not include a warboss, because that would make the total group of orcs too dangerous to the area.  In addition, I placed a few pit traps along access points the orcs didn't regularly use.

Play began.  The players sighted the keep from a hilltop about a mile off, and couldn't make out many details due distance and tree cover.  They could have directly approached, in which case most of the encounter map would have been a surprise (lots of secret backstory), but instead chose to recon by moving into the woods for a better vantage point.  A die roll later and they spend an hour relocating to a better, concealed vantage.  From there, they can see the layout of the map (I described it) and that there are two groups of orcs.  The players opt to have 2 of their number approach and parley with the village orcs, with one wondering why they were separate from the keep orcs.  The rest of the characters opt to sneak in closer to provide support in case the parley goes poorly.  The group that sneaks in ends up near one of the pit traps, which they notice through passive checks and avoid.

The parley group approaches and manages to start a conversation.  A diplomacy check (failed) causes some tension, which is offset by a successful intimidate check back to neutral.  The orcs respond to this by making a demand for tribute, paid to one of the orcs.  One of the characters, who speaks orc and so has insight into their ways, makes an insight check to realize that this is typical orc extortion behavior -- a lesser member increasing standing due without the ability to actually negotiate.  The parley team then demands to speak to the boss, and finds out that the warboss isn't there, there's a shaman instead in the keep ("livin all posh in the keep").  The players interpret that as the village orcs not liking the keep orcs and the Shaman, and offer to help find the warboss.  This is totally offscript (and, actually, has been).  I rolled with it, and a diplomacy check later the orcs agreed that they didn't like the keep orcs and the shaman, and if the characters could find the warboss, they'd talk.  I extemporized that the warboss went into the dungeons below the keep and never came out, with the shaman being the only survivor and who promptly ordered the stairwell blocked.

Meanwhile, the support crew failed a stealth check and drew attempt from the keep orcs.  Right about when the negotiated ended, the keep orcs detected the support team and raised an alarm.  The village orcs stayed out of it and the players mopped up the keep orcs with a fun standoff between the Dwarven cleric of Moradin and his spiritual weapon squaring off against the shaman of Gruumsh and his spiritual weapon.  The pit traps switched in purpose to keeping intruders out to keeping the two groups of arguing orcs separate.  The player then quickly swept the keep upper floors (all the orcs ran out to fight) and preceded to clear the stairs to enter the basement.

So, prepped things:  the map, the two groups of orcs, the traps, a blocked stairway to the dungeons.  Things that changed because of player:  the orcs, the traps, the reason the stairway was blocked and that a warboss actually existed and now is missing.

What kind of play was this?  I say it was very DM-facing, with liberal allowances for player generated goals and content based on those goals.  I say it's DM-facing because a lot of play is still the players declaring actions and me narrating results, with go tos for the mechanics when the outcome is both uncertain and failure meaningful.


----------



## darkbard

darkbard said:


> I wasn't characterizing your posts as such. But I don't think this is an unfair characterization of some of the strong pushback.






Ovinomancer said:


> No, dude, just no.  You can't defend reckless hyperbole by saying that "ruthless assault," in any way, resembles "strong pushback."  You should walk this one back a bit more -- it certainly doesn't elevate the rhetoric in any way.




Go back and read some of Saelorn's posts, in this thread and the "What is an xp worth?" thread that spawned this, and tell me if you think I have mischaracterized.


----------



## Nagol

darkbard said:


> Go back and read some of Saelorn's posts, in this thread and the "What is an xp worth?" thread that spawned this, and tell me if you think I have mischaracterized.




What happened elsewhere has no bearing on your statements about what happened/is happening here.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> I meant the GM having backstory in mind ahead of play.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I mean pre-authored campaign material that the GM comes up with prior to play, but which is used not to thwart the players introducing story elements or declaring actions for their characters.



If this is genuinely setting material - as opposed to ideas that might seem useful in play - then what prevents it from affecting player action declarations?

If the material deals with the locations of things, or the dispositions of NPCs, or the hidden forces at work in some game-relevant situation, how does a GM _avoid_ it coming into collision with player conceptions of the shape of the fiction?



hawkeyefan said:


> If we can imagine a GM who creates an interesting and compelling story that incorporates or at the very least does not contradict or suppress player goals, then I think that's all that is needed in order for the idea to have merit. Perhaps the Gm has come up with a villain that he has worked into each character's stories in some way, connecting them all but without forcing them along certain paths. The GM has a loose idea of where things will go or what some characters may or may not do, but leaves plenty of room for change along the way.



I'm not sure how "interesting and compelling story" and "loose idea of where things will go" yet a"without forcing them along certain paths" and "plenty of room for change along the way" fit together.

For instance, how do we know that the NPC introducec by the GM is a villain? What if the players have their PCs ally with the NPC? Or what if some do and some don't?

_Story_ tends to suggest a sequence of events with rising action, climax, resolution, etc. If the GM has an idea for such a thing, where exactly do the players fit in? Conversely, if the rising action, climax and resolution are the results of actual play, then what is the role of the GM?

This is why the "standard narrativistic model" emphasises framing and consequences. Compelling framing does not require the GM to envisage, in advance, what the compelling story might look like. Robust action resolution mechanics mean that these can be relied upon to generate consequences, again without the GM needing to envisage, in advance, what the compelling story might look like.



hawkeyefan said:


> So my players gave me a good idea of what each of them wanted for their characters.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I then took those ideas and some that I had, and weaved them together. Some of my ideas were inspired, or further inspired, by ideas of the players. I also had some stories that I wanted to bring about in play, so I connected those to the players' stories. The ideas I had and the ideas my players had have blended quite a bit. There are some elements about which I can honestly not say who came up with them. Others I know are mine, or a specific player, or the group.
> 
> So there is a larger story at play, some of which the players are unaware of, and they discover through play.



To the extent that the players discover a GM-authored "larger story" through play, it seems to me that it is the GM rather than the players who is exercising agency in respect of those contents of the shared fiction.

And _discovering a GM-authored story through play_ seems to me to mean that, at certain points of play, the players make moves that lead the GM to reveal (= tell them) some bits of that story. Eg maybe the players declare that their PCs spy on some person or event, and the GM reveals (= narrates) what transpires.

Perhaps you mean something else by the idea of "a larger story at play, some of which the players are unaware of, and they discover through play." I am just trying to make sense of what you are describing, including the contrast that you draw.



hawkeyefan said:


> to introduce an element wholly unexpected by the players because it is not directly connected to their stated desires



I think it is self-evident that this is an example of the GM, and not the players, exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction.



hawkeyefan said:


> to take many story threads offered by the players and make a cohesive narrative out of them



This can cover a very great range of things, from approaches to framing, to narration of consequences of failed action declarations, to "behind the scenes" manipulation of backstory to generate particular outcomes.

Having a failed search for the mace reveal that the mage's brother was apparently manufacturing black arrows - one of which killed the master of the elven ronin PC - might be an instance of what you have in mind.

So would the GM deciding, as an item of pre-authored setting detail that the only way to free the brother from possession by a balrog is to gain the help of the dark naga - thus linking the fate of one PC (the one whose brother is possessed by a balrog) with that of another (the one dominated by a dark naga).

It seems obvious to me that these are very different sorts of thing: the first affirms player agency over the content of the shared fiction, whereas the second is the GM establishing some setting element that seems likely to serve as a limit on subsequence player action declarations for their PCs.



hawkeyefan said:


> I don't use the pre-authored material to force them down certain paths, or to thwart their ideas. I use it to hopefully enhance the story and play.



I am not in a position to judge whether or not what you do in your game enhances the story and enhances play. I'm just trying to analyse techniques, not make aesthetic judgements.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> 1) principles play would be to curtail action negation through secret backstory.  If it's never used, there's not point.  No, instead, that was about the mere existence of secret backstory being enough to mean that the DM will not only occasionally veto a declaration, but that they will instead veto every declaration that doesn't fit their 'choose-your-own-adventure' novel backstory.  This is clearly false.



Well, that wasn't actually the question/commentary. The question was "if it is never going to use it to veto an action declaration, then why does it exist at all?" You COULD answer that, straight up, by providing some sort of reason. In fact some fairly plausible answers HAVE been presented. [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION] for instance suggested that a type of mystery story, and a type of exploration would both benefit from secret backstory or hidden world elements (which is a bit different but COULD be hidden backstory, they're pretty close anyway). I posed some questions, which we may yet examine 



> 2) I don't think player-centered games provide all of the same depth of play experience.  I think they provide a different play experience, one that can also be deep.  This is a point that many have agreed upon, the chess vs checkers argument.  The playstyles incorporate different approaches and goals and so can't provide the same experience because they aren't tuned to do so.  You can mix and match a bit, but it's mostly importing some traits into a mostly DM or mostly player driven game.



I think they can do different things. I actually tend to think that GM-centered play with hidden elements is MORE limited, but there are questions of aesthetics here and nobody can claim they own the final word on it, which is fine. I think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has said pretty much the same thing. Its quite possible he's sometimes phrased that in a way that was more easily interpreted as antagonistic to your position.



> 3) the words you used here 'DM ace-in-the-hole' is exactly the kind of phrasing I'm talking about.  This wording implies that the DM is using their backstory not to further play, but to arbitrarily restrict play in a way that is intentional to limit player action declaration.  It implies an adversarial relationship where the DM is using the game to control the players, rather than a game where the DM is trying to enable players.  You've chosen to frame your argument in a way that says anyone playing that way is just looking to screw over the players and don't want to let go of that power.  It's false and exactly why the arguments are rebutted so strongly.



Its not 'false', sometimes its TRUE! I can attest to living that! I'm not saying that disbars the technique from use in any well-run game, or anything close to that. I would claim it means its reasonable to critique the technique. 



> See above -- it's not about never doing it, it's about doing it in pursuit of aiding players, not punishing them.  Yet every example presented is one that assumes the DM will use secret backstory to punish players.



I think the people you are referring to prefer the other technique, so there's no reason for them to DEFEND the one you prefer. That doesn't mean they believe that it will always be used badly simply because it CAN be. Nobody claimed it is always bad. Criticism isn't identical to universal condemnation.



> A few people have mentioned the matter of trust and this has always been loudly dismissed as unimportant, but I can't read this argument as anything other than a lack of trust.  And also a lack of imagination that many DMs don't want to run that kind of game.  I mean, if you can find DMs that enjoy running player facing games (many of which incorporation DM fiat rules but then provide principles to not use them arbitrarily) that would imply there are DMs that aren't interested in the kind of degenerate play you argue is inevitable.  Why can't there be similar DMs that play in a different style?
> 
> When you shift to imagining that those that do not play like you do are all slowly devolving into the worst examples of play because you dislike their playstyle, why are you remotely surprised when your arguments for that are met with strong disagreement?  Why are you surprised when those, like @_*pemerton*_, make those same arguments they're met with strong disagreement?




By the same token, why is player-centered play met with such great skepticism and quite often scorn? I think there's a theme here. No doubt you may remember the Great Edition War. I learned from that that MANY posters, while not basically unreasonable people, are set on the proposition that they have the most popular, natural, 'best' way of playing, of game rules, etc. At this point I have to count it a virtually universal trait of human nature. Why does it surprise you? In a mild form its really not a big deal.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> I meant the GM having backstory in mind ahead of play. Given your use of the term "world building" to mean something much different than its standard use, I'm sure you'll forgive my use of a more broad term in conversation.



I remember this was a point that was hammered on a bunch early in the thread, then I skipped a number of pages, so maybe it reached some conclusion I missed, but I was never happy with this. I think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s initial definition of world building was a PERFECTLY GOOD ONE, and I don't think it is actually far off from anyone else's definition (or if it is one might ask which one is 'different from its standard use'). 

IMHO 'world building' includes establishing the cosmology, geography, societies, languages, races, etc. It also includes political geography, inhabited areas, their inhabitants, politics, etc. There's no clear dividing line you can draw between "the plane of fire borders the plane of air" and "Joe the barber mercilessly hates halflings and always reacts negatively to them" or "on June 30th the Duke will slip poison into the King's pudding and he will die" or "the map is in the kitchen bread box." Now, some of these might not always be understood to be world building by everyone in all situations, but even the last one COULD be (under the assumption the map is relatively unimportant to anyone and the kitchen is part of some mundane location that is not likely to figure much into play). 



> I mean pre-authored campaign material that the GM comes up with prior to play, but which is used not to thwart the players introducing story elements or declaring actions for their characters.
> 
> So my players gave me a good idea of what each of them wanted for their characters. This was not actually prior to start of play, but at a point when we decided to keep playing after playing the initial adventure module in the 5E starter set to familiarize ourselves with the game. Everyone like it, and liked their characters, so we decided to keep going. So they provided me some background info and goals (some of which had been established in play, some of which had not).
> 
> I then took those ideas and some that I had, and weaved them together. Some of my ideas were inspired, or further inspired, by ideas of the players. I also had some storiess that I wanted to bring about in play, so I connected those to the players' stories. The ideas I had and the ideas my players had have blended quite a bit. There are some elements about which I can honestly not say who came up with them. Others I know are mine, or a specific player, or the group.
> 
> So there is a larger story at play, some of which the players are  unaware of, and they discover through play. I don't use the pre-authored  material to force them down certain paths, or to thwart their ideas. I  use it to hopefully enhance the story and play.



Really, nobody doubts you. I don't even think this is controversial at all. Even if you're wildly exaggerating I still believe this is a pretty common case. It describes a lot of play I DMed in the late 90's and the late 2000's, though I didn't generally use modules much even back then.



> I know that I have not criticized player driven play at all. I understand it, and why it is enjoyable, and that it is your preferred method of play. However, your stance in this thread seems to criticize GM driven play. Which is fine....but if you criticize that mode of play, and you ask what it is useful for, then that's what I am going to talk about.
> 
> So your stance on framing, and on player backstory and goals, and all these other elements....you have a very clear understanding of why you like them. What I struggle with is how you fail to see any use for GM driven story elements. Pre-written backstory as a tool like those others and not as an obstacle to players.




Speaking for myself I often ask about things in this kind of vein. It doesn't mean I think something is valueless because I question its value in an attempt to analyze it.


----------



## Maxperson

darkbard said:


> And it astounds me that, despite [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's consistently measured tone, sometimes in the face of blatant hostility, that some continue to mistake honest analysis for insult.



The first time could be honest analysis.  Then we corrected him.  The second and third times, okay.  Maybe he missed the corrections.  Then we corrected him a few more times.  Times four to eighteen(or maybe more at this point)?  That's no longer honest analysis.  He's mischaracterized the playstyle as "choose your own adventure" too often for it to be anything other than insulting at this point.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I've not said anything about your game. As far as I know, you've posted no examples of your own play.
> 
> I've talked about some approaches to play eg "collecting information", in the context of a TTRPG, means "making moves that trigger the GM to say some stuff". If collecting information or "exploration" means something different in your game, then post about it.




I'm not talking about my game.  That's why I said "our style of play" rather than "my game".  You have consistently mischaracterized our entire playstyle and been corrected on it many times by multiple people, yet you continue to use the same incorrect characterizations.  Beyond that, [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] spelled it out quite well, so you can refer to his recent responses to [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION].


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Nagol said:


> No, not really.  For example, superhero play is rarely exploratory in the sense of trying to understand and decode the environment.  It tends to be reactive in style (PCs react to prevent environmental changes threatened by the opposition) and focused more on the interpersonal (rivalries, relationships, mind set) when not tactical.  I do run such games with some exploratory components using relationships and attitudes in place of maps, but I wouldn't call them exploratory focused games.  A lot of comedic games also are not exploratory; either the setting can't be explored because it isn't stable (Macho Women with Guns), it isn't unknown (Teenagers from Outer Space), or it is just set dressing and doesn't count for advantage or disadvantage for PCs (Toon) .



Well, I did consider these two genre, and I agree that they are on the 'not focused on exploration' end of the spectrum. Still, they have SOME exploration built into them (Toon is hard to categorize, its mostly slapstick, but it COULD involve exploring a novel environment now and then). Still, most games include, at least, some sort of 'investigation' as an element, and MANY, maybe even most, RPGs are quite heavy on exploratory activity of some sort. I mean, I'm thinking of games I've played in the last 10 years, it was pretty far up there as a part of the agenda of all but a couple.



> Did I say one person? [Goes back and checks] Nope. I've run with multiple GMs cooperatively so it'd be pretty foolish of me to say so.



OK, I think its fair to say that most of the discussion here didn't involve multi-GM setups. Those, IME, are rare, though certainly not unheard of (I've done several myself, they're fun). Now, I can't say how much your gaming is of this type. I'm guessing [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and others are not usually playing this way.


> The vision needs to be kept separate form the players otherwise you have a situation where the group that needs to find a solution already knows all the information.  That pretty much negates puzzle solving.  Now there are playstyles where the players are playing to find out "what happens next" as opposed to "how it works and what do we do with it" where having all the (partial) available information in advance isn't a problem, but I find puzzle solving is the opposite if fun if I already know where every piece goes.



I think I have said that there's a point here. It is basically what the Czege Principle is all about. You can't both author a challenge and be the one to resolve it. The reasons may not always have to do with hidden information exactly, but in spirit its the same kind of issue, you're playing both sides of the field. Of course it WOULD be possible to have different players know different things, so I think we can't exclude a 'Pemertonian' type of game from having puzzles in it. The players simply have to say "I want to solve puzzles" and the GM SHOULD supply some, but another player could also in some types of game.



> Causality should (a) follow genre convention and (b) remain plausible.  If both (a) and (b) are true then having a model that allows for all possible results is immaterial.



I agree. The issue then, IMHO, is "can the player's actually work out, plausibly, what the GM is thinking?" It runs into two issues. One is they're not really thinking about causality necessarily, but about how their GM thinks, which is a bit different. Secondly it is often not really very similar to the type of reasoning you'd do in the real world, where you can gather a lot more detailed observation and just be a lot more systematic (and where "its boring" is not a factor). Thus real-world police work is quite mundane and boring, and when it gets crazy there's usually 100 police and one bad guy. 



> Crap happens isn't pejorative; it's a grandma friendly version of a common saying about life.  It's particularly endemic to player-led games because you have a bunch of people introducing narrative elements that feel right at the time.  The problem with a bunch of people introducing such elements into a puzzle solving game is pretty straightforward.  The elements introduced will randomly support and undercut the puzzle framework.  Such element introduction works better in games where puzzle solving isn't a desired trait i.e. where behaviours and happenings can be explained post hoc.



I think we get this, but then I think that its really just a matter of what the players are interested in. If they WANT to solve a puzzle, then they won't 'spoiler' it. Right? I mean, this is [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION]'s drum that he likes to play, and I understand his point.



> It is a hard problem.  I think it could be done too, but it requires great care to not introduce contradictions and paradoxes (unless the game features those of course but I hate time travel games in general).  One of the cooperative GMing games I was involved with had a exploratory focus and an undefined world.  Each GM could take the world as currently defined and develop an adventure that offered further definition so long as nothing previously set was contradicted.  GMing duties passed back and forth.  The game fell apart mainly because the GMs ended up losing interest since we couldn't effectively lay groundwork.  It was like trying to build a house you lay the foundation and come back to find a shed where the living room was going to go so you start laying a new floor over the over guy's garden plot.  We agreed that the GMing experiment was better suited for other gaming types and probably for short runs rather than an open-ended campaign.




Ah, I have a remedy for that, which is probably not perfect, but it works. Strong genre. So, for instance, myself and 4 other people did a CoC game like that. The premise we hit on was that the characters were reincarnated in each section of the game. The first piece we ran was set in the 1980's, then the next was set in the year 450 AD, and the one after that was in the 1920's, and then finally the last one was in the far future. It worked OK. Each GM introduced new elements to the story, and the players simply played. Being CoC there wasn't really 'player authoring of story' DURING the sessions when they weren't GMing, but that hardly mattered as we each simply framed things so that our character could do something in a later episode. It was, interesting! I was a bit disappointed with CoC as a system, but the genre is so well understood that it worked pretty well.


----------



## Maxperson

darkbard said:


> It all depends on how these are implemented at the table. If the GM uses such _preparation_ as scene framing or the outcome of failed player action, then we're talking about the same thing: no secret backstory, player-centered gaming. If they're kept secret from the players until such a time as they nullify player goals and actions, then [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION], myself, and other advocates for player-driven "story now" games would take issue, questioning what purpose this serves (as in the OP).




See, this is the kind of crap that gets the strong pushback here.  You've set that paragraph up in a way that portrays our playstyle very negatively.  It basically says "Hey, if you do it my way there's no problem, but if you do it your way,  you're doing it for the sole purpose of nullifying player goals and actions.".  

I'm going to ignore the "nullify player goals" portion since unless the DM is an asshat, he's not designing the game to negate player goals.  As for the other, 9 times out of 10 the secret backstory comes out during game play in one way or another before it actually has the chance to affect the outcome of a PC action.  The remaining 1 time in 10 will usually affect the PC's action to some degree, but rarely outright negates it.  At no time is the purpose of secret backstory to nullify player goals and actions.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> He introduced "choose-your-own-adventure" as a descriptor of secret backstory games.  He's been pretty consistent with examples that explicitly go to this.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> In a DM facing game, such a declaration can occur in multiple places, and the players are managing other factors of agency in how and where they look for the map among many locations available.  They can bring their resources to bear to reduce the available choices and improve success, but if the map isn't where they look (this time) they don't find it.



What are the "other factors of agency" at work here?

I can see the GM's agency. (The GM decided what moves will be sufficient to find the map - eg the players have to declare that their PCs look while their PCs are at place X, but not at place Y.) I can see that the players have the capacity to make moves that will trigger narration by the GM.

What other agency is at work here?



Ovinomancer said:


> I prepared an orc encampment.  Due to previously established in play information, this orc encampment needed to be threatening to the area (not the characters specifically) but not overwhelming.  I prepped a large (60x60) map with a ruined keep (previously established at the base of the orcs) and a ruined village just outside (not previously established).  I placed a group of orcs in the keep, and a group in the village.  Those in the village were all regular orcs, but the ones in the keep included a shaman of Gruumsh.  I did not include a warboss, because that would make the total group of orcs too dangerous to the area.  In addition, I placed a few pit traps along access points the orcs didn't regularly use.
> 
> Play began.  The players sighted the keep from a hilltop about a mile off, and couldn't make out many details due distance and tree cover.  They could have directly approached, in which case most of the encounter map would have been a surprise (lots of secret backstory), but instead chose to recon by moving into the woods for a better vantage point.  A die roll later and they spend an hour relocating to a better, concealed vantage.  From there, they can see the layout of the map (I described it) and that there are two groups of orcs.



This seems to be an example of the players making moves ("recon", "relocating) that lead to the GM relating various bits of pre-established backstory to them.



Ovinomancer said:


> The players opt to have 2 of their number approach and parley with the village orcs, with one wondering why they were separate from the keep orcs.  The rest of the characters opt to sneak in closer to provide support in case the parley goes poorly.  The group that sneaks in ends up near one of the pit traps, which they notice through passive checks and avoid.



"Noticing the pit trap" seems to be an example of the players making moves that lead to the GM relating a bit of pre-established backstory to them.



Ovinomancer said:


> The parley group approaches and manages to start a conversation.  A diplomacy check (failed) causes some tension, which is offset by a successful intimidate check back to neutral.



Who set the stakes for these checks? Without knowing that, it's hard for someone who wasn't there to work out what was going on.



Ovinomancer said:


> The orcs respond to this by making a demand for tribute, paid to one of the orcs.  One of the characters, who speaks orc and so has insight into their ways, makes an insight check to realize that this is typical orc extortion behavior -- a lesser member increasing standing due without the ability to actually negotiate.



This looks very much like an example of a player making a move that leads the GM to relate some pre-authored backstory.



Ovinomancer said:


> The parley team then demands to speak to the boss, and finds out that the warboss isn't there, there's a shaman instead in the keep ("livin all posh in the keep").



Likewise.



Ovinomancer said:


> The players interpret that as the village orcs not liking the keep orcs and the Shaman, and offer to help find the warboss.  This is totally offscript (and, actually, has been).  I rolled with it, and a diplomacy check later the orcs agreed that they didn't like the keep orcs and the shaman, and if the characters could find the warboss, they'd talk.



This appears to be an exercise by the players of some agency over the content of the shared fiction. The players seem to be working to a significant degree with GM-introduced elements, such as the shaman "livin' all posh in the keep"), but they seem to have introduced the idea of the orc boss.



Ovinomancer said:


> I extemporized that the warboss went into the dungeons below the keep and never came out, with the shaman being the only survivor and who promptly ordered the stairwell blocked.



It's not clear if this is you just making something up "behind the scenes", or if this is you actually telling the players some more stuff.



Ovinomancer said:


> the support crew failed a stealth check and drew attempt from the keep orcs.  Right about when the negotiated ended, the keep orcs detected the support team and raised an alarm.  The village orcs stayed out of it and the players mopped up the keep orcs with a fun standoff between the Dwarven cleric of Moradin and his spiritual weapon squaring off against the shaman of Gruumsh and his spiritual weapon.  The pit traps switched in purpose to keeping intruders out to keeping the two groups of arguing orcs separate.



This seems like it began as more narration of established backstory in response to player moves (ie a failed Stealth check) which then led into the framing of a combat encounter.



Ovinomancer said:


> The player then quickly swept the keep upper floors (all the orcs ran out to fight) and preceded to clear the stairs to enter the basement.



"Sweeping the keep upper floors" seems like more player moves that generate the GM relating pre-authored material. Clearing the main stairs seems like it might combine some of that sort of activity with a combat encounter.



Ovinomancer said:


> Things that changed because of player:  the orcs, the traps, the reason the stairway was blocked and that a warboss actually existed and now is missing.



I don't understand how the traps changed. The reason the stairway was blocked seems like it might be something known only to the GM?



Ovinomancer said:


> What kind of play was this?  I say it was very DM-facing, with liberal allowances for player generated goals and content based on those goals.  I say it's DM-facing because a lot of play is still the players declaring actions and me narrating results, with go tos for the mechanics when the outcome is both uncertain and failure meaningful.



I would agree that this seems to be a predominantly GM-driven game. As you present it, a great deal of the play seems to be the players making moves that trigger you as GM telling them bits of the fiction that you have established.

The main player contribution to the shared fiction seems to be the idea of their being a boss of the orcs. I was a bit unclear how this worked, because you have the orcs saying the boss wasn't there - instead the shaman was - and then this becomes the boss being missing; but as you present it I take it to have involved a degree (maybe quite a degree?) of back-and-forth between you and the players (taking the form of the PCs' conversation with the orcs).

What do the players understand to be at stake in the recovery of the missing warboss?


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> At no time is the purpose of secret backstory to nullify player goals and actions.



I'm more interested in analysing function or consequence than purpose.



Maxperson said:


> I'm not talking about my game.  That's why I said "our style of play" rather than "my game".  You have consistently mischaracterized our entire playstyle



If you think what I'm describing doesn't apply to you, then what makes you think I'm talking about your style of RPGing?


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think they can do different things. I actually tend to think that GM-centered play with hidden elements is MORE limited, but there are questions of aesthetics here and nobody can claim they own the final word on it, which is fine. I think  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has said pretty much the same thing. Its quite possible he's sometimes phrased that in a way that was more easily interpreted as antagonistic to your position.




Sure, our playstyle is more limited, but that doesn't affect its depth at all.  Look at free form roleplay chatrooms.  Pretty much no limits there.  I went to one once, left about 10 minutes later and never returned.  Player facing games have more limits than free form roleplay, and DM facing games more limits still.  However, it's those very limits that help give the game depth and uniqueness.  Where you limit the game and how will have a big impact on the game and where the depth of the game lies.

When it comes to DM facing vs. Player facing games, I don't think that either one has more depth than the other.  Where the depth is, however, will be in very different areas and yield games with very different feels and experiences.  

And c'mon.  It's quite possible he's SOMETIMES phrased that in a way that was more easily interpreted as antagonistic?  I'm going to say with some confidence that it has been said that way by him in a majority of his posts.  At least the ones that actually talk about our playstyle. 



> Its not 'false', sometimes its TRUE! I can attest to living that! I'm not saying that disbars the technique from use in any well-run game, or anything close to that. I would claim it means its reasonable to critique the technique.




It's false as the playstyle is intended to be run.  Of course there will be the occasional bad DM that misuses the playstyle.  Since we are not talking about the rare exceptions to the rule, but rather the playstyles in general, it's false to portray our playstyle in the way [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] are portraying it.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> What are the "other factors of agency" at work here?
> 
> I can see the GM's agency. (The GM decided what moves will be sufficient to find the map - eg the players have to declare that their PCs look while their PCs are at place X, but not at place Y.) I can see that the players have the capacity to make moves that will trigger narration by the GM.
> 
> What other agency is at work here?




That would be player agency.  The PCs don't actually need the map.  The information on the map is out there in other ways.  Often the players come up with ways that I did not think of, so are not a part of the DM options at all and are not party of any backstory, hidden or otherwise.  



> This seems to be an example of the players making moves ("recon", "relocating) that lead to the GM relating various bits of pre-established backstory to them.
> 
> "Noticing the pit trap" seems to be an example of the players making moves that lead to the GM relating a bit of pre-established backstory to them.




So it really boils down to this.  In order for your "choose your own adventure" characterization to be true, the DM must literally have every iota of everything in the entire world written down so that there isn't an ounce of possible improv that happens.  That the only way for every option to be one that the DM has prepared for players to choose.  If even one thing isn't prepared and the DM has to improvise, then the game is no longer a choose your own adventure.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> If you think what I'm describing doesn't apply to you, then what makes you think I'm talking about your style of RPGing?



Because you have described my style of running things, and then followed up with a flawed characterization of what that actually means.  It has demonstrated that you don't truly understand the playstyle, or if you do, you are deliberately mischaracterizing it.  

We have give you many examples and explanations that show you that our playstyle is not "choose your own adventure", but you refuse to see it for some reason.


----------



## Lanefan

You ask this: 







pemerton said:


> What other agency is at work here?



And then answer your own question with several variants of this:



> This seems to be an example of the players making moves ("recon", "relocating) that lead to the GM relating various bits of pre-established backstory to them.



While in the process skipping over the fact that the moves made by the players ARE their agency - the moves they make or attempt to make are what determine the specific fiction they will encounter and (probably) interact with; which in turn gives them control over the fiction that ends up being shared, in terms of largely dictating what fiction will be shared at all. 

You've referred numerous times to this as (paraphrased) modest agency at best, where I see it as much more significant.  Now it's true there's DMs out there who deny this agency by running a hard railroad with no deviance allowed; for some groups this works fine but for most I posit it doesn't, and is thus rather uncommon.



> I'm more interested in analysing function or consequence than purpose.



Though asking what worldbuilding is for kinda suggests it's the purpose you're after, or did I misinterpret the thread header?

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, I think its fair to say that most of the discussion here didn't involve multi-GM setups. Those, IME, are rare, though certainly not unheard of (I've done several myself, they're fun). Now, I can't say how much your gaming is of this type. I'm guessing [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and others are not usually playing this way.



If you mean more than one DM switching off running the same game world and-or PCs, then mostly no.  If you mean more than one DM playing in each other's games and having cross-links between our game worlds, then yes - this is what I do.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The PCs don't actually need the map.  The information on the map is out there in other ways.  Often the players come up with ways that I did not think of, so are not a part of the DM options at all and are not party of any backstory, hidden or otherwise.



Unless I've misunderstood, you are referring to player moves that will trigger the GM to tell the players stuff that the GM has pre-authored.



Lanefan said:


> You ask this: And then answer your own question with several variants of this:
> 
> While in the process skipping over the fact that the moves made by the players ARE their agency - the moves they make or attempt to make are what determine the specific fiction they will encounter and (probably) interact with; which in turn gives them control over the fiction that ends up being shared, in terms of largely dictating what fiction will be shared at all.



Would you agree that there is a significant difference between (i) choosing which of the GM's pre-authored bits of fiction to "interact" with (which is itself an unhelpful metaphor), and (ii) exercising agency over the content of the (non-preauthored) shared fiction?


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Unless I've misunderstood, you are referring to player moves that will trigger the GM to tell the players stuff that the GM has pre-authored.




You probably misunderstood because you cut the sentence below out of that quote, and it shows that it also involves stuff that isn't pre-authored.

"Often the players come up with ways that* I did not think of*, so are not a part of the DM options at all and are not party of any backstory, hidden or otherwise."

You can't pre-author stuff you didn't think of.


----------



## innerdude

Another idea that I have had to come to grips with in this thread as well---is there a difference between "secret backstory" that negates player agency, and "scene frame maneuvering"? In other words, are there things happening in the background relevant to the player's current concerns and framing of the challenge which the PCs would not logically be aware of, but which could increase/decrease the possibility of success for the PCs?

Example: If you've framed the PCs into a scene where they need to go hunt down an otyugh in the city underground, it's not "secret backstory" for the current location of the otyugh to be unknown---that's part of the framing of the challenge. Or is it? Depending on the rationale for play, I could easily see this going both ways. If part of the challenge is to successfully navigate the sewers, putting the party's resources at stake, keeping the location "hidden" might be part of the challenge frame. But if a player declares, "I talk to several city sanitation workers and town guards to discover the last known points of activity for the otyugh," as a GM, I'd be hard pressed to negate that player declaration if the fortune mechanic indicated a success. 

Example 2: A scene where you've framed the PCs into a challenge where they need to convince a local magistrate to divulge the location of a prisoner being held at a secret location. Let's say as GM, you've created a backstory for the magistrate that he's actually under a lot of pressure because of some gambling debts he needs to pay off, and if the PCs could take care of the bookie that's owed money, the magistrate will be willing to help them.

Is _this_ considered secret backstory? Even if the PCs could discover that information through any number of strongly telegraphed means (various streetwise and information gathering checks). How and when does this cross over from "scene framing" to "secret backstory"? Is it still "secret" if the GM has provided ample means for discovery? 

Is setting up a "hidden" victory condition at all like this a bad idea? If this were the ONLY method to success for the challenge, I think that would obviously be a bad idea. There would always be other avenues for the PCs to find the location of the prisoner---capture / interrogate the magistrate, steal government dispatches that indicate the location of the prison, hunt down a former prisoner who would know where it is---but for this particular challenge frame, the PCs' probability of success would be exponentially easier if they "discover" the "backstory" and bring it to bear against the magistrate.  

Or is this something that should be left totally "open"? For example, should that backstory not exist at all until a player authors it? Something like, "I'm going to do some investigation around this magistrate, because I'm sure there's something shady about him I can use to pressure him---maybe, like, he's incurred some gambling debts." And then on a success, the player authored backstory is now true?

Or is this something that should be implicitly built into the scene frame by the GM? "Okay, so you need to find this prisoner because he has valuable information about [Goal X the Party Really Wants to Accomplish]. From your past success, you've been told that Magistrate Jones knows where the prison is, but you'll need to convince him to give that information to you. Some cursory "street investigation" into Magistrate Jones reveals that there may be a way for you to put the screws to him and get what you need."

There's some definite grey area here for me, but perhaps its the principle behind it---even if I as GM have "pre-authored" elements of a scene frame, those shouldn't be the only possibilities embedded into the frame, and I as GM should be open to improvising/updating/modifying elements based on PC action declaration and intent.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, that wasn't actually the question/commentary. The question was "if it is never going to use it to veto an action declaration, then why does it exist at all?" You COULD answer that, straight up, by providing some sort of reason. In fact some fairly plausible answers HAVE been presented. [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION] for instance suggested that a type of mystery story, and a type of exploration would both benefit from secret backstory or hidden world elements (which is a bit different but COULD be hidden backstory, they're pretty close anyway). I posed some questions, which we may yet examine



I did answer the question asked, clearly and in the part you quote:  it would serve no purpose.  If you'd like to redirect to a different question, then, like you note, I point you to many previous points in this thread, some made by me, many by others, that address the questions you pose.  I don't understand why you're trying to state what another poster actually meant when his statement was clear and unambiguous.




> I think they can do different things. I actually tend to think that GM-centered play with hidden elements is MORE limited, but there are questions of aesthetics here and nobody can claim they own the final word on it, which is fine. I think  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has said pretty much the same thing. Its quite possible he's sometimes phrased that in a way that was more easily interpreted as antagonistic to your position.



So, to understand, you agree with me, and then say that DM facing games are more limited.  I disagree, as the limits that have been discussed focus entirely on analysis from the assumptions that support player facing play.  Yes, being able to author fiction into the narrative is more agency for authoring fiction, but you're also then limited to only being able to do so in response to DM framed crisis points.  IE, you exercise more control over authorship at the expense of accepting that the DM will always frame you into crisis points.  You lose control over pacing of the advance of the fiction (you can't choose to avoid crisis points, as this defeats the purpose of play) and you lose control over the stakes, as the crisis the DM presents carries inherent dangers.  You also lose control over your character actions, as the DM can frame situations with assumptions of your character's actions and can frame failures as assumptions of your characters actions.

A good example of this is the engagement roll in Blades, the players define the general type of score they want and provide a specific (target, access point, etc) they want, but then the roll happens and the DM frames the scene by assuming character actions to fit the roll - the players never declare actions to reach this framing, they're placed there, in crisis, and have to react.  

This kind of thing doesn't happen in the Gygaxian play proposed as exemplifying secret backstory -- the players always maintain complete agency over their character's actions, and control the fiction via that constant agency.  This means many decisions are smaller in scope and stakes, and most generate new narration by the DM, but they do not lose agency of their character actions (except through explicit mechanics).



> Its not 'false', sometimes its TRUE! I can attest to living that! I'm not saying that disbars the technique from use in any well-run game, or anything close to that. I would claim it means its reasonable to critique the technique.



If some people have red hair, I cannot say describe the general condition of hair as red.  That is false.  Just like you're bad experiences with a lousy DM (again, I am sorry you suffered) do not mean that the style employed is always what you experienced.  This is, again, going from the specific to the general, something you _should not do_.



> I think the people you are referring to prefer the other technique, so there's no reason for them to DEFEND the one you prefer. That doesn't mean they believe that it will always be used badly simply because it CAN be. Nobody claimed it is always bad. Criticism isn't identical to universal condemnation.



Actually, comments by [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] have strongly implied they see the style as always going bad.  Darkbard with the 'temptation to use it more and more' comments and pemerton with the repeated characterization of the style as a 'choose-your-own-adventure' book.




> By the same token, why is player-centered play met with such great skepticism and quite often scorn? I think there's a theme here. No doubt you may remember the Great Edition War. I learned from that that MANY posters, while not basically unreasonable people, are set on the proposition that they have the most popular, natural, 'best' way of playing, of game rules, etc. At this point I have to count it a virtually universal trait of human nature. Why does it surprise you? In a mild form its really not a big deal.



In order of asking:

Because it's a niche-game concept and it differs from the predominate style.  Most of the scorn is due to how the proponents of the style often display it as superior or fixing the problems of the DM facing style.  You usually don't do this, and so receive less pushback.  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] often does this, I think because he's not very good at articulating his thoughts and actually does hold that his method delivers superior results, so it bleed through.

It doesn't.  But [-]edition[/-] style wars are two sided.  And, if you're challenging the zeitgeist, it pays to not do it in a way that comes across as superior.  People tend to identify with their hobby to a great degree, so questioning how they enjoy their hobby seems like you're questioning them.  If they play in a way you characterize as having less agency (implied bad thing) then you're saying that they like things that are bad.  Is this rational?  Not really, but it is how human people tend to think and entangle their emotions, especially today.  I'm not the least affected by how you or someone else chooses to play, and I hope I've come across as someone interested in getting to actual discussion rather than the superficial handwaving that mostly goes on in this topic, but I'll admit I get sometimes a bit worked up not because my gaming choices are questioned but because I'm frustrated by bad rhetoric, which, sadly, is endemic to forum discussions.

As I've said, I think agency is largely similar in good examples of both styles.  The kind of agency differs, but both styles give up agency in one arena to increase it in another.  I think that's largely invisible to the proponents of each style because the agency they sacrifice is less important to them than the agency they retain.  I don't think you'd consider it an impact to your agency to have the DM frame you into a situation that has to assume actions by your character, so long as those actions are at least nearly in alignment with your concepts and the purpose is to get to the action.  I know other players that would howl at the DM assuming any action on the part of their character, even to get to the action.  Similarly, I have a player that absolutely dislikes players being able to author fiction into the game, especially if that fiction affects them.  For them, the world is a puzzle and they trust an impartial DM to set up that puzzle and then fairly adjudicate their solving of it.  They like combat best.  To them, giving up agency over authoring the fiction isn't a sacrifice, it's preferred.  Clearly, this is not something [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] or you would accept, having a great deal of your enjoyment tied into the agency to create new fiction.

The concepts here really are chess vs checkers.  They look superficially similar (same board, same number of pieces, same general objective, both as war surrogates), but they behave in ways that are very different.  I think you can come up with checkers games that have some chess moves, and chess games that have some checkers moves, but there isn't a middle point (this is a change from my earlier thinking).  I think it's a critical mistake to judge play in one with the metrics and assumptions of another.  The similarities will fool you into thinking you can do this, so long as you ignore the crucial differences.  And that's something people in general are good at doing:  confirmation bias is a thing we all do and must guard against.

As someone that enjoys both playstyles, and tries to stretch themselves, this is the best framework for the discussion I can create.  It doesn't denigrate or dismiss any style and I think it's a good tool that explains why we have so much trouble discussing these differences -- we're often mired in one way of thinking and try to fit new concepts into our existing conceptualization.


----------



## Ovinomancer

darkbard said:


> Go back and read some of Saelorn's posts, in this thread and the "What is an xp worth?" thread that spawned this, and tell me if you think I have mischaracterized.




I can't.  Saelorn blocked me awhile ago because I called him on his, well, I can't say without breaking the rules.  Saelorn picks fights with a bunch of people, even those on his 'side' in this discussion.  His posting style appears to be intentionally confrontational and dismissive.  My board life has been improved by his blocking me.  Because of this (and my experience with his arguments and style) I also scroll past any post that quotes him and ignore that discussion.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> What are the "other factors of agency" at work here?
> 
> I can see the GM's agency. (The GM decided what moves will be sufficient to find the map - eg the players have to declare that their PCs look while their PCs are at place X, but not at place Y.) I can see that the players have the capacity to make moves that will trigger narration by the GM.
> 
> What other agency is at work here?



No, the DM doesn't decide the moves that are sufficient.  The DM sets some of the fictional positioning required, yes, but not the moves.  If the players take a hostage and ransom the map from the others, they can go get the map and the players never have to be in the study.  There's a difference between establishing a bit of the necessary fictional positioning and dictating the only moves (action declaration + fictional positioning) that can achieve the goal.





> This seems to be an example of the players making moves ("recon", "relocating) that lead to the GM relating various bits of pre-established backstory to them.



I'm rather confused as to why you decided it was helpful to fisk my example.  Are you looking for a similar fisking of your examples where someone tells you the obivous things rather than focusing on bits that are interesting?

As for relating bits of pre-established backstory, I had no backstory as to how the orcs would respond to a parley attempt, as I did not make such notes or prepare for that eventuality.  I set the minimum situation for a combat because that's the hard thing to prep in 5e, and the players chose to engage a different option than combat, so, at that point, I was 'off script' and reacting to player action declarations for the parley attempt.



> "Noticing the pit trap" seems to be an example of the players making moves that lead to the GM relating a bit of pre-established backstory to them.



Why is it not framing, as the players change their fictional positioning?  How is this different from an invisible opponent?  Note that this information was provided in response to action declarations that changed the characters' fictional positioning and wasn't used to negate any action declarations.  In effect, the players declared an action that I agreed to without using the mechanics and then I introduced a new complication that they could then engage.  I don't see how the fact that I wrote it down earlier would have changed anything.  Also, the DC for spotting the trap was low enough that only extremely reckless action by the players would have failed to notice it well before it became a threat to them.  It was literally set dressing -- a terrain feature on the encounter map to possibly provide dynamic play during combat by both sides and not a secret lurking to trap players.  My 'notes' said that the traps were obvious to all who approached from a distance that would allow easy avoidance.



> Who set the stakes for these checks? Without knowing that, it's hard for someone who wasn't there to work out what was going on.



The players set them with their goal of engaging in trade with the orcs.  The orcs were known to be hostile creatures who fight at the drop of a hat, so the stakes were obvious:  success moved towards the players trading with the orcs, failure moved towards a fight.



> This looks very much like an example of a player making a move that leads the GM to relate some pre-authored backstory.



Hmm.  I suppose if I wrote that down, sure, but I decided it on the spot.  The orcs upped the ante because the players had failed a roll.  The player was wondering if they should engage this action because it seemed fishy to them, so they made an insight check and the result was that the orc was pushing for individual gain in classic bully manner, a result that was presented because the check succeeded.  A failure would have provided a different answer, likely that the orc required a bribe in order for the parley to continue.



> Likewise.



Yup.


> This appears to be an exercise by the players of some agency over the content of the shared fiction. The players seem to be working to a significant degree with GM-introduced elements, such as the shaman "livin' all posh in the keep"), but they seem to have introduced the idea of the orc boss.



Yup.


> It's not clear if this is you just making something up "behind the scenes", or if this is you actually telling the players some more stuff.



I'm not sure what you think the difference is.  The players established there was a warboss and that they could achieve their goals if they found him.  I agreed with this and provided some new, made up in response, fiction to do so that also pointed to new challenges.



> This seems like it began as more narration of established backstory in response to player moves (ie a failed Stealth check) which then led into the framing of a combat encounter.



Nope.  The characters were aware of the orcs in the keep and could see them, so it was part of the framing.  The stealth check was made specifically to keep the orcs in the keep from noticing the characters.  The check failed, and the orcs investigated.  The players had choices on what to do and chose to remain hidden, which, since it didn't counter the orc move to investigate, escalated the situation as the orcs moved closer and may now discover the hidden characters.



> "Sweeping the keep upper floors" seems like more player moves that generate the GM relating pre-authored material. Clearing the main stairs seems like it might combine some of that sort of activity with a combat encounter.



It was more transition narration to move to the new scene of the dungeons below the keep.  I didn't play this out, I narrated it.



> I don't understand how the traps changed. The reason the stairway was blocked seems like it might be something known only to the GM?



The traps were initially to stop intruders, but the reasons for the traps changed due to player comments to separating the orcs from each other.  The players changed the fictional reasons for the traps to exist at all through their play.

The stairs were blocked in my notes, yes, as I had also prepared an encounter map of the dungeons below the keep and the inhabitants were not allies of the orcs, so it made sense to have a barricade between the two.  The fictional reason for the barricade changed, even though the existence of it did not.

The entire point, I thought, of your complaints about secret backstory was that is was pre-authored ficiton and it could be used to thwart player action declarations.  Backstory that was presented as framing, even if prepared, and made known to the players was acceptable.  Yet you've repeatedly commented that the notes employed, despite not thwarting player actions or even being secret (almost everything was known to players and the few things that weren't were trivially discovered and made known before having an impact), are pre-authored, secret backstory.  It seems your goalposts are shifting, but I'm not sure as you may have just failed to make your points clear.

If I had to guess, what you mean is 'secret backstory is stuff the DM does that prevents players from introducing new fiction.'  I say this as you seem very dismissive of play that doesn't have the players telling the DM new fiction.  That's coherent, but not in line with many of your previous statements -- or, rather, your previous statements do not say this but also don't preclude it
.


> I would agree that this seems to be a predominantly GM-driven game. As you present it, a great deal of the play seems to be the players making moves that trigger you as GM telling them bits of the fiction that you have established.
> 
> The main player contribution to the shared fiction seems to be the idea of their being a boss of the orcs. I was a bit unclear how this worked, because you have the orcs saying the boss wasn't there - instead the shaman was - and then this becomes the boss being missing; but as you present it I take it to have involved a degree (maybe quite a degree?) of back-and-forth between you and the players (taking the form of the PCs' conversation with the orcs).
> 
> What do the players understand to be at stake in the recovery of the missing warboss?



They have staked their achieving their goal of establishing peaceful trade with the orcs on finding the fate of the warboss.  I say fate because they now believe that the warboss was killed by the inhabitants of the dungeon after having to retreat from a fight was was going poorly for them (mostly due to very bad dice).  They have stated they believe the warboss was killed, but plan to return to the dungeon after resting to recover any remains, as they want to follow through with their promise to find the warboss.  Since I had no notes on the warboss, and had not decided his fate, I'm planning to go with the warboss indeed being killed by the inhabitants below and his body recoverable once they overcome the challenge currently blocking them.  The orcs have already agreed to these stakes, so I'm not going to renege that.  Not that I considered doing so at all, that's not my style to renege on deals established in play unless the players take actions that cause such (like being themselves untrue to the deal and that being known to the other party), but I wanted to make it clear.


----------



## innerdude

Ovinomancer said:


> The entire point, I thought, of your complaints about secret backstory was that is was pre-authored ficiton and it could be used to thwart player action declarations.  Backstory that was presented as framing, even if prepared, and made known to the players was acceptable.  Yet you've repeatedly commented that the notes employed, despite not thwarting player actions or even being secret (almost everything was known to players and the few things that weren't were trivially discovered and made known before having an impact), are pre-authored, secret backstory.  It seems your goalposts are shifting, but I'm not sure as you may have just failed to make your points clear.
> 
> If I had to guess, what you mean is 'secret backstory is stuff the DM does that prevents players from introducing new fiction.'  I say this as you seem very dismissive of play that doesn't have the players telling the DM new fiction.  That's coherent, but not in line with many of your previous statements -- or, rather, your previous statements do not say this but also don't preclude it.




I think my post earlier, talking about example "scene frames," was very much looking at this is the same way. It's a very difficult line to draw to say that NOTHING can be secret from the players if it hinders their ability to author fiction. Even for me, someone who WANTS more player-driven play, that seems extreme. My example with the magistrate and the hidden prisoner was very much posing this question---is it okay to have the "hidden" gambling debt backstory for the magistrate, if it's trivially knowable with any sort of intelligent effort put forth by the players?

I think in that case, assuming that it only affects the _ease of success_ and doesn't thwart success entirely, and as long as there are multiple other options available to the players---including ones they might author themselves---I don't know that simply having some "hidden" element in a scene frame is a bad thing.

It would become a "bad thing" if 1) the PCs' success/failure either solely or greatly hinged on discovering that element, 2) the GM was actively limiting potential success if the PCs' action declarations weren't in line with the hidden element, and 3) the GM was unwilling to modify the fiction to accommodate input from the players that might make the action resolution even more satisfying.


----------



## Ovinomancer

innerdude said:


> I think my post earlier, talking about example "scene frames," was very much looking at this is the same way. It's a very difficult line to draw to say that NOTHING can be secret from the players if it hinders their ability to author fiction. Even for me, someone who WANTS more player-driven play, that seems extreme. My example with the magistrate and the hidden prisoner was very much posing this question---is it okay to have the "hidden" gambling debt backstory for the magistrate, if it's trivially knowable with any sort of intelligent effort put forth by the players?
> 
> I think in that case, assuming that it only affects the _ease of success_ and doesn't thwart success entirely, and as long as there are multiple other options available to the players---including ones they might author themselves---I don't know that simply having some "hidden" element in a scene frame is a bad thing.
> 
> It would become a "bad thing" if 1) the PCs' success/failure either solely or greatly hinged on discovering that element, 2) the GM was actively limiting potential success if the PCs' action declarations weren't in line with the hidden element, and 3) the GM was unwilling to modify the fiction to accommodate input from the players that might make the action resolution even more satisfying.



I agree with a lot of this.


----------



## Nagol

AbdulAlhazred said:


> <snip>
> 
> OK, I think its fair to say that most of the discussion here didn't involve multi-GM setups. Those, IME, are rare, though certainly not unheard of (I've done several myself, they're fun). Now, I can't say how much your gaming is of this type. I'm guessing @_*hawkeyefan*_ and @_*Lanefan*_ and others are not usually playing this way.




Not a lot in the past couple of decades.  I offered to share campaigns that weren't specifically focused on environmental exploration, but none of the other players wanted to step up to the GM seat.   



> <snip>
> 
> I agree. The issue then, IMHO, is "can the player's actually work out, plausibly, what the GM is thinking?" It runs into two issues. One is they're not really thinking about causality necessarily, but about how their GM thinks, which is a bit different. Secondly it is often not really very similar to the type of reasoning you'd do in the real world, where you can gather a lot more detailed observation and just be a lot more systematic (and where "its boring" is not a factor). Thus real-world police work is quite mundane and boring, and when it gets crazy there's usually 100 police and one bad guy.




I agree it is both simpler and more abstract than the real world.  You have fewer points of input which makes the ones you do receive much more important and seemingly meaningful.  Which means information contrary to a pattern or relationship (either GM introduced red herrings, mischaracterised colour, or player-introduced events) also has an out-sized effect on player pattern detection.  It is best if the GM strives to include other influences in his prep to limit his own prejudices; I tend to add a few adventures written by outsiders very now and again.




> I think we get this, but then I think that its really just a matter of what the players are interested in. If they WANT to solve a puzzle, then they won't 'spoiler' it. Right? I mean, this is @_*hawkeyefan*_'s drum that he likes to play, and I understand his point.



.

It can be hard particularly when the players are dealing with bits and pieces and do not yet understand how different aspects interrelate.  The PCs are concentrating on the identity of the serial killer and a player does something that makes their receptionist take a vacation as a lark and suddenly the murder timeline breaks.  Was that deviation planned?  Is it reacting to something the PCs did or is the timing coincidental? 



> Ah, I have a remedy for that, which is probably not perfect, but it works. Strong genre. So, for instance, myself and 4 other people did a CoC game like that. The premise we hit on was that the characters were reincarnated in each section of the game. The first piece we ran was set in the 1980's, then the next was set in the year 450 AD, and the one after that was in the 1920's, and then finally the last one was in the far future. It worked OK. Each GM introduced new elements to the story, and the players simply played. Being CoC there wasn't really 'player authoring of story' DURING the sessions when they weren't GMing, but that hardly mattered as we each simply framed things so that our character could do something in a later episode. It was, interesting! I was a bit disappointed with CoC as a system, but the genre is so well understood that it worked pretty well.




We've done disjointed follow-on campaigns too.  They tend to work well because one GM is in charge for the whole arc.  The campaigns I was discussing had multiple consecutive GMs -- we swapped pretty much every adventure taking control of the current state of the world as it was known by the table at the time of transition.  Thee were a lot of twists and counter-twists in the region's politics and known NPCs as the GMs played push-me-pull-you with the world.


----------



## Nagol

innerdude said:


> Another idea that I have had to come to grips with in this thread as well---is there a difference between "secret backstory" that negates player agency, and "scene frame maneuvering"? In other words, are there things happening in the background relevant to the player's current concerns and framing of the challenge which the PCs would not logically be aware of, but which could increase/decrease the possibility of success for the PCs?
> 
> Example: If you've framed the PCs into a scene where they need to go hunt down an otyugh in the city underground, it's not "secret backstory" for the current location of the otyugh to be unknown---that's part of the framing of the challenge. Or is it? Depending on the rationale for play, I could easily see this going both ways. If part of the challenge is to successfully navigate the sewers, putting the party's resources at stake, keeping the location "hidden" might be part of the challenge frame. But if a player declares, "I talk to several city sanitation workers and town guards to discover the last known points of activity for the otyugh," as a GM, I'd be hard pressed to negate that player declaration if the fortune mechanic indicated a success.




It could easily be secret back story because although you've framed the scene of the PCs trying to hunt down the otyugh, you know there isn't one.  The PCs are meant to find <insert something of great personal relevance to one PC> in the sewers -- the stated purpose is just a rationale to get hem in the appropriate setting for the reveal. 



> Example 2: A scene where you've framed the PCs into a challenge where they need to convince a local magistrate to divulge the location of a prisoner being held at a secret location. Let's say as GM, you've created a backstory for the magistrate that he's actually under a lot of pressure because of some gambling debts he needs to pay off, and if the PCs could take care of the bookie that's owed money, the magistrate will be willing to help them.
> 
> Is _this_ considered secret backstory? Even if the PCs could discover that information through any number of strongly telegraphed means (various streetwise and information gathering checks). How and when does this cross over from "scene framing" to "secret backstory"? Is it still "secret" if the GM has provided ample means for discovery?




Absolutely this is secret backstory.  You assigned goals and pressure points that the players are unaware of that should guide their interactions during the scene.  That the players can discover the story is immaterial  Players can discover almost any part of secret backstory in many games.  But, the PCs can't push on his pathological fear of spiders, his medical debt, his doting on his pretty niece, or any other personality tic they can dream up because you've already assigned back story to the NPC.



> Is setting up a "hidden" victory condition at all like this a bad idea? If this were the ONLY method to success for the challenge, I think that would obviously be a bad idea. There would always be other avenues for the PCs to find the location of the prisoner---capture / interrogate the magistrate, steal government dispatches that indicate the location of the prison, hunt down a former prisoner who would know where it is---but for this particular challenge frame, the PCs' probability of success would be exponentially easier if they "discover" the "backstory" and bring it to bear against the magistrate.
> 
> Or is this something that should be left totally "open"? For example, should that backstory not exist at all until a player authors it? Something like, "I'm going to do some investigation around this magistrate, because I'm sure there's something shady about him I can use to pressure him---maybe, like, he's incurred some gambling debts." And then on a success, the player authored backstory is now true?
> 
> Or is this something that should be implicitly built into the scene frame by the GM? "Okay, so you need to find this prisoner because he has valuable information about [Goal X the Party Really Wants to Accomplish]. From your past success, you've been told that Magistrate Jones knows where the prison is, but you'll need to convince him to give that information to you. Some cursory "street investigation" into Magistrate Jones reveals that there may be a way for you to put the screws to him and get what you need."
> 
> There's some definite grey area here for me, but perhaps its the principle behind it---even if I as GM have "pre-authored" elements of a scene frame, those shouldn't be the only possibilities embedded into the frame, and I as GM should be open to improvising/updating/modifying elements based on PC action declaration and intent.




I don't think setting up hidden or initially secret victory conditions is bad because I don't think secret backstory is bad.  I think setting up "auto-fail" gotchas that are not well advertised (such as 'any Intimidation attempt will auto-fail and cause other bad things to happen...' are bad regardless of style in action.  For player-led games, the PCs also "discover" secrets in the NPCs that they can leverage... they are just the instigators of establishing those secret while playing the scene or they were established in a prior scene and that people remembered.

There is no 'bad' or 'should' here.  There are styles at play.  One of those styles takes advantage of world building as part of prep; another does not.


----------



## Nagol

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, that wasn't actually the question/commentary. The question was "if it is never going to use it to veto an action declaration, then why does it exist at all?" You COULD answer that, straight up, by providing some sort of reason. In fact some fairly plausible answers HAVE been presented. @_*Nagol*_ for instance suggested that a type of mystery story, and a type of exploration would both benefit from secret backstory or hidden world elements (which is a bit different but COULD be hidden backstory, they're pretty close anyway). I posed some questions, which we may yet examine
> 
> <snip>




Can secret back story curtail action declaration?  No.  But it can cause an action declaration to not require a fortune mechanic to resolve in a way unanticipated by the player.  

You know what actually curtails action declaration?  Scene framing.  If you don't want the PCs to delve underwater and look for a shipwreck, frame them away from the ocean and into a tense encounter with the local baron in his keep.  Ta-da!  Possible action declaration curtailed!  If they never get back to the beach, the delve will never happen.  Before the anguished cries of "That would never happen!" occur, of course it does.  Probably as often as secret backstory is used as a club to force players onto the straight and narrow path the DM conceives as appropriate.  Both turn a decent tool into a weapon against player choice.

Now, can secret back story offer value other than controlling the resolution of certain declarations?  I think so.


It provides guidance for the GM as to how entities will react to stimuli generated by the players via assigned motivations, action constraints, and unexpected abilities.
It provides a rationale as to why the situation is as it is that can help the GM faithfully and consistently adjudicate attempts to alter the situation.
It can provide a mystery or puzzle for the players to notice and solve.
It can provide the GM with inspiration for how to prevent the game from stalling e.g. a form of fail-forward so the answer isn't always "Ninjas attack!"


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> If this is genuinely setting material - as  opposed to ideas that might seem useful in play - then what prevents it  from affecting player action declarations?
> 
> If the material deals with the locations of things, or the dispositions  of NPCs, or the hidden forces at work in some game-relevant situation,  how does a GM _avoid_ it coming into collision with player conceptions of the shape of the fiction?




The GM's judgment. Why MUST it conflict with what the  player wants? Why can't the GM have an idea in his mind ahead of time,  with some ideas about what can or may happen, but not committing to  anything until the players have interacted with the idea? 



pemerton said:


> I'm not sure how "interesting and compelling story" and "loose idea of  where things will go" yet a"without forcing them along certain paths"  and "plenty of room for change along the way" fit together.
> 
> For instance, how do we know that the NPC introducec by the GM is a  villain? What if the players have their PCs ally with the NPC? Or what  if some do and some don't?
> 
> _Story_ tends to suggest a sequence of events with rising action,  climax, resolution, etc. If the GM has an idea for such a thing, where  exactly do the players fit in? Conversely, if the rising action, climax  and resolution are the results of actual play, then what is the role of  the GM?
> 
> This is why the "standard narrativistic model" emphasises framing and  consequences. Compelling framing does not require the GM to envisage, in  advance, what the compelling story might look like. Robust action  resolution mechanics mean that these can be relied upon to generate  consequences, again without the GM needing to envisage, in advance, what  the compelling story might look like.




The NPC might be a villain in the GM's mind. But the PCs  are free to ally with him or oppose him...whatever they want. I don't  think that pre-authoring anything means you must commit to it 100% with  no ability to deviate. 

I feel like the same question could be  asked of framing. What's to stop the GM from framing things that have  nothing to do with what the players want? Certainly a GM could do  that....it just would likely be seen as a contradiction to the goals of  play. 

Same thing. 



pemerton said:


> To the extent that the players discover a GM-authored "larger story"  through play, it seems to me that it is the GM rather than the players  who is exercising agency in respect of those contents of the shared  fiction.
> 
> And _discovering a GM-authored story through play_ seems to me to  mean that, at certain points of play, the players make moves that lead  the GM to reveal (= tell them) some bits of that story. Eg maybe the  players declare that their PCs spy on some person or event, and the GM  reveals (= narrates) what transpires.
> 
> Perhaps you mean something else by the idea of "a larger story at play,  some of which the players are unaware of, and they discover through  play." I am just trying to make sense of what you are describing,  including the contrast that you draw.




Yes, the GM has agency in my examples. I am not offering  an example that fits your style. I am attempting to offer you an answer  to your question. To explain why some of us find GM driven elements  useful. 



pemerton said:


> I think it is self-evident that this is an example of the GM, and not  the players, exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction.




Yes.  This is me offering an answer to your question. I don't place the same  level of value that you place on player agency. I like it, and I prefer  it in most instances, but I do not think it must be ubiquitous. 

So  you asked what is worldbuilding for.....here's something to consider.  As with most things, there may need to be some consideration given in  evaluating it. "Hm is this worth the loss in player agency that will  result?" I think your answer is clearly "No", and that's fine. 

But I don't think you wanted an echo chamber. And I don't think that your preference for another style somehow eliminates your ability to understand why a different style might appeal to other players. For me, having some predetermined elements may be worth a reduction in player agency in some ways. 



pemerton said:


> This can cover a very great range of things, from approaches to framing,  to narration of consequences of failed action declarations, to "behind  the scenes" manipulation of backstory to generate particular outcomes.
> 
> Having a failed search for the mace reveal that the mage's brother was  apparently manufacturing black arrows - one of which killed the master  of the elven ronin PC - might be an instance of what you have in mind.
> 
> So would the GM deciding, as an item of pre-authored setting detail that  the only way to free the brother from possession by a balrog is to gain  the help of the dark naga - thus linking the fate of one PC (the one  whose brother is possessed by a balrog) with that of another (the one  dominated by a dark naga).
> 
> It seems obvious to me that these are very different sorts of thing: the  first affirms player agency over the content of the shared fiction,  whereas the second is the GM establishing some setting element that  seems likely to serve as a limit on subsequence player action  declarations for their PCs.




Sure. I'm just simply not as concerned with that limit as you are. Or at least, I'm not always concerned. There are always some constraints on what the players can have their characters do, so in a case like you describe where you take two stories and tie them together...I wouldn't be averse to that at all. Especially if it was still in line with what the players had established as what they want for their characters. 



pemerton said:


> I am not in a position to judge whether or not what you do in your game  enhances the story and enhances play. I'm just trying to analyse  techniques, not make aesthetic judgements.




I feel like you aren't analyzing the technique at all. You don't  like the technique, which is fine, but then you don't seem to ever even  allow the possibility that the technique has anything to offer. And you insist upon adding other preferences you hold as being requirements for the technique to even be considered. 

So  maybe we should take a moment to reset....to look at the question you  posed in the OP again, and ask it of you. What is worldbuilding for? Has  your view changed in any way at all? Or do you feel exactly as you did  at the start? Has anything said here by anyone over the 100 pages made a difference in your opinion?


----------



## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> The thread title really says it all. But here's some context to explain why I'm asking that question.
> 
> In classic D&D, _the dungeon_ was a type of puzzle. The players had to map it, by declaring moves (literally) for their PCs. The players, using their PCs as vehicles, had to learn what was in there: this was about inventory - having enough torches, 10' poles, etc - and about game moves too - searching for secret doors, checking ceilings and floors, and so on. And finally, the players had to try and loot it while either avoiding or defeating the monsters guarding the treasures and wandering around the place - this is what the combat mechanics were for.
> 
> The game is something of a cross between a wargame and a complex refereed maze. And *worldbuilding* is all about making the maze. I get that.
> 
> But most contemporary D&D isn't played in the spirit of classic D&D: the players aren't trying to map a maze; when it comes to searching, perception and the like there is often an emphasis on PC skills (perception checks) rather than player game moves; there is no clear win condition like there used to be (ie getting the gold and thereby accruing XP).
> 
> In the classic game, alignment (and related aspects of character motivation) become components in, and establish the parameters of, the puzzle: if I find a prisoner in the dungeon, should I be rescuing her/him (after all, my PC is lawful and so I might suffer a GM-imposed penalty if I leave a helpless person behind)? Or is s/he really a succubus or medusa in disguise, trying to take advantage of my lawful foibles? This is one reason why divination items like wands of enemy detection, ESP medallions and the like are so prominent in classic D&D - they're "game components" which, once obtained, allow a clever player to make better moves and so increase his/her chance of winning the game. And their function relies upon the GM having already written the dungeon, and having already decided what the truth is about the prisoner.
> 
> But in most contemporary play, character motivations (and alignment etc) aren't treated purely instrumentally in that waym as puzzle components and parameters. I'm expected to develop my character, and to care about his/her motivations, for their own sake. This is part of the standard picture of what it is to be a good RPGer.
> 
> So, given these difference between typical contemporary play and "classic" play, what is world building for?
> 
> And here's a final thought, in spoiler blocksbecause it's a little bit tangential:[sblock]In this blog post, Luke Crane has interesting (and very enthusiastic) things to say about playing Moldvay Basic. He also asserts that "the beautiful economy of Moldvay's basic rules are rapidly undermined by the poorly implemented ideas of the Expert set." I think at least part of what he has in mind there is that Expert-style wilderness adventuring doesn't establish the same clear framework for play. There is no clear maze, and so no clear parameters for establishing puzzles to solve in avoiding or defeating the monsters while getting the gold.
> 
> I see this contrast, between Basic and Expert - dungeon crawling compared to wilderness exploration - as raising the same question as this thread: what is world building _for_ once we're no longer playing a dungeon crawling, puzzle-solving game?[/sblock]




I'm not sure I agree with your description of classic D&D. I never played through the BECMI system (although I owned all of them and the adventures), so if the presentation was so focused on the dungeon and only the dungeon, that was a later development and I'm not sure I would consider it the "classic" game. If anything, OD&D > AD&D is what I'd consider classic. In any event, I'll have to check out that post...

Nor would I agree worldbuilding is about "making the maze."

It might seem early D&D was focused on the dungeon, but even from the earliest TSR and third party releases (like Judges' Guild) it went beyond that. Gary and TSR early on thought that published adventures wouldn't sell, since the DM can just make their own. Even more when talking about a campaign world. That is, world-building was specifically in the domain of the DM, and not the publisher. This aspect of the game might not have been as obvious to those purchasing it, but it would be explicitly spelled out in adventures like B1 "In Search of the Unknown." For example:

_"Most good dungeons (and indeed, entire game campaigns) rest upon a firm basis of interesting background and "history" as set for the players by the game moderator, or Dungeon Master."_

That's the most basic part of worldbuilding. Setting the dungeon in a world. The first published adventure, _Temple of the Frog_ in the _Blackmoor_ supplement essentially provided a template that was copied by DMs thousands of times over. There was nearly two pages of background, setting the story, and a bit of worldbuilding. The rules already spoke of a campaign, where the characters would explore the world around them in a continuous fashion, and new characters would explore the same world of that DM. That is, if you were playing in Gary's campaign you were in the World of Greyhawk, and in Dave's campaign, Blackmoor. The original D&D set had rules for dungeon and wilderness adventures, including keeps, castles, etc.

And the earliest adventures accentuated this serial nature of adventures within a known world, although the thrust at that time was still for DMs to create their own world. So I think worldbuilding has always been the intended domain of the DM, and what changed was that people began to play in published worlds more and more. If anything, I think that D&D has moved away from worldbuilding over the years. I started with the Holmes Basic Set and a Monster Manual. Of course, like many, many others my initial adventure was B2 _Keep on the Borderlands_, and like so many other DMs, that was my template for how to build a campaign. You start with a place in the world, an outpost in the wilderness. A Keep. And the first adventure your first characters take is, to find the adventure. It's a wilderness adventure, with several written encounters, and explicit instructions to make your own as a DM (and even has another dungeon "complex" indicated on the map specifically for the DM's use). The PCs are in search of the Caves of Chaos, but they don't know where it is.

In fact, looking at OD&D, and how I, at least, learned to play in the late '70s, I'd characterize the spirit of the game as:

DM: Dungeon/Campaign/Worldbuilding
Players: Exploration.

That is, the DM was there to provide the place to explore (however big or small), and the players/characters purpose was to explore. Treasure was a goal to encourage exploration, and monsters, traps, and tricks the challenges. Combat was one way to overcome challenges. But most dungeons had plenty of non-combat challenges too.

But what specifically characterized D&D as unique is that it was designed to be a campaign. Wargames were about the current battle. This army against that one, and the next game is a different one. Sometimes you'd have a campaign, such as playing through a series of battles in WWII. But eventually the game and campaign would end.

But D&D was different - you had a character. And after you finished one adventure, that same character would go on another adventure. And when somebody new joined, they would go on adventures with that character, and in the same world. And when your character died, a new one would enter the same campaign. And players would leave, but the campaign continued. New players joined, and the campaign continued. The game itself has no end. 

Now, the DM is mostly viewed as a referee. They have always been the referee of course, but their creative input is often more limited. They utilize a published world, or part of it, to run a published adventure. And since the APs tend to level a character from start to finish, there isn't a continuous campaign, you build new characters for the next AP. 

Now, at least from what I see on the forums and many local groups, I'd say the focus is:

DM: Referee
Players: (Mechanical) Character Designers

The focus of players has shifted to Character Design. That is, designing a cool character, with cool abilities, and leveraging the rules to make that character shine...mechanically. It's not about their place in the world, it's about them. More importantly, more options that directly engage the rules. If it doesn't have a mechanical benefit, then it's not necessary. 

Now, players expect to be able to use any published material for their character, leveraging online "build guides" on how to maximize the mechanical aspects of character building. There are so many choices, and they don't want to make "trap" decisions, nor do they quietly accept the DM "nerfing" their choice by disallowing or changing a rule. In the past, the DM designed the world and the campaign, deciding the races, classes, modifications, and the rest of it. While there were always optional rules, in AD&D, and especially 2e, the DM could decide entire rule systems. This even extends to the rules themselves. Where once were there not only bonuses, but penalties, and everything was designed to be a trade-off, now there are complaints that a given race/class combination is "unplayable" because the ability score bonus is for the wrong stat. 

Instead of the Bilbo Baggins model, the modern RPG character is the Harry Potter model. Destined to be better than the average person in the world from birth.

The focus shift, I think, started with marketing. TSR figured out that for every game there's one DM and 4-8 players. And there might be ancillary players beyond that in a given campaign. Write a book for the DM and you sell one per table. Write it for the players, and you might sell 4 or 5. In the TSR years, each book (and often in many places through the book) were disclaimers informing players that this is all cool stuff, but you can only use it if your DM agrees. Ask them first. 

WotC again, I think, looked at this from a marketing perspective. First, there were too many different rules, and despite the fact that they were all supposed to work together, they didn't. But I think there was a bigger issue at play. If the book you're selling says "you can only use this book if your DM says it's OK" discourages players to pick them up. Publish everything as canon, with optional rules scattered within, means that every book has something for the players that they _can_ use.

Want another sign that world-building or characters engaging in the world isn't the focus anymore. Questions like, "what do I spend gold on since I can't buy magic items in 5e?"

Let's think through that a bit. First, who said you can't buy magic items anymore. If I'm playing a 3e or 4e game, and we convert to 5e, and we're in the same campaign, why are magic items suddenly not for sale anymore? Why did the world change? Just because the rules don't spell out a specific system for buying and selling magic items? 

It's character-building, at least on a mechanical level. If the character was being built on an actual character level, then they would have goals, likes, perhaps some debts or responsibilities, and all sorts of other reasons to spend gold. Many characters in our campaigns retire after a few adventures, because they've gained more riches than they could have imagined, and literally buy the farm and find a nice girl (guy) to settle down with and have a family. And then they sometimes un-retire when a reason presents itself. In the meantime, they act as a direct sort of world-building because not only do the characters know this NPC, but so do the players. 

If world-building was the current focus of the game, then the answer to the question would be obvious. _"The same thing everybody else spends gold on."_ But world-building is clearly not the focus when that question is asked. Buying a keep, throwing a birthday party and inviting the whole of Hobbiton, getting fancy armor that cost 10 times more than is practical because you _can_ have your plate gilded in gold, paying tithes, etc. But none of that helps you in the next combat, and in this world people are only focused on work (adventuring) 24x7.

It's either the 15 MWD, or, "but the PHB doesn't say you actually have to sleep to take a long rest." The point, once again, is that the focus is on the mechanics and the rules, not on the world and the characters as people within it.

In my opinion 2e was, paradoxically, the height of world-building in D&D, and the cause of its demise. With books like _Leaves from the Inn of the Lost Home_ and _Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue_, not to mention the Volo's Guides, the bulk of releases for the world were fluff. Things that helped flesh out a public campaign world, but also served as inspiration for those that made their own world. Because, my world should have unique kinds of cheese too. And Ale. And Trees. And songs, legends, and recipes. 

The problem was, it also got to the point where most DMs couldn't design such a richly detailed world. It's easier to hop aboard the Forgotten Realms train than to try and design it all yourself. I did, and then I proceeded to modify it heavily. All that is great, except that by the time 3e came around, the content shifted. Every single book had to have new playable races, new spells, new magic items, new prestige classes, new monsters, etc. Of course in terms of the spells, items and monsters many were old monsters updated. But the races and classes, well that was new. We have more options in the quest for the perfect character build. Character creation grew to be extremely complex. No more sitting down at a new table and rolling up a character in a few minutes. 

Even the complexity of the game has an impact. There are more rules for the DM to know. Way more. And that's less time world-building. Combats became complex, hour-or-more-long set pieces. Instead of combat just being a hurdle on the way to more exploration, it became the focus of much of the game. If there wasn't a battle mat for it, it didn't exist. Not only less world-building, but less time interacting with the world. The more complex the game has become, the more the players and the DM interact with the rules and the mechanics, instead of the world that the DM may or may not have created. 

This, of course, is not limited to D&D. Indie games often push worldbuilding to the side (don't design anything that doesn't come into play, or even until it comes into play), or takes it into a cooperative approach, giving the players a larger hand in the process. Again, neither are bad/wrong/fun, but they do provide a very different experience. These can still be strung together into a campaign, maintaining the established lore from earlier games. But in many cases the games discourage this, particularly as new players come into the game because it would limit their creative input.

Some of it is to free up time for the DM, to avoid spending hours prepping for a game, only to learn that all of that prep went to waste. Here's the thing, though. Good DM prep work never goes to waste - if you're world-building. Building the world for the characters to explore, the people, the cultures, the ecological interactions of monsters and such, then you provide a framework not only for exploration, but for better DM improvisation. Instead of prepping (in great detail) this place or that, we look back to the brilliance of the early approach to dungeon and world design. Look back to early dungeons, or the Judges' Guild _City State of the Invincible Overlord_. There isn't a lot of detail, just a sentence or two with the basics.

To me, good world-building is to identify things that are in the area, and their typical behaviors. For example, a displacer beast has a range of 40 miles, hunts in a small pack much like a lion, then you have some information to work with when you roll a random encounter (or decide there should be one here). If you determine that orcs don't have a monetary-based economy, finding things that you have to carry and can't hit things with useless, then you know that food, shelter, and weapons are better negotiating tactics when confronting an orc. World building isn't about placing every last tree and rock, it's about making the world come alive.  

Let me be clear. There is nothing wrong with wanting to engage in the rules and build the perfect character. It's a lot of fun. And the game (and RPGs) have evolved into games that a great many people like. I think that 5e has done a lot of simplify the rules, and bring the game back to that exploration, if not entirely to the campaign/world-building roots. I think that AL is more in tune with the campaign approach, with shorter adventures that tie together, but also tie into a greater world where you can have a group of characters and choose which character you want to use for a given adventure. What it often lacks is a cohesiveness and the ties into the greater world, since there isn't really any "between adventures" periods. But that's understandable due to the format. The other thing that seems to be on the upswing is the exploration style of play. _Tomb of Annihilation_, _Out of the Abyss_, and _Storm King's Thunder_ in particular accentuate this aspect well, I think.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The PCs don't actually need the map.  The information on the map is out there in other ways.  Often the players come up with ways that I did not think of, so are not a part of the DM options at all and are not party of any backstory, hidden or otherwise.





Maxperson said:


> You probably misunderstood because you cut the sentence below out of that quote, and it shows that it also involves stuff that isn't pre-authored.
> 
> "Often the players come up with ways that* I did not think of*, so are not a part of the DM options at all and are not party of any backstory, hidden or otherwise."
> 
> You can't pre-author stuff you didn't think of.



Those "ways that I did not think of" appear to be ways of getting "the information on the map [, which] is out there in other ways".

Which is to say, unlesss I have misunderstood, you appear to be referring to player moves that will trigger the GM to tell the players stuff that the GM has pre-authored.


----------



## pemerton

innerdude said:


> If you've framed the PCs into a scene where they need to go hunt down an otyugh in the city underground, it's not "secret backstory" for the current location of the otyugh to be unknown---that's part of the framing of the challenge. Or is it? Depending on the rationale for play, I could easily see this going both ways. If part of the challenge is to successfully navigate the sewers, putting the party's resources at stake, keeping the location "hidden" might be part of the challenge frame. But if a player declares, "I talk to several city sanitation workers and town guards to discover the last known points of activity for the otyugh," as a GM, I'd be hard pressed to negate that player declaration if the fortune mechanic indicated a success.



There are a number of different ways to adjudicate "succesfully navigating the sewers".

This could mean that the GM already has a map of the sewers drawn, with the location of the otyugh marked on it, and the players' main goal is to declare moves which will give them information about the GM's map, including (ultimately) where the otyugh is located on it.

Or it could mean that the players declare (say) Dungeoneering checks (in 4e) or Catacombs-wise checks (as happened in my BW game), with difficulties set in whatever manner the game prescribes (in 4e this is the DC-by-level chart; in BW each skill has associated DCs for various tasks); resources are consumed in the course of resolving these checks (eg powers or rituals in 4e; perhaps fate and persona points in BW; and equipment might be used in either system); and the success or failure of these checks determines whether or not the PCs find their way through the sewers, or are lost in the sewers, or get ambushed by the otyugh, etc.

In Cortex+ Heroic this would most likely be a single check, made to establish a Tracked Down the Otyugh asset (or something similar, depending exactly how the player establishes his/her PC's goal). Success would mean that the next scene opens with the PCs having found the otyugh, and one would have the benefit of the asset. Failure could mean a number of different things, depending on how exactly it plays out, but one possibility would be that the PCs encounter the otyugh while subject to a complication; or perhaps the GM frames them into an encounter with something other than the otyugh, given that they failed to track it down.

So anyway, until we know how the resolution is going to be handled it's not even clear what it means to "keep the otyugh's location hidden": do you mean that there is a bit of information known to the GM that the players won't know until they declare the right moves to learn it? (This is how the first sort of approach would work.) Or do you mean that the players have to succeed at some other challenge before they earn the privilege of being framed into an encounter with the otyugh (or maybe if they fail they still get the otyugh encounter, but subject to some disadvantage)?

These different sorts of approaches involve different degrees of player agency over the content of the shared fiction.



innerdude said:


> A scene where you've framed the PCs into a challenge where they need to convince a local magistrate to divulge the location of a prisoner being held at a secret location. Let's say as GM, you've created a backstory for the magistrate that he's actually under a lot of pressure because of some gambling debts he needs to pay off, and if the PCs could take care of the bookie that's owed money, the magistrate will be willing to help them.
> 
> Is _this_ considered secret backstory? Even if the PCs could discover that information through any number of strongly telegraphed means (various streetwise and information gathering checks). How and when does this cross over from "scene framing" to "secret backstory"? Is it still "secret" if the GM has provided ample means for discovery?



I had some long discussions of this upthread.

My own view is that if "secret" framing is (i) knowable, and (ii) salient, and (iii) not devastating if undiscovered, then it's fair game. These are all obviously highly contextual - if the group has a long history together, and the players have extensive familiarity with the highways and byways of the GM's tricksy mind, then things might be salient that would not be salient among strangers.

"Ample means for discovery" seems to me to address (i) but not (ii). "Strongly telegraphed means" to me suggests a high degree of GM agency relative to player agency - if the situation is player-driven, then the GM shouldn't have to "telegraph" because the salience will already be implicit in the situation.



innerdude said:


> Is setting up a "hidden" victory condition at all like this a bad idea?



This seems to be completely orthogonal. CoC scenarios work almost entirely like this - that doesn't mean that CoC scenarios are bad idead, or for that matter that they're good ideas. Some people enjoy them; others don't.

Clearly a lot of people like The Alexandrian's "node-based design" and "three clue rule", which is essentially a set of techniques for running a scenario along the lines that you describe (the "three clue rule" is a device for "telegraphing"; the "node-based design" is a device for accommodating different sequences of player-declared moves to try and learn the information that the GM has prepared in advance).



innerdude said:


> If this were the ONLY method to success for the challenge, I think that would obviously be a bad idea. There would always be other avenues for the PCs to find the location of the prisoner---capture / interrogate the magistrate, steal government dispatches that indicate the location of the prison, hunt down a former prisoner who would know where it is---but for this particular challenge frame, the PCs' probability of success would be exponentially easier if they "discover" the "backstory" and bring it to bear against the magistrate.
> 
> Or is this something that should be left totally "open"?



A significant issue here is, how are difficulties established?

In 4e these default to a DC-by-level chart, and so there is no particular reason to think that interrogation is a (mechanically) harder way to get the information than blackmail or quid quo pro. Cortex+ uses opposed checks for everything, with dice pools coming either from character sheets or the Doom Pool; again, there's no reason to think that one way here would be mechanically easier than the other.

In BW, which uses "objective" (ie fiction-derived) difficulties rather than pacing-derived difficulties, it might be _easier_ to interrogate the magistrate than go through the trouble of dealing with the bookie.

What seems to me to be at stake in the scenario you've set out isn't _difficulty_ at all, but rather, _what do the players want their PCs to do_? Are they ruthless? (Capture and interrogate the magistrate.) Do they care about reputation? (In which case, be nice to the magistrate.) Do they want to make a friend? (In which case, help the magistrate deal with the bookie.)

This is one reason why player-driven games tend to use either pacing-derived difficulties, or provide the players with resources (like fate points etc) to modulate "objective" difficulties - so that the players can then make and act on the decisions that express their conceptions of what the situation demands (in moral, thematic, character, terms) of their PCs. Whereas in a GM-driven game, the players are perhaps more likely to be trying to ascertain the path of least difficulty so that they can have the best chance of success, which may tend to produces a more operational and expedience-driven play.



innerdude said:


> For example, should that backstory not exist at all until a player authors it? Something like, "I'm going to do some investigation around this magistrate, because I'm sure there's something shady about him I can use to pressure him---maybe, like, he's incurred some gambling debts." And then on a success, the player authored backstory is now true?



Well, do you want a game that emphasises _learning stuff the GM has establishd but not revealed about the magistrate_? Or that emphasises "I'm the sort of person who will cheerfully blackmail and quid quo pro my way to the top!" Different priorities for play suggest different ways of adjudicating the scene, with different amounts of player agency over the content of the shared fiction being appropriate to them.



innerdude said:


> Or is this something that should be implicitly built into the scene frame by the GM? "Okay, so you need to find this prisoner because he has valuable information about [Goal X the Party Really Wants to Accomplish]. From your past success, you've been told that Magistrate Jones knows where the prison is, but you'll need to convince him to give that information to you. Some cursory "street investigation" into Magistrate Jones reveals that there may be a way for you to put the screws to him and get what you need."



Besides everything I've said above, at this point I was wondering why anyone cares about the prisoner. Is the prisoner just a McGuffin? Which already suggests a somewhat GM-driven game. Or is there something at stake here in relation to this prisoner, this magistrate, etc?



innerdude said:


> even if I as GM have "pre-authored" elements of a scene frame, those shouldn't be the only possibilities embedded into the frame, and I as GM should be open to improvising/updating/modifying elements based on PC action declaration and intent.



This takes me back to the questions about resolution. Until we know how resolution works (again, contrast _plotting positions on a map_ with _adjudicating a skill challenge_), ti's not even clear what "updating" or "modifyting" or "improvising" look like.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

innerdude said:


> Another idea that I have had to come to grips with in this thread as well---is there a difference between "secret backstory" that negates player agency, and "scene frame maneuvering"? In other words, are there things happening in the background relevant to the player's current concerns and framing of the challenge which the PCs would not logically be aware of, but which could increase/decrease the possibility of success for the PCs?
> 
> Example: If you've framed the PCs into a scene where they need to go hunt down an otyugh in the city underground, it's not "secret backstory" for the current location of the otyugh to be unknown---that's part of the framing of the challenge. Or is it? Depending on the rationale for play, I could easily see this going both ways. If part of the challenge is to successfully navigate the sewers, putting the party's resources at stake, keeping the location "hidden" might be part of the challenge frame. But if a player declares, "I talk to several city sanitation workers and town guards to discover the last known points of activity for the otyugh," as a GM, I'd be hard pressed to negate that player declaration if the fortune mechanic indicated a success.
> 
> Example 2: A scene where you've framed the PCs into a challenge where they need to convince a local magistrate to divulge the location of a prisoner being held at a secret location. Let's say as GM, you've created a backstory for the magistrate that he's actually under a lot of pressure because of some gambling debts he needs to pay off, and if the PCs could take care of the bookie that's owed money, the magistrate will be willing to help them.
> 
> Is _this_ considered secret backstory? Even if the PCs could discover that information through any number of strongly telegraphed means (various streetwise and information gathering checks). How and when does this cross over from "scene framing" to "secret backstory"? Is it still "secret" if the GM has provided ample means for discovery?
> 
> Is setting up a "hidden" victory condition at all like this a bad idea? If this were the ONLY method to success for the challenge, I think that would obviously be a bad idea. There would always be other avenues for the PCs to find the location of the prisoner---capture / interrogate the magistrate, steal government dispatches that indicate the location of the prison, hunt down a former prisoner who would know where it is---but for this particular challenge frame, the PCs' probability of success would be exponentially easier if they "discover" the "backstory" and bring it to bear against the magistrate.
> 
> Or is this something that should be left totally "open"? For example, should that backstory not exist at all until a player authors it? Something like, "I'm going to do some investigation around this magistrate, because I'm sure there's something shady about him I can use to pressure him---maybe, like, he's incurred some gambling debts." And then on a success, the player authored backstory is now true?
> 
> Or is this something that should be implicitly built into the scene frame by the GM? "Okay, so you need to find this prisoner because he has valuable information about [Goal X the Party Really Wants to Accomplish]. From your past success, you've been told that Magistrate Jones knows where the prison is, but you'll need to convince him to give that information to you. Some cursory "street investigation" into Magistrate Jones reveals that there may be a way for you to put the screws to him and get what you need."
> 
> There's some definite grey area here for me, but perhaps its the principle behind it---even if I as GM have "pre-authored" elements of a scene frame, those shouldn't be the only possibilities embedded into the frame, and I as GM should be open to improvising/updating/modifying elements based on PC action declaration and intent.




I guess this seems as good a place as any to jump in...

First. I don't give a crap about "player agency."  

Ok, I do, but not quite in the same idealistic way that a lot of gamers on the forum do. To me "player agency" (one of those buzzwords I hate since there isn't an agreed-upon definition), is simply that the players (primarily as their characters) get to make decisions in the game without interference or the rules changing under their feet.

In a recent thread elsewhere, somebody cried foul against player agency because the DM preferred his players to roll their ability scores (as do I). This was taking away player agency, because they couldn't set their own ability scores.

I disagree. How you generate ability scores is part of the rules of the game. And the DM (and to a degree the table) determines the rules of the game. To put it a different way, I have limited time to run a D&D game, and want to run the game in a way that I enjoy. I'm happy to put rules up for discussion, and will often change them if that's what the table wishes.

But one of the most enjoyable part of character creation is the excitement of rolling six abilities (in order) and the inspiration they provide to help develop and design _this_ character. And sure, it's easy to start with the highest score and build something from that, but it's usually the mix of them that starts to inspire something. This is what the character is "born" with, and then we take it from there. We generally roll characters together, and this process is often one of brainstorming amongst the group. We also often roll 3 characters at a time (and all 3 are built to the basic 1st-level character). 

The point is, that we've (I've) set a limitation of the game (or chosen one of the options given). But that's not harming the precious player agency. It's just providing a different framework for the player to fully and completely express their player agency. That framework is part of what defines the game, just like basing the ability scores on 72 points, or a range of 3d6 (instead of percentile), or whatever. Limitations in and of themselves are not an impact on player agency.

So to so-called secret backstories:

It doesn't matter if the DM thought of something 2 days ago, 2 hours ago, or 2 seconds ago. All have their benefits, and all can also be problematic. Personally, I'm not a fan of everything being defined and noted in every place on the map, etc. That's too much prep and doesn't provide much in return. However, I love things like a couple of sentences defining a few characteristics, goals, and such for an NPC, monster, or whatever. I love digging into the ecology of a creature (say, lizardfolk), and defining how they view the world as a race, how they interact with it, how they live. All too often, DMs and writers approach a monster only in relation to their encounters with adventures.

For example, it is my fervent belief that drow, duergar, and other underdark races would light their cities and regularly frequented locations with dim light. Why? Because they are at a disadvantage in darkness. But the usual argument is that they are at an advantage against humans and surface races. But the day-to-day life, indeed, the year-to-year or even the decade-to-decade they may not come across a surface dweller that lacks darkvision. On the other hand they encounter lots of other deadly things in the Underdark, and would naturally ensure that they weren't at a disadvantage (darkness = disadvantage on Perception checks), and increase visibility to the nearest physical obstacle, instead of just 120 feet. To put it a different way, once you're within 120 feet of a Displacer Beast, it's probably too late...

Anyway, this is "secret backstory." Or, it's world-building and intelligent DM prep so I have a sense as to what I'll have to describe when I need to improvise. 

So back to your specific questions, well question. I'm going to speak to #2. The gambling debts are indeed the dreaded "secret backstory." However, in addition to recommending intelligent prep (and in this case that magistrate might have 2 or 3 sentences at most), I also say that nothing is set in stone until it enters the campaign.

For example, during the PC interaction, the players start looking for a potential way to convince the magistrate to divulge the secret location (oh, that's secret backstory too). In the process, they inquire about his family, in particular one of the players asks about a rogue that they had previously discovered to be a magistrate's son (I might have even forgotten). In the process it occurs to me that the magistrate's son is the one with the gambling debts, and he fears for his life, and is willing to give away the secret location for them to help his son.

In other words, through the interaction with the players, a better scenario has presented itself, and my secret backstory bent to accommodate the circumstance. It rewards good play with results, without having to pre-plan everything, and more importantly, acknowledges the fact that it's a game where we're all visualizing something different in our heads, and without the benefit of actually being present with the person in question, etc. My input into the story is entirely that of the NPCs, monsters, and world itself, and is often "written" in response to things the players say, not just what the characters do and say. Sometimes things that came directly from the players don't materialize for a while. But I find that the more I listen to and incorporate what the players say, and the ideas they have (often just an offhand comment), the more it draws them into the game, because they can relate more directly to things they thought of, even if they don't remember it.

Another example would be searching for a hidden tomb. In my campaign the players have found a map amongst the belongings of a deceased adventurer. There are some basic instructions to the location. I have an idea of where it will be located, and they have set a priority to find it. They didn't follow up (yet) on what I thought they might. But if there's anything I've learned, the players never do what I expect. But I provide lots of potential threads and hooks for them to follow, and they pick up the one they want to follow at a specific time. I don't have to have all of the answers about where this tomb is, or exactly how they'll find it, etc. And there are lots of threads they never follow up on. That's fine too. 

I also don't think there's inherently a problem with a single solution scenario. My players expect to encounter things from time-to-time that they can't overcome...yet. And it's actually a very good thing too. In my world, if there's a tomb that has survived mundane and magical attempts to plunder it for over 2,000 years, then it's going to be a pretty deadly challenge if the PCs figure out how to get in when nobody else has. And not being able to get in yet is probably saving them from certain death. Obviously it will be a challenge even for somebody that manages to figure it out. I don't generally design puzzles that the players must figure out exactly, although this group likes those sort of things. And it was part of what originally rounded out D&D into more than just combat. So failure here doesn't mean there aren't other options in life (usually), but it does help build a more believable world in that they won't always be successful.

Perhaps it's just me and my own abilities, and that there are people that can run a game without any preconceived or prepared "secret" information. I find that having lots of little bits and pieces give me the tools to improvise better, as a starting point, when the players run off to do something unexpected. Like the session that started with the characters heading to a merchant caravan's camp to gather information on one of their priorities, only to be side-tracked when the  "I can't relate to people unless I've had something to drink" sorcerer lamented the fact that due to a recent magical mishap he is immune to the effects of alcohol for the next 20 days, and he really, really wanted anything to help and asked if maybe there were any drugs he could find. Suffice to say, that session didn't go near anything I expected, and had I been a "prep first" type DM wouldn't have used anything I prepped. Instead, I have 30+ years of notes, thoughts, little maps, rumors, plots, schemes, NPCs and monsters to draw from for inspiration and I can take all these bits and pieces of "secret backstory" as a launching pad to improvise but still maintain consistency in the world.

The bottom line is there isn't anything wrong with pre-authored vs improvised. What matters is that the players are engaged, they feel like they are part of the world and the adventure, and that you aren't changing the rules, inhibiting their choices, or making arbitrary decisions that have significant impact on their play or their characters. To me it's more of a continuum, with preauthored at one end, and totally improvised at the other, with various branches regarding how much input the players have on the world and setting vs. the DM, etc.

Some people prefer a much more collaborative approach, where the players provide direct and in-the-moment influence in the world and other aspects outside of the specific character. I'm not a fan of those myself. I've yet to find a group that can do that well, and that asks to do it more. On the other hand, I have lots of former players that either ask to rejoin, or if they've moved away, lament that they can't find a DM that they like as much, or that runs a game in the manner I do. 

It's clear when somebody joins my table that I'm setting limitations (I have a lot of house rules), and that the focus will be different than other games. And the primary focus of the player is their character(s) and the actions they take and decisions they make. I do give them quite a bit of leeway in determining how they fit into the world up to this point, and in interactions with people in the village they have a say in what sort of relationship they have with a person, if they know them, etc. But they also understand that there is a point where I will make those determinations, or inform them when something that they suggest isn't the case. It's still a collaborative approach, but I have more of a final say when dealing with the world and its inhabitants outside of the PCs.

It doesn't take away any player agency. They know right up front what the rules are, and how I run my game. They have 100% agency to play their character, and their actions and decisions as that character. Player agency is defined, in part, within the framework of the game being played. And to say that running a D&D game where the DM preps material is taking away player agency when compared to another game (D&D or otherwise) where the DM improvises, or works only from random tables, etc., is like saying it's no fair that you can't jump the other player's pieces in chess. That's simply because chess is different from checkers. It's not affecting their agency at all. 

To fully address player agency and its relationship to things like secret backstory, or even somethings as controversial as fudging dice, requires you to take into account the specific rules in play at the table, and the goals of the DM and the players and what they are expecting to get out of it. I recently ran a very linear campaign (multiple parallel story arcs), where as the DM I "authored" a much larger part of the story than I normally do. But that's what that group wanted, it's the way they like to play, and to _not_ provide that would have been taking away their player agency to play the type of game they preferred.


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Would you agree that there is a significant difference between (i) choosing which of the GM's pre-authored bits of fiction to "interact" with (which is itself an unhelpful metaphor), and (ii) exercising agency over the content of the (non-preauthored) shared fiction?



I agree there's a difference but only in the pre-authored vs. non-pre-authored element; a difference that shouldn't even be observable by the players if the DM is good enough at her trade.

Otherwise it's the same - the players exercise agency over the content of the shared fiction via their decisions as to where they-as-PCs will go in the game world and what they will do when they get there.

Using a modern-based example: if the players decide their PCs are going to Spain then the shared fiction for the next while is going to be about Spain and what the PCs do there; where if instead they decide they're going to Nepal then the upcoming shared fiction is very likely going to take place in Nepal - a significantly different culture and atmosphere from Spain.  If the DM had stuff prepared for Spain but the sudden turn to Nepal has caught her off guard she has to be able to deal with that and from the players' side make it appear as if it's every bit as prepared as Spain would have been, even though she's completely winging it.

Lanefan


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## AbdulAlhazred

darkbard said:


> When the issue of trust has arisen, it has been dismissed when it is interpersonal, i.e. between players and GM at the table. What I'm suggesting here--and perhaps I differ from @_*pemerton*_, @_*AbdulAlhazred*_, and others--is that any real human being would be tempted to steer play in a certain direction (including, potentially, negating PC action declarations), even unconsciously, if hours of hard work had gone into crafting a secret backstory. Removing secret backstory keeps the GM agenda free of entanglements that may come at odds with player goals in this way. It's not really a trust issue at all.




I agree, and have the experience to back this up. However, its impossible to say that any person posting here and espousing GM-driven play IS doing any of that, and naturally they're not guilty of advocating for it simply because they see that as a good way to run a game. I mean, this is the rock that all RPG discussions of this ilk sink on. Everyone takes any critique of their favorite techniques as a judgement of play using those techniques, and of the people doing it. Its very easy and natural, just as easy and natural as steering the game in a direction that goes down some specific road.

That being said, you can devise very clean sandboxes and that does help to avoid the problem you're talking about. I mean, IF I prepare 4 different adventure locations that are unrelated to each other, I have little incentive to push things in one direction. Its just potentially a lot more work.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> What kind of play was this?  I say it was very DM-facing, with liberal allowances for player generated goals and content based on those goals.  I say it's DM-facing because a lot of play is still the players declaring actions and me narrating results, with go tos for the mechanics when the outcome is both uncertain and failure meaningful.




Yeah, I think it is MAINLY directed by the GM in terms of what the basic parameters of the scenario are, but there's definitely some adaptive framing in terms of ideas/interests presented by the players. I consider games like this kind of 'middle of the road' and its typical of what MANY of us have done in the past. I think its similar to the first, heroic tier, section of my opening 4e campaign. As we transitioned towards paragon though I just decreased the degree of prep a LOT, and then I found it was even more fluid because I could just follow the player's lead. Even then I do MOST of the actual figuring out of what is where. 

So it would be interesting to consider a version of your example that was run on my current technique. I'd have to think about how exactly I would set up the challenges, it really depends heavily on the details of what the players have signaled.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Those "ways that I did not think of" appear to be ways of getting "the information on the map [, which] is out there in other ways".
> 
> Which is to say, unlesss I have misunderstood, you appear to be referring to player moves that will trigger the GM to tell the players stuff that the GM has pre-authored.




Of course you've misunderstood.  The answers are not all pre-authored.  The players can not only come up with ways that I didn't think of, but come up with ideas that will yield helpful information that I didn't think of.  None of that is pre-authored.  

There are two ways to come up with a choose your own adventure book.  One of which is impossible.  You can detail literally every possible thing in the world from atoms on up, so that nothing the players can think of or do isn't already written down(this is the impossible one), and you can place them in an extremely tight railroad, which isn't something anyone here in this discussion does.

There is no "choose your own adventure" in our style of play and it's time you admit that.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> The first time could be honest analysis.  Then we corrected him.  The second and third times, okay.  Maybe he missed the corrections.  Then we corrected him a few more times.  Times four to eighteen(or maybe more at this point)?  That's no longer honest analysis.  He's mischaracterized the playstyle as "choose your own adventure" too often for it to be anything other than insulting at this point.




No, you DISAGREED with him, that's nothing like correcting someone. And when you 'correct' people by telling them that your opinion is facts and they need to accept it as such, particularly without concrete evidence of such (and in the case of things that are matters of aesthetics/taste there are NEVER facts) its simply being a git. 

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but your not entitled your own personal opinion being given the status of 'fact' just because you like it. 

Now, sometimes people make statements without saying one way or the other how they consider it, but its better to assume they're willing to grant everyone else their own tastes and opinions unless otherwise stated. That just facilitates discussion and means disputes will only happen when someone actually IS a jerk, and not when they simply don't like your way of doing things so much and voice some criticism of it (and I mean criticism in its most neutral way, to point out the flaws in a thing, not 'to condemn it').


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> And c'mon.  It's quite possible he's SOMETIMES phrased that in a way that was more easily interpreted as antagonistic?  I'm going to say with some confidence that it has been said that way by him in a majority of his posts.  At least the ones that actually talk about our playstyle.




I feel like the real core of this is that you don't want to even discuss [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s concept of player agency. That concept is a very basic agency concept that says "you have agency when you have power to control something" in essence. So, when a poster says "the players moved their characters to point X and I told them they found Y, and they said 'we search' and nothing was found because that's what the map key said was there, nothing." (I know, I'm stripping the narrative down to a very dry level, but I'm not doing so to attack the technique, but just to easily illustrate the elements of it) then where is the player agency by [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s measure? I don't see how, in a game where all the content is as established as the real world is, and just as immutable, that the players have any agency over that. I my example they simply don't. You can say that they could have gone to room Z instead of X, and then found something when they searched. OK, but that's missing the point, the players still didn't decide what the narrative was going to include or be about, at all!

So, when you instead assert your theory, that the PCs having a choice in-game is agency (although I am personally not understanding what is being controlled by fictional people) then Pemerton saying "its just like a choose-your-own-adventure novel" is bound to piss you off, because you think that someone is wrong AND critical, but its not wrong, you just have to be able to discuss things in terms that other people accept sometimes. We can have a discussion about YOUR definition of 'agency' (actually we did, and I'm sorry to say I wasn't really convinced it is very useful, but I'd be the last person to tell anyone to shut up, you can champion that view as much as you want). In other words, put yourself in the position of the person you're arguing with and see if maybe their viewpoint actually makes some sense, and isn't as antagonistic as you think.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> You ask this: And then answer your own question with several variants of this:
> 
> While in the process skipping over the fact that the moves made by the players ARE their agency - the moves they make or attempt to make are what determine the specific fiction they will encounter and (probably) interact with; which in turn gives them control over the fiction that ends up being shared, in terms of largely dictating what fiction will be shared at all.
> 
> You've referred numerous times to this as (paraphrased) modest agency at best, where I see it as much more significant.  Now it's true there's DMs out there who deny this agency by running a hard railroad with no deviance allowed; for some groups this works fine but for most I posit it doesn't, and is thus rather uncommon.
> 
> Though asking what worldbuilding is for kinda suggests it's the purpose you're after, or did I misinterpret the thread header?




I think the key point is that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is interested in the EXPERIENCE of the players, what they're after from the game, which isn't necessarily related to which particular one of the choices that they make for their characters. I mean, it MIGHT be, but nobody can say if and to what degree. That isn't because of 'railroading', that's not really necessary for the 'limited agency' that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] means. He just means "the players may not be defining what the game is about." 

I mean, lets use another spherical cow example, what if the game takes place in an endless maze of basically identical rooms and corridors. Its true that the players have 'agency' in this game. In fact, in some abstract way, JUST AS MUCH as in any other game where the GM established environs and contents and thus topic of the fiction. However that agency is obviously meaningless in this hypothetical scenario, the PCs can go left, right, north, south, whatever. They're just going to encounter more endless and virtually identical rooms and corridors. 

The point is, AT THE LIMIT, the type of freedom you posit has no agency about it. Now, realistic play isn't at that limit, but it is closer to it than what Pemerton does. So, I can see why he, at least claims, it represents less agency. 

Now, if the players choice of going left leads to a realm of undead and a quest to defeat them, and going right leads to a realm of orcs and a quest to establish peace between them and the dwarves, then that's a meaningful choice, BUT the GM still decided the agenda in either direction. We also have to ask if the players knew which choice lead where. Lets say they did, well then they 'voted with their (characters) feet' and we might call that agency over the content of the game, at least within the menu of choices presented. Still, there are types of things that the players can't do here, like introduce an element into the fiction that wasn't thought of by the GM.

Obviously real games OFTEN include, informally, something like "wouldn't it be cool if my character was trying to find the cure for the disease that his town is dying of?" or whatever, and the GM taking the offered hook/backstory. So, probably for anyone that has played as long as we all obviously have, I suspect there's nothing too close to my spherical cow. We can still ask about the function of world building though, right?


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> If you mean more than one DM switching off running the same game world and-or PCs, then mostly no.  If you mean more than one DM playing in each other's games and having cross-links between our game worlds, then yes - this is what I do.




I had the former in mind, though I think the later is cool too. I haven't done that in a long time, but back in our early days it was very common. Characters would get moved around between GM's worlds and whatnot.


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## Ilbranteloth

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I feel like the real core of this is that you don't want to even discuss  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s concept of player agency. That concept is a very basic agency concept that says "you have agency when you have power to control something" in essence. So, when a poster says "the players moved their characters to point X and I told them they found Y, and they said 'we search' and nothing was found because that's what the map key said was there, nothing." (I know, I'm stripping the narrative down to a very dry level, but I'm not doing so to attack the technique, but just to easily illustrate the elements of it) then where is the player agency by  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s measure? I don't see how, in a game where all the content is as established as the real world is, and just as immutable, that the players have any agency over that. I my example they simply don't. You can say that they could have gone to room Z instead of X, and then found something when they searched. OK, but that's missing the point, the players still didn't decide what the narrative was going to include or be about, at all!
> 
> So, when you instead assert your theory, that the PCs having a choice in-game is agency (although I am personally not understanding what is being controlled by fictional people) then Pemerton saying "its just like a choose-your-own-adventure novel" is bound to piss you off, because you think that someone is wrong AND critical, but its not wrong, you just have to be able to discuss things in terms that other people accept sometimes. We can have a discussion about YOUR definition of 'agency' (actually we did, and I'm sorry to say I wasn't really convinced it is very useful, but I'd be the last person to tell anyone to shut up, you can champion that view as much as you want). In other words, put yourself in the position of the person you're arguing with and see if maybe their viewpoint actually makes some sense, and isn't as antagonistic as you think.




But player agency doesn’t mean they have full control of everything. Whether the discovery was pre-authored or not doesn’t really have anything to do with player agency. The players are not being restricted in their choices or actions. Just like I can go get in my car and go left or right. My free will has not been altered. If I come to a red light it still hasn’t altered my free will or agency, it’s just a circumstance that provides a decision point.

It’s not a choose your own adventure because the outcome has not been predetermined. That there is something in the room may have been, but what the characters choose to do, and the results of that decision is not predetermined. Choose your own adventure books produce the same result every time you select option 1. A published adventure is like a DM prepped adventure. I’ve run Keep on the Borderlands and Tomb of Horrors dozens of times, and never had the same results, ever. Each group had their own experiences and results. 

Now [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] may prefer a game where the players have a greater ability to author beyond the actions and decisions of their characters, and that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean the players have more agency, just a broader part of the authoring of the story.

Removing player agency would be pretermining the outcome of an encounter, not the content of the world. Such as deciding that the result of this encounter will be that the PCs will be captured. That decision can be predetermined or made on the fly.

Note that this does not mean the characters can never be captured. 

Taking away agency: the DM decides that the characters must be captured. Initially he throws 8 well armed guards, but that doesn’t deter them. So he brings in 12 reinforcements. That still doesn’t stop them, so he brings in a wizard with a wand of hold person.

Not taking away player agency (and tying into world-building): the kingdom is in the midst of a war, and bandits have been an increasing problem in the area. The Lord has ordered an increased patrol of 12 men-at-arms, 6 of them mounted, with a wizard with a wand of hold person. The PCs run afoul of the law, and find themselves surrounded by one such patrol. Due to the heightened security, escape may be risky, since it will make them outlaws, putting a bounty on their heads, dead or alive. 

Their agency hasn’t been altered, because they are still able to make any decision they want, although some are more risky than others. Even if they aren’t aware of the current political situation, that will become apparent in time. 

The important thing to understand is that in this situation the _player’s_ agency has not been compromised, although the character’s may have been.

The framework of the game, including the house or table rules, determines what the players are allowed to do or not. This is not altering agency, it is just the rules of the game. Some games have more restrictions than others.

For example, the rules for high school football are different that the NFL. That’s not taking anything away from the players. They still have the same goals, and they are free to accomplish those in any manner within the framework of the rules. How they meet those goals might be altered, but within the framework of the game they still have their agency.
 [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]’s preferred approach is not “choose your own adventure” nor is it impacting player agency within the context of the game they are playing. It’s a different game than [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]’s, with different rules and approaches, that’s all.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> No, you DISAGREED with him, that's nothing like correcting someone. And when you 'correct' people by telling them that your opinion is facts




I'm not stating an opinion.  My playstyle is not anything like "choose your own adventure".  That's a fact.  It can be abused into "choose your own adventure", but at that point it's no longer the playstyle being discussed here.  He can hold the opinion that my playstyle is like "choose your own adventure", but he would be wrong.



> Now, sometimes people make statements without saying one way or the other how they consider it, but its better to assume they're willing to grant everyone else their own tastes and opinions unless otherwise stated. That just facilitates discussion and means disputes will only happen when someone actually IS a jerk, and not when they simply don't like your way of doing things so much and voice some criticism of it (and I mean criticism in its most neutral way, to point out the flaws in a thing, not 'to condemn it').



At this point I don't even know if he dislikes my way of doing things.  He hasn't demonstrated here that he even understands it.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I feel like the real core of this is that you don't want to even discuss [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s concept of player agency. That concept is a very basic agency concept that says "you have agency when you have power to control something" in essence. So, when a poster says "the players moved their characters to point X and I told them they found Y, and they said 'we search' and nothing was found because that's what the map key said was there, nothing." (I know, I'm stripping the narrative down to a very dry level, but I'm not doing so to attack the technique, but just to easily illustrate the elements of it) then where is the player agency by [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s measure? I don't see how, in a game where all the content is as established as the real world is, and just as immutable, that the players have any agency over that. I my example they simply don't. You can say that they could have gone to room Z instead of X, and then found something when they searched. OK, but that's missing the point, the players still didn't decide what the narrative was going to include or be about, at all!




There's no such game.  Never has a game been made where all the content has been established as the real world is, or is just as immutable.  And I have already stated multiple times and have given examples of how the players have an amount of control over what the narrative is going to include or be about.  And they have that ability BECAUSE the game you just described is impossible.  Not only is it impossible, but no game can even remotely come close to it.  Even in the Forgotten Realms, the most detailed campaign you can buy, only about 5%, if even that much, is detailed.

I'm perfectly willing to discuss handing the players some DM Agency by the way.  I'm just not willing to change the definition of Player Agency in the discussion.



> So, when you instead assert your theory, that the PCs having a choice in-game is agency (although I am personally not understanding what is being controlled by fictional people) then Pemerton saying "its just like a choose-your-own-adventure novel" is bound to piss you off, because you think that someone is wrong AND critical, but its not wrong, you just have to be able to discuss things in terms that other people accept sometimes. We can have a discussion about YOUR definition of 'agency' (actually we did, and I'm sorry to say I wasn't really convinced it is very useful, but I'd be the last person to tell anyone to shut up, you can champion that view as much as you want). In other words, put yourself in the position of the person you're arguing with and see if maybe their viewpoint actually makes some sense, and isn't as antagonistic as you think.




So first, PC and player is interchangeable.  The players are the ones making the choices for the PC, so the players are the ones.  Second, it's not MY definition of Player Agency.  It's the one that has long been established and used.  Third, when someone is factually incorrect about the nature of my playstyle by repeatedly calling it "choose your own adventure", then yes I get irritated and will call that person out on it.


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## Campbell

When I think about player agency the first thing that comes to mind is *What is a player expected to do?* What (usually unspoken) principles should guide my decision making? Am I there to enjoy serial world exploration for its own sake? Am I there to find the GM's story and complete the predesignated scenario in the manner dictated? Am I supposed to carefully manage  my resources? Am I supposed to play my PC with integrity as my main focus? Am I supposed to drive my PC like  a stolen car? 

*Where does the ultimate protagonism lie?*

The other thing that I think about is everyone's commitment to really following the fiction. Does the GM provide meaningful opportunities for players to find leverage over the current state of the fiction? Are there reliable ways to reason about the fiction? Is fictional positioning respected? Are the rules and fiction something that can be relied on? Does the GM or any player have designs on how things should work out that they are purposefully moving things toward? Are players overly precious about the ways their PC may be affected by events? What goals are players social free to pursue?


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think the key point is that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is interested in the EXPERIENCE of the players, what they're after from the game, which isn't necessarily related to which particular one of the choices that they make for their characters. I mean, it MIGHT be, but nobody can say if and to what degree.



Perhaps, though much of the experience of the game IME that players remember afterwards is what happened to their characters in the game, and what they did, and how.


> That isn't because of 'railroading', that's not really necessary for the 'limited agency' that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] means. He just means "the players may not be defining what the game is about."



The players in fact probably aren't defining what the game is about, in broad terms e.g. court intrigue or gritty warfare or swashbuckling space marines, once play has started; as that would have been sorted out by all involved before play began.  This usually goes something like:

DM: Hey, I've got this idea for a campaign - court intrigue, kings and nobles, that sort of thing.  Who's in?"
Some players: "Yeah, sure - when do we start?"
Other players: "No thanks, not my cup of tea."



> I mean, lets use another spherical cow example, what if the game takes place in an endless maze of basically identical rooms and corridors. Its true that the players have 'agency' in this game. In fact, in some abstract way, JUST AS MUCH as in any other game where the GM established environs and contents and thus topic of the fiction. However that agency is obviously meaningless in this hypothetical scenario, the PCs can go left, right, north, south, whatever. They're just going to encounter more endless and virtually identical rooms and corridors.
> 
> The point is, AT THE LIMIT, the type of freedom you posit has no agency about it. Now, realistic play isn't at that limit, but it is closer to it than what Pemerton does. So, I can see why he, at least claims, it represents less agency.



Yeah, at the limit this would be pretty boring to DM too - kind of the equivalent of "you are in a maze of little twisty passages, all alike". 

But based on a more normal game my disagreement with pemerton is that it's not so much a question of less agency as a different type of agency, and the argument then becomes which type is more valid.



> Now, if the players choice of going left leads to a realm of undead and a quest to defeat them, and going right leads to a realm of orcs and a quest to establish peace between them and the dwarves, then that's a meaningful choice, BUT the GM still decided the agenda in either direction. We also have to ask if the players knew which choice lead where. Lets say they did, well then they 'voted with their (characters) feet' and we might call that agency over the content of the game, at least within the menu of choices presented. Still, there are types of things that the players can't do here, like introduce an element into the fiction that wasn't thought of by the GM.



Well, they actually can after a fashion if - when presented with a menu of choices - they choose 'none of the above' and then proactively go looking for something else, thus forcing the DM to think up new things she hasn't thought of yet.



> Obviously real games OFTEN include, informally, something like "wouldn't it be cool if my character was trying to find the cure for the disease that his town is dying of?" or whatever, and the GM taking the offered hook/backstory. So, probably for anyone that has played as long as we all obviously have, I suspect there's nothing too close to my spherical cow. We can still ask about the function of world building though, right?



We can ask, though I think everyone involved in this thread has at some point by now given a decent and considered answer one way or another.

Now we're just arguing about the answers. 

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

Ilbranteloth said:


> But player agency doesn’t mean they have full control of everything.



True.

And this is where I'll bring up a question -and a term - that hasn't yet hit this thread though it's been lurking behind the scenes the whole way: at what point does player agency drift into player entitlement?



> Whether the discovery was pre-authored or not doesn’t really have anything to do with player agency. The players are not being restricted in their choices or actions. Just like I can go get in my car and go left or right. My free will has not been altered. If I come to a red light it still hasn’t altered my free will or agency, it’s just a circumstance that provides a decision point.



Well, a red light attempts to alter your free will in that it (or the laws behind it) expects you to stop there.  You've still got the choice of going through it, I suppose, but there's strong discouragement for that choice.



> Now [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] may prefer a game where the players have a greater ability to author beyond the actions and decisions of their characters, and that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean the players have more agency, just a broader part of the authoring of the story.



However be advised that he's been quite consistent in this thread about tying authorship control and agency together in a you-mostly-can't-have-one-without-the-other kind of way, and has held steady through significant disagreement (including mine) with this position.

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> How is this different from an invisible opponent?



I don't know that it is - why would it be?

If the GM has decided that there is an unrevealed invislbe opponent present, and then a player declares "I use my wand of truesight", that is making a move that triggers the GM to tell the player some bit of pre-authored backstory. Isn't it?



Ovinomancer said:


> I'm not sure what you think the difference is.



As I understood your account, you had already decided that there was a blocked stairway. You then, as part of the resolution of the PCs' conversation with the orcs, decided that the stairway had been blocked to keep the boss from coming back. But it wasn't clear to me whether that was a note you made to yourself, or something that you told the players (eg one of the orcs says "The day after the warboss went missing, the shaman had us block up the stairs.")



Ovinomancer said:


> the DM doesn't decide the moves that are sufficient. The DM sets some of the fictional positioning required, yes, but not the moves. If the players take a hostage and ransom the map from the others, they can go get the map and the players never have to be in the study. There's a difference between establishing a bit of the necessary fictional positioning and dictating the only moves (action declaration + fictional positioning) that can achieve the goal.



You're right that "deciding the moves" may not have been the right term - "establishing a bit of the necessary fiction al positioning" is more accurate.

The hostage example is interesting, because there are many ways that could be adjudicated, and the differences betwween them can be highly illuminating of the etent to which play is GM- or player-driven. There was an extensive discussion of a similar example (hiring an assassin to kill the king) upthread, between [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], which I think brought out some of the relevant points.

not you seem very dismissive of play that doesn't have the players telling the DM new fiction[/quote]I've repeatedly posted, and I'm sure that some of those posts have been in reply to you, that none of the RPGs that I GM has a mechanic for player fiat introduction of fiction (and I have repeatedly drawn the contrast with Fate and OGL Conan in this respect).

Players don't have to be able to tell the GM new fiction in the course of play to exercise agency over the content of the shared fiction.

not The entire point, I thought, of your complaints about secret backstory was that is was pre-authored ficiton and it could be used to thwart player action declarations. Backstory that was presented as framing, even if prepared, and made known to the players was acceptable. Yet you've repeatedly commented that the notes employed, despite not thwarting player actions or even being secret (almost everything was known to players and the few things that weren't were trivially discovered and made known before having an impact), are pre-authored, secret backstory. It seems your goalposts are shifting, but I'm not sure as you may have just failed to make your points clear.[/quote]I'm not sure what you think the "goalposts" are here.

For the past X (> 200) posts, there has been an ongoing discussion about player agency. I've been focused on discussing player agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction. I've talked about various ways this can arise and be exercised, and various techniques that tend to reduce it. The use of pre-authored backstory to establish unrevealed fictional positioning is one way. The GM establishing the stakes of play, McGuffins, fetch quests, etc is another. If a fair bit of the focus of play is on the players making moves that will trigger the GM to narrate bits of the pre-established fiction, well that's another way in which the players will not be exercising a great deal of agency over the content of the shared fiction.

I'm sorry if the above is not clear - I've done my best to reitereate it many times over many posts. And I've linked multiple times to Eero Tuovinen's outline of the "standard narrativistic model" which also sets it out pretty clearly - the players build PCs with dramatic needs, the GM establishes situations that speak to those needs and hence provoke action declarations, those action declarations are resolved which generates various sorts of consequences, which feed into new situations, etc, etc.

There are a number of fairly common approaches to RPGing that constitute departures from the standard narrativistic model: the GM establishing stakes and goals for play that are not related to PCs' dramatic needs; play being focused on the players acquiring information from the GM about the content of the fiction, rather than on addressing the PCs' dramatic needs; the PCs not having any clear dramatic needs; consequences being established based on the GM's conception of what is important in the situation, or basedon GM pre-authorship of gameworld elements ("secret backstory" as a factor in action resolution); etc.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> I don't know that it is - why would it be?
> 
> If the GM has decided that there is an unrevealed invislbe opponent present, and then a player declares "I use my wand of truesight", that is making a move that triggers the GM to tell the player some bit of pre-authored backstory. Isn't it?
> 
> As I understood your account, you had already decided that there was a blocked stairway. You then, as part of the resolution of the PCs' conversation with the orcs, decided that the stairway had been blocked to keep the boss from coming back. But it wasn't clear to me whether that was a note you made to yourself, or something that you told the players (eg one of the orcs says "The day after the warboss went missing, the shaman had us block up the stairs.")
> 
> You're right that "deciding the moves" may not have been the right term - "establishing a bit of the necessary fiction al positioning" is more accurate.
> 
> The hostage example is interesting, because there are many ways that could be adjudicated, and the differences betwween them can be highly illuminating of the etent to which play is GM- or player-driven. There was an extensive discussion of a similar example (hiring an assassin to kill the king) upthread, between [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], which I think brought out some of the relevant points.
> 
> I've repeatedly posted, and I'm sure that some of those posts have been in reply to you, that none of the RPGs that I GM has a mechanic for player fiat introduction of fiction (and I have repeatedly drawn the contrast with Fate and OGL Conan in this respect).
> 
> Players don't have to be able to tell the GM new fiction in the course of play to exercise agency over the content of the shared fiction.
> 
> I'm not sure what you think the "goalposts" are here.
> 
> For the past X (> 200) posts, there has been an ongoing discussion about player agency. I've been focused on discussing player agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction. I've talked about various ways this can arise and be exercised, and various techniques that tend to reduce it. The use of pre-authored backstory to establish unrevealed fictional positioning is one way. The GM establishing the stakes of play, McGuffins, fetch quests, etc is another. If a fair bit of the focus of play is on the players making moves that will trigger the GM to narrate bits of the pre-established fiction, well that's another way in which the players will not be exercising a great deal of agency over the content of the shared fiction.
> 
> I'm sorry if the above is not clear - I've done my best to reitereate it many times over many posts. And I've linked multiple times to Eero Tuovinen's outline of the "standard narrativistic model" which also sets it out pretty clearly - the players build PCs with dramatic needs, the GM establishes situations that speak to those needs and hence provoke action declarations, those action declarations are resolved which generates various sorts of consequences, which feed into new situations, etc, etc.
> 
> There are a number of fairly common approaches to RPGing that constitute departures from the standard narrativistic model: the GM establishing stakes and goals for play that are not related to PCs' dramatic needs; play being focused on the players acquiring information from the GM about the content of the fiction, rather than on addressing the PCs' dramatic needs; the PCs not having any clear dramatic needs; consequences being established based on the GM's conception of what is important in the situation, or basedon GM pre-authorship of gameworld elements ("secret backstory" as a factor in action resolution); etc.




Again, I think the issue here is your choices to limit your analysis to things you define as supporting your playstyle, like defining agency in respect to the content of the shared fiction.  Even this definition is a bit vague, as you haven't clearly defined it at all.  Using Eero's concepts, it's pretty clear that you accept that the DM has authority over backstory, in that the players do not have any ability or very limited ability to author backstory.  You've repeated that you don't play games that allow players to author backstory by fiat a number of times, so it seems this is where your head is.  So, then, you're correct that you don't define agency with respect to the shared fiction as the ability to author new backstory - that's the DM's job.  Instead, it seems that what you really mean is that the DM has not predefined where the story goes, as in, there is no plot the DM is following.  The play generates the plot through play, thereby giving the players agency over the shared fiction because they help generate the plot of the story through play.  But this kind of definition applies to many kinds of DM-facing play as well -- my play example above had the players generating the fiction through their play, I had no notes or plot developed at all, just some prepared combat stats and a map.  Yes, they received new information from me, either about elements of the map or the combat statistics, but I didn't provide any plot.  In this sense, the 'notes' of the GM don't interfere with the kind of agency you're talking about, but you continue to say that it does.  I can only surmise that when you say 'secret backstory' you don't just mean framing notes the GM uses to provide a scene for play, but also a presupposed plot the GM is using to corral play.  If that's the case, you could have skipped a few hundred posts by being up front about that.  If that's not the case, well, you still haven't clearly explained your position.  That may be because you've defined your terms by the way you play and not by an overarching philosophy.  You keep referencing Eero's works, but I don't see anything there that defines agency the way you do.

And, speaking of Eero and how you define agency, it would appear many of the things I've said about the different kinds of agency and how their achieved by the different playstyles lines up with some of Eero's thoughts.  At least, in GNS theory, DM-facing play appears more gamist, and scratches gamist itches that narrativist play cannot, while narrativist play cannot scratch gamist itches.  Not that I'm a big fan of GNS theory, but it has some uses, and this may be one of them:  by defining agency as strictly a narrativist concern, you've excluded (perhaps intentionally) gamist creative agendas from that definition of agency.  However, in doing so, you've also excluded your definition of agency from gamist definitions of agency -- how can I win in a narrativist game, for instance, for the GNS definitions of winning in RPGs?

So, by co-opting a narrow definition of agency and not being upfront about what it doesn't cover, you've introduced a confusing discussion where those that use a broader definition of agency (or a different one) are being met with you claiming that agency is increase in your style of play and decreased in theirs.  A true statement if you use your narrow definition, but not in the general sense of agency.  Given you've been very careful to state agency in terms of the shared fiction, I think this distinction is known to you, which means you've decided to not clarify this point intentionally, either because you failed to understand why it caused confusion because you have trouble stepping to the other side of the argument to see the confusion or because you wanted to make a superiority claim in a manner that was obtuse and hard to counter.  I prefer the former.

ETA: there were some malformed quote tags in pemerton's post that I quoted that caused formatting issues with this post.  I've removed the tags and the material from my previous post that slipped in with the tags to make this more readable.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> <snip>
> 
> This seems to be completely orthogonal.
> 
> <snip>




Just as a side note, you've used this word a number of times throughout this thread, and I don't think it means what you think it means.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I've repeatedly posted, and I'm sure that some of those posts have been in reply to you, that none of the RPGs that I GM has a mechanic for player fiat introduction of fiction (and I have repeatedly drawn the contrast with Fate and OGL Conan in this respect).
> 
> Players don't have to be able to tell the GM new fiction in the course of play to exercise agency over the content of the shared fiction.



OK, now I'm a bit confused.

Up to this point you've been pretty steady in stating your view that, if I may sum up, comes down to player agency largely being defined by player contribution to the shared fiction.  And note there's only two ways in which a player can contribute to shared fiction: by altering something that's already present in the fiction (e.g. successfully searching for a secret door puts one in a wall already known to be part of the fictional scene; or by blowing up the room with a fireball), or by introducing something new (e.g. adding a weakness for gambling to the guard's background via successful use of player-side mechanics).

And to me, successful use of player-side mechanics to add something to the fiction is _when looked at in hindsight_ just the same as telling the DM that new fiction.  The only difference at the time is that the player's addition to the fiction doesn't take hold until confirmed by the dice and is denied or altered if the dice don't co-operate.

So I'm confused when you say this doesn't have to be there for the players to still have agency, when all along you've steadfastly held that it does.



> There are a number of fairly common approaches to RPGing that constitute departures from the standard narrativistic model: the GM establishing stakes and goals for play that are not related to PCs' dramatic needs; play being focused on the players acquiring information from the GM about the content of the fiction, rather than on addressing the PCs' dramatic needs; the PCs not having any clear dramatic needs; consequences being established based on the GM's conception of what is important in the situation, or basedon GM pre-authorship of gameworld elements ("secret backstory" as a factor in action resolution); etc.



I looked deeper at that Eero stuff last night and found something that surprised me: bluntly put, in his view the DM has control over backstory.

Given this, and given that backstory comes out of worldbuilding, there's your answer for what worldbuilding is for: to provide backstory.

Also given the above, and given that it only makes sense that not all of the game world's backstory is going to be known by the PCs at any particular time, the DM basing outcomes on backstory that remains yet unknown to the players/PCs is also implicitly endorsed.

Lanefan


----------



## Ilbranteloth

Lanefan said:


> True.
> 
> And this is where I'll bring up a question -and a term - that hasn't yet hit this thread though it's been lurking behind the scenes the whole way: at what point does player agency drift into player entitlement?




That certainly may be part of it. I’ve posted before that I think that D&D in particular has shifted to more of a player entitlement model, and some take that to the extreme that the DM should not influence the action at all. A “pure” sandbox if you will, where everything is placed ahead of time and the DM only tells the players what they find, and the dice are the only arbitrators to determine results. No DM fiat. It’s still not a choose your own adventure since the results aren’t predetermined.

Ironically, in discussions with players who feel very strongly about this approach, their very strong opinion is that the DM deciding anything on the fly, after the monsters, etc. have been placed, is infringing on their player agency. That is, anything that the DM introduces that is NOT secret backstory is taking away their player agency.




Lanefan said:


> Well, a red light attempts to alter your free will in that it (or the laws behind it) expects you to stop there.  You've still got the choice of going through it, I suppose, but there's strong discouragement for that choice.




But discouragement does not remove your free will, although it might influence your actions or decisions. And judging by the drivers I see, it’s not much of one. 



Lanefan said:


> However be advised that he's been quite consistent in this thread about tying authorship control and agency together in a you-mostly-can't-have-one-without-the-other kind of way, and has held steady through significant disagreement (including mine) with this position.
> 
> Lanefan




That’s why I have a problem with the term. In a game where the players explicitly have a shared responsibility in the authorship, taking that away from them is removing their player agency.

On the other hand, D&D and many other games do not explicitly give the players control of the fiction. The specifics vary through editions, but in general the game is based on the premise that the characters have control over their characters, which also provides some influence on the fiction through the character’s actions and decisions. They also have control over their backstory, but it’s not absolute. It’s subject to DM approval, and the DM can add to it if they wish, secretly if they so desire.

The definition of player agency is dependent upon the rules of the game being played. In OD&D through AD&D, the setting, events, creatures, and dungeons of the world were entirely within the purview of the DM. That doesn’t mean that they can’t share some of that with the players, whether during the game or in between sessions. 

But not doing that doesn’t remove or impact their player agency because it wasn’t part of their player agency in the first place within those rule sets.


----------



## Aenghus

Communication remains critical in a game. If one or more players are unhappy, that's not good for the game, no more than when the referee is unhappy. Suppressing dissent, cowing players, labeling unhappy players as "entitled" can all go wrong, if the underlying issues are ignored.

Often unhappy players are reasonable and have legitimate issues. Even if they are being unreasonable, being unhappy is still an issue for the game. Now the answer in some cases might be people leaving the game, but changes and compromises are possible and happen all the time.

Trying to suppress player feedback and ignore player requests works in a very small subset of RPGs, otherwise it's terrible advice. IMO.

I constantly try to find out what my players want from my games. It helps me prepare and run them, and be aware when they want stuff I feel dodgy about or don't want to explore.


----------



## chaochou

Ovinomancer said:


> Just as a side note, you've used this word a number of times throughout this thread, and I don't think it means what you think it means.




Just as a side note, since you have neither the courage to say what you think it means, nor the courtesy to try to establish how that differs from the way in which it has been used, your opinion is worthless. Just cowardly, passive aggressive rubbish.

If you're crtitiquing someone's use of language, the onus is on you to show that what 'you think' is correct. But you won't even state what you think. Not only are you wrong, you're gutless with it.


----------



## Lanefan

Looks like 'orthogonal' means one of:

being of or involved with right angles; or
being at right angles; or
(in statistics) statistically independent.

Certainly either of the latter two definitions could apply to how the word's been used in this thread; though which one applies at any given instance might be open to (mis)interpretation.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> No, the DM doesn't decide the moves that are sufficient.  The DM sets some of the fictional positioning required, yes, but not the moves.  If the players take a hostage and ransom the map from the others, they can go get the map and the players never have to be in the study.  There's a difference between establishing a bit of the necessary fictional positioning and dictating the only moves (action declaration + fictional positioning) that can achieve the goal.




Yeah, I think what this illustrates is that GMs CAN always 'go with what the players tried'. Its partly a matter of degree, and also exactly which things the players can try (IE can they suggest the existence of the map because a map would be really useful to them and then dice for it, or does it have to be pre-established, or can it be established by the GM on the spot). Its STILL a little different when the thing the players are deciding is ONLY the character's actions (as much as the characters may be 'seizing fate by the horns') the players are still playing within the fiction that was established by the GM. Yes, they have some choices they can make, in character. It isn't exactly the same as making choices outside of character stance. So it becomes a bit more than just degree.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

innerdude said:


> I think my post earlier, talking about example "scene frames," was very much looking at this is the same way. It's a very difficult line to draw to say that NOTHING can be secret from the players if it hinders their ability to author fiction. Even for me, someone who WANTS more player-driven play, that seems extreme. My example with the magistrate and the hidden prisoner was very much posing this question---is it okay to have the "hidden" gambling debt backstory for the magistrate, if it's trivially knowable with any sort of intelligent effort put forth by the players?
> 
> I think in that case, assuming that it only affects the _ease of success_ and doesn't thwart success entirely, and as long as there are multiple other options available to the players---including ones they might author themselves---I don't know that simply having some "hidden" element in a scene frame is a bad thing.
> 
> It would become a "bad thing" if 1) the PCs' success/failure either solely or greatly hinged on discovering that element, 2) the GM was actively limiting potential success if the PCs' action declarations weren't in line with the hidden element, and 3) the GM was unwilling to modify the fiction to accommodate input from the players that might make the action resolution even more satisfying.




Right, I don't have any principle in my GMing where "there can be no secrets from the players" or anything like that. I think when [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] talks about 'secret backstory' what he's referring to is something like when the GM drops some fact on the players like "remember that goblin that got away, well he snuck back around and stole all the oil flasks, you can't start the fire!" and the whole plan that the players came up with is thwarted by something they couldn't know about, had no control over, and wasn't possible for them to anticipate or even especially likely given their state of knowledge. 

Its not about "you can't have a mystery for the players/PCs to solve."


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Nagol said:


> You know what actually curtails action declaration?  Scene framing.  If you don't want the PCs to delve underwater and look for a shipwreck, frame them away from the ocean and into a tense encounter with the local baron in his keep.  Ta-da!  Possible action declaration curtailed!  If they never get back to the beach, the delve will never happen.  Before the anguished cries of "That would never happen!" occur, of course it does.  Probably as often as secret backstory is used as a club to force players onto the straight and narrow path the DM conceives as appropriate.  Both turn a decent tool into a weapon against player choice.



I don't think this is a relevant concern in any game that is run remotely like I would run it. The reason is that the GM isn't using framing as a control mechanic AT ALL. It just isn't one. Its merely a way of presenting a scene that relates to what the player's want. It challenges the characters and provides both a way to advance the player's agenda, and the possibility of failure, thus putting stress on the character. 

If a GM is 'framing' things into a railroad, that isn't even player-centered play at all IMHO. It might possibly share some techniques, maybe, but its still a totally different kind of play.



> Now, can secret back story offer value other than controlling the resolution of certain declarations?  I think so.
> 
> 
> It provides guidance for the GM as to how entities will react to stimuli generated by the players via assigned motivations, action constraints, and unexpected abilities.
> It provides a rationale as to why the situation is as it is that can help the GM faithfully and consistently adjudicate attempts to alter the situation.
> It can provide a mystery or puzzle for the players to notice and solve.
> It can provide the GM with inspiration for how to prevent the game from stalling e.g. a form of fail-forward so the answer isn't always "Ninjas attack!"




OK, the first three are definitely in the "I don't generally do it this way anymore" category, but I agree they can work this way. I think this is most useful in things like organized play (especially #2).

I'm not sure I understand the last one. I guess games IME 'stall' when the PCs are stuck and unable to find some 'secret door' in the material the GM has prepared which lets them move forward. I'd say you won't get stuck in the most common sense of that if you don't have (at least canonical) material of this sort, and players have some agency to change the terms of the situation. 

I guess if the PCs get stuck, isn't it really about the only option for the GM to have some sort of deus ex machina (IE ninjas attack)?!!?


----------



## Campbell

I want to go back and address the OP.

I do not think it is helpful to frame every incidence of GM created backstory or even all prepared material as world building. To me the connotation behind world building implies that the setting has value beyond providing a play space for the game we are playing. For me when I hear most more traditionally leaning GMs talk about world building it's almost always focused on creating something to show off to the players later, not setting up a situation for them to respond to.

I contrast it with dungeon design, scenario design or something like Apocalypse World style fronts which are designed fiction meant to provide the players with opportunities to play a game, make meaningful decisions and mess about in the fiction. I do not mean to demean color here. I think it can be important  to breathe life into the game. I just consider it the spice and not the main ingredient. I am not here to express my individual creativity or consume anyone else's individual creativity. I'm here for what we do together.

For a long time I personally held off running games because I had no interest in world building or planning out narrative arcs. The games I did run I did not enjoy because I felt like I had to do all this extraneous crap. I also became increasingly frustrated with games I played in where I felt like a bystander or audience member rather than an active participant. I am not knocking the enjoyment some people get from this sort of experience. I just find serial world exploration for its own sake incredibly boring.

I know I am not going to make many friends here by saying this, but I really think the role of world building really is about players as consumers of content rather than active contributors. Players are expected to enjoy the world building for its own sake, and make what I feel are relatively modest contributions through play. This isn't like a bad thing. It's just a thing.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Right, I don't have any principle in my GMing where "there can be no secrets from the players" or anything like that. I think when [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] talks about 'secret backstory' what he's referring to is something like when the GM drops some fact on the players like "remember that goblin that got away, well he snuck back around and stole all the oil flasks, you can't start the fire!" and the whole plan that the players came up with is thwarted by something they couldn't know about, had no control over, and wasn't possible for them to anticipate or even especially likely given their state of knowledge.



That's not really true, though.  PCs often set a guard on their stuff, which would prevent the goblin's success, so they do have a degree of control over the situation.  PCs often anticipate thieves going after their stuff, ignoring thieves in D&D is a good way to get stuff stolen.  It's very possible for them to anticipate the theft, if not who stole the oil.  Also, they don't necessarily need oil to start a fire, so it's very likely that the theft won't even thwart them.  It would just be a minor setback.

Most situations that I've seen that are given to show how the DM is thwarting the players with secret backstory are similarly flawed.  There are ways to have avoided the situation had they taken them.  That's not to say that they can't be thwarted, but that A) those situations are much rarer than people make them out to be, and/or involve railroading.


----------



## pemerton

Ilbranteloth said:


> Whether the discovery was pre-authored or not doesn’t really have anything to do with player agency. The players are not being restricted in their choices or actions.



Yes they were.

Just to give a simple example: if the GM tells the players they are in the middle of a desert that stretches as far as they can see in every direction, then they are not able to declare, as actions for their PCs, that they board their boat and sail away.



Ilbranteloth said:


> @pemerton may prefer a game where the players have a greater ability to author beyond the actions and decisions of their characters



This has come up so many times in this thread that I should just have a bot posting my response to it!

You can have a game with a high degree of player agency over the shared fiction which doesn't require the players doing anything in the course of play but delcaring actions for their PCs.

There are two main components to this that I have mentioned multiple (extremely multiple) times upthread. (1) The core focus of, and material, for plauy is established by the GM by reference to player signals. (2) Player acrion declarations for their PCs are adjudicated via action resolution mechanics rather than unrevealed fictional positioning known only to the GM.

That's not to say there is anything wrong with (3) the players have fiat power to introduce elements of the fiction. That is an occasional ad hoc element in my games. It is a systematic element in some systems (eg Fate, OGL Conan) and it is a more important part of some other posters RPGing than it is of mine (eg  [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION],  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]). But to talk about player agency over the content of the shared fiction is not to talk particularly about (3) at all. (1) and (2) are the main game.



Lanefan said:


> he's been quite consistent in this thread about tying authorship control and agency together in a you-mostly-can't-have-one-without-the-other kind of way, and has held steady through significant disagreement



Lanefan, I refer you to the above paragraphs in this post which are a reiteration of something that you must have already encountered (eg I would have posted it in reply to you) multiple times in this thread.

EDIT:



Lanefan said:


> Up to this point you've been pretty steady in stating your view that, if I may sum up, comes down to player agency largely being defined by player contribution to the shared fiction.



I haven't defined player agency at all - but yes, I have been interested mostly in player agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction. That's why I keep using that phrase!



Lanefan said:


> there's only two ways in which a player can contribute to shared fiction: by altering something that's already present in the fiction (e.g. successfully searching for a secret door puts one in a wall already known to be part of the fictional scene; or by blowing up the room with a fireball), or by introducing something new (e.g. adding a weakness for gambling to the guard's background via successful use of player-side mechanics).



This claim is not true.

Here's one way that a player can exercise agency in respect of the shared fiction: s/he declares an action along the lines of "I offer the bribe a guard"; then we resolve that action using whatever the mechanics are (eg Traveller's mechanics for the bribery skill; the Moldvay Basic reaction table; etc); and if the action succeeds, we now know - among other things - that the guard in question was susceptible to being bribed.

That doesn't involve rewriting anything. Nor does it involve introducing something new. This is one way in which RPGs are different from cooperative storytelling games - they have action resolution mechanics to mediate the process of establishing fiction.

Here's another way a player can exercise agency in respect of the shared fiction: s/he tells the GM that her PC is a fox spirit banished from the animal courts of heaven. The GM then frames a scene in which constables of hell come to the PCs in their teahouse, and declare that the PC must come with them to face judgement for violating the terms of that banishment.

That doesn't involve rewriting anything. The only fiction that it introduces is backstory about the PC (when this happened in one of my campaigns, the fact that the gameworld includes animal courts in heaven was already an established part of the fiction). It is the GM who writes in the constables of hell. But they are a clear response to the backstory established by the player. The GM's introduction of them into the fiction affirms the player's agency over the content of the shared fiction.



Lanefan said:


> I looked deeper at that Eero stuff last night and found something that surprised me: bluntly put, in his view the DM has control over backstory.



Worldbuilding, in the OP sense, is one way to establish backstory. It's not the only way. Consider the example that was just given.

To say that the GM is responsible for managing the backstory - as occurs in the example of constables of hell coming to take the PC off to face trial - is not to say that the GM is expected to pre-author setting material (i) independently of player signals about PC dramatic needs, or (ii) so as to use it as a secret element of fictional positioning in the adjudication of action declarations.


----------



## pemerton

Ilbranteloth said:


> I can go get in my car and go left or right. My free will has not been altered.



A tangential point - the whole purpose of urban design, including traffic management and the design of transport infrastructure, is to channel agency in various ways. That you see a choice to turn left or turn right on a paved road with footpaths, buildings, etc in the way as no burden on your agency really just shows how much you have internalised certain social expectations and habits.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The players can not only come up with ways that I didn't think of, but come up with ideas that will yield helpful information that I didn't think of.



Where does that information come from? If the GM didn't think of it, who did? (I'm taking it as given that, being fiction, it didn't write itself.)



Maxperson said:


> Most situations that I've seen that are given to show how the DM is thwarting the players with secret backstory are similarly flawed.  There are ways to have avoided the situation had they taken them.  That's not to say that they can't be thwarted, but that A) those situations are much rarer than people make them out to be, and/or involve railroading.



_There are ways to have avoided the situation had they taken them_ - what does this mean, other than that _there is stuff that the GM might have told the players, but they didn't make the right moves to be told that stuff_?


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> you've used this word a number of times throughout this thread, and I don't think it means what you think it means.



"Orthogonal to" = at right angles to, or - in the context of discussion, analysis and argument - _cutting across_ and/or _not running in the same direction as_.

EDIT: more-or-less as [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] said.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> You don't like the technique, which is fine, but then you don't seem to ever even allow the possibility that the technique has anything to offer.



"Having something to offer" looks like an aesthetic judgement of the sort that I hope to avoid.

GM pre-authorship of backstory used to adjudicate player action declarations (eg the attempt to bribe the guard will fail, because the GM has already establihsed in his/her notes that the guard can't be corrupted) will tend to have a certain effect on play: players will spend effort and time during the play of the game trying to learn that backstory so that they can have their PCs achieve the things that they want their PCs to achieve. The way the players learn that backstory is by making moves with their PCs that trigger the GM to tell it to them.



hawkeyefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If this is genuinely setting material - as opposed to ideas that might seem useful in play - then what prevents it from affecting player action declarations?
> 
> If the material deals with the locations of things, or the dispositions of NPCs, or the hidden forces at work in some game-relevant situation, how does a GM avoid it coming into collision with player conceptions of the shape of the fiction?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The GM's judgment. Why MUST it conflict with what the  player wants? Why can't the GM have an idea in his mind ahead of time, with some ideas about what can or may happen, but not committing to anything until the players have interacted with the idea?
Click to expand...


Here you seem to be endorsing the distinction I drew upthread between preparation and pre-authorship. What you describe here doesn't seem to be worldbuilding, because it doesn't establish any element of the setting, of the shared fiction



hawkeyefan said:


> I don't place the same level of value that you place on player agency.



OK. Upthread I had thought you, as well as some other posters, had asserted that the use of GM pre-authored backstory and setting has no implications for player agency over the content of the shared fiction. If I have confused your position with that of some other posters, I apologise.

Quite a way upthread (many hundred posts) I suggested that one thing that worldbuilding (in the sense of GM pre-authored backstory and setting) is for is to provide material for the GM to read/relate to the players. Many posters disagreed with this. But am I right in thinking that you agree? - for instance, this seems to be what you have in mind when you refer to the GM establishing a compelling story. Some of that story will come out because the players make moves that trigger the GM to relate to them pre-authored material that helps make up the story. And some of that story will come out because the GM relates elements of it in the course of framing the PCs into a situation which pertains to/expresses the GM's compelling story.


----------



## pemerton

Ilbranteloth said:


> I’ve posted before that I think that D&D in particular has shifted to more of a player entitlement model, and some take that to the extreme that the DM should not influence the action at all. A “pure” sandbox if you will, where everything is placed ahead of time and the DM only tells the players what they find, and the dice are the only arbitrators to determine results.



That is not an example of the GM not influencing the action at all. The parameters for action declaration have all been established by the GM!



Ilbranteloth said:


> D&D and many other games do not explicitly give the players control of the fiction.



The D&D combat rules give the players a form of control of the fiction. Eg if a player declares "My PC attacks the orc" then (unless certain, relatively uncommon, defeating factors are present) it is true in the fiction that the PC attacks the orc. And if the numbers on the to hit and damage dice are such that (i) the to hit number is high enough relative to AC, and (ii) the hit points dealt equal or exceed the orc's hit points, then the orc is dead - ie a change in the fiction resulting from the resolution of the player's action declaration.

It's not fiat authorship, but it is clearly a type of control.


----------



## pemerton

Ilbranteloth said:


> The definition of player agency is dependent upon the rules of the game being played.



I have been unambiguous in referring to _player agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction_. If the way some person GMs a RPG means that the players have little or no such agency, then they have little or no such agency.

That they might have some other form of agency over some other thing (eg the agency to trigger the GM to tell them certain things) doesn't change that fact.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> That is not an example of the GM not influencing the action at all. The parameters for action declaration have all been established by the GM!



Though I may be wrong, I think he means the sort of game where once the DM has set the world up and placed the PCs into an initial setting she from there on acts as nothing more than a glorified CPU whose only purposes are to react to what the PCs do, to narrate those reactions neutrally, and to describe the scenery around the PCs wherever they may be.  

The parameters for action declaration are set by a combination of the rules system in use (what actions are allowed and-or how are they resolved) and the fictional environment in which the PCs are at the time (as per your example of no boats in mid-desert). 

Not my cup of tea, but there's players out there who cut their teeth on MMORPGs and thus expect this sort of thing in a table-top game.



> The D&D combat rules give the players a form of control of the fiction. Eg if a player declares "My PC attacks the orc" then (unless certain, relatively uncommon, defeating factors are present) it is true in the fiction that the PC attacks the orc. And if the numbers on the to hit and damage dice are such that (i) the to hit number is high enough relative to AC, and (ii) the hit points dealt equal or exceed the orc's hit points, then the orc is dead - ie a change in the fiction resulting from the resolution of the player's action declaration.



Absolutely.  And in most RPGs the players can further control the fiction without referring to dice at all by simply deciding to go that way as opposed to this way, or talk to this NPC instead of that one, or...

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> Again, I think the issue here is your choices to limit your analysis to things you define as supporting your playstyle, like defining agency in respect to the content of the shared fiction.



I've not defined agency as anything. I have talked about a form of agency that I am interested in - namely, player agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction.

I have also talked, at length and in many posts (eg some just made, which repeat points that appear to have been missed in earlier posts) about ways in which players can exercise agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction.

I have also talked about other sorts of agency - eg (apropos of your reference to "gamism") I have talked about the very different sort of agency that is present in classic D&D dungeoneering play (beating the dungeon by mapping it, and coming up with effective methods of looting), and have identified some of the conceits and conventions of play that are necessary to make this work.

As far as Eero Tuovinen's blog is concerned:

(i) He draws upon a pre-existing body of analysis - The Forge discussions of narrativism - in the blog I have linked to. He makes this quite explicit. Player agency in narrativism is all about agency over the content of the shared fiction: see eg here:

Story Now requires that at least one engaging issue or problematic feature of human existence be _addressed_ in the process of role-playing. "Address" means:

*Establishing the issue's Explorative expressions in the game-world, "fixing" them into imaginary place.

*Developing the issue as a source of continued conflict, perhaps changing any number of things about it, such as which side is being taken by a given character, or providing more depth to why the antagonistic side of the issue exists at all.

*Resolving the issue through the decisions of the players of the protagonists, as well as various features and constraints of the circumstances.​
Can it really be that easy? Yes, Narrativism is that easy. The _Now_ refers to the people, during actual play, focusing their imagination to create those emotional moments of decision-making and action, and paying attention to one another as they do it. To do that, they relate to "the story" very much as authors do for novels, as playwrights do for plays, and screenwriters do for film at the creative moment or moments. Think of the Now as meaning, "in the moment," or "engaged in doing it," in terms of input and emotional feedback among one another. The Now also means "get to it," in which "it" refers to any Explorative element or combination of elements that increases the enjoyment of that issue I'm talking about.

There cannot be any "_the_ story" during Narrativist play, because to have such a thing (fixed plot or pre-agreed theme) is to remove the whole point: the creative moments of addressing the issue(s).​
(2) Eero Tuovinen doesn't say that players have no authority to author backstory. Eg:

One of the players is a gamemaster . . . The rest of the players each have their own characters to play . . . [O]nce the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character​
Part of how a player knows his/her PC is because s/he knows the PC's backstory (which contributes to establishing dramatic needs).

I'm sorry you find what I'm describing confusing. There are any number of RPGs that are written to be run (more-or-less) along the lines of the "standard narrativistic model", where the role of the players and of the GM is (more-or-less) as Eero Tuovinen describes; and in which players exercise agency over the shared fiction in the sorts of ways I have described in posts in this thread.



Ovinomancer said:


> it seems that what you really mean is that the DM has not predefined where the story goes, as in, there is no plot the DM is following. The play generates the plot through play, thereby giving the players agency over the shared fiction because they help generate the plot of the story through play. But this kind of definition applies to many kinds of DM-facing play as well -- my play example above had the players generating the fiction through their play, I had no notes or plot developed at all, just some prepared combat stats and a map. Yes, they received new information from me, either about elements of the map or the combat statistics, but I didn't provide any plot. In this sense, the 'notes' of the GM don't interfere with the kind of agency you're talking about, but you continue to say that it does. I can only surmise that when you say 'secret backstory' you don't just mean framing notes the GM uses to provide a scene for play, but also a presupposed plot the GM is using to corral play.



I have given examples of what I have in mind. I think they're pretty clear:

To the extent that an important part of play is making moves that trigger the GM to tell them stuff that the GM has (literally or notionally) in his/her notes, the players are not exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction. They are triggering the GM to exercise such agency (if the notes are purely notional) or to relate the outcome of prior such exercised of agency (if the notes are literal). This may happen in a game with a pre-conceived story or plot; it may happen in some forms of sandbox; it is an important part of classic dungeoneering.

To the extent that the content of GM framing reflects the GM's conception of the situation, the point of the game, the nature of the gameworld, etc, that is the GM and not the players exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction. Again, this may or may not be related to the GM having a pre-conceived story or plot.

To the extent that the outcomes of action resolution are determined by treating prior GM authorship of (hitherto unrevealed) bits of the setting as a component of the fictional positioning, rather than using the action resolution mechanics to determine what happens in the fiction, the GM rather than the players is exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction. This may be related to the GM having a pre-conceived story or plot (". . . and then they find the map where it got lost in the kitchen, which means that . . ."); or it may be simply because the GM has made a catalogue of gameworld elements ("the study has a desk in it with empty drawers; the kitchen has a map in the breadbin, where someone accidentally dropped it; the guard is not amenable to being bribed; etc, etc").​
These techniques are often related - eg the more that the third is a feature of play, then the more likely the first will be also, as the players try to make moves that reveal the hitherto unrevealed fictional positioning. (In this thread various posters have described this as "exploring the gameworld", "acquiring information", "investigating", etc.) And one and three tend to lead to two, as they lead to the GM's ideas about the gameworld becoming a prominent aspect of play.

I don't see what is confusing about any of this.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> I think he means the sort of game where once the DM has set the world up and placed the PCs into an initial setting she from there on acts as nothing more than a glorified CPU whose only purposes are to react to what the PCs do, to narrate those reactions neutrally, and to describe the scenery around the PCs wherever they may be.
> 
> The parameters for action declaration are set by a combination of the rules system in use (what actions are allowed and-or how are they resolved) and the fictional environment in which the PCs are at the time (as per your example of no boats in mid-desert).



I understand what sort of game [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] is describing. I'm just saying that it's a mistake to say that the GM doesn't influence the action at all. When one says that _the fictional environment establishes a parameter for action declaration_ , and also note that _the GM established the fictional environment_, we see that _the GM is influencing actions a great deal_.

In thinking about the significance of this for play, I think it's helpful to think about game conventions or conceits. If I turn up to play a session of Moldvay Basic, or of the sort of D&D that Gygax describes in the "Successful Adventuring" section of his PHB, then of course the fictional situation is going to be a dungeon. That's what the game is about. And it has a lot of system elements - mechanics, methods, implicit understandings - to support play in that context.

If I turn up to play a game of AD&D and the GM says, "Right, you're in a desert" that's already very different from the Moldvay Basic case.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, I think what this illustrates is that GMs CAN always 'go with what the players tried'. Its partly a matter of degree, and also exactly which things the players can try (IE can they suggest the existence of the map because a map would be really useful to them and then dice for it, or does it have to be pre-established, or can it be established by the GM on the spot). Its STILL a little different when the thing the players are deciding is ONLY the character's actions (as much as the characters may be 'seizing fate by the horns') the players are still playing within the fiction that was established by the GM. Yes, they have some choices they can make, in character. It isn't exactly the same as making choices outside of character stance. So it becomes a bit more than just degree.




I can't really parse this until I know what you mean by character stance.  Firstly, I'm not sure I agree with the stance philosophy, but it has uses, so we can work with it.  That said, character isn't a stance I'm familiar with.  Do you mean character advocacy or do you mean actor stance?  The difference is that with character advocacy, your primary play goal is to advocate for the things you think your character cares about, while with actor stance you play from the position your character inhabits in the gameworld.  The former doesn't care if the levers being pulled are in character to meta-game, the latter does.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> "Orthogonal to" = at right angles to, or - in the context of discussion, analysis and argument - _cutting across_ and/or _not running in the same direction as_.
> 
> EDIT: more-or-less as [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] said.




"To" and "as" being operative.  The times you've used this you've made statements like, "This is orthogonal."  You've then not been clear what this is orthogonal to or not running in the same direction as.  Correct usage requires being clear what the other thing is; "This is orthogonal to this other thing."

I thought pointing out a minor pet peeve on word usage with a Princess Bride paraphrase would have been funny.  Apparently, that humor didn't parse well.  My apologies to those that took the time to answer with respect despite my failed attempt at humor.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I've not defined agency as anything. I have talked about a form of agency that I am interested in - namely, player agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction.



Fair enough.

I guess the problem we're having is that while you're interested in that specific form of agency, not everyone is.  Further, even though some less-played systems promote it by design not everyone sees it as a relevant component of the overall agency held by players in most 'mainstream' games/systems; which are what most of us play and are thus a) familiar with and b) basing our thoughts on.



> I have also talked about other sorts of agency - eg (apropos of your reference to "gamism") I have talked about the very different sort of agency that is present in classic D&D dungeoneering play (beating the dungeon by mapping it, and coming up with effective methods of looting), and have identified some of the conceits and conventions of play that are necessary to make this work.



And more relevant, you've here acknowledged those forms of agency exist.  This hasn't always been clear up to now. 



> As far as Eero Tuovinen's blog is concerned:
> 
> (i) He draws upon a pre-existing body of analysis - The Forge discussions of narrativism ...



And from my standpoint he might as well pack it in right there.

What Edwards calls "transcript" is the story I want to get out of a campaign; and it's also the story being written during play.  

All the rest of Edwards' stuff is...well, to keep Eric's grandma happy I probably better hadn't use the words I'd like to use for it. 



> Can it really be that easy? Yes, Narrativism is that easy. The _Now_ refers to the people, during actual play, focusing their imagination to create those emotional moments of decision-making and action, and paying attention to one another as they do it. To do that, they relate to "the story" very much as authors do for novels, as playwrights do for plays, and screenwriters do for film at the creative moment or moments. Think of the Now as meaning, "in the moment," or "engaged in doing it," in terms of input and emotional feedback among one another.



This sort of thing can easily arise out of a Gygaxian dungeon.  All it needs is some immersion into character by the players and a dM who's willing to give them the time between the combats to roleplay their stories/emotions out.  They don't even all have to relate to the current adventure e.g. romantic entanglements between PCs, or rivalries friendly or otherwise, or pranks, etc.


> The Now also means "get to it," in which "it" refers to any Explorative element or combination of elements that increases the enjoyment of that issue I'm talking about.



As long as it doesn't tread on the toes of things raised in my last paragraph.



> (2) Eero Tuovinen doesn't say that players have no authority to author backstory. Eg:
> 
> One of the players is a gamemaster . . . The rest of the players each have their own characters to play . . . [O]nce the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character
> 
> Part of how a player knows his/her PC is because s/he knows the PC's backstory (which contributes to establishing dramatic needs).​



Yet he's also very clear that backstory belongs to the DM.  A bit contradictory, this. 



> I have given examples of what I have in mind. I think they're pretty clear:
> 
> To the extent that an important part of play is making moves that trigger the GM to tell them stuff that the GM has (literally or notionally) in his/her notes, the players are not exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction. They are triggering the GM to exercise such agency (if the notes are purely notional) or to relate the outcome of prior such exercised of agency (if the notes are literal). This may happen in a game with a pre-conceived story or plot; it may happen in some forms of sandbox; it is an important part of classic dungeoneering.
> 
> To the extent that the content of GM framing reflects the GM's conception of the situation, the point of the game, the nature of the gameworld, etc, that is the GM and not the players exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction. Again, this may or may not be related to the GM having a pre-conceived story or plot.
> 
> To the extent that the outcomes of action resolution are determined by treating prior GM authorship of (hitherto unrevealed) bits of the setting as a component of the fictional positioning, rather than using the action resolution mechanics to determine what happens in the fiction, the GM rather than the players is exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction. This may be related to the GM having a pre-conceived story or plot (". . . and then they find the map where it got lost in the kitchen, which means that . . ."); or it may be simply because the GM has made a catalogue of gameworld elements ("the study has a desk in it with empty drawers; the kitchen has a map in the breadbin, where someone accidentally dropped it; the guard is not amenable to being bribed; etc, etc").
> 
> These techniques are often related - eg the more that the third is a feature of play, then the more likely the first will be also, as the players try to make moves that reveal the hitherto unrevealed fictional positioning. (In this thread various posters have described this as "exploring the gameworld", "acquiring information", "investigating", etc.) And one and three tend to lead to two, as they lead to the GM's ideas about the gameworld becoming a prominent aspect of play.
> 
> I don't see what is confusing about any of this.​



I don't see what is bad about any of this.

Lanefan​


----------



## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> That is not an example of the GM not influencing the action at all. The parameters for action declaration have all been established by the GM!




Or by the author of the published adventure. In other words, the DM has no creative input during the game itself. And I’m not saying I agree anyway. My point was simply that there are players who believe that anything other than “secret backstory” is infringing on their player agency.



pemerton said:


> The D&D combat rules give the players a form of control of the fiction. Eg if a player declares "My PC attacks the orc" then (unless certain, relatively uncommon, defeating factors are present) it is true in the fiction that the PC attacks the orc. And if the numbers on the to hit and damage dice are such that (i) the to hit number is high enough relative to AC, and (ii) the hit points dealt equal or exceed the orc's hit points, then the orc is dead - ie a change in the fiction resulting from the resolution of the player's action declaration.
> 
> It's not fiat authorship, but it is clearly a type of control.




Which I acknowledged. But that’s not the type of authorship I was referring to. I was referring specifically to authorship of the setting and fiction beyond the decisions and actions of their character. And D&D, with the exception of the establishment of the character background primarily during character creation, does not explicitly provide for that. 

Both were simply examples of what defines “player agency” within the context of those types of game play.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> I understand what sort of game [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] is describing. I'm just saying that it's a mistake to say that the GM doesn't influence the action at all. When one says that _the fictional environment establishes a parameter for action declaration_ , and also note that _the GM established the fictional environment_, we see that _the GM is influencing actions a great deal_.




First, setting up the parameters for the action is different than authoring the fiction.

Second, I was describing a specific type of player that clearly defines player agency different than you. I didn't say that _I_ thought the DM didn't have any influence, and nor did I explicitly say they didn't. What their definition of player agency seems to indicate is that they don't want the DM to introduce new elements to the fiction itself. Yes, I know that even in reacting to the actions of the PCs to play the part of the NPCs and monsters does this, and the setting up of the dungeon itself does too. And in past discussions both you and I have pointed these facts out.

The DM obviously exerts more influence in this type of game during social interactions, but most of these types of players focus almost entirely on the exploration aspect of the game (which involves combat), in the wilderness and/or dungeon. Overarching plots, if there is one, tend to be of the "threat to civilization" type where the villains are holed up in their lair, apparently content to let the PCs come in and foil their plans. A _Keep on the Borderlands_ rather than a _Castle Ravenloft_ approach.

All of this, of course, was in the context of pointing out that player agency means very different things depending on the context of the game itself.



pemerton said:


> In thinking about the significance of this for play, I think it's helpful to think about game conventions or conceits. If I turn up to play a session of Moldvay Basic, or of the sort of D&D that Gygax describes in the "Successful Adventuring" section of his PHB, then of course the fictional situation is going to be a dungeon. That's what the game is about. And it has a lot of system elements - mechanics, methods, implicit understandings - to support play in that context.
> 
> If I turn up to play a game of AD&D and the GM says, "Right, you're in a desert" that's already very different from the Moldvay Basic case.




This is one of the flaws in the post you originally referenced in my opinion. While the Moldvay rule book doesn't have wilderness rules per se, the Moldvay Basic Set was packaged with B2. He obviously didn't know that when he picked up the game to play it. From my perspective, the rules encompass what comes in the box, because that package was designed to give beginning players and DMs everything they need to know to run the game. And in that context, finding the dungeon - the exploration - is an important part of the game. The module spends quite a bit of space describing the keep and its purpose, and then wilderness adventuring to the degree that the DM is instructed to add their own material to the wilderness, including a specific location for their own dungeon. Note that it doesn't leave them blank space within the dungeon itself, but that the DMs creative input is directed toward the wilderness. 

So my expectation would be that the game would start outside the dungeon in question if I'm playing Moldvay basic. And indeed, nearly every "B" module released in the Moldvay basic era does not start at the door of a dungeon, there is exploration required first.


----------



## Morrus

chaochou said:


> Just as a side note, since you have neither the courage to say what you think it means, nor the courtesy to try to establish how that differs from the way in which it has been used, your opinion is worthless. Just cowardly, passive aggressive rubbish.
> 
> If you're crtitiquing someone's use of language, the onus is on you to show that what 'you think' is correct. But you won't even state what you think. Not only are you wrong, you're gutless with it.




Namecalling is *not* appropriate. Please do not post in this thread again.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Where does that information come from? If the GM didn't think of it, who did? (I'm taking it as given that, being fiction, it didn't write itself.)




If it's not pre-authored information, then it's authored on the spot like you play it.  The players have dictated the authoring of that information by coming up with something I didn't think of, which triggered me to think of something I didn't pre-author to give to them, or at least give them the chance to receive if the outcome is in doubt.



> _There are ways to have avoided the situation had they taken them_ - what does this mean, other than that _there is stuff that the GM might have told the players, but they didn't make the right moves to be told that stuff_?



It means that they had ways through player agency to thwart to theft.  I'm going to refer you back to the post below, since you seem to have ignored it.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...uilding*-for&p=7354332&viewfull=1#post7354332


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> The D&D combat rules give the players a form of control of the fiction. Eg if a player declares "My PC attacks the orc" then (unless certain, relatively uncommon, defeating factors are present) it is true in the fiction that the PC attacks the orc. And if the numbers on the to hit and damage dice are such that (i) the to hit number is high enough relative to AC, and (ii) the hit points dealt equal or exceed the orc's hit points, then the orc is dead - ie a change in the fiction resulting from the resolution of the player's action declaration.




This is no different than, "My PC does action X" then (unless certain, relatively uncommon, defeating factors are present) it is true in the fiction that PC does action X.  And if the numbers on the d20 roll are such that the d20 roll is high enough relative to the DC, the action happens or information is given and there is a change in the fiction resulting from the resolution of the player's action declaration.  



> It's not fiat authorship, but it is clearly a type of control.




And yet somehow, it's not control when it happens outside of combat.  It's "choose your own adventure".  There is no difference between pre-authored orcs with pre-authored ACs and HPs, and the DMs pre-authored world content.  If your combat example is player control over the fiction, then the rest is as well.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> I've not defined agency as anything. I have talked about a form of agency that I am interested in - namely, player agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction.
> 
> I have also talked about other sorts of agency - eg (apropos of your reference to "gamism") I have talked about the very different sort of agency that is present in classic D&D dungeoneering play (beating the dungeon by mapping it, and coming up with effective methods of looting), and have identified some of the conceits and conventions of play that are necessary to make this work.
> 
> I have also talked, at length and in many posts (eg some just made, which repeat points that appear to have been missed in earlier posts) about ways in which players can exercise agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction.



This is a definition of agency, though, so I'm not sure what you're arguing against.  This isn't a critique, it's a clear statement about the fact that you've defined agency for the purposes of your discussion as relating to the content of the shared fiction ONLY.  Every time you use the word agency in this thread without explicit reference otherwise (like the above mention) this is what I'm assuming you mean.  





> As far as Eero Tuovinen's blog is concerned:
> 
> (i) He draws upon a pre-existing body of analysis - The Forge discussions of narrativism - in the blog I have linked to. He makes this quite explicit. Player agency in narrativism is all about agency over the content of the shared fiction: see eg here:
> 
> Story Now requires that at least one engaging issue or problematic feature of human existence be _addressed_ in the process of role-playing. "Address" means:
> 
> *Establishing the issue's Explorative expressions in the game-world, "fixing" them into imaginary place.
> 
> *Developing the issue as a source of continued conflict, perhaps changing any number of things about it, such as which side is being taken by a given character, or providing more depth to why the antagonistic side of the issue exists at all.
> 
> *Resolving the issue through the decisions of the players of the protagonists, as well as various features and constraints of the circumstances.​
> Can it really be that easy? Yes, Narrativism is that easy. The _Now_ refers to the people, during actual play, focusing their imagination to create those emotional moments of decision-making and action, and paying attention to one another as they do it. To do that, they relate to "the story" very much as authors do for novels, as playwrights do for plays, and screenwriters do for film at the creative moment or moments. Think of the Now as meaning, "in the moment," or "engaged in doing it," in terms of input and emotional feedback among one another. The Now also means "get to it," in which "it" refers to any Explorative element or combination of elements that increases the enjoyment of that issue I'm talking about.
> 
> There cannot be any "_the_ story" during Narrativist play, because to have such a thing (fixed plot or pre-agreed theme) is to remove the whole point: the creative moments of addressing the issue(s).​




For others not already steeped in GNS theory, Exploration (capital E) means playing the game, not exploring somewhere inside the game.  

Forge-speak is opaque at best.  What this is saying in simpler terms is that play focuses on the immediate scene only - there are no bits decided about the next scene until this one is concluded -- and that a focus of play is about some human issue.  That's more opaqueness, as what a 'human issue' is isn't clearly defined by the term, but usually it means something about how people interact and the goals of people.  So, then, the game should focus primarily on the motivations and goals of the characters that are played by the humans playing the game.

The bits about the 'now' are kinda loose, though.  The idea is that there isn't a preplanned 'next scene' in story now games, it's only about this scene.  The next scene won't exist until we know how this scene completes, and then the next scene will generate based on how this scene resolved.  So, if you have a 'scene' about negotiating with orcs in a ruined village the next scene can't be created at all until that resolves, and then the next scene would be framed based on the outcome of the negotiation scene.  By this, the fact I had an encounter map for the dungeon under the keep, or even the fact that there was a dungeon under the keep, was not Story Now play because it was determined in advance of the completion of the negotiation scene, which is a no-no.  Had the negotiation scene ended with it having been introduced -- either by players or by the DM in response to a player statement -- that there was a dungeon, then that's now acceptable for a possible next scene (provided that the dungeon naturally flows as the next scene from the previous one).

This is why you see so much made of scenes, they are the core unit of play for Story Now.

This is also why I've made comments about more broadly focused scenes -- for instance, my play example of the orcs in the ruined village, the orcs in the ruined keep, and the dungeon under the keep were a single, broadly framed scene.  The action is 'how will you resolve finding an anvil here', but the scene isn't immediately framed into crisis onto that question.  Rather, it's set up so that the players have many choices to advance through the scene to answer the question posed -- can we find the anvil? -- and the crisis points aren't hard framed into the scene but allowed to develop through repeated action declarations by the players.  Yes, a lot of prepped material is used, and some of the interactions are asking the DM to reveal more about the scene (read from notes), but the crisis points are generated by the players making action declarations and engaging mechanics until a crisis develops.  In this play example, the first crisis was instated by the players trying to parley with usually hostile orcs.  The second was the fight that occurred due to a failed stealth challenge.  The third was the fight in the dungeon where the mechanics led to the characters failing their attempt to recover the orc warboss.  There will be a few more in the next session as they try again with the consequences of their first failure complicating the attempt.  I, as DM, didn't set any of these crisis points ahead of time - the occurred due to player action declarations and use of mechanics.  None of my notes resulted in these action declarations failing.  

The point of the above is that my play example does revolve around human issues -- did the players wish to exterminate the orcs or make friends with them and what does that mean for the characters and the fiction?  Given the premise -- the players are stranded in a foreign plane of existence with no means of escape and limited resources, the decision to try to befriend the orcs and gain some allies is pretty weighty.  Further, I don't have a 'next scene' planned after this -- however this plays out, the players will make a decision on what to do next to advance their immediate goals.



> (2) Eero Tuovinen doesn't say that players have no authority to author backstory. Eg:
> 
> One of the players is a gamemaster . . . The rest of the players each have their own characters to play . . . [O]nce the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character​





> Part of how a player knows his/her PC is because s/he knows the PC's backstory (which contributes to establishing dramatic needs).



Eero makes a pretty clear distinction between DM authority over backstory and that small authority that a player may have (based on system, as noted by Eero) to define aspects of their character's backstory.  In other words, character backstory isn't the backstory Eero is referencing the DM having authority over in his blog post.

Eero also doesn't say that the DM always has authority over backstory, and he refers to the cases where the DM doesn't as narrative sharing.  You've explicitly disavowed that you use narrative sharing in your play, while acknowledging others in this thread do.  Eero's entire point in that blog post is that narrative sharing is incoherent with DM authority over backstory and also is very likely incoherent with character advocacy.  The latter because shared narration in support of character advocacy leads to Czege Principle violations.  Also, most shared narration has a goal that isn't character advocacy.  If you are expected to narrate in a manner that is best for the game instead of best for your character, this is incoherent with character advocacy.

Finally, as a point, Eero doesn't talk about agency _at all_ in his blog posts.  I think that's telling that he doesn't consider the concept of agency to be important to game design discussion and prefers terms like narration and advocacy.



> I'm sorry you find what I'm describing confusing. There are any number of RPGs that are written to be run (more-or-less) along the lines of the "standard narrativistic model", where the role of the players and of the GM is (more-or-less) as Eero Tuovinen describes; and in which players exercise agency over the shared fiction in the sorts of ways I have described in posts in this thread.



The only confusion I had was the usual adjustment and slow process of deducing what you mean with your unique definition of terms.  Once I understood what you were going for by unravelling the chaff around your usages, I understood you fine.  I disagree with you, and I think you're too narrowly focused on a topic that's not revealing of actual play differences at all, or, rather, that there's a better architecture to discuss the difference you're trying to highlight than using loaded terms like 'agency'.  Again, note that Eero avoids that term, largely because it doesn't have a majority accepted definition and is already a charged term (you don't have as much power as I do is, after all, not something people will generally like to hear).



> I have given examples of what I have in mind. I think they're pretty clear:
> 
> To the extent that an important part of play is making moves that trigger the GM to tell them stuff that the GM has (literally or notionally) in his/her notes, the players are not exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction. They are triggering the GM to exercise such agency (if the notes are purely notional) or to relate the outcome of prior such exercised of agency (if the notes are literal). This may happen in a game with a pre-conceived story or plot; it may happen in some forms of sandbox; it is an important part of classic dungeoneering.
> 
> To the extent that the content of GM framing reflects the GM's conception of the situation, the point of the game, the nature of the gameworld, etc, that is the GM and not the players exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction. Again, this may or may not be related to the GM having a pre-conceived story or plot.
> 
> To the extent that the outcomes of action resolution are determined by treating prior GM authorship of (hitherto unrevealed) bits of the setting as a component of the fictional positioning, rather than using the action resolution mechanics to determine what happens in the fiction, the GM rather than the players is exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction. This may be related to the GM having a pre-conceived story or plot (". . . and then they find the map where it got lost in the kitchen, which means that . . ."); or it may be simply because the GM has made a catalogue of gameworld elements ("the study has a desk in it with empty drawers; the kitchen has a map in the breadbin, where someone accidentally dropped it; the guard is not amenable to being bribed; etc, etc").​
> These techniques are often related - eg the more that the third is a feature of play, then the more likely the first will be also, as the players try to make moves that reveal the hitherto unrevealed fictional positioning. (In this thread various posters have described this as "exploring the gameworld", "acquiring information", "investigating", etc.) And one and three tend to lead to two, as they lead to the GM's ideas about the gameworld becoming a prominent aspect of play.
> 
> I don't see what is confusing about any of this.




That's the clearest statement of your position, which, again, I've understood for at least the last half of this thread, yet.  The issue with understanding this is largely that you've chosen to frame it in terms that indicated that this isn't good play.  This is understandable because you do not value this kind of play -- I'd hazard that you're strongly opposed to this kind of play based on your statements -- but for people who do enjoy this kind of play (which may arguably be the majority of players) note that in your phrasing and think that you're making a qualitative statement about the value of this kind of play whereas you think you're just making an obvious statement about how this kind of play functions.  

And, this is a two way street for a lot of this.  I'm fairly certain that you think that my statements above that you responded to are criticisms rather than attempts to clarify by being blunt on what the issues in the discussion are.  And, that's entirely fair.  But, it's very easy to become defensive when someone else describes your playing or posting in a manner that is blunt and critical and shows some coloring of personal opinion.  I disagree with elements of your position*, and I'm sure that I haven't avoided that disagreement from coloring my posts.

*Namely that the distinction you're drawing about agency is worthwhile as the total agency of a game isn't necessarily correlated to the amount of that kind of agency.  Pointing out a game has less of this kind of agency doesn't really show anything worthwhile about the playstyle that isn't already apparent in the general description of the playstyle.  Also, this kind of analysis is rooted in GNS theory, which I find deeply flawed even as it does illuminate some very interesting areas of discussion.  Any theory that heavily relies on GNS to make it's claims is dubious, at best, to me, even if it might still have some utility in discussion.

I find discussing Story Now games would be better served by just talking about how they play without reference to GNS theory.  I find referring to GNS theory outside of an audience that already is deeply invested in it to cause confusion through the unique definitions the GNS uses and the obfuscation of concepts behind overly complicated theory-speak.  Story Now games are games played in the moment, with no 'next part of the story' planned, and that focus on the desires of the characters rather than having a world the characters react to.  That's an interesting hook, and a good start to discussion, but the moment you say 'narrativist' you've drug the discussion into a quagmire.

In my home game, I have 2 strongly gamist players, a gamist/simulationist, and 2 narrativist focused players.  We play 5e, which is gamist/simulationist with narrativist overtones in design, and we play it with about a 50/20/30 mix of those styles.  The gamist is from the combat nature of the 5e ruleset that encourage builds, acquiring correct equipment, and winning in combat as a major solution to obstacles in play, and the fact that most of my players enjoy the combat game (the 2 more narrativist focused players enjoy it, but don't require it; the gamists would leave without it).  Simulationist in the exploration of the hexgrid and the process steps that enable that -- traveling duties, random encounter roles, managing survival resources, etc.  Narrativist in that there's no plot, the players have their own motivations (built into the premise and character development as questions they had to answer) and the way they approach those goals are unscripted, very much like the desire to acquire an anvil that led to them investigating ruins with orc and then choosing to try to establish peaceful relations with those orcs rather than exterminate them.  What happens next is dependent on how they resolve this issue and what decisions they make about their next moves to accomplish character goals.  The style is largely DM centered, because 70% of the game is best served by strong DM side authority, but that  leaves some room for narrativist play.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> If I turn up to play a session of Moldvay Basic, or of the sort of D&D that Gygax describes in the "Successful Adventuring" section of his PHB, then of course the fictional situation is going to be a dungeon. That's what the game is about. And it has a lot of system elements - mechanics, methods, implicit understandings - to support play in that context.




That section of the PHB clearly says, "The most common form of ADVANCED DUNGEONS 8 DRAGONS play is the underground adventure,".  That sentence clearly shows that there are adventures outside of the dungeon such as a desert.  Then the section goes on to say on page 109, "So much for the underworld adventure. *Most of what was said regarding successful expeditions* there also *applies to outdoor* and city adventures as well. Preparation and mutual aid are keys to these sorts of adventures also."  The DMG also has significant portions of it devoted to outdoor adventuring, including encounter tables.  It's almost as if the outdoor adventure was an important part of the game.

So no, if you show up in the sort of D&D that Gygax describes in the "Successful Adventuring" section, it won't of course be a fictional situation that is going to be in a dungeon.  Most likely it will, but it can also be the desert.



> If I turn up to play a game of AD&D and the GM says, "Right, you're in a desert" that's already very different from the Moldvay Basic case.




Moldvay Basic is similar.  From the "Definition of Standard Terms" section.  "It is the DM's job to prepare the setting for each adventure before the game begins. This setting is called a dungeon since *most adventures* take place in underground caverns or stone rooms beneath old ruins or castles.".  Most adventures, not all adventures, so the desert could be in accordance with Moldvay Basic as well, though there is far less support for it throughout the book than 1e has.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> "Having something to offer" looks like an aesthetic judgement of the sort that I hope to avoid.
> 
> GM pre-authorship of backstory used to adjudicate player action declarations (eg the attempt to bribe the guard will fail, because the GM has already establihsed in his/her notes that the guard can't be corrupted) will tend to have a certain effect on play: players will spend effort and time during the play of the game trying to learn that backstory so that they can have their PCs achieve the things that they want their PCs to achieve. The way the players learn that backstory is by making moves with their PCs that trigger the GM to tell it to them.




I don't know what you hope to analyze if you are not determining why something may be useful, or why others may prefer the thing to other options. If I want to analyze "The Godfather", I'm not going to dismiss the opinions of those who like the film. Or with those who may disagree with my opinion of the film. 

Since you asked "what is worldbuilding for?" and your offered answer seems to be "solely to limit player agency in authorship as it relates to action declaration", I am trying to offer a counterpoint. 



pemerton said:


> Here you seem to be endorsing the distinction I drew upthread between preparation and pre-authorship. What you describe here doesn't seem to be worldbuilding, because it doesn't establish any element of the setting, of the shared fiction




It doesn't? I would expect it to. I'm sure we can provide an example where it does not, but I think most often there would be setting elements at play in worldbuilding.

For instance, let's say that the elements the players have brought to the game with their characters lend themselves to planar adventures. Perhaps as GM I decide to use the Blood War as a backdrop for the campaign. That is a setting element. 

Perhaps I as the GM come up with my own version of the Blood War, which changes the standard lore related to that concept. Or perhaps I come up with something similar, but totally new...the Exarch Wars. The elements of this story would undoubtedly affect the setting and at least some of the action in play. 



pemerton said:


> OK. Upthread I had thought you, as well as some other posters, had asserted that the use of GM pre-authored backstory and setting has no implications for player agency over the content of the shared fiction. If I have confused your position with that of some other posters, I apologise.




Here is the full comment you clipped to quote me, and I think this explains things. 


			
				hawkeyefan said:
			
		

> _Yes. This is me offering an answer to your question. I don't place the same level of value that you place on player agency. *I like it, and I prefer it in most instances, but I do not think it must be ubiquitous*.
> 
> So you asked what is worldbuilding for.....here's something to consider. As with most things, there may need to be some consideration given in evaluating it. "Hm is this worth the loss in player agency that will result?" I think your answer is clearly "No", and that's fine.
> 
> But I don't think you wanted an echo chamber. And I don't think that your preference for another style somehow eliminates your ability to understand why a different style might appeal to other players. For me, having some predetermined elements may be worth a reduction in player agency in some ways. _




I value player agency. I do not feel it needs to be ubiquitous. I also think that your definition of player agency is very specific, and that your game requires a loss of other kinds of player agency which I likely value more. 

I would not say that GM Backstory has "no implications" for player agency over the content of the fiction. I simply said that it isn't a case that it must have implications. Meaning that it may be used to deny player action declarations without any kind of check, but that it doesn't have to be used that way. 

I don't think that allowing the players to author elements of the fiction as part of action declaration is always a good idea. So I wouldn't always allow it. I think it's rife for abuse, especially if the players are playing as advocates of the characters....where they are doing what's best based on what they think their character would want, rather than what would make the most compelling story. 

This is why I think that which game you are playing and what the expectations for play are prior to starting are such a big factor. In a game like Fiasco, the goal is specifically not for the players to have their characters succeed. But in a game like D&D, that is the case. 

So to use your example of the unbribeable guard....in most instances I'd simply set up the scene and the challenge it involves. The PCs need to gain entry into the Baron's castle. So they can try and find a way to sneak in, or they can try to bribe a guard, or they can fight their way in, or whatever means they come up with. I generally don't want to limit the players in how they approach a challenge. In this sense, I leave it entirely up to them. 

However, sometimes, I think it is quite useful and interesting to remove one or more means at their disposal. To take away some choice to see what they will do then. I like to put the characters into situations that are difficult....so I'll put them in a situation where they cannot win a fight....so what do they do? Sneaking in is impossible....what do you do? 

Sounds just like Framing to me. Would you agree? 

So in that sense, if I thought that removing the ability to bribe guards would create a compelling challenge which also made sense for the story....perhaps the PCs are on Mechanus, and they cannot bribe the Modron sentries they encounter.....then I'll do so. 

I think I just approach these situations far less strictly than you. I don't tend to treat them in absolute terms such as "I will never remove any player agency". 



pemerton said:


> Quite a way upthread (many hundred posts) I suggested that one thing that worldbuilding (in the sense of GM pre-authored backstory and setting) is for is to provide material for the GM to read/relate to the players. Many posters disagreed with this. But am I right in thinking that you agree? - for instance, this seems to be what you have in mind when you refer to the GM establishing a compelling story. Some of that story will come out because the players make moves that trigger the GM to relate to them pre-authored material that helps make up the story. And some of that story will come out because the GM relates elements of it in the course of framing the PCs into a situation which pertains to/expresses the GM's compelling story.




I do think that is an element. I don't think most people were disagreeing with you about that so much as how you presented it, which was rather dismissive. And when people pointed out it was dismissive, you again dismissed their concerns by saying you had no idea how it could be construed as dismissive. I also think you very much implied that it was the *only* thing you could see it was useful for, rather than simply one thing. 

So yes, I would say that some elements of worldbuilding is the PCs taking some kind of action, which then indicates that they learn some bit of information. The thief searching the door for traps will possibly reveal the presence of a trap, which the GM will then describe and perhaps offer some further option to disarm the trap. 

I would also think that this may apply to lore, and research of historical elements in the setting. Who were the combatants in the Dawn War? Who is Dendar the Night Serpent? Was Miska the Wolf Spider an ally or enemy of the Queen of Chaos? Or secrets of NPCs. Perhaps the PCs can do some schmoozing to try and find out what they can about the Baron, and they learn he has a thing for the girls at a certain brothel, and visits it once a week. Things of that nature. 

What I would not advocate is the idea that GM Backstory is only this. That this information can only be used in such a way. In this sense, I don't see how it's different than the setting information chosen by the GM and/or players. If they want to play in a Greyhawk Campaign, then there are certain elements that will possibly come up in play. I don't think the choice of Greyhawk for a game is any more or less limiting than other elements that the GM may have determined in advance. Especially in the instance when the GM has taken the players' wants and choices and incorporated them into what he has in mind. 

It also, to me, seems to serve largely the same purpose as your Framing. If Framing is the GM taking elements of the setting based on the characters' stated goals and players' areas of interest, and creating a scene that requires a choice.....I really don't see how, in this regard, its purpose is so different from GM Backstory. 

Again....perhaps you do not like the technique because, as with any, it can be used poorly, and to you the risk is not worth the reward. But I don't think it's unclear what it may offer. 

So I'll ask again....do you think there is any purpose for it other than your initial assessment? Has your mind changed at all over the course of this thread?


----------



## Ovinomancer

hawkeyefan said:


> I don't know what you hope to analyze if you are not determining why something may be useful, or why others may prefer the thing to other options. If I want to analyze "The Godfather", I'm not going to dismiss the opinions of those who like the film. Or with those who may disagree with my opinion of the film.
> 
> Since you asked "what is worldbuilding for?" and your offered answer seems to be "solely to limit player agency in authorship as it relates to action declaration", I am trying to offer a counterpoint.
> 
> 
> 
> It doesn't? I would expect it to. I'm sure we can provide an example where it does not, but I think most often there would be setting elements at play in worldbuilding.
> 
> For instance, let's say that the elements the players have brought to the game with their characters lend themselves to planar adventures. Perhaps as GM I decide to use the Blood War as a backdrop for the campaign. That is a setting element.
> 
> Perhaps I as the GM come up with my own version of the Blood War, which changes the standard lore related to that concept. Or perhaps I come up with something similar, but totally new...the Exarch Wars. The elements of this story would undoubtedly affect the setting and at least some of the action in play.
> 
> 
> 
> Here is the full comment you clipped to quote me, and I think this explains things.
> 
> 
> I value player agency. I do not feel it needs to be ubiquitous. I also think that your definition of player agency is very specific, and that your game requires a loss of other kinds of player agency which I likely value more.
> 
> I would not say that GM Backstory has "no implications" for player agency over the content of the fiction. I simply said that it isn't a case that it must have implications. Meaning that it may be used to deny player action declarations without any kind of check, but that it doesn't have to be used that way.
> 
> I don't think that allowing the players to author elements of the fiction as part of action declaration is always a good idea. So I wouldn't always allow it. I think it's rife for abuse, especially if the players are playing as advocates of the characters....where they are doing what's best based on what they think their character would want, rather than what would make the most compelling story.
> 
> This is why I think that which game you are playing and what the expectations for play are prior to starting are such a big factor. In a game like Fiasco, the goal is specifically not for the players to have their characters succeed. But in a game like D&D, that is the case.
> 
> So to use your example of the unbribeable guard....in most instances I'd simply set up the scene and the challenge it involves. The PCs need to gain entry into the Baron's castle. So they can try and find a way to sneak in, or they can try to bribe a guard, or they can fight their way in, or whatever means they come up with. I generally don't want to limit the players in how they approach a challenge. In this sense, I leave it entirely up to them.
> 
> However, sometimes, I think it is quite useful and interesting to remove one or more means at their disposal. To take away some choice to see what they will do then. I like to put the characters into situations that are difficult....so I'll put them in a situation where they cannot win a fight....so what do they do? Sneaking in is impossible....what do you do?
> 
> Sounds just like Framing to me. Would you agree?
> 
> So in that sense, if I thought that removing the ability to bribe guards would create a compelling challenge which also made sense for the story....perhaps the PCs are on Mechanus, and they cannot bribe the Modron sentries they encounter.....then I'll do so.
> 
> I think I just approach these situations far less strictly than you. I don't tend to treat them in absolute terms such as "I will never remove any player agency".
> 
> 
> 
> I do think that is an element. I don't think most people were disagreeing with you about that so much as how you presented it, which was rather dismissive. And when people pointed out it was dismissive, you again dismissed their concerns by saying you had no idea how it could be construed as dismissive. I also think you very much implied that it was the *only* thing you could see it was useful for, rather than simply one thing.
> 
> So yes, I would say that some elements of worldbuilding is the PCs taking some kind of action, which then indicates that they learn some bit of information. The thief searching the door for traps will possibly reveal the presence of a trap, which the GM will then describe and perhaps offer some further option to disarm the trap.
> 
> I would also think that this may apply to lore, and research of historical elements in the setting. Who were the combatants in the Dawn War? Who is Dendar the Night Serpent? Was Miska the Wolf Spider an ally or enemy of the Queen of Chaos? Or secrets of NPCs. Perhaps the PCs can do some schmoozing to try and find out what they can about the Baron, and they learn he has a thing for the girls at a certain brothel, and visits it once a week. Things of that nature.
> 
> What I would not advocate is the idea that GM Backstory is only this. That this information can only be used in such a way. In this sense, I don't see how it's different than the setting information chosen by the GM and/or players. If they want to play in a Greyhawk Campaign, then there are certain elements that will possibly come up in play. I don't think the choice of Greyhawk for a game is any more or less limiting than other elements that the GM may have determined in advance. Especially in the instance when the GM has taken the players' wants and choices and incorporated them into what he has in mind.
> 
> It also, to me, seems to serve largely the same purpose as your Framing. If Framing is the GM taking elements of the setting based on the characters' stated goals and players' areas of interest, and creating a scene that requires a choice.....I really don't see how, in this regard, its purpose is so different from GM Backstory.
> 
> Again....perhaps you do not like the technique because, as with any, it can be used poorly, and to you the risk is not worth the reward. But I don't think it's unclear what it may offer.
> 
> So I'll ask again....do you think there is any purpose for it other than your initial assessment? Has your mind changed at all over the course of this thread?




Firstly, I agree with and appreciate a lot that's in this post.

That said, there's terminology that's been invoked in recent discussion that is easily confusable.  Backstory, in the context that Eero uses it, is framing -- it's the parts that form the backdrop of the scene, the backstory that enables the current story to unfold.  This setting, everything that's happened, location, immediate events, etc.  This kind of backstory in Story Now games is always given to the players explicitly in play.  This shouldn't be confused with the [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]ian constructs of secret backstory, which are true things that the players don't know about during play, that may surface in action resolution steps to affect or cause an action to fail (strangely, there's no mention of those things that cause automatic success as issues... maybe a different post).  The Backstory (capital intended) is Forge speak for the set of information that frames a scene.  Shared narration would give players the ability to narrate some of this Backstory in play, thus changing the scene.  As you note, this has Czege Principle issues if the primary motivation of player is character advocacy.

I point this out as it's a likely point of confusion as to which kind of backstory or Backstory is being discussed and in what framing.  Again, the only time Forge speak _increases _understanding is when everyone in the conversation is already proficient in Forge speak.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Ovinomancer said:


> Firstly, I agree with and appreciate a lot that's in this post.
> 
> That said, there's terminology that's been invoked in recent discussion that is easily confusable.  Backstory, in the context that Eero uses it, is framing -- it's the parts that form the backdrop of the scene, the backstory that enables the current story to unfold.  This setting, everything that's happened, location, immediate events, etc.  This kind of backstory in Story Now games is always given to the players explicitly in play.  This shouldn't be confused with the [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]ian constructs of secret backstory, which are true things that the players don't know about during play, that may surface in action resolution steps to affect or cause an action to fail (strangely, there's no mention of those things that cause automatic success as issues... maybe a different post).  The Backstory (capital intended) is Forge speak for the set of information that frames a scene.  Shared narration would give players the ability to narrate some of this Backstory in play, thus changing the scene.  As you note, this has Czege Principle issues if the primary motivation of player is character advocacy.
> 
> I point this out as it's a likely point of confusion as to which kind of backstory or Backstory is being discussed and in what framing.  Again, the only time Forge speak _increases _understanding is when everyone in the conversation is already proficient in Forge speak.




Yes, I think this is one of the main areas of confusion. I admit to not being very knowledgeable about Forge terms...mostly because I wasn't really involved in online discussion when the Forge was still around, but also because I tend to prefer a more conversational discussion than a technical one. 

I get the distinction you are making between Backstory and backstory. I'm going to take your comments as a starting point to kind of toss some ideas out there. I'm interested to know what you think. 

So the Framing of a scene draws on the Backstory....known to the players...in order to set up some kind of conflict or situation that demands that they act. In that sense, Framing is the establishment of factors that dictate the players' options. Do you think that's accurate? 

To me, I think this can also be the purpose of little b backstory, where perhaps the players don't know. So to use the bribe-ability of guards as an example....is it really that different to openly Frame a scene and explain that guards cannot be bribed, than it is to not state that openly and let the players discover it only through attempts to bribe or to find out if it's possible? 

Both limit what is available to the player. The only real distinction to me is that in the second example, the player "wastes a turn" finding out the guards can't be bribed. Is that the point of concern? Doesn't the GM's Framing potentially have just as much impact that secret backstory may have on action declaration? Aren't the players prevented from having their characters bribe the guards either way? So one limit on agency happens up front and openly, and the other is only discovered through play....would that be the primary difference? 

In this sense, couldn't it almost be argued that player agency is even more limited by Framing? Because depending on how the GM Frames things, the players may not even consider certain actions, whether or not they have a chance to succeed. 

To apply this more specifically to Permerton's concern about player authorship of fiction through action declaration....the Framing certainly seems to remove the ability of the players to author things into the fiction. Anything that contradicts the GM's framing is off the table. Which is fine....I think most people would accept this with no question....but I just don't see it as being all that different. 

Just some thoughts about it all.....generally, my idea of player agency is different than the specific use Permerton has assigned to it in regard to authorship ability....but I still see limitations however you look at it.


----------



## Ovinomancer

hawkeyefan said:


> Yes, I think this is one of the main areas of confusion. I admit to not being very knowledgeable about Forge terms...mostly because I wasn't really involved in online discussion when the Forge was still around, but also because I tend to prefer a more conversational discussion than a technical one.
> 
> I get the distinction you are making between Backstory and backstory. I'm going to take your comments as a starting point to kind of toss some ideas out there. I'm interested to know what you think.
> 
> So the Framing of a scene draws on the Backstory....known to the players...in order to set up some kind of conflict or situation that demands that they act. In that sense, Framing is the establishment of factors that dictate the players' options. Do you think that's accurate?



Just to clarify, Backstory in Story Now games is always apparent to the players (or should be).  Backstory applied to, say, D&D, includes a bunch of things that might be hidden.

That said, yes, I agree.



> To me, I think this can also be the purpose of little b backstory, where perhaps the players don't know. So to use the bribe-ability of guards as an example....is it really that different to openly Frame a scene and explain that guards cannot be bribed, than it is to not state that openly and let the players discover it only through attempts to bribe or to find out if it's possible?
> 
> Both limit what is available to the player. The only real distinction to me is that in the second example, the player "wastes a turn" finding out the guards can't be bribed. Is that the point of concern? Doesn't the GM's Framing potentially have just as much impact that secret backstory may have on action declaration? Aren't the players prevented from having their characters bribe the guards either way? So one limit on agency happens up front and openly, and the other is only discovered through play....would that be the primary difference?
> 
> In this sense, couldn't it almost be argued that player agency is even more limited by Framing? Because depending on how the GM Frames things, the players may not even consider certain actions, whether or not they have a chance to succeed.
> 
> To apply this more specifically to Permerton's concern about player authorship of fiction through action declaration....the Framing certainly seems to remove the ability of the players to author things into the fiction. Anything that contradicts the GM's framing is off the table. Which is fine....I think most people would accept this with no question....but I just don't see it as being all that different.
> 
> Just some thoughts about it all.....generally, my idea of player agency is different than the specific use Permerton has assigned to it in regard to authorship ability....but I still see limitations however you look at it.



I agree.  The method of framing that Story Now uses forces choices of the DM's devising on the players.  But, then, so does more traditional play, just in a slower exposition.  The fight will still be with those orcs regardless of style.  What I think limits agency in Story Now is the necessity to move to crisis -- play will focus around crisis points entirely, and players cannot avoid or mitigate these crises prior to their introduction into play, they can only aim for a different kind of crisis.  Again, as I said prior to this, I don't think this  is a problem, because the agency lost isn't agency the players care about.  What they care about is maximizing the agency in a narrativist way -- ie, playing through with the only focus on the immediate story, with only past story as a restriction (NO future story AT ALL), and addressing issues of human concern.  That last bit, thought, I'll admit is still a bit too vague for use for me.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ilbranteloth said:


> But player agency doesn’t mean they have full control of everything. Whether the discovery was pre-authored or not doesn’t really have anything to do with player agency. The players are not being restricted in their choices or actions. Just like I can go get in my car and go left or right. My free will has not been altered. If I come to a red light it still hasn’t altered my free will or agency, it’s just a circumstance that provides a decision point.
> 
> It’s not a choose your own adventure because the outcome has not been predetermined. That there is something in the room may have been, but what the characters choose to do, and the results of that decision is not predetermined. Choose your own adventure books produce the same result every time you select option 1. A published adventure is like a DM prepped adventure. I’ve run Keep on the Borderlands and Tomb of Horrors dozens of times, and never had the same results, ever. Each group had their own experiences and results.
> 
> Now @_*pemerton*_ may prefer a game where the players have a greater ability to author beyond the actions and decisions of their characters, and that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean the players have more agency, just a broader part of the authoring of the story.
> 
> Removing player agency would be pretermining the outcome of an encounter, not the content of the world. Such as deciding that the result of this encounter will be that the PCs will be captured. That decision can be predetermined or made on the fly.
> 
> Note that this does not mean the characters can never be captured.
> 
> Taking away agency: the DM decides that the characters must be captured. Initially he throws 8 well armed guards, but that doesn’t deter them. So he brings in 12 reinforcements. That still doesn’t stop them, so he brings in a wizard with a wand of hold person.
> 
> Not taking away player agency (and tying into world-building): the kingdom is in the midst of a war, and bandits have been an increasing problem in the area. The Lord has ordered an increased patrol of 12 men-at-arms, 6 of them mounted, with a wizard with a wand of hold person. The PCs run afoul of the law, and find themselves surrounded by one such patrol. Due to the heightened security, escape may be risky, since it will make them outlaws, putting a bounty on their heads, dead or alive.
> 
> Their agency hasn’t been altered, because they are still able to make any decision they want, although some are more risky than others. Even if they aren’t aware of the current political situation, that will become apparent in time.
> 
> The important thing to understand is that in this situation the _player’s_ agency has not been compromised, although the character’s may have been.
> 
> The framework of the game, including the house or table rules, determines what the players are allowed to do or not. This is not altering agency, it is just the rules of the game. Some games have more restrictions than others.
> 
> For example, the rules for high school football are different that the NFL. That’s not taking anything away from the players. They still have the same goals, and they are free to accomplish those in any manner within the framework of the rules. How they meet those goals might be altered, but within the framework of the game they still have their agency.
> @_*Maxperson*_’s preferred approach is not “choose your own adventure” nor is it impacting player agency within the context of the game they are playing. It’s a different game than @_*pemerton*_’s, with different rules and approaches, that’s all.




We're still talking about different things. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has stated it pretty explicitly a few times, "agency over the issues they engage within the game" to paraphrase. As with my 'spherical cow' above, the endless maze, if the only choice is left to face orcs and right to face undead, that's SOME agency over the activity of the characters, but it is a SMALL agency because it only allows choices with the absolute bounds of what the GM proposed. A player cannot say here "I try to find the secret passage which leads to the land of the Yuan Ti, my character is obsessed with finding them."


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> This sort of thing can easily arise out of a Gygaxian dungeon. All it needs is some immersion into character by the players and a dM who's willing to give them the time between the combats to roleplay their stories/emotions out. They don't even all have to relate to the current adventure e.g. romantic entanglements between PCs, or rivalries friendly or otherwise, or pranks, etc.



This isn't quite what Edwards, Eero Tuovinen or most of those who describe their RPGing as "story now" have in mind. Eg the "current adventure", including any combat, _is_ the story - not an alternative to it.

I agree that in GM-driven games a lot of the "story" and character development takes place in PC-to-PC interaction. Imagine having that permeate the whole game, and you start to get closer to "story now" RPGing.



Ilbranteloth said:


> The DM obviously exerts more influence in this type of game during social interactions, but most of these types of players focus almost entirely on the exploration aspect of the game (which involves combat)



There may be non-accidental correlation here.

It's not as if there is any _genre_ reason why exploration should prioritise combat over social interaction (eg consider the bits of the LotR that take place in Rohan, or the REH Conan story People of the Black Circle).



Maxperson said:


> If it's not pre-authored information, then it's authored on the spot like you play it. The players have dictated the authoring of that information by coming up with something I didn't think of, which triggered me to think of something I didn't pre-author to give to them, or at least give them the chance to receive if the outcome is in doubt.



Yes. I posted about this something like 800+ posts upthread, and intermittently since. One way I have made the point is by contrasting between what is literally, and what is notionally, in the GM's notes.

Triggering the GM to tell you stuff _as if_ it was in his/her notes, although it is actually made up on the spot, is not an exercise of player agency over the content of the shared fiction. Triggering the GM to tell you stuff can affirm such agency _if_ the GM is making that stuff up by reference to and/or incorporation of player-established theme and content (as per the "standard narrativistic model").

As far as the contrast between combat and non-combat resolution in D&D (with 4e skill challenges, and some aspects of dungeon exploration in classic D&D, as exceptions): it is pretty marked. There is no analogue to hit points, and the resulting finality of resolution, in (eg) 5e D&D's system for ability/skill checks.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> This is a definition of agency, though
> 
> <snip>
> 
> you've defined agency for the purposes of your discussion as relating to the content of the shared fiction ONLY



I don't understand your point. I haven't defined agency. I have made it clear what I'm talking about. If you want to talk about something else, go right ahead. That doesn't have any bearing on what I'm saying about my topic, though, does it?



Ovinomancer said:


> Eero doesn't talk about agency at all in his blog posts.



He doesn't have to - he expressly states that he's discussing an approach to play - narrativism - which has been analysed in detail on The Forge: "I won’t explain what narrativism (Story Now) is here; if you don’t know, find out."

And he identifies some games as exemplars of what he's talking about: "_Sorcerer_, _Dogs in the Vineyard_, some varieties of _Heroquest_, _The Shadow of Yesterday_, _Mountain Witch_, _Primetime Adventures_ and more games than I care to name".

I've just been reading DitV (which Vincent Baker himself identifies as owing a great design debt to Sorcerer) - it's all about player agency and player-driven play, with many admonitions from Baker to that effect throughout the rulebook. And it's representative, not distinctive, in this respect.



Ovinomancer said:


> Forge-speak is opaque at best.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I find discussing Story Now games would be better served by just talking about how they play without reference to GNS theory.



I quoted Ron Edwards only because you were arguing Eero Tuovinen says something different from what I said that he says, _and_ you mentioned GNS in the course of that! 



Ovinomancer said:


> And, speaking of Eero and how you define agency, it would appear many of the things I've said about the different kinds of agency and how their achieved by the different playstyles lines up with some of Eero's thoughts.  At least, in GNS theory, DM-facing play appears more gamist, and scratches gamist itches that narrativist play cannot, while narrativist play cannot scratch gamist itches.  Not that I'm a big fan of GNS theory, but it has some uses



If you aren't interested in talking about things through a GNS perspective, why raise it?

But anyway, it's a bit weird to have someone explaining something to me that I'm extremely familiar with, and actually put to work in RPGing on a pretty regular basis.



Ovinomancer said:


> What this is saying in simpler terms is that play focuses on the immediate scene only
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Story Now games are games played in the moment, with no 'next part of the story' planned, and that focus on the desires of the characters rather than having a world the characters react to.



Not really.

Ewards is not saying that play focused on the immediate scene only - eg many systems that are typically played in a "story now" fashion (I'm thinking Dogs in the Vineyard, HeroWars/Quest and Burning Wheel, for instance) incorporate rules for relationships, which establish mechanical links between present events and past bits of backstory.

And consider Vincent Baker's advice from DitV - "Escalate, ecalate, escalate!" Escalation frequently means taking up some concern or outcome from prior events and pushing it harder, stepping up the pressure, forcing the player to ask "Do I still agree with what I did then?" In my main 4e game, one important element of escalation is around the role of the Raven Queen, and the PCs' ongoing sequence of decisions that confer upon her more and more power. This is not a focus on the immediate scene only.

And DitV is _all abour_ the PCs travelling from town to town and reacting to what the characters encounter there. My 4e game has a cosmological situation that the PCs react to. "Story now" games can have plenty of setting.

As Ron Edwards says, "story now" means that, right now, we are - through our play - establishing and thereby experiencing something which is recognisably story in the literary sense: there are protagonists, who have dramatic needs (the "issue" or "problematic feature of human existence") which are put to the test; there is rising action, climax and some sort of resolution.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Yes. I posted about this something like 800+ posts upthread, and intermittently since. One way I have made the point is by contrasting between what is literally, and what is notionally, in the GM's notes.
> 
> Triggering the GM to tell you stuff _as if_ it was in his/her notes, although it is actually made up on the spot, is not an exercise of player agency over the content of the shared fiction. Triggering the GM to tell you stuff can affirm such agency _if_ the GM is making that stuff up by reference to and/or incorporation of player-established theme and content (as per the "standard narrativistic model").




Your style:

1. Player says or does something that triggers your response to author information to give to the PCs, thereby causing a change in the fiction.

My style:

1. Player says or does something that triggers my response to author information to give to the PC, thereby causing a change in the fiction.

In both cases it's the player causing the change in the fiction via the DM's response.  The only reason the content changes is because of the player's decision.



> As far as the contrast between combat and non-combat resolution in D&D (with 4e skill challenges, and some aspects of dungeon exploration in classic D&D, as exceptions): it is pretty marked. There is no analogue to hit points, and the resulting finality of resolution, in (eg) 5e D&D's system for ability/skill checks.



So it's okay to pre-author something and somehow isn't a form of control so long as it has no analogue elsewhere.  Got it.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> It doesn't? I would expect it to. I'm sure we can provide an example where it does not, but I think most often there would be setting elements at play in worldbuilding.



Upthread, you said "Why can't the GM have an idea in his mind ahead of time, with some ideas about what can or may happen, but not committing to anything until the players have interacted with the idea?" I responded to this, saying that this is not an account of the GM establishing any setting element. _The GM does not commmit to anything until the players have interacted with the idea_.

If the GM has established a setting element, then s/he is already committed to something. Conversely, if s/he's not committed it follows that nothing is yet established. S/he just has an idea.



hawkeyefan said:


> I don't think that allowing the players to author elements of the fiction as part of action declaration is always a good idea. So I wouldn't always allow it. I think it's rife for abuse, especially if the players are playing as advocates of the characters....where they are doing what's best based on what they think their character would want, rather than what would make the most compelling story.
> 
> This is why I think that which game you are playing and what the expectations for play are prior to starting are such a big factor. In a game like Fiasco, the goal is specifically not for the players to have their characters succeed. But in a game like D&D, that is the case.



I'm not sure what you mean by "abuse" here. But anyway, as I have said many times upthread already, the games the I GM are not ones in which players are per se empowered to author elements of the fiction as part of action declaration. They are no different from D&D in this respect. The players are not considering "what would make the most compelling story" - they are just playing their PCs. (Eero Tuovinen talks about this at some length in the blog I've linked to several times in this thread.)



hawkeyefan said:


> sometimes, I think it is quite useful and interesting to remove one or more means at their disposal. To take away some choice to see what they will do then. I like to put the characters into situations that are difficult....so I'll put them in a situation where they cannot win a fight....so what do they do? Sneaking in is impossible....what do you do?
> 
> Sounds just like Framing to me. Would you agree?



If you like. What do you think is at stake in labelling it "framing"?

For myself, I'm generally interested in the players' choice of means for their PC expressing something about their conception of the situation, and what is important in respect of it, rather than reflecting some choice I made as GM to pose some sort of puzzle. So when I frame a situation, I am trying to "go where the action is" so as to provoke some response driven by dramatic need.



Ovinomancer said:


> The method of framing that Story Now uses forces choices of the DM's devising on the players.



Huh?

The PCs arrive in town. They want to befriend the baron. They also learn that the baron's advisor is, in fact (but unknown to the townsfolk or the baron) the leader of the hobgoblins who are assaulting the town, whom they've been pursuing for some time. 

The situation puts pressure on the players - it may be hard for the PCs to befriend the baron while also meting out justice to his advisor - but what choice of the GM's devising is being forced on the players? They can choose as they think is appropriate.



hawkeyefan said:


> So the Framing of a scene draws on the Backstory....known to the players...in order to set up some kind of conflict or situation that demands that they act. In that sense, Framing is the establishment of factors that dictate the players' options. Do you think that's accurate?



No.

The framing is the establishment of some shared fiction, which speaks to the PCs' dramatic needs. It doesn't dictate options.

The players learning that it will be hard for the PCs both to befriend the baron and deal with the leader of the hobgoblins doesn't dictate their options. It does establish a context for making choices that will tell us something about these protagonists.



hawkeyefan said:


> To me, I think this can also be the purpose of little b backstory, where perhaps the players don't know. So to use the bribe-ability of guards as an example....is it really that different to openly Frame a scene and explain that guards cannot be bribed, than it is to not state that openly and let the players discover it only through attempts to bribe or to find out if it's possible?
> 
> Both limit what is available to the player. The only real distinction to me is that in the second example, the player "wastes a turn" finding out the guards can't be bribed. Is that the point of concern? Doesn't the GM's Framing potentially have just as much impact that secret backstory may have on action declaration? Aren't the players prevented from having their characters bribe the guards either way? So one limit on agency happens up front and openly, and the other is only discovered through play....would that be the primary difference?



I don't know of any RPG that would be run the way you describe. I don't know of any RPG that suggests that the GM's job is to (i) frame the situation, and then (ii) tell the players what their PCs are or are not allowed to do in trying to engage and/or resolve the situation. Do you have one in mind?

In every RPG I'm familiar with that has social resolution mechanics, the way we find out whether or not a guard can be bribed is by seeing how the social resolution unfolds.



hawkeyefan said:


> couldn't it almost be argued that player agency is even more limited by Framing? Because depending on how the GM Frames things, the players may not even consider certain actions, whether or not they have a chance to succeed.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> the Framing certainly seems to remove the ability of the players to author things into the fiction. Anything that contradicts the GM's framing is off the table.



I don't know what limits you have in mind. Or what actions you are worried will or won't be considered. Do you have a concrete example in mind?

As for the bit about _the ability of the players to author things into the fiction_ - I will repeat again that the games I GM generally do not involve player fiat authorship, and in my view that this is largely a red herring as far as player agency in respect of the shared fiction is concerned.

"Is there a vessel in the room that would allow me to catch the mage's blood?" isn't "authoring things into the fiction." It's just an action declaration.



hawkeyefan said:


> If Framing is the GM taking elements of the setting based on the characters' stated goals and players' areas of interest, and creating a scene that requires a choice.....I really don't see how, in this regard, its purpose is so different from GM Backstory.



I feel I have posted many response to this upthread. Apparently they haven't been clear or helpful. Here is something from Vicent Baker in DitV (pp 138-39):

Actively reveal the town in play
The town you’ve made has secrets. It has, quite likely, terrible secrets — blood and sex and murder and damnation.

But you the GM, you don’t have secrets a’tall. Instead, you have cool things — bloody, sexy, murderous, damned cool things — that you can’t wait to share.

The PCs arrive in town. I have someone meet them. They ask how things are going. The person says that, well, things are going okay, mostly. The PCs say, “mostly?" . . .

So instead of having the NPC say “oh no, I meant that things are going just fine, and I shut up now,” I have the NPC launch into his or her tirade. “Things are awful! This person’s sleeping with this other person not with me, they murdered the schoolteacher, blood pours down the meeting house walls every night!”

...Or sometimes, the NPC wants to lie, instead. That’s okay! I have the NPC lie. You’ve watched movies. You always can tell when you’re watching a movie who’s lying and who’s telling the truth. And wouldn’t you know it, most the time the players are looking at me with skeptical looks, and I give them a little sly nod that yep, she’s lying. And they get these great, mean, tooth-showing grins — because when someone lies to them, ho boy does it not work out.

Then the game _goes _somewhere.​
In a game GMed in that fashion, relatively little time is spent making and resolving moves whose main function is to get the GM to relate his/her fiction.



hawkeyefan said:


> I don't think most people were disagreeing with you about that so much as how you presented it, which was rather dismissive. And when people pointed out it was dismissive, you again dismissed their concerns by saying you had no idea how it could be construed as dismissive.



People disagreed. And denied.

The only "dismissive" thing was to actually say it.

That's why I am trying to analyse rather than make aesthetic judgements. Because the analysis itself takes many posts. It's taken 1000+ posts to get some consensus that one thing that worldbuillding is for is to establish material that the GM will relate to the players when they make certain moves that trigger that.

Until these sorts of literal descriptions of what happens in play are established, how can we possibly talk about what the aesthetic rationales might be?


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> We're still talking about different things.  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has stated it pretty explicitly a few times, "agency over the issues they engage within the game" to paraphrase.



This is an even worse paraphrase that adds even more confusion to the bits we've managed to sort out.  This definition, as written, applies to many styles of DM0-facing games if taken at face value.  For this to mean what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] means, there's a huge host of unspoken assumptions that have to go along with it.



> As with my 'spherical cow' above, the endless maze, if the only choice is left to face orcs and right to face undead, that's SOME agency over the activity of the characters, but it is a SMALL agency because it only allows choices with the absolute bounds of what the GM proposed. A player cannot say here "I try to find the secret passage which leads to the land of the Yuan Ti, my character is obsessed with finding them."




Again, not a very good comparision because the assumptions of play between your spherical cow and the following declaration do not align.  The problem here isn't the spherical cow and what that entails in limited choice (mazes automatically limit choices) but that the assumptions of play are not aligned.  

Secondly, that declaration is treading close to the Czege Principle of the player writing their own solution to their own problems (I want to find X, so I'll declare Y action that will directly lead to me finding X.  Even if there's a mechanical check on this declaration, a success leads to immediate satisfaction of the player defined objectives.)


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> I don't understand your point. I haven't defined agency. I have made it clear what I'm talking about. If you want to talk about something else, go right ahead. That doesn't have any bearing on what I'm saying about my topic, though, does it?




Sigh.  Yes, you have, for the purposes of the discussion in this thread you've defined agency as that agency that relates to input into the shared fiction.  That's a definition.  This isn't a trap, or an accusation, or a bad thing, it's pointing out that you have a very precise meaning when you say "agency" in this discussion, and that "agency" is defined, by you, in this manner for this discussion.

I'm honestly baffled that you are 1) opposing this and 2) actually think that you haven't established a specific definition of agency for the purposes of your analysis.

Although, I'll note that you oppose any argument from some posters, regardless of what they say.  This entire post is you finding reasons to disagree with me despite me saying pretty much exactly what you've been saying.


> He doesn't have to - he expressly states that he's discussing an approach to play - narrativism - which has been analysed in detail on The Forge: "I won’t explain what narrativism (Story Now) is here; if you don’t know, find out."
> 
> And he identifies some games as exemplars of what he's talking about: "_Sorcerer_, _Dogs in the Vineyard_, some varieties of _Heroquest_, _The Shadow of Yesterday_, _Mountain Witch_, _Primetime Adventures_ and more games than I care to name".



Search for the word 'agency' on Eero's blog.  The only returns are when agency is part of the name of a game he's discussing.  Search on google for the word agency+Eero (use his full name, of course).  The returns are when he's commenting on a discussion where some other poster uses agency.  Eero does not establish agency as something he uses to discuss game design.  Instead he uses much more tailored and specific points to discuss options open to players.  I believe this is because Eero is keen on being as precise as possible and agency is often very imprecise in these discussion.  This is why you've chosen to tightly define agency for the purposes of your analysis -- the general term agency is to vague and undefinable to be used for good analysis.  

As for Eero borrowing from the Forge and thus importing agency indirectly, I'm having trouble finding defintions of the standard narrativistic model, much less one that defines the model using 'agency'.

Ron Edward's Narrativism: Story Now post doesn't use agency anywhere in the seminal definition of Story Now style.  Check for yourself.



> I've just been reading DitV (which Vincent Baker himself identifies as owing a great design debt to Sorcerer) - it's all about player agency and player-driven play, with many admonitions from Baker to that effect throughout the rulebook. And it's representative, not distinctive, in this respect.



Sure, I don't have access to the text of DitV, so I can't follow along with what Baker is saying there.  I've had trouble locating strong discussions of agency on Baker's blog, though, so I can't source this through other means.



> I quoted Ron Edwards only because you were arguing Eero Tuovinen says something different from what I said that he says, _and_ you mentioned GNS in the course of that!





> You brought up Edwards (and Eero) yourself without prompting in early posts in this thread.  However, given Story Now is deeply tied to GNS theory
> ​



Again, you've brought Ron up long before the recent posts.



> If you aren't interested in talking about things through a GNS perspective, why raise it?
> But anyway, it's a bit weird to have someone explaining something to me that I'm extremely familiar with, and actually put to work in RPGing on a pretty regular basis.



I didn't -- you're the one citing things based on GNS perspective.  It's hard to discuss those cites accurately without an understanding of why they think that way.  And, many people who are not familiar with GNS theories are reading and commenting on posts we make quoting each other, so my explanations are for two reasons: 1) to verify we're talking about the same things and 2) make that discussion understandable to others.

Again, you're the one that keeps quoting outside cites that use GNS terminology or the Standard Narrativist Model, which is written by Ron Edwards based on his GNS theories.  Discussing that things you cite requires a grasp of the theory it's based on.  You could have chosen to make those arguments in clear terms, but instead chose to offload that explanation onto your cites which are steeped in GNS theory and term usages.  Eero adds another layer as he has a few terms he's defined and uses that aren't GNS but are very specific.

So, I'm explaining it to other people reading what I'm saying to you.



> Not really.



Yes, really.  Nothing I said there implies that previous story isn't incorporated, and I've said in other posts exactly this.  

However, since that was the only thing that you cut out of five paragraphs talking about the central issue in discussion, I must assume that you agree with what you snipped and only had this one point of contention in what I said.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> <Removed your responses to @hawkeyefan>
> Huh?
> 
> The PCs arrive in town. They want to befriend the baron. They also learn that the baron's advisor is, in fact (but unknown to the townsfolk or the baron) the leader of the hobgoblins who are assaulting the town, whom they've been pursuing for some time.
> 
> The situation puts pressure on the players - it may be hard for the PCs to befriend the baron while also meting out justice to his advisor - but what choice of the GM's devising is being forced on the players? They can choose as they think is appropriate.



Who framed the dilemma that put pressure on the players?  If it was not the players, then it's the DM, who has _chosen _a crisis that the player have to react to.  The players didn't chose that crisis.  They must now make choices about what the crisis the DM framed.


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## innerdude

pemerton said:


> The framing is the establishment of some shared fiction, which speaks to the PCs' dramatic needs. It doesn't dictate options.
> 
> The players learning that it will be hard for the PCs both to befriend the baron and deal with the leader of the hobgoblins doesn't dictate their options. It does establish a context for making choices that will tell us something about these protagonists . . .
> 
> . . . As for the bit about _the ability of the players to author things into the fiction_ - I will repeat again that the games I GM generally do not involve player fiat authorship, and in my view that this is largely a red herring as far as player agency in respect of the shared fiction is concerned.
> 
> "Is there a vessel in the room that would allow me to catch the mage's blood?" isn't "authoring things into the fiction." It's just an action declaration.




You've lost me here for a bit, @_*pemerton*_ --- "Is there a vessel in the room that would allow me to catch the mage's blood?" isn't an action declaration, it's a query --- I'd call it a "scene frame query." It's asking for confirmation from the GM about a particular element within the scene frame.

An action declaration would be, "I find a vessel in the room that would allow me to catch the mage's blood, and I start capturing the blood." An action declaration of this type does include direct player authorship of something into the fiction---the presence of the vessel. 

So how, then, do we move from "scene frame query" to the actual action declaration, "I find a vessel in the room that would allow me to catch the mage's blood, and I start capturing the blood"? From a practical, in-game perspective of actually GM-ing, this is where it starts to get interesting for me. 

1) The GM can simply agree with the player without any consultation to game mechanics. "Oh yes, of course, there's a small ceramic pot with a plant in it, you can easily toss out the plant and collect some of the blood." (In some cases the GM may not even acknowledge the act of finding the vessel, but move immediately to the narration---"Okay, you're now catching the dripping liquid into an urn.") 

2) The GM can consult a chart or establish an ad hoc probability and roll against it. "Oh, you know what, there might be a vessel --- roll a d20, on 7+ there is, on 6 or less, there isn't." Or perhaps, "Hmmm, I don't know, let me consult this 'stuff in a typical wizard's tower' chart and see what we get."

3) The GM asks the player to process the frame query through some relevant PC mechanics. "Sure, roll a search check, on a success, you've found a vessel, on a success of 5 or more, you find a perfectly clean, pristine pot or urn that will not taint the blood."

Which, if any of these, are you advocating for?

Then let's say a session later, the player who captured the blood says, "Hey, you know what? I bet that tainted sorcerer's blood has some cool magical properties. I bet if I sprinkle it on food, the food will become toxic." This would definitely be player-authored fiction. How as a GM would you determine whether this is "allowable" fiction?

Of course, the PCs may also be unaware of the "secret backstory"---"The PCs can take the blood of the dead sorcerer to Goulash the Dread Witch of Lower Sobovia, who can only be found in sector X55 of the map and the PCs will only discover sector X55 by singing a bardic tune to the stone giantess. Upon receiving the blood, Goulash will grant them 15,000 gold pieces and bake them apple pies to give to the winter wolf."    <<<< If THIS is the kind of worldbuilding you're against, I totally see your point; this is rather useless trivia to the players, that will likely never be useful or speak to any sort of dramatic need. It's mere window dressing included only because the GM really likes the metaphorical "sound of their own imagination." 

But this is a different play component from querying the scene frame and determining the state of the fiction through either agreement or mechanical/probabilistic outcome resolution. 

The more I consider it, the more I'm not sure that the concept of "secret backstory" is really all that helpful. The principle of the matter is, "Be open to letting players really advocate for their characters, and leave elements of the fiction open to letting them do that." As a GM, I'm simply not inclined to ask myself about every single thing I note down about the game world and get all up in arms and anxious about, "Oh crap, have I introduced the dreaded HIDDEN BACKSTORY!!!????" If it turns out later that some piece of pre-authored fiction could be altered in response to what the players are doing and the stakes in the fiction, then just _change it._ I don't think it does much good to worry about it before hand. 

The question each group has to answer is, at what scale or level of specificity are the players allowed to either A) outright introduce elements to the fiction, or B) query the scene frame to determine if a fictional element can appropriately be introduced?

And then find a system that successfully meets the criteria of their answer.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I'm not sure what you mean by "abuse" here.



This 'Czege principle' people keep referring to is one obvious means of abuse.  Metagaming might be another, as would simply playing in bad faith.

You may have players that play nice within your system, as do I for mine.  But not everybody is so lucky; there's players out there who will abuse the hell out of any loophole they can find, just because that's how they play, and any system that allows for direct or even indirect player authorship leaves itself wide open for such abuse.



> But anyway, as I have said many times upthread already, the games the I GM are not ones in which players are per se empowered to author elements of the fiction as part of action declaration.



It's a fine distinction, but your players are - from what I can see - empowered to indirectly author elements of the fiction, as follows:

DM: <describes the room and its contents, including a bleeding mage on a table>
Player: "I search the room for a container to catch the blood!"
<dice are rolled, search is successful, blood is caught>

The container wasn't in the DM's initial description of the room, so the DM didn't author it.  Who authored it, then?  The player, of course, indirectly via the successful search action.

And this is the sort of thing I mean when I suggest players can in fact author elements in a system like what you use.  The success of such authorship just isn't guaranteed until the dice confirm it.  See previous discussions elsewhere about secret doors for another example of this.



> The framing is the establishment of some shared fiction, which speaks to the PCs' dramatic needs. It doesn't dictate options.



It might not dictate options but it certainly can remove or deny some.

Go back to the reliquary example in your game.  The PCs met with some angels who agreed to show them the way to the reliquary, and from there you jumped straight to framing the scene at the reliquary.  While this leaves open all the options for what the PCs do once they arrive it denies any and all options for what they might have wanted to do on the way (e.g. further conversation with the angels, making note of any interesting things seen in passing for later investigation or looting, etc.), and removes any options for pre-scouting, information gathering, or additional exploration before reaching the reliquary itself.

Yes the immediate drama might be waiting at the reliquary but - and this only just now occurred to me - what's being denied is the ability for the PCs to become distracted by something else, or to distract themselves.  Isn't this just another form of railroad?



> As for the bit about _the ability of the players to author things into the fiction_ - I will repeat again that the games I GM generally do not involve player fiat authorship, and in my view that this is largely a red herring as far as player agency in respect of the shared fiction is concerned.
> 
> "Is there a vessel in the room that would allow me to catch the mage's blood?" isn't "authoring things into the fiction." It's just an action declaration.



Yes, but it's also an attempt to author something into the fiction - in this case a container that wasn't initially a part of the room description (or framed scene, whatever) provided by the DM.

A better example might be this: let's say a party is in a castle and has via whatever means got itself into a combat it really can't quite handle.  They've retreated into an old study on the ground floor, which the DM describes (or frames) as being musty, dusty, with two tall narrow windows big enough to let light in but not big enough for a normal person to fit through.  The furniture is covered over with sheets, as if this place has somewhat been abandoned.

The enemies beat on the door, and it gives way.  Foes pour in, and the party's front line prepares for a heroic last stand.

The party thief/rogue/sneak declares as an action "I search the outside wall for a secret door!".  This is huge: success means some of the PCs can escape; failure means a likely TPK.

In a DM-driven game the DM is going to already know whether there's one there to find or not*.  But in a player-driven game it would seem the roll for success on this action will determine whether a secret door is found...which means two things on a successful roll: 1) the thief's player just authored that secret door into the fiction, and 2) the thief's player has via this authorship just given the party an escape route they wouldn't otherwise have had, which skirts a bit too close to the Czege principle for my liking.

* - though even in a DM-driven game, if the DM realizes the pending TPK is her fault rather than the players' she might suddenly decide to stick a secret door there anyway even if there wasn't one to begin with...

Lanefan


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> That is not an example of the GM not influencing the action at all. The parameters for action declaration have all been established by the GM!



It is actually an example of extending the Gygaxian dungeon to the whole world. This is why it is a classic 'OSR' mode of play. At least in theory, the GM simply makes up the whole world ahead of time and then the players solve it, with the GM acting as neutral referee during play. Ideally anyway. Obviously that's another 'spherical cow' but you can achieve a measure of 'skill game' with the world playing as your 'board' to put it in your terms.



> The D&D combat rules give the players a form of control of the fiction. Eg if a player declares "My PC attacks the orc" then (unless certain, relatively uncommon, defeating factors are present) it is true in the fiction that the PC attacks the orc. And if the numbers on the to hit and damage dice are such that (i) the to hit number is high enough relative to AC, and (ii) the hit points dealt equal or exceed the orc's hit points, then the orc is dead - ie a change in the fiction resulting from the resolution of the player's action declaration.
> 
> It's not fiat authorship, but it is clearly a type of control.




I would say that other PC actions are similar aren't they? I mean, you did say that dicing to find the map is identical to killing the orc, in a game-theoretical sense (and I agree). Neither is agency over the fiction, but they are equal. This is really why I give players the ability to AUTHOR fiction, it is the true unequivocal way in which they can become equal in their participation to the GM. Only then is it "everyone's game." It isn't easy to reach this conclusion, it takes a lot of analysis, but it is the endpoint, for me, in terms of RPG analysis. NOW I can talk about ways in which restricting that authorial power, or wielding it in different forms, can shape what can be done. 

This is the final sense in which I am interested in your world building question.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> I can't really parse this until I know what you mean by character stance.  Firstly, I'm not sure I agree with the stance philosophy, but it has uses, so we can work with it.  That said, character isn't a stance I'm familiar with.  Do you mean character advocacy or do you mean actor stance?  The difference is that with character advocacy, your primary play goal is to advocate for the things you think your character cares about, while with actor stance you play from the position your character inhabits in the gameworld.  The former doesn't care if the levers being pulled are in character to meta-game, the latter does.




I mean to 'play with the agency of the character'. Advocacy isn't really relevant here, although presumably a character is a vehicle for the player to express some sort of desire about what she wants to play. I would call 'actor stance' (I haven't really used these terms) to be 'playing in first person', but in my discussion first person isn't really material either. What is material is that the player is taking, within the game world and its fiction, the characteristics, the AGENCY (ability to do things in the game) of the character. This is what you mean by 'no meta-game' presumably.

As with [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], I find it odd that anyone would assert that players bound to character stance have the same agency WRT the fiction as one's who don't live within that limit. Beyond that though, Pemerton's point includes that a player CAN be entirely in what I call character stance and STILL exercise agency over the fiction, and that this is a common method of play. I think it is what most of us are really debating about here. You, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION], et al often maintain that you take into consideration player motivations, desires, suggestions, possibly even to the level of players establishing fictional elements via making checks (IE I search for a secret door and one shows up if the search is successful) in some cases.

I think there's an unbroken continuum in a practical sense from my 'spherical cow' endless random maze where all decisions are pointless, on up through Arnesonian (poor guy gets shafted on credit too much) dungeon play, to various degrees of GM establishment of and utilization of fixed backstory and hidden positioning, on up through all the degrees of GMs cooperating with players to put the elements they want into the story, finally on up to formal scene framing (standard narrativist model) play, and into formal systems of player authorship, and finally unconstrained group authorship. 

In this context I think it is reasonable to get back to the original discussion of world building (which I would generalize to most GM pre-authored backstory and setting). As you approach the Standard Narrativist Model level of player agency is there a different role for world building than there would be in say a dungeon crawl?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> "To" and "as" being operative.  The times you've used this you've made statements like, "This is orthogonal."  You've then not been clear what this is orthogonal to or not running in the same direction as.  Correct usage requires being clear what the other thing is; "This is orthogonal to this other thing."
> 
> I thought pointing out a minor pet peeve on word usage with a Princess Bride paraphrase would have been funny.  Apparently, that humor didn't parse well.  My apologies to those that took the time to answer with respect despite my failed attempt at humor.




I think I'm the one who originally introduced the term into common use on EnWorld. We use it often in software engineering practice in the sense of 'two things which are not related or dependant on each other', usually in the context of a 'concern' or area which requires attention, such as a functional or non-functional requirement.

While it is true that two things are related by their orthogonality, I generally use it in a context where one of those things is understood (IE X is orthogonal to the topic under discussion, which is understood to be Y). Maybe that is sometimes not clear.

I admit to being slow when it comes to humorous references sometimes. Got the Princess Bride reference though


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Fair enough.
> 
> I guess the problem we're having is that while you're interested in that specific form of agency, not everyone is.  Further, even though some less-played systems promote it by design not everyone sees it as a relevant component of the overall agency held by players in most 'mainstream' games/systems; which are what most of us play and are thus a) familiar with and b) basing our thoughts on.




Now see, THIS is a habit I find infinitely irritating!  (and I will just say you personally are a very mild example and I don't mean to get all in your face about it, just pointing it out). 

First of all, though we all acknowledge that most people have played and often do play D&D, the idea that all other RP experience is basically irrelevant to any discussion of RPGs and that the total sum of it all amounts to nothing but some tiny radical fringe of people who should just go away and stop bugging anyone, is not supported by any credible facts. The truth is that MOST other systems in development and play now, MANY of which have a great deal of support in places like Kickstarter and whatnot, are narrativist in many of their elements. I don't agree that this is a fringe group and I don't think trying to keep stating it as a 'fact' furthers discussion. I mean, by all means, start a thread and lets examine the actual state of the RPG industry in that light and try to establish some facts, but to use this non-factual fact as a club in other discussions with which to beat people, I'm not a fan of that! 

Secondly, so what? I mean, really, what does a desire to dismiss all other points of view simply because they are less popular than yours say? I don't think you really mean to be that sort of people! 

Truthfully, I'm not outraged or offended by this kind of thing, I get it, but you probably are best-served by other forms of rhetoric.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> This sort of thing can easily arise out of a Gygaxian dungeon.  All it needs is some immersion into character by the players and a dM who's willing to give them the time between the combats to roleplay their stories/emotions out.  They don't even all have to relate to the current adventure e.g. romantic entanglements between PCs, or rivalries friendly or otherwise, or pranks, etc.




Eh, I think it is not quite the same thing. In the Arnesonian dungeon, the content ALL belongs entirely to the GM. In no case do the players establish what the game is 'about'. If the GM puts undead into the dungeon, then its about undead. If the GM puts orcs in the dungeon, then its about orcs, etc. While players can establish character agendas, "I want to find the Girdle of Giant Strength made by my ancestor Glorf the Great!" its entirely up to the GM as to when, how, where, or if such an agenda will be addressed. In fact, in the perfect ideal of sandbox dungeon play that is often espoused, for the GM to author content deliberately aimed at addressing this character's agenda is considered to be 'not kosher'. 

I think its possible for some very limited elements of player-facing techniques to exist within a skill-test Arnesonian dungeon concept, but to the extent that they do, they begin to move outside that paradigm. So, for instance, it is possible for the Reaction Roll system to produce such results. The PCs encounter the orcs and they convince the orcs, via a good reaction roll, that they should join up with the characters to wipe out the hobgoblins on level 2 and split the loot. Later the thief backstabs the orc leader because he wants a bigger share and thus precipitates some specific action (IE a battle). 

These are some of the elements of player agency which Gygax and Arneson wrote into their game along with certain spells and items (IE scrying and such). Still, every such element requires specific fictional positioning which may be subject to hidden elements, and/or a character resource (spell, potion, etc). Note how in OD&D there is no 'skill system', meaning there isn't an established always available technique for doing this kind of thing, except 'listen rolls' and 'find secret doors', and dwarf's ability to sense slopes and such.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> So the Framing of a scene draws on the Backstory....known to the players...in order to set up some kind of conflict or situation that demands that they act. In that sense, Framing is the establishment of factors that dictate the players' options. Do you think that's accurate?



Framing backstory establishes factors which draw a scene that addresses player concerns and 'gets to the action'. 



> To me, I think this can also be the purpose of little b backstory, where perhaps the players don't know. So to use the bribe-ability of guards as an example....is it really that different to openly Frame a scene and explain that guards cannot be bribed, than it is to not state that openly and let the players discover it only through attempts to bribe or to find out if it's possible?



Well, there are a couple of things to point out here. First it REALLY depends on the agenda of the players. Secondly the bribeability of the guards appears to be SECRET. Think of a wall in a dungeon, you can see it, you can touch it, you know all about what it is. The wall cuts off motion in a certain direction in the dungeon, and the unbribeable guard cuts off certain actions too, but without telegraphing that to the players. This may or may not be an issue depending on the first point, agenda.



> Both limit what is available to the player. The only real distinction to me is that in the second example, the player "wastes a turn" finding out the guards can't be bribed. Is that the point of concern? Doesn't the GM's Framing potentially have just as much impact that secret backstory may have on action declaration? Aren't the players prevented from having their characters bribe the guards either way? So one limit on agency happens up front and openly, and the other is only discovered through play....would that be the primary difference?



I think you need to understand Story Now more deeply. The scene is framed IN RESPECT TO THE PLAYER'S AGENDA, so if the players decide that they wish to engage in bribery and other kinds of skullduggery then unbribeable guards may well be an infringement on their agenda and it simply wouldn't be established as such in a Story Now player-centered game, doing so would be a mistake. Guards would be established, probably, in order to present a CHALLENGE to the characters such that the players must address the questions at hand, which is "we're shady guys who bribe people" (or maybe not, maybe your character is a Paladin and the question is about sticking to your principles regardless of the cost and NOT bribing the guards, then the GM might frame a SOLICITATION of a bribe). Notice how pre-established backstory would work against this kind of agenda. It might be fine to call the guards 'unbribeable' if this suites the framing and leads to the right conflict, but you won't know until you get there. This is why its Story Now. Walls and guards and such ONLY APPEAR when they serve the agenda of the game, and then they have the characteristics that are requisite of them (otherwise they might simply appear as simple props).



> In this sense, couldn't it almost be argued that player agency is even more limited by Framing? Because depending on how the GM Frames things, the players may not even consider certain actions, whether or not they have a chance to succeed.



Player agency probably always IS limited by framing. This is the PURPOSE of framing. Without any limits there's no challenge to overcome, no conflict, no tension, no stakes, nothing. Nobody is arguing that there are no limits on player agency (at least with respect to what the characters can do, in a group-authored game the player might not ACTUALLY be limited formally except by the need to cooperate with the other players to make a good game). What is argued is that the game should always address the player's AGENDA. 

If a player wishes to have a character who's concept is "My father always said I wasn't good enough, so I'm going to rule the world in order to prove him wrong!" then the focus of things which that player does with that character, his character's narrative, is going to be about that need, that drive, the consequences of it, the nature of it, how it impacts and shapes his character, the world, etc. Maybe he spends his time working towards world domination and the challenges are the obvious obstacles to that. Maybe some of it, or most of it even, is about the moral cost of such an undertaking. How much does he have to compromise himself as a human being in order to achieve his goal? It might be about the ultimate hollowness of such an achievement and his growth and realization that it is empty and won't make him happy. There's plenty of possibilities even within a fairly narrow character definition. How this character interacts with the other characters, the nature of the milieu, etc. may all influence exactly what ends up being addressed. Standard Narrativist concepts just imply that it WILL be the central focus of that character's narrative.



> To apply this more specifically to Permerton's concern about player authorship of fiction through action declaration....the Framing certainly seems to remove the ability of the players to author things into the fiction. Anything that contradicts the GM's framing is off the table. Which is fine....I think most people would accept this with no question....but I just don't see it as being all that different.
> 
> Just some thoughts about it all.....generally, my idea of player agency is different than the specific use Permerton has assigned to it in regard to authorship ability....but I still see limitations however you look at it.




Again, limitations aren't really the issue. The issue is what is the agenda of the game? When [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] talks about "moves which reveal the GM's secret backstory" what that really says is "the GM introduces elements of the story that address the GM's agenda." This is, in Story Now terms, simply definitional, as the player's agenda is established dynamically by engaging with the framing of the scenes, character backstory, etc. When the GM dictates backstory for purposes that are other than player agenda, that reduces player agency over the narrative, because it addresses GM agency over the narrative and thus GM agenda. Maybe the two are in harmony sometimes and the player and the GM both get what they want out of the scene. I think this usually happens to some degree in all but dysfunctional cases. The point is, frames always create limitations, but in a player-centered game the players are the center and the limitations are there to further their agenda.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> This is an even worse paraphrase that adds even more confusion to the bits we've managed to sort out.  This definition, as written, applies to many styles of DM0-facing games if taken at face value.  For this to mean what @_*pemerton*_ means, there's a huge host of unspoken assumptions that have to go along with it.



It seemed clear to me 



> Again, not a very good comparision because the assumptions of play between your spherical cow and the following declaration do not align.  The problem here isn't the spherical cow and what that entails in limited choice (mazes automatically limit choices) but that the assumptions of play are not aligned.



Sure, its not coherent with the spherical cow, the only point here was the difference between the two in respect of what the fiction addresses. Its a very bare bones comparison, and that was the point. 



> Secondly, that declaration is treading close to the Czege Principle of the player writing their own solution to their own problems (I want to find X, so I'll declare Y action that will directly lead to me finding X.  Even if there's a mechanical check on this declaration, a success leads to immediate satisfaction of the player defined objectives.)




Sure sure, its a simplistic example. Remember, the 'Czege Principle' is not some sort of absolute thing. It is less a factor to the degree that the result of the player's declaration produces an indirect or incremental move in the direction of meeting their objective. In other words, it would be poor Story Now to produce the secret door to the Yuan Ti temple and entirely address the character's desire. It would be less poor to have it lead to a chamber which contained a map that guided the party to another location. That location in turn would most likely be a step in the direction of the goal, etc. I don't think this is really very relevant to the point I was making, which was about who was in charge of the direction and content of the fiction. In the endless maze it is clearly the GM, entirely. When the player can declare an action to reveal an element of the scene that addresses his agenda, then he's achieved some control over the narrative.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> Who framed the dilemma that put pressure on the players?  If it was not the players, then it's the DM, who has _chosen _a crisis that the player have to react to.  The players didn't chose that crisis.  They must now make choices about what the crisis the DM framed.




Sure, but only in response to what the players WANTED to do. Had these issues not been of interest to the players then this detail would never have been created. In the context of a discussion of world building and backstory creation this is the central topic, how, when, and why do such elements come into existence and what purpose do they serve?


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> A better example might be this: let's say a party is in a castle and has via whatever means got itself into a combat it really can't quite handle.  They've retreated into an old study on the ground floor, which the DM describes (or frames) as being musty, dusty, with two tall narrow windows big enough to let light in but not big enough for a normal person to fit through.  The furniture is covered over with sheets, as if this place has somewhat been abandoned.
> 
> The enemies beat on the door, and it gives way.  Foes pour in, and the party's front line prepares for a heroic last stand.
> 
> The party thief/rogue/sneak declares as an action "I search the outside wall for a secret door!".  This is huge: success means some of the PCs can escape; failure means a likely TPK.
> 
> In a DM-driven game the DM is going to already know whether there's one there to find or not*.  But in a player-driven game it would seem the roll for success on this action will determine whether a secret door is found...which means two things on a successful roll: 1) the thief's player just authored that secret door into the fiction, and 2) the thief's player has via this authorship just given the party an escape route they wouldn't otherwise have had, which skirts a bit too close to the Czege principle for my liking.
> 
> * - though even in a DM-driven game, if the DM realizes the pending TPK is her fault rather than the players' she might suddenly decide to stick a secret door there anyway even if there wasn't one to begin with...




Well, this is where the GM is called upon to use their skills in scene framing. Is this secret door really a thing that further's the player's agenda? It certainly addresses a situation in a way that is advocating for the PC (IE it helps him escape a sticky situation), but is that escape actually beneficial to the narrative? Now, a player is often likely to create some sort of action declaration like this without asking that question (because they're caught up in the scene and their immediate actions and favoring the PC). Still, it MAY be poor play on the part of the player. In that case the GM might try to address it in various ways. First of all he might simply set the DC very high, which is a bit of a cop out, but not terrible. He might simply declare this action to be incoherent WRT the framing of the scene (IE it is illogical for such a passage to exist). He might frame it in terms of 'Yes, and..." or "Yes, but...". Maybe now the character has to escape and leave his friends behind. Is this a price he's willing to pay? Will he invoke some sort of costly magic to bring them along? etc. The GM might also feel that, aesthetically, a secret door is silly, and recast it in different terms. The player should really have done this already if, say, the door is at variance with genre expectations or just illogical.


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, this is where the GM is called upon to use their skills in scene framing. Is this secret door really a thing that further's the player's agenda? It certainly addresses a situation in a way that is advocating for the PC (IE it helps him escape a sticky situation), but is that escape actually beneficial to the narrative?



I'd say it is, in that without it there probably won't BE any narrative after the end of the battle, as there'll be no party left to narrate about. 



> Now, a player is often likely to create some sort of action declaration like this without asking that question (because they're caught up in the scene and their immediate actions and favoring the PC). Still, it MAY be poor play on the part of the player.



Which to me shows an advantage of a more DM-driven game: the player doesn't have to bother with these considerations but instead can just play her character and in so doing declare anything, trusting the DM's judgment to just say 'no' to anything that's out of line or ridiculous.

In other words, if I'm the player here I don't want to have to think on any sort of meta-level about "what's good for the story" or "is this beneficial to the narrative" when I'm trying to get my sorry character out of a jam...or at any other time, for that matter.  And why is that?  Because the moment I allow a thought of "what's good for the story" to change anything that my character would otherwise do, I've stopped playing my character as my character and have instead moved into meta-playing.

I-as-player should be able to just have my character do what it would do (or try to, subject to the DM's permission and-or the system's means of resolution), and let the story take care of itself.

As for the specific example:



> In that case the GM might try to address it in various ways. First of all he might simply set the DC very high, which is a bit of a cop out, but not terrible. He might simply declare this action to be incoherent WRT the framing of the scene (IE it is illogical for such a passage to exist). He might frame it in terms of 'Yes, and..." or "Yes, but...". Maybe now the character has to escape and leave his friends behind. Is this a price he's willing to pay? Will he invoke some sort of costly magic to bring them along? etc. The GM might also feel that, aesthetically, a secret door is silly, and recast it in different terms. The player should really have done this already if, say, the door is at variance with genre expectations or just illogical.



All of these are of course possible; but many could be seen from the player side as being exactly the same as the DM consulting her notes and (with or without faking a roll) narrating failure on the search.

And further, even if a secret door there is illogical a character desperate to find an escape route might not see it that way in the heat of the moment...

Lan-"why is it that I simply cannot type the word 'secret' without messing it up and having to backspace-retype"-efan


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> I'd say it is, in that without it there probably won't BE any narrative after the end of the battle, as there'll be no party left to narrate about.



Eh, while 'classic' D&D seems to have persisted in encouraging a very final interpretation of 'character death' (defeat in combat) long after it stopped always serving the agenda, modern games don't suffer from that problem so much. I mean, sure, if the whole framing of the thing is "lets stake the lives of our characters on success, we'll hold nothing back, success or death!" then they're ASKING for death! So give it to them! 

OTOH if they're maybe NOT asking for death then there's always logic in a parley. I mean, MOST bad guys are not averse to ransoms, slavery, etc. You can always kill 'em later. A GM can EASILY come up with a frame for a post-capture type of scene. I know the old, "you wake up some time later" thing is perhaps a bit old and tired and you don't want to use it constantly, but once the PCs are cornered there's nothing stopping them from tossing down there weapons, perhaps in a "we'll spare killing a whole bunch of your minions if you take us prisoner and let us live" kind of thing. 

So, meh, I'm not sure most battles MUST be life-and-death struggles. 



> Which to me shows an advantage of a more DM-driven game: the player doesn't have to bother with these considerations but instead can just play her character and in so doing declare anything, trusting the DM's judgment to just say 'no' to anything that's out of line or ridiculous.
> 
> In other words, if I'm the player here I don't want to have to think on any sort of meta-level about "what's good for the story" or "is this beneficial to the narrative" when I'm trying to get my sorry character out of a jam...or at any other time, for that matter.  And why is that?  Because the moment I allow a thought of "what's good for the story" to change anything that my character would otherwise do, I've stopped playing my character as my character and have instead moved into meta-playing.
> 
> I-as-player should be able to just have my character do what it would do (or try to, subject to the DM's permission and-or the system's means of resolution), and let the story take care of itself.



Well, its easy enough for it to just be the GM saying "Nope, that isn't possible here!" which is NOT forbidden. I mean, these kinds of games are intended to be driven by "say yes" type GMing, but there's ALWAYS a limit to that! I mean, characters can only do certain things. Your average dwarf cannot just say "I sprout wings and fly away" any old time, and even [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is going to have some serious questions about that! I know it wouldn't fly (hehe) in my game! Actually it MIGHT, if you're level 27 and you appeal to your patron deity to save your bacon in a really important battle! Of course there WILL be consequences... I'd point out that there's a chart for this in the 1e DMG p111 where the guidelines work out that a character of level 15 who has never asked for divine favor before, and has reasonable alignment behavior has a 41% chance of such intervention! (15% for level, 25% for 'serving deity proximately', and 1% for 'diametrically opposed alignment'). It won't happen every time, but even crazy stuff is intended to be possible in D&D. 

Point is, I don't think you're really imposing any consideration on the game that isn't already there in some form. Yes, players in a player-centered type of Standard Narrative game should consider the narrative, but that's why they're playing in such a game, right? Players in ANY game have a similar situation, they're expected to play in a way that shows some deference to the character as an individual. They aren't supposed to just commit suicide because it is fun for the player, or assassinate the other PCs just for the amusement of the player. I'd point out that this sort of problematic behavior is all too well known in games! So I would think that pushing the bounds in terms of player authority when they have narrative agency is really nothing surprising or new.  

Obviously there may be some people who just don't want to play this way, but IME that is extremely rare. It may take presenting the game in a way that players relate to when they first encounter such a game, but in the form [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is espousing, which is really the mildest form, pretty much everyone I've tried it on just 'got it'. They produced much more interesting and useful backstory, they pointed out times and places in play which they felt related to their character's concerns, and took those concerns as a significant element of play to be exploited for their entertainment. I'm quite positive players exist who will absolutely refuse to play this way, but its not a huge percentage of those I've met.



> As for the specific example:
> 
> All of these are of course possible; but many could be seen from the player side as being exactly the same as the DM consulting her notes and (with or without faking a roll) narrating failure on the search.
> 
> And further, even if a secret door there is illogical a character desperate to find an escape route might not see it that way in the heat of the moment...




No, but I think they'd see the logic in something else. Some sort of 'deus ex machina', an offer to accept their surrender, or the sudden arrival of an ally, etc. is often quite plausible. It might, again, get a little contrived, but that's part of the whole concept, at least in many genre, that the heroes get these sorts of breaks, otherwise they wouldn't have survived as heroes. 

And that's always how I look at it, the story is like an old tale that is being retold. You wouldn't even hear it if the orcs slaughtered the PCs on day 3 of their story and roasted them over a fire. Somehow they pulled through. Maybe not every time, maybe the story is about how they died heroically, but something interesting happened. So there must have been some fate involved to pull their fat out of the fire a few times (or not I guess if they're skilled/lucky enough).


----------



## pemerton

innerdude said:


> "Is there a vessel in the room that would allow me to catch the mage's blood?" isn't an action declaration, it's a query --- I'd call it a "scene frame query." It's asking for confirmation from the GM about a particular element within the scene frame.
> 
> An action declaration would be, "I find a vessel in the room that would allow me to catch the mage's blood, and I start capturing the blood." An action declaration of this type does include direct player authorship of something into the fiction---the presence of the vessel



I was treating it as equivalent to "I look about for a vessel in the room that would allow me to catch the mage's blood."

"I find a vessel . . ." I think is a valid action declaraiton only if (i) it's already established that the room is full of vessels, or (ii) the player is allowed to exercise fiat authorship.



innerdude said:


> From a practical, in-game perspective of actually GM-ing, this is where it starts to get interesting for me.
> 
> 1) The GM can simply agree with the player without any consultation to game mechanics. "Oh yes, of course, there's a small ceramic pot with a plant in it, you can easily toss out the plant and collect some of the blood." (In some cases the GM may not even acknowledge the act of finding the vessel, but move immediately to the narration---"Okay, you're now catching the dripping liquid into an urn.")
> 
> 2) The GM can consult a chart or establish an ad hoc probability and roll against it. "Oh, you know what, there might be a vessel --- roll a d20, on 7+ there is, on 6 or less, there isn't." Or perhaps, "Hmmm, I don't know, let me consult this 'stuff in a typical wizard's tower' chart and see what we get."
> 
> 3) The GM asks the player to process the frame query through some relevant PC mechanics. "Sure, roll a search check, on a success, you've found a vessel, on a success of 5 or more, you find a perfectly clean, pristine pot or urn that will not taint the blood."
> 
> Which, if any of these, are you advocating for?



The standard approach to resolution under the "standard narrativistic model" is "say 'yes' or roll the dice".

What "roll the dice" looks like is system-dependent. Some systems don't have a "roll the dice" option for a range of standard action declarations (eg spell casting in D&D) which can create some challenges - 4e tries to circumvent this issue by having the fiat authorship of a ritual or a daily power count as only one success in a skill challenge, leaving dice to be rolled for other actions within the context of the skill challenge.

Your (1) is saying "yes". Your (3) is rolling the dice. Your (2) looks like a version of establishing notional (rather than literal) notes. Part of the difference between (2) and (3) is that (3) allows player decision-making (eg build decisions; resource expenditure, such as fate points in some systems) to manifest.

When this actually came up in my Burning Wheel game, I followed the rules of the game - say "yes" when nothing is at stake, and otherwise frame a check - and jhence framed a Perception check.

Of systems that I am currently GMing, the one that most strongly elides the contrast between (2) and (3) is Classic Traveller, because it has very little player control over PC build, and very few player-side resources (nothing like fate points, and nothing like fiat-authorship spells/rituals either). My principal response to this is to turn the (2)s into (3)s - eg the players roll the reaction checks (which thereby become influence checks), roll the encounter checks (which thereby become "avoid attention" checks), etc. Because each player is running 2 PCs, the most important player-side resouce allocation actually becomes which PC(s) to use in a particular context (eg which PC is going down in the shuttle?).

This relative lack of player-side resources, combined with a very high degree of dice-driven content-introduction, is what prompted me to start a thread a little while ago about Classic Traveller being a dice-driven game.

(All that said, there are bits of CT that are mildly incoherent - eg there are suggestions in the rules that floor plans should be drawn up in advance, and the published adventures tend to reinforce this; but I think the encounter rules work better if the details are established in response to the roll for encounter range - in other words, the "dice driven" elements are more powerful than other parts of the rules seem to give them credit for.)



innerdude said:


> Then let's say a session later, the player who captured the blood says, "Hey, you know what? I bet that tainted sorcerer's blood has some cool magical properties. I bet if I sprinkle it on food, the food will become toxic." This would definitely be player-authored fiction. How as a GM would you determine whether this is "allowable" fiction?



Again, it looks like action declaration.

The details would be system-dependent. For the systems I'm currently GMing:

* In 4e it looks like an Arcana check - depending how the player elaborates as the GM teases it out, either for knowledge or for doing.

* In Cortex+ Heroic it looks like colour + fictional positioning - the player explains what is going in in making a Sorcery check to establish either a complication (Poisoned by Toxic Food) or physical stress on an opponent.

* In Burning Wheel, depending on how the player elaborates as the GM teases it out, it could be an Enchanting check, or an Aura-Reading check (to learn the properties of the blood), or even a Sorcery check (if that particular game is using free-form sorcery - mine doesn't).



innerdude said:


> The principle of the matter is, "Be open to letting players really advocate for their characters, and leave elements of the fiction open to letting them do that."



I think that this formulation tends to elide some matters that, at the table, matter - you can see this in the XP for your post! Because what counts as "really advocating" is up for grabs.


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> (All that said, there are bits of CT that are mildly incoherent - eg there are suggestions in the rules that floor plans should be drawn up in advance, and the published adventures tend to reinforce this; but I think the encounter rules work better if the details are established in response to the roll for encounter range - in other words, the "dice driven" elements are more powerful than other parts of the rules seem to give them credit for.)



Simply because, at the time (1977) when Traveler was published it was literally inconceivable to do it any other way. I would imagine Marc Miller started working on Traveler virtually as soon as he saw a copy of D&D in 1974, since it would have taken 2-3 years to design, playtest, edit, and layout and print, a game in those days, and then get it to the distributors. Thus it was probably literally written before anything like even Greyhawk had been published. At that time the only example of a working RPG and process would be whatever you saw Gary do at a con, or what someone who had one of the early 'woodgrain box' D&D sets was doing. These were all wargamers, thus a scenario (adventure, dungeon, whatever) was laid out ahead of time for sure.

So, when it came to designing an adventure for Traveler, the only thing anyone knew how to do was to make a bunch of maps and keys, and some sort of story arc which would presumably propel the PCs from their starting point to the adventure location (or on to the next location if there was one). What I remember of the early Traveler adventures was that they were all location-based. It was all something on the order of "go to location X and explore the base/ship/ruins found there" with various permutations of how you got there (shipwrecked, hijacked, hired, misjumped, etc.) and of what exactly needed to be accomplished at the location (find something, blow it up, steal it, loot it, etc) if anything. 

TBH I don't recall the specifics of any one single adventure, though I do remember that there were a number of products like 'Azhanti High Lightning' which had a whole bunch of maps of a large warship and various scenarios for using them (sneak on board to do something, find ship a floating wreck and explore, etc).

I don't recall that Traveler ever really evolved beyond that level. Its an odd aspect of that game, it seemed to be born whole in 1977 and it basically has been stuck there ever since. It never evolved even a tiny bit. I guess Megatraveler and maybe the newer Mongoose version have some very modest provisions for things like general action declarations ala the Streetwise skill check in CT, though I have never played any of those myself. Functionally they all look pretty much like very slightly tweaked updates to the CT rules.

That being said, Traveler is an easy game to modernize! For example you could go the 4e path and introduce SCs to it. At that point you could add in 'special benefits' for high skill levels (IE you can get extra advantages to certain types of checks with skill level 3+). You could also fold these benefits back into the logistics side of the game (make an Engineering check to see if you packed the right spare parts before leaving port when they're needed).

You could also allow some fun stuff with SS, like risking a loss of SS in return for doing certain things, or add a debt factor to it to represent calling in obligations or incurring new ones. Abstract wealth would also work well in Traveler, and you could basically establish a separate wealth stat which worked much like SS.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] - agreed completely on history of Traveller - my comment about incoherence isn't a historical analysis but just a comment about actual play when you look at how the systems (maps + encounter rules) interact.

Early Traveller adventures are pretty much what you describe only more boring if that's possible - they really are "poke at this situation and get the GM to tell you stuff until you figure out what is going on". It's like the early part of an Alien franchise movie but more tedious and with no payoff!

On more modern versions, I can't comment on Mongoose Traveller but MegaTraveller is (I would say) an objectively bad system:

* it turns nearly every entry on the skill chart into a cascade skill, with choices like (say) Liaison vs Carousing as opposed to the Wheeled vs Grav Vehicle type stuff that you get in Classic, thus losing the quirks and virtues of random PC gen without getting a coherent (say, points buy) alternative;

* it replaces the interesting rules for skill resolution in CT (where, say, 1 rank in Vacc Suit means something different depending whether you're trying to avoid tearing your suit running across a moon, or you're trying to emergency patch your suit having torn it; and where, say, unskilled driving is easier to pull off than unskilled Streetwise, let alone unskilled Medicine or Engineering) with a complicated and utterly bland universal skill resolution system;

* it replaces the intriguing and workable ship design system from Book 2 with some unworkable descendant of the barely workable High Guard system;

etc.

Basically, at every point where the game could lose its charm and playability and become more like a poor cousin of GURPS, MegaTraveller makes that move.

The only innovation it has that I think is worthwhile is the "special duty" line on the PC gen charts, which gives starting skill loads out a bit more in line with Mercenary/High Guard-type characters.

I haven't had occasion yet to use "loss of Social Standing" as a stake in my game, but I think it's completely viable, and Andy Slack had a version of it (connected to criminal convictions) back in his early White Dwarf Expanded Universe series.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I would say that other PC actions are similar aren't they? I mean, you did say that dicing to find the map is identical to killing the orc, in a game-theoretical sense (and I agree).



I agree in a theoretical sense. The post you've replied to was particularly in the context of D&D, which tends (especially in its 2nd ed AD&D, 3E and 5e incarnations) to be weak on finality for non-combat action resolution.

If you have a skill challenge, or 1st ed AD&D-style "no retries" (or retries with cost, like passage of time = wandering monster checks), then other PC actions become similar to combat. But a lot of "living, breathing world" play also rejects those sorts of "no retries" mechanics on grounds that they are "unrealistic".



AbdulAlhazred said:


> This is really why I give players the ability to AUTHOR fiction, it is the true unequivocal way in which they can become equal in their participation to the GM. Only then is it "everyone's game." It isn't easy to reach this conclusion, it takes a lot of analysis, but it is the endpoint, for me, in terms of RPG analysis. NOW I can talk about ways in which restricting that authorial power, or wielding it in different forms, can shape what can be done.



I can see the logic of this. For me, full equality suggests a game like A Penny For My Thoughts that I posted about upthread. Once you start having distinct player and GM roles, there have to be different functions to establish that distinctness. I see those differences of function to include, at least potentially and - given my habits - by default, different sorts of authority over content-introduction.

For instance, I think player content introduction - again, by default given my habits - is circumscribed by _the PC_ as some sort of centring device. So eg a player can say, "I reach out to Jabal, the leader of my sorcerous cabal", therefore making it the case that the fiction includes Jabal as a leader of the cabal. But the player probably can't just declare that Jabal has a step-child who is a magic-using prodigy; nor just declare who the head of the butcher's guild, to which the PC has no connection, is.

I think all the above is often very informal, and as I've said guided by habits and assumptions. But I hope you can see a certain logic to it!


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> there's players out there who will abuse the hell out of any loophole they can find, just because that's how they play, and any system that allows for direct or even indirect player authorship leaves itself wide open for such abuse.



This is a strange argument for worldbuilding - it stops player's abusing their power, by removing it!

What if the GM abuses his/her power?

Personally I think I prefer to think about different techniques based on the play experience they are intended to deliver, rather than what happens if game participants turn bad.



> It's a fine distinction, but your players are - from what I can see - empowered to indirectly author elements of the fiction, as follows:
> 
> DM: <describes the room and its contents, including a bleeding mage on a table>
> Player: "I search the room for a container to catch the blood!"
> <dice are rolled, search is successful, blood is caught>
> 
> The container wasn't in the DM's initial description of the room, so the DM didn't author it. Who authored it, then? The player, of course, indirectly via the successful search action.



Yes. I've posted the above example (or variants on it) about 100 times upthread!

That's a key part of what distinguishes RPGing from shared storytelling: the player doesn't have to do anything but delcare actions as his/her character. The resolution mechanics mediate the process of establishing the content of the shared fiction.



Lanefan said:


> I-as-player should be able to just have my character do what it would do (or try to, subject to the DM's permission and-or the system's means of resolution), and let the story take care of itself.



Sure. That's why you just delcare actions! It's the job of the resolution system to take care of story - that's the whole point of it!

If the resolution system isn't up to the job, that's a different thing (see further below).



Lanefan said:


> it's also an attempt to author something into the fiction



All action declaration is an attempt to author something into the fiction - a dead orc, a discovered secret door, whatever it might be. That's the point of action declaration - to change the fiction!



Lanefan said:


> The enemies beat on the door, and it gives way. Foes pour in, and the party's front line prepares for a heroic last stand.
> 
> The party thief/rogue/sneak declares as an action "I search the outside wall for a secret door!". This is huge: success means some of the PCs can escape; failure means a likely TPK.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> in a player-driven game it would seem the roll for success on this action will determine whether a secret door is found...which means two things on a successful roll: 1) the thief's player just authored that secret door into the fiction, and 2) the thief's player has via this authorship just given the party an escape route they wouldn't otherwise have had, which skirts a bit too close to the Czege principle for my liking.



I think [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] posted some thoughts in response to this.

My first thought is that I don't see how what you describe violates the Czege principle at all - the player is not framing his/her own conflict, the GM did that (by establishing that the enemies have beaten through the door - I am assuming that this is being established by the GM). The player is simply declaring an action that addresses the conflict - "I look for a secret door so I can run away!"

Second, you are making assumptions that you have not spelled out about the significance of finding a secret door. In some systems (eg some forms of D&D), perhaps this is a "get out of jail free" card. But then in those systems so would a Passwall spell be, so whether or not finding a secret door is unbalanced depends upon how the system allocates a range of other similar action possibilities.

In Cortex+ Heroic finding the secret door establishes an asset which will give a bonus die to subsequent appropriate action declarations, but doesn't constitute a "get out of jail free" card at all. In 4e, it might be part of a skill challenge, and until the challenge overall is resolved the players are not entitled to any assumption of success in escaping their enemies.

More generally, I think there is a need to distignuish between _abuse_ and _unbalanced moves_. The latter are a big deal in D&D (less so in nearly every other RPG I'm familiar with), but that just tells us something about a peculiarity of D&D. If D&D can't support player-driven RPGing because it's got no appropriate way of balancing moves, managing action economy, etc, again that's mostly just a fact about D&D. (I know from experience that 4e doesn't have problems along these lines, besides the niggling infelicities that can be found in many complex RPG systems with many moving parts. I wouldn't be surprised if 3E is very different in this respect, nor 5e either for that matter. And 2nd ed AD&D has its own issues that AbdulAlhazred has already mentioned at length in this thread.)



Lanefan said:


> Go back to the reliquary example in your game. The PCs met with some angels who agreed to show them the way to the reliquary, and from there you jumped straight to framing the scene at the reliquary. While this leaves open all the options for what the PCs do once they arrive it denies any and all options for what they might have wanted to do on the way (e.g. further conversation with the angels, making note of any interesting things seen in passing for later investigation or looting, etc.), and removes any options for pre-scouting, information gathering, or additional exploration before reaching the reliquary itself.
> 
> Yes the immediate drama might be waiting at the reliquary but - and this only just now occurred to me - what's being denied is the ability for the PCs to become distracted by something else, or to distract themselves. Isn't this just another form of railroad?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Do you mean PCs or players? There is no player agency in the PCs being distracted - I mean, I as GM could narrate "You [the PCs] become distracted by some piping minstrels, but soon regain your focus on the task at hand."
> 
> As far as the players being distracted, I find it hard to characterise "being distracted" as a form of agency - it is a way of being led by someone else's exercise of agency! (That's practically inherent in the meaning of what it is to be distracted.)
> 
> If the players want to do something other than go to the reliquary, than that is on them - they can call for us to back up, or they can retropsectively resolve some situation where they collected some information, or whatever. You seem to be presupposing a type of rigidigy about play, and the handling of the passage of time and of movement from A to B in the fiction, that is different from my experience.
Click to expand...


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> Who framed the dilemma that put pressure on the players? If it was not the players, then it's the DM, who has chosen a crisis that the player have to react to. The players didn't chose that crisis. They must now make choices about what the crisis the DM framed.



 [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] posted a response to this not far upthread.

What I would add is that you are now positing that _having a GM_ is a burden on player agency. I guess there is a sense in which that is true, but it seems a necessary element in anything resembling a RPG in the typical sense rather than a shared story-telling game like A Penny For My Thoughts.

I started this thread in the General RPG forum, and throughout have assumed that we are talking about RPGs. In a typical RPG someone else - the GM (or another player occupying the GM role for that episode of play) - establishes the situation in which the player finds his/her PC. That framing can either take as its core the GM's stuff or the player's stuff. Consistently with what AbdulAlhazred posted, I am asserting in this thread that when the GM uses the player's stuff (or players' stuff) to inform the framing that affirms the players' agency over the content of the shared fiction.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> the assumptions of play between your spherical cow and the following declaration do not align.  The problem here isn't the spherical cow and what that entails in limited choice (mazes automatically limit choices) but that the assumptions of play are not aligned.



I believe that [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] is making a point about degrees of player agency over the content of the shared fiction, and perhaps more generally over the "direction and shape" of play (to use a metaphor).

I don't see how it refutes AbdulAlhazred to say that "the assumptions of play are not aligned." That's the point! A player of snakes and ladders who tries to _choose_ which squares to move his/her piece into has "misalgined" his/her assumptions of play. But that doesn't mean that players of snakes and ladders have some sort of different, snakes-and-ladders-type agency. It just helps us see that snakes and ladders is a game free of player agency - whereas there are other games in the neighbourhood (eg backgammon) that do involve player agency.

And if someone comes along and says, "Well, when we play snakes and ladders we exercise all this agency over how we roll the dice (with a cup, with lots of shaking, over the shoulder, whatever)" or "We exercise all this agency in how we count out the squares" how is the person who said that backgammon has more agency than snakes and ladders meant to respond? I mean, backgammon players can do that stuff too if they want - but they may not bother if the play of the game itself has sufficient agency to hold their interest!

As we relax the constraints on snakes and ladders to make it more like backgammon, then attempted moves that once were "misaligned" become apposite. That's precisely because we're introducing agency into the play of the game.

Of course any illustration by analogy has its limits; AbdulAlhazred already acknowledged that by calling his a "spherical cow". But the point is still there: in the scenario he described player agency over the content of the shared fiction is minimal at best. The fact that players may manifest their agency in other ways, or over other elements of the RPGing experience, doesn't change the basic point.



Ovinomancer said:


> AbdulAlhazred said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> A player cannot say here "I try to find the secret passage which leads to the land of the Yuan Ti, my character is obsessed with finding them."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> that declaration is treading close to the Czege Principle of the player writing their own solution to their own problems (I want to find X, so I'll declare Y action that will directly lead to me finding X.  Even if there's a mechanical check on this declaration, a success leads to immediate satisfaction of the player defined objectives.)
Click to expand...


The Czege Principle is the empirical conjecture that "it’s not exciting to play a roleplaying game if the rules require one player to both introduce and resolve a conflict."

What AbdulAlhazred has described does not violate the Czege Principle: he is positing that the GM has framed the PC into an endless indiscernible maze; and the player decares "I search for a secret passage to take me to the land of the Yuan Ti." That is just the play of a RPG!

To be honest I find it interesting, and potentially quite telling, that both you ( [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]) and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] look at perfectly ordinary action declarations in response to GM establishment of the situation - like "I'm in place X - the maze - and want to be in place Y - the land of the Yuan-ti - and so search for a secret passage from X to Y"; or "Enemies have broken down the door to my redoubt, and I want to escape, so I search for a secret escape tunnel" - and see violations of the Czege Principle!

You are treating the principle as supporting a prohibition on players' freely declaring actions that would resolve their current predicaments - ie as a licence for railroading!


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I agree in a theoretical sense. The post you've replied to was particularly in the context of D&D, which tends (especially in its 2nd ed AD&D, 3E and 5e incarnations) to be weak on finality for non-combat action resolution.
> 
> If you have a skill challenge, or 1st ed AD&D-style "no retries" (or retries with cost, like passage of time = wandering monster checks), then other PC actions become similar to combat. But a lot of "living, breathing world" play also rejects those sorts of "no retries" mechanics on grounds that they are "unrealistic".




That's still no different than killing the orc, though.  When killing an orc, you also get "retries".  If you miss(fail to kill the orc), you can retry until you kill it or something else happens to prevent success.  You are comparing success against the orc on the first try, with failure of the skill attempt on the first try, rather than comparing success on the first attempts to both.  

AC and HP are not set with an orc, either.  The DM has the option to alter both via rolling for hit points rather than using the flat number listed, or by adding removing armor pieces/magic to the orc.  So those two variables are similar to the DM setting the DC for the skill attempt.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I mean to 'play with the agency of the character'. Advocacy isn't really relevant here, although presumably a character is a vehicle for the player to express some sort of desire about what she wants to play. I would call 'actor stance' (I haven't really used these terms) to be 'playing in first person', but in my discussion first person isn't really material either. What is material is that the player is taking, within the game world and its fiction, the characteristics, the AGENCY (ability to do things in the game) of the character. This is what you mean by 'no meta-game' presumably.
> 
> As with  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], I find it odd that anyone would assert that players bound to character stance have the same agency WRT the fiction as one's who don't live within that limit. Beyond that though, Pemerton's point includes that a player CAN be entirely in what I call character stance and STILL exercise agency over the fiction, and that this is a common method of play. I think it is what most of us are really debating about here. You, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION], et al often maintain that you take into consideration player motivations, desires, suggestions, possibly even to the level of players establishing fictional elements via making checks (IE I search for a secret door and one shows up if the search is successful) in some cases.
> 
> I think there's an unbroken continuum in a practical sense from my 'spherical cow' endless random maze where all decisions are pointless, on up through Arnesonian (poor guy gets shafted on credit too much) dungeon play, to various degrees of GM establishment of and utilization of fixed backstory and hidden positioning, on up through all the degrees of GMs cooperating with players to put the elements they want into the story, finally on up to formal scene framing (standard narrativist model) play, and into formal systems of player authorship, and finally unconstrained group authorship.
> 
> In this context I think it is reasonable to get back to the original discussion of world building (which I would generalize to most GM pre-authored backstory and setting). As you approach the Standard Narrativist Model level of player agency is there a different role for world building than there would be in say a dungeon crawl?




I don't think anyone's claiming they have the same agency, with agency defined in the [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]ian sense.  Clearly, there are different levels of this agency, and I've been very explicit about this.  What I have argued is that total agency is similar, because the trade-offs made in granted expanded [MENTION=6923062]Per[/MENTION]mertonian agency come at the reductions of other kinds of agency, and vice versa.  I've also said that this is fine, because different players will value different kinds of agency in different ways.  

As for the continuum, I started thinking that there was one, but I've come around to strongly saying there isn't an unbroken continuum.  This is shown by the fact that there are no games truly in the middle by design.  There are DM-facing games with some player-facing tools, and vice versa, but nothing at all that's truly in the middle.  I think, despite the tone and strange arguments, that [MENTION=6923062]Per[/MENTION]merton's simplified point that hidden backstory interferes with player action declaration in player-facing games and breaks the understood point of play is correct and why we cannot have 'in the middle' games at all -- we can only borrow some tools while the majority remain in the different camps.  It really is chess vs checkers with no true hybrid in the middle.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> It seemed clear to me



Sure, you had all of the assumptions! 




> Sure, its not coherent with the spherical cow, the only point here was the difference between the two in respect of what the fiction addresses. Its a very bare bones comparison, and that was the point.



I think, again, it's a bad comparison because the intent and declaration are outside of the scope of the model -- the model is that there is only the maze, but the declaration both presents something outside of the maze and a way to achieve it, neither of which are part of the model.  It's like searching the study for a ray gun - it breaks the assumptions of the game.  In doing so, it doesn't represent what you intended it to represent, and actually takes on characteristics that go against the model of player-facing games and right into some of the easy but incorrect criticisms made against player facing play, ie, that the players can just make up whatever they want.

As such, your example does more against your point that for it.




> Sure sure, its a simplistic example. Remember, the 'Czege Principle' is not some sort of absolute thing. It is less a factor to the degree that the result of the player's declaration produces an indirect or incremental move in the direction of meeting their objective. In other words, it would be poor Story Now to produce the secret door to the Yuan Ti temple and entirely address the character's desire. It would be less poor to have it lead to a chamber which contained a map that guided the party to another location. That location in turn would most likely be a step in the direction of the goal, etc. I don't think this is really very relevant to the point I was making, which was about who was in charge of the direction and content of the fiction. In the endless maze it is clearly the GM, entirely. When the player can declare an action to reveal an element of the scene that addresses his agenda, then he's achieved some control over the narrative.



No, I understand all of that, I pointed it out because, given the simple model, the player declaring that there is a yuan-ti jungle in a world defined as only a twisty maze is introducing their own challenge and the fiction necessary to support it, ie that the spherical cow now has a tumor that's yuan-ti jungle shaped.  And then the player proposes their own solution to this inserted problems with the declaration of a secret door.  There's a mechanical check, which prevents a complete violation, but a success looks very much like one and a failure leaves the problem of whether or not the cow tumor yuan-ti jungle is negated as well.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Sure, but only in response to what the players WANTED to do. Had these issues not been of interest to the players then this detail would never have been created. In the context of a discussion of world building and backstory creation this is the central topic, how, when, and why do such elements come into existence and what purpose do they serve?




This is a bit vague.  My understanding is that the GM is supposed to frame scenes that bring the player agendas into crisis, which isn't the same thing as framing things the players are interested in.  The form of the crisis is the invention of the GM, not the player, and only loosely follows player interests in that the crisis formed attacks some part of the player's agenda.  The fact that all scenes are supposed to place the player agenda into unavoidable crisis is the bit that I'm actually talking about.  The defense that 'well, it's still the player's agenda' doesn't really defuse the point that the players lack agency to mitigate or choose the crisis they're forced into.

Again, this is analytical. I think that there's a lot of fun in games that do this, that constantly bang the drum on crisis and make the players make hard choices.  But, it that fun does come as some costs -- it's not all free lunch.  And, when discussing agency, I think it's okay to acknowledge that it is a zero-sum game because we all can't have total agency in a shared space -- we also have to share the agency or it's not a shared space.  How we share that agency is useful, but not when we're denying that agency sharing occurs and try to claim that one style has more agency than another in total.  This is why I've tried to be so clear about how [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has defined agency for his discussion.  Under that definition, the agency over what's added to the fiction and how is more broadly given to players and taken from the DM in player-facing games (by definition of player facing, I'd argue).  However, this doesn't mean that some other agencies aren't given back to the DM to compensate.  The agency over pacing, for instance, seems to be a big concession -- players in DM facing games tend to have much more agency over pacing than in player facing games because crisis is an emergent function of DM facing games while it's a focus in player-facing games.  Players in player-facing games cannot avoid or mitigate crisis by slowing down the pacing.  Players in DM-facing games have less agency to introduce new fiction to overcome crisis.  This is because they have more agency in pacing to mitigate and overcome crisis.  Much of the discussion about resting in 5e is really about how much agency the players have over pacing and how it can trivialize many elements of the game that the DM uses to advance to crisis.  So, this isn't something that's new, even if it's not normally discussed in terms like 'agency over pacing.'


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] posted a response to this not far upthread.
> 
> What I would add is that you are now positing that _having a GM_ is a burden on player agency. I guess there is a sense in which that is true, but it seems a necessary element in anything resembling a RPG in the typical sense rather than a shared story-telling game like A Penny For My Thoughts.
> 
> I started this thread in the General RPG forum, and throughout have assumed that we are talking about RPGs. In a typical RPG someone else - the GM (or another player occupying the GM role for that episode of play) - establishes the situation in which the player finds his/her PC. That framing can either take as its core the GM's stuff or the player's stuff. Consistently with what AbdulAlhazred posted, I am asserting in this thread that when the GM uses the player's stuff (or players' stuff) to inform the framing that affirms the players' agency over the content of the shared fiction.



No, I didn't posit that because having a DM as a burden on player agency is blatantly obvious.  I assumed we all took that as a given.

What I was doing was pointing out that increasing agency in one area typically comes at a cost in another area.  Having increased agency over the shared fiction for the purposes of overcoming obstacles in play comes at the loss of agency in determining the pacing of the game -- the rate at which obstacles must be addressed.  In player-facing games, the players can't choose to hold off on a framed crisis in play -- they are expected to engage that crisis and accept the consequences of the engagement.  In DM-facing games, players often can opt out or delay a challenge and recover or improve resources to reduce the challenge presented.  This isn't an option in player-facing games.



pemerton said:


> I believe that [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] is making a point about degrees of player agency over the content of the shared fiction, and perhaps more generally over the "direction and shape" of play (to use a metaphor).
> 
> I don't see how it refutes AbdulAlhazred to say that "the assumptions of play are not aligned." That's the point! A player of snakes and ladders who tries to _choose_ which squares to move his/her piece into has "misalgined" his/her assumptions of play. But that doesn't mean that players of snakes and ladders have some sort of different, snakes-and-ladders-type agency. It just helps us see that snakes and ladders is a game free of player agency - whereas there are other games in the neighbourhood (eg backgammon) that do involve player agency.
> 
> And if someone comes along and says, "Well, when we play snakes and ladders we exercise all this agency over how we roll the dice (with a cup, with lots of shaking, over the shoulder, whatever)" or "We exercise all this agency in how we count out the squares" how is the person who said that backgammon has more agency than snakes and ladders meant to respond? I mean, backgammon players can do that stuff too if they want - but they may not bother if the play of the game itself has sufficient agency to hold their interest!
> 
> As we relax the constraints on snakes and ladders to make it more like backgammon, then attempted moves that once were "misaligned" become apposite. That's precisely because we're introducing agency into the play of the game.
> 
> Of course any illustration by analogy has its limits; AbdulAlhazred already acknowledged that by calling his a "spherical cow". But the point is still there: in the scenario he described player agency over the content of the shared fiction is minimal at best. The fact that players may manifest their agency in other ways, or over other elements of the RPGing experience, doesn't change the basic point.
> 
> The Czege Principle is the empirical conjecture that "it’s not exciting to play a roleplaying game if the rules require one player to both introduce and resolve a conflict."
> 
> What AbdulAlhazred has described does not violate the Czege Principle: he is positing that the GM has framed the PC into an endless indiscernible maze; and the player decares "I search for a secret passage to take me to the land of the Yuan Ti." That is just the play of a RPG!
> 
> To be honest I find it interesting, and potentially quite telling, that both you ( [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]) and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] look at perfectly ordinary action declarations in response to GM establishment of the situation - like "I'm in place X - the maze - and want to be in place Y - the land of the Yuan-ti - and so search for a secret passage from X to Y"; or "Enemies have broken down the door to my redoubt, and I want to escape, so I search for a secret escape tunnel" - and see violations of the Czege Principle!
> 
> You are treating the principle as supporting a prohibition on players' freely declaring actions that would resolve their current predicaments - ie as a licence for railroading!




Again, no, not even close.  As I posted above, the spherical cow is the game concept and that means the entire game is the twisty maze -- there is no yuan-ti jungle to engage.  This is the point of the simplified model -- there's nothing to play with except the maze.  So, the player introducing both the yuan-ti jungle as a place in the game that isn't a twisty maze AND that this is the goal/objective of the player (how can this be if it's not part of the game except by fiat) AND a solution to achieve this goal (the secret door leading directly there) is very close to a full, explicit Czege Principle violation.  This is why I said, explicitly, that the declaration wasn't coherent with the model - it has the player authoring both backstory (yuan-ti jungle), a challenge (get to the backstory), and a solution (secret door), none of which are within the the simplified spherical cow model.  It's a bad example on many levels.

And, that said, at no point was I using the Czege Principle to try to falsely prohibit action declarations.  Again, recall that I have played and am familiar with the conceits of player-facing play and that I enjoy playing in those kinds of games, given the right group dynamic.  I'm not at all interested in finding ways to discredit the playstyle, as I enjoy that playstyle.  I don't run that playstyle, for a number of reasons, but I'm going to try a few games of Blades in the Dark because that goal of play and setting strongly appeals to me whereas many of the other examples of that style (Burning Wheel, Dungeon World, etc) don't really appeal to me.  I cannot run a heist game well in a DM-facing style without a huge amount of work, something I'm not interested in, and hours of in-game planning and contingency planning, something I'm also not interested in.  Blades provides a nice framework for a style I am interested in, and I'm not adverse to the concepts of player-facing games at all, so it's something I actually want to run (as opposed to the others, which don't appeal to me because I prefer my D&D as D&D for reasons).

I think you'll get a lot more out of these discussions when you stop trying to shove everyone into boxes they don't fit in.  Your comment to [MENTION=85870]innerdude[/MENTION] above about who repped his posts is very telling of a mindset that's keeping track of the 'sides' in a discussion and assumes that rep is an indication of which side a post is on.  I don't think that's very useful as a metric at all.  Also, you should maybe listen a bit better to many people saying your formulation is dismissive and find a better one that still sticks to your points.  This insistence on 'the DM telling you things in his notes' bit is a great example.  When shown something that isn't in notes, you've changed your statement to 'what I mean by notes is things pre-authored or made up on the spot but kinda seem like their pre-authored' and stuck with your formulation.  This undermines your argument about pre-authoring being bad because you've now added DM provided narrative that isn't pre-authored but is instead responsive to player input as in the same category so that you don't have to back away from other things you've said.  You've now conflated two different arguments -- pre-authoring outcomes reduces player agency to add to the shared fiction by creating unknowable roadblocks to action declarations AND that action declarations that prompt the DM to narrate more backstory also reduce that agency.  The latter isn't obvious, and you haven't actually made that case, but yet you keep appending it to the former case and assuming it's also true.  I can see cases where it is true, but also cases where it isn't.  You should separate your arguments so this can be unpacked and discussed.  Not doing so continues the confusion as people argue against the latter part and you respond as if their contesting the former.  Like this post, for example, where you respond to an argument I didn't make to then accuse me of doing something I'm not doing.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> Upthread, you said "Why can't the GM have an idea in his mind ahead of time, with some ideas about what can or may happen, but not committing to anything until the players have interacted with the idea?" I responded to this, saying that this is not an account of the GM establishing any setting element. _The GM does not commit to anything until the players have interacted with the idea_.
> 
> If the GM has established a setting element, then s/he is already committed to something. Conversely, if s/he's not committed it follows that nothing is yet established. S/he just has an idea.




Sure, and I think that is fine. I tend to keep a lot of things in mind, but remain flexible based on how they come about in play. 

But there are other elements that I certainly do decide ahead of time. I do commit prior to play. My point is that this need not violate any level of player agency. 



pemerton said:


> I'm not sure what you mean by "abuse" here. But anyway, as I have said many times upthread already, the games the I GM are not ones in which players are per se empowered to author elements of the fiction as part of action declaration. They are no different from D&D in this respect. The players are not considering "what would make the most compelling story" - they are just playing their PCs. (Eero Tuovinen talks about this at some length in the blog I've linked to several times in this thread.)




This is where I think it depends on the nature of what is happening. The PC searching a room for a bowl where one conceivably may be? Sure....make a Perception or Search check and let's see. Or, more likely, sure, there's a bowl on a table near the bed. 

The PC searching the kitchen for a map that they've come to the keep to find? To me, that's an issue. It's the solution to the problem that's been established, and has likely been given much more consideration than the presence of a bowl in a bedroom. 

So the players abusing their ability to foster the fictional elements of the scene by simply declaring that something may be present in the room. I don't think that the Czege Principle is exactly what this is, but it's close enough. 




pemerton said:


> If you like. What do you think is at stake in labelling it "framing"?
> 
> For myself, I'm generally interested in the players' choice of means for their PC expressing something about their conception of the situation, and what is important in respect of it, rather than reflecting some choice I made as GM to pose some sort of puzzle. So when I frame a situation, I am trying to "go where the action is" so as to provoke some response driven by dramatic need.




Provoking a response to what? You've clearly given a decision point to them. So they have certain options available to them. This limits their options. 

Now, this is likely not an issue given that the GM is supposed to be basing these decision points based on player want/character interest. But my point is that doesn't mean there is not a limit on player agency. A specific problem of some kind is presented. It must be addressed. So the GM is indeed limiting their agency. They have to deal with this thing in front of them, and not go off on some kind of side quest that piqued their interest. 





pemerton said:


> No.
> 
> The framing is the establishment of some shared fiction, which speaks to the PCs' dramatic needs. It doesn't dictate options.




My secret backstory is the establishment of the shared fiction, which speaks to the PCs' dramatic needs. It doesn't dictate options. 




pemerton said:


> The players learning that it will be hard for the PCs both to befriend the baron and deal with the leader of the hobgoblins doesn't dictate their options. It does establish a context for making choices that will tell us something about these protagonists.
> 
> I don't know of any RPG that would be run the way you describe. I don't know of any RPG that suggests that the GM's job is to (i) frame the situation, and then (ii) tell the players what their PCs are or are not allowed to do in trying to engage and/or resolve the situation. Do you have one in mind?




I'm going off of your descriptions. I am not familiar with Burning Wheel and a few of the other games you are advocating. I am familiar with other games that would be considered story now. 



pemerton said:


> In every RPG I'm familiar with that has social resolution mechanics, the way we find out whether or not a guard can be bribed is by seeing how the social resolution unfolds.
> 
> I don't know what limits you have in mind. Or what actions you are worried will or won't be considered. Do you have a concrete example in mind?
> 
> As for the bit about _the ability of the players to author things into the fiction_ - I will repeat again that the games I GM generally do not involve player fiat authorship, and in my view that this is largely a red herring as far as player agency in respect of the shared fiction is concerned.
> 
> "Is there a vessel in the room that would allow me to catch the mage's blood?" isn't "authoring things into the fiction." It's just an action declaration.




But the result of the action does establish the player's desired thing into the fiction. So yes, you are advocating for that. 

I suppose the word "fiat" being added here is key....yes, I know you are not advocating for players to add elements to the story without restriction. But you've been talking about it throughout the thread in the course of action declaration, so that's what I am talking about. 




pemerton said:


> People disagreed. And denied.
> 
> The only "dismissive" thing was to actually say it.




I disagree. I don't think that people were lying when they said they found the way you described their playstyle as insulting. What they were arguing was not your description in general, because it applies to just about any RPG in one way or another....but it was your insistence that this was the sole characteristic of their style. "The GM reading a story to the players" is a dismissive description of an RPG. 

Again, it may be useful if you can answer if you've been swayed in any way. If there are any decent answers to the question you posed in the OP. What is worldbuilding for? If you reply to me, I'd hope you would not cut this question out a third time. I think it'd genuinely be interesting to see your take on it after hundreds of pages of this thread. 

Certainly there must have been some take away for you?


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I agree in a theoretical sense. The post you've replied to was particularly in the context of D&D, which tends (especially in its 2nd ed AD&D, 3E and 5e incarnations) to be weak on finality for non-combat action resolution.
> 
> If you have a skill challenge, or 1st ed AD&D-style "no retries" (or retries with cost, like passage of time = wandering monster checks), then other PC actions become similar to combat. But a lot of "living, breathing world" play also rejects those sorts of "no retries" mechanics on grounds that they are "unrealistic".



While I prefer the "living, breathing world" model I'm also quite happy with "no retries", based on the assumption that the roll you made represents your best attempt of several or many, depending on the specific situation; which to me is quite realistic.



> What if the GM abuses his/her power?
> 
> Personally I think I prefer to think about different techniques based on the play experience they are intended to deliver, rather than what happens if game participants turn bad.



Agreed.  I just wanted to point out it's not always DMs who go bad; players can too.



> That's a key part of what distinguishes RPGing from shared storytelling: the player doesn't have to do anything but delcare actions as his/her character. The resolution mechanics mediate the process of establishing the content of the shared fiction.



It's a fine distinction but worth noting, in how we're looking at this: you're saying the resolution mechanics are what introduces the content, where I'm going one step further back and saying it's the player introducing it if the gatekeeping mechanics allow via success on a roll.

The mechanics themselves can't introduce anything; they have to be triggered by something.



> All action declaration is an attempt to author something into the fiction - a dead orc, a discovered secret door, whatever it might be. That's the point of action declaration - to change the fiction!



Where to me the point of action declarations is to interact with (and maybe change) the fiction that's already there, be it fiction the player/PC knows about (there's an orc whose presence is known by all, my action declaration of attack tries to change its state from healthy to unhealthy, or dead) or doesn't know about (there's a secret door in the south wall which won't be found if nobody looks for it and might be found if someone does).

Lanefan


----------



## hawkeyefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Framing backstory establishes factors which draw a scene that addresses player concerns and 'gets to the action'.




Yes.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, there are a couple of things to point out here. First it REALLY depends on the agenda of the players. Secondly the bribeability of the guards appears to be SECRET. Think of a wall in a dungeon, you can see it, you can touch it, you know all about what it is. The wall cuts off motion in a certain direction in the dungeon, and the unbribeable guard cuts off certain actions too, but without telegraphing that to the players. This may or may not be an issue depending on the first point, agenda.




A wall in a dungeon can be illusory or can contain a secret door or may have a message carved into the stone. It may do much more than simply block the PCs' progress. The only way to know is for the PCs to interact with the wall. 

Same with the guards. Why would the bribeability of the guards be broadcast to the players, but a secret door would not? I don't see the distinction here within the context of your analogy.

Now, having said that, I would almost never have totally unbribeable guards in a game, unless there was some really compelling reason for it (I mentioned earlier that Modron guards on Mechanus would definitely fit this description). Especially if the players want an intrigue-laden, caper type campaign along the lines of the Gentlemen Bastards series. 

But let's say there is some compelling reason for bribery not to work. Modrons, per my example above, or magically compelled guards, or whatever the case may be. Why offer this information? Why not make the players work for it in some way? The players can find themselves in a situation where their normal solution won't work. Can't that be an interesting scene that goes where the action is?

I don't think I see the fear of keeping secrets from the players that seems to be a major concern. Yes, I get that such secrets can be used poorly by the GM. But I also think they can be interesting complications to the players' plans, and what courses of actions are available to the characters. 

Pemerton would likely dismiss this as not being interested in this kind of "puzzle solving" but I don't really see it that way. So I'd like your take on it, if you care to share.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think you need to understand Story Now more deeply. The scene is framed IN RESPECT TO THE PLAYER'S AGENDA, so if the players decide that they wish to engage in bribery and other kinds of skullduggery then unbribeable guards may well be an infringement on their agenda and it simply wouldn't be established as such in a Story Now player-centered game, doing so would be a mistake. Guards would be established, probably, in order to present a CHALLENGE to the characters such that the players must address the questions at hand, which is "we're shady guys who bribe people" (or maybe not, maybe your character is a Paladin and the question is about sticking to your principles regardless of the cost and NOT bribing the guards, then the GM might frame a SOLICITATION of a bribe). Notice how pre-established backstory would work against this kind of agenda. It might be fine to call the guards 'unbribeable' if this suites the framing and leads to the right conflict, but you won't know until you get there. This is why its Story Now. Walls and guards and such ONLY APPEAR when they serve the agenda of the game, and then they have the characteristics that are requisite of them (otherwise they might simply appear as simple props).




So if I pre-establish in my GM notes that the guards may be open to bribery, but it will depend on the results of the PC's check, then how is this different from Story Now? I mean in the result at the table and the impact on the players' agency in this instance? 



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Player agency probably always IS limited by framing. This is the PURPOSE of framing. Without any limits there's no challenge to overcome, no conflict, no tension, no stakes, nothing. Nobody is arguing that there are no limits on player agency (at least with respect to what the characters can do, in a group-authored game the player might not ACTUALLY be limited formally except by the need to cooperate with the other players to make a good game). What is argued is that the game should always address the player's AGENDA.
> 
> If a player wishes to have a character who's concept is "My father always said I wasn't good enough, so I'm going to rule the world in order to prove him wrong!" then the focus of things which that player does with that character, his character's narrative, is going to be about that need, that drive, the consequences of it, the nature of it, how it impacts and shapes his character, the world, etc. Maybe he spends his time working towards world domination and the challenges are the obvious obstacles to that. Maybe some of it, or most of it even, is about the moral cost of such an undertaking. How much does he have to compromise himself as a human being in order to achieve his goal? It might be about the ultimate hollowness of such an achievement and his growth and realization that it is empty and won't make him happy. There's plenty of possibilities even within a fairly narrow character definition. How this character interacts with the other characters, the nature of the milieu, etc. may all influence exactly what ends up being addressed. Standard Narrativist concepts just imply that it WILL be the central focus of that character's narrative.




This was my point. I see Framing as limiting agency to an extent. It puts a choice to the players and is compelling enough that it must be addressed. So their choices of what to do are now limited to what is possible to address the situation before them. The fact is that the player is accepting of the limits placed on his agency. And I don't have a problem with this....this is fine. But it's interesting that you agree with me, but Pemerton does not. 

My point being that Framing acts as a limit on player agency. It says "here is the situation...what do you do?" and in any situation, there are a limited number of actions. 

For some, probably [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], forcing such a situation on the players is likely seen as a limit on agency. A game like that would likely begin with "what do you do?" and then determine the action in response to the players actions and the results thereof. 

I'm not advocating for either approach....I think I utilize both, but I tend to always have the players' interests in mind. But I think as you hint at above, a GM can take a LOT of leeway with what the player has offered as their interests in the game. The character who wants to prove his father wrong? You provided several different takes on it, and we ca come up with more, many of which would likely be very different from one another. 



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Again, limitations aren't really the issue. The issue is what is the agenda of the game? When [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] talks about "moves which reveal the GM's secret backstory" what that really says is "the GM introduces elements of the story that address the GM's agenda." This is, in Story Now terms, simply definitional, as the player's agenda is established dynamically by engaging with the framing of the scenes, character backstory, etc. When the GM dictates backstory for purposes that are other than player agenda, that reduces player agency over the narrative, because it addresses GM agency over the narrative and thus GM agenda. Maybe the two are in harmony sometimes and the player and the GM both get what they want out of the scene. I think this usually happens to some degree in all but dysfunctional cases. The point is, frames always create limitations, but in a player-centered game the players are the center and the limitations are there to further their agenda.




I think I agree with most of this. I don't necessarily think that the GM should have no agenda at all, nor that a story now game is entirely free of such, but other than that, I think the rest makes perfect sense. The players are accepting of the limits placed on their agency, because they know it will drive the game in a way that they've expressed interest. 

I don't know if I see it as all that different in that basic way from a sandbox style game where the GM has pre-determined all the nearby areas and the threats and challenges they contain, as long as the players have expressed interest in this style. In that sense, they're accepting of the limits that are being placed on their agency because they know the game that will result is one in which they're likely to be interested.

Again, I think so much of this goes back to the player and GM's expectations, and what the style or methods being used will bring to the game


----------



## Lanefan

Separated this bit out for its own discussion...


pemerton said:


> I think [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] posted some thoughts in response to this.
> 
> My first thought is that I don't see how what you describe violates the Czege principle at all - the player is not framing his/her own conflict, the GM did that (by establishing that the enemies have beaten through the door - I am assuming that this is being established by the GM). The player is simply declaring an action that addresses the conflict - "I look for a secret door so I can run away!"



In a DM-run system where the presence or absence of a secret door is already locked in, there's no problem.  But in a player-driven system the player has to have in the back of his mind the thought "Hey, maybe if I try searching for a secret door and roll well I can - in effect - out of nowhere author us an escape hatch."; and so she tries it, and it works.

The player didn't author the conflict but did author the resolution, which is why I put it as skirting close to Czege rather than outright violating it.



> Second, you are making assumptions that you have not spelled out about the significance of finding a secret door. In some systems (eg some forms of D&D), perhaps this is a "get out of jail free" card. But then in those systems so would a Passwall spell be, so whether or not finding a secret door is unbalanced depends upon how the system allocates a range of other similar action possibilities.
> 
> In Cortex+ Heroic finding the secret door establishes an asset which will give a bonus die to subsequent appropriate action declarations, but doesn't constitute a "get out of jail free" card at all. In 4e, it might be part of a skill challenge, and until the challenge overall is resolved the players are not entitled to any assumption of success in escaping their enemies.



4e doesn't fold combat situations into skill challenges, does it?  And this is a combat situation.  And in other systems if my next action declaration following discovery of the door goes something like "I open it, yell to my companions that here's the way out, and book it outside!" then - depending on other factors such as initiative order and actions of the foes - I'm probably out.



> More generally, I think there is a need to distignuish between _abuse_ and _unbalanced moves_. The latter are a big deal in D&D (less so in nearly every other RPG I'm familiar with), but that just tells us something about a peculiarity of D&D. If D&D can't support player-driven RPGing because it's got no appropriate way of balancing moves, managing action economy, etc, again that's mostly just a fact about D&D. (I know from experience that 4e doesn't have problems along these lines, besides the niggling infelicities that can be found in many complex RPG systems with many moving parts. I wouldn't be surprised if 3E is very different in this respect, nor 5e either for that matter. And 2nd ed AD&D has its own issues that AbdulAlhazred has already mentioned at length in this thread.)



The answer here might be to fine-grain it all a bit.  1e with its 1-minute round length has all kinds of issues and headaches here; more recent editions with rounds measured in seconds solve many of these while introducing a bunch of others; I think there's a sweet spot somewhere in the middle (20 or 30-second rounds?) that mitigates many of the headaches without ever fully removing any of them, and that might be the best we can hope for.

I wonder, is the difference due to D&D actually paying attention to action economy and unbalanced actions where other systems maybe don't so much?

Re the reliquary example:


> Lanefan said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes the immediate drama might be waiting at the reliquary but - and this only just now occurred to me - what's being denied is the ability for the PCs to become distracted by something else, or to distract themselves. Isn't this just another form of railroad?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Do you mean PCs or players? There is no player agency in the PCs being distracted - I mean, I as GM could narrate "You [the PCs] become distracted by some piping minstrels, but soon regain your focus on the task at hand."
Click to expand...


You could narrate that.  Or you could describe what the PCs are going past during their journey to the reliquary: "As you travel with the angels you pass by several intersections and open doors.  Down one hallway you see (and hear!) a slave being beaten with a club by a hooded person.  Through one of the open doors you see a luxurious-looking bedchamber - and you're sure that was some pretty expensive jewelry just sitting out in the open on that dresser!  Down another hall you notice a strange shimmering light coming from a door or opening on the left."

Or it could just be "As you travel with the angels you pass through a number of dusty passages; in a few places intersecting passages lead off into darkness."

Things like this give the players (via their PCs) options.  They could decide to rescue the slave.  They could decide to steal the jewelry.  They could check out one of the passages leading into darkness*.  Or they could ignore it all and go straight to the reliquary.

* - even if they ignore everything else they might still want to check out the other passages to see if one provides a different approach to where they're going.



> As far as the players being distracted, I find it hard to characterise "being distracted" as a form of agency - it is a way of being led by someone else's exercise of agency! (That's practically inherent in the meaning of what it is to be distracted.)
> 
> If the players want to do something other than go to the reliquary, than that is on them - they can call for us to back up, or they can retropsectively resolve some situation where they collected some information, or whatever. You seem to be presupposing a type of rigidigy about play, and the handling of the passage of time and of movement from A to B in the fiction, that is different from my experience.



Backups and retcons are undesirable in the extreme.  Note the way I presented the descriptions above: I don't say or imply they've got to the reliquary yet, I just say what they see on the way and thus give them the chance to interact with it before ever getting to the reliquary or knowing what awaits them there (though in this particular case the angels might have already forewarned them what awaits; this is an unusual example in that the party have a guide, which isn't often the case).  Thus things happen in a sequential order both within the fiction and outside of it:

1 they* talk with the angels
2 they travel with the angels
3 during this travel they learn more about the environment simply by what they see as they pass
4 they get an opportunity to respond to what they've learned in 3
5a if they do nothing they reach the reliquary
5b if they do something in response to what they've learned in 3 they don't reach the reliquary yet and things (temporarily or permanently) go in a different direction.

* - they meaning both PCs within the fiction and players outside of it.

But none of this even gets a chance to happen if you-as-DM jump straight from talking with the angels to framing the scene at the reliquary.  There's the add-to-the-fiction type of agency, but there's also the make-a-choice-within-the-fiction type of agency; and it's the second that's being denied.

Lan-"I nip into the bedroom and steal the jewels"-efan


----------



## Lanefan

Ovinomancer said:


> The agency over pacing, for instance, seems to be a big concession -- players in DM facing games tend to have much more agency over pacing than in player facing games because crisis is an emergent function of DM facing games while it's a focus in player-facing games.  Players in player-facing games cannot avoid or mitigate crisis by slowing down the pacing.  Players in DM-facing games have less agency to introduce new fiction to overcome crisis.  This is because they have more agency in pacing to mitigate and overcome crisis.  Much of the discussion about resting in 5e is really about how much agency the players have over pacing and how it can trivialize many elements of the game that the DM uses to advance to crisis.  So, this isn't something that's new, even if it's not normally discussed in terms like 'agency over pacing.'



 QFT - 'pacing as agency' is certainly relevant here; and I see it as incumbent on a good DM to follow the pace the players seem to want to set.


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## Emerikol

My only beef with you [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is the misuse of terms.  I don't think what you call agency is really agency.  Maybe it can be worldbuilding agency if you will.  It's definitely not PC agency.  PC agency just means the PC's can do anything in the GM's world they want with the only limitation being what their characters are legitimately capable of.  To me that is 100% agency.  

If you mean, agency outside of their characters, then sure.  There is 0% agency outside of your character in my game.  It's still a game very full of PC agency.  Just not player as worldbuilder agency.  I think the term agency probably triggers people on the other side because they very much feel like they are playing a game where they have lots of choices as characters.

And I go back to the real world.  How much agency do you have over your life?  I would say I have total agency within the limits of what I as a human being with my skillset can do.  I can't make a building vanish no.  I can't (yet!) make a car fly.  But I don't feel a lack of agency.  So really I think using that term is a mistake.

Maybe the right term is player authoring.  How much can players author worldbuilding content as players outside of their characters?  In my games you can't.  In Iserith's games, you can create entire nations so long as it doesn't contradict prior shared knowledge.  I imagine in your games Pemerton it falls somewhere in between.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Early Traveller adventures are pretty much what you describe only more boring if that's possible - they really are "poke at this situation and get the GM to tell you stuff until you figure out what is going on". It's like the early part of an Alien franchise movie but more tedious and with no payoff!



LOL, yeah, I never ran any of them, they were really mostly poop. I mean, there were some reasonably interesting locations and potential in some of the plots, but they had the weakness of almost any D&D module (you have to basically follow the author's path through the thing, usually with fairly minimal available branches) AND they didn't have the virtue of being an enclosed environment where such a path is at least pretty natural and likely to result from whatever the PCs do. That is to say, dungeons pretty much get explored, so when the PCs show up at White Plume Mtn, or Castle D'Amber, they are pretty much going to explore it! Granted, there are some possible plots and whatnot in some of those, but the tight focus on a narrow location works.

Traveler modules tend to be much less that way. Most of them involve a presupposition that the PCs will take the bait, do whatever social/political/economic maneuvering is needed, get to the primary location, and then stick there when they could most likely (and most logically) just bug out. Obviously SOME of them instead railroad the party into the action, but that's just WORSE. A game where characters can roam a large fraction of the galaxy should NOT be a game where they get railroaded into a 'dungeon', yet that is sadly the description of most modules.



> On more modern versions, I can't comment on Mongoose Traveller but MegaTraveller is (I would say) an objectively bad system:
> 
> * it turns nearly every entry on the skill chart into a cascade skill, with choices like (say) Liaison vs Carousing as opposed to the Wheeled vs Grav Vehicle type stuff that you get in Classic, thus losing the quirks and virtues of random PC gen without getting a coherent (say, points buy) alternative;
> 
> * it replaces the interesting rules for skill resolution in CT (where, say, 1 rank in Vacc Suit means something different depending whether you're trying to avoid tearing your suit running across a moon, or you're trying to emergency patch your suit having torn it; and where, say, unskilled driving is easier to pull off than unskilled Streetwise, let alone unskilled Medicine or Engineering) with a complicated and utterly bland universal skill resolution system;



Yeah, I have had very little exposure to it. What I read didn't seem like an improvement over CT and I still own that, so... 

Mongoose Traveller OTOH seems like mostly just a more polished CT. It refined the skill check mechanic slightly, but the chargen system is pretty much lifted verbatim from the original game, with the appropriate refinements that were introduced in the supplements. I think there are a couple minor tweaks that help get rid of a few quirks like the totally useless guy that got booted from the marines at age 22 and has no useful skills (not a good trade off for lack of age reductions to physical stats if you ask me). 



> * it replaces the intriguing and workable ship design system from Book 2 with some unworkable descendant of the barely workable High Guard system;



The High Guard system is literally just "take the CT core system and break it down to infinite levels of granularity" plus the extrapolations to a whole range of giant ships. It is a bunch more work to build a ship using it, but I used to do it regularly and once you know the system its really not bad at all. 

The real issue with it is the way it completely recasts the whole concept of ships. By the standards of the original core books and the first few supplements a 50k ton Azhanti High Lightning class cruiser is a HUGE warship. By High Guard standards it is barely more than a ship's boat for REAL warships which range on up into the megaton range. Had they started out with this concept in mind, then it would have been a bit less incoherent, but it comes across as kind of weird. Of course HG has been around for 40 years now, so you always have the choice to just go with what it dictates from the start. 

I will admit, million ton merchant vessels kinda implies a whole different sort of economics though.... 



> Basically, at every point where the game could lose its charm and playability and become more like a poor cousin of GURPS, MegaTraveller makes that move.



Well, isn't it basically a spawn of the GURPS Traveler expansion? I think essentially that is the thing's pedigree. GURPS Traveler came out, was met with something of a yawn, and then some people folded the new material back into the original rules structure, with updates. I'm NOT a GURPS fan (said by someone who really liked Steve and Co. and playtested a lot of their early stuff, but it just never floated my boat). 



> The only innovation it has that I think is worthwhile is the "special duty" line on the PC gen charts, which gives starting skill loads out a bit more in line with Mercenary/High Guard-type characters.
> 
> I haven't had occasion yet to use "loss of Social Standing" as a stake in my game, but I think it's completely viable, and Andy Slack had a version of it (connected to criminal convictions) back in his early White Dwarf Expanded Universe series.




Yeah, I think Mongoose has basically the same tweak. I always thought that Traveler should have made INT, EDU, and SS as 'mutable' kinds of things. INT in terms of cyberpunk/transhumanist stuff, and the other two simply in narrative terms. I guess physical stats would be up for grab as well in that case, but it would seem like there should be some sort of trade offs there which Traveler doesn't really deal with.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I can see the logic of this. For me, full equality suggests a game like A Penny For My Thoughts that I posted about upthread. Once you start having distinct player and GM roles, there have to be different functions to establish that distinctness. I see those differences of function to include, at least potentially and - given my habits - by default, different sorts of authority over content-introduction.
> 
> For instance, I think player content introduction - again, by default given my habits - is circumscribed by _the PC_ as some sort of centring device. So eg a player can say, "I reach out to Jabal, the leader of my sorcerous cabal", therefore making it the case that the fiction includes Jabal as a leader of the cabal. But the player probably can't just declare that Jabal has a step-child who is a magic-using prodigy; nor just declare who the head of the butcher's guild, to which the PC has no connection, is.
> 
> I think all the above is often very informal, and as I've said guided by habits and assumptions. But I hope you can see a certain logic to it!




Yeah, in HoML I introduced the 'Inspiration' mechanic where you only get points either 1 per session or if you accept a 'setback', and anything you add to the game has to be based in continuity and related to a trait of your character. So basically it ends up being very much like the Jabal thing, players add new relationships, maybe 'remember that they packed a knife', etc. I mean, you might remember that the bad guy has a step-child, assuming you can justify that in terms of a trait of your own character, but that IS a pretty big limiting factor there! It seems to work out. Mostly the GM handles the framing details, and the players just toss something in now and then which adds to their fun. 

And yeah, I see the fun and logic of it. Now my problem is I start to see all the limits to my insight into these techniques WRT whatever I've put together, and then I feel an urge to make a better set of rules... lol.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> What AbdulAlhazred has described does not violate the Czege Principle: he is positing that the GM has framed the PC into an endless indiscernible maze; and the player decares "I search for a secret passage to take me to the land of the Yuan Ti." That is just the play of a RPG!
> 
> To be honest I find it interesting, and potentially quite telling, that both you ( @_*Ovinomancer*_) and @_*Lanefan*_ look at perfectly ordinary action declarations in response to GM establishment of the situation - like "I'm in place X - the maze - and want to be in place Y - the land of the Yuan-ti - and so search for a secret passage from X to Y"; or "Enemies have broken down the door to my redoubt, and I want to escape, so I search for a secret escape tunnel" - and see violations of the Czege Principle!
> 
> You are treating the principle as supporting a prohibition on players' freely declaring actions that would resolve their current predicaments - ie as a licence for railroading!




Well, I think what they're objecting to, and I'm unable to say if it relates to whatever Mr Czege wrote about since I haven't read it, is that the player could posit a goal "find the Yuan Ti" and a solution to achieving that goal "a secret door to the Yuan Ti temple". In the simplest form its equivalent to "I want gold, I search for a chest full of gold!" Now, in some games that might be a feasible move I guess, but it seems poor RPG play, at best.

I freely admit, my example wouldn't be very good clever play. The character's motivation is shallow, the player's goal could be interesting, but his attempt to shape the narrative to instantly fulfill it isn't. Obviously a GM in a realistic game would, at best, make the secret passage lead to somewhere that might be the first step on a long road to finding the Yuan Ti. HOWEVER, the point still stands, Yuan Ti would now have entered the game as a thing to achieve.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> Sure, you had all of the assumptions!
> 
> 
> 
> I think, again, it's a bad comparison because the intent and declaration are outside of the scope of the model -- the model is that there is only the maze, but the declaration both presents something outside of the maze and a way to achieve it, neither of which are part of the model.  It's like searching the study for a ray gun - it breaks the assumptions of the game.  In doing so, it doesn't represent what you intended it to represent, and actually takes on characteristics that go against the model of player-facing games and right into some of the easy but incorrect criticisms made against player facing play, ie, that the players can just make up whatever they want.
> 
> As such, your example does more against your point that for it.
> 
> 
> 
> No, I understand all of that, I pointed it out because, given the simple model, the player declaring that there is a yuan-ti jungle in a world defined as only a twisty maze is introducing their own challenge and the fiction necessary to support it, ie that the spherical cow now has a tumor that's yuan-ti jungle shaped.  And then the player proposes their own solution to this inserted problems with the declaration of a secret door.  There's a mechanical check, which prevents a complete violation, but a success looks very much like one and a failure leaves the problem of whether or not the cow tumor yuan-ti jungle is negated as well.




OK, you are generally concerned here with problems of 'integrity of the milieu' or 'genre appropriateness' and maybe other variations on that theme. 

I think its up to the people playing a game to work out what it is that is in genre. Its true, if the GM is the only one introducing fiction, then it may be perfectly consistent in this way, since presumably he has at least a coherent vision of that; though I think this is actually very frequently not the case, at least from the player's perspective. 

I'd also point out that there can be any degree of milder agency, like a player might be empowered to say "I search for clues to where the Yuan Ti temple is" instead of suggesting any specific fiction. Maybe the character would share a story with his companions around soup about how he's fascinated with Yuan Ti because he read a book about it when he was a kid, or whatever.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> This is a bit vague.  My understanding is that the GM is supposed to frame scenes that bring the player agendas into crisis, which isn't the same thing as framing things the players are interested in.  The form of the crisis is the invention of the GM, not the player, and only loosely follows player interests in that the crisis formed attacks some part of the player's agenda.  The fact that all scenes are supposed to place the player agenda into unavoidable crisis is the bit that I'm actually talking about.  The defense that 'well, it's still the player's agenda' doesn't really defuse the point that the players lack agency to mitigate or choose the crisis they're forced into.



Well, one point here strikes me instantly. There's a huge difference between the pacing at the table, and the pacing in the game world. Its perfectly feasible to run a game where a character mostly does his own thing and only meets up with a few crises where his interests are threatened. The rest of his life could be just plain boring, but we're not going to play through that, so it doesn't matter. I'm not saying this is 'the answer' to what your saying, but just to put it out there, the PLAYER is the one playing from crisis to crisis. 

And yes, the GM is going to threaten the character's interests, and thus ENGAGE the player's agenda. However that doesn't mean that character accomplishments are simply going to be open to constant threat. In fact [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] mentioned that several times, the sort of 'no regression clause'. I would give the example of the fighter's castle. Its not cool to keep constantly taking it away and forcing the player to endlessly win it back. It would be more cool to 



> Again, this is analytical. I think that there's a lot of fun in games that do this, that constantly bang the drum on crisis and make the players make hard choices.  But, it that fun does come as some costs -- it's not all free lunch.  And, when discussing agency, I think it's okay to acknowledge that it is a zero-sum game because we all can't have total agency in a shared space -- we also have to share the agency or it's not a shared space.  How we share that agency is useful, but not when we're denying that agency sharing occurs and try to claim that one style has more agency than another in total.



Frankly I think the type of agency you talk about is like apples, and you are stacking and counting those, and we're over hear talking about oranges. While the numbers of apples and oranges might not be totally unrelated, I do not think they constitute a zero sum relation. 'Control of the narrative' itself may be zero sum in that there's only so much narrative produced, but even that isn't really a very good model because its not a one-dimensional situation, there are elements of content, quality (and consider this has multiple definitions, think WotC style 'player types') and quite likely a number of other dimensions here. 



> This is why I've tried to be so clear about how @_*pemerton*_ has defined agency for his discussion.  Under that definition, the agency over what's added to the fiction and how is more broadly given to players and taken from the DM in player-facing games (by definition of player facing, I'd argue).  However, this doesn't mean that some other agencies aren't given back to the DM to compensate.  The agency over pacing, for instance, seems to be a big concession -- players in DM facing games tend to have much more agency over pacing than in player facing games because crisis is an emergent function of DM facing games while it's a focus in player-facing games.



I don't take this as proven, or even self-evident. TBH I don't really take it as very coherent, as again I don't know what 'pace' we're talking about. Is it the pace of play at the table, or the pace of events in the narrative? I know of no principle of the Standard Narrativistic Model which states that character's must be hammered with a blizzard of attacks on their interests at every moment. They might well progress in stately and serene fashion about their business, and we only pick up their story at those points where it becomes interesting. 

I'd also question the idea that everything must be a crisis like "your house is on fire!" or something like that. If a player's agenda is "build a trading empire that lasts 10 generations" (I'm thinking OA with its clans and such would be fun for this) then a 'crisis' could simply be "some new guys sail into port with cheaper goods!" and what happens next. Or "you meet a ship captain who tells tales of a fantastic island full of valuable spice you could buy very cheaply, but you'll have to risk a lot money on equipping an expedition, and risk being arrested, because the king has forbidden trade to that island!" or something like that. You don't need to be flinging burning flaming death at the PCs every day of their waking lives. That's crude.



> Players in player-facing games cannot avoid or mitigate crisis by slowing down the pacing.  Players in DM-facing games have less agency to introduce new fiction to overcome crisis.  This is because they have more agency in pacing to mitigate and overcome crisis.  Much of the discussion about resting in 5e is really about how much agency the players have over pacing and how it can trivialize many elements of the game that the DM uses to advance to crisis.  So, this isn't something that's new, even if it's not normally discussed in terms like 'agency over pacing.'




Meh, I think what you're talking about, really, is player input, in game as the character, into a 'logistics game'. This is what 5e resting is about, calculating when it is advantageous to stop and recoup ones resources. 5e seems to feel this should be in the player's hands, though there are issues with that design. I don't think those issues are about agency though. In fact I'd say ONE of the issues is actually stemming from LACK of player agency, that the GM has to resort to 'plot costs' in order to create a dilemma for the players, should we rest or press on? Mechanically the answer is, 100% of the time, REST! I suppose this was also somewhat true of 4e, you can only really balance resting's mechanical benefits against narrative effects of doing it.


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## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> A wall in a dungeon can be illusory or can contain a secret door or may have a message carved into the stone. It may do much more than simply block the PCs' progress. The only way to know is for the PCs to interact with the wall.



And I don't actually find 'secret doors' in the Gygaxian sense very interesting, outside of purely Gygaxian play where you're in a puzzle dungeon and that's just part of the puzzle. In a game of the type I'm talking about, why would a GM establish a secret door as part of the fiction? Well, establishing fiction ONLY happens for the purpose of framing scenes who's focus is on the player's agenda. So, a secret door in my kind of play will ONLY EXIST in order to further the engagement with that topic. There's no objective world, even an imaginary one, in which the secret door 'exists', it is a narrative device. 

Now, if a player really wants to engage in puzzle-solving, then maybe setting up a situation where he has to figure out the existence of a secret door from whatever clues might be a thing. In that case the GM might actually decide at some point that the parameters of the mystery include a secret door at a specific location. This is a possible kind of play which could resemble 'classic' D&D play where the GM maps out an area and places a secret door.

OTOH a secret door could be a 'resource' ala Cortex+, or something that a player simply declares, as in "I search for a way through the wall, like a secret door" and then succeeds on a check. There are no real dearth of secret doors in my games, but they don't appear as fixed, established elements of mapped-out locations, unless such has been established by canon. 



> Same with the guards. Why would the bribeability of the guards be broadcast to the players, but a secret door would not? I don't see the distinction here within the context of your analogy.



I was just pointing out that a wall and an unbribeable guard differ in that one way. Of course I wouldn't have an unbribeable guard, just like I wouldn't have an unbeatable one either! So, in my style of play it would only be established that the guard is unbribeable or the wall impenetrable by testing that possibility, in which case the character's action will be thwarted and a different solution will be required.



> Now, having said that, I would almost never have totally unbribeable guards in a game, unless there was some really compelling reason for it (I mentioned earlier that Modron guards on Mechanus would definitely fit this description). Especially if the players want an intrigue-laden, caper type campaign along the lines of the Gentlemen Bastards series.



Right, there's nothing wrong with genre conventions. Modrons are unbribeable, the walls of Asmodeus' palace are impenetrable. This kind of thing is OK, but it should be fairly obvious that these things are true, given their genre convention status. 



> But let's say there is some compelling reason for bribery not to work. Modrons, per my example above, or magically compelled guards, or whatever the case may be. Why offer this information? Why not make the players work for it in some way? The players can find themselves in a situation where their normal solution won't work. Can't that be an interesting scene that goes where the action is?



Agreed. I don't have a problem with walls. Maybe this is where the characters pull out a pickaxe and make a new door. 

I don't think I see the fear of keeping secrets from the players that seems to be a major concern. Yes, I get that such secrets can be used poorly by the GM. But I also think they can be interesting complications to the players' plans, and what courses of actions are available to the characters. 

Pemerton would likely dismiss this as not being interested in this kind of "puzzle solving" but I don't really see it that way. So I'd like your take on it, if you care to share.



So if I pre-establish in my GM notes that the guards may be open to bribery, but it will depend on the results of the PC's check, then how is this different from Story Now? I mean in the result at the table and the impact on the players' agency in this instance? 



> This was my point. I see Framing as limiting agency to an extent. It puts a choice to the players and is compelling enough that it must be addressed. So their choices of what to do are now limited to what is possible to address the situation before them. The fact is that the player is accepting of the limits placed on his agency. And I don't have a problem with this....this is fine. But it's interesting that you agree with me, but Pemerton does not.
> 
> My point being that Framing acts as a limit on player agency. It says  "here is the situation...what do you do?" and in any situation, there  are a limited number of actions.




Eh, is it limiting if the players can simply pick another direction to go in? As long as they're finding choices and as long as those choices have thematic narrative consequences its fine. Its when they have no choice as to what the story is ABOUT that they lose their agency. 



> I'm not advocating for either approach....I think I utilize both, but I tend to always have the players' interests in mind. But I think as you hint at above, a GM can take a LOT of leeway with what the player has offered as their interests in the game. The character who wants to prove his father wrong? You provided several different takes on it, and we ca come up with more, many of which would likely be very different from one another.



Yes, the GM always has a lot of choices, potentially. The art is really more in making it work for the players than in giving people choice.


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, one point here strikes me instantly. There's a huge difference between the pacing at the table, and the pacing in the game world. Its perfectly feasible to run a game where a character mostly does his own thing and only meets up with a few crises where his interests are threatened. The rest of his life could be just plain boring, but we're not going to play through that, so it doesn't matter. I'm not saying this is 'the answer' to what your saying, but just to put it out there, the PLAYER is the one playing from crisis to crisis.



But what if the player wants to slow it down and make everything more granular; for example making each left-right choice at each intersection even if there's nothing there, rather than jumping straight to the 'action' without real opportunity to do anything else.  This is what I mean when I refer to pacing; where more (or less) granular exploration and interaction with the game world means less (or more) overall story gets told or produced in a session.

I'm not sure what your take is on this, but from things pemerton has posted he seems quite concerned with maintaining a 'fast' pace, where lost of story gets told or produced each session (and thus the campaign as a whole is completed sooner); where I by contrast don't care about speed - it can all take as long as it wants to as long as people are having fun.  There'll always be another session, and another after that...



> And yes, the GM is going to threaten the character's interests, and thus ENGAGE the player's agenda. However that doesn't mean that character accomplishments are simply going to be open to constant threat. In fact [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] mentioned that several times, the sort of 'no regression clause'. I would give the example of the fighter's castle. Its not cool to keep constantly taking it away and forcing the player to endlessly win it back. It would be more cool to



This is quoted as posted - I think you were going to say more but it got lost somewhere?



> Frankly I think the type of agency you talk about is like apples, and you are stacking and counting those, and we're over hear talking about oranges.



Sometimes it feels more like comparing apples to motorboats. 



> I don't take this as proven, or even self-evident. TBH I don't really take it as very coherent, as again I don't know what 'pace' we're talking about. Is it the pace of play at the table, or the pace of events in the narrative?



I'd say it's more pace of events in the narrative.  Pace of play at the table is another issue entirely.


> I know of no principle of the Standard Narrativistic Model which states that character's must be hammered with a blizzard of attacks on their interests at every moment. They might well progress in stately and serene fashion about their business, and we only pick up their story at those points where it becomes interesting.



Fine, but it'll seem like a constant barrage of attacks anyway if there's no chance for "downtime activities" between them.  And this is what I'm getting at - if no attention is ever paid to downtime* then it might as well not exist.

* - on both the small (exploring empty passages, or PC-to-PC interactions while camped out) and large (what the PCs do during their three-week stopover in town between adventures) scale.



> I'd also question the idea that everything must be a crisis like "your house is on fire!" or something like that. If a player's agenda is "build a trading empire that lasts 10 generations" (I'm thinking OA with its clans and such would be fun for this) then a 'crisis' could simply be "some new guys sail into port with cheaper goods!" and what happens next. Or "you meet a ship captain who tells tales of a fantastic island full of valuable spice you could buy very cheaply, but you'll have to risk a lot money on equipping an expedition, and risk being arrested, because the king has forbidden trade to that island!" or something like that. You don't need to be flinging burning flaming death at the PCs every day of their waking lives. That's crude.



Here I agree, and would go a step further and say you don't always need to be flinging anything at them at all.  Give them a chance to determine their own next course of action - that's a part of player agency too. 



> Meh, I think what you're talking about, really, is player input, in game as the character, into a 'logistics game'. This is what 5e resting is about, calculating when it is advantageous to stop and recoup ones resources. 5e seems to feel this should be in the player's hands, though there are issues with that design. I don't think those issues are about agency though. In fact I'd say ONE of the issues is actually stemming from LACK of player agency, that the GM has to resort to 'plot costs' in order to create a dilemma for the players, should we rest or press on? Mechanically the answer is, 100% of the time, REST! I suppose this was also somewhat true of 4e, you can only really balance resting's mechanical benefits against narrative effects of doing it.



The poor-ness of the 4e and 5e resting rules aside, input into the in-game logistics is very important as a player; and is a part of the 'pacing' agency.

Lanefan


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## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, I think what they're objecting to, and I'm unable to say if it relates to whatever Mr Czege wrote about since I haven't read it, is that the player could posit a goal "find the Yuan Ti" and a solution to achieving that goal "a secret door to the Yuan Ti temple". In the simplest form its equivalent to "I want gold, I search for a chest full of gold!" Now, in some games that might be a feasible move I guess, but it seems poor RPG play, at best.
> 
> I freely admit, my example wouldn't be very good clever play. The character's motivation is shallow, the player's goal could be interesting, but his attempt to shape the narrative to instantly fulfill it isn't. Obviously a GM in a realistic game would, at best, make the secret passage lead to somewhere that might be the first step on a long road to finding the Yuan Ti. HOWEVER, the point still stands, Yuan Ti would now have entered the game as a thing to achieve.



I would go further than you have here (and I think you might come along with me).

I agree that your examples (the Yuan-ti and the gold), as presented, seem like fairly unexciting play. But I treat that just as a function of toy examples in a post to make a point.

I'll give a real example, from actual BW play:

A PC has (as two of three Beliefs) _I will free my brother from possession by a balrog_ and _I'm not leaving Hardby without gaining some magical item to use against my brother_. The very first scene, that started the campaign, found this PC at a bazaar where a peddler was offering an angel feather for sale (ie a magical item that might be useful in dealing with a balrog-possessed mage).

This sees those two beliefs (one as instrumental to the other) engaged right away. And it doesn't make for poor play at all!

Now the retort might be _that was GM framing_. But I don't think that makes any difference.

In my Traveller game a couple of sessions ago the players had a group of PCs make planetfall on a particular world to try to find alien artefacts there. Traveller doesn't have a formal belief mechanic, but we could say the goal is _We will find alien artefacts on Enlil_. I had established (by way of the world generation system) that the world in question had a class C starport and was TL 3; and hence had decided that the starport was an orbital station (there being no onworld starport on a TL 3 world). A NPC had subsequently let the PCs know that DNA scans on the inhabitants of this world revealed alien as well as human elements to their DNA.

The players posited (i) that the world must have markets, and (ii) that the starport would have information for tourists about markets, and hence (iii) decided that their PCs would get the tourist information, go down to the planet, and check the market for artefacts that showed signs of alien manufacture. The actual resolution was a bit Traveller-esque (ie not quite Burning Wheel or even 4e in its robustness; and even within those constraints I'm not sure I handled it ideally - as I posted somewhere way upthread): but the strucure of play was pretty much the same as your toy examples. That is, the players have a goal, they posit the solution to that goal, and then the resolution mechanics determine whether or not their solution works.

Issues of goal, pacing etc can also go the other way. Consider this (from p 54 of the BW Gold book):

Beliefs are meant to be challenged, betrayed and broken. Such emotional drama makes for a good game. If your character
has a Belief, "I guard the prince’s life with my own," and the prince is slain before your eyes in the climax of the scenario, that's your chance to play out a tortured and dramatic scene and really go ballistic.

Conversely, if the prince is killed right out of the gate, the character is drained of purpose. Note that the player stated he wanted to defend the prince in play, not avenge him. Killing the prince in the first session sucks the life out of the character. He really has no reason to participate any longer. But if the prince dies in the grand climax, c'est la vie. The protector must then roll with the punches and react to this new change. Even better, if the prince dies due to the actions or failures of his own guardian - now that's good stuff.

Another example: We once had a character with the Belief: "I will one day restore my wife’s life." His wife had died, and he kept her body around, trying to figure out a way to bring her back. Well, mid-way through the game, the GM magically restored his wife to the land of the living. I've never seen a more crushed player. He didn't know what to do! He had stated that the quest and the struggle was the goal, not the end result. "One day!" he said. But the GM insisted, and the whole scenario and character were ruined for the player.​
Ron Edwards also has a discussion of this same general issue:

[A] minor problem [for narrativist play] is to resolve play-Situations rapidly and without developing them much beyond the initial preparatory circumstances: "over before it begins." This typically occurs when people are so floored by the possibility of actually addressing a Premise through play, that they hare off to do so before some RPG god notices and intervenes to stop them. Usually, this sort of play is a short-lived phase as the group builds trust with one another.​
At least in my experience, the group will probably develop an understanding (based on genre, a general sense of "how the game works", etc) which implicitly answers the question of whether or not it is appropriate play to delcare as an action "I search for a tunnel to the land of the Yuan-ti."

And my conclusion is that these issues of pacing in relation to how the GM frames things; whether the tunnel leads to the land of the Yuan-ti or just a clue to it; when it is appropriate to put the prince's life at stake; etc - are so contextual that it's impossible to give general advice, other than to follow the players' leads and try not to make the sort of mistake described in the BW extract.

***********************

These bits from the Ron Edwards essay also sees relevant to the overall discussion, although not this particular issue of pacing:

Since Exploration is best understood as a medium and tool in Narrativist play, rather than a product itself, the role of "in game reality" needs some review - not so much about who has authority over it (the usual concern in Simulationist play), but what the heck it is. The answer is, it's a medium and tool for addressing Premise, and _nothing_ more at all.

. . .

Force (Illusionist or not) isn't necessarily dyfunctional: it works well when the GM's main role is to make sure that the transcript ends up being a story, with little pressure or expectation for the players to do so beyond accepting the GM's Techniques. I think that a shared "agreement to be deceived" is typically involved, i.e., the players agree not to look behind the Black Curtain. I suggest that people who like Illusionist play are very good at establishing and abiding by their tolerable degree of Force, and Secrets of Gamemastering seems to bear that out as the perceived main issue of satisfactory role-playing per se.

Producing a story via Force Techniques means that play must shift fully to Simulationist play. "Story" becomes Explored Situation, the character "works" insofar as he or she fits in, and the player's enjoyment arises from contributing to that fitting-in. However, for the Narrativist player, the issue is not the Curtain at all, but the Force. Force-based Techniques are pure poison for Narrativist play and vice versa. The GM (or a person currently in that role) can provide substantial input, notably adversity and Weaving [= a GM technique of bringing NPC activities closer to the player-characters and to introduce multiple responses among NPC and player-character actions], but not specific protagonist decisions and actions; that is the very essence of deprotagonizing Narrativist play.​


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I would go further than you have here (and I think you might come along with me).
> 
> I agree that your examples (the Yuan-ti and the gold), as presented, seem like fairly unexciting play. But I treat that just as a function of toy examples in a post to make a point.
> 
> I'll give a real example, from actual BW play:
> 
> A PC has (as two of three Beliefs) _I will free my brother from possession by a balrog_ and _I'm not leaving Hardby without gaining some magical item to use against my brother_. The very first scene, that started the campaign, found this PC at a bazaar where a peddler was offering an angel feather for sale (ie a magical item that might be useful in dealing with a balrog-possessed mage).
> 
> This sees those two beliefs (one as instrumental to the other) engaged right away. And it doesn't make for poor play at all!
> 
> Now the retort might be _that was GM framing_. But I don't think that makes any difference.




My retort, and it really isn't a retort, but rather just a statement of preference, is that it seems too easy.  For me, something that important to my PC should take some work to locate.  That work adds extra meaning to my success when I finally find the item I need to free my brother from his possession.  Is there a reason why instead of starting the scene where the feather was located, you didn't start the scene at a place where a guy knows a guy who knows a place where such things can be found?


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## innerdude

There's lots of subtexts running beneath this topic of player agency vis-a-vis narrative pacing.

 [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] 's question of, "Why not start your scene frame _here_ instead of _there_?" is a good one, and as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] notes, it's really contextual. No one is going to allow a player to declare in the first 15 seconds of Session 1, "I take the One Ring to Orodruin and throw it into the fire." But not all groups are going to want to start out with, "You're all Level 0 halfling rogues in the Shire" either.

My wife has written several novels now (none published yet, sadly), and she and I talk constantly about story and narrative pacing, character arcs, plot arcs, etc. There's lots of "rules" around how to write effective fiction, but two of the most important are "Never let your protagonist earn a victory cheaply," and "Don't let your characters act out of character."

"Story Now" play, as I see it, is an attempt to directly address the second point. If players/characters aren't allowed to advocate for their narrative agenda in RPG play, they are in effect, "acting out of character." 

At which point, the player is forced to subsume their actual character design and just "go along with it."  This is essentially what I ended up doing with my PC for a year in the last Savage Worlds game in which I was a player. I had established clear narrative stakes for her through her character background and her choice of magical talents---she will valiantly fight against any and all forms of slavery. 

Yet that dramatic need got addressed for maybe all of two sessions out of 27 or 28, and in mostly perfunctory, unsatisfying ways. And at one point I would have willingly traded out that character for one more suited for "GM scene tourist" play, but by that point she was kind of critical to party strategy. Her unorthodox set of magical talents complimented the rest of the group, and other players had already made character building choices based on some of her characteristics . . . so, she stayed on as a PC. 

The other thing that keeps coming to mind is, neither side (GM and players) is immune to making mistakes from time to time. Sometimes players will wrongly advocate for a fictional state change that would, in fact, make the game worse. Sometimes the GM will wrongly impede players from advocating for their character agendas. Sometimes the GM offers too few concessions to the narrative, sometimes the players ask for too many.

GM experience plays a big role in making this work. It's very easy for me to see why an inexperienced GM would be adverse to a "Story Now"/player-front style---they haven't yet mastered techniques of pacing and scene framing, or possibly are unsure about how to appropriately re-frame player action declarations that cross the line of the Czege Principle. 

As far as the problem of allowing the PCs to have their victories come too cheaply, this is not unique to "Story Now"/player-front play. Every edition of D&D from 3.x onward has had encounter difficulty guidelines to specifically address this. It doesn't matter if player victory comes too cheaply because the GM didn't set encounter difficulty high enough, or it comes too cheaply because the group consented to an inappropriate level of fictional authoring----the result is still unsatisfying.


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Is there a reason why instead of starting the scene where the feather was located, you didn't start the scene at a place where a guy knows a guy who knows a place where such things can be found?



Yes. Because starting in the bazarr (i) made it easier to bring 3 PCs into the situation, and (ii) it seemed more interesting.



Maxperson said:


> My retort, and it really isn't a retort, but rather just a statement of preference, is that it seems too easy. For me, something that important to my PC should take some work to locate. That work adds extra meaning to my success when I finally find the item I need to free my brother from his possession.



Two thoughts in response.

(1) The angel feather, as it turned out, was not the item needed. It turned out to be cursed (in the play of the game, this was the consequence that followed upon a failed Aura-reading check) and got the PCs into a reasonable amount of trouble.

(2) The notion of "some work" needs interrogation here. In the real world, work si work: time, effort, perhaps expense.

In a RPG, "work" is just playing the game. So putting in work to find the item means either (i) making moves that will trigger the GM to tell you, as a player, what further moves you have to make to find the item, and/or (ii) the chance of failure is "relocated", from the chance that the angel feather is actually not what the PC is after to a chance that the PC never actually comes face-to-face with the prospects of finding a useful artefact.

It is (ii), in particular, that makes me describe the approach I took as more interesting.


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## pemerton

innerdude said:


> The other thing that keeps coming to mind is, neither side (GM and players) is immune to making mistakes from time to time. Sometimes players will wrongly advocate for a fictional state change that would, in fact, make the game worse. Sometimes the GM will wrongly impede players from advocating for their character agendas. Sometimes the GM offers too few concessions to the narrative, sometimes the players ask for too many.
> 
> GM experience plays a big role in making this work.



This is all true. That's why I've been posting assuming a GM who is doing what s/he set out to do.

It's also why I think detours through "pemerton doesn't trust GMs" and the like are just that - detours. Preferring RPGing in which players exercise significant agency over the content of the shared fiction has nothing to do with distrusting the GM, or thinking the GM will do a bad job of "telling the story". It's rather than (as a player, and as a GM) I don't want the GM to be telling a story - because I am looking for a different sort of thing out of RPGing.



innerdude said:


> It's very easy for me to see why an inexperienced GM would be adverse to a "Story Now"/player-front style---they haven't yet mastered techniques of pacing and scene framing, or possibly are unsure about how to appropriately re-frame player action declarations that cross the line of the Czege Principle.



But this I don't really agree with. The way to learn to manage pacing is to try it. And perhaps read a bit of advice around it. But the idea that it's easier to deliver a good RPGing experience by doing something else (say, establishing a whole lot of setting, some of which serves as unrevealed fictional positioning that then affects the adjudication of declared actions) I think is unwarranted.



innerdude said:


> There's lots of "rules" around how to write effective fiction, but two of the most important are "Never let your protagonist earn a victory cheaply," and "Don't let your characters act out of character."
> 
> <snip>
> 
> As far as the problem of allowing the PCs to have their victories come too cheaply, this is not unique to "Story Now"/player-front play. Every edition of D&D from 3.x onward has had encounter difficulty guidelines to specifically address this. It doesn't matter if player victory comes too cheaply because the GM didn't set encounter difficulty high enough, or it comes too cheaply because the group consented to an inappropriate level of fictional authoring----the result is still unsatisfying.



"Too cheaply" in a RPG can often be related to resolution mechanics. If something is a "big deal" - if it carries heft in play, in terms of mechanical heft, time spent, player-side resources brought to bear, and possible consequences of failure - then I generally think it will not be too cheap.


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> "Too cheaply" in a RPG can often be related to resolution mechanics. If something is a "big deal" - if it carries heft in play, in terms of mechanical heft, time spent, player-side resources brought to bear, and possible consequences of failure - then I generally think it will not be too cheap.



And this gets right back to the map-in-the-castle example.

If for whatever reason finding this map is a big deal, then having it turn up on the first successful search roll* (as a player-driven system would resolve the search-the-room-for-the-map action declaration) gives it away too cheaply simply through resolution mechanics.  In a DM-driven system she can, if desired, put the map behind various traps and defend it with various opponents**, knowing all the while where it is and what obstacles the PCs will have to either overcome or bypass in order to get it.

* - this also means the DM can't have the map's specific location be somehow defended, as until it is found it doesn't have a specific location.
** - e.g. if it's in a breadbox in the kitchen the breadbox could be lethally trapped, and a phantom snake could be in there with the map to defend it, and the kitchen could be the home of the cook's fearsome ghost; meanwhile the study could have all kinds of traps, hints, etc. to steer the PCs toward looking there as a diversionary defense of the map's actual location.

Lan-"though even in a DM-driven game the PCs will sometimes beeline straight to the solution and bypass all the obstacles by sheer luck"-efan


----------



## Maxperson

innerdude said:


> My wife has written several novels now (none published yet, sadly), and she and I talk constantly about story and narrative pacing, character arcs, plot arcs, etc. There's lots of "rules" around how to write effective fiction, but two of the most important are "Never let your protagonist earn a victory cheaply," and "Don't let your characters act out of character."
> 
> "Story Now" play, as I see it, is an attempt to directly address the second point. If players/characters aren't allowed to advocate for their narrative agenda in RPG play, they are in effect, "acting out of character."
> 
> At which point, the player is forced to subsume their actual character design and just "go along with it."  This is essentially what I ended up doing with my PC for a year in the last Savage Worlds game in which I was a player. I had established clear narrative stakes for her through her character background and her choice of magical talents---she will valiantly fight against any and all forms of slavery.
> 
> Yet that dramatic need got addressed for maybe all of two sessions out of 27 or 28, and in mostly perfunctory, unsatisfying ways. And at one point I would have willingly traded out that character for one more suited for "GM scene tourist" play, but by that point she was kind of critical to party strategy. Her unorthodox set of magical talents complimented the rest of the group, and other players had already made character building choices based on some of her characteristics . . . so, she stayed on as a PC.




I don't think that they are in effect, "acting out of character."  Character is more wide reaching than that.  I think it's more a case of "How do I want to play out the character."  

For me, I set the personality of my PC.  I add in likes and dislikes and quirks,  including for example a hatred of slavery for my favorite PC of all time.  I set goals for him.  Then I stick to that character through all that comes his way.  I may never have narrative control over a situation, but that doesn't keep me from keep character completely.  Even if he never encounters slavery in the game, it's still a part of him that I know, and that comes out in little ways at appropriate times.  If he encounters a father that is controlling of his kids, he might make a comment about slavery or slave drivers.  And so on.

For the kind of play involving narrative control, it seems like the focus changes from just staying in the character you build, to exploring much more deeply, fewer aspects of that character, and in different ways.  

I think both methods allow for deep character roleplay and exploration, but not in the same manner.  It just depends on your preference.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Yes. Because starting in the bazarr (i) made it easier to bring 3 PCs into the situation, and (ii) it seemed more interesting.
> 
> Two thoughts in response.
> 
> (1) The angel feather, as it turned out, was not the item needed. It turned out to be cursed (in the play of the game, this was the consequence that followed upon a failed Aura-reading check) and got the PCs into a reasonable amount of trouble.
> 
> (2) The notion of "some work" needs interrogation here. In the real world, work si work: time, effort, perhaps expense.
> 
> In a RPG, "work" is just playing the game. So putting in work to find the item means either (i) making moves that will trigger the GM to tell you, as a player, what further moves you have to make to find the item, and/or (ii) the chance of failure is "relocated", from the chance that the angel feather is actually not what the PC is after to a chance that the PC never actually comes face-to-face with the prospects of finding a useful artefact.
> 
> It is (ii), in particular, that makes me describe the approach I took as more interesting.




I guess it's all a matter of perspective.  To me, getting handed something on a silver platter that may be pewter if you don't succeed at the roll isn't as interesting is pursuing a goal and achieving it after some effort.  I also enjoy forcing the DM to react to me as I drive the story forward with my PC's actions, so I very proactively go after my goals.  One day I'd like to try your method, though.  While I don't think I'd find it to be as much fun as my style, I do think it would be fun.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> And this gets right back to the map-in-the-castle example.
> 
> If for whatever reason finding this map is a big deal, then having it turn up on the first successful search roll* (as a player-driven system would resolve the search-the-room-for-the-map action declaration) gives it away too cheaply simply through resolution mechanics.  In a DM-driven system she can, if desired, put the map behind various traps and defend it with various opponents**, knowing all the while where it is and what obstacles the PCs will have to either overcome or bypass in order to get it.
> 
> * - this also means the DM can't have the map's specific location be somehow defended, as until it is found it doesn't have a specific location.



Your asterisked claim is not true.

Actual play example: it is well-established in my main 4e game that at least one fragment of the Rod of Seven Parts is embedded in the body of Miska the Wolf Spider. Hence the Rod can't be completed until Miska is defeated.

Exactly the same thing could be true in relation to the map.

And there are multiple ways that this could come about: it could be an element of framing backstory established by the GM; it could be a consequence of a check - eg a player declares a Lore-type check to learn more about the map, say with the goal of generating an augment of some sort to subsequent attempts to find the map, and the check fails and hence what the PC learns is something that makes it harder to get the map (such as that it is guarded by something-or-other).

As far as "too cheaply" is concerned, my response is the same as to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] upthread: the effect of the GM interpolating "obstacles" that must be overcome or bypassed is to make the focus of play something _the GM authored_ rather than something _the player has made salient_. I don't see how that makes the acquisition any less cheap: the player is not actually doing anything harder, but rather is just working his/her way through the GM's material before getting to the stuff that s/he has flagged as important.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> When killing an orc, you also get "retries".  If you miss(fail to kill the orc), you can retry until you kill it or something else happens to prevent success.



There is a combat system whereby the GM, using the orc as his/her playing piece, is wearing down the PC's hit points. This puts quite a strong limit on retries.

(If the PC is trying to kill an orc who doesn't fight back, then in D&D it is the same as 3E-style skill checks with no finality of resolution.)


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> As far as "too cheaply" is concerned, my response is the same as to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] upthread: the effect of the GM interpolating "obstacles" that must be overcome or bypassed is to make the focus of play something _the GM authored_ rather than something _the player has made salient_. I don't see how that makes the acquisition any less cheap: the player is not actually doing anything harder, but rather is just working his/her way through the GM's material before getting to the stuff that s/he has flagged as important.




It is more challenging.  Just as you had a roll for success or failure, there will be rolls for success and failure along the way to the item.  The player when his PC encounters those challenges will have to figure out ways to bypass the challenge without rolling, or let the dice dictate fate.  Figuring out ways past the challenge is harder than just rolling for an item handed to you on a platter.  Then, if failure happens, the player has to figure out new ways to get to the item.  

Let's go back to the feather example.  In your game you just plopped the PCs down in the bazar where they could locate the item.  In our game the player would have to come up with the idea to go to the bazar to look around, or try to locate someone in the city who knows where someone might be selling an item of that sort, or seek out a sage, or...  That right alone has increased the challenge level over your method, and without "working his way through the GM's material".  The DM simply won't have material for everything the players try to do and will be reacting to the story that the players are driving.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> This is a bit vague.  My understanding is that the GM is supposed to frame scenes that bring the player agendas into crisis, which isn't the same thing as framing things the players are interested in. The form of the crisis is the invention of the GM, not the player, and only loosely follows player interests in that the crisis formed attacks some part of the player's agenda. The fact that all scenes are supposed to place the player agenda into unavoidable crisis is the bit that I'm actually talking about. The defense that 'well, it's still the player's agenda' doesn't really defuse the point that the players lack agency to mitigate or choose the crisis they're forced into.



Instead of abstract speculation about how "story now" or "the standard narrativistic model" games are played, it might be better to consider actual examples of games written to be played in that style, or at actual play examples of play in that style.

But anyway, even if one sticks to abstract description, Eero Tuovinen says

[the] gamemaster . . . frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go[es] where the action is) and provoke thematic moments (defined in narrativistic theory as moments of in-character action that carry weight as commentary on the game’s premise) by introducing complications.​

And Ron Edwards says

Story Now requires that at least one engaging issue or problematic feature of human existence be _addressed _in the process of role-playing . . . [which] means . . . [d]eveloping the issue as a source of continued conflict, perhaps changing any number of things about it, such as which side is being taken by a given character, or providing more depth to why the antagonistic side of the issue exists at all [and r]esolving the issue through the decisions of the players of the protagonists . . .​
There is nothing here about "bringing the player's agenda into crisis", or "attacking" that agenda.

Both emphasise player decision-making ("in-character action", "decisions of the players of the protagonists") that is provoked by "complications"/"continued conflict" which speak to "dramatic needs"/"the engaging issue" and thereby yield "thematic moments"/"development of the isssue".

This could be about crisis, but need not be. Being a poor sorceror with only a limited ability to read magical auras, but in need of items to help free one's brother from demonic possession, means that the offer of an angel feather for sale provokes a choice for the PC, and thus a decision by the player. (In Edwards' terms, the "issue" is implicit but fairly straightforward: what will I risk, and what forces beyond my control will I treat with, in order to free my brother from the forces beyond his control?) But this is not a crisis. It doesn't attack the player's agenda (of having the PC find items to save his brother). It puts that agenda to the fore of play, however.



Ovinomancer said:


> Players in player-facing games cannot avoid or mitigate crisis by slowing down the pacing. Players in DM-facing games have less agency to introduce new fiction to overcome crisis.  This is because they have more agency in pacing to mitigate and overcome crisis.  Much of the discussion about resting in 5e is really about how much agency the players have over pacing and how it can trivialize many elements of the game that the DM uses to advance to crisis.  So, this isn't something that's new, even if it's not normally discussed in terms like 'agency over pacing.'



The first sentence rests on a false premise.

Players in "player-facing" games cannot avoid _dealing with their own agendas_. But that does not seem to be a burden on agency!

And as [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has pointed out, resting in 5e seems to be about resources rather than pacing. It's true that the GM can use his/her control over "the plot", or framing, to create "story losses" (what AbdulAlhazred calls "plot costs") that the players might risk if they renew their resources - but the risking of story losses for resources doesn't really seem to be a strong or even distinctive form of player agency at all. Not particularly strong, because the bulk of the agency seems to be in the GM's hands; and not distinctive, because a player in a "player-facing" game can often spend a "move" or "turn" trying to establish an augment of some sort rather than actually tackling the situation head-on. (Even if there is no literal action economy, trying to establish the augment is an action that risks failure, which can then be narrated as consequences that consist in the situation getting worse for the PC, which - in terms of fictional content, if not the process of play that generates it - is analogous to the story loss of the GM-driven game.)


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> There is a combat system whereby the GM, using the orc as his/her playing piece, is wearing down the PC's hit points. This puts quite a strong limit on retries.
> 
> (If the PC is trying to kill an orc who doesn't fight back, then in D&D it is the same as 3E-style skill checks with no finality of resolution.)




Retries are usually limited with 3e skill checks as well.  Fail enough climb checks and you can die from falling, limiting retries.  You only get one roll to spellcraft a spell.  After that it's gone and it's not realistic to continue to allow rolls.  Fail a concentration check and it's over.  No rerolls.  Fail tracking and you've lost the trail.  You can't keep appraising, bluffing, sensing motive for the same interaction, deciphering a script, diplomacy, and more.  Really, if you are playing the game realistically, very few 3e skills would allow retries, and even fewer would allow you to keep retrying without limit.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> In our game the player would have to come up with the idea to go to the bazar to look around, or try to locate someone in the city who knows where someone might be selling an item of that sort, or seek out a sage, or...  That right alone has increased the challenge level over your method, and without "working his way through the GM's material".  The DM simply won't have material for everything the players try to do and will be reacting to the story that the players are driving.



There are two basic options here.

(1) The player never actually gets to do the stuff that s/he wanted to do - instead of the game being about whether or not the PC can find an artefact that might help free his/her brother, the game is about the hunt for sages and bazaars and vendors. That is not a story driven by the player - it is driven by the GM's conception of these various obstacles/challenges.

(2) The player does get to do the stuff that s/he wanted to do, but only after doing some other stuff first. Again, this is not a story driven by the player, at least up until that point - it was driven by the GM's conception of those obstacles and challenges.

It would be different if the PC's Belief was "I will find someone to help me deal with my brother's possession." But that wasn't the Belief.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> There are two basic options here.
> 
> (1) The player never actually gets to do the stuff that s/he wanted to do - instead of the game being about whether or not the PC can find an artefact that might help free his/her brother, the game is about the hunt for sages and bazaars and vendors. That is not a story driven by the player - it is driven by the GM's conception of these various obstacles/challenges.
> 
> (2) The player does get to do the stuff that s/he wanted to do, but only after doing some other stuff first. Again, this is not a story driven by the player, at least up until that point - it was driven by the GM's conception of those obstacles and challenges.
> 
> It would be different if the PC's Belief was "I will find someone to help me deal with my brother's possession." But that wasn't the Belief.




No.  It's simply a different way for the player to drive the story.  The focus is on different aspects of play than yours, but it's no less player driven.  There's no effective difference between the DM obstacle in my style,  and you creating the curse obstacle in your via the failed roll.  In both instances the players have to overcome an obstacle that the DM put in the way.  In both instances the players desires drove that obstacle into being through their desires.  In both instances the story moves forward ONLY because of the players, as the DM is just reacting to what the players do.  

And the story is driven forward in my game by the players regardless of success.  Even in failure, the story moves, albeit in a different direction.  Perhaps the player seeks a wizard instead to commission the item in need.  Maybe he seeks out a demon himself and makes a bargain to learn how to drive the Balrog out.  And more.  Failure doesn't stop the action, but rather shifts the direction.

Your style doesn't allow for greater player control over the story.  It simply allows for a different kind of player control over the story and has a different focus on the game.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> there are other elements that I certainly do decide ahead of time. I do commit prior to play. My point is that this need not violate any level of player agency.



If you decide something ahead of time, and it has not been revealed to the players, and they then delcare an action to which this unrevealed fictional positioning is relevant, how can it not affect their agency?

Also, if you decide this thing ahead of time, and it actually comes to matter in play, then how does that also count as an exercise of GM rather than player agency over the content of the shared fiction?

These questions are not rhetorical. If I am wrong, then you have in mind something that I haven't succeeded in grasping- because it looks like GM-authored setting that _doesn't affect action resolution_ and _doesn't contribute to the fiction that is the focus of play_. But that just doesn't seem right.



hawkeyefan said:


> My secret backstory is the establishment of the shared fiction, which speaks to the PCs' dramatic needs. It doesn't dictate options.



But it affects action resolution, in ways the players aren't aware of, and in ways that reflects the GM's prior conception of the fiction.

Framing doesn't do that.



hawkeyefan said:


> The PC searching the kitchen for a map that they've come to the keep to find? To me, that's an issue. It's the solution to the problem that's been established, and has likely been given much more consideration than the presence of a bowl in a bedroom.
> 
> So the players abusing their ability to foster the fictional elements of the scene by simply declaring that something may be present in the room.



I mean, isn't this a descrition of a limit on the ability of the players to exercise agency over the content of the shared fiction, based on the GM's conception of what the fiction should be? If not, what is it?



hawkeyefan said:


> You've clearly given a decision point to them. So they have certain options available to them. This limits their options.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> A specific problem of some kind is presented. It must be addressed. So the GM is indeed limiting their agency. They have to deal with this thing in front of them, and not go off on some kind of side quest that piqued their interest.



My response to this is the same as to [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] upthread - any time the GM says "You find yourself in situation XYZ" the description of XYZ in some fashion limits options. I'm taking that to be a given for any mainstream RPG. But there is nothing distinctive about the "standard narrativistic model" in this respect.

You seem to be suggesting that there is something distinctive, though. But I've not grasped what you think that is.

As far as the side quest is concerned, I don't get what you are saying. First, I don't know what you mean by "side quest" - it's not a notion that has any purchase in player-driven RPGing, because it rests on a contrast with the "real" or "main" quest that only operates in GM-driven games.

But second, the player can declare whatever action s/he wants. If the GM frames the PC into the bazaar, and the player decides that angel feathers are of no interest, the player can declare whatever action s/he wants to (and that respects the fictional positioning of the PC). Again, you seem to be envisaging some aspect or dynamic of play here that I'm simply not seeing (eg some sort of GM veto over action declarations).



hawkeyefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I don't know of any RPG that would be run the way you describe. I don't know of any RPG that suggests that the GM's job is to (i) frame the situation, and then (ii) tell the players what their PCs are or are not allowed to do in trying to engage and/or resolve the situation. Do you have one in mind?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm going off of your descriptions. I am not familiar with Burning Wheel and a few of the other games you are advocating. I am familiar with other games that would be considered story now.
Click to expand...


OK, so which game have you got in mind in envisaging that if the players try to engage with the "sidequest" the GM will veto that action declaration and force them to do something else (the main quest?)? Or that involves the GM, as part of the framing, saying "You're not allowed to bribe this guard" or "You're not allowed to fight this monster"?

As I said, I don't know any - that's why I'm asking what you have in mind.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> Again, it may be useful if you can answer if you've been swayed in any way. If there are any decent answers to the question you posed in the OP. What is worldbuilding for? If you reply to me, I'd hope you would not cut this question out a third time. I think it'd genuinely be interesting to see your take on it after hundreds of pages of this thread.
> 
> Certainly there must have been some take away for you?



I answered this a long way upthread, I think in multiple posts. A range of answers have been given.

Worldbuilding provides material for the GM to share with the players as triggered by their moves - this is generally described as "exploration". On the GM side, this can be a creative exercise. On the player side, it seems to be described mostly in terms of immersion. "Immersion" in this context seems necessarily to involve someone else telling fiction to the player, but that characterisation has been resisted to quite a degree.

Worldbuilding provides the players with "levers" to do things - [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION] is the main poster to have talked about this. It hasn't been fully analysed in this thread, but there are multiple ways this could play out. One is in what I would call White Plume Mountain style - worldbuilding provides material, by way of fictional positioning, that the players can directly engage to proffer solutions to the puzzles they are faced with (I call it WPM because the paradigm, in my mind, is removing doors from their hinges so as to "surf" down the frictionless corridor over the pits with super-tetanus spikes).

Another, which is less OSR-ish/WPM, and probably therefore more typical in contemporary RPGing, is that the players - by engaging with the "levers" - trigger the GM to narrate stuff in ways that go beyond pre-authoring. When this really starts to reflect player pro-activity, I think that we may see a transition to player-driven play without anyone in the game having to get self-conscious about it. Now that I think about it, [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has, quite a way upthread, pointed to this sort of thing as particularly being a feature of upper-level AD&D play.

Quite different from the idea of "levers", worldbuidling provides a uniform aesthetic vision for the game. And at least somewhat relatedly, it provides a drive/direction for the game where the players are not themselves interested in providing this. And these two things may come together in the context of a drop-in or AL-style situation.

And another function for worldbuilding that has been mentioned in some recent posts is that it creates a "space" in play between the player's expression of a desire to engage with situation XYZ, and actually engaging, in play, with situation XYZ.

Some of these answers are not surprising. Probably the most surprising are the last two - the uniform vision/driving of the game is part of an approach to RPGing that I find really very foreign to my own experience; and the idea that it might be desirable to create space in play between wanting to engage with XYZ, and engaging with XYZ, in the way that is being described is not something that would occur to me through reflection.


----------



## darkbard

Maxperson said:


> Let's go back to the feather example.  In your game you just plopped the PCs down in the bazar where they could locate the item.  In our game the player would have to come up with the idea to go to the bazar to look around, or try to locate someone in the city who knows where someone might be selling an item of that sort, or seek out a sage, or...  That right alone has increased the challenge level over your method, and without "working his way through the GM's material".  The DM simply won't have material for everything the players try to do and will be reacting to the story that the players are driving.




I disagree: it's simply setting the starting point of a protracted process at different initial stages. Go back and take a look at [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s example of how action resolution led to the introduction of complications whereby the feather was cursed and another magical item was needed, etc. 

In both his example and yours, this is much "work" to be done before the player goal is met.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> In a DM-run system where the presence or absence of a secret door is already locked in, there's no problem.  But in a player-driven system the player has to have in the back of his mind the thought "Hey, maybe if I try searching for a secret door and roll well I can - in effect - out of nowhere author us an escape hatch."



This just reiterates my point that the issue is not player freedom to make action declarations that are then resolved via the mechanics; but rather that balancing moves is a bigger deal in D&D than in most other RPGs. The concern you raise here isn't about the player's "authorship" role, but about the fact that the move is too powerful relative to other available moves.

(Though personally I'm not sure this is true in a game with fiat secret doors via Passwall.)



Lanefan said:


> I wonder, is the difference due to D&D actually paying attention to action economy and unbalanced actions where other systems maybe don't so much?



There are any number of reasons, probably starting with the list approach (spells, magic items) to PC abilities in combination with large swathes of dramatically fiction-altering fiat magic. But I think a full discussion is beyond the scope of this thread.



Lanefan said:


> 4e doesn't fold combat situations into skill challenges, does it?



Absolutely it can. A combat can be part of a skill challenge (eg defeating the monster generates 1 success). Or a skill challenge can unfold within, or parallel to, a combat.

There is a good recent thread in the <5e editions sub-forum about skill challenges in combat contexts.



Lanefan said:


> in other systems if my next action declaration following discovery of the door goes something like "I open it, yell to my companions that here's the way out, and book it outside!" then - depending on other factors such as initiative order and actions of the foes - I'm probably out.



In AD&D there are pursuit rules. In BW there are pursuit rules, and they are only activiated if first you satisfy the disengagement requirements.

In Cortex+ Heroic finding the secret door might support an action to impose a "I Escaped" complication on the enemy, but that is no easier or harder than imposing a "You're dead!" result on them - so finding the secret door changes the fiction, and thus may change what abilities the oppponents can bring to bear, but doesn't change the mechanical difficulty in any in-principle sense.



Lanefan said:


> Re the reliquary example:
> You could narrate that.  Or you could describe what the PCs are going past during their journey to the reliquary: "As you travel with the angels you pass by several intersections and open doors.  Down one hallway you see (and hear!) a slave being beaten with a club by a hooded person.  Through one of the open doors you see a luxurious-looking bedchamber - and you're sure that was some pretty expensive jewelry just sitting out in the open on that dresser!  Down another hall you notice a strange shimmering light coming from a door or opening on the left."
> 
> Or it could just be "As you travel with the angels you pass through a number of dusty passages; in a few places intersecting passages lead off into darkness."
> 
> Things like this give the players (via their PCs) options.  They could decide to rescue the slave.  They could decide to steal the jewelry.  They could check out one of the passages leading into darkness*.  Or they could ignore it all and go straight to the reliquary.
> 
> * - even if they ignore everything else they might still want to check out the other passages to see if one provides a different approach to where they're going.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> 3 during this travel they learn more about the environment simply by what they see as they pass
> 4 they get an opportunity to respond to what they've learned in 3
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But none of this even gets a chance to happen if you-as-DM jump straight from talking with the angels to framing the scene at the reliquary.



Everything you describe here is just GM authorship of fiction.

You are saying that by framing the PCs as being at the reliquary I am denying the players the chance to rescue the slave. But by framing the players into a scene with a doorway and beyond that a beating of a slave, _you_ are denying the players the chance to meet the Modron that some other GM might have decided to mention in his/her possible framing. Or whatever.

Every moment of framing means that some other framing wasn't established. Every moment of play spent doing X means that we have less time to do Y.

By spending time framing situations about slaves and intersecting passages you don't increase the scope for agency. You just spend more time on the stuff that you think is interesting and less time (or delay the arrival at) the stuff the players have flagged as interesting to them.



Lanefan said:


> to me the point of action declarations is to interact with (and maybe change) the fiction that's already there



This takes us back to the point that fiction is imaginary.

From the point of view of "interacting" with fiction, there's no difference between authoring that an (already mentioned) orc is dead, and authoring that an (already mentioned) wall contains a secret door.

You have to introduce other constraints - eg the player's authorship is constrained to things that, in the fiction, might be causal results of his/her PC's actions. I know that plenty of people like such constraints, but RPGs that don't adhere to them aren't in any sense abandoning the idea of "interacting with the fiction", and aren't in any sense more "unrealistic" or "Schroedingerish".


----------



## Maxperson

darkbard said:


> I disagree: it's simply setting the starting point of a protracted process at different initial stages. Go back and take a look at [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s example of how action resolution led to the introduction of complications whereby the feather was cursed and another magical item was needed, etc.
> 
> In both his example and yours, this is much "work" to be done before the player goal is met.




That's simply not true, at least not as he described it.  Had that arcana check succeeded, that would have been the feather they needed.  One roll in a place he plopped them.  While it is true that we both would start at the initial stages, only his allowed for the initial stage to also be the final stage.  One check is hardly "work".


----------



## darkbard

I'm quoting the relevant bit from [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s post here:



pemerton said:


> I'll give a real example, from actual BW play:
> 
> A PC has (as two of three Beliefs) _I will free my brother from possession by a balrog_ and _I'm not leaving Hardby without gaining some magical item to use against my brother_. The very first scene, that started the campaign, found this PC at a bazaar where a peddler was offering an angel feather for sale (ie a magical item that might be useful in dealing with a balrog-possessed mage).
> 
> This sees those two beliefs (one as instrumental to the other) engaged right away. And it doesn't make for poor play at all!




Now, I'm not in pemerton's game, so I have no idea how this may have played out at his table, but I see nothing in his description of the episode that guarantees that a single successful action resolution mechanic would have led to the fulfillment of the PC's Belief that _I'm not leaving Hardby without gaining some magical item to use against my brother_. Might the angel feather have been magically beneficial and not cursed with a single roll? Maybe. Would it be useful against his brother? Maybe, but not necessarily.

Maybe [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] wishes to engage this, or perhaps he feels it's a non sequitur.

The point of the example, though, and he's subsequently addressed this upthread, is that his framing goes directly to the PC Belief (regardless of how much work may be required to get there), whereas the situation you propose interposes several GM-designed intervening obstacles to even addressing the Belief.


----------



## Lanefan

Maxperson said:


> Your style doesn't allow for greater player control over the story.  It simply allows for a different kind of player control over the story and has a different focus on the game.



It seems a difference between your style and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's is that where you'd have the players (in character) take the time to figure out how in the game-world to find the information that would lead them to the bazaar, he'd assume the PCs would obtain the correct info and thus jump straight to the bazaar scene.

Your way allows the players / PCs to make mistakes, find and follow false leads, or otherwise run into distractions that make the whole thing take longer to play out at the table.  His doesn't.

Pacing.



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> As far as the side quest is concerned, I don't get what you are saying. First, I don't know what you mean by "side quest" - it's not a notion that has any purchase in player-driven RPGing, because it rests on a contrast with the "real" or "main" quest that only operates in GM-driven games.



Er...if the PC's main quest is to free his brother from demonic possession, and during play he encounters a village under attack by troglodytes and decides to put his main quest on hold and stop to help the villagers for a while by rounding up a party and taking the battle to the trogs...sounds like a player-driven side quest to me. 

Not every PC needs to always be so focused on its own goals and angst that it ignores the world around it.

And before you say you'd never frame the village scene as it's not important to the PCs' goals, I say why not?  Make them make a choice.  Give them a chance to side-quest themselves, or distract themselves.  Who knows, maybe what starts as a side quest will become a main quest, with the PC's original goals forgotten or abandoned.

Lan-"every time a player has a choice of what her PC does next, that player's agency is increased"-efan


----------



## Michael Silverbane

Lanefan said:


> Er...if the PC's main quest is to free his brother from demonic possession, and during play he encounters a village under attack by troglodytes and decides to put his main quest on hold and stop to help the villagers for a while by rounding up a party and taking the battle to the trogs...sounds like a player-driven side quest to me.
> 
> Not every PC needs to always be so focused on its own goals and angst that it ignores the world around it.
> 
> And before you say you'd never frame the village scene as it's not important to the PCs' goals, I say why not?  Make them make a choice.  Give them a chance to side-quest themselves, or distract themselves.  Who knows, maybe what starts as a side quest will become a main quest, with the PC's original goals forgotten or abandoned.




Further, if the player has a belief for his character such as, "My own personal ambitions are more important the the plight of the downtrodden." Then the DM _must_ introduce such scenes in order to bring that player belief into conflict.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> This just reiterates my point that the issue is not player freedom to make action declarations that are then resolved via the mechanics; but rather that balancing moves is a bigger deal in D&D than in most other RPGs. The concern you raise here isn't about the player's "authorship" role, but about the fact that the move is too powerful relative to other available moves.
> 
> (Though personally I'm not sure this is true in a game with fiat secret doors via Passwall.)



Not everyone has Passwall as a field-castable spell, particularly at low level; but most parties have someone capable of a competent secret door search.



> In AD&D there are pursuit rules. In BW there are pursuit rules, and they are only activiated if first you satisfy the disengagement requirements.
> 
> In Cortex+ Heroic finding the secret door might support an action to impose a "I Escaped" complication on the enemy, but that is no easier or harder than imposing a "You're dead!" result on them - so finding the secret door changes the fiction, and thus may change what abilities the oppponents can bring to bear, but doesn't change the mechanical difficulty in any in-principle sense.



It'd be situationally dependent, of course.  

And AD&D's pursuit rules aren't much use. 



> Everything you describe here is just GM authorship of fiction.
> 
> You are saying that by framing the PCs as being at the reliquary I am denying the players the chance to rescue the slave. But by framing the players into a scene with a doorway and beyond that a beating of a slave, _you_ are denying the players the chance to meet the Modron that some other GM might have decided to mention in his/her possible framing. Or whatever.



Either way, the players are being denied the opportunity to make a choice.  There might be nothing but empty passages...but unless you narrate them the players don't know they exist and thus don't get to choose whether to explore them or not.



> Every moment of framing means that some other framing wasn't established. Every moment of play spent doing X means that we have less time to do Y.



Why is it so important that we do Y right now rather than next session or the session after that?  You're not running to a time limit.



> By spending time framing situations about slaves and intersecting passages you don't increase the scope for agency. You just spend more time on the stuff that you think is interesting and less time (or delay the arrival at) the stuff the players have flagged as interesting to them.



If the players (in and-or out of character) are dead set on getting to the reliquary they'll choose to bypass whatever distractions may appear...and that's fine.  They had the choice, and they made it: all is good.  But for them to have made this choice they have to know it exists.

But maybe the players (in and-or out of character) will find one or more of the distractions more immediately interesting than the reliquary*, and divert course to follow up on that while leaving the reliquary for later.  Neither you nor they will ever know if they're not given the chance; and you-as-DM can't just assume they'll choose to ignore everything else they might stumble across en route to where the were originally going.

* - for these purposes I'm arbitrarily authoring that the guiding angels are exceptionally patient and tolerant and won't mind if the PCs take some detours en route to the reliquary. 



> This takes us back to the point that fiction is imaginary.
> 
> From the point of view of "interacting" with fiction, there's no difference between authoring that an (already mentioned) orc is dead, and authoring that an (already mentioned) wall contains a secret door.



Where I posit that there is a difference, unless you're referring to someone simply stating the orc is now dead while bypassing the combat mechanics usually required to get it there.

A better comparison might be authoring that an orc appears in a (previously mentioned) room vs. authoring that a (previously mentioned) wall contains a secret door.  For me, the option to do either of these would be only open to the DM: she'd have pre-determined the secret door bit, and would have a rationale for the sudden appearance of an orc; and note that said rationale could be a PC having just cast a summoning spell.



> You have to introduce other constraints - eg the player's authorship is constrained to things that, in the fiction, might be causal results of his/her PC's actions. I know that plenty of people like such constraints



Count me as one such. 



> but RPGs that don't adhere to them aren't in any sense abandoning the idea of "interacting with the fiction", and aren't in any sense more "unrealistic" or "Schroedingerish".



They're not abandoning the idea of interacting with the fiction but the fiction being interacted with is - or certainly seems to be - a lot more fluid, which makes those interactions more difficult both to initiate and to pin down.

Lanefan


----------



## BryonD

pemerton said:


> In real life, "interacting with a canvas" means painting on it. But upthread you said that the players in your game don't get to author setting elements. So I'm having trouble following the metaphor.



Sorry for the long delay.

But yeah, round and round we go.  And this quote does a decent job of summing it up.  You can't follow the concept of players interacting with setting elements via their PCs within an RPG unless they have the ability to author them.  That is just stunning.  As I've said numerous times before, I totally get the value and fun potential of your player agency approach.  It provides less fun *to me* and to 99% of those I've discussed it with.  But it would be absurd to claim that the sum total of all of our opinions count one sliver of impact on what you enjoy.

So differences of opinion are all well and good.   But when you openly say that you are unable to wrap your brain around something so fundamental to such an immense portion of the gaming community and history, then clearly there is nothing that can be offered.

That I've been offline for about a year and you are still here going through the exact same circles with new people reinforces that point.

So be it.

Until I fail my next WILL save....   Enjoy your games


----------



## Maxperson

darkbard said:


> Now, I'm not in pemerton's game, so I have no idea how this may have played out at his table, but I see nothing in his description of the episode that guarantees that a single successful action resolution mechanic would have led to the fulfillment of the PC's Belief that _I'm not leaving Hardby without gaining some magical item to use against my brother_. Might the angel feather have been magically beneficial and not cursed with a single roll? Maybe. Would it be useful against his brother? Maybe, but not necessarily.




You've come late to the conversation, so you've missed a lot.  He has said many times that success on rolls gets the player what the player has said he wants to happen.  A failed roll results in a consequence of some sort.  That's why a few posts after the one you quoted, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] said that the feather turned out not to be the item being sought due to a failed arcana roll.



> The point of the example, though, and he's subsequently addressed this upthread, is that his framing goes directly to the PC Belief (regardless of how much work may be required to get there), whereas the situation you propose interposes several GM-designed intervening obstacles to even addressing the Belief.




This is not accurate.  The situation I propose does address belief.  Every step of the way the PC is heading towards his goal and accomplishing that belief.  The only difference is the style of play.  i.e. how one gets to the goal, and how the players drive the story.


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> It seems a difference between your style and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's is that where you'd have the players (in character) take the time to figure out how in the game-world to find the information that would lead them to the bazaar, he'd assume the PCs would obtain the correct info and thus jump straight to the bazaar scene.




See, as the DM I would never force my view on the players by assuming how the PCs will accomplish their goals.  I have no idea if they will find their way to the bazaar, end up seeking out a sage or wizard, making a pact with a demon themselves, and so on.  By assuming the bazaar as the end result, I would be depriving them of a lot of possible ways to proceed.  I would also be taking the story out of their hands and driving it myself, which is something I don't want to do.



> Your way allows the players / PCs to make mistakes, find and follow false leads, or otherwise run into distractions that make the whole thing take longer to play out at the table.  His doesn't.
> 
> Pacing.




It's significantly more than just pacing.  Yes the pacing is different, but along the way is tons of roleplay that wouldn't/couldn't happen if I skipped ahead, as well as opportunities to make allies and enemies, acquire information and things, get into fights, and more.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> But what if the player wants to slow it down and make everything more granular; for example making each left-right choice at each intersection even if there's nothing there, rather than jumping straight to the 'action' without real opportunity to do anything else.  This is what I mean when I refer to pacing; where more (or less) granular exploration and interaction with the game world means less (or more) overall story gets told or produced in a session.



OK, that's fairly explicit. I guess my basic answer is there are an INFINITE number of these 'what if the player wants' questions, I could ask "what if the player wants to only play the exciting parts" and that's just as much a what-if. So, we can really only say "in my experience, this is what players typically want, and this is what can serve most of them well a majority of the time." Hopefully that can also be relatively adaptable so that you can adjust how things work, at least to some extent.

IME players get bored. I mean, yes, a player who is new or in a certain mood will probably relish crawling around in a dungeon pixel bitching every cobblestone trying to find traps and secret doors and whatnot endlessly, and scrounging for every copper piece and whatnot. This WILL almost certainly get old after a few sessions, at most. MOST players will begin to desire to move into a more narrative, cinematic, heroic sort of play. Maybe they will also want to do some 'boring stuff' as well, like they might become fascinated with shopkeeping or farming or something, but they don't really end up wanting to spend vast periods of their table time on it every game. Its enough to make a few critical decisions and feel like they're having the experience. Usually this kind of thing will segue into "the thieves guild is trying to take 90% of your profit!" or something rather quickly and that will be more interesting than trying to negotiate a cheaper source of quality high hard boots (15gp). 

I feel like it is always possible to do some 'development' if the player wants, but its almost always a pretty good idea to get on to pushing things pretty soon. I find that 4e's SC system is really awesome here. I can make up an SC for "successfully convince the thieves guild to stop threatening you" and that will include plenty of shopkeeping action and a real interesting plot that 'goes to the action' at the same time. Its probably not going to dwell on book keeping, negotiating contracts, and meetings of the cobbler's guild, but those things might factor in as scenes within the SC.



> I'm not sure what your take is on this, but from things pemerton has posted he seems quite concerned with maintaining a 'fast' pace, where lost of story gets told or produced each session (and thus the campaign as a whole is completed sooner); where I by contrast don't care about speed - it can all take as long as it wants to as long as people are having fun.  There'll always be another session, and another after that...



I find that I want to see what happens in the game. So I like it if there's a fairly robust plot progression. I feel like there's always more characters and more situations and more games to be had and there's no need to linger and draw out one specific situation when there is an infinite amount of gaming I could be doing.



> This is quoted as posted - I think you were going to say more but it got lost somewhere?



Oh, maybe I got distracted, lol. I think I was going to say "cool to place obstacles in the way of making it thrive or growing his holdings into a Kingdom or whatever." I would also say it would be cool to threaten THE WHOLE WORLD, that would of course necessarily threaten his castle, but there's a progression there to more global concerns, so it doesn't really feel so much like endlessly repeating the same thing. I mean, its sort of like Superman, after the 100th time some villain kidnaps Louis Lane it GETS OLD, so you have to move on. Players should always feel like they've accomplished something and their achievements will stand. Never refight the same battle!



> Sometimes it feels more like comparing apples to motorboats.






> I'd say it's more pace of events in the narrative.  Pace of play at the table is another issue entirely.
> 
> Fine, but it'll seem like a constant barrage of attacks anyway if there's no chance for "downtime activities" between them.  And this is what I'm getting at - if no attention is ever paid to downtime* then it might as well not exist.
> 
> * - on both the small (exploring empty passages, or PC-to-PC interactions while camped out) and large (what the PCs do during their three-week stopover in town between adventures) scale.



Right, and I agree that it is the pace experienced by the players that is really actually experienced and thus forms the basis of their enjoyment (or lack thereof) in play. I don't think its necessarily true that the pace should be unrelenting at the table either, there needs to be some degree of pacing, but I don't think every sticky situation that the PCs are in need be immediately hair-raising either. Maybe they are spending the next hour of table time negotiating and planning. These can still be DRAMATIC activities, and even punctuated with action scenes, but they don't need to be Indiana Jones crazy rollercoaster every minute either.



> Here I agree, and would go a step further and say you don't always need to be flinging anything at them at all.  Give them a chance to determine their own next course of action - that's a part of player agency too.



I call those scenes basically 'Interludes'. They often take place outside of table time too. Nothing is really at stake, but the parameters of the next challenge may be set. I don't think that games have to be merely reactive on the part of the players to be 'go to the action' either. "Some guy walks in with a map" and now things are rolling and the party is in the driver's seat, for now...



> The poor-ness of the 4e and 5e resting rules aside, input into the in-game logistics is very important as a player; and is a part of the 'pacing' agency.




Well, they seem better to me than the AD&D ones! lol. I mean, "every time you're injured you have to wait weeks to do anything again" wasn't really very thrilling, and the "well, just find a cleric to magic you back to health 100x faster!" didn't really cut it either. The fact that half the party used a totally different resource scheme than the other half wasn't winning me over either. This is a BIG reason as well that I like 4e over 13a or 5e, because it DOES have a consistent set of resources that all classes basically share (ignoring some ill-considered exceptions).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> My retort, and it really isn't a retort, but rather just a statement of preference, is that it seems too easy.  For me, something that important to my PC should take some work to locate.  That work adds extra meaning to my success when I finally find the item I need to free my brother from his possession.  Is there a reason why instead of starting the scene where the feather was located, you didn't start the scene at a place where a guy knows a guy who knows a place where such things can be found?




Does it matter? I mean, sure, you could start somewhere further back up the chain, but its not like its planned out! If you're creating a DM-driven story arc then there could 3 stages to the goal, or there could be 13, and then its a real question "how big is this story arc and should I keep it going for 1, 2, 5, 7, or 100 sessions?" In Story Now it isn't important to think about that except tactically, as in don't actually put the prize in the character's hands in THIS scene. Now, clearly pacing and genre conventions and whatnot will probably signal at what point you're belaboring the premise and need to move on to the conclusion. A good GM will manage that, but I don't think where [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is with the angel feather is really problematic. The feather itself is merely a prop. Possession of it MIGHT have signaled a chance to advance the character towards his goal. In fact it appears it was of little real value, except in engaging the desired story element and spurring the PLAYERS to take further actions.

In DM-driven play you need sufficient obstacles laid out in the path of success to establish a pace, but in story now play that just isn't the case. I would posit that even in most DM-driven games the DM is likely interpolating new obstacles into the path of the party as needed in order to draw things out to the proper degree. Its just a less nimble way of doing it.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, that's fairly explicit. I guess my basic answer is there are an INFINITE number of these 'what if the player wants' questions, I could ask "what if the player wants to only play the exciting parts" and that's just as much a what-if. So, we can really only say "in my experience, this is what players typically want, and this is what can serve most of them well a majority of the time." Hopefully that can also be relatively adaptable so that you can adjust how things work, at least to some extent.



True.  I'm mostly trying to point out the agency that players in 'go where the action is' games are missing out on.  As long as they know they're missing out on it and are cool with that, then fill yer boots. 



> IME players get bored. I mean, yes, a player who is new or in a certain mood will probably relish crawling around in a dungeon pixel bitching every cobblestone trying to find traps and secret doors and whatnot endlessly, and scrounging for every copper piece and whatnot. This WILL almost certainly get old after a few sessions, at most.



Actually, IME it never does; at least not permanently.

I'm starting to look forward to the next time I can play in a start-out-fresh-at-1st-level party again, where every copper piece you find is a big deal and you're not expected to save the known world every other adventure.


> MOST players will begin to desire to move into a more narrative, cinematic, heroic sort of play.



I find most want to start seeing some sort of overarching story develop out of what they do, but at the same time don't become all that concerned about cinematic or heroic play as such. (that said, we don't really do 'heroic' play here; it's more like 'murderhoboes with occasional flickers of conscience')



> Maybe they will also want to do some 'boring stuff' as well, like they might become fascinated with shopkeeping or farming or something, but they don't really end up wanting to spend vast periods of their table time on it every game. Its enough to make a few critical decisions and feel like they're having the experience. Usually this kind of thing will segue into "the thieves guild is trying to take 90% of your profit!" or something rather quickly and that will be more interesting than trying to negotiate a cheaper source of quality high hard boots (15gp).



This isn't what I mean.  I'm more getting at the granularity of interactions while adventuring...that every intersecting passage gets described and the party given a choice which way to go, for example, rather than jumping them straight to the 'action' scene in the throne room.



> I feel like it is always possible to do some 'development' if the player wants, but its almost always a pretty good idea to get on to pushing things pretty soon. I find that 4e's SC system is really awesome here. I can make up an SC for "successfully convince the thieves guild to stop threatening you" and that will include plenty of shopkeeping action and a real interesting plot that 'goes to the action' at the same time. Its probably not going to dwell on book keeping, negotiating contracts, and meetings of the cobbler's guild, but those things might factor in as scenes within the SC.



I've looked at 4e a bit, in terms of converting some of its adventures for my own game, and found that wherever a module suggests a skill challenge it's really saying 'here's a nice quick mechanical shortcut around all this exploration or negotiation they'll otherwise have to do'.  I don't want those shortcuts; I want to play out the exploration or negotiation or whatever in a much more granular fashion.



> I find that I want to see what happens in the game. So I like it if there's a fairly robust plot progression. I feel like there's always more characters and more situations and more games to be had and there's no need to linger and draw out one specific situation when there is an infinite amount of gaming I could be doing.



Where I know I'm going to see what happens in the game sooner or later anyway, and I'm not (usually) so eager to get to the next character/game/situation that I'm willing to shortchange this one.

As I even say in my houserules introduction (paraphrased here): it doesn't matter if little or no actual adventuring gets done during a session as long as everyone has fun.  What I mean by this is that if the PCs want to spend the session arguing with each other or chasing red herrings or telling war stories or whatever it's fine with me, as long as what they're doing is game-related.  If the players drift off into a long discussion about politics or hockey or food , that's different; and I'll steer them back to the game at hand.



> Oh, maybe I got distracted, lol. I think I was going to say "cool to place obstacles in the way of making it thrive or growing his holdings into a Kingdom or whatever." I would also say it would be cool to threaten THE WHOLE WORLD, that would of course necessarily threaten his castle, but there's a progression there to more global concerns, so it doesn't really feel so much like endlessly repeating the same thing. I mean, its sort of like Superman, after the 100th time some villain kidnaps Louis Lane it GETS OLD, so you have to move on. Players should always feel like they've accomplished something and their achievements will stand. Never refight the same battle!



I'm not sure I completely agree here: I've had some great situations arise out of the use of recurring villains.  In my current game there's one villain they've beaten (I think) 5 times now - each a clone of the original except the most recent one met, which was the original - and they've reason to believe there's at least one more of her out there somewhere.  The trick is to have her show up in different and unexpected situations - so far she's been met as the boss of two different (and widely separated) dungeons, a leader of an enemy army, a quasi-wandering monster, and the sidekick of another dungeon boss.



> Right, and I agree that it is the pace experienced by the players that is really actually experienced and thus forms the basis of their enjoyment (or lack thereof) in play. I don't think its necessarily true that the pace should be unrelenting at the table either, there needs to be some degree of pacing, but I don't think every sticky situation that the PCs are in need be immediately hair-raising either. Maybe they are spending the next hour of table time negotiating and planning. These can still be DRAMATIC activities, and even punctuated with action scenes, but they don't need to be Indiana Jones crazy rollercoaster every minute either.



I agree, but is the hour of table time spent in planning even possible if they're being framed into the next scene right away?



> I call those scenes basically 'Interludes'. They often take place outside of table time too. Nothing is really at stake, but the parameters of the next challenge may be set. I don't think that games have to be merely reactive on the part of the players to be 'go to the action' either. "Some guy walks in with a map" and now things are rolling and the party is in the driver's seat, for now...



I'm thinking even less structured than that; a situation where the players / PCs can stop, divide their treasure, re-equip themselves, purchase or commission magic items if allowed by system, assess their successes-failures-goals-desires-assets, and generally take a deep breath.  And from there they get the chance to ask the DM what's going on in the world (the DM takes on the role of newscaster for a moment); and then process this information through the filter of their own goals etc. and decide - without any DM framing - what they're going do next.

And at this point the players are in effect telling the DM what to frame next, via exercising the agency provided by choice.



> Well, they seem better to me than the AD&D ones! lol. I mean, "every time you're injured you have to wait weeks to do anything again" wasn't really very thrilling, and the "well, just find a cleric to magic you back to health 100x faster!" didn't really cut it either.



I far prefer this over the 4e-5e model where you can be near death several times during a day yet be right as rain the next morning.

That said, the 1e model as written is too slow even for me; and we long ago fixed it to something we like that's between those two extremes.



> The fact that half the party used a totally different resource scheme than the other half wasn't winning me over either. This is a BIG reason as well that I like 4e over 13a or 5e, because it DOES have a consistent set of resources that all classes basically share (ignoring some ill-considered exceptions).



Where I don't at all mind different classes using different resource schemes - not everyone has to be the same.   4e went way too far in this idea of streamlining the classes and making them all more similar to each other.

Lan-"an overnight rest gets you back 1/10 of your full hit points, rounding any and all fractions up"-efan


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> Lan-"an overnight rest gets you back 1/10 of your full hit points, rounding any and all fractions up"-efan



We did 1 per level + your con modifier per night of rest.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> And this gets right back to the map-in-the-castle example.
> 
> If for whatever reason finding this map is a big deal, then having it turn up on the first successful search roll* (as a player-driven system would resolve the search-the-room-for-the-map action declaration) gives it away too cheaply simply through resolution mechanics.  In a DM-driven system she can, if desired, put the map behind various traps and defend it with various opponents**, knowing all the while where it is and what obstacles the PCs will have to either overcome or bypass in order to get it.
> 
> * - this also means the DM can't have the map's specific location be somehow defended, as until it is found it doesn't have a specific location.
> ** - e.g. if it's in a breadbox in the kitchen the breadbox could be lethally trapped, and a phantom snake could be in there with the map to defend it, and the kitchen could be the home of the cook's fearsome ghost; meanwhile the study could have all kinds of traps, hints, etc. to steer the PCs toward looking there as a diversionary defense of the map's actual location.




IMHO this falls back to the "if you have a bad GM..." (or player) thing. Why would finding the map, if it is going to represent a 'big deal' be too easy? We have no context, so we really cannot say what the map represents, or how hard it was to get to where it is being found. Truthfully, in Story Now you only know things are big deals BECAUSE they're built up so much! Otherwise, who knows? There's no structure to the story that exists in the beginning of the telling. If the map is a big deal it is because a LOT has lead up to it, making it so. If not, then it isn't a big deal. This is one of the things about this type of play, it simply paces itself. It naturally builds to final conclusions. The story, instead of being something premeditated and planned out and drawn up is now not just emergent (because that is likely true of most any decent game) but there is a naturally emergent dramatic structure! Things build. There's a progression. Eventually the conflicts at the center of the story reach a head. They resolve. That is what is REALLY cool.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> And as @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ has pointed out, resting in 5e seems to be about resources rather than pacing. It's true that the GM can use his/her control over "the plot", or framing, to create "story losses" (what AbdulAlhazred calls "plot costs") that the players might risk if they renew their resources - but the risking of story losses for resources doesn't really seem to be a strong or even distinctive form of player agency at all. Not particularly strong, because the bulk of the agency seems to be in the GM's hands; and not distinctive, because a player in a "player-facing" game can often spend a "move" or "turn" trying to establish an augment of some sort rather than actually tackling the situation head-on. (Even if there is no literal action economy, trying to establish the augment is an action that risks failure, which can then be narrated as consequences that consist in the situation getting worse for the PC, which - in terms of fictional content, if not the process of play that generates it - is analogous to the story loss of the GM-driven game.)




Right, in my own system for example: you could trade your inspiration for a surge worth of healing, a daily power recharge, etc. You'd have to justify it in terms of a character trait, but that's often a pretty low bar if whatever you're doing is central to your character.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> This just reiterates my point that the issue is not player freedom to make action declarations that are then resolved via the mechanics; but rather that balancing moves is a bigger deal in D&D than in most other RPGs. The concern you raise here isn't about the player's "authorship" role, but about the fact that the move is too powerful relative to other available moves.
> 
> (Though personally I'm not sure this is true in a game with fiat secret doors via Passwall.)



Well, D&D lacks any sort of resource or mechanic which would produce that kind of balancing. There's no 'doom pool' or anything like that. So, if you put authorial privilege into a check, then in D&D it is purely a new factor in favor of the player. And since in the archetypal Gygaxian D&D the player and the character are essentially one, you have 'powered up the character' in a sense. This is where the anxiety about 'giving the player power' is coming from. Any player in Gary's basement in 1974 given the ability to make checks to create narrative elements would OF COURSE create ways to 'cheat the maze', because beating the dungeon IS the game! Now, had Gary thought of it, he could have created something like 'plot coupon' or something that came with a balancing factor, it just was a bridge too far from wargaming and not in the cards for the first ever RPG.

Passwall, that is spells, do actually work almost as plot coupons, though they are fairly elegantly wedded to the game world action. 

[quite]
Absolutely it can. A combat can be part of a skill challenge (eg defeating the monster generates 1 success). Or a skill challenge can unfold within, or parallel to, a combat.

There is a good recent thread in the <5e editions sub-forum about skill challenges in combat contexts.
[/quote]
Right, there's no clear line in 4e between combat and non-combat. Combat DOES have special rules, but the standard rules still apply (IE SCs and checks in general, see page 42 for example). 



> By spending time framing situations about slaves and intersecting passages you don't increase the scope for agency. You just spend more time on the stuff that you think is interesting and less time (or delay the arrival at) the stuff the players have flagged as interesting to them.
> 
> This takes us back to the point that fiction is imaginary.
> 
> From the point of view of "interacting" with fiction, there's no difference between authoring that an (already mentioned) orc is dead, and authoring that an (already mentioned) wall contains a secret door.
> 
> You have to introduce other constraints - eg the player's authorship is constrained to things that, in the fiction, might be causal results of his/her PC's actions. I know that plenty of people like such constraints, but RPGs that don't adhere to them aren't in any sense abandoning the idea of "interacting with the fiction", and aren't in any sense more "unrealistic" or "Schroedingerish".




Right, fiction is fiction is fiction. This again goes back to my observations about pacing at the table vs in game narrative. You can assume a vast amount of stuff happened in game and not even talk about it. Heck, there's no reason in principle that you can't skip major, and significant, portions of the character's stories and lives. 

If a player WANTS to bring up a certain element at a certain point, then sure, if you elided that whole sequence of events, then they'd have to raise their hand and bring it up, or something. Generally in our games we have pretty much of a consensus about what to elide. 4e provided, in DMG2, a bunch of advice about doing things like vignettes and interludes as tools you can add to the story-telling toolbox in order to get to what you want to play out.

I think the 'realisticness' is a conceit. That's always been my point with the whole issue of causality and its non-existence in RPGs. Every game is fundamentally filled with undecided, and not formally decidable stuff. Its made up, there's no point in worrying about whether it was made up on the spot to be interesting, or all predefined long ago using some complex procedure.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> That's simply not true, at least not as he described it.  Had that arcana check succeeded, that would have been the feather they needed.  One roll in a place he plopped them.  While it is true that we both would start at the initial stages, only his allowed for the initial stage to also be the final stage.  One check is hardly "work".




That is entirely your leap. Just because you have an angel feather doesn't mean you've exorcised a balrog! You could spend another 20 levels going from feather to victory in that fight!


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> That is entirely your leap. Just because you have an angel feather doesn't mean you've exorcised a balrog! You could spend another 20 levels going from feather to victory in that fight!




What leap?  I didn't say or even imply that it was one roll to successfully get rid of the Balrog.  Context is your friend.  We were discussing only the first leg of the PCs goals, which was to have the item before he left the city.  Therefore, what I say on the matter in CONTEXT only has to do with that first leg, unless I specifically say otherwise.  Being plopped down into the bazaar to find the feather which if the roll had been successful, would also have been the final stage of finding the item.  It's not a leap at all to describe the situation accurately.  It's the simple truth according to how [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has been describing his playstyle and that particular game.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> What leap?  I didn't say or even imply that it was one roll to successfully get rid of the Balrog.  Context is your friend.  We were discussing only the first leg of the PCs goals, which was to have the item before he left the city.  Therefore, what I say on the matter in CONTEXT only has to do with that first leg, unless I specifically say otherwise.  Being plopped down into the bazaar to find the feather which if the roll had been successful, would also have been the final stage of finding the item.  It's not a leap at all to describe the situation accurately.  It's the simple truth according to how  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has been describing his playstyle and that particular game.




I'm still skeptical that this alone automatically addresses the character's belief. It MIGHT be enough, but there could also be MANY obstacles to getting out of the city with it, even if it proved to be what was desired. And really, is it that big a deal? I mean, the belief stated seemed to be a fairly short-term goal really. I guess the other question being "why would he leave anyway?" I mean, maybe after the whole sequence that was outlined by [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] he DID leave, but just the finding of the feather doesn't seem to me to provide the character any narrative reason to do so, and indeed he didn't seem to think it was necessary himself either, though you might argue that was due to the perceived low quality of the feather. Still, had it been a fully potent feather (he passed the check) then wouldn't he have been even MORE motivated to stay in town?


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I'm still skeptical that this alone automatically addresses the character's belief. It MIGHT be enough, but there could also be MANY obstacles to getting out of the city with it, even if it proved to be what was desired.




I'm not sure how you can be skeptical about it.  The belief is that he finds the item and gets out of the city.  If he finds it immediately and gets out of the city, how is that not addressing the character's belief?



> And really, is it that big a deal? I mean, the belief stated seemed to be a fairly short-term goal really.




I don't understand this, either.  Specific magic items dealing with powerful demons are usually fairly rare and hard to obtain.  I'm basing that on the multitude of DMs I've played under.  I don't ever recall the magic item I need for the quest to be handed to me with one successful roll right at the beginning of the campaign.  



> I guess the other question being "why would he leave anyway?" I mean, maybe after the whole sequence that was outlined by  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] he DID leave, but just the finding of the feather doesn't seem to me to provide the character any narrative reason to do so, and indeed he didn't seem to think it was necessary himself either, though you might argue that was due to the perceived low quality of the feather. Still, had it been a fully potent feather (he passed the check) then wouldn't he have been even MORE motivated to stay in town?



I think one of us isn't understanding what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] said, and I'm not sure which one of us.  My recollection is that the brother was not in the town.  If that's true, then there no reason at all for him to stay once he has the item he needs, let alone be more motivated to stay in town.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> if the PC's main quest is to free his brother from demonic possession, and during play he encounters a village under attack by troglodytes and decides to put his main quest on hold and stop to help the villagers for a while by rounding up a party and taking the battle to the trogs...sounds like a player-driven side quest to me.



What does _during play he encounters a village under attack by troglodytes_ mean?

These "worlds" aren't real. They're authored - they're fictions.

What you describe is an instance of GM-driven play: the "side quest" is the GM framing the PC (and, thereby, the player) into a situation that does not speak to the interests and concerns that the player has signalled.

Thus, as I said (and as you quoted), [o]sidequest[/I] not a notion that has any purchase in player-driven RPGing"



Michael Silverbane said:


> if the player has a belief for his character such as, "My own personal ambitions are more important the the plight of the downtrodden." Then the DM _must_ introduce such scenes in order to bring that player belief into conflict.



Well then it wouldn't be a "sidequest", would it?



Lanefan said:


> Not every PC needs to always be so focused on its own goals and angst that it ignores the world around it.



There is _no world around the PC_, except as that "world" is authored.

All you are positing is that the GM should drive this authorship.



Lanefan said:


> And before you say you'd never frame the village scene as it's not important to the PCs' goals, I say why not?



Because I prefer to run a game along the lines of the "standard narrativisitc model" - ie one in which the player-expressed thematic content and dramatic needs are engaged in play. 



Lanefan said:


> Why is it so important that we do Y right now rather than next session or the session after that?  You're not running to a time limit.



(1) Why don't you spend your sessions all sitting aorund silently for an hour between action declarations? After all, there is no time limit!

(2) There is a time limit - we're all mortal.

(3) I want to spend my play time on the stuff that I enjoy, that delivers the experiences I enjoy in RPGing. I don't need to fill random hours with uninteresting stuff.



Lanefan said:


> I'm mostly trying to point out the agency that players in 'go where the action is' games are missing out on.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I'm more getting at the granularity of interactions while adventuring...that every intersecting passage gets described and the party given a choice which way to go, for example, rather than jumping them straight to the 'action' scene in the throne room.



What they're missing out on is having the GM tell them stuff (about intersections, about troglodytes attacking villagers, about slaves being beaten, etc). Ie what they're missing out in is GM-driven framing.

Having the GM tell you stuff isn't exercising agency.



Lanefan said:


> Either way, the players are being denied the opportunity to make a choice.  There might be nothing but empty passages...but unless you narrate them the players don't know they exist and thus don't get to choose whether to explore them or not.





Lanefan said:


> Make them make a choice.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> every time a player has a choice of what her PC does next, that player's agency is increased



Players always have choices. That is not in issue.

Framing the PC into the bazaar, or the reliquary, doesn't reduce choices. It just means that they are choices that bear upon the PC's dramatic needs.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> There's no effective difference between the DM obstacle in my style,  and you creating the curse obstacle in your via the failed roll. In both instances the players have to overcome an obstacle that the DM put in the way.  In both instances the players desires drove that obstacle into being through their desires.  In both instances the story moves forward ONLY because of the players, as the DM is just reacting to what the players do.



What counts as _effective difference_ obviously is relative to things that matter to people.

What matters to me is the actual experience of playing the game - at each moment of play, what fiction is the focus of play? where did it come from? why do we care about it?

Given those concerns, the difference between _a GM-authored obstacle that must be played through before we get to the thing the player cares about_ and _a GM-authored consequence for a failed check in dealing with the thing the player cares about_ is vast. The first is GM-driven and verges on a railroad: the player has to jump through the GM's hoops before play actually gets to what s/he wants it to be about. The fact that there might be multiple ways of jumping through the hoops - bribe a guard or visit a sage or whatever - doesn't reduce its railroad-y character. The player still has to play through all this GM-authored stuff before getting to the bit s/he's interested in.

The second is the player being confronted with a situation that speaks to the PC's dramatic need. The player makes choices about _that_ - try to buy it? try to steal it? try to analyse it? - and the results of these choices yield consequences that the GM authors _having regard to these same dramatic needs_.



Maxperson said:


> the story is driven forward in my game by the players regardless of success.  Even in failure, the story moves, albeit in a different direction.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Your style doesn't allow for greater player control over the story.



The episode of play I described is about a wizard _who is in Hardby, hoping to find an item to help him free his brother from possession_ haggling over an angel feather, and learning that it is cursed.

The player made the choice that made angel feathers salient (ie the player authored the PC's belief). The player made the choice that might reveal the feather as cursed (ie to read the aura of the feather).

The hypothetical example you put forward involves situations whose content is established by the GM; and where the consequences will also be established by the GM. The payer "drives the story forward" only in the sense that the player declares actions. That is to say, it is a RPG.



Maxperson said:


> Had that arcana check succeeded, that would have been the feather they needed.  One roll in a place he plopped them.  While it is true that we both would start at the initial stages, only his allowed for the initial stage to also be the final stage.  One check is hardly "work".





darkbard said:


> In both his example and yours, this is much "work" to be done before the player goal is met.





AbdulAlhazred said:


> That is entirely your leap. Just because you have an angel feather doesn't mean you've exorcised a balrog! You could spend another 20 levels going from feather to victory in that fight!



What  [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] say seems more accurate to me.

Suppose the check succeeds and the PC identifies some useful trait of the feather. He still has to acquire it somehow. He still has to use his Alchemy and Enchanting to work it into some usable form. This would require tools which he currently doesn't have. And he still has to find his brother!

And as I already posted upthread - "work" here is inapt. We're talking about a hobby, a pastime, playing a game. The question isn't whether or not the player has to "work" for anything. It's about whether the focus of the play is on the stuff the player has flagged, or some other stuff the GM wants to play through.



Lanefan said:


> It seems a difference between your style and pemerton's is that where you'd have the players (in character) take the time to figure out how in the game-world to find the information that would lead them to the bazaar, he'd assume the PCs would obtain the correct info and thus jump straight to the bazaar scene.



The game has to start somewhere. A bazaar is barey less traditional than a tavern!

What is significant about the bazaar scene is not that it is a bazaar, but that a peddler is selling an angel feather.



Lanefan said:


> Your way allows the players / PCs to make mistakes, find and follow false leads, or otherwise run into distractions that make the whole thing take longer to play out at the table.  His doesn't.



The PC can make mistakes or follow false leads - the feather turned out to be one!

The difference is that the false leads and distractions are not GM-driven material displacing the content that speaks to the PC's dramatic needs - ie the material that affirms player agency over the content of the shared fiction.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> What does _during play he encounters a village under attack by troglodytes_ mean?
> 
> These "worlds" aren't real. They're authored - they're fictions.



To us, yes.  To the PCs, no - they're the reality the PCs have to operate in.



> What you describe is an instance of GM-driven play: the "side quest" is the GM framing the PC (and, thereby, the player) into a situation that does not speak to the interests and concerns that the player has signalled.
> 
> Thus, as I said (and as you quoted), [o]sidequest[/I] not a notion that has any purchase in player-driven RPGing"



The players aren't allowed to side-quest themselves?

They can't, if they're never given the chance to...but they can, and sometimes will, if the chance is there.  Nothing wrong with that.



> There is _no world around the PC_, except as that "world" is authored.



It is unbelievably frustrating that you keep making this ridiculous claim that "there is no world around the PCs".  If there isn't, then what are the PCs operating in and-or interacting with in the fiction?  An endless empty void?



> All you are positing is that the GM should drive this authorship.



Of course she should.  It's her job, as I've been saying the whole time.



> Because I prefer to run a game along the lines of the "standard narrativisitc model" - ie one in which the player-expressed thematic content and dramatic needs are engaged in play.
> 
> What they're missing out on is having the GM tell them stuff (about intersections, about troglodytes attacking villagers, about slaves being beaten, etc). Ie what they're missing out in is GM-driven framing.



At the same time as my player-expressed thematic content and dramatic needs ("Dramatic needs"?  Really?) are being engaged in play, as a natural outgrowth of said engagement I also want to explore the game world my PC is in and at least see what's going by as my story goes along.  I want to know much more about the world than merely the trivialities affecting my PC right now, if for no other reason than this knowledge allows me to make better choices as a player/PC.  Who knows, maybe I'll completely chuck my original goals and beliefs if something more engaging comes along, or maybe I'll put them on hold and get back to them later.



> Having the GM tell you stuff isn't exercising agency.



Not by your definition, perhaps.  But you're using a rather narrow definition of 'agency' here, which excludes the agency of choice within the fiction.



> (1) Why don't you spend your sessions all sitting aorund silently for an hour between action declarations? After all, there is no time limit!



Silently, no; but sometimes a hockey or politics debate will break out between one round and the next - it happens... 



> (2) There is a time limit - we're all mortal.



Yes, and "the rest of my life" is my expectation for how long any campaign I'm playing or DMing will potentially last.  If someone's trying to sell me on a campaign and says they only expect it'll last 6 months to a year I'll say why bother - by that point you should just nicely be getting started. 



> (3) I want to spend my play time on the stuff that I enjoy, that delivers the experiences I enjoy in RPGing. I don't need to fill random hours with uninteresting stuff.



Nor does anyone, but define "uninteresting".  Just because you've put your character on a story path via its goals and beliefs doesn't (or certainly shouldn't) mean said character is locked into dealing with those and nothing else, nor does it mean those goals/beliefs cannot be changed or abandoned during the campaign as new information comes to light and you as PC learn more about the game world around you.



> Players always have choices. That is not in issue.
> 
> Framing the PC into the bazaar, or the reliquary, doesn't reduce choices. It just means that they are choices that bear upon the PC's dramatic needs.



How can you possibly conclude that anything involving a scene-jump framing such as either of those examples doesn't reduce choices?  Zero - which is how many choices the players/PCs have between one framed scene and the next in these examples - is always a reduction on the number they'd have had if any of the intervening scenery had been described; as the second you introduce said scenery you're also introducing a choice for the players/PCs as to what to do with it, if anything.

And if some of the choices are or lead to red herrings, so be it.  Deny these options, and this 'scene framing' idea is every bit as much a railroad as the more conventional type about which so many have complained over the years.

Don't have time right now to get to the other post. 

Lanefan


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> What counts as _effective difference_ obviously is relative to things that matter to people.
> 
> What matters to me is the actual experience of playing the game - at each moment of play, what fiction is the focus of play? where did it come from? why do we care about it?
> 
> Given those concerns, the difference between _a GM-authored obstacle that must be played through before we get to the thing the player cares about_ and _a GM-authored consequence for a failed check in dealing with the thing the player cares about_ is vast. The first is GM-driven and verges on a railroad: the player has to jump through the GM's hoops before play actually gets to what s/he wants it to be about. The fact that there might be multiple ways of jumping through the hoops - bribe a guard or visit a sage or whatever - doesn't reduce its railroad-y character. The player still has to play through all this GM-authored stuff before getting to the bit s/he's interested in.
> 
> The second is the player being confronted with a situation that speaks to the PC's dramatic need. The player makes choices about _that_ - try to buy it? try to steal it? try to analyse it? - and the results of these choices yield consequences that the GM authors _having regard to these same dramatic needs_.




There's still no effective difference in how it plays out.  You can prefer the reasons behind how you get to the end point, but the end point is the same and both styles author them under very similar circumstances, which I spelled out above and will do so again below.

"There's no effective difference between the DM obstacle in my style, and you creating the curse obstacle in your via the failed roll. In both instances the players have to overcome an obstacle that the DM put in the way. In both instances the players desires drove that obstacle into being through their desires. In both instances the story moves forward ONLY because of the players, as the DM is just reacting to what the players do."

I also don't know how you can say my style verges on railroading when it plays out very similarly to the way yours does.  My style doesn't even remotely come close to forcing players down one path, so again you betray your lack of understanding about how my style works.  You'd think that by now you'd stop making these absurd statements about a style you don't understand.  I get that you THINK you understand it, but given how many times pretty much everyone who plays my style lets you know how far off base you are with your comments, you probably should step back and re-assess how much you truly understand.



> The episode of play I described is about a wizard _who is in Hardby, hoping to find an item to help him free his brother from possession_ haggling over an angel feather, and learning that it is cursed.
> 
> The player made the choice that made angel feathers salient (ie the player authored the PC's belief). The player made the choice that might reveal the feather as cursed (ie to read the aura of the feather).
> 
> The hypothetical example you put forward involves situations whose content is established by the GM; and where the consequences will also be established by the GM. The payer "drives the story forward" only in the sense that the player declares actions. That is to say, it is a RPG.




That's simply not true.  While the rules might allow me to tell the player that there are no wizards in this large city, or no sages, or..., the social contract does not.  A large city will have those things in it, so when the player tells me that he is seeking them out, I have no real choice but to react in a way that allows the player a chance of success.  And again, there is no effective difference between you establishing consequence or a challenge in response to a player declaration, and me doing the same thing.  The only difference is one of motivations "what fiction is the focus of play? where did it come from? why do we care about it?", and motivations don't create an effective difference here.



> Suppose the check succeeds and the PC identifies some useful trait of the feather. He still has to acquire it somehow. He still has to use his Alchemy and Enchanting to work it into some usable form. This would require tools which he currently doesn't have. And he still has to find his brother!




Your initial post said nothing about further work to make it usable.  It made it seem like the angle feather magic item would be useful in freeing his brother.  If there's more to do, then it sounds a lot more like the way I do things.  It's just the motivational stuff that is sometimes different.



> And as I already posted upthread - "work" here is inapt. We're talking about a hobby, a pastime, playing a game. The question isn't whether or not the player has to "work" for anything. It's about whether the focus of the play is on the stuff the player has flagged, or some other stuff the GM wants to play through.




You think hobbies, game and pastimes don't involve work?  Work, effort, not wanting things to be easy, call it whatever you want, but a lot of people want it in their hobbies, games and pastimes.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> The game has to start somewhere. A bazaar is barey less traditional than a tavern!
> 
> What is significant about the bazaar scene is not that it is a bazaar, but that a peddler is selling an angel feather.



In a bazaar, which the PCs might want to further explore. (though if this was the very start of the campaign they might not have much money to spend...) 

If framed into this situation as the puck-drop scene my first (and probably second, and third...) question would be something like "OK, there's a pedlar selling feathers.  What else is here?  What's the weather doing?  What else is for sale at the other vendors?  [which of the following I'd ask would be dependent on what I'm running as a character] What are my opportunities for stealing stuff?  Do I see any thieving going on that I need to act upon, or report to the authorities?  Does the general atmosphere of the place make me think I need to take extra precautions? Etc. Etc.

Just because my story and drama might be best served by the feather-selling dude doesn't for a second mean I-as-PC am going to ignore everything else around me; I-as-player want to know what's going on around my PC and whether I either need to or want to interact with it, and if I see some thieving happening and I'm playing the sort (or, if I've given this no forethought, I decide on the spur of the moment that I'm playing the sort) who would be honour-bound to report it the feathers are just going to have to wait.



> The PC can make mistakes or follow false leads - the feather turned out to be one!
> 
> The difference is that the false leads and distractions are not GM-driven material displacing the content that speaks to the PC's dramatic needs - ie the material that affirms player agency over the content of the shared fiction.



Still a false lead though - nice. 

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> There is no world around the PC, except as that "world" is authored.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It is unbelievably frustrating that you keep making this ridiculous claim that "there is no world around the PCs".  If there isn't, then what are the PCs operating in and-or interacting with in the fiction?  An endless empty void?
Click to expand...


I'll repeat: there is no world around the PC, except as that "world" is authored.

That is not the claim that there is no world around the PCs. The claim is that there is no world except as it is authored.

The PCs are in a bazaar. That's the world I authored, as part of framing a situation that spoke to one PCs goal to find a magic item that would help him against a balrog. That world is no less "real" than one that has an intersection in it, or a village being attacked by troglodytes.

The peddler and angel feather aren't less "real" because they engage the dramatic needs of the PC.

That's the point I'm making. You are not advocating for a more "real" world, or more player choice. You're advocating for more GM authorship and less player influence. That's your prerogative, but surely you can see why I say that the approach you advocate gives the player less control over the content of the shared fiction!



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> All you are positing is that the GM should drive this authorship.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Of course she should.  It's her job, as I've been saying the whole time.
Click to expand...


But you don't increase player agency in respect of the shared fiction by giving the GM more authorship of it. Which is the point I've been making the whole time.

One may prefer more GM agency, or more player agency. That's a matter of taste. But you can't increase player agency by increasing GM agency. That's a contradiction!



Lanefan said:


> I want to know much more about the world than merely the trivialities affecting my PC right now, if for no other reason than this knowledge allows me to make better choices as a player/PC. Who knows, maybe I'll completely chuck my original goals and beliefs if something more engaging comes along, or maybe I'll put them on hold and get back to them later.



There is nothing magical about GM-authored goals. There is no particular reason to suppose that they will be "more engaging".

As far as "better choices" are concerned, better in what sense? More exciting? See the previous paragraph. More efficient? More tactically sound? Now you're talking about a completely different approach to play from what I'm interested in.

As far as "knowledge of the world" - backstory known only to the GM doesn't make anyone's play experience richer. Here are some actual play reports that illustrate backstory emerging in the course of play.

As far as "trivialities" are concerned, there is generally nothing trivial about the events affecting the PCs in a player-driven RPG. The point can be generalised - if the stuff the PCs are involved in is always per se trivial, then following the GM's leads can make no difference. Conversely, if stuff that the PCs are involved in is sometimes not trivial, then what makes you think that any of the episodes of play I've described involves trivial stuff?



Lanefan said:


> Just because you've put your character on a story path via its goals and beliefs doesn't (or certainly shouldn't) mean said character is locked into dealing with those and nothing else, nor does it mean those goals/beliefs cannot be changed or abandoned during the campaign as new information comes to light and you as PC learn more about the game world around you.



New information came to light - namely, the angel feather is cursed. This led the player to change goals for his PC - he reached out to a leading figure in his sorcerous cabal.

Later on, new information came to light - namely, his brother was killed in front of him. Hence the PC changed goals (there no longer being any hope of saving his brother).

What you say isn't controversial. But there's no connection between what you say, and the GM authoring vast swathes of fiction and revealing it to the players.



Lanefan said:


> How can you possibly conclude that anything involving a scene-jump framing such as either of those examples doesn't reduce choices?  Zero - which is how many choices the players/PCs have between one framed scene and the next in these examples - is always a reduction on the number they'd have had if any of the intervening scenery had been described



No. This is ridiculous.

Your players are wondering what to do about an intersection which you, the GM, have decided to tell them about.

My players are wondering what to do at the reliquary which I, as GM, have decided to tell them about.

My players have as many choices as yours. They have not lost any choices.

You are being misled, I think, by ignoring the fact that (i) _it is all just fiction_, and (ii) _we are all mortal_. I'm not going to run out of stuff before I die. The fact that I'm taking my stuff from player cues doesn't affect that.



Lanefan said:


> you're using a rather narrow definition of 'agency' here, which excludes the agency of choice within the fiction.



_The agency of choice within the fiction_ = choosing to declare actions that trigger the GM to say stuff. That is not _exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction_.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> There's still no effective difference in how it plays out.  You can prefer the reasons behind how you get to the end point, but the end point is the same and both styles author them under very similar circumstances, which I spelled out above and will do so again below.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I also don't know how you can say my style verges on railroading when it plays out very similarly to the way yours does.  My style doesn't even remotely come close to forcing players down one path
> 
> <snip>
> 
> While the rules might allow me to tell the player that there are no wizards in this large city, or no sages, or..., the social contract does not.  A large city will have those things in it, so when the player tells me that he is seeking them out, I have no real choice but to react in a way that allows the player a chance of success.



The end point can be the same if the GM dictates every choice to the players, and disregards every dice roll! But that doesn't tell us that _there's no effective difference in how it plays out_.

In my game, the player says "My PC won't leave Hardby without a magic item usable against my brother" and the starting situation is a peddler selling an angel feather, which may be such an item.

In your game, the player says "My PC won't leave Hardby without a magic item usable against my brother" and the starting situation is that the player has to start collecting information about the setting - ie getting the GM to tell him/her stuff.

That's the difference.


----------



## Aenghus

RPG groups with different goals are probably going to use different systems and mixes of technique to attempt to achieve them.

The analogy I find useful here is that detailed gameworlds with heavy worldbuilding are in some ways analogous to accurate historical drama, historical recreations or documentaries, except with a different world. IMO the more work players have to do to learn the world, the less accessible it is. The traditional alternative is for the players to learn the world bit by bit over time, whether that's one long sprawing campaign or a series of shorter campaigns and games. 

Whereas player-focused games are more analogous to drama and soap opera, with focus on personal goals and interpersonal drama, with the setting being a more-or-less malleable backdrop that exists to facilitate the drama. There are even jokes about this re daytime soaps, wobbly sets, and convoluted plots. The backdrop doesn't matter as much in such shows as the focus is on the drama and characters, not the setting.

Disclaimer: Analogies are dangerous as they are imperfect and can be distracting, but still I think they can be useful so long as everyone remembers they are just analogies and not the actual thing. 

There are lots of other elements which modify a RPG - Humorous or serious, slow-paced or fast-paced, naturalistic or interesting times, tone, genre, consistency, session length,  campaign length etc etc.

On a personal note, I have been a player in a number of games where I was given referee assurances that my PC backstory would be relevant, and it never turned out to be. (And other games  where it was). This could be because the game ended too soon, the game moved in a different direction, dice-rolls failed in game or the referee never made it possible.

Now in some cases I wasn't invested hugely in the PC backstory so it was fine, but there were cases where I wanted to explore something with the PC and I was annoyed when it never happened. Most older RPGs don't have formal ways for players to make requests with teeth.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I'll repeat: there is no world around the PC, except as that "world" is authored.
> 
> That is not the claim that there is no world around the PCs. The claim is that there is no world except as it is authored.
> 
> The PCs are in a bazaar. That's the world I authored, as part of framing a situation that spoke to one PCs goal to find a magic item that would help him against a balrog. That world is no less "real" than one that has an intersection in it, or a village being attacked by troglodytes.
> 
> The peddler and angel feather aren't less "real" because they engage the dramatic needs of the PC.
> 
> That's the point I'm making. You are not advocating for a more "real" world, or more player choice. You're advocating for more GM authorship and less player influence. That's your prerogative, but surely you can see why I say that the approach you advocate gives the player less control over the content of the shared fiction!
> 
> But you don't increase player agency in respect of the shared fiction by giving the GM more authorship of it. Which is the point I've been making the whole time.
> 
> One may prefer more GM agency, or more player agency. That's a matter of taste. But you can't increase player agency by increasing GM agency. That's a contradiction!
> 
> There is nothing magical about GM-authored goals. There is no particular reason to suppose that they will be "more engaging".
> 
> As far as "better choices" are concerned, better in what sense? More exciting? See the previous paragraph. More efficient? More tactically sound? Now you're talking about a completely different approach to play from what I'm interested in.
> 
> As far as "knowledge of the world" - backstory known only to the GM doesn't make anyone's play experience richer. Here are some actual play reports that illustrate backstory emerging in the course of play.
> 
> As far as "trivialities" are concerned, there is generally nothing trivial about the events affecting the PCs in a player-driven RPG. The point can be generalised - if the stuff the PCs are involved in is always per se trivial, then following the GM's leads can make no difference. Conversely, if stuff that the PCs are involved in is sometimes not trivial, then what makes you think that any of the episodes of play I've described involves trivial stuff?
> 
> New information came to light - namely, the angel feather is cursed. This led the player to change goals for his PC - he reached out to a leading figure in his sorcerous cabal.
> 
> Later on, new information came to light - namely, his brother was killed in front of him. Hence the PC changed goals (there no longer being any hope of saving his brother).
> 
> What you say isn't controversial. But there's no connection between what you say, and the GM authoring vast swathes of fiction and revealing it to the players.
> 
> No. This is ridiculous.
> 
> Your players are wondering what to do about an intersection which you, the GM, have decided to tell them about.
> 
> My players are wondering what to do at the reliquary which I, as GM, have decided to tell them about.
> 
> My players have as many choices as yours. They have not lost any choices.
> 
> You are being misled, I think, by ignoring the fact that (i) _it is all just fiction_, and (ii) _we are all mortal_. I'm not going to run out of stuff before I die. The fact that I'm taking my stuff from player cues doesn't affect that.
> 
> _The agency of choice within the fiction_ = choosing to declare actions that trigger the GM to say stuff. That is not _exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction_.




These are all cogent points. I think, to perhaps take something like [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s viewpoint for a moment, that you could recontextualize what he is talking about in terms of player agenda and goals. That is to say, he has a fixed primary goal as a player, which is to be a bit part of a much larger story. His preference is years long arcs of playing low level PCs in some largely pre-defined world where most of the important things which are going on have little or nothing at all to do with his character. Thus in important ways he's really spectating. He's engaged in the sense that his character exists in the world and 'does things' (perhaps exciting and dangerous things we would assume) and thus has some kind of 'stake', which may be reinforced by character backstory, which if not provided exclusively by the player is certainly at least vetted by and probably mostly written by the player. 

You can simply see this as an overarching agenda. If [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] played in one of your games he would advocate for the GM to explain to him the history and complex backstory associated with persons, places, and things which were encountered within the scene frames and desire to explore each one in great detail as the opportunity arose. There might also be a 'primary quest' driving this in a more specific direction, and possibly 'side quests' that basically involve some exploration activity and backstory revelation that isn't directly involved in the 'primary quest'. These quests may also be more limited than some of the agendas that PCs often have in Story Now, which are often about core beliefs and values which drive them forward to the end of the campaign. 

You can see how 4e actually is built around this kind of model to an extent. There is a fairly significant cosmological backstory, which the GM can flesh out as he chooses, and which is designed to hang adventure hooks off of. The game also provides major and minor quests, which are ideally suited to providing short-mid term PC goals, and can simply be used as a set of 'breadcrumbs' to pull the characters forward in an exploratory mode of play. Its also true it espouses 'get to the action', which is more of a Story Now concept, as well as 'say yes', but I don't think the designers were fully sold on one fixed game concept (which may be one of 4e's issues in and of itself).


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> These are all cogent points. I think, to perhaps take something like [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s viewpoint for a moment, that you could recontextualize what he is talking about in terms of player agenda and goals. That is to say, he has a fixed primary goal as a player, which is to be a bit part of a much larger story. His preference is years long arcs of playing low level PCs in some largely pre-defined world where most of the important things which are going on have little or nothing at all to do with his character. Thus in important ways he's really spectating. He's engaged in the sense that his character exists in the world and 'does things' (perhaps exciting and dangerous things we would assume) and thus has some kind of 'stake', which may be reinforced by character backstory, which if not provided exclusively by the player is certainly at least vetted by and probably mostly written by the player.



A summation that's close enough for rock 'n' roll. 

I don't mind if after the years-long bit the PCs achieve higher level - they don't have to be low-level forever - but my definition of 'higher level' is still only in the 10-12 range (in 1e), others' may vary.

About the only thing I'd change here is where you say "in important ways he's really spectating", I'd put it that while during early parts of the campaign this is true it's also giving me (or us as a group) information and options as to what - out of what we're 'spectating' now - we'll choose to get involved with later in the campaign once we're up to the job.



> You can simply see this as an overarching agenda. If [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] played in one of your games he would advocate for the GM to explain to him the history and complex backstory associated with persons, places, and things which were encountered within the scene frames and desire to explore each one in great detail as the opportunity arose. There might also be a 'primary quest' driving this in a more specific direction, and possibly 'side quests' that basically involve some exploration activity and backstory revelation that isn't directly involved in the 'primary quest'. These quests may also be more limited than some of the agendas that PCs often have in Story Now, which are often about core beliefs and values which drive them forward to the end of the campaign.



And this summation is about bang on. 

I might not ask for all the details and history every time but when I did it would usually be out of a search for information to provide me with better - or at least different - options and choices than what's being given.



> You can see how 4e actually is built around this kind of model to an extent. There is a fairly significant cosmological backstory, which the GM can flesh out as he chooses, and which is designed to hang adventure hooks off of. The game also provides major and minor quests, which are ideally suited to providing short-mid term PC goals, and can simply be used as a set of 'breadcrumbs' to pull the characters forward in an exploratory mode of play. Its also true it espouses 'get to the action', which is more of a Story Now concept, as well as 'say yes', but I don't think the designers were fully sold on one fixed game concept (which may be one of 4e's issues in and of itself).



Not just 4e.  Any D&D edition can work this way.

Lanefan


----------



## Kobold Boots

1256 posts at an average (guesstimate) of 7m per to draft and post.. 146.5 hours since the post started.

I hope to heck that given the amount of time spent on this that there's at least that much actual cumulative game time from all participants.

KB


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> A summation that's close enough for rock 'n' roll.
> 
> I don't mind if after the years-long bit the PCs achieve higher level - they don't have to be low-level forever - but my definition of 'higher level' is still only in the 10-12 range (in 1e), others' may vary.
> 
> About the only thing I'd change here is where you say "in important ways he's really spectating", I'd put it that while during early parts of the campaign this is true it's also giving me (or us as a group) information and options as to what - out of what we're 'spectating' now - we'll choose to get involved with later in the campaign once we're up to the job.



hehe, fair enough! I mean, yeah, I certainly don't think your characters are all couch potatoes or something like that. I think one of the things that strikes me is how you stick closely to this one agenda over multiple games. I think this a tendency a lot of players have, to work within a particular range of play goals that they find most interesting to them. Some people do tend to mix things up a bit more. Then again they may not sustain interest in whatever they're focused on this month over a longer term.



> And this summation is about bang on.
> 
> I might not ask for all the details and history every time but when I did it would usually be out of a search for information to provide me with better - or at least different - options and choices than what's being given.



Right, there's a general thematic approach, exploring the game world, and then more immediate goals, which might still cover the whole career of a given character in some cases. I think this boils down to what WotC likes to call 'player type', explorer perhaps in this case. 



> Not just 4e.  Any D&D edition can work this way.




Yeah, its not too hard to do in earlier editions, though the detailed mechanics can get in the way a lot. 2e certainly TRIED to espouse this kind of play. One reason it is often seen as philosophically aligned with 4e in some sense. I basically went from 2e to 4e and pretty much skipped 3e, so I found 4e to be rather familiar territory. Kind of a '2e done right' even. Now, in a lot of mechanical senses that's what 3e was aspiring to, they just got a lot of things wrong (IMHO).


----------



## Lanefan

Kobold Boots said:


> 1256 posts at an average (guesstimate) of 7m per to draft and post.. 146.5 hours since the post started.



Someone must have me blocked, then, as I show the post I've quoted as being #1238.



> I hope to heck that given the amount of time spent on this that there's at least that much actual cumulative game time from all participants.



146.5 hours at 4 hours per session (average) gives about 36-and-a-half sessions; I play in one game and DM another which means I'll hit this over 18 weeks...let's say 22 weeks to account for skipping a few...


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> In my game, the player says "My PC won't leave Hardby without a magic item usable against my brother" and the starting situation is a peddler selling an angel feather, which may be such an item.




Yes, because the DM told him stuff.  Then he does something else, and the DM tells him stuff.  Players using their agency in order to get me to respond by telling them stuff happens in my game, too.



> In your game, the player says "My PC won't leave Hardby without a magic item usable against my brother" and the starting situation is that the player has to start collecting information about the setting - ie getting the GM to tell him/her stuff.




Based on their goals and actions, just like in your game.  Only the motivation is really different.  They aren't exploring character the same way you are.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Yes, because the DM told him stuff.  Then he does something else, and the DM tells him stuff.  Players using their agency in order to get me to respond by telling them stuff happens in my game, too.



I think the key difference is it was the PLAYER who started this process, by describing his goal, to rescue his brother from a demon. The GM then reacted to that by INVENTING the bazaar and the angel feather (its possible some prompting or back-and-forth existed here, we don't really know for sure all the details of play at the table). 

Now, its true that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] probably started the action in Hardby for whatever reason, but again we don't know really the details of how these decisions were made. In effect Hardby is just a name of a town that comes with some regional geography attached. Even this choice must ultimately be made with the player's agenda in mind. Maybe they established WoG as an overall setting beforehand and created character backstory with that in mind, or maybe Pemerton just whipped out a map he happened to have in his bag. I think he did mention that Hardby was selected based on some general criteria as an interesting place to start an adventure. I would say these COULD be GM driven choices, within certain bounds, but they seem to play a fairly limited part in the end result, being color in essence.



> Based on their goals and actions, just like in your game.  Only the motivation is really different.  They aren't exploring character the same way you are.




Well, they MAY be, and you MAY provide for that. Its just not guaranteed as it would be in Pemerton's game, where NO MATTER WHAT the player's agenda, it will become a focus of play. I guess there could be the usual sorts of limitations here based on the concurrence of the rest of the table with whatever the player is wanting. There will perhaps also sometimes be a question between player agendas and needs as to exactly how an adventuring party can be constructed from the result, or if it can. I recall this was an ongoing theme of Pemerton's long-running 4e campaign, where several characters had almost diametrically opposed interests at certain points.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think the key difference is it was the PLAYER who started this process, by describing his goal, to rescue his brother from a demon. The GM then reacted to that by INVENTING the bazaar and the angel feather (its possible some prompting or back-and-forth existed here, we don't really know for sure all the details of play at the table).




That's what I'm trying to say, though.  The players start processes in my game as well, and then I react to them.  I've told [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] that several times, but he continues to ignore it in favor of his biased opinion of my playstyle.  I know that there are differences in the playstyles, but those differences are as many or as great as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] wants them to be.  



> Well, they MAY be, and you MAY provide for that. Its just not guaranteed as it would be in Pemerton's game, where NO MATTER WHAT the player's agenda, it will become a focus of play. I guess there could be the usual sorts of limitations here based on the concurrence of the rest of the table with whatever the player is wanting.



Perhaps it's not as guaranteed, at least not within the playstyle as a whole.  In my game it pretty much is, though.



> There will perhaps also sometimes be a question between player agendas and needs as to exactly how an adventuring party can be constructed from the result, or if it can. I recall this was an ongoing theme of Pemerton's long-running 4e campaign, where several characters had almost diametrically opposed interests at certain points.



I'm not sure exactly what you mean with that first sentence.  As for the second, I've had PCs rarely take oppositional positions.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> These are all cogent points.



Thankyou!



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think, to perhaps take something like [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s viewpoint for a moment, that you could recontextualize what he is talking about in terms of player agenda and goals. That is to say, he has a fixed primary goal as a player, which is to be a bit part of a much larger story. His preference is years long arcs of playing low level PCs in some largely pre-defined world where most of the important things which are going on have little or nothing at all to do with his character. Thus in important ways he's really spectating.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> If [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] played in one of your games he would advocate for the GM to explain to him the history and complex backstory associated with persons, places, and things which were encountered within the scene frames and desire to explore each one in great detail as the opportunity arose.



Sure. I'm reasonably familiar with this kind of play.

I just think it's fairly obvious that (i) it doesn't invovle a great deal of player agency over the content of the shared fiction, and (ii) it does involve a lot of the players making moves that trigger the GM to tell them stuff - this is what "spectating" and "explaining the histoy and backstory" and "exploring in great detail" actually consist in, at the game table.



Lanefan said:


> A summation that's close enough for rock 'n' roll.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> About the only thing I'd change here is where you say "in important ways he's really spectating", I'd put it that while during early parts of the campaign this is true it's also giving me (or us as a group) information and options as to what - out of what we're 'spectating' now - we'll choose to get involved with later in the campaign once we're up to the job.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I might not ask for all the details and history every time but when I did it would usually be out of a search for information to provide me with better - or at least different - options and choices than what's being given.



The key word in "story now" is _now_. Which contrasts with your _later_ ("later in the campaign").

And a consequence of "now" as opposed to "later" is that the content and framing have to be generated in some fashion other than just having the GM gradually reveal it all as appropriate moves are performed in the course of play. This is where one aspect of player agency comes in.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> You can see how 4e actually is built around this kind of model to an extent. There is a fairly significant cosmological backstory, which the GM can flesh out as he chooses, and which is designed to hang adventure hooks off of. The game also provides major and minor quests, which are ideally suited to providing short-mid term PC goals, and can simply be used as a set of 'breadcrumbs' to pull the characters forward in an exploratory mode of play. Its also true it espouses 'get to the action', which is more of a Story Now concept, as well as 'say yes', but I don't think the designers were fully sold on one fixed game concept (which may be one of 4e's issues in and of itself).



I agree with the last sentence. But 4e also advocates for player-authored "quests". And the backstory is not hidden by default - much of it is in the PHB, or in the MM and accessible through a fairly straightforward knowledge check mechanic. (We could ask what the point is of making players spend PC build resources on getting the backstory, but that's a different matter.)


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> I've told [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] that several times, but he continues to ignore it in favor of his biased opinion of my playstyle.  I know that there are differences in the playstyles, but those differences are as many or as great as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] wants them to be.





pemerton said:


> What counts as _effective difference_ obviously is relative to things that matter to people.



It's not about "wanting" there to be differences. It's that, on the measures I care about, there are fundamental differences.

I get that you don't care about the same things I do. Hence you don't notice, or care about, the differences that matter to me. Pointing out this thing about _you_ isn't going to change anything about _me_, though!



Maxperson said:


> Yes, because the DM told him stuff.  Then he does something else, and the DM tells him stuff.  Players using their agency in order to get me to respond by telling them stuff happens in my game, too.



In the actual bit of gameplay I described, the game begins with the player confronted with a situation that puts his PC's belief to the test: is this feather the thing you want? what will you do, and risk, to get it?

In the hypothetical bit of gameplay you have described, the game begins with the player confronted with a situation that requires him to learn stuff from the GM, and make logisitical and tactical choices to try and have the chance to actually put his PC's belief to the test.

That's the difference that matters to me.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think the key difference is it was the PLAYER who started this process, by describing his goal, to rescue his brother from a demon. The GM then reacted to that by INVENTING the bazaar and the angel feather



Correct.



Maxperson said:


> The players start processes in my game as well



But by your own account, they do not generate or shape the content of the shared fiction. When the PC's goal is to find an item, you don't start with a situation involving the question - _is this the item I'm seeking_ - which is a fiction that has been read straight off the player-authored goal. You start with a GM-authored description of a place with libraries and oracles and sages and the like, and the players start working there way through this GM-established fiction.



Maxperson said:


> Based on their goals and actions, just like in your game.  Only the motivation is really different.  They aren't exploring character the same way you are.



Nor are they exercising the same sort of agency over the content of the shared fiction, as the GM is not authoring the framing components of the shared fiction _so as to speak directly to the player's evinced conception of the character_.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> its true that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] probably started the action in Hardby for whatever reason, but again we don't know really the details of how these decisions were made. In effect Hardby is just a name of a town that comes with some regional geography attached. Even this choice must ultimately be made with the player's agenda in mind. Maybe they established WoG as an overall setting beforehand and created character backstory with that in mind, or maybe Pemerton just whipped out a map he happened to have in his bag. I think he did mention that Hardby was selected based on some general criteria as an interesting place to start an adventure. I would say these COULD be GM driven choices, within certain bounds, but they seem to play a fairly limited part in the end result, being color in essence.



Hardby is colour.

The player had already circulated a picture of the tower where his PC had been an apprentice wizard studying with his brother (pre-possession). From memory, the photograph in question is of an Indian castle. The landscape is moderately arid. In GH terms, this suggests the Abor-Alz.

The wizard PC is called Jobe the Blue, and is meant to evoke Alatar of the Istari, who travelled to the East of Middle Earth. This suggests a town which is more like Zamora in Tower of the Elephant, or Hort Town in The Farthest Shore.

Plus there needs to be a forest nearby for another PC to come from, and Celene not too far away for the Elf PC to come from.

When yu look at the GH map and keep the above three paragraphs in mind, Hardby stands out. But as you say it's just colour - a name to be given to the place where events unfold. 



AbdulAlhazred said:


> in Pemerton's game, where NO MATTER WHAT the player's agenda, it will become a focus of play. I guess there could be the usual sorts of limitations here based on the concurrence of the rest of the table with whatever the player is wanting. There will perhaps also sometimes be a question between player agendas and needs as to exactly how an adventuring party can be constructed from the result, or if it can. I recall this was an ongoing theme of Pemerton's long-running 4e campaign, where several characters had almost diametrically opposed interests at certain points.



Conflict between PC goals, to a greater or lesser extent, is a recurrent element in my RPGing. Apart from its inherent interest (think eg LotR, where the fellowship needs to go to Mordor but Aragorn's main desire is to go to Gondor) it's an effective way to generate meaningful choices and a bit of drama at the table.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, they MAY be, and you MAY provide for that. Its just not guaranteed as it would be in Pemerton's game, where NO MATTER WHAT the player's agenda, it will become a focus of play.



So what happens if the player doesn't have an agenda, or a pre-set idea of what story she wants to play through?  What if she'd rather let her 'agenda' build itself out of what happens during the run of play?  Or, in a broader sense, what happens if she wants to react to what the DM gives her to work with rather than having the DM react to what she gives them?


> I guess there could be the usual sorts of limitations here based on the concurrence of the rest of the table with whatever the player is wanting. There will perhaps also sometimes be a question between player agendas and needs as to exactly how an adventuring party can be constructed from the result, or if it can. I recall this was an ongoing theme of Pemerton's long-running 4e campaign, where several characters had almost diametrically opposed interests at certain points.



This has been one of my questions also, but I can see ways both friendly (resolve them consecutively rather than concurrently) and infriendly (a little PvP, anyone?) to get around the issue.



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> The key word in "story now" is now. Which contrasts with your later ("later in the campaign").



The story now might be something as simple as dealing with a tribe of raiding orcs; but in the course of doing so we've learned the local Baron is corrupt.  Dealing with him and all his guards and advisers is way outside our pay grade at the moment, and as we don't know who else we can trust with this knowledge we-as-PCs (and as players) just file it away for a later time when we think we can handle what he might throw at us.

It's called player-side long range planning.



> And a consequence of "now" as opposed to "later" is that the content and framing have to be generated in some fashion other than just having the GM gradually reveal it all as appropriate moves are performed in the course of play. This is where one aspect of player agency comes in.



And where another aspect of player agency - that of choosing what to do - is denied as a trade-off.



			
				Maxperson said:
			
		

> I've had PCs rarely take oppositional positions.



That's a bit surprising, in that it can happen so easily particularly if players are independently coming up with their own intended story-lines.  Could be something as simple as, in say a court-intrigue game, one player-as-PC setting her goal as marriage to the Duke and another setting her goal as the overthrow and death of this same Duke.

Lanefan


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> That's what I'm trying to say, though.  The players start processes in my game as well, and then I react to them.  I've told @_*pemerton*_ that several times, but he continues to ignore it in favor of his biased opinion of my playstyle.  I know that there are differences in the playstyles, but those differences are as many or as great as @_*pemerton*_ wants them to be.
> 
> Perhaps it's not as guaranteed, at least not within the playstyle as a whole.  In my game it pretty much is, though.




Yeah, I believe you. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] then at this juncture asks "so why have GM pre-generated content"? And there are reasonable answers to that, which we all acknowledge. I DO believe that heavy backstory/elaborate setting can present some disadvantages/dangers. I think GMs get constrained and invested more than they think they do, but clearly most GMs are happy to have a backstop of existing lore, maps, adventures, etc to quickly draw from, even if they do extemporize or adapt a lot. 

A lot of the objections or doubts about player-centered Story Now kind of games though I think is somewhat forced. I guess it takes really playing in a game which is unabashedly of that ilk and takes it the whole way to nothing predetermined at all to see what playing it is really like.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I get that you don't care about the same things I do. Hence you don't notice, or care about, the differences that matter to me. Pointing out this thing about _you_ isn't going to change anything about _me_, though!




That works both ways, which is probably why you get our playstyle wrong so frequently.  



> In the actual bit of gameplay I described, the game begins with the player confronted with a situation that puts his PC's belief to the test: is this feather the thing you want? what will you do, and risk, to get it?
> 
> In the hypothetical bit of gameplay you have described, the game begins with the player confronted with a situation that requires him to learn stuff from the GM, and make logisitical and tactical choices to try and have the chance to actually put his PC's belief to the test.
> 
> That's the difference that matters to me.



Except the game play begins with the player telling me what he wants to do, not me confronting him with a situation that requires him to learn stuff.  He tells me what he wants done, and then I respond.  Dice get rolled and success or failure takes over.


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> That's a bit surprising, in that it can happen so easily particularly if players are independently coming up with their own intended story-lines.  Could be something as simple as, in say a court-intrigue game, one player-as-PC setting her goal as marriage to the Duke and another setting her goal as the overthrow and death of this same Duke.
> 
> Lanefan




Not so surprising when you realize that our session 0 involves the players and I all contributing 3 ideas for campaigns.  Then if anyone has a dislike for an idea, they can nix it.  Usually a few get tossed that way.  Then they each rank the ideas in order from 1-X(the number of ideas).  We tally the totals and drop all but the highest 3.  Then they discuss and decide which one to play, taking another vote if one can't be decided on.  Usually, the ideas involve a theme of some sort and while the PCs might have different goals, but they are typically similar, so direct opposition is rare.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> A lot of the objections or doubts about player-centered Story Now kind of games though I think is somewhat forced. I guess it takes really playing in a game which is unabashedly of that ilk and takes it the whole way to nothing predetermined at all to see what playing it is really like.




I've said many times that I don't think it will be my cup of tea, but that I'd like to try it someday to be sure.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> So what happens if the player doesn't have an agenda, or a pre-set idea of what story she wants to play through?  What if she'd rather let her 'agenda' build itself out of what happens during the run of play?  Or, in a broader sense, what happens if she wants to react to what the DM gives her to work with rather than having the DM react to what she gives them?
> This has been one of my questions also, but I can see ways both friendly (resolve them consecutively rather than concurrently) and infriendly (a little PvP, anyone?) to get around the issue.



It isn't a super uncommon type of player, the one who doesn't evince a desire for any course of action, except maybe tactically. I think its also not so prevalent a behavior when the game is organized around the player's and their PCs story/drama. Players tend to become a bunch more proactive in that situation. Now, there are tried and true ways for a GM to poke. "Oh, why doesn't your character want to drink with the dwarves?" "How do you feel about the greedy banker?" etc. Even that MIGHT not work in a few hard cases, but then unless the player is playing solo (a pretty odd idea for that type of player) then they at least have the agenda of "be a good party member" or something along those lines. Its not much, but you can live with one or two freeloaders if you have to.



> The story now might be something as simple as dealing with a tribe of raiding orcs; but in the course of doing so we've learned the local Baron is corrupt.  Dealing with him and all his guards and advisers is way outside our pay grade at the moment, and as we don't know who else we can trust with this knowledge we-as-PCs (and as players) just file it away for a later time when we think we can handle what he might throw at us.
> 
> It's called player-side long range planning.



I guess the question is what is the significance of those two things? If the players are just having their characters drift around in the sandbox and react to what they find, then this is a normal sort of play. If its Story Now, then clearly the orcs are what they WANT to be doing, maybe the Baron is a plot hook left for getting to another PC's agenda later in the adventure. 



> And where another aspect of player agency - that of choosing what to do - is denied as a trade-off.



I don't really see that. The WHOLE GAME is the player choosing what to do. They choose the agenda, and they choose how to react to the framing created by the GM in accordance with that. I don't think any agency is given up, except the agency of letting someone else determine what elements go into the story.  



> That's a bit surprising, in that it can happen so easily particularly if players are independently coming up with their own intended story-lines.  Could be something as simple as, in say a court-intrigue game, one player-as-PC setting her goal as marriage to the Duke and another setting her goal as the overthrow and death of this same Duke.
> 
> Lanefan




I am jealous of whatever GM has players that came up with those two backstories! What an awesome combination. I'd try to cast them as fast friends. One's family was cast down by the Duke, and the other falls for him. Maybe they're even sisters!


----------



## Campbell

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]

I do not think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is speaking about your game specifically in his criticism of GM Driven play unless you run a game that is very close to the Dragonlance/Ravenloft Modules or Vampire - The Masquerade, AD&D 2e and 5e as explicitly described by their GMing texts. There is no way to address your individual game unless we know more about the play environment, social layer, and play procedures actually used at the table. The only way to learn more about the play procedures in use is for you to say what they are?


Do you plan out story and character arcs?
Do you adjudicate things based on what you would like to have happen?
Do you expect players to follow your lead?
Do you expect players to appreciate your world design for its own sake?
Do you follow the fiction wherever it might lead?
Do you reward skilled fictional positioning?
Does the social environment include an expectation of getting back on track to the GM's story?
Does everyone get the same rewards even if some players play passively while others actively contribute?
Do you design scenarios or plots?
Can players address a hook as they see fit or only in preapproved ways designed by you?

I do not mean to badger the witness here. I do think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s analysis can sometimes exclude other ways to play that are not either Sorcerer or 5e as described by the text of the DMG. The criticisms that I have personally for the current orthodoxy does not apply to sandbox games like early RuneQuest, Godbound, Stars Without Number or B/X D&D run according to their text.  Those games are my second favorite sort of game to be a player in. I also have my own criticisms about intent based resolution systems. 

One of the larger points of this thread I think is that it is useful to question the orthodoxy and take a critical look at why we do the things we do. It's also useful to see the dominant modes of play is *a way* to play role playing games and not *the way*.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> I've said many times that I don't think it will be my cup of tea, but that I'd like to try it someday to be sure.




Careful, we'll take you up on it. We might all end up agreeing on everything!  EnWorld would shrink by half!


----------



## Lanefan

Campbell said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]



I'm not he but just for kicks I ought to roll and see if I can hit any of these...



> Do you plan out story and character arcs?



Story arcs yes, character arcs no; and in full knowledge that any story arc I plan might not survive once the puck gets dropped


> Do you adjudicate things based on what you would like to have happen?



Usually no.


> Do you expect players to follow your lead?



Sometimes yes, particularly if they're in some sort of hard AP; other times no.


> Do you expect players to appreciate your world design for its own sake?



It's nice when they do, but not expected or demanded.


> Do you follow the fiction wherever it might lead?



Depends where it's leading.  If it's leading to something I flat-out don't want to run (e.g. some long-winded exercise in game-world economics) I'll make this clear.  But I'm ready willing and able to hit whatever curveballs the players throw at me in terms of what they decide to do next.


> Do you reward skilled fictional positioning?



I've no idea, as I don't know what you mean by this.


> Does the social environment include an expectation of getting back on track to the GM's story?



Sometimes.  Then again, sometimes they think the "GM's story" is one thing where in fact it was trying to be something else entirely.  Couple that with my being able to sometimes take their ideas and build them in to my story (without them even realizing it, on occasion), or make them my story, and while there's a frequent expectation of getting back on track with the story it may or may not be entirely my story they want to get back on to.


> Does everyone get the same rewards even if some players play passively while others actively contribute?



For xp, no; if you do nothing you get nothing.  For treasure, usually yes.


> Do you design scenarios or plots?



Yes to both, as one (scenarios) is a natural outgrowth of DMing the other (plots).


> Can players address a hook as they see fit or only in preapproved ways designed by you?



In most cases any way they see fit, including ignoring it either wilfully or unintentionally.  Sometimes, though, they don't have much choice - again something that happens mostly in hard APs where the PCs really do get led by the nose for a while.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Careful, we'll take you up on it. We might all end up agreeing on everything!



Beer.

It's all you need.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Beer.
> 
> It's all you need.




Why, its a universal language! Makes English optional! 

We used to have a D&D campaign where you had to take a drink every time you took damage. It kinda died horribly pretty quickly...


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Why, its a universal language! Makes English optional!
> 
> We used to have a D&D campaign where you had to take a drink every time you took damage. It kinda died horribly pretty quickly...



I can't remember the last time I DMed a completely sober game where neither I nor the players touched a drop.  I'm assuming it's happened at least once...


----------



## Maxperson

Campbell said:


> Do you plan out story and character arcs?






No.



> [*]Do you adjudicate things based on what you would like to have happen?




No.



> [*]Do you expect players to follow your lead?




Not as a DM, no.  As a player, I'll at least try to talk them into things. 



> [*]Do you expect players to appreciate your world design for its own sake?




No.



> [*]Do you follow the fiction wherever it might lead?
> [*]Do you reward skilled fictional positioning?




I'm not entirely sure what you mean by these.  If you could explain them a bit better I'd be happy to answer those questions.



> [*]Does the social environment include an expectation of getting back on track to the GM's story?




No.



> [*]Does everyone get the same rewards even if some players play passively while others actively contribute?




I don't have any passive players.



> [*]Do you design scenarios or plots?




I'll make dungeons, castles, etc. in response to the players.  If they are searching out relics and find out that one is in the dungeon of mantha, I'll make the dungeon of mantha.  I don't create the ways to succeed, though.  How they go about accomplishing their goals is up to them.  If they decide at the beginning, half way, or wherever that they want to go and do something else, that's what happens.



> [*]Can players address a hook as they see fit or only in preapproved ways designed by you?




As they see fit, including ignoring it completely.



> One of the larger points of this thread I think is that it is useful to question the orthodoxy and take a critical look at why we do the things we do. It's also useful to see the dominant modes of play is *a way* to play role playing games and not *the way*.




Edit: forgot to reply to this one.  

I don't think anyone here thinks that there are only the traditional ways to play the game.  Most of us(all I think) debating with [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] aren't saying that his way is wrong or bad, but rather are disagreeing with his mischaracterizations of our playstyle(s).


----------



## pemerton

Campbell said:


> I do think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s analysis can sometimes exclude other ways to play that are not either Sorcerer or 5e as described by the text of the DMG. The criticisms that I have personally for the current orthodoxy does not apply to sandbox games like early RuneQuest, Godbound, Stars Without Number or B/X D&D run according to their text.  Those games are my second favorite sort of game to be a player in.



In my OP I tried to distinguish classic D&D dungeoncrawling (so at least the B in B/X) (i) from (what I labelled) more contemporary play, and (ii) from sandboxing more generally.

I've already posted at length, upthread, about features of non-dungeon sandboxing that (I believe) can tend to reduce player agency. The main one is the lack of clear parameters around what might be "hidden", unrevealed backstory - whereas the austere dungeon environment, together with established conventions/tropes (like pit traps, rotating rooms, etc), set such parameters in dungeoneering play.

As I've mentioned several times in the thread, I am currently running a Classic Traveller game. Some parts of that game have a clear resolution structure (interstellar travel, dealing with bureaucrats) that I think support player agency. The only mechanic I've encountered so far that was really unsatisfactory was the system for travelling in the on-world "wilderness" - it has no finality of resolution and really depended rather heavily on the sort of GM manipulation that I dislike.

I think non-dungeon sandboxing can tend to have quite a bit of that. Or, if the only resolution system that yields finality is combat, then combat can become very frequent! Which again makes sense in a dungeon but can hurt the feel of a bigger sandbox. (My Traveller game has been happily combat-light - happily in the sense that it is not a verisimilitude-threatening bloodbath given the broadly civilian contexts the PCs have been operating in.)

I haven't got enough experience with early RQ played in sandbox but non-dungeon style to know how it might compare to, or improve upon, Traveller in this respect.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> In my OP I tried to distinguish classic D&D dungeoncrawling (so at least the B in B/X) (i) from (what I labelled) more contemporary play, and (ii) from sandboxing more generally.
> 
> I've already posted at length, upthread, about features of non-dungeon sandboxing that (I believe) can tend to reduce player agency. The main one is the lack of clear parameters around what might be "hidden", unrevealed backstory - whereas the austere dungeon environment, together with established conventions/tropes (like pit traps, rotating rooms, etc), set such parameters in dungeoneering play.
> 
> As I've mentioned several times in the thread, I am currently running a Classic Traveller game. Some parts of that game have a clear resolution structure (interstellar travel, dealing with bureaucrats) that I think support player agency. The only mechanic I've encountered so far that was really unsatisfactory was the system for travelling in the on-world "wilderness" - it has no finality of resolution and really depended rather heavily on the sort of GM manipulation that I dislike.
> 
> I think non-dungeon sandboxing can tend to have quite a bit of that. Or, if the only resolution system that yields finality is combat, then combat can become very frequent! Which again makes sense in a dungeon but can hurt the feel of a bigger sandbox. (My Traveller game has been happily combat-light - happily in the sense that it is not a verisimilitude-threatening bloodbath given the broadly civilian contexts the PCs have been operating in.)
> 
> I haven't got enough experience with early RQ played in sandbox but non-dungeon style to know how it might compare to, or improve upon, Traveller in this respect.




So vastly increasing the players choices further limits agency.  I disagree with that.  In a sandbox game I can choose to become king and work towards my goal.  In a sandbox game I can choose to rule the world, or rob the houses of the wealthy, leaving a 6 sided die behind as my calling card, or go from town to town looking for opportunities to save them from evil, or a huge number of other choices that aren't available in dungeon crawls.  And I can also choose to dungeon crawl.  Dungeon crawl games = highly limited choices in how the players can drive the game.  Sandbox = vastly greater number of choices in how the players can drive the game.


----------



## Imaro

Campbell said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]
> 
> I do not think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is speaking about your game specifically in his criticism of GM Driven play unless you run a game that is very close to the Dragonlance/Ravenloft Modules or Vampire - The Masquerade, AD&D 2e and 5e as explicitly described by their GMing texts. There is no way to address your individual game unless we know more about the play environment, social layer, and play procedures actually used at the table. The only way to learn more about the play procedures in use is for you to say what they are?
> 
> 
> Do you plan out story and character arcs?
> Do you adjudicate things based on what you would like to have happen?
> Do you expect players to follow your lead?
> Do you expect players to appreciate your world design for its own sake?
> Do you follow the fiction wherever it might lead?
> Do you reward skilled fictional positioning?
> Does the social environment include an expectation of getting back on track to the GM's story?
> Does everyone get the same rewards even if some players play passively while others actively contribute?
> Do you design scenarios or plots?
> Can players address a hook as they see fit or only in preapproved ways designed by you?
> 
> I do not mean to badger the witness here. I do think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s analysis can sometimes exclude other ways to play that are not either Sorcerer or 5e as described by the text of the DMG. The criticisms that I have personally for the current orthodoxy does not apply to sandbox games like early RuneQuest, Godbound, Stars Without Number or B/X D&D run according to their text.  Those games are my second favorite sort of game to be a player in. I also have my own criticisms about intent based resolution systems.
> 
> One of the larger points of this thread I think is that it is useful to question the orthodoxy and take a critical look at why we do the things we do. It's also useful to see the dominant modes of play is *a way* to play role playing games and not *the way*.




Okay now my interest is piqued... is the implication that following the 5e DMG text leads to these questions being answered in the affirmative?


----------



## Lanefan

Maxperson said:


> So vastly increasing the players choices further limits agency.  I disagree with that.  In a sandbox game I can choose to become king and work towards my goal.  In a sandbox game I can choose to rule the world, or rob the houses of the wealthy, leaving a 6 sided die behind as my calling card, or go from town to town looking for opportunities to save them from evil, or a huge number of other choices that aren't available in dungeon crawls.  And I can also choose to dungeon crawl.  Dungeon crawl games = highly limited choices in how the players can drive the game.  Sandbox = vastly greater number of choices in how the players can drive the game.



Agreed.

Keep in mind, however, that true sandbox play requires a well-built cohesive internally-consistent sandbox to play in.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Lanefan said:


> Agreed.
> 
> Keep in mind, however, that true sandbox play requires a well-built cohesive internally-consistent sandbox to play in.



But, and this is a point, it doesn't require the box to be built before play.  The box that results from the different styles can be (I'd venture nearly guaranteed) pretty different, yes, but you can sandbox in both styles.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> Okay now my interest is piqued... is the implication that following the 5e DMG text leads to these questions being answered in the affirmative?




I think it is true that 5e, largely implicitly, assumes a game centered around GM authority and a GM authored story line. There's a bit of a nod to player-generated character backstory in the form of the personality traits and background, and you can tie those to some mechanics through skill choices, but there's really very little which concretely ties these things in a mechanical sense to the fiction which happens at the table. There isn't even the SC construct with which to mediate and structure conflict in a way that is largely amenable to player manipulation. 

I think 5e is a step up from 2e, which espouses a narrative type of game without ANY mechanical support or concession to it at all. 5e has the traits and backgrounds, Inspiration (weak as it is), and a much 'tighter' resolution system than 2e such that players at least have some expectation that things will work a certain way when they try something. Yet it falls far short in specific ways of what 4e offered in this area.

To be clear, 4e could have gone a good bit further (I have authored that game myself). 5e pulled back a lot in critical areas.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> But, and this is a point, it doesn't require the box to be built before play.  The box that results from the different styles can be (I'd venture nearly guaranteed) pretty different, yes, but you can sandbox in both styles.




MY understanding and conception of a 'sandbox' includes the idea that it is, ideally, a pre-generated environment. That it is authored specifically without regard to any agenda of or focus on the PCs. The conceit is anything you do, anything you build, any conflict you generate, etc. is all on you. The purest sandbox even lacks any backstory beyond basic reactive kinds of stuff like "the orcs pull up stakes and beat it for the mountain passes during the night. All you find are cold campfires and empty warrens in the morning, and a few broken tools."

That might not, in theory, be incompatible with on-the-fly authoring of content, but it is pretty hard to imagine it really being pulled off. How can you even be sure that your content is NOT a story in being as opposed to a simple collection of elements ready to be engaged with (which is what I would say the term 'sandbox' literally implies, a box of sand in which the player can do whatever they wish without regard to anything but the basic 'laws of nature').

Now, I tend to believe this concept is an idealization which a) is less interesting in most cases than is fondly imagined, and b) exists mostly as a theoretical construct for practical reasons. In fact I think players find it intriguing for the very reason they play Story Now games, it implies that THEIR agenda will be THE agenda.


----------



## Sunseeker

AbdulAlhazred said:


> MY understanding and conception of a 'sandbox' includes the idea that it is, ideally, a pre-generated environment. That it is authored specifically without regard to any agenda of or focus on the PCs. The conceit is anything you do, anything you build, any conflict you generate, etc. is all on you. The purest sandbox even lacks any backstory beyond basic reactive kinds of stuff like "the orcs pull up stakes and beat it for the mountain passes during the night. All you find are cold campfires and empty warrens in the morning, and a few broken tools."




I would suggest that the "purest" sandbox would actually be a blank canvas and utilize a "Yes and..." system of going round robin or whatever getting player (and DM, since at this point the DM is only barely above the player) input on what and where they are.  IE:
Once the party is made....
DM: So you find yourselves...
Bob: In a town!
Joe: A small town!
Sue: A dirty small town!
Jill: That's overrun with orcs!

Fast Forward a bit >>

DM: Okay, you made peace with the orcs and they're helping rebuild the town in exchange for supplies to their...
Bob: War camp!
Joe: In the high mountains!
Sue: The ones a couple days travel away!
Jill: Overrun with dragons!
DM: I'm beginning to see a pattern with you Jill...
Jill: Well how else will we get XP?
DM: >.>

And so on and so forth expanding from there in the direction that interests the players slowly mapping out "the world", however zany it may be.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

shidaku said:


> I would suggest that the "purest" sandbox would actually be a blank canvas and utilize a "Yes and..." system of going round robin or whatever getting player (and DM, since at this point the DM is only barely above the player) input on what and where they are.  IE:
> Once the party is made....
> DM: So you find yourselves...
> Bob: In a town!
> Joe: A small town!
> Sue: A dirty small town!
> Jill: That's overrun with orcs!
> 
> Fast Forward a bit >>
> 
> DM: Okay, you made peace with the orcs and they're helping rebuild the town in exchange for supplies to their...
> Bob: War camp!
> Joe: In the high mountains!
> Sue: The ones a couple days travel away!
> Jill: Overrun with dragons!
> DM: I'm beginning to see a pattern with you Jill...
> Jill: Well how else will we get XP?
> DM: >.>
> 
> And so on and so forth expanding from there in the direction that interests the players slowly mapping out "the world", however zany it may be.




I would say that is a highly dynamic 'conch passing exercise'. It certainly produces tremendous player agency, but its questionable if it makes a good RPG. Nor would I personally call it a 'sandbox' in any sense. There are games which use a controlled form of this type of open authorship, and it can work, but it generally breaks down or simply doesn't play out like an RPG when its this loose. For instance the players are likely to clash and also likely to violate the Czege Principle, and IME are likely to lack focus and goals. Its hard to HAVE goals when you're simply pushing material into the narrative with effectively no guidelines or limits. You will DEFINITELY not get a sense of exploration from this kind of play, though you may get a sense of authorship.


----------



## Gameimake

The closest I can think of is Spore. It doesn't have much depth to it but can be useful for getting ideas, and the various editors offer a useful tool for visualizing everything from animals to spaceships.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I would say that is a highly dynamic 'conch passing exercise'. It certainly produces tremendous player agency, but its questionable if it makes a good RPG. Nor would I personally call it a 'sandbox' in any sense.



Ditto.  It's way over at the 'collaborative storytelling' end of the spectrum.


> You will DEFINITELY not get a sense of exploration from this kind of play, though you may get a sense of authorship.



You'll definitely get a sense of authorship, and I can see how this could absolutely rock as a one session one-off with a decent group.  But in a continuing game or campaign I'd sure hate to be the poor schlub who has to remember or write down everything said and done and authored this session so it'll be consistent when we come back to it next session...or next month...or next year...


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> So what happens if the player doesn't have an agenda
> 
> <snip>
> 
> what happens if she wants to react to what the DM gives her to work with rather than having the DM react to what she gives them?



Well, that's a player who isn't going to be exercising much agency over the content of the shared fiction! In effect, she's outsourcing that to the GM. Your post says as much.



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I've already posted at length, upthread, about features of non-dungeon sandboxing that (I believe) can tend to reduce player agency. The main one is the lack of clear parameters around what might be "hidden", unrevealed backstory - whereas the austere dungeon environment, together with established conventions/tropes (like pit traps, rotating rooms, etc), set such parameters in dungeoneering play.
> 
> As I've mentioned several times in the thread, I am currently running a Classic Traveller game. Some parts of that game have a clear resolution structure (interstellar travel, dealing with bureaucrats) that I think support player agency. The only mechanic I've encountered so far that was really unsatisfactory was the system for travelling in the on-world "wilderness" - it has no finality of resolution and really depended rather heavily on the sort of GM manipulation that I dislike.
> 
> I think non-dungeon sandboxing can tend to have quite a bit of that. Or, if the only resolution system that yields finality is combat, then combat can become very frequent! Which again makes sense in a dungeon but can hurt the feel of a bigger sandbox. (My Traveller game has been happily combat-light - happily in the sense that it is not a verisimilitude-threatening bloodbath given the broadly civilian contexts the PCs have been operating in.)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So vastly increasing the players choices further limits agency.  I disagree with that.  In a sandbox game I can choose to become king and work towards my goal.  In a sandbox game I can choose to rule the world, or rob the houses of the wealthy, leaving a 6 sided die behind as my calling card, or go from town to town looking for opportunities to save them from evil, or a huge number of other choices that aren't available in dungeon crawls.  And I can also choose to dungeon crawl.  Dungeon crawl games = highly limited choices in how the players can drive the game.  Sandbox = vastly greater number of choices in how the players can drive the game.
Click to expand...


Without finality of resolution, what does it mean _to work towards the goal of becoming king_ (just to pick up one of your examples)? And if there are backstory elements that are known to the GM, but unrevealed, but also apt to be used in the context of action resolution as "hidden" elements of fictional positioning, then where is the player agency located?

The notion of "player choice of goal" doesn't do any work, as far as agency is concerned, until you tell me something about how this choice actually matters to the content of the shared fiction. It is very easy for a non-dungeon sandboxing game to become the making of moves to trigger the GM to say stuff. Changing the way backstory is established and managed makes a big difference in this respect.



Maxperson said:


> Except the game play begins with the player telling me what he wants to do, not me confronting him with a situation that requires him to learn stuff.  He tells me what he wants done, and then I respond.  Dice get rolled and success or failure takes over.



Perhaps I've misunderstood.

The player tells you (speaking as his/her character) "I want to find an item that will help free my brother from possession by a balrog!" And you respond by . . . ? I _thought_ you respond by asking "OK, how do you go about that?" and then the player says (eg) "I look for a sage" or "I look for a marketplace" or whatever it might be.



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I get that you don't care about the same things I do. Hence you don't notice, or care about, the differences that matter to me. Pointing out this thing about you isn't going to change anything about me, though!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That works both ways, which is probably why you get our playstyle wrong so frequently.
Click to expand...


What difference that is important to you are you saying that I'm disregarding?



Lanefan said:


> it <ie conflict of PC agendas> can happen so easily particularly if players are independently coming up with their own intended story-lines. Could be something as simple as, in say a court-intrigue game, one player-as-PC setting her goal as marriage to the Duke and another setting her goal as the overthrow and death of this same Duke.



This is a set-up that is begging for player-driven play!



Lanefan said:


> The story now might be something as simple as dealing with a tribe of raiding orcs; but in the course of doing so we've learned the local Baron is corrupt.



As you describe it, that's not a story. There's no rising action. There's no climax. There's no resolution.

Story now means _story_ - in the sense of conflict > rising action > climax > resolution - as an ever-present element of play. But without pre-authorship of said story.

Roughly speaking, the players provide the characters with dramatic needs; the GM provides the framing which yields conflict; the playing through of the action resolution process yields rising action and climax, at various "levels"; and the outcome of action resolution yields resolution, again at various "levels".

To go back to the feather example: the PC wants a magic item, and is at a bazaar where an angel feather is for sale. But the PC is broke, and maybe the feather is a dud or a fake. That's the conflict. The PC tests the aura of the the feather -there's rising action. It's cursed! There's the climax. There's also a bit in there where the PC buys the feather - I can't remember how the purchase and the aura-reading interacted, but the upshot - the resolution - is that the PC now has a cursed feather, that might bring trouble upon him.

But the whole dealing with the feather is also itself a moment of rising action in the larger story arc of the balrog-possessed brother, which doesn't reach it's climax in that initial scene.

Here is how Eero Tuovinen describes it:

The fun in these games from the player’s viewpoint comes from the fact that he can create an amazing story with nothing but choices made in playing his character; this is the holy grail of rpg design, this is exactly the thing that was promised to me in 1992 in the MERP rulebook.​
Instead of curtailing player agency to create story (which is what Dragolance, White Wolf, 2nd ed AD&D, fudging advice in other rulebooks, and indeed more RPGing text than I can count, recommend), this method of play _relies on_ player agency to create story.

In your example, of the player waiting to be told by the GM where the action is - eg the local Baron is corrupt - story is not going to be reliably produced. What if the players aren't interested in the Baron? Or even suppose that they are - what is the conflict that drives the story, or even kicks it off?

The 3E module The Speaker in Dreams illustrates the issue: big chunks of the module are devoted essentially to plot download by the GM (often but not always accompanying combat encounters that, from the point of view of the players-as-PCs, are largely unmotivated ), and then the whole thing depends on the players adopting the outlook that will make the story work (eg opposing the mind flayer rather than seeking to work with it).



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And a consequence of "now" as opposed to "later" is that the content and framing have to be generated in some fashion other than just having the GM gradually reveal it all as appropriate moves are performed in the course of play. This is where one aspect of player agency comes in.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And where another aspect of player agency - that of choosing what to do - is denied as a trade-off.
Click to expand...


No. There's no trade-off. The player is free to choose what to do at any moment of play.

There is no difference in this respect between my style and yours. (And I see that  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has made this same point.)


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> Well, that's a player who isn't going to be exercising much agency over the content of the shared fiction! In effect, she's outsourcing that to the GM. Your post says as much.
> 
> Without finality of resolution, what does it mean _to work towards the goal of becoming king_ (just to pick up one of your examples)? And if there are backstory elements that are known to the GM, but unrevealed, but also apt to be used in the context of action resolution as "hidden" elements of fictional positioning, then where is the player agency located?
> 
> The notion of "player choice of goal" doesn't do any work, as far as agency is concerned, until you tell me something about how this choice actually matters to the content of the shared fiction. It is very easy for a non-dungeon sandboxing game to become the making of moves to trigger the GM to say stuff. Changing the way backstory is established and managed makes a big difference in this respect.
> 
> Perhaps I've misunderstood.
> 
> The player tells you (speaking as his/her character) "I want to find an item that will help free my brother from possession by a balrog!" And you respond by . . . ? I _thought_ you respond by asking "OK, how do you go about that?" and then the player says (eg) "I look for a sage" or "I look for a marketplace" or whatever it might be.
> 
> What difference that is important to you are you saying that I'm disregarding?
> 
> This is a set-up that is begging for player-driven play!
> 
> As you describe it, that's not a story. There's no rising action. There's no climax. There's no resolution.
> 
> Story now means _story_ - in the sense of conflict > rising action > climax > resolution - as an ever-present element of play. But without pre-authorship of said story.
> 
> Roughly speaking, the players provide the characters with dramatic needs; the GM provides the framing which yields conflict; the playing through of the action resolution process yields rising action and climax, at various "levels"; and the outcome of action resolution yields resolution, again at various "levels".
> 
> To go back to the feather example: the PC wants a magic item, and is at a bazaar where an angel feather is for sale. But the PC is broke, and maybe the feather is a dud or a fake. That's the conflict. The PC tests the aura of the the feather -there's rising action. It's cursed! There's the climax. There's also a bit in there where the PC buys the feather - I can't remember how the purchase and the aura-reading interacted, but the upshot - the resolution - is that the PC now has a cursed feather, that might bring trouble upon him.
> 
> But the whole dealing with the feather is also itself a moment of rising action in the larger story arc of the balrog-possessed brother, which doesn't reach it's climax in that initial scene.
> 
> Here is how Eero Tuovinen describes it:
> 
> The fun in these games from the player’s viewpoint comes from the fact that he can create an amazing story with nothing but choices made in playing his character; this is the holy grail of rpg design, this is exactly the thing that was promised to me in 1992 in the MERP rulebook.​
> Instead of curtailing player agency to create story (which is what Dragolance, White Wolf, 2nd ed AD&D, fudging advice in other rulebooks, and indeed more RPGing text than I can count, recommend), this method of play _relies on_ player agency to create story.
> 
> In your example, of the player waiting to be told by the GM where the action is - eg the local Baron is corrupt - story is not going to be reliably produced. What if the players aren't interested in the Baron? Or even suppose that they are - what is the conflict that drives the story, or even kicks it off?
> 
> The 3E module The Speaker in Dreams illustrates the issue: big chunks of the module are devoted essentially to plot download by the GM (often but not always accompanying combat encounters that, from the point of view of the players-as-PCs, are largely unmotivated ), and then the whole thing depends on the players adopting the outlook that will make the story work (eg opposing the mind flayer rather than seeking to work with it).
> 
> No. There's no trade-off. The player is free to choose what to do at any moment of play.
> 
> There is no difference in this respect between my style and yours. (And I see that  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has made this same point.)



No, they aren't.  This is obvious because all RPGs limit choice.  It's a design feature.  But, even further to that, player choice in player facing games is more limited, in that they really only have choices on how to deal with GM introduced crisis.  That's the design goal: go to the action.  This isn't a design goal in DM facing games, where action occurs when out dies and thers a heavier focus on the logistical and tactical choices available to the players.  Or, some DM facing games, as pure railroads are pure railroads.  Still, those kinds of choices are absent in player facing games -- by design.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Without finality of resolution, what does it mean _to work towards the goal of becoming king_ (just to pick up one of your examples)?




The same way it worked in your example.  You described the feather as being a starting point.  The PC had to identify the feather as something that could be useful, get it enchanted, do a third thing, etc.  With the goal of becoming king, there will also be steps that need to be successfully completed along that patch in order to become king.  Probably more than just three, but theoretically it could be three or less depending on circumstances and background.



> And if there are backstory elements that are known to the GM, but unrevealed, but also apt to be used in the context of action resolution as "hidden" elements of fictional positioning, then where is the player agency located?




With the player still.  There's very, very little chance that any hidden backstory will stop the player's goal, so at worst it will just represent an increase or added challenge, and at best make it easier to accomplish.  It will still be the player driving the story where the player wants it to go, and I will still be reacting to the player.



> The notion of "player choice of goal" doesn't do any work, as far as agency is concerned, until you tell me something about how this choice actually matters to the content of the shared fiction. It is very easy for a non-dungeon sandboxing game to become the making of moves to trigger the GM to say stuff. Changing the way backstory is established and managed makes a big difference in this respect.




I still don't see it.  The player told you he wanted to find an item before he left the city that would allow him to free his brother from the Balrog.  That triggered you to say stuff, and the stuff you said was about the bazaar and an angel feather.  Then he said that he would check it with his arcana skill.  That triggered you to say stuff based on the roll, and the stuff you said was about it being cursed.

Why is it okay for your players to trigger you to say stuff, but you speak like it's something to be avoided when discussing other playstyles?



> Perhaps I've misunderstood.
> 
> The player tells you (speaking as his/her character) "" And you respond by . . . ? I _thought_ you respond by asking "OK, how do you go about that?" and then the player says (eg) "I look for a sage" or "I look for a marketplace" or whatever it might be.




Probably that he's not going to say it like that for one.  The player is going to tell me "I want to find an item that will help free my brother from possession by a balrog!  So I am going to go to the bazaar to try and find something at one of the merchants there.", or "I want to find an item that will help free my brother from possession by a balrog! So I go to Easypeasyfreshandsqueezy Street to find a sage that specializes in possession/demons/magic items to find information.", or "I want to find an item that will help free my brother from possession by a balrog!  So I go see if there is a wizard guild in the city."  Those statements trigger me to say stuff in response, just as you player triggered you to say stuff in response.  

How I respond to the player's statement will vary depending on the circumstances, prior game play, etc.  Usually there will be a roll involved.  Sometimes it will just automatically succeed, such as if the player had previously spoken to a sage that had the specialty in question.  Sometimes, very rarely, it will automatically fail, such as if the player wants to find a wizard guild in a city that hates arcane spellcasters.  Sometimes there will be success with a consequence, or failure with a consequence.  Outright failure is okay, since there are many avenues to success.  A failure isn't a failure at the goal, but just at that step in the process.  

The important thing is that I am not dictating the process or how the process is to work.  I'm not going to the player and saying "Your brother is possessed by a Balrog.  If you want him to be free, you have to do A, B, C, D and E."  



> What difference that is important to you are you saying that I'm disregarding?



That my playstyle is nothing like a choose your own adventure book, or a railroad, or the other negative lights you have tried to shine on it.  The players can't author things into existence, but that lack does not hinder their agency.  They still drive the game through their choices and goals.

One of the things that pre-authoring adds that your style doesn't have, is the ability for both the DM and the players to draw from that large pool of pre-authored content.  I have been running primarily the Forgotten Realms since 1e.  If the players are in Baldur's Gate, they know many of the pre-authored elements and can draw from those.  The player might tell me, "I go find some Flaming Fists to take this lost girl back to her parents."  He has drawn on the depth of the world as an aid to what he wants to do.  That's not something that's really available in your game.  Your game lacks that depth(though it adds in other areas).  Your game has a very limited amount of pre-authored content(just stuff that you guys authored prior to that moment), so the player is either forced to use that or come up with a name on the fly.


----------



## Aenghus

From a player point of view one of the big differences I see between GM-driven games and player-driven games is that conventional GM-driven games tend to encourage risk management and mitigation (even if the players don't bother with them). IMO this is the high level agency that can be provided by GM-driven games, where it is possible to discover threats and dangers, and then either choose to avoid them or engage them on the PC's terms. 

Random choices, where the players have insufficient information to make an informed choice, do not provide player agency. Choices where the players are misinformed or working on faulty assumptions aren't great either from an agency point of view, too many such choices can undermine a game.

DM-driven games can train players to be risk-aware, or even risk-adverse. Making choices though a series of small procedural steps can give players the impression they can bail out if things turn bad, and reduces the number of single-big-risk choices they are presented with.

Whereas in a player-driven game, the game is fundamentally about the risks players take, which are often complex high level questions of the sort that GM-driven games don't provide a method of directly addressing. Risk mitigation is much reduced in importance or even impossible. Conversely, risk management is often improved, in that the player(s) choose what risks to take and which not to take, often with more player information than in a GM-driven game. The negotiation step attempts to ensure that players have sufficient information to make an informed choice, rather than making random choices in a vacuum, and that whether the PC wins or loses, the player (hopefully) remains engaged in the game. 

Player-driven games can guarantee the prompt resolution of meaty questions important to players, while GM-driven games often don't. 

More than once in the latter case the answer turned out to be "That question was pointless in the setting but the GM wouldn't reveal that for ages over concern for campaign secrets. If I had know I wouldn't have played in the game in the first place."


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Without finality of resolution, what does it mean _to work towards the goal of becoming king_



Just that, I guess - to work toward the goal.

Nothing says the campaign has to go far enough that the PC actually becomes king, or even if it does that this whole story has to be played out.

Using my own current example of my PC who eventually wants to become Empress* of [Rome], while it's a background goal I've got her slowly building up to there's no way I'd expect the other players to sit through all the non-adventuring political machinations she's likely going to have to attempt.  Hell, I might not want to sit through it myself!  In any case I expect that'll all happen after she's retired from adventuring (as in, no longer an actively-played character but still existent in the game world).

* - though very recent developments have suggested there might not be much left to be Empress of, by the time we get back there...



> And if there are backstory elements that are known to the GM, but unrevealed, but also apt to be used in the context of action resolution as "hidden" elements of fictional positioning, then where is the player agency located?



In the case of the wanna-be Empress, almost certainly.  As a player, I'd be rather surprised if there weren't. 



> As you describe it, that's not a story. There's no rising action. There's no climax. There's no resolution.



Here and now the story is about defeating the orcs, and whatever's gone into getting to that point.  The climax, I suppose, might be the battle against the orcs' chieftain, or whatever.



> Story now means _story_ - in the sense of conflict > rising action > climax > resolution - as an ever-present element of play. But without pre-authorship of said story.
> 
> Roughly speaking, the players provide the characters with dramatic needs; the GM provides the framing which yields conflict; the playing through of the action resolution process yields rising action and climax, at various "levels"; and the outcome of action resolution yields resolution, again at various "levels".



That doesn't sound unique to player-driven games.  In and of itself (ignoring any plot or setting or background or external considerations) this pretty much is the essence of every RPG out there; with the only exception being that sometimes the players/PCs frame themselves into conflict without the DM having to provide anything.

Matter of scale, though.  You're looking for the needs-framing-action-climax-resolution cycle almost on a per-encounter scale, it seems; where I look for it on a larger scale - perhaps per-adventure - and don't worry about forcing it into each individual encounter.



> Instead of curtailing player agency to create story (which is what Dragolance, White Wolf, 2nd ed AD&D, fudging advice in other rulebooks, and indeed more RPGing text than I can count, recommend), this method of play _relies on_ player agency to create story.



Which is a euphamistic (sp?) way of saying the workload of creating and maintaining the story is removed from the DM and dumped in the players' laps.



> In your example, of the player waiting to be told by the GM where the action is - eg the local Baron is corrupt - story is not going to be reliably produced. What if the players aren't interested in the Baron? Or even suppose that they are - what is the conflict that drives the story, or even kicks it off?



If the players aren't interested in the Baron and ignore that whole element, I'd say that's player agency at work!  They've chosen to focus on something else, as is their right.

If they do end up going after the Baron, particularly if the Baron a) doesn't see them coming or b) is in fact innocent, the players/PCs are very likely going to create the conflict as they go along.  There doesn't need to be a conflict to kick the story off, just a curiosity and desire to investigate.



> The 3E module The Speaker in Dreams illustrates the issue: big chunks of the module are devoted essentially to plot download by the GM (often but not always accompanying combat encounters that, from the point of view of the players-as-PCs, are largely unmotivated ), and then the whole thing depends on the players adopting the outlook that will make the story work (eg opposing the mind flayer rather than seeking to work with it).



Can't speak to that one as I've never seen/read/played it; but I've seen many modules vaguely like it.  The trick is to be able to adapt away from the module to reflect what the players do to it e.g. if the PCs kill the bad guys before they get the chance to monologue* and provide the exposition, or if they decide to work with the mind flayer

* - my players are great for this - as soon as there's even a hint that my villain is about to monologue they drop a _Silence_ on him and do everything they can to kill him before it wears off!



> No. There's no trade-off. The player is free to choose what to do at any moment of play.



So you say, but as I've pointed out upthread this is in fact not so.

The player is free to choose what to do within any given framed scene, but has no choice what to do between framed scenes.  In your feather example the player didn't get to choose how to begin the investigation, or where to start looking for information, or who else to engage for help (there's not been much mention of what the rest of the party was doing during all this).



			
				Aenghus said:
			
		

> DM-driven games can guarantee the prompt resolution of meaty questions important to players, while GM-driven games often don't.



Not quite sure what you're getting at here, as DM and GM are in this case just different terms for the same thing.  For one of these did you mean to say "player-driven"?

Lan-"if I'm driving, who's navigating?"-efan


----------



## Aenghus

Lanefan said:


> Not quite sure what you're getting at here, as DM and GM are in this case just different terms for the same thing.  For one of these did you mean to say "player-driven"?
> 
> Lan-"if I'm driving, who's navigating?"-efan




Misprint on my part, and a fairly obvious one, Player rather than DM. In any case, thanks for pointing it out, I corrected the original post


----------



## Maxperson

Aenghus said:


> Player-driven games can guarantee the prompt resolution of meaty questions important to players, while GM-driven games often don't.




Hmm.  Well, next time you play  in a player-driven game, please find out for my why of all the creatures that fly, fly got the name.


----------



## Lanefan

Aenghus said:


> Player-driven games can guarantee the prompt resolution of meaty questions important to players, while GM-driven games often don't.



Two things here.

First, 'prompt' isn't always desireable for a few reasons.  First, if the meaty question's meaty answer comes too soon or too easily it loses some of its tasty meaty flavour.  Second, if the finding of these meaty answers can be spun out for a while or only given in little bits and pieces at a time it helps keep the campaign going longer and as a side effect helps keep the players engaged as they look for the rest of the answer.

Second, this assumes the players have questions with more meat to them than "are there any cold ones in the fridge?" or "which way to the treasure haul?".  Not all do.



> More than once in the latter case the answer turned out to be "That question was pointless in the setting but the GM wouldn't reveal that for ages over concern for campaign secrets. If I had know I wouldn't have played in the game in the first place."



So you're saying a player would hinge her entire participation in a game on one story piece relevant only to her?  Seems more than a bit selfish...

LAn-"and what about the quite-likely enjoyable and fun play that took place during all that time where the DM wasn't revealing the answer - does that count for nothing?"-efan


----------



## Aenghus

Maxperson said:


> Hmm.  Well, next time you play  in a player-driven game, please find out for my why of all the creatures that fly, fly got the name.




I don't understand the statement. In a game where this was important, it would be discussed until there was some understanding or the issue was dropped. Here, it's probably a distraction from the OP.

I will revise my original statement quoted above from "guarantees" to "facilitates" ie Player-driven games can facilitate the prompt resolution of meaty questions important to players, while GM-driven games often don't. There are no absolute guarantees, of course.


----------



## Maxperson

Aenghus said:


> I don't understand the statement. In a game where this was important, it would be discussed until there was some understanding or the issue was dropped. Here, it's probably a distraction from the OP.
> 
> I will revise my original statement quoted above from "guarantees" to "facilitates" ie Player-driven games can facilitate the prompt resolution of meaty questions important to players, while GM-driven games often don't. There are no absolute guarantees, of course.




hu·mor
ˈ(h)yo͞omər/Submit
noun
1.
the quality of being amusing or comic, especially as expressed in literature or speech.
"his tales are full of humor"


----------



## Ovinomancer

Aenghus said:


> I don't understand the statement. In a game where this was important, it would be discussed until there was some understanding or the issue was dropped. Here, it's probably a distraction from the OP.
> 
> I will revise my original statement quoted above from "guarantees" to "facilitates" ie Player-driven games can facilitate the prompt resolution of meaty questions important to players, while GM-driven games often don't. There are no absolute guarantees, of course.



I don't know that's correct, still.  It might be better to say that meaty questions the players have are guaranteed to be the _focus of play_ in player facing ganes.  Resolution of those questions can be pretty equal in both styles, but focus of play isn't.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Ditto.  It's way over at the 'collaborative storytelling' end of the spectrum.
> You'll definitely get a sense of authorship, and I can see how this could absolutely rock as a one session one-off with a decent group.  But in a continuing game or campaign I'd sure hate to be the poor schlub who has to remember or write down everything said and done and authored this session so it'll be consistent when we come back to it next session...or next month...or next year...




There are some games I've read about which have a more structured approach to who gets to invent the narrative, what they can do with it, etc. which probably are much more RPG-like, but still provide some fairly significant opportunities for players to 'write a story'. 

You could add some elements like this to 4e probably (though this is beyond what I've experimented with so far at least). For example you could let the player describe the narrative consequences of defeating an opponent (4e already allows a limited version of this by RAW). So you could let the player state something like "the orc is utterly disheartened and gives up as I hold my dagger to his throat. He throws down his weapon and raises his hands." This is a SMALL example, but it could be expanded to things like describing the narrative consequences of victory or defeat in an SC (this might not work in a DM-centered mode of play, but it COULD work in a Story Now type of game). You'd probably put some hard constraints on exactly what the player can describe (perhaps there would need to be a formal staking of assets at the start for instance). In fact I could imagine a sort of 'bidding' type of SC where the players could be authoring as much content as they want to 'buy'. Of course the GM will be enriched or the player's become poor in some sort of plot currency in this process. I think it would work pretty well in 4e though without a lot of reworking of the basic mechanics of the rest of the game.


----------



## Aenghus

Ovinomancer said:


> I don't know that's correct, still.  It might be better to say that meaty questions the players have are guaranteed to be the _focus of play_ in player facing ganes.  Resolution of those questions can be pretty equal in both styles, but focus of play isn't.




Good point re _focus of play_, that's a better way of putting it. IMO there are more potential distractions that might prevent a resolution satisfactory to the players in GM-focused play e.g. secret backstory, uncooperative plot deadlines etc


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> No, they aren't.  This is obvious because all RPGs limit choice.  It's a design feature.  But, even further to that, player choice in player facing games is more limited, in that they really only have choices on how to deal with GM introduced crisis.  That's the design goal: go to the action.  This isn't a design goal in DM facing games, where action occurs when out dies and thers a heavier focus on the logistical and tactical choices available to the players.  Or, some DM facing games, as pure railroads are pure railroads.  Still, those kinds of choices are absent in player facing games -- by design.




I don't agree that this is true in practice. As a player you're going to engage with your character, it has SOME sort of backstory, some preferences, likes, dislikes, SOMETHING will be expressed in play, even if the GM has to elicit it. I mean, in D&D, EVERY character has a race, and a class, presumably a gender and a name as well (I guess maybe those aren't literally required, except in 1e you must have a gender defined in some cases for mechanical reasons). So, AT WORST, you've defined SOMETHING about your PC.

Once that happens the GM has what is needed in order to start framing some kind of conflict around what the character, at least implicitly, needs. A truly uninspired and passive player might require a skilled GM to use all their tricks to push things forward, but the point is that the choices which drive this are all PLAYER choices.

Beyond that, there is nothing in a sandbox which lets the players off the hook in this respect! If they simply want to sit in the tavern and drink until their gold is spent and then lie in a gutter and starve, nothing prevents that. It will NOT be a very interesting game for 99.9% of us. Its true, in Story Now, the character's desire to do this will be confronted and a conflict will develop. Maybe he'll be swept up by a press gang and find himself an unwilling soldier. Does he risk death by trying to desert? Or does he make do? Maybe he learns to like it! An endless series of conflicts can arise from this player 'choice of no choice'. We could let the character rot in the ditch, but what is the point?

OTOH if the players decide that their desire is to go exploring and have the world described to them, and then react to it or continue on to new destinations, or whatever, then why would a Story Now GM fail to deliver on that agenda? He might threaten the PCs ability to get to point X which they have set out for, but then again that isn't a given. There's no specific way that Story Now HAS to play out. I think this gets back to the whole pacing question we talked about back a few pages.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> How I respond to the player's statement will vary depending on the circumstances, prior game play, etc.  Usually there will be a roll involved.  Sometimes it will just automatically succeed, such as if the player had previously spoken to a sage that had the specialty in question.  *Sometimes, very rarely, it will automatically fail, such as if the player wants to find a wizard guild in a city that hates arcane spellcasters.*  Sometimes there will be success with a consequence, or failure with a consequence.  Outright failure is okay, since there are many avenues to success.  A failure isn't a failure at the goal, but just at that step in the process.



...


> *One of the things that pre-authoring adds that your style doesn't have, is the ability for both the DM and the players to draw from that large pool of pre-authored content.*  I have been running primarily the Forgotten Realms since 1e.  If the players are in Baldur's Gate, they know many of the pre-authored elements and can draw from those.  The player might tell me, "I go find some Flaming Fists to take this lost girl back to her parents."  He has drawn on the depth of the world as an aid to what he wants to do.  That's not something that's really available in your game.  Your game lacks that depth(though it adds in other areas).  Your game has a very limited amount of pre-authored content(just stuff that you guys authored prior to that moment), so the player is either forced to use that or come up with a name on the fly.




These things go together. In Story Now there is only NOW, the non-existence of elaborate backstory and canonical setting means that there won't BE a situation where the player's need is met with "no, the world just isn't like that, its impossible" for no other reason than the GM authored it that way (or FR book XYZ says so, etc.). This comes right back to the central question of the thread, what exactly is this pre-authored content DOING? We KNOW its supplying these kinds of limitations on play, as you've stated this is the case (albeit you say 'very rarely' which is important in practical terms but not so much in a theoretical sense). 

I don't think the 'Flaming Fists' example is really all that compelling either. I mean, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] could invoke something like that in one of his games too, it just wouldn't be a pre-established thing. It might even BE pre-established in the sense of being a fixture of a particular genre or something. Its true, someone may 'come up with a name on the fly', and this is one of the various proposed uses of world building. I guess we could move forward into an analysis of exactly 'how much is too much' etc. That might be interesting.


----------



## pemerton

Aenghus said:


> From a player point of view one of the big differences I see between GM-driven games and player-driven games is that conventional GM-driven games tend to encourage risk management and mitigation



Risk management and mitigation is clearly a big part of classic dungeon-crawling.

I think it's _meant_ to be part of Expert-style sandboxing as well, but for the sorts of reasons I've described upthread this can often be illusory. For instance, in social interactions in a city what does risk-mitigation look like? Is turning up to the meeting fully armed and armoured risk mitigation (better protected against an ambush) or risk exacerbation (likely to irritate NPCs because contrary to social norms)? A verisimilitudinous, "living breathing" world gives rise to all sorts of questions like this.

Of course the players can ask the GM "Is it bad manners to turn up fully kitted out?", but (i) that is getting fairly close to the GM running the game on the player side as well as his/her own side, and (ii) it still doesn't help the players work out what the trade-off is (eg what is the risk of ambush?).

It's far from trivial to extrapolate dungeon-crawling play into the "living, breathing" world.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> player choice in player facing games is more limited, in that they really only have choices on how to deal with GM introduced crisis.  That's the design goal: go to the action.  This isn't a design goal in DM facing games, where action occurs when out dies and thers a heavier focus on the logistical and tactical choices available to the players.



The subject matter of the choices may well be different. But [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] was making an assertion about the _quantity_ of choice.

Admittedly measuring quantity of choice is inexact, but if we think of it in terms of _chances to make action declarations that matter to the direction of play_ - which probably correlates with something like  _situations that prompt the making of an action declaration whose consequence will shape future outcomes_ - then (as I said) the player in the player-driven game has as much choice as the player in the GM-driven game.

The particular claim about logistical/tactical choices is also not true. It depend on system. Cortex+ Heroic has almost no choices of this sort. 4e has a modest amount of such choice, mostly around magic item creation/acquisition. But Burning Wheel makes these sorts of choices quite important.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Risk management and mitigation is clearly a big part of classic dungeon-crawling.
> 
> I think it's _meant_ to be part of Expert-style sandboxing as well, but for the sorts of reasons I've described upthread this can often be illusory. For instance, in social interactions in a city what does risk-mitigation look like? Is turning up to the meeting fully armed and armoured risk mitigation (better protected against an ambush) or risk exacerbation (likely to irritate NPCs because contrary to social norms)? A verisimilitudinous, "living breathing" world gives rise to all sorts of questions like this.
> 
> Of course the players can ask the GM "Is it bad manners to turn up fully kitted out?", but (i) that is getting fairly close to the GM running the game on the player side as well as his/her own side, and (ii) it still doesn't help the players work out what the trade-off is (eg what is the risk of ambush?).
> 
> It's far from trivial to extrapolate dungeon-crawling play into the "living, breathing" world.




Yeah, the players can ask 1000's of questions about the reputation and background of the guys they're negotiating with, about social norms and etiquette, etc. but at what point do we just devolve down to the GM is making it all up on the fly in terms of all these details? At that point, why not just frame the situation to address the player's agenda? Its not really a 'sandbox' anymore at that point anyway! This is part of what I've been saying a while back in terms of causality. Real (or realistic) worlds are going to be so complex that every single situation can easily evoke 1000 questions. Once you get down into these weeds, either the GM is playing the tune by how he responds, or the game might was well just go for Story Now and be done with it. AT BEST it could turn into long sessions of contemplation and questioning with very little action and a darn slow pace (which I've seen pretty often in these types of games, and which in some ways [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s description of years-long largely low-mid-level games seems to evoke).


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Risk management and mitigation is clearly a big part of classic dungeon-crawling.
> 
> I think it's _meant_ to be part of Expert-style sandboxing as well, but for the sorts of reasons I've described upthread this can often be illusory. For instance, in social interactions in a city what does risk-mitigation look like? Is turning up to the meeting fully armed and armoured risk mitigation (better protected against an ambush) or risk exacerbation (likely to irritate NPCs because contrary to social norms)?



 This may be something the players/PCs already know from prior information gathering or trial-and-error, or they may have to take steps to find out.  Could be something as simple as making inquiries about local protocol.


> A verisimilitudinous, "living breathing" world gives rise to all sorts of questions like this.



As it should - no problem there.



> Of course the players can ask the GM "Is it bad manners to turn up fully kitted out?", but (i) that is getting fairly close to the GM running the game on the player side as well as his/her own side, and (ii) it still doesn't help the players work out what the trade-off is (eg what is the risk of ambush?).



Unless the players/PCs have contacts in town or are already familiar with the place the chances of them knowing that risk level is - and realistically should be - rather low in most cases.  The town might have a reputation for lawfulness or danger, but beyond that?  They won't know until they try...and maybe won't even fully know after that.

And the same is true with full-on dungeon-crawling - the players/PCs can mitigate some of the risks they're aware of but may never be fully aware of all of them - particularly if they avoid said risks by sheer ignorant luck, which happens. 



> It's far from trivial to extrapolate dungeon-crawling play into the "living, breathing" world.



From the player side it's largely the same, I find - gather what info you can and then decide what to do; there's just more info to sift through.  From the DM side it's a LOT more work to do right, and to produce all the info the players might (or might not) ask for.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> There are some games I've read about which have a more structured approach to who gets to invent the narrative, what they can do with it, etc. which probably are much more RPG-like, but still provide some fairly significant opportunities for players to 'write a story'.



I don't have wide experience with story-telling games. I did post a play report of "A Penny For My Thoughts" upthread, and comparing that experience to RPGing I would say that one big difference is asymmetry in responsibilities in respect of content-introduction.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> This may be something the players/PCs already know from prior information gathering or trial-and-error, or they may have to take steps to find out.  Could be something as simple as making inquiries about local protocol.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> From the DM side it's a LOT more work to do right, and to produce all the info the players might (or might not) ask for.



This is exactly the sort of thing I have in mind when I talk about play that involves the players making moves to trigger the GM to tell them stuff.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I don't agree that this is true in practice. As a player you're going to engage with your character, it has SOME sort of backstory, some preferences, likes, dislikes, SOMETHING will be expressed in play, even if the GM has to elicit it. I mean, in D&D, EVERY character has a race, and a class, presumably a gender and a name as well (I guess maybe those aren't literally required, except in 1e you must have a gender defined in some cases for mechanical reasons). So, AT WORST, you've defined SOMETHING about your PC.
> 
> Once that happens the GM has what is needed in order to start framing some kind of conflict around what the character, at least implicitly, needs. A truly uninspired and passive player might require a skilled GM to use all their tricks to push things forward, but the point is that the choices which drive this are all PLAYER choices.
> 
> Beyond that, there is nothing in a sandbox which lets the players off the hook in this respect! If they simply want to sit in the tavern and drink until their gold is spent and then lie in a gutter and starve, nothing prevents that. It will NOT be a very interesting game for 99.9% of us. Its true, in Story Now, the character's desire to do this will be confronted and a conflict will develop. Maybe he'll be swept up by a press gang and find himself an unwilling soldier. Does he risk death by trying to desert? Or does he make do? Maybe he learns to like it! An endless series of conflicts can arise from this player 'choice of no choice'. We could let the character rot in the ditch, but what is the point?
> 
> OTOH if the players decide that their desire is to go exploring and have the world described to them, and then react to it or continue on to new destinations, or whatever, then why would a Story Now GM fail to deliver on that agenda? He might threaten the PCs ability to get to point X which they have set out for, but then again that isn't a given. There's no specific way that Story Now HAS to play out. I think this gets back to the whole pacing question we talked about back a few pages.




I think you completely missed what I was saying, as this response isn't at all responsive to my point.  You've actually said, in more words, what I was saying:  the players in the player facing game who choose to sit and drink in the tavern as a goal will not have a choice in having that agenda challenged by the GM.  The GM in player facing games, by using the design goal of going to the action, skips all the logistical and tactical choices players may engage in and places the agenda of the players in crisis, forcing them to deal with whatever events have placed the agenda into crisis.  This isn't a bad thing, and I'm not criticizing it (I'm running a Blades in the Dark game tomorrow night, as a matter of fact, and will be doing this with wild abandon), but it is a true thing.  As I've said before, I'm running Blades on an off night because I have two players uninterested in the play, and who will not be attending.  They like the logistics/tactical play in my much more DM facing 5e game.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> The subject matter of the choices may well be different. But  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] was making an assertion about the _quantity_ of choice.
> 
> Admittedly measuring quantity of choice is inexact, but if we think of it in terms of _chances to make action declarations that matter to the direction of play_ - which probably correlates with something like  _situations that prompt the making of an action declaration whose consequence will shape future outcomes_ - then (as I said) the player in the player-driven game has as much choice as the player in the GM-driven game.



Eh, the kinds of choices made are so different that I'm not sure this is even a question that can be answered, much less one that should be answered.  It really doesn't matter.  In both styles, the players have lots of opportunity to make choices that fit the style and the player choices.  Which has more is pointless, and, beside, from your OP and your definition of agency in respect to adding to the fiction, this isn't even important.



> The particular claim about logistical/tactical choices is also not true. It depend on system. Cortex+ Heroic has almost no choices of this sort. 4e has a modest amount of such choice, mostly around magic item creation/acquisition. But Burning Wheel makes these sorts of choices quite important.



I've read a few of your BW play reports that featured combat.  In one I recall more clearly, your character was accosted by orcs for failing a check to determine what happened at a sacked farmhouse, and the combat lacked a good deal of tactical depth as well.  At no point did it appear you had options to limit danger occurring or make tactical choices about fictional position to mitigate danger that did appear.  These are part and parcel of the DM-facing style, where players are incentivized to be risk-aware because that has positive benefits for dealing with risk.  In player facing games, risk occurs no matter what on check failures or scene framing, and there's limited logistical (when to rest, stocking up on potions/scrolls, spell expenditure rates, etc) or tactical (posting guards while a player engages in a time consuming task, having weapons drawn, scouting locations, etc) choices to make.  This is because, as a design feature, scene framing is already at a crisis point (go to the action) that requires immediate addressing of events AND failures are meant to increase stakes, so any precautions taken will have limited impacts.  Story Now games offset this by using player resources to possibly mitigate consequences (like Blades' use of the resist mechanic), but this is reactionary and not proactive action declaration -- its a choice after the fact, not behavior the player can engage with prior to failure.

Again, this is intentional -- a specific design goal, even -- that's meant to engage a specific type of play.  And that's peachy awesome and not a bad thing, but, as you've said a few times, analyzing where the trade-offs and impacts are is important and requires dispassionate viewing.  There's a reason Story Now games are not the mainstream of play, and that's not because they're better systems.  They're great systems (again, looking forward to Blades tomorrow, I spent the last few hours making my Roll20 game have everything at hand for character generation and rules references), and they deliver great fun, but they're not superior systems by definition -- they're only superior systems for players/GMs looking for and able to process that style of play.  Given how much [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] continue to miss critical differences in the player-facing playstyle making some of their arguments waaaay off base, you've done similar things in describing their playstyle.  Perhaps you should take a moment and let that sink in.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Without finality of resolution, what does it mean to work towards the goal of becoming king
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Just that, I guess - to work toward the goal.
Click to expand...


My point here is the same as in relation to risk-mitigation in a city encounter: if there is no finality of resolution, and if management and consequences of unrevealed elements of backstory is entirely in the GM's hands (as in your example upthread of the PC mage who charmed the NPC and thereby made and enemy of the duke), then how does the player reliably work towards his/her PC becoming king?

The player can declare actions, but even if they succeed, whether they support this goal or not is extremely subject to GM decisions around the unrevealed backstory.



Lanefan said:


> Here and now the story is about defeating the orcs, and whatever's gone into getting to that point.



My point is that that is not a _story _- it's just an event.



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Story now means story - in the sense of conflict > rising action > climax > resolution - as an ever-present element of play. But without pre-authorship of said story.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In and of itself (ignoring any plot or setting or background or external considerations) this pretty much is the essence of every RPG out there; with the only exception being that sometimes the players/PCs frame themselves into conflict without the DM having to provide anything.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> You're looking for the needs-framing-action-climax-resolution cycle almost on a per-encounter scale, it seems; where I look for it on a larger scale - perhaps per-adventure - and don't worry about forcing it into each individual encounter.
Click to expand...


Your second paragraph refutes your first! Story is not an ever-present element of play if your story unfolds only over hours and hours of actual play time.



Lanefan said:


> Instead of curtailing player agency to create story (which is what Dragolance, White Wolf, 2nd ed AD&D, fudging advice in other rulebooks, and indeed more RPGing text than I can count, recommend), this method of play relies on player agency to create story.



Which is a euphamistic (sp?) way of saying the workload of creating and maintaining the story is removed from the DM and dumped in the players' laps.[/quote]It's not a euphemism - it's describing exactly what happens - to restate what I posted,



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> provide the characters with dramatic needs; the GM provides the framing which yields conflict; the playing through of the action resolution process yields rising action and climax



If players do not provide characters with dramatic needs; or don't want to engage in action resolution; then "story now" play won't work.  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has posted more about this, and what some of the limit cases might look like, upthread.



Lanefan said:


> There doesn't need to be a conflict to kick the story off, just a curiosity and desire to investigate.



An account of someone walking down the street and counting the number of daffodils isn't a story in the traditional sense.

And in the context of a RPG, it is also not a significant manifestation of player agency. "GM, how many daffodils do I see?" is not a significant expression of player agency.



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In your example, of the player waiting to be told by the GM where the action is - eg the local Baron is corrupt - story is not going to be reliably produced. What if the players aren't interested in the Baron? Or even suppose that they are - what is the conflict that drives the story, or even kicks it off?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If the players aren't interested in the Baron and ignore that whole element, I'd say that's player agency at work!
Click to expand...


It's fairly modest agency - it doesn't actually establish any shared fiction, it just vetoes one of the GM's offerings.

And it is not story. A group of protagonists learning of a corrupt baron but ignoring it is not a story. Which was my point - GM-driven RPGing does not reliably produce story unless (as per Dragonlance, 2nd ed AD&D, White Wolf, etc) the GM uses a heavy does of force and backstory manipulation.



Lanefan said:


> The player is free to choose what to do within any given framed scene, but has no choice what to do between framed scenes.  In your feather example the player didn't get to choose how to begin the investigation, or where to start looking for information, or who else to engage for help (there's not been much mention of what the rest of the party was doing during all this).



This still makes no sense.

At every moment of play, the GM is establishing the situation the PCs find themselves in. The fact that they speak to dramatic need  ("You're in a bazaar. A peddler claims to have an angel feather for sale.") rather than not ("As you walk from the great hall to the reliquary, you pass through an intersection") doesn't reduce the scope for player choice.

Also, as far as asking for help is concerned,



			
				pemerton posting as thurgon on rpg.net said:
			
		

> As Jobe started haggling a strange woman (Halika) approached him and offered to help him if he would buy her lunch. Between the two of them, the haggling roll was still a failure, and also the subsequent Resources check: so Jobe got his feather but spent his last 3 drachmas, and was taxed down to Resources 0. They did get some more information about the feather from the peddler, however - he bought it from a wild-eyed man with dishevelled beard and hair, who said that it had come from one of the tombs in the Bright Desert.
> 
> Jobe, being unable to buy Halika any lunch, suggested he might be able to find some work for them instead.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Without finality of resolution, what does it mean to work towards the goal of becoming king (just to pick up one of your examples)?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The same way it worked in your example.  You described the feather as being a starting point.  The PC had to identify the feather as something that could be useful, get it enchanted, do a third thing, etc.  With the goal of becoming king, there will also be steps that need to be successfully completed along that patch in order to become king.  Probably more than just three, but theoretically it could be three or less depending on circumstances and background.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> There's very, very little chance that any hidden backstory will stop the player's goal, so at worst it will just represent an increase or added challenge, and at best make it easier to accomplish.
Click to expand...


But I am talking about a system that has finality of resolution: success means that the intent of the action declaration is realised.

I am also talking about a system in which stakes are express or implicit in the framing and the context of resolution: there are not unrevealed backstory elements that mean that an action resolution success might nevertheless mean that the PC actually goes _backwards_ in achieving his/her goal (compare [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s example upthread of the mage who charmed the NPC trying to preserve civic order, only to unknowingly make an enemy of the duke).

"Added challenge', in the context of GM manipulation of backstory together with an absence of finality in resolution, can be opaque to the player, may emerge or manifest itself at any time, and is not amenable to risk mitigation (as per some recent posts not far upthread).



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The notion of "player choice of goal" doesn't do any work, as far as agency is concerned, until you tell me something about how this choice actually matters to the content of the shared fiction. It is very easy for a non-dungeon sandboxing game to become the making of moves to trigger the GM to say stuff. Changing the way backstory is established and managed makes a big difference in this respect.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I still don't see it. The player told you he wanted to find an item before he left the city that would allow him to free his brother from the Balrog. That triggered you to say stuff, and the stuff you said was about the bazaar and an angel feather. Then he said that he would check it with his arcana skill. That triggered you to say stuff based on the roll, and the stuff you said was about it being cursed.
Click to expand...


So there are two approaches to framing, if the player has as a goal for his/her PC "I will find an item to help confront my balrog-possessed brother before leaving town":

(1) The GM tells the player "You're in a bazaar, with a peddler offering an angel feather for sale. What do you do?"

(2) The GM tells the player "You're in the town. What do you do?​
The content in (1) itself reflects player agency - it is the GM directly engaging the player's statement of dramatic need. The content in (2) does not.

Suppose, following (1), the player declares some action in relation to the feather: _I offer 3 drachmas for it_ or _I read its aura to learn what useful magical traits it has._ The upshot of these are not _just_ the GM telling stuff to the player. It is the player establishing salient content of the shared fiction. If the offer to buy succeeds, the PC now owns the feather. If the attempt to read the aura succeeds, the PC learns of a useful trait the feather has. Conversely, if the check fails then an adverse consequence ensues - in this case, the feather is Resistant to Fire but also cursed.

Suppose, following (2), the player says "I look for a bazaar". If the GM simply says "yes", then the only difference that I see from what I described is that we spend 5 minutes of play getting to the action. It's certainly not the case that the player had to "work" for it in any other sense of "work". 

If the GM says "No, there are no open markets in this town" then we already have hitherto unrevealed backstory being used by the GM to drive the direction of play. The player now has to start making other moves that will get the GM to tell him/her the stuff necesaary to get to where the action is. (Eg "OK, so I look for a curio shop instead" or "OK, I look for a wizard's tower" or whatever.)

And if the GM calls for a check (say, Streetwise), then what happens if it fails? Now the focus of play is not on what the player has flagged (ie finding a useful item) but on something the GM has decided to make a big deal of (ie finding a place where items might be sold). Again, the player now has to start declaring different moves that (whether via the GM saying "yes", or due to successful checks) that eventually result in the Gm describing the PC as being in a place where a potentially useful item is on sale. It's all that stuff that I describe as _making moves whose purpose is to get the GM to say more stuff about the gameworld_.



Maxperson said:


> How I respond to the player's statement will vary depending on the circumstances, prior game play, etc. Usually there will be a roll involved. Sometimes it will just automatically succeed, such as if the player had previously spoken to a sage that had the specialty in question. Sometimes, very rarely, it will automatically fail, such as if the player wants to find a wizard guild in a city that hates arcane spellcasters. Sometimes there will be success with a consequence, or failure with a consequence. Outright failure is okay, since there are many avenues to success. A failure isn't a failure at the goal, but just at that step in the process.



I wrote the preceding paragraphs before reading this. It seems pretty consistent with what I wrote, so I'm leaving what I wrote unchanged and don't see the need to add anything more.



Maxperson said:


> Why is it okay for your players to trigger you to say stuff, but you speak like it's something to be avoided when discussing other playstyles?



All RPGing involves conversation. In this post just above, and in many earlier posts, I have tried to make it fairly clear what I am talking about.

_Investigation_ and _exploration_, in the sense that (eg) [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] talks about them, mean the players making moves that have no result but the GM relating more stuff about the gameworld (either read from notes, or made up on the spot but having the same status as if it were read from notes). Paradigms of this sort of RPGing are CoC modules and "story"-style D&D modules like Dead Gods.

The player trying to find a marketplace or a wizard or a curio shop that might sell items is, in a GH-driven game, almost certainly going to be this sort of RPGing.

What I am contrasting it with is action declaration whose success or failure doesn't simply change what the players know about the shared fiction, but actually changes the content of the shared fiction in some salient fashion - eg _I search the study for the map_, if it succeeds, yields the result that the PC has found the map; or _I read the aura of the feather to identify any useful traits_, if it succeeds, yields the result that the feather has useful traits; etc.



Maxperson said:


> One of the things that pre-authoring adds that your style doesn't have, is the ability for both the DM and the players to draw from that large pool of pre-authored content.  I have been running primarily the Forgotten Realms since 1e.  If the players are in Baldur's Gate, they know many of the pre-authored elements and can draw from those.  The player might tell me, "I go find some Flaming Fists to take this lost girl back to her parents."  He has drawn on the depth of the world as an aid to what he wants to do.  That's not something that's really available in your game.  Your game lacks that depth



Well, in the first session of my BW game - the one with the angel feather - the PCs interacted with a sorcerous cabal, its local leader Jabal, and a peddler who had purchased various items from a dishevelled man whom they later saw in Jabal's tower.

As [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] said, this sort of stuff doesn't depend upon pre-authorship.

Or is _depth_ a reference not to the actual possibility of story elements, but rather something about their emotional resonance with the participants?



Maxperson said:


> The important thing is that I am not dictating the process or how the process is to work. I'm not going to the player and saying "Your brother is possessed by a Balrog. If you want him to be free, you have to do A, B, C, D and E."



You haven't really said anything about how you would adjudicate the attempt to free the brother. How do you establish if a shop (or market, or wizard, or whatever) has a useful item? How do you determine what _counts_ as a useful item?

What sort of check would be involved?



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What difference that is important to you are you saying that I'm disregarding?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That my playstyle is nothing like a choose your own adventure book, or a railroad, or the other negative lights you have tried to shine on it.
Click to expand...


It's clear to me that, to you, the difference between _the GM reading from notes_ and _the GM making stuff up and giving it the same status as if it was on his/her notes_ is important.

A long way (as in, many many hundreds of posts) upthread I explained why I don't see the difference as that significant. It's because, as long as the GM treats this made-up stuff as if it were in his/her notes, player action declarations really have the status of suggestions for what the shared fiction might contain. There is no robust resolution with finality.

Whereas you seem to regard it as very important that (unlike what _you_ would call a railroad) the GM is taking suggestions.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> I've read a few of your BW play reports that featured combat.  In one I recall more clearly, your character was accosted by orcs for failing a check to determine what happened at a sacked farmhouse, and the combat lacked a good deal of tactical depth as well.  At no point did it appear you had options to limit danger occurring or make tactical choices about fictional position to mitigate danger that did appear.



That particular melee was resolved using the Fight! subsystem.

Fight! is resolved in exchanges consisting of three volleys each. At the start of each exchange you have to blind script 3 volleys. The number of actions in each volley is a function of the Reflex score. The options that are available on each action are fairly standard for a fantasy RPG: strike, block (= parry in some systems), avoid (= dodge in a system like RQ), feint, counterstrike, tackle, push, lock (= grapple in some systems), etc.

At the top of each exchange you also have to declare a positioning manoeuvre (close, maintain or withdraw).

There are rules for changing the script of unresolved volleys following the resolution of a volley, but it requires forfeiture of actions.

All resolution is simultaneous, volley by volley (for positioning) and then action by action. (My PC, wearing armour, has only 3 actions. One thing I have to have regard to in scripting is that a 4 reflex opponent will have one volley with a second option following the first, against which I will have no corresponding action.)

I don't remember all the details of my scripting in that particular combat, but I do know that I used my positioning to protect my companion (an unarmoured mage); and then later on used positioning to try and reach my horse before the orcs did.

Plus there were the standard scripting choices of when to attack, etc.



Ovinomancer said:


> In player facing games, risk occurs no matter what on check failures or scene framing



In my Cortex+ Heroic game, one of the PCs (an orcale) has an ability that allows for the spending of resources (plot points) to reduce the size of a doom pool die. The player of that PC uses that ability to modulate risk (in particular, to try and stop the doom pool building up to contain 2d12, which the GM can spend to bring the scene to a peremptory close.

In BW, players can modulate risk in all sorts of ways - I've described some just above. In the first session of the campaign, the player of the mage initially thought about reaching out to the Gynarch of Hardby, but then decided to reach out to a lesser personage - Jabal - because the consequences of any blowback should things go wrong were likely to be less. That is player management of the stakes.

Because BW is a grity game, where equipment lists matter and gear can easily get lost or broken as a consequence of failure, where healing takes a long time ingame, and where periodic maintenance checks are necessary, logistics can also become important in a way that is not the case in Cortex+ Heroic or (my approach to) 4e.

In the original version of HeroWars, extended contest resolution involves a literal stake-setting system in which participants stake more or fewer action points on an exchange - with zero action points remaining meaning los of the contest. HeroQuest revised maintains a less mathematically and mechanically intricate version of this system.

Dogs in the Vineyard allows the player, at every point of resolution, to choose to yield (so as to avoid the risk of fallout) or to escalate (so as to try and get more and better dice, at the risk of more extreme fallout).

Etc.



Ovinomancer said:


> there's limited logistical (when to rest, stocking up on potions/scrolls, spell expenditure rates, etc) or tactical (posting guards while a player engages in a time consuming task, having weapons drawn, scouting locations, etc) choices to make.  This is because, as a design feature, scene framing is already at a crisis point



Again, this sounds like you're not that familiar with a cross-section of systems.

Having weapons drawn absolutely matters in BW. (In Fight! it's two actions to draw a sword.) In my Marvel Heroic game, in one session War Machine began the session in his civvies (so as to earn a bonus plot point) and then later on had to make a successful check against the Doom Pool in order to have his armour fly to him so he could suit up.

In my Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy game, when the PCs came to a giants' steading the scout PC scouted it (initially establishing an Overview of the Steading Interior Asset by climbing up the pallisade, and then establishing a Giant Ox asset by spotting said ox in the giants' barn). This is tactical choice at the table, as it consumes actions (which might otherwise be spent on, say, fighting or talking) and - in this context - it fed into an approach based on social resolution (by trying to sell the giants' ox back to them, relying on their dimwittedness) rather than fighting.

The significance of these tactical choices is different - in the Cortex+ game (which is a viking game) the player is taking us in the more comedic direction of contests where Thor is trying to drink the ocean or wrestle Jormungandur, rather than the drama of the Ragnarok. And in BW, if you can't make your maintenance check then the game is probably not going to just end with your PC starving in the gutter - the GM might frame that scene ("You've no money, no food, your landlord has kicked you out, you're sitting in the gutter wondering what to do . . .") but then would follow up with something like ('" . . and then a coach pulls up, and Jabal's head pokes out - 'Jobe, I see that you've fallen on hard times'").

But they're there, in different forms dealing with different subject matter in different games, and they matter to how events unfold in the fiction.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> My point here is the same as in relation to risk-mitigation in a city encounter: if there is no finality of resolution, and if management and consequences of unrevealed elements of backstory is entirely in the GM's hands (as in your example upthread of the PC mage who charmed the NPC and thereby made and enemy of the duke), then how does the player reliably work towards his/her PC becoming king?



I've dreamed up several examples in this thread but I don't think the mage-NPC-duke is one of mine.

Finality of resolution doesn't happen in this case until the PC either becomes king or fails beyond hope of redemption.  All other intermediate resolutions are just that - stepping stones.

Which brings up a question: in your system can a PC ultimately outright fail at its intended goal, and if so, what happens?  Example: if my goal is to be king, and we get to some climactic point that determines whether I get the throne or not, and I somehow blow it either by bad dice luck or follish actions - what then?



> My point is that that is not a _story _- it's just an event.



It can be an event within a larger story, or a small story (or self-contained chapter) unto itself.



> Your second paragraph refutes your first! Story is not an ever-present element of play if your story unfolds only over hours and hours of actual play time.



Sure it is.  It just takes longer to unfold.

Similar to watching a TV series like the original Star Trek where each episode's story was wound up within that episode, vs. watching a series like the new Battlestar Galactica where the story - though always lurking in either the background or the foreground - takes four complete seasons to fully unfold.



> It's fairly modest agency - it doesn't actually establish any shared fiction, it just vetoes one of the GM's offerings.



And in so doing moves toward establishing what fiction is going to be shared: we're not going to be sharing any fiction about taking down the Baron, as that fiction isn't of interest.



> At every moment of play, the GM is establishing the situation the PCs find themselves in. The fact that they speak to dramatic need  ("You're in a bazaar. A peddler claims to have an angel feather for sale.") rather than not ("As you walk from the great hall to the reliquary, you pass through an intersection") doesn't reduce the scope for player choice.



As you may have gathered, I rather disagree with this statement.



> <play example>



Was Halika an NPC or someone else's PC?



> So there are two approaches to framing, if the player has as a goal for his/her PC "I will find an item to help confront my balrog-possessed brother before leaving town":
> 
> (1) The GM tells the player "You're in a bazaar, with a peddler offering an angel feather for sale. What do you do?"
> 
> (2) The GM tells the player "You're in the town. What do you do?
> 
> The content in (1) itself reflects player agency - it is the GM directly engaging the player's statement of dramatic need. The content in (2) does not.



The content in (1) reflects less player agency than the content in (2) does.  In and of themselves they are equal statements - in each case the player is looking for an item for a specific reason but has (I must assume) no idea what that item may be or even if it can be found in this town, and in eac case the DM is trying to jumpstart that process.  Both speak to the agency exercised by the player in setting that goal, to find an item to help his brother out.  But (1) railroads the player straight to the (or a) possible solution, while (2) gives the player the agency of choice in how to approach the search for the item.

(1) certainly saves a lot of time if you-as-DM already know the feather is the key...but in theory you don't already know that, and in fact the feather turned out to be a false lead.

As a player, I know my answer to (1) would be "How did I get here, who is with me, why am I here, and what else is around me?" where for (2) it would be some version of "I look for information via rumours, sages, and bardic tales; and ask my erstwhile companions to please do likewise on my behalf".



> And if the GM calls for a check (say, Streetwise), then what happens if it fails? Now the focus of play is not on what the player has flagged (ie finding a useful item) but on something the GM has decided to make a big deal of (ie finding a place where items might be sold). Again, the player now has to start declaring different moves that (whether via the GM saying "yes", or due to successful checks) that eventually result in the Gm describing the PC as being in a place where a potentially useful item is on sale. It's all that stuff that I describe as making moves whose purpose is to get the GM to say more stuff about the gameworld.



If the DM hasn't told me what I need to know (which in this case is perfectly reasonable as there's no good reason yet for my PC to know it) then I have to get that information somehow.  It's called exploration, in this case exploration of the game world; and it's a fundamental element of most fantasy RPGs.

Lanefan


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> That particular melee was resolved using the Fight! subsystem.
> 
> Fight! is resolved in exchanges consisting of three volleys each. At the start of each exchange you have to blind script 3 volleys. The number of actions in each volley is a function of the Reflex score. The options that are available on each action are fairly standard for a fantasy RPG: strike, block (= parry in some systems), avoid (= dodge in a system like RQ), feint, counterstrike, tackle, push, lock (= grapple in some systems), etc.
> 
> At the top of each exchange you also have to declare a positioning manoeuvre (close, maintain or withdraw).
> 
> There are rules for changing the script of unresolved volleys following the resolution of a volley, but it requires forfeiture of actions.
> 
> All resolution is simultaneous, volley by volley (for positioning) and then action by action. (My PC, wearing armour, has only 3 actions. One thing I have to have regard to in scripting is that a 4 reflex opponent will have one volley with a second option following the first, against which I will have no corresponding action.)
> 
> I don't remember all the details of my scripting in that particular combat, but I do know that I used my positioning to protect my companion (an unarmoured mage); and then later on used positioning to try and reach my horse before the orcs did.
> 
> Plus there were the standard scripting choices of when to attack, etc.
> 
> In my Cortex+ Heroic game, one of the PCs (an orcale) has an ability that allows for the spending of resources (plot points) to reduce the size of a doom pool die. The player of that PC uses that ability to modulate risk (in particular, to try and stop the doom pool building up to contain 2d12, which the GM can spend to bring the scene to a peremptory close.
> 
> In BW, players can modulate risk in all sorts of ways - I've described some just above. In the first session of the campaign, the player of the mage initially thought about reaching out to the Gynarch of Hardby, but then decided to reach out to a lesser personage - Jabal - because the consequences of any blowback should things go wrong were likely to be less. That is player management of the stakes.
> 
> Because BW is a grity game, where equipment lists matter and gear can easily get lost or broken as a consequence of failure, where healing takes a long time ingame, and where periodic maintenance checks are necessary, logistics can also become important in a way that is not the case in Cortex+ Heroic or (my approach to) 4e.
> 
> In the original version of HeroWars, extended contest resolution involves a literal stake-setting system in which participants stake more or fewer action points on an exchange - with zero action points remaining meaning los of the contest. HeroQuest revised maintains a less mathematically and mechanically intricate version of this system.
> 
> Dogs in the Vineyard allows the player, at every point of resolution, to choose to yield (so as to avoid the risk of fallout) or to escalate (so as to try and get more and better dice, at the risk of more extreme fallout).
> 
> Etc.
> 
> Again, this sounds like you're not that familiar with a cross-section of systems.
> 
> Having weapons drawn absolutely matters in BW. (In Fight! it's two actions to draw a sword.) In my Marvel Heroic game, in one session War Machine began the session in his civvies (so as to earn a bonus plot point) and then later on had to make a successful check against the Doom Pool in order to have his armour fly to him so he could suit up.
> 
> In my Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy game, when the PCs came to a giants' steading the scout PC scouted it (initially establishing an Overview of the Steading Interior Asset by climbing up the pallisade, and then establishing a Giant Ox asset by spotting said ox in the giants' barn). This is tactical choice at the table, as it consumes actions (which might otherwise be spent on, say, fighting or talking) and - in this context - it fed into an approach based on social resolution (by trying to sell the giants' ox back to them, relying on their dimwittedness) rather than fighting.
> 
> The significance of these tactical choices is different - in the Cortex+ game (which is a viking game) the player is taking us in the more comedic direction of contests where Thor is trying to drink the ocean or wrestle Jormungandur, rather than the drama of the Ragnarok. And in BW, if you can't make your maintenance check then the game is probably not going to just end with your PC starving in the gutter - the GM might frame that scene ("You've no money, no food, your landlord has kicked you out, you're sitting in the gutter wondering what to do . . .") but then would follow up with something like ('" . . and then a coach pulls up, and Jabal's head pokes out - 'Jobe, I see that you've fallen on hard times'").
> 
> But they're there, in different forms dealing with different subject matter in different games, and they matter to how events unfold in the fiction.




It's amusing that you cut out the bits of my post where I specifically point out those mechanics that are after the fact resource expenditures to reduce consequences and then present these exact things as if it refutes my argument.  I'm specifically taking about action declaration to reduce or mitigate risk which is why I called out the post-hoc mechanics.

And, yes, I'm aware BW uses a more complicated combat mechanic, and one that is especially brutal and difficult to use.  This isn't common in player-facing games, though, so it's not really a good example of the nature of the genre, just of itself.  That said, the combat mechanics of BW are really designed to make fighting a bad choice -- both from the player perspective by being so overly complicated compared to the rest of the system, and from the character perspective in that even a simple combat has a reasonable chance of leaving you dead.  As such, it's brutality is more of a push to keep the game away from combat rather than a wealth of tactical choices available to the player.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> I think you completely missed what I was saying, as this response isn't at all responsive to my point.  You've actually said, in more words, what I was saying:  the players in the player facing game who choose to sit and drink in the tavern as a goal will not have a choice in having that agenda challenged by the GM.



OK, do you hear yourself? You're complaining about a 'weakness' in a style of play based on the hypothesis that the players DON'T ACTUALLY WANT TO PLAY AN FRPG AT ALL! There's no need for any kind of an RPG in order to sit around the kitchen table tipping a few! This is meaningless in any realistic discussion of actual RPGs in the real world, which is exactly what my comment was about (FYI it started "I don't agree that this is true in practice" lol). Its another 'spherical cow', only its even MORE divorced from the real world than my endless maze was (which could actually exist as a game, though a very limited one). Nobody EVER does what you're proposing, ever. 

More realistically, perhaps sometimes in our group we'd get together with the intent to play and there wouldn't be much energy in it and we'd dither and fiddle and not really focus on doing much. I don't see why a Story Now game is any different, and it isn't IME. Now and then you just sit around the table shooting the  and maybe the PCs work on some project or other, invent a new spell, write a song, etc. That exists in my game, and it even has mechanical support! Its called an 'interlude', no dice are ever touched during this mode of play. It handles transitions and scenes you want to play out but that don't really contain any outright conflict. 

But the idea that entire games run this way all the time, to the point where a system that introduces action to the game is actually unwanted and subverts play? I find that to be ludicrous TBH. Objecting on that basis is going too far.



> The GM in player facing games, by using the design goal of going to the action, skips all the logistical and tactical choices players may engage in and places the agenda of the players in crisis, forcing them to deal with whatever events have placed the agenda into crisis.



OK, slow down a little bit here. Just because Story Now 'goes to the action' doesn't mean it is endless cliff-hangers with nothing else in between. It means that the narrative moves to what engages the primary concerns of the PCs (and thus by extension the players, or sometimes directly of the players). Yes, there will be action, adventure, and conflict, and there will be crises, that's what creates/results from dramatic movement. However to think that every single time the GM frames the next scene that it is some sort of flaming catastrophe that the characters are instantly thrust into the middle of is badly misrepresenting the concept.

Think of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s last example, of the bazaar and the feather and whatnot. Is there a 'crisis' going on in the bazaar? No, its relevant to the agenda of the character in question, and there's 'action' in the sense of an investigatory and preparatory scene. Nobody is in bodily danger, there's no combat, nothing of the sort. If the characters want to simply wander around the bazaar then I'm sure they can. Probably something will come up that engages their needs pretty soon. It might focus on a different character, or introduce some other new element. It might lead to an action sequence of some sort, etc. 

Yes, there will be a good bit of action in a game of this kind, however action is defined in the genre in play. I tend to think of most games as being sort of modeled on something like 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', there's 'talky bits' where story is established and character relationships are developed, and there are action sequences where 'stuff happens', and there are, now and then, travel montages and similar things. They are all interspersed to produce a narrative with pace and drama which follows a story arc that engages the characters dramatically. The exact contents of this arc are largely up to the players in terms of what they choose to be interested in, and then made concrete and given direction by the framing of the GM. 



> This isn't a bad thing, and I'm not criticizing it (I'm running a Blades in the Dark game tomorrow night, as a matter of fact, and will be doing this with wild abandon), but it is a true thing.  As I've said before, I'm running Blades on an off night because I have two players uninterested in the play, and who will not be attending.  They like the logistics/tactical play in my much more DM facing 5e game.




Its not a 'true thing', it may well be a TYPE of game which is Story Now, and Blades in the Dark may well exemplify it, I don't know. It isn't a universal. Story Now can be as measured and contain as many kinds of material and establish whatever pace it is that the GM and players feel comfortable with. If the players want to blather around drinking in taverns much of the time, then I'm sure you can do that with any system, it doesn't even take rules! I would suggest that these scenes be played out in a more summary fashion than a combat, where you go by the minute or even second, but its not required that the game be rushed along just because it centers on the PCs.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> These things go together. In Story Now there is only NOW, the non-existence of elaborate backstory and canonical setting means that there won't BE a situation where the player's need is met with "no, the world just isn't like that, its impossible" for no other reason than the GM authored it that way (or FR book XYZ says so, etc.). This comes right back to the central question of the thread, what exactly is this pre-authored content DOING? We KNOW its supplying these kinds of limitations on play, as you've stated this is the case (albeit you say 'very rarely' which is important in practical terms but not so much in a theoretical sense).




As I said, those instances are very, rare.  It's very unlikely for the party to be in an area like that,  and very unlikely to be unaware of those anti-arcane sentiments, so the players won't be looking for a wizard in the first place.  I'm a firm believe on not basing what I do on possible outliers occurring.  

As for what pre-authored content is doing, it's giving the world far more depth than any player facing game can achieve.  That depth gives the world a different feel than one where the world pretty much doesn't exist outside of the PCs and what is authored in the moment.  That content also gives both the players and the DM more to draw upon when roleplaying.  Without such content, you are limited by both your ability to improvise.  With the content, you have your ability to improvise, plus pre-authored content to draw upon.  

I'm sure that there is increased depth in other areas of player facing games.  Exploration of character being one of them.  



> I don't think the 'Flaming Fists' example is really all that compelling either. I mean, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] could invoke something like that in one of his games too, it just wouldn't be a pre-established thing.




And that is a loss of world depth.



> It might even BE pre-established in the sense of being a fixture of a particular genre or something. Its true, someone may 'come up with a name on the fly', and this is one of the various proposed uses of world building. I guess we could move forward into an analysis of exactly 'how much is too much' etc. That might be interesting.



I think it would be.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, do you hear yourself? You're complaining about a 'weakness' in a style of play based on the hypothesis that the players DON'T ACTUALLY WANT TO PLAY AN FRPG AT ALL! There's no need for any kind of an RPG in order to sit around the kitchen table tipping a few! This is meaningless in any realistic discussion of actual RPGs in the real world, which is exactly what my comment was about (FYI it started "I don't agree that this is true in practice" lol). Its another 'spherical cow', only its even MORE divorced from the real world than my endless maze was (which could actually exist as a game, though a very limited one). Nobody EVER does what you're proposing, ever.



This is highly disingenuous of you, as I didn't create the example and I was responding to your use of it exactly how you used it.  It's difficult enough having this discussion, as you're now reacting as many did to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s original points in a very defensive manner to analysis of your preferred playstyle.  This seizing on my using the example YOU used to try and paint me as being unreasonable isn't appreciated.



> More realistically, perhaps sometimes in our group we'd get together with the intent to play and there wouldn't be much energy in it and we'd dither and fiddle and not really focus on doing much. I don't see why a Story Now game is any different, and it isn't IME. Now and then you just sit around the table shooting the  and maybe the PCs work on some project or other, invent a new spell, write a song, etc. That exists in my game, and it even has mechanical support! Its called an 'interlude', no dice are ever touched during this mode of play. It handles transitions and scenes you want to play out but that don't really contain any outright conflict.
> 
> But the idea that entire games run this way all the time, to the point where a system that introduces action to the game is actually unwanted and subverts play? I find that to be ludicrous TBH. Objecting on that basis is going too far.



Sigh.  Nothing in my analysis says you can't do this.  I'm pointing out that the primary focus of play is to cut to crisis.  I think it's disingenuous to try to intimate otherwise.



> OK, slow down a little bit here. Just because Story Now 'goes to the action' doesn't mean it is endless cliff-hangers with nothing else in between. It means that the narrative moves to what engages the primary concerns of the PCs (and thus by extension the players, or sometimes directly of the players). Yes, there will be action, adventure, and conflict, and there will be crises, that's what creates/results from dramatic movement. However to think that every single time the GM frames the next scene that it is some sort of flaming catastrophe that the characters are instantly thrust into the middle of is badly misrepresenting the concept.
> 
> Think of  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s last example, of the bazaar and the feather and whatnot. Is there a 'crisis' going on in the bazaar? No, its relevant to the agenda of the character in question, and there's 'action' in the sense of an investigatory and preparatory scene. Nobody is in bodily danger, there's no combat, nothing of the sort. If the characters want to simply wander around the bazaar then I'm sure they can. Probably something will come up that engages their needs pretty soon. It might focus on a different character, or introduce some other new element. It might lead to an action sequence of some sort, etc.
> 
> Yes, there will be a good bit of action in a game of this kind, however action is defined in the genre in play. I tend to think of most games as being sort of modeled on something like 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', there's 'talky bits' where story is established and character relationships are developed, and there are action sequences where 'stuff happens', and there are, now and then, travel montages and similar things. They are all interspersed to produce a narrative with pace and drama which follows a story arc that engages the characters dramatically. The exact contents of this arc are largely up to the players in terms of what they choose to be interested in, and then made concrete and given direction by the framing of the GM.



"Crisis" is the point at which the player's agenda is challenged.  The framed situation is supposed to challenge the player's agenda in a way that will reveal something about it.  The feather in [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s example directly challenges the players belief:  is this feather what I need.  A success moves toward that goal, a failure causes the feather to be cursed -- which the player now needs to deal with before returning to his agenda.  This is a crisis point -- either you succeed or you're dealt a serious setback (or failure) to your agenda.  Take a look at the dictionary definition of crisis -- it doesn't mean "catastrophe" it merely means a point at which the future hinges.  That seems an excellent description of the kind of things a GM is supposed to frame the player agenda into.

Both you and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] have misunderstood the use of crisis and assumed some form of catastrophic situation.  The feather was a crisis -- the resolution of the player action created a decisive change in the fiction.  That's what a crisis is.  I know it's a shock for someone to use the actual definitions of words in this thread, but that's me, I'm a rebel.



> Its not a 'true thing', it may well be a TYPE of game which is Story Now, and Blades in the Dark may well exemplify it, I don't know. It isn't a universal. Story Now can be as measured and contain as many kinds of material and establish whatever pace it is that the GM and players feel comfortable with. If the players want to blather around drinking in taverns much of the time, then I'm sure you can do that with any system, it doesn't even take rules! I would suggest that these scenes be played out in a more summary fashion than a combat, where you go by the minute or even second, but its not required that the game be rushed along just because it centers on the PCs.



Then the description of Story Now is a lie.  Considering it's not, this is really just an example of you not grasping what I mean by crisis.  And what I mean is the dictionary definition of the word.  The job of the GM in a Story Now game is to go to the action and put the player's agendas into crisis.  This leads to the snowball of play where consecutive crises create a memorable game.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Finality of resolution doesn't happen in this case until the PC either becomes king or fails beyond hope of redemption.  All other intermediate resolutions are just that - stepping stones.
> 
> Which brings up a question: in your system can a PC ultimately outright fail at its intended goal, and if so, what happens?  Example: if my goal is to be king, and we get to some climactic point that determines whether I get the throne or not, and I somehow blow it either by bad dice luck or follish actions - what then?



Of course you can fail! Addressing the dramatic needs of the character is not the same as a plot where the character always succeeds. It would be perfectly apt for this goal to slip out of the character's fingers. Probably, if its really done in a cool way, it will represent the resolution of some sort of character flaw or a price that the character paid at some point, that is a consequence of their previous actions. A key NPC will betray them because the PC injured her, or maybe the character will realize some higher goal or aspiration. Maybe giving up his dream to be king because it is in the better interests of the people, and 'Nobility is more important than Kingship' or something. It is always possible to address various themes in a game like this too, maybe such a thread runs through the whole game! It could be the REAL underlying conflict, between duty and ambition, etc.

In terms of finality of resolution, I look at it much like action movies. Again I always go back to Raiders of the Lost Ark as sort of the archetypal pattern. There ARE reverses, Indy and Marion find the location of the ark and then the Nazi's show up and take it away. In game terms that might be a FAILURE to find the ark (a failed check). It would be an example of 'fail forward'. A true success doesn't get reversed. When Indy gets the head of the Staff of Ra, he's achieved something that is never reversed. Even though the bad guy has half the inscription burned into his hand he's still missing the final clue. This presumably was acquired in game terms by successful action resolution.

In terms of quest to become King, the PC would maybe undermine his rivals, and each one so disposed of would no longer represent a threat. They wouldn't pop back up and suddenly be in contention again. The NPC might still play another part in the action, but only as a defeated rival. There wouldn't be some unrevealed backstory that subverted or reversed finalized actions. If such an NPC DID become a rival again it would be as a consequence of specific events which happened within the continuing narrative based on further actions and checks made by the PC/player. It would be EXPLICIT, although it is perfectly fine if the narrative explains it in terms of factors the PC didn't know about at the time. The key is that in no case would the defeated rival simply reappear due to factors happening offstage which didn't involve the players in any way that they could understand or have a chance to control. At most it might be something like "You hear word from your spies that Baron X is attempting to raise an army in his home province! What do you do about it?" or something like that. If the answer is 'nothing', well maybe the guy becomes a threat again, but in game mechanical terms its really a NEW threat. 



> It can be an event within a larger story, or a small story (or self-contained chapter) unto itself.
> 
> Sure it is.  It just takes longer to unfold.
> 
> Similar to watching a TV series like the original Star Trek where each episode's story was wound up within that episode, vs. watching a series like the new Battlestar Galactica where the story - though always lurking in either the background or the foreground - takes four complete seasons to fully unfold.



In terms of games you can do either one of these things with Story Now. Its merely a convention of the specific game and table conventions as to how you approach RPG play. You could establish a game with episodic characters where each independent story arc resolves in one session if you want, there are games like this.  In fact I'd say they are almost entirely story telling games of some sort. As soon as you invoke persistent characters you start to have longer-term play. In Star Trek Captain Kirk is bounded in his actions by the dictates of Star Fleet. In a purely episodic game he could just ignore them, but in an ongoing game he has to factor in the consequences of defying orders. 

One way to play an episodic Star Trek would be to make the PCs less significant characters. Instead of playing Captain Kirk, you'd play some minor character, or even a character that appears only for a single episode. The players work out the story for the visit to that 'planet' (or whatever it is) and the resolution of those character's interests, and then next time MAYBE they reuse some of them, and maybe not. A TNG RPG OTOH would have the PCs as ongoing characters, probably always crew members or some such. They could be the ship's officers or lesser characters depending on the setup of the game, it wouldn't really matter too much. I'd think being the bridge crew would be the standard setup. This is how the old FASA Star Trek game worked. It was a pretty good game actually, the semi-episodic format of classic Star Trek lent itself pretty well to a series of adventures. I wouldn't say it was a Story Now type of system though, more similar to CoC or something like that.



> And in so doing moves toward establishing what fiction is going to be shared: we're not going to be sharing any fiction about taking down the Baron, as that fiction isn't of interest.
> 
> As you may have gathered, I rather disagree with this statement.



Exactly, you aren't interested in Story Now. It was just posited as the starting point for the discussion of World Building at the start of the thread. 



> The content in (1) reflects less player agency than the content in (2) does.  In and of themselves they are equal statements - in each case the player is looking for an item for a specific reason but has (I must assume) no idea what that item may be or even if it can be found in this town, and in eac case the DM is trying to jumpstart that process.  Both speak to the agency exercised by the player in setting that goal, to find an item to help his brother out.  But (1) railroads the player straight to the (or a) possible solution, while (2) gives the player the agency of choice in how to approach the search for the item.



I disagree that there is any 'railroading' in (1). The player established the terms of his agenda, not the GM. How could it be railroading? The game is about what the player decided it would be about. All the GM is doing is describing a scene in which the player's agenda, what he WANTS the scene to be about, is realized. It could hardly be MORE a matter of player agency, unless you want to go to a 'conch passing exercise', which IMHO isn't really even an RPG in most cases (IE players author content jointly or something like that).

(2) OTOH is an example of GM agency at its utmost. The GM is deciding where the character is and what he's engaging with, and there is no regard there for any player input, at least not in any formal explicit way. If the GM considers what the player wants it is entirely HIS choice to engage with it, or not. The player can choose the action of his character, but he isn't even guaranteed to be able to acquire enough information to make a choice that relates to his agenda, let along actually engage it directly. He may well simply be left engaging with some GM constructed plot and setting elements that were created without any reference whatsoever to what he wants to do. This is in fact the definition of 'sandbox'! Sure, the players can then start to try to construct some kind of engagement with their own interests, but they're STILL dependent on the GM to go along, and the GM has potentially infinite reserves of plot power (IE arguments based on some sort of 'causes') with which to move the plot in any direction he desires.

Now, in (1), the players agency is NOT absolute, the GM determines the details of the scene frame and thus initial fictional positioning at each point, BUT the scenes will address things that interest the players. In (2) there's just no guarantee of anything. While a 'good GM' may find it wise to give some credence to player agendas this is by no means universal nor consistent IME. I've played in games where the action followed a direction almost entirely of the GM's choosing. Skillful GMs CAN very definitely make this work, but it isn't the same at all as (1).



> (1) certainly saves a lot of time if you-as-DM already know the feather is the key...but in theory you don't already know that, and in fact the feather turned out to be a false lead.
> 
> As a player, I know my answer to (1) would be "How did I get here, who is with me, why am I here, and what else is around me?" where for (2) it would be some version of "I look for information via rumours, sages, and bardic tales; and ask my erstwhile companions to please do likewise on my behalf".



Again, I don't think that Story Now dictates that the PCs can never be in the position of looking for information. Sometimes, given the positioning they are in, it may be a fine option. I will say again that in my own rules system there ARE 'interludes', which are really designed for this sort of thing (sometimes an SC works too, it depends on whether there are significant stakes or not). Usually what I find is that the dramatic pacing and player signals will indicate when such a point has been reached. Often its quite obvious, and something like a montage is generate. The character acquires some training, goes up a level, establishes some social contacts, arrives at a new location, etc.



> If the DM hasn't told me what I need to know (which in this case is perfectly reasonable as there's no good reason yet for my PC to know it) then I have to get that information somehow.  It's called exploration, in this case exploration of the game world; and it's a fundamental element of most fantasy RPGs.
> 
> Lanefan




Exploration is fine, but most explorers have a goal in mind. At the most extreme end of the spectrum it might be 'play tourist', but then chances are, after some 'tourism montage' perhaps, the action arrives at "and as you step out of the carriage 4 scruffy men armed with daggers jump out of the ally and demand all your money!" Are you going to surrender the cash needed to be a tourist or fight? Or maybe its a little more subtle, the police knock at your door. "Why were you in the Louvre this morning? Did you see this man? Come down to the station with us right now!" 

I mean, sure, if you REALLY want a game about being a tourist, I'm not averse to that. If its PURELY that, then maybe a Story Now type of system isn't ideal? I just think these cases are pretty contrived. Having played RPGs of all sorts for decades I can certainly say that there should be some 'meat' and I'm going to want it to be the cut of meat I ordered up. I WANT the GM to be creative and produce evocative scenes and generate plenty of backstory and revelation and whatnot in play, I just don't want to have to deal with endless wandering around in irrelevant details. Only so much fiction can be generated in each gaming session. Lets make it relevant fiction, IMHO.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> I'm sure that there is increased depth in other areas of player facing games.  Exploration of character being one of them.
> 
> And that is a loss of world depth.
> 
> I think it would be.




I'm not CONVINCED BTW that Story Now worlds 'lack depth' that is present in other games. I think, in practical terms, there's not a big divide there, but the subtopic is "What is the ideal dividing line between established elements and an open 'blank slate' world?" (maybe you can formulate the question more precisely or in a better way, feel free).

I think genre, and tone, do a LOT of work here. If we're playing a game of Noire detective stories then there's likely to be a Moll, a Damsel in Distress, a Hardbitten but Romantic PI, some bad guys, a fairly direct-seeming surface plot linking them together, and usually a nasty plot-twist somewhere along the way. There are likely to be subthemes of romanticism, betrayal, 'life is cheap', a sort of cynical world where people do things for selfish reasons, etc. 

So, a GM running this game would have access for scene framing to an urban landscape, characters such as cops, detectives, thugs, probably various women who play the parts of romantic interest and/or victim (and/or betrayer) etc. They will appear in the various scenes as needed, probably starting with the classic "PI in his office having a drink while contemplating his eviction notice when a damsel walks in" or something along those lines. The exact details would depend on who the characters are, and how they're described. The choices would be fairly limited in this genre though, as its a pretty niche one. 

I wouldn't think there would be a HUGE benefit to inventing endless details about 'the city'. It would be mostly urban backdrop. There might be a 'bar', an 'office', some dark alley, a warehouse, a few street scenes, etc. They can generally be described without needing to refer to the exact layouts of the neighborhood, roads, etc. Now and then it might be useful to know some physical details of a location in order to adjudicate action (fictional positioning) but mostly that's going to exist so as to serve the dramatic needs of the story (IE if the main character wants to slip out the back way then the bar has a back door and a check will resolve whether or not he makes it to the back alley without being intercepted). 

Obviously this sort of game WILL have some kind of central plot points that engage with the 'detective fiction' motif. There will be a 'murder' or 'robbery' or something that needs to be solved. The need to resolve this plot element will help to drive the scene framing. I would say that in this kind of game the GM would be very likely to establish the parameters of this element at the start in his mind, so that any clues and developments are logically connected to it. This is a genre constraint essentially, film noire plots are generally logically plausible and fairly coherent, and resolving the 'mystery' is, if not an actual player goal, at least part of the convention they are participating in and a structure-producing device. So, as a GM I would invent the main participants in the 'crime', its motivation, how and where it was executed, etc. I might not nail all these things down in ironclad details though. For example you could invent witnesses, alter or invent some of the details where it fits into the plot, etc. I think you'd also likely have plot twists and such in mind from the start, but these things could well be invented or altered on the fly if the narrative moves in a different direction than envisaged.

So, for this example, there's likely SOME 'world building', characters are invented, locations defined, and some plot elements mapped out, ahead of time. I think this is probably the sort of case that is most amenable to this kind of prearranged elements. Most other genre can be a bit looser.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> This is highly disingenuous of you, as I didn't create the example and I was responding to your use of it exactly how you used it.  It's difficult enough having this discussion, as you're now reacting as many did to @_*pemerton*_'s original points in a very defensive manner to analysis of your preferred playstyle.  This seizing on my using the example YOU used to try and paint me as being unreasonable isn't appreciated.
> 
> 
> Sigh.  Nothing in my analysis says you can't do this.  I'm pointing out that the primary focus of play is to cut to crisis.  I think it's disingenuous to try to intimate otherwise.



I only created the 'example' in order to exemplify how far from the norm of RPG play it is to posit characters who sit around doing nothing. IIRC it was perhaps [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] who originally asked a question like "what happens when the players don't want to engage in any agenda" and the line of discussion from there was in the vein of "why would this make sense as a game?" I think I have also touched on this again since you posted. Anyway, I don't think I was trying to misrepresent anyone's argument. I was simply drawing the logical inferences from it. If players refuse to really PLAY, then clearly the game will not work in a Story Now sense. It won't REALLY work in ANY sense, though I guess in a GM-directed game you can sort of have a kind of passive play



> "Crisis" is the point at which the player's agenda is challenged.  The framed situation is supposed to challenge the player's agenda in a way that will reveal something about it.  The feather in @_*pemerton*_'s example directly challenges the players belief:  is this feather what I need.  A success moves toward that goal, a failure causes the feather to be cursed -- which the player now needs to deal with before returning to his agenda.  This is a crisis point -- either you succeed or you're dealt a serious setback (or failure) to your agenda.  Take a look at the dictionary definition of crisis -- it doesn't mean "catastrophe" it merely means a point at which the future hinges.  That seems an excellent description of the kind of things a GM is supposed to frame the player agenda into.
> 
> Both you and @_*pemerton*_ have misunderstood the use of crisis and assumed some form of catastrophic situation.  The feather was a crisis -- the resolution of the player action created a decisive change in the fiction.  That's what a crisis is.  I know it's a shock for someone to use the actual definitions of words in this thread, but that's me, I'm a rebel.



OK, fair enough, I accept your definition of crisis. I just don't think that every scene is necessarily high stakes or has to address the primary belief/goal/agenda of the PC in the most head first fashion. In fact the specific belief of the PC in [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s example was kind of a 'secondary consideration', find something to save his brother before leaving town. So it was already kind of a side quest sort of thing. If it failed, then it would be addressed, but the primary goal of saving his brother would remain. 

Anyway, scenes can be pretty incremental. They might only involve some information gathering, maybe even just basic recon. Another factor is that there are usually multiple PCs, with somewhat disjoint agendas. So in any given scene it is usually more likely than not that a given player is simply supporting someone else's agenda. Ideally the scene speaks to everyone in SOME degree, but it may be pretty tangential to some character's interests. 

So, from a player perspective, things may be only episodically really a crisis for THEM. Imagine a 4e game. Each level of play notionally consists of 10 encounters with 1 or maybe 2 long rests separating them into 'adventuring days'. Lets imagine that each day fully engages the agendas of 2 of the 5 PCs (the rest perhaps resolve a minor quest). On average each character will engage directly slightly less than once per level of play, or maybe a bit more than that depending on details of pacing and structure. Lets call it 'once per level'. This, IME, is about how 4e works. Each character gets the 'spotlight' one time at each level of play, and engages in a crisis at that time, maybe roughly every 10 encounters will be about them specifically and exclusively. The rest of the time they'll be supporting cast to a certain extent. 



> Then the description of Story Now is a lie.  Considering it's not, this is really just an example of you not grasping what I mean by crisis.  And what I mean is the dictionary definition of the word.  The job of the GM in a Story Now game is to go to the action and put the player's agendas into crisis.  This leads to the snowball of play where consecutive crises create a memorable game.




OK, I understand what you are saying. I'm just saying that, in practice, what this amounts to is not that a character is at some pivotal point, a 'make or break' in every scene. As I noted above, this is probably typically in actual play not much the case at all. Each scene is significant to someone and will define where their story goes next, but often the 'crisis' may be pretty tactical in nature. Consider LoTR, the Fellowship could go over Caradharas, through the Gap of Rohan, or into the Mines of Moria. They eventually chose the later option. No doubt a different choice, assuming it was successfully resolved, would have led to a similar story later on. The fundamental shape of the conflict wasn't altered by the failure to use the Pass of Caradharas, Frodo still needed to travel to Mt Doom and cast the One Ring into the fire.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I only created the 'example' in order to exemplify how far from the norm of RPG play it is to posit characters who sit around doing nothing. IIRC it was perhaps [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] who originally asked a question like "what happens when the players don't want to engage in any agenda" and the line of discussion from there was in the vein of "why would this make sense as a game?" I think I have also touched on this again since you posted. Anyway, I don't think I was trying to misrepresent anyone's argument. I was simply drawing the logical inferences from it. If players refuse to really PLAY, then clearly the game will not work in a Story Now sense. It won't REALLY work in ANY sense, though I guess in a GM-directed game you can sort of have a kind of passive play



But you did try to paint me as unreasonable for following the example.  




> OK, fair enough, I accept your definition of crisis.



You mean the _actual definition_ of crisis.  It's not mine.



> I just don't think that every scene is necessarily high stakes or has to address the primary belief/goal/agenda of the PC in the most head first fashion. In fact the specific belief of the PC in  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s example was kind of a 'secondary consideration', find something to save his brother before leaving town. So it was already kind of a side quest sort of thing. If it failed, then it would be addressed, but the primary goal of saving his brother would remain.



You're contradicting [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], now, as he's said it was a player belief and not a side quest.  I agree with [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] -- the player gets to pick a limited number of things she cares about, it's not the GM's place to rank them or decide that this one isn't that important.



> Anyway, scenes can be pretty incremental. They might only involve some information gathering, maybe even just basic recon. Another factor is that there are usually multiple PCs, with somewhat disjoint agendas. So in any given scene it is usually more likely than not that a given player is simply supporting someone else's agenda. Ideally the scene speaks to everyone in SOME degree, but it may be pretty tangential to some character's interests.
> 
> So, from a player perspective, things may be only episodically really a crisis for THEM. Imagine a 4e game. Each level of play notionally consists of 10 encounters with 1 or maybe 2 long rests separating them into 'adventuring days'. Lets imagine that each day fully engages the agendas of 2 of the 5 PCs (the rest perhaps resolve a minor quest). On average each character will engage directly slightly less than once per level of play, or maybe a bit more than that depending on details of pacing and structure. Lets call it 'once per level'. This, IME, is about how 4e works. Each character gets the 'spotlight' one time at each level of play, and engages in a crisis at that time, maybe roughly every 10 encounters will be about them specifically and exclusively. The rest of the time they'll be supporting cast to a certain extent.



We weren't talking about spotlight time, but how play engages various kinds of agency.  Spotlight time isn't something unique to either playstyle, nor is it engaged with any real difference between the two.




> OK, I understand what you are saying. I'm just saying that, in practice, what this amounts to is not that a character is at some pivotal point, a 'make or break' in every scene. As I noted above, this is probably typically in actual play not much the case at all. Each scene is significant to someone and will define where their story goes next, but often the 'crisis' may be pretty tactical in nature. Consider LoTR, the Fellowship could go over Caradharas, through the Gap of Rohan, or into the Mines of Moria. They eventually chose the later option. No doubt a different choice, assuming it was successfully resolved, would have led to a similar story later on. The fundamental shape of the conflict wasn't altered by the failure to use the Pass of Caradharas, Frodo still needed to travel to Mt Doom and cast the One Ring into the fire.



The decision on which route to take wouldn't be a question generally framed into a scene by the GM, though.  As you've said, that's a free play setup question, not a scene.  Once the Fellowship chose the Mines, the GM of the Ring clearly framed the confrontation with the goblins which spiraled out of control into the confrontation with the Balrog, which had a serious consequence for the Fellowship (and Gandalf's player in particular).


----------



## Campbell

Here's what my experience coming from Apocalypse World and other games I have run using similar techniques has shown me: When you define characters first and then define the world around them the level of setting depth that develops around things is dependent on proximity to the characters - both geographically and logically. You might have only a feint idea of what is happening over in Bosnia, but you know that girl with the cute nose ring at the local coffee shop just quit. You really liked her. You might have some idea of why the elves left the forest, but you know why the king put your brother in the dungeon. You also get to kind of explore the world together as time goes on and we are forced to author new stuff so we have interesting stuff to play through.

It's a really big deal to me that characters feel *connected* to the foreground of the setting. That they are more than just individuals. A character needs to have drives, relationships, a family, and a place in the world. I find that building the world up around the characters makes this much easier to accomplish than going the other way around.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> But I am talking about a system that has finality of resolution: success means that the intent of the action declaration is realised.
> 
> I am also talking about a system in which stakes are express or implicit in the framing and the context of resolution: there are not unrevealed backstory elements that mean that an action resolution success might nevertheless mean that the PC actually goes _backwards_ in achieving his/her goal (compare [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s example upthread of the mage who charmed the NPC trying to preserve civic order, only to unknowingly make an enemy of the duke).
> 
> "Added challenge', in the context of GM manipulation of backstory together with an absence of finality in resolution, can be opaque to the player, may emerge or manifest itself at any time, and is not amenable to risk mitigation (as per some recent posts not far upthread).




But in your example there was no finality of resolution.  You told me that failure meant the feather was cursed, and that even if he succeeded, he still needed to get the feather enchanted and more.  If if the player's roll had succeeded in your example, there wouldn't have been any final resolution.  

I don't remember seeing his example, but in your description here, the player didn't go backwards.  The goal was civic order and the charm would seem(hard to tell without the original example) to have achieved or helped move that forward.  The duke as an enemy would a new, but separate issue



> So there are two approaches to framing, if the player has as a goal for his/her PC "I will find an item to help confront my balrog-possessed brother before leaving town":
> 
> (1) The GM tells the player "You're in a bazaar, with a peddler offering an angel feather for sale. What do you do?"
> 
> (2) The GM tells the player "You're in the town. What do you do?​
> The content in (1) itself reflects player agency - it is the GM directly engaging the player's statement of dramatic need. The content in (2) does not.
> 
> Suppose, following (1), the player declares some action in relation to the feather: _I offer 3 drachmas for it_ or _I read its aura to learn what useful magical traits it has._ The upshot of these are not _just_ the GM telling stuff to the player. It is the player establishing salient content of the shared fiction. If the offer to buy succeeds, the PC now owns the feather. If the attempt to read the aura succeeds, the PC learns of a useful trait the feather has. Conversely, if the check fails then an adverse consequence ensues - in this case, the feather is Resistant to Fire but also cursed.
> 
> Suppose, following (2), the player says "I look for a bazaar". If the GM simply says "yes", then the only difference that I see from what I described is that we spend 5 minutes of play getting to the action. It's certainly not the case that the player had to "work" for it in any other sense of "work".
> 
> If the GM says "No, there are no open markets in this town" then we already have hitherto unrevealed backstory being used by the GM to drive the direction of play. The player now has to start making other moves that will get the GM to tell him/her the stuff necesaary to get to where the action is. (Eg "OK, so I look for a curio shop instead" or "OK, I look for a wizard's tower" or whatever.)
> 
> And if the GM calls for a check (say, Streetwise), then what happens if it fails? Now the focus of play is not on what the player has flagged (ie finding a useful item) but on something the GM has decided to make a big deal of (ie finding a place where items might be sold). Again, the player now has to start declaring different moves that (whether via the GM saying "yes", or due to successful checks) that eventually result in the Gm describing the PC as being in a place where a potentially useful item is on sale. It's all that stuff that I describe as _making moves whose purpose is to get the GM to say more stuff about the gameworld_.




There are a number of things here.  First, with your example (1), outside of the very first moment of a campaign, you would be railroading the player if you did that.  I don't know if during gameplay you just put PCs into places and tell them what they are doing, but if you do, that would be railroading.  It removes the option from the player to go anywhere else.  

Second, with option 2, there will usually be more to it than "you're in the town.  What do you do?"  Were that my game and I knew the player was going into the town to try and find an item to free his brother, I would address that in my question.  It would more likely be "You walk through the gates of Waterdeep to find something that will help you free your brother.  This place is well known for having just about everything somewhere, so it's seems certain that you can succeed."  I'm not going to ask him what he wants to do most of the time, since it's pretty obvious that he is going to tell me what he wants to do.  I may not railroad him into the bazaar and stick him in front of an object, but I am addressing his goal.  It's also more than just 5 minutes of play getting to the action, and but that I don't mean that it necessarily takes longer.  I am allowing him more player agency by not forcing him into the bazaar.  He can try to seek the bazaar, a wizard, a sage, looking for a merchant guild, look for an old merchant buddy(depending on circumstances) that might have a contact, and many more options.  *HE* gets to decide how best to try and further his goal.

I also do not agree that calling for checks, etc. when trying to find an item shifts the focus of play away.  The goal is still the focus, even if there are intermediate steps and sometime setbacks through failed rolls, just like in your game with the failed roll making the feather cursed.  When I decide to walk around the block to the store instead of driving, deciding to cut through an alley instead of going to the corner doesn't alter the focus of my journey or change my goal.  If I walk past someone who says hi to me(rare in Los Angeles, but it does happen), pausing to say hi delays me(setback), but also doesn't shift my goal or the focus of my journey.  



> All RPGing involves conversation. In this post just above, and in many earlier posts, I have tried to make it fairly clear what I am talking about.
> 
> _Investigation_ and _exploration_, in the sense that (eg) [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] talks about them, mean the players making moves that have no result but the GM relating more stuff about the gameworld (either read from notes, or made up on the spot but having the same status as if it were read from notes). Paradigms of this sort of RPGing are CoC modules and "story"-style D&D modules like Dead Gods.
> 
> The player trying to find a marketplace or a wizard or a curio shop that might sell items is, in a GH-driven game, almost certainly going to be this sort of RPGing.
> 
> What I am contrasting it with is action declaration whose success or failure doesn't simply change what the players know about the shared fiction, but actually changes the content of the shared fiction in some salient fashion - eg _I search the study for the map_, if it succeeds, yields the result that the PC has found the map; or _I read the aura of the feather to identify any useful traits_, if it succeeds, yields the result that the feather has useful traits; etc.




So in your style of game the players just pop around from place to place only ever doing something relevant to the story?  There's never any interaction where the fiction won't change?  That's very railroady.  The player shows up at a bazaar, because you determined that his chance to change his fiction would be there, not because the player through his agency decided to go to the bazaar instead of a sage or wizard guild.  

In my style, the players have more agency to affect their goals. They determine which way to pursue things and they do change the fiction in meaningful ways.  It's just not an instant gratification process.  It may take 5 scenes to complete the change in fiction that they are initiating.  It's often slower(and often not), but allows them greater agency over the fiction by giving them far more options in how they go about enacting that change. 



> Well, in the first session of my BW game - the one with the angel feather - the PCs interacted with a sorcerous cabal, its local leader Jabal, and a peddler who had purchased various items from a dishevelled man whom they later saw in Jabal's tower.
> 
> As [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] said, this sort of stuff doesn't depend upon pre-authorship.
> 
> Or is _depth_ a reference not to the actual possibility of story elements, but rather something about their emotional resonance with the participants?




As I've already acknowledged in prior posts, your method does allow for some small amount of depth by going back to things previously authored in the campaign.  When the game world is fleshed out, you have much more depth of world to draw upon as both the DM and the player to add to the story.  There is still a great deal of improvisation involved with my style of play, though.  Even the Forgotten Realms, with all the pre-authored material it has, has only pre-authored less than 5% of the world and its inhabitants.  That little bit of pre-authorship is an aid that enhances the story being woven by the DM and players. 



> You haven't really said anything about how you would adjudicate the attempt to free the brother. How do you establish if a shop (or market, or wizard, or whatever) has a useful item? How do you determine what _counts_ as a useful item?
> 
> What sort of check would be involved?




How do I establish if a shop or whatever has a useful item?  Generally with a roll of some sort.  Sometimes, depending on circumstance there won't be a roll involved.  As 5e mentions, you only roll when the outcome is in doubt.  If the player is looking for a useful item in a flower pot store, the answer will be that there is no useful item there.  If the player has gone to someone the game has already determined would have items of the sort sought, the answer will be yes.  For the rest I determine the chances or DC, depending on the type of roll, and I leave it to chance.  The type of check will vary.  As for what counts as a useful item, I don't really understand that question.  Useful is useful.  If an item is useful, it will count as a useful item.  If not, not.  



> It's clear to me that, to you, the difference between _the GM reading from notes_ and _the GM making stuff up and giving it the same status as if it was on his/her notes_ is important.
> 
> A long way (as in, many many hundreds of posts) upthread I explained why I don't see the difference as that significant. It's because, as long as the GM treats this made-up stuff as if it were in his/her notes, player action declarations really have the status of suggestions for what the shared fiction might contain. There is no robust resolution with finality.
> 
> Whereas you seem to regard it as very important that (unlike what _you_ would call a railroad) the GM is taking suggestions.




I don't get how that's clear to you.  I've said more than once that to the PC, there is no difference between coming from notes and authored on the spot.  To the player, there also isn't much of a difference, except that stuff drawn from the world adds to depth and often, because so much is improvised anyway, the players don't know what is notes and what isn't.  Writing down that the innkeeper's name is Darmak and that he's a half-orc fighter with one arm is no different that coming up with it on the spot as far as the players are concerned.  In either case the innkeeper will be a one-armed half-orc named Darmak.  In neither case has their agency been infringed by his creation.

You also seem to be under the mistaken impression that if I write something down in my notes, that it can't change.  Written things are not final.  Player/PC actions will quite often affect how written down notes work.  I'll give you an example from my last game using the 3e rules.

The players arrived in a town after using an ability to go seeking an adventure where they would be able to help people and increase their fame.  I grabbed a scenario from an old dungeon magazine that involved a small town being afflicted by a disease that was turning the inhabitants into humanoid ooze creatures.  As I mentioned up thread, I will use scenarios and build dungeons in response to the players' goals.

The scenario was written with specific ways to identify people who were afflicted and what sorts of actions those under the effects would react to the PCs.   As it happens, though, one of the PCs had the scent ability, which completely upended that portion of the scenario. Rather than sticking to what was written and railroading things as you indicate my style likes to do, I tossed out the written notes and improvised.  The PC was able to smell the differences between those townsfolk and use that knowledge to cause that portion of the scenario played out very differently than what was written.  

What I write down is nothing more than an idea of how things might play out.  How things usually play out is very often different.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I'm not CONVINCED BTW that Story Now worlds 'lack depth' that is present in other games. I think, in practical terms, there's not a big divide there, but the subtopic is "What is the ideal dividing line between established elements and an open 'blank slate' world?" (maybe you can formulate the question more precisely or in a better way, feel free).
> 
> I think genre, and tone, do a LOT of work here. If we're playing a game of Noire detective stories then there's likely to be a Moll, a Damsel in Distress, a Hardbitten but Romantic PI, some bad guys, a fairly direct-seeming surface plot linking them together, and usually a nasty plot-twist somewhere along the way. There are likely to be subthemes of romanticism, betrayal, 'life is cheap', a sort of cynical world where people do things for selfish reasons, etc.
> 
> So, a GM running this game would have access for scene framing to an urban landscape, characters such as cops, detectives, thugs, probably various women who play the parts of romantic interest and/or victim (and/or betrayer) etc. They will appear in the various scenes as needed, probably starting with the classic "PI in his office having a drink while contemplating his eviction notice when a damsel walks in" or something along those lines. The exact details would depend on who the characters are, and how they're described. The choices would be fairly limited in this genre though, as its a pretty niche one.




This is the difference.  If you are setting the stage in a player-facing game, you make up those details as you go along and they fit the general theme, but that's it.  If, however,  you set it in Harry Dresden's Chicago, instead of the story leading to a stadium, it leads to Wriggly Field.  Instead of it being some bad guys, it's now some of John Marcone's thugs(or some other group).  They can meet some of the named cops during the course of the adventure, instead of random cop with name #s 1, 2 and 3.  In the player facing game, you have theme, and in the DM facing game, you have theme + depth of world.  What value you place on world depth will vary from individual to individual.  Personally, as a player, I really like being able to tell the bad guys that I will make the trade at midnight at Millennium Park, rather than "the park" or just coming up with a park name.



> I wouldn't think there would be a HUGE benefit to inventing endless details about 'the city'. It would be mostly urban backdrop. There might be a 'bar', an 'office', some dark alley, a warehouse, a few street scenes, etc. They can generally be described without needing to refer to the exact layouts of the neighborhood, roads, etc. Now and then it might be useful to know some physical details of a location in order to adjudicate action (fictional positioning) but mostly that's going to exist so as to serve the dramatic needs of the story (IE if the main character wants to slip out the back way then the bar has a back door and a check will resolve whether or not he makes it to the back alley without being intercepted).




It's not about endless details, though.  Even in the Realms, Waterdeep doesn't come close to having endless details and it is one of, if not the most detailed city they've talked about.  It lists some details, and leaves the vast majority is a blank canvas.



> Obviously this sort of game WILL have some kind of central plot points that engage with the 'detective fiction' motif. There will be a 'murder' or 'robbery' or something that needs to be solved. The need to resolve this plot element will help to drive the scene framing. I would say that in this kind of game the GM would be very likely to establish the parameters of this element at the start in his mind, so that any clues and developments are logically connected to it. This is a genre constraint essentially, film noire plots are generally logically plausible and fairly coherent, and resolving the 'mystery' is, if not an actual player goal, at least part of the convention they are participating in and a structure-producing device. So, as a GM I would invent the main participants in the 'crime', its motivation, how and where it was executed, etc. I might not nail all these things down in ironclad details though. For example you could invent witnesses, alter or invent some of the details where it fits into the plot, etc. I think you'd also likely have plot twists and such in mind from the start, but these things could well be invented or altered on the fly if the narrative moves in a different direction than envisaged.
> 
> So, for this example, there's likely SOME 'world building', *characters are invented, locations defined, and some plot elements mapped out, ahead of time*. I think this is probably the sort of case that is most amenable to this kind of prearranged elements. Most other genre can be a bit looser.




When I build an adventure, that's all I really do as well.  I have a very loose outline with the bolded portions, and then fill in the rest as we go.  However, I also set most of my games in the Forgotten Realms, so there is always the pre-authored content of that campaign setting in the background for the players and myself to draw upon.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I only created the 'example' in order to exemplify how far from the norm of RPG play it is to posit characters who sit around doing nothing. IIRC it was perhaps [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] who originally asked a question like "what happens when the players don't want to engage in any agenda" and the line of discussion from there was in the vein of "why would this make sense as a game?"



Close, but not quite.

What I asked was more like "what happens if the players don't have an agenda".  Nothing about whether they're willing to engage with one if it wanders by in front of them; theyre probably all set for that, they just don't have an agenda of their own and aren't interested in coming up with one...or (and this is more where I come from) want to wait until the game is nicely under way and see if anything suggests itself from the run of play.

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> What I asked was more like "what happens if the players don't have an agenda".  Nothing about whether they're willing to engage with one if it wanders by in front of them; theyre probably all set for that, they just don't have an agenda of their own and aren't interested in coming up with one...or (and this is more where I come from) want to wait until the game is nicely under way and see if anything suggests itself from the run of play.



All I'm saying about this, in the current context of discussion, is that it is clearly not a case of the players exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction. I don't see how that can be controversial!

_An agenda wanders in front of them_ = the GM exercises some agency!


----------



## Campbell

Lanefan said:


> Close, but not quite.
> 
> What I asked was more like "what happens if the players don't have an agenda".  Nothing about whether they're willing to engage with one if it wanders by in front of them; theyre probably all set for that, they just don't have an agenda of their own and aren't interested in coming up with one...or (and this is more where I come from) want to wait until the game is nicely under way and see if anything suggests itself from the run of play.
> 
> Lanefan




The first answer is that creating a character with some sort of driving force is a requirement for play. It's part of character creation in most of these games. A Burning Wheel character's Beliefs are as much a part of character creation as generating their stats. Same goes for Aspirations in New World of Darkness or Intimacies in Exalted 3 or a Kicker in Sorcerer.

The second answer is a social one. As a player you are expected to contribute to the game by playing a character with Beliefs they are willing to fight for. You wouldn't create a D&D character who wanted to traipse about town all session instead of going where the monsters live to steal their stuff. It's the same deal. 

Also, the GM is not obligated to provide your character with a motivation.  You are. I can help you come up with one if you are having trouble doing so, but it is ultimately on you. You provide the protagonism. The GM provides the antagonism.

Note: Apocalypse World and Blades In The Dark are a little different here. They tend to be more exploratory. We want to find out what your character believes over time rather than testing beliefs or going after aspirations.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> But you did try to paint me as unreasonable for following the example.



I just found the example to be rather contrived. I mean, players don't normally behave that way, certainly not to such an extreme degree that its impossible to engage in some sort of player-centered kind of play.



> You're contradicting @_*pemerton*_, now, as he's said it was a player belief and not a side quest.  I agree with @_*pemerton*_ -- the player gets to pick a limited number of things she cares about, it's not the GM's place to rank them or decide that this one isn't that important.



Well, as far as I can tell, that specific belief was secondary to the more general belief about the brother. It doesn't even make sense by itself. So I would call it 'subsidiary'. If you think about it, this specific belief "I will get something to help my brother before leaving the town" is more about a statement of determination, of an URGENT desire vs the overall "I will save my brother" belief being potentially more long-range. Failure to achieve the immediate goal doesn't invalidate the long-range goal, and its easy to imagine that the character would prioritize the longer-range goal over the shorter (though this might be subject to how the player wants to portray his character, maybe he's so impulsive and fixated on immediate goals that he WOULD damage his own chances for a quick fix). 

Thus I, as a GM, would play it as the one belief is subsidiary and secondary to the other, and a 'quest' to satisfy this subsidiary goal may be less urgent and something of a side show, although its quite easy to see it as a critical first step as well. As it turned out it was a distraction and actually helped lead to (in the narrative at least) the eventual failure of the main task.



> We weren't talking about spotlight time, but how play engages various kinds of agency.  Spotlight time isn't something unique to either playstyle, nor is it engaged with any real difference between the two.



In my mind this was and is part and parcel of one discussion. There is a natural evolution of 'spotlight', it naturally emerges from Story Now play; at least in a D&D-like game. 



> The decision on which route to take wouldn't be a question generally framed into a scene by the GM, though.  As you've said, that's a free play setup question, not a scene.  Once the Fellowship chose the Mines, the GM of the Ring clearly framed the confrontation with the goblins which spiraled out of control into the confrontation with the Balrog, which had a serious consequence for the Fellowship (and Gandalf's player in particular).




I think it would! First of all there's a scene in which the characters are camping and the crebain (birds) fly overhead, and then they enter into a debate in which the 3 choices are discussed. First they reject Moria, and then the Gap of Rohan, and then choose Caradharas as their first choice. Clearly their attempt to cross the pass results in a failure, which would be mechanical in most game systems. The result is they wind up back near where they began, and then wolves attack them. At this point they become convinced there's only one remaining choice, Moria. This would be handled quite naturally in my own game. The debate itself might be handled as a challenge in which different options can be elicited, thus producing the pass as a best choice. Another SC results in failure to cross the pass, and play continues with finding the gates and having an encounter (the successful opening of the West Gate could be taken as a skill check during the encounter with the Watcher, or simply as the inevitable consequence of choosing this path and given the composition of the party).

The events following this, in Moria, would likely represent a whole other challenge, presumably being a partial failure. Some of the party emerge largely unscathed, Gandalf is lost. It all seems relatively straightforward. I mean, is it a perfectly likely Story Now narrative? Hard to say really, but in at least some aspects it could certainly arise out of that style of play.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Campbell said:


> Here's what my experience coming from Apocalypse World and other games I have run using similar techniques has shown me: When you define characters first and then define the world around them the level of setting depth that develops around things is dependent on proximity to the characters - both geographically and logically. You might have only a feint idea of what is happening over in Bosnia, but you know that girl with the cute nose ring at the local coffee shop just quit. You really liked her. You might have some idea of why the elves left the forest, but you know why the king put your brother in the dungeon. You also get to kind of explore the world together as time goes on and we are forced to author new stuff so we have interesting stuff to play through.
> 
> It's a really big deal to me that characters feel *connected* to the foreground of the setting. That they are more than just individuals. A character needs to have drives, relationships, a family, and a place in the world. I find that building the world up around the characters makes this much easier to accomplish than going the other way around.




Agreed! Story Now characters are much more likely to have well-developed connections with the setting. How can they not? I guess you could really go out of your way to construct a character as a total loner from some strange foreign land or something. In standard D&D play this is almost UNIVERSAL, the PCs just hit town, they know nobody, have no allegiances, no connections to anyone, nothing but the coin in their purse and clothes on their backs. Consider the classic example, B2, the characters hit town in the first scene of the module. There's virtually no provision for them to be locals at all as I remember it. The term 'murder hobos' wasn't just invented randomly, it sort of perfectly describes the average PC, some kind of rootless drifter with a murky past and a dubious career.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Close, but not quite.
> 
> What I asked was more like "what happens if the players don't have an agenda".  Nothing about whether they're willing to engage with one if it wanders by in front of them; theyre probably all set for that, they just don't have an agenda of their own and aren't interested in coming up with one...or (and this is more where I come from) want to wait until the game is nicely under way and see if anything suggests itself from the run of play.
> 
> Lanefan




Yeah, and I think there were a couple of iterations of answer to that and some follow-on comments by others, which amounted to: I can usually elicit a usable agenda fairly quickly from most players with some leading questions. Then there was the observation that players don't REALLY have 'no agenda', they want to do SOMETHING interesting and when the point was pressed then I stated that I thought it was unrealistic to posit entirely passive players that won't rise to ANY bait. Then I got told I was misrepresenting what had been posted. I didn't think I was misrepresenting anything, just that there were several slightly different iterations of positing this sort of 'no agenda' situation.

To be clear, as stated originally, I don't think players are likely to remain without agenda for very long. Its possible that some options need to be provided, or suggestions, or elicitation of more character backstory to draw out an agenda, etc. No doubt it is easiest for a GM when the players come all loaded for bear and dive right into generating a story. It is still possible for things to work if they aren't that proactive. I just don't think its realistic to posit players that will reject ANY attempt to draw them in. I don't know what someone like that is doing, why do they play? Even so, given the party has other players I stated its still workable as long as SOME of them will help get the ball rolling. There can always be a 'freeloader' or two, they generally evolve as sort of 'sidekicks', but often they eventually take on their own goals. This is likely to be a newer player.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Campbell said:


> Here's what my experience coming from Apocalypse World and other games I have run using similar techniques has shown me: When you define characters first and then define the world around them the level of setting depth that develops around things is dependent on proximity to the characters - both geographically and logically. You might have only a feint idea of what is happening over in Bosnia, but you know that girl with the cute nose ring at the local coffee shop just quit. You really liked her. You might have some idea of why the elves left the forest, but you know why the king put your brother in the dungeon. You also get to kind of explore the world together as time goes on and we are forced to author new stuff so we have interesting stuff to play through.
> 
> It's a really big deal to me that characters feel *connected* to the foreground of the setting. That they are more than just individuals. A character needs to have drives, relationships, a family, and a place in the world. I find that building the world up around the characters makes this much easier to accomplish than going the other way around.




I'm curious about this, having just run my first session of Blades in the Dark.  Blades features a pretty well detailed setting, with a bunch of tightly integrated mechanics that interface with that setting.  Characters are mechanically tied to the setting through almost all of the choices in build -- you pick friends, rivals, vices, vice dealers, heritage (both ancestry and family details), prior professions/backgrounds, who you pissed off/made friends with in establishing your hunting grounds, which faction you pissed off for this, which likes you for that, and so forth.  The characters are woven into the details of the setting through the act of creation.  But Blades is written by the same author of and also very close to in mechanical resolution to *World games.  What do you think of this difference in creation, which is very much setting first then character.  Granted, players have a good bit of room to add new details, but not that much and only within the conceits of the established setting.

As an aside, my first session of Blades went fantastically, we all had a blast.  We built a crew and characters together, and I used the suggested starting scenario of the gang war in Crow's Foot.  They immediately threw off the shackles by telling Baz to f off and promptly took a job from the Dimmer Sisters to plant a cursed relic in Baz's office, which they pulled off with a stealth plan going through the skylight in the Lampblack warehouse and a nice flashback to lace the wine the guards were drinking so they could slip into Baz's office.  They did manage to set off an alarm as they were exiting, though, as a combined consequence to a number of 'success with cost' rolls, and that has the Lampblacks thinking their crew might have been involved so they're now at negative relationship.  Totes awesome play even if rocky to start as they adjusted, but, by the end, they were leaning into it and offering devil's bargains to each other.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> I'm curious about this, having just run my first session of Blades in the Dark.  Blades features a pretty well detailed setting, with a bunch of tightly integrated mechanics that interface with that setting.  Characters are mechanically tied to the setting through almost all of the choices in build -- you pick friends, rivals, vices, vice dealers, heritage (both ancestry and family details), prior professions/backgrounds, who you pissed off/made friends with in establishing your hunting grounds, which faction you pissed off for this, which likes you for that, and so forth.  The characters are woven into the details of the setting through the act of creation.  But Blades is written by the same author of and also very close to in mechanical resolution to *World games.  What do you think of this difference in creation, which is very much setting first then character.  Granted, players have a good bit of room to add new details, but not that much and only within the conceits of the established setting.
> 
> As an aside, my first session of Blades went fantastically, we all had a blast.  We built a crew and characters together, and I used the suggested starting scenario of the gang war in Crow's Foot.  They immediately threw off the shackles by telling Baz to f off and promptly took a job from the Dimmer Sisters to plant a cursed relic in Baz's office, which they pulled off with a stealth plan going through the skylight in the Lampblack warehouse and a nice flashback to lace the wine the guards were drinking so they could slip into Baz's office.  They did manage to set off an alarm as they were exiting, though, as a combined consequence to a number of 'success with cost' rolls, and that has the Lampblacks thinking their crew might have been involved so they're now at negative relationship.  Totes awesome play even if rocky to start as they adjusted, but, by the end, they were leaning into it and offering devil's bargains to each other.




Nice! This is of course a real strength for a lot of 'story games' that they do very specific settings quite well. When genre expectations and whatnot are spelled out very clearly and the characters have a fairly set concept space to fill, then its likely they will 'fit' pretty well. Of course that means choices are limited, as you noted. Obviously this kind of game can have limited lifespan and replay value unless the players are particularly into the specifics. Of course there's room for infinite such games out there. I personally really like the PbtA model of providing options in the form of a series of 'moves' that evoke the specific conceits of a given genre. DW, for instance, is really pretty narrowly aimed at producing play that is narratively analogous to B/X vintage D&D. It gets HARD to apply it outside of that space. Of course its also easy enough to invent new games in the same vein which work in other contexts, though some are less straightforward, or just too open ended to really work well in this format. For instance it would be harder to make a true space opera game using PbtA IMHO. You can obviously do some niche stuff there, but each class of character is really fairly narrow in these games.


----------



## Campbell

Ovinomancer said:


> I'm curious about this, having just run my first session of Blades in the Dark.  Blades features a pretty well detailed setting, with a bunch of tightly integrated mechanics that interface with that setting.  Characters are mechanically tied to the setting through almost all of the choices in build -- you pick friends, rivals, vices, vice dealers, heritage (both ancestry and family details), prior professions/backgrounds, who you pissed off/made friends with in establishing your hunting grounds, which faction you pissed off for this, which likes you for that, and so forth.  The characters are woven into the details of the setting through the act of creation.  But Blades is written by the same author of and also very close to in mechanical resolution to *World games.  What do you think of this difference in creation, which is very much setting first then character.  Granted, players have a good bit of room to add new details, but not that much and only within the conceits of the established setting.
> 
> As an aside, my first session of Blades went fantastically, we all had a blast.  We built a crew and characters together, and I used the suggested starting scenario of the gang war in Crow's Foot.  They immediately threw off the shackles by telling Baz to f off and promptly took a job from the Dimmer Sisters to plant a cursed relic in Baz's office, which they pulled off with a stealth plan going through the skylight in the Lampblack warehouse and a nice flashback to lace the wine the guards were drinking so they could slip into Baz's office.  They did manage to set off an alarm as they were exiting, though, as a combined consequence to a number of 'success with cost' rolls, and that has the Lampblacks thinking their crew might have been involved so they're now at negative relationship.  Totes awesome play even if rocky to start as they adjusted, but, by the end, they were leaning into it and offering devil's bargains to each other.




I think character exploration is a focus, but not quite the focus of Blades in the same way it is for a game like Apocalypse World. Still the setting material is low resolution enough to really explore in play. It's also far more focused on scenario design with a focus on actual play. I like to think of Duskvol as a dungeon with a vibrant ecosystem that responds to player actions. The core of the faction game is built on OSR tech and the best sort of dungeon design. It even utilizes the crawl-rest-crawl-rest cycle with its excellent downtime mechanics.

I really like that those names on the sheet are with a few exceptions just names and occupations. In our game those Allies and Rivals ended up becoming really fleshed out. We also ended up adding a substantial amount of depth to those characters and other major faction characters. The relationship map just for my character by the end of play was staggering. 
Still the core of the game is that faction struggle. I think it's important to have some of that predefined for the sake of tactical play which is a strong suit of Blades in the Dark. We often began play by looking at that faction chart which shows our relationship with each faction and their current tier in order to target who we wanted to bring down and who we wanted to raise up.

Basically => Duskvol = Really Big Dungeon
                   Blades = Apocalypse World + Stars Without Number + B/X


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> All I'm saying about this, in the current context of discussion, is that it is clearly not a case of the players exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction. I don't see how that can be controversial!



It isn't controversial, and nor should it be.  The players want to explore the game world and see where that exploration leads them; and build or derive their goals out of whatever comes of that process.  And who knows, they might each be on their third PC by that time depending on the lethality level.

The other thing the players probably want to do - and this is something else I've seen little to no mention of in your game logs - is get to know the other PCs in the party that they don't already know.

I always see the first - and maybe the second and third as well, depending on circumstance - adventure in any campaign as essentially a shakedown cruise where the PCs get to know each other, the obvious liabilities are either winnowed out or at least identified for what they are, and the party tries to gel as a party.  There's not much backstory yet, though this is a good time to drop in hints and foreshadowing that might not make sense until much later.



			
				Campbell said:
			
		

> The first answer is that creating a character with some sort of driving force is a requirement for play. It's part of character creation in most of these games. A Burning Wheel character's Beliefs are as much a part of character creation as generating their stats. Same goes for Aspirations in New World of Darkness or Intimacies in Exalted 3 or a Kicker in Sorcerer.
> 
> The second answer is a social one. As a player you are expected to contribute to the game by playing a character with Beliefs they are willing to fight for. You wouldn't create a D&D character who wanted to traipse about town all session instead of going where the monsters live to steal their stuff. It's the same deal.



To me that's like starting the game with the character's career already half over: I didn't get to play through whatever adventures and events led her to those Beliefs and-or goals.  I'd far rather my character's goals grow organically out of the run of play rather than be baked in at char-gen; and I'd also far rather they be a lot more malleable over time than this seems to allow for.



> Also, the GM is not obligated to provide your character with a motivation. You are. I can help you come up with one if you are having trouble doing so, but it is ultimately on you. You provide the protagonism. The GM provides the antagonism.



The initial motivation I provide can be as simple as wanting to get out and see the world, put my [class skills] to use, and maybe make a g.p. or two in the process.  After that it might not be until an adventure or two down the road when I see some slave getting beaten in a plaza that I decide my goal will be to abolish slavery in this realm...and five adventures later I might realize (rightly or wrongly) that my stated goal, while noble, is also utterly unachievable; and change to some other goal based on things that have come up in the meantime.

Assuming, of course, that character is even still alive...no sure thing when it has me for a player.


----------



## Maxperson

Campbell said:


> The second answer is a social one. As a player you are expected to contribute to the game by playing a character with Beliefs they are willing to fight for. *You wouldn't create a D&D character who wanted to traipse about town all session instead of going where the monsters live to steal their stuff.* It's the same deal.




Sure you would.  I've both played in and run D&D games that were primarily social, taking place almost entirely within a city or cities.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> in your system can a PC ultimately outright fail at its intended goal, and if so, what happens? Example: if my goal is to be king, and we get to some climactic point that determines whether I get the throne or not, and I somehow blow it either by bad dice luck or follish actions - what then?



That depends entirely on the context of actual play.

When the feather turned out to be cursed, and hence not so useful for confronting the balrog-possessed brother, the game proceeded. When the balrog-possessed brother was decapitated in front of the mage PC - hence putting an end to his attempts to redeem his brother - the game proceeded. The player wrote new Beliefs for his PC - at the moment, they are:

Joachim's blood will help make the Rod of the Blue Wizard.	

I will learn more of the coming apocalypse (hell gates, demonic possession, …), so	I will help Halika summon Joachim's spirit for revelation of Lungorthin's plans.

I am a Servant of the Secret Fire and will oppose Lungorthin's orcish legions, so I will read Joachim's secret paper to uncover his Storm of Lightning spell.​
Lungorthin is the balrog. Halika was a PC, but - as that player often does not make it to sessions - is played more often now as a NPC.

If there is nothing left for the character to do in dramatic terms - either success or failure is total - then the campaign is over. (As Eero Tuovinen describes in his account of the "standard narrativistic model".)



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It's fairly modest agency - it doesn't actually establish any shared fiction, it just vetoes one of the GM's offerings.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> And in so doing moves toward establishing what fiction is going to be shared: we're not going to be sharing any fiction about taking down the Baron, as that fiction isn't of interest.
Click to expand...


This is the basis for my comparison to "choose your own adventure" (which [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] objects to).

Establishing what to do from a list of options provided by the GM is modest agency.

Hence when you say that there is more agency in (i) having the GM say "You're in town, what do you do?" then starting things at the situation the player has signalled as salient, I can only assume that you mean: there is more agency in choosing from the GM's list of possible situations, and in gettting the GM to tell you more about the world s/he has made up, than there is in actually providing the content of a situation. I don't know what conception of agency you are working with here.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> It's amusing that you cut out the bits of my post where I specifically point out those mechanics that are after the fact resource expenditures to reduce consequences and then present these exact things as if it refutes my argument. I'm specifically taking about action declaration to reduce or mitigate risk which is why I called out the post-hoc mechanics.



I don't really know what you mean by this. I know that there are games where players can spend resources to mitigate conseequences - eg 4e has a version of these in some combat-relevant interrupts; and at our table we allow action point-fuelled retries or interrupt-speed augments in skill challenge resolution. But I didn't refer to any such system above.

Blind declarations in Fight! are not "after the fact resource expenditures to reduce consequnces". Nor are any of the action declarations I described in relation to Cortex+.

The HeroWars and HeroQuest revised systems I described are not "after the fact" mitigations - they are bidding (ie blind declarations).

"Giving" in Dogs in the Vineyard is not blind - and it eliminates fallout but doesn't stop the fictional consequences at all - it's a trade off of yielding the fiction to preserve the character.

So as I said, I don't really know what you're talking about here.



Ovinomancer said:


> I'm aware BW uses a more complicated combat mechanic, and one that is especially brutal and difficult to use. This isn't common in player-facing games, though, so it's not really a good example of the nature of the genre, just of itself. That said, the combat mechanics of BW are really designed to make fighting a bad choice
> 
> <snip>
> 
> even a simple combat has a reasonable chance of leaving you dead



Melee in BW is not a bad choice. Nor a good choice. It's a choice.

It's not true that "even a simple combat in BW has a reasonable chance of leaving you dead". Most PCs will have a Mortal Wound around 9 to 11. This will require a Superb hit, or a Mark with a decent weapon. A Superb hit requires 5 successes. A Mark requires 3 successes, and it's not like you won't notice the opponent is wielding a dangerous weapon.

The system is no more brutal than (say) RQ, RM or low level D&D. In fact it's lest brutal than RQ, RM or 1st level classic D&D.

My BW PC has the following four Beliefs and three Instincts:

The Lord of Battle will lead me to glory.

I am a Knight of the Iron Tower: by devotion and example I will lead the righteous to glorious victory.

Harm and infamy will befall Auxol no more!

Aramina will need my protection.

When entering battle, always speak a prayer to the Lord of Battle.

If an innocent is threatened, interpose myself.

When camping, always ensure that the campfire is burning.​
So it's not a bad choice for me to fight to protect Aramina, to purue glory, or to interpose myself - even violently - to protect innocents.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], what you say in reply to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] about player agency and the addressing of dramatic needs is good stuff.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> In terms of finality of resolution, I look at it much like action movies
> 
> <snip>
> 
> In terms of quest to become King, the PC would maybe undermine his rivals, and each one so disposed of would no longer represent a threat. They wouldn't pop back up and suddenly be in contention again. The NPC might still play another part in the action, but only as a defeated rival. There wouldn't be some unrevealed backstory that subverted or reversed finalized actions. If such an NPC DID become a rival again it would be as a consequence of specific events which happened within the continuing narrative based on further actions and checks made by the PC/player. It would be EXPLICIT, although it is perfectly fine if the narrative explains it in terms of factors the PC didn't know about at the time.



An actual play example: in my BW game, two of the PCs drugged Halika to stop her going to Jabal's tower to assassinate Joachim, the demon-possessed brother. Those PCs then tried, themselves, to get to Jabal's tower, and for some reason decided to sneak via the catacombs. As a result they got lost in the catacombs, and so Halika woke from her stupor and was able to beat them to the tower.

In mechanical terms, the consequence of the failed check to navigate through the catacombs was that Halika was now able to race them to the tower. The race was resolved as opposed Speed checks. Halika won, and decapitated Joachim.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think genre, and tone, do a LOT of work here. If we're playing a game of Noire detective stories then there's likely to be a Moll, a Damsel in Distress, a Hardbitten but Romantic PI, some bad guys, a fairly direct-seeming surface plot linking them together, and usually a nasty plot-twist somewhere along the way. There are likely to be subthemes of romanticism, betrayal, 'life is cheap', a sort of cynical world where people do things for selfish reasons, etc.
> 
> So, a GM running this game would have access for scene framing to an urban landscape, characters such as cops, detectives, thugs, probably various women who play the parts of romantic interest and/or victim (and/or betrayer) etc. They will appear in the various scenes as needed, probably starting with the classic "PI in his office having a drink while contemplating his eviction notice when a damsel walks in" or something along those lines. The exact details would depend on who the characters are, and how they're described. The choices would be fairly limited in this genre though, as its a pretty niche one.
> 
> I wouldn't think there would be a HUGE benefit to inventing endless details about 'the city'.



Another couple of actual play examples:

In my BW game, Hardby plays the same role as "the city" would in your Noir game. It has docks, it has catacombs, it has a sorcerous cabal, it has taverns (both rich ones and dives), it has a cathedral, it has bazaars, etc. These come to life as needed in play.

In my Traveller game, the PCs spent a couple of sessions on Byron, a world with no fluids, a corrosive atmosphere, and a domed city - Byron - with a tech level unable to sustain itself and a high law level. This world needed - and play delivered up - officials, police and security forces, the dome (obviously), medics (as it turned out, given there is a bioweapons conspiracy), a tavern ("The Offworlder") where the PCs could recruit a grizzled ATV driver, etc.

I just don't feel this conjectured "lack of depth" in my games.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> as far as I can tell, that specific belief was secondary to the more general belief about the brother. It doesn't even make sense by itself. So I would call it 'subsidiary'. If you think about it, this specific belief "I will get something to help my brother before leaving the town" is more about a statement of determination, of an URGENT desire vs the overall "I will save my brother" belief being potentially more long-range. Failure to achieve the immediate goal doesn't invalidate the long-range goal, and its easy to imagine that the character would prioritize the longer-range goal over the shorter (though this might be subject to how the player wants to portray his character, maybe he's so impulsive and fixated on immediate goals that he WOULD damage his own chances for a quick fix).



There is quite a bit of advice in BW books on how to write effective Beliefs. One bit of advice is - have a goal-oriented Belief that you might achieve in a session or so, so you can earn Persona from closing off that Belief. The Belief about finding a useful item was an instance of this.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> they enter into a debate in which the 3 choices are discussed.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The debate itself might be handled as a challenge in which different options can be elicited, thus producing the pass as a best choice.



In BW this would be a Duel of Wits (and there have been PvP DoW in my BW game).

In Traveller, a couple of times I've made the players dice against one another to reach a decision when the debate has been going on too long (with modest bonuses for the side with the Leader skill and the side with the Baron).

In my 4e game I once made the players dice against one another when debate about what to do had gone on _interminably_.

In my Cortex+ Fantasy Hack game yesterday, the PCs had split into two groups: the skinchanger was leading rescued villagers to safety in the south, while the other three PC were heading north (on the original quest) following a vision that the god-touched berserker had had (in mechanical terms, the player spent a "plot point" to create a Religious Expert resource). The scene included as distinctions Frightened Villagers and The Giants are Almost Upon Us (following on from the previous seen which had Giants Not Far Behind?; which in turn followed on from the PCs rescuing the villagers from the giants). The skinchanger eliminated the Frightened Villager distinction (in the fiction, by turning into a werewolf and bullying the villagers into some sort of discipline), whie the other group eleminated The Giants are Almost Upon Us. The berserker did this, in the fiction by leading the group on a hard run through the hills while avoiding the giants. In the fiction, this made it clear that there was no one between the giants and the group heading south, and so I spent a die from the Doom Pool to introduce a mob of giants attacking the skinchanger.

The northern group included a seer, who has Oracular Senses as well as Sorcery Supremacy, and it was not contentious that he had a sense of the giant attack taking place to the south. The players then discussed how to respond - try and teleport the skinchanger back to the northern group to save him (and thus sacrificing the villagers), or maybe teleport south themselves along a ley line. The berserker has a milestone which gives him XP for getting in an argument, and so his player was up for one, especially as it was the berserker who had had the vision to head north and who had led them around the giants. So the seer urged him to agree to come south through a teleporting mist summoned on a ley line (mechanically, inflicting a small amount of mental stress) before then conjuring the mist that the warriors stepped through (mechanically, he was able to inflict a Confused by the Mists complication on the giants as well as grant a Out of the Mists asset to the PC swordthane).

The fact that, in the story, we know the protagonists agreed after debate to take path X rather than path Y, doesn't tell us anything about how this result was achieved in play.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> This is the basis for my comparison to "choose your own adventure" (which @_*Maxperson*_ objects to).
> 
> Establishing what to do from a list of options provided by the GM is modest agency.




I still object to it, because (1) he didn't say it was of no interest only to him, and (2) even if it is only him that made that decision, that's a DM thing, not part of the playstyle.  The players could indeed try to take down the Baron in my game, and in the games of others I have played under who use the playstyle.



> Hence when you say that there is more agency in (i) having the GM say "You're in town, what do you do?" then starting things at the situation the player has signalled as salient, I can only assume that you mean: there is more agency in choosing from the GM's list of possible situations, and in gettting the GM to tell you more about the world s/he has made up, than there is in actually providing the content of a situation. I don't know what conception of agency you are working with here.



You are assuming, and you shouldn't.  You are continually wrong about the playstyle when you do so.  The playstyle is not now, nor has it ever been, choose your own adventure.  Even if some DMs play it badly, and I'm not convinced @_*Lanefan*_ does.

Edit:


> When the feather turned out to be cursed, and hence not so useful for confronting the balrog-possessed brother, the game proceeded. When the balrog-possessed brother was decapitated in front of the mage PC - hence putting an end to his attempts to redeem his brother - the game proceeded. The player wrote new Beliefs for his PC - at the moment, they are:





I'm curious about this.  Does a player have to wait for the conclusion of his list before choosing more beliefs, or can he choose new ones in the middle?  If that PC had encountered a particularly nasty cleric while trying to free his brother, could he have added, "I will send the foul cleric of Bane to his master." as a new belief?


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> But in your example there was no finality of resolution.  You told me that failure meant the feather was cursed, and that even if he succeeded, he still needed to get the feather enchanted and more.  If if the player's roll had succeeded in your example, there wouldn't have been any final resolution.



There is finality. Success is success: the PC acquires an item useful for confronting his brother. Failure is failure: the item is cursed.

The GM is not at liberty to upend or undo these outcomes by manipulating as-yet unrevealed backstory. [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] outlined this in more detail upthread (in discussion of the example of "becoming a king"), and I posted an actual play illustration of the point: when Halika was drugged by the other PCs, the resultant success - Halika can't beat us to the tower - was secured until they affirmatively took an action that put it into jeopardy (by trying to sneak through the catacombs).



Maxperson said:


> I don't remember seeing his example, but in your description here, the player didn't go backwards.  The goal was civic order and the charm would seem(hard to tell without the original example) to have achieved or helped move that forward.  The duke as an enemy would a new, but separate issue



In [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s example there is a disturbance, and the PC charms a participant in that (a "harlot"), and then it turns out - due to a whole lot of GM authored and manipulated backstory - that the NPC is a spy who, being charmed, fails to carry out her mission, allowing an attack upon the duke, which then leads to the duke arresting the PCs for having facilitated said attack upon him. This is not a case of finality in resolution - the stakes of the check are not remotely clear to the players, and their success has no significance for what actually unfolds in play.



Maxperson said:


> First, with your example (1), outside of the very first moment of a campaign, you would be railroading the player if you did that.



I was talking about the opening scene of a campaign, and provided a concrete example from actual play. I thought you were talking about the same thing. if you weren't, then tell me what you were talking about and how it bears upon what I was talking about. 



Maxperson said:


> Second, with option 2, there will usually be more to it than "you're in the town.  What do you do?"  Were that my game and I knew the player was going into the town to try and find an item to free his brother, I would address that in my question.  It would more likely be "You walk through the gates of Waterdeep to find something that will help you free your brother.  This place is well known for having just about everything somewhere, so it's seems certain that you can succeed."
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I am allowing him more player agency by not forcing him into the bazaar.  He can try to seek the bazaar, a wizard, a sage, looking for a merchant guild, look for an old merchant buddy(depending on circumstances) that might have a contact, and many more options.  *HE* gets to decide how best to try and further his goal.



First, I don't see how what you describe is significantly different from what I said - "You're in town - what do you do?" All you've done is add a bit of colour - there was colour in my description of the bazaar too, but the colour doesn't change the basic choice structure of the moment of play.

As far as agency is concerned, why is being in the bazaar a railroad? Can't your player choose to leave the bazaar to look for a sage?

But furthermore, what does "best method" mean? What makes one method better than another? If you're running D&D, there is no "contact" rule system for finding an old merchant buddy. Are you talking about Streetwise checks? What makes those "better" than investigating the feather in the bazaar? It is completely opaque to me how you are framing and running these situations, how you are setting DCs, what information the player has about those DCs, what moves the player is able to make to affect DCs, and when the game actually gets to the crunch point of whether or not the PC finds a useful item.



Maxperson said:


> How do I establish if a shop or whatever has a useful item? Generally with a roll of some sort.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I determine the chances or DC, depending on the type of roll, and I leave it to chance.



This is consistent with my characterisation in the post to which you replied. But I don't see how it is a source of player agency that the question of whether or not they actually get to engage their player goal - in this case, finding a useful item - is dependent upon the GM making a (presumably secret) die roll.



Maxperson said:


> As for what counts as a useful item, I don't really understand that question. Useful is useful. If an item is useful, it will count as a useful item.



Well, in my game the PC's goal, as established by the player, was to find an item which would be useful in confronting his balrog-possessed brother. My question is, how do _you_ decide what counts as a useful item? When you're making your die roll to determine if a curio shop has a useful item for sale, what item are you rolling for?

In my case, the player will declare what sort of property he hopes to detect in the feather. As well as establishing immediate details about the fiction, it also contributes to the table's shared understanding of what is involved in confronting a balrog.



Maxperson said:


> In my style, the players have more agency to affect their goals. They determine which way to pursue things and they do change the fiction in meaningful ways. It's just not an instant gratification process.  It may take 5 scenes to complete the change in fiction that they are initiating.  It's often slower(and often not), but allows them greater agency over the fiction by giving them far more options in how they go about enacting that change.



I don't understand what contrast you think you're drawing. This is like [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] saying that the players have more agency because the GM tells them about an intersection, or about a slave being beaten. It's not an increase in player agency to have the GM offer a menu of things to ask questions about.

If the players expressed goal is finding a useful item, and half an hour of play is spent _getting to the pont where that goal is actually in issue_, with that half hour essentially the player eliciting information from the GM ("Does anyone know whether there's a curiou shop in town? OK, can someone tell me where it is? Is it open? Does it have anything interesting for sale?"), I am not seeing where the player agency resides.



Maxperson said:


> So in your style of game the players just pop around from place to place only ever doing something relevant to the story?  There's never any interaction where the fiction won't change?  That's very railroady.



This is contradictory. If, at every interaction, the fiction might change (ie _there's never any interaction where the fiction won't change_) then what is the railroad?

I also don't know what you mean by "the story". And how you are judging _relevance to the story_.

In any event, whether travelling from A to B requires a check depends upon whether or not anything is at stake. If it is not, then I say "yes". When the PCs in my Traveller game travelled to and from their landing ship to the market in Enlil, that was narrated in less than a minute. When the PCs in my Marvel Heroic game flew in the Stark private jet from Washington DC to Tokyo, that was narrated in less than a minute. When those same PCs wanted to sneak into the basement of the Latverian embassy in Washington, they had to establish an asset to unlock that possibility in the fiction (namely, acquire plans from the a department of planning and urban infrastructure).

This is some new definition of railroading, though, when it's railroading to say to players who declare "Right, we get into the jet and fly to Tokyo so we can break into the Clan Yashida headquarters" to respond "OK, you arrive and are standing in the streets of Tokyo outside the Yashida skyscraper. How are you going to get inside."!!



Maxperson said:


> I've said more than once that to the PC, there is no difference between coming from notes and authored on the spot.



The PC is purely imaginary. I'm talking about the experience of the player.



Maxperson said:


> Writing down that the innkeeper's name is Darmak and that he's a half-orc fighter with one arm is no different that coming up with it on the spot as far as the players are concerned.



This same claim has been made by [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]. It's only true under the assumption that the GM is responsible for all content introduction into the fiction. As soon as you drop that assumption, the claim is not true at all.

For instance - if the reason the GM is talking about wolves is because one of the PCs has an ability to summon and control wolves, it makes a difference. If the reason the GM is talking about Jabal is because a player has declared a Circles check, it makes a difference. If the reason the GM is talking about the Raven Queen, or Orcus, is because a player has just declared that his Raven Queen devotee prays for guidance, it makes a difference.

The basic action of RPGing is conversation. If the conversation takes the form of the players saying to the GM "Tell me stuff", and then the GM replies, it is true that it makes little difference whether the reply is pre-scripted or not. But as soon as the players engage the fiction in some more proactive style - be that "I'm a devotee of the Raven Queen - are the forces of Orcus opposing me here?", or "We go to the market on Enlil to look for alien artefacts - what do we find?", or "While he goes south with the villagers, we're going to make a hard run through the hills to avoid the giants - what happens?" - then the difference between pre-sripted answers and genuine answers is huge.

And I say _genuine answers_ deliberately: because in a game with robust resolution mechanics, we don't get answers to the players' questions until those mechanics are applied, and the application of the mechanics could mean that things go either way.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> I still object to it, because (1) he didn't say it was of no interest only to him, and (2) even if it is only him that made that decision, that's a DM thing, not part of the playstyle.  The players could indeed try to take down the Baron in my game, and in the games of others I have played under who use the playstyle.
> 
> 
> You are assuming, and you shouldn't.  You are continually wrong about the playstyle when you do so.  The playstyle is not now, nor has it ever been, choose your own adventure.  Even if some DMs play it badly, and I'm not convinced @_*Lanefan*_ does.



I'm not _assuming_. I'm doing my best to make sense of what [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is posting.

His example of the baron is one where the baron only becomes salient because the GM informs the players (in the course of some episode of play - eg a distressed peasant tells the PCs) that the baron is corrupt.

Freeing the slaves only becomes salient because the GM informs the players (in the course of some episode of play - eg the PCs see a slave being beaten) that slavery is a social problem in this part of the world.

Etc, etc.

The fact that the GM tells the players under the guise of a NPC telling a PC, or using the narrator's voice to tell the players what their PCs see, doesn't change the fact that it is the GM telling the players.

The fact that the menu is implicit - ie is generated by these moments of narration by the GM - doesn't change the fact that it's a menu.

In Lanefan's game, as in yours, the PCs can oppose the baron, or free the slaves, or whatever. The point is that _the whole field of action_ is established by the GM, and the players simply make moves within it. They gather information (ie get the GM to tell them stuff) and choose what parts of the gameworld to engage (ie choose from the list provided, implicitly, by the GM).

My point is that this is rather modest agency over the content of the shared fiction.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> I don't really know what you mean by this. I know that there are games where players can spend resources to mitigate conseequences - eg 4e has a version of these in some combat-relevant interrupts; and at our table we allow action point-fuelled retries or interrupt-speed augments in skill challenge resolution. But I didn't refer to any such system above.
> 
> Blind declarations in Fight! are not "after the fact resource expenditures to reduce consequnces". Nor are any of the action declarations I described in relation to Cortex+.
> 
> The HeroWars and HeroQuest revised systems I described are not "after the fact" mitigations - they are bidding (ie blind declarations).
> 
> "Giving" in Dogs in the Vineyard is not blind - and it eliminates fallout but doesn't stop the fictional consequences at all - it's a trade off of yielding the fiction to preserve the character.
> 
> So as I said, I don't really know what you're talking about here.



...

Here's what happened:

1.  I posted about post-hoc resolution mechanics as not addressing the agency of players to declare actions to mitigate risk prior to events.

2.  You cliped my post to remove this argument, and presented post-hoc resolution mechanics as risk mitigation.  You ALSO began a discussion of the Fight! mechanics in BW to respond to my separate points on tactical decision points.

3.  I pointed out that you clipped the relevant portion of my first post in regards to post-hoc mitigation mechanics and how it was amusing that you would present post-hoc mitigation mechanics as a solution while intentionally ignoring my explicit comments about them.  

3a.  I ALSO responded to your separate comments on the Fight! mechanics.

4.  You now claim confusion because my complaint about your clipping out portions of my post doesn't address your post about the Fight! mechanics, which is unrelated and temporally impossible.

Okay,  that really looks good on you.  Go with that.


> Melee in BW is not a bad choice. Nor a good choice. It's a choice.



Let's look at this:
1.  Fight! is unpredicatable and has a reasonable likelihood to result in wounding or death.
2.  BW recovery mechanics for wounds are very long and punishing
3.  therefore, entering into Fight! where even skilled combatants against weak foes still have a non-ignorable chance of losing weeks of in-game time to recovering means, generally, getting into combat is a bad idea.  This system disincentivizes combat much more than the normal for RPGs.



> It's not true that "even a simple combat in BW has a reasonable chance of leaving you dead". Most PCs will have a Mortal Wound around 9 to 11. This will require a Superb hit, or a Mark with a decent weapon. A Superb hit requires 5 successes. A Mark requires 3 successes, and it's not like you won't notice the opponent is wielding a dangerous weapon.



I would generally assume that if you're getting into combat that your opponents have dangerous weapons.  This is a given, and I'm confused as to why you'd point it out.



> The system is no more brutal than (say) RQ, RM or low level D&D. In fact it's lest brutal than RQ, RM or 1st level classic D&D.



1st level classic D&D disincentivizes combat as well.  You pointed this out in an early post how play revolves around scouting and careful exploration because combat is so deadly.  This doesn't go anywhere towards not showing BW combat isn't deadly.  And in D&D, higher level combats are less deadly, but BW combat retains much of it's deadliness even through character advances _as a design goal_.



> My BW PC has the following four Beliefs and three Instincts:
> 
> The Lord of Battle will lead me to glory.
> 
> I am a Knight of the Iron Tower: by devotion and example I will lead the righteous to glorious victory.
> 
> Harm and infamy will befall Auxol no more!
> 
> Aramina will need my protection.
> 
> When entering battle, always speak a prayer to the Lord of Battle.
> 
> If an innocent is threatened, interpose myself.
> 
> When camping, always ensure that the campfire is burning.​
> So it's not a bad choice for me to fight to protect Aramina, to purue glory, or to interpose myself - even violently - to protect innocents.




Sorry, but are you actually saying that because you've built a character that wants to fight that this changes how the mechanics work and are built and makes combat a good choice?  Or that because you've chosen it, the choice can't be a bad one?  Really.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> I'm curious about this. Does a player have to wait for the conclusion of his list before choosing more beliefs, or can he choose new ones in the middle? If that PC had encountered a particularly nasty cleric while trying to free his brother, could he have added, "I will send the foul cleric of Bane to his master." as a new belief?



In Burning Wheel a player is free to change any/all PC Beliefs at any time (unless the Belief is an additional Belief resulting from a particular build element which introduces constraints; and some Belief changes can have knock on effects - eg you lost the Faithful trait if you don't have at least one Belief that expresses your faith).

The GM is entitled to veto a change, however, if (i) s/he takes the view it's an attempt to squib in the face of a challenge to the existing Belief, or (ii) s/he is about to frame a challenge to the existing Belief.

The nearest thing to Beliefs in Cortex+ Heroic is a PC's milestones. Here is a sample milestone, which illustrates their general structure:

WORDS, NOT DEEDS

1 XP	when you begin an action scene with a non-attack action
3 XP	when you inflict emotional stress or take mental stress via an argument
10 XP when you either foreswear conversation as useless or when you foreswear the initiation of violence​
You can trigger the 1 XP no more than once per action; the 3 XP no more than once per scene; and the 10 XP only once, which then closes out the milestone and requires the PC to take on a new milestone. You can't change milestones otherwise.

The PC with the above milestone took it on after closing out this one:

DEEDS, NOT WORDS

1 XP	when you act on impulse.
3 XP	when you admit to an ally that your lack of self-control scares you.
10 XP when you learn to control your impulses, or when impulsive action causes you to be stressed out.​
Coming up with effective (and moderately balanced) milestones is an important part of PC build in this system. I treat it as a negotiation between GM and player.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> When the feather turned out to be cursed, and hence not so useful for confronting the balrog-possessed brother, the game proceeded. When the balrog-possessed brother was decapitated in front of the mage PC - hence putting an end to his attempts to redeem his brother - the game proceeded. The player wrote new Beliefs for his PC



So Beliefs are amendable - that's good to know.

Is it kosher to change them before finality - say for example could the guy have decided, after following this path for a while, that his brother was beyond hope and changed his Belief about redeeming his brother at some point before seeing brother lose his head?

EDIT: I see you already answered this, and that he (most of the time) could - again, good to know. 



> If there is nothing left for the character to do in dramatic terms - either success or failure is total - then the campaign is over. (As Eero Tuovinen describes in his account of the "standard narrativistic model".)



Bleah.

A campaign is always bigger than any character in it; and when one story ends another begins...if it hasn't already.

Keep in mind I come from a background of frequent character turnover, be it from death, retirement, player turnover, or whatever.  But the campaign goes on.



> Establishing what to do from a list of options provided by the GM is modest agency.



So you keep saying.  I disagree with the 'modest' qualifier.



> Hence when you say that there is more agency in (i) having the GM say "You're in town, what do you do?" then starting things at the situation the player has signalled as salient, I can only assume that you mean: there is more agency in choosing from the GM's list of possible situations, and in gettting the GM to tell you more about the world s/he has made up, than there is in actually providing the content of a situation. I don't know what conception of agency you are working with here.



The conception I'm working with is *choice = agency*.  "You're in town - what do you do?" gives the player a nigh-endless amount of choice.  "You're at a bazaar, there's a pedlar selling feathers - what do you do?" takes away all the possible choices and options (and yes, distractons) between starting in town and finding the pedlar...if the PC ever finds the pedlar at all.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> There is finality. Success is success: the PC acquires an item useful for confronting his brother. Failure is failure: the item is cursed.



In that one scene, yes.  But it's only a stepping-stone on the road to the overall success-failure finality of redeeming the brother - I think you two are looking at different scales here.



> As far as agency is concerned, why is being in the bazaar a railroad? Can't your player choose to leave the bazaar to look for a sage?



Yes, but why would they when you-as-DM have given them a hammer-upside-the-head clue that what they seek is in the bazaar - probably from the feather merchant - by framing them there?



> But furthermore, what does "best method" mean? What makes one method better than another? If you're running D&D, there is no "contact" rule system for finding an old merchant buddy. Are you talking about Streetwise checks? What makes those "better" than investigating the feather in the bazaar? It is completely opaque to me how you are framing and running these situations, how you are setting DCs, what information the player has about those DCs, what moves the player is able to make to affect DCs, and when the game actually gets to the crunch point of whether or not the PC finds a useful item.



Why involve hard mechanics at all?  Streetwise, DCs, etc. - don't use unless absolutely necessary!  Let the player tell you what the PC does, then narrate what comes of it based on what you know about 9or have just made up about!) the city.

I'll quite often use what I call "soft mechanics", where I'll get a roll and use it as a general barometer of success - roll really well and you're good, roll really badly and you're screwed, but roll something in between and I'll scale the narration to the roll - a middling roll of 14 might get you further than a middling roll of 7 - but there's almost never a hard number binarily (is that a word?) dividing success and failure.



> This is consistent with my characterisation in the post to which you replied. But I don't see how it is a source of player agency that the question of whether or not they actually get to engage their player goal - in this case, finding a useful item - is dependent upon the GM making a (presumably secret) die roll.



I'd like to think that the player isn't so selfish as to only care about the goals on his PC's character sheet, and is willing to engage in the goals of other players/PCs and with the game world at large.

I've had selfish players like that in the past.  They don't play in my games any more.




> I don't understand what contrast you think you're drawing. This is like [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] saying that the players have more agency because the GM tells them about an intersection, or about a slave being beaten. It's not an increase in player agency to have the GM offer a menu of things to ask questions about.



Sure it is, as it provides choice the players/PCs would not otherwise have had.



> This is contradictory. If, at every interaction, the fiction might change (ie _there's never any interaction where the fiction won't change_) then what is the railroad?



The railroad occurs when you skip a series of possible interactions (e.g. intersections, slaves being beaten, etc.) to get to the "action" one.  The fiction doesn't get the chance to be changed away from the action scene you've already decided comes next.



> This same claim has been made by [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]. It's only true under the assumption that the GM is responsible for all content introduction into the fiction. As soon as you drop that assumption, the claim is not true at all.
> 
> For instance - if the reason the GM is talking about wolves is because one of the PCs has an ability to summon and control wolves, it makes a difference. If the reason the GM is talking about Jabal is because a player has declared a Circles check, it makes a difference. If the reason the GM is talking about the Raven Queen, or Orcus, is because a player has just declared that his Raven Queen devotee prays for guidance, it makes a difference.



So the DM isn't allowed to introduce hooks, or distractions, or seemingly-superfluous information?



> The basic action of RPGing is conversation. If the conversation takes the form of the players saying to the GM "Tell me stuff", and then the GM replies, it is true that it makes little difference whether the reply is pre-scripted or not. But as soon as the players engage the fiction in some more proactive style - be that "I'm a devotee of the Raven Queen - are the forces of Orcus opposing me here?", or "We go to the market on Enlil to look for alien artefacts - what do we find?", or "While he goes south with the villagers, we're going to make a hard run through the hills to avoid the giants - what happens?" - then the difference between pre-sripted answers and genuine answers is huge.
> 
> And I say _genuine answers_ deliberately: because in a game with robust resolution mechanics, we don't get answers to the players' questions until those mechanics are applied, and the application of the mechanics could mean that things go either way.



Letting the mechanics tell the story for you is one way to go about it, I suppose, but hardly my preference. 

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I'm not _assuming_. I'm doing my best to make sense of what [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is posting.
> 
> His example of the baron is one where the baron only becomes salient because the GM informs the players (in the course of some episode of play - eg a distressed peasant tells the PCs) that the baron is corrupt.
> 
> Freeing the slaves only becomes salient because the GM informs the players (in the course of some episode of play - eg the PCs see a slave being beaten) that slavery is a social problem in this part of the world.
> 
> Etc, etc.
> 
> The fact that the GM tells the players under the guise of a NPC telling a PC, or using the narrator's voice to tell the players what their PCs see, doesn't change the fact that it is the GM telling the players.



Yes, if for no other reason than to inform the players/PCs that there's more to the game world than just themselves and their own angst and drama.



> In Lanefan's game, as in yours, the PCs can oppose the baron, or free the slaves, or whatever. The point is that _the whole field of action_ is established by the GM, and the players simply make moves within it. They gather information (ie get the GM to tell them stuff) and choose what parts of the gameworld to engage (ie choose from the list provided, implicitly, by the GM).



But they never get to make those choices if they aren't even told they exist; and this is my point - the game world is bigger than the PCs and has more going on in it than the PCs' own drama, and as the PCs in theory would notice this it's incumbent on the DM to narrate it.  And the very act of narrating it provides the players/PCs a choice as to whether or not to interact with it, even if it means putting their own drama aside for a while.


----------



## Aenghus

The vast majority of RPG games I have played in have been GM-driven games, and I have enjoyed or at least appreciated many of them. A few were consistently great, most had highs and lows, with varying proportions of high and low.

IMO to get the best out of such games places some constraints on the players. The players need to learn at least enough about the setting to get by, even if they are playing ignorant outsiders at the start. How much work this takes varies from game to game and group to group. 

If a PC is supposed to be from the setting the player should make some effort to fit them to that part of the setting, ideally with the GM's help. Tolerance of special snowflakes varies a lot from group to group, with some creativity very unusual PCs can be grafted in if that's desired. Alternatively, it's common for GMs to modify or ban PCs who don't fit his or her concept of the setting.

PC goals need to fit the setting. If the players are ignorant of the setting at the start of the game, they don't know enough to set any but the most conservative of goals with any expectation of success. In some GM-driven games PC goals might be discussed with the GM and arrived at with collaboration. In others, they are entirely the business of the player and there are zero assurances of relevance or closure. Expected PC lifespan has a bearing on this, campaigns with high PC turnover don't encourage long term PC goals.

IMO proactive players who don't like conforming to someone else's setting don't do so well in GM-driven games with strong settings. Players who don't like learning settings may have issues as well.

There a whole load of reasons why players might stop engaging with the game, ignore plot hooks and turtle up. Acting out, attention seeking, feeling starved of enough information to make reasonable choices, setting dangers exceeding player expectations, concern the game is ignoring or misinterpreting their PC's goals, concern that plot hooks are irrelevant to the PC etc etc. Many of these can't be addressed properly in-game IMO and call for an OOC discussion to attempt a resolution.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ]As far as agency is concerned, why is being in the bazaar a railroad? Can't your player choose to leave the bazaar to look for a sage?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, but why would they when you-as-DM have given them a hammer-upside-the-head clue that what they seek is in the bazaar - probably from the feather merchant - by framing them there?
Click to expand...


This is bizarrely backwards.

There is no _clue_. There is a chance for the player to commit - or not, if s/he is feeling weak or cautious. For instance, given that the PC has an Affiliation with a sorcerous cabal, it would be easily open to the player to reach out to a contact and learn what sort of reputation - if any - this peddler has.

It's a weird conception of agency where (i) we know that what the player is interested in includes items that have the possibility of being useful in confronting a balrog, and (ii) it's judged a burden on agency to present the player with situations that speak to this desire, while (iii) it's considered an _increase_ in agency to make the player jump through essentially GM-driven and mediated hoops (is there a sage? is there a shop? who knows where angel feathers might be sold?) before we actually get to the core moment of play.



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> t's not an increase in player agency to have the GM offer a menu of things to ask questions about.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Sure it is, as it provides choice the players/PCs would not otherwise have had.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The railroad occurs when you skip a series of possible interactions (e.g. intersections, slaves being beaten, etc.) to get to the "action" one. The fiction doesn't get the chance to be changed away from the action scene you've already decided comes next.
Click to expand...


Again, this is all weirdly backwards. You're saying that the GM increases agency by saying _choose from these things I'm offering_ rather than _here, engage with this thing that you've shown you care about_.

The other bit that's biazarre is that you increase choice by saying "You're in the town" raher than "You're at the bazaar" - as if your playuer has _all the town choices_ pluys, once the PC gets to the bazaar, _all the bazaar choices_. Buit by the time (say, half-an-hour of play) your PC gets to the bazaar (or the sage, or whatever), guess what! - my table has been playing to, and the player at my table has made choices (what to do about the curse, who to ask for work, what to do about spotting the vendor of the cursed feather lurking in Jabal's tower).

Tight scene-framing doesn't reduce choice. It just means that the choices more often egnage dramatic need rather than are simply requests for the GM to download setting information.



Lanefan said:


> I'd like to think that the player isn't so selfish as to only care about the goals on his PC's character sheet, and is willing to engage in the goals of other players/PCs and with the game world at large.



Integrating the goals of multiple players is an important matter in player-driven RPGing. Both [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and I have posted about it at some length, over multiple posts, upthread.

But (1) you don't address this matter by giving all agency to the GM. And (2) _the gameworld at large_ is not a participant who can be slighted or harmed by player :"selfishness". It's just a metaphor for GM authorship!



Lanefan said:


> The conception I'm working with is choice = agency. "You're in town - what do you do?" gives the player a nigh-endless amount of choice. "You're at a bazaar, there's a pedlar selling feathers - what do you do?" takes away all the possible choices and options (and yes, distractons) between starting in town and finding the pedlar...if the PC ever finds the pedlar at all.



As choice situations in a RPG, the fictional setup in the second is no more limiting than the first. Given that the bazaar is in a town, the player whose PC is framed into the bazaar has all the same action declaration options vis-a-vis the fiction as does the player whose PC is framed into the town - but in addition, the framing speaks directly to his/her PC's dramatic need.

But - to go back to the "choose your own adventure" motif - _agency over the content of the shared fiction_ is not established simply by the fact that _in the fiction, the PC has choices_. If the content of all those choices is established by the GM, and if the significant outcomes of them are primarily a function of GM authorship of unrevealed backstory (as in your example of the mage who charms the spy and therefore but unknown to the player allows the attempt to be made on the life of the duke), then the player is not contributing very much to the content of the shared fiction.



Lanefan said:


> So the DM isn't allowed to introduce hooks, or distractions, or seemingly-superfluous information?



It's not an issue of _permission_. It's an issue of _what's the point_. If the plaeyr wants to play a Raven Queen devotee, and the table is in the middle of an exciting sequence dealing with the plots of some Orcus cultists, _what does it add to play_ to tell the players that their PCs come to an intersection?

That doesn't increase choice, for the reason already described - if I'm not wasting my time on that, I'll instead be framing a situation which invites relevant choices (eg the Orcus cultists are trying to bring the PC's friend back to life as a zombie).

The only answer I can see is because - for whatever aesthetic reason - one prefers RPGing to consist in the GM telling the players stuff that is independent of player exercise of agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction.



Lanefan said:


> Let the player tell you what the PC does, then narrate what comes of it based on what you know about (or have just made up about!) the city.



And there could hardly be a clearer example of my point. This is the player being told a story by the GM, about a city that the GM has made up, or is making up. All the player is doing is triggering the GM to tell him/her stuff!


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> There is finality. Success is success: the PC acquires an item useful for confronting his brother. Failure is failure: the item is cursed.




Success as you described it is not finality in any way.  You told me when I said that the player would have the item needed to save his brother that it still needed to be enchanted and one other thing I can't remember.  That's not finality.  That's exactly like me saying, "I want something to help me dig holes in my garden." as one of my goals, and you handing me a chunk of iron and saying that success is finality, even though I still need a blacksmith to make a shovel head out of it and a handle to attach.  

Finality is a shovel.  Finality is the item to free the brother.  Heck, even failure wasn't final since now the player had a curse to contend with.



> The GM is not at liberty to upend or undo these outcomes by manipulating as-yet unrevealed backstory. [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] outlined this in more detail upthread (in discussion of the example of "becoming a king"), and I posted an actual play illustration of the point: when Halika was drugged by the other PCs, the resultant success - Halika can't beat us to the tower - was secured until they affirmatively took an action that put it into jeopardy (by trying to sneak through the catacombs).




They succeeded in something that said that Halika can't beat us to the tower.  If it can be later put in jeopardy by a trip through the catacombs, not only is it not final, but it's not truly successful, either.  To be both successful and final, Halika can't make it to the tower ahead of them no matter what they do.



> I was talking about the opening scene of a campaign, and provided a concrete example from actual play. I thought you were talking about the same thing. if you weren't, then tell me what you were talking about and how it bears upon what I was talking about.




I know you were talking about the opening scene. That's why I said "outside of the very first moment..."  So how do they get to the next important scene.  Do they just get transported to wherever, or do they travel there?  If they are just transported(whether through skipping the travel portion or however), who decides where those places are?



> First, I don't see how what you describe is significantly different from what I said - "You're in town - what do you do?" All you've done is add a bit of colour - there was colour in my description of the bazaar too, but the colour doesn't change the basic choice structure of the moment of play.
> 
> As far as agency is concerned, why is being in the bazaar a railroad? Can't your player choose to leave the bazaar to look for a sage?




My way allows for players to exercise agency over wherever they go.  Your way would be considered a railroad since the players had absolutely no choice in whether or not they went to the bazaar.  You decided their movements for them.



> But furthermore, what does "best method" mean? What makes one method better than another? If you're running D&D, there is no "contact" rule system for finding an old merchant buddy. Are you talking about Streetwise checks? What makes those "better" than investigating the feather in the bazaar? It is completely opaque to me how you are framing and running these situations, how you are setting DCs, what information the player has about those DCs, what moves the player is able to make to affect DCs, and when the game actually gets to the crunch point of whether or not the PC finds a useful item.




I didn't say "best method", rather, what I said was that the player gets to decide how best to further his goal.  What he decides may or may not truly be the best way, but the player has made that value judgment, not you.  He decides whether to go to the bazaar, a wizard, or another way.  For the rest, it all depends on the circumstances of the situation.  As one example, the DC for finding a merchant(if a roll is even required) with a helpful item will be much higher in a mid sized town than in a large capitol city.



> This is consistent with my characterisation in the post to which you replied. But I don't see how it is a source of player agency that the question of whether or not they actually get to engage their player goal - in this case, finding a useful item - is dependent upon the GM making a (presumably secret) die roll.




They are engaging in that goal by the very act of searching out the item and interacting with the various NPCs in the game to achieve finding the item.  It doesn't have to be a single all or nothing roll in order to be engaging in the goal.



> Well, in my game the PC's goal, as established by the player, was to find an item which would be useful in confronting his balrog-possessed brother. My question is, how do _you_ decide what counts as a useful item? When you're making your die roll to determine if a curio shop has a useful item for sale, what item are you rolling for?
> 
> In my case, the player will declare what sort of property he hopes to detect in the feather. As well as establishing immediate details about the fiction, it also contributes to the table's shared understanding of what is involved in confronting a balrog.




By the very act of declaring, "I will find an item useful in saving my brother before I leave town.", the player has established that the item be useful in that goal.  Therefore, any item that is of use in achieving that goal would qualify as a useful item.  He doesn't need to declare anything more specific than that in order for the item to be useful.



> I don't understand what contrast you think you're drawing. This is like [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] saying that the players have more agency because the GM tells them about an intersection, or about a slave being beaten. It's not an increase in player agency to have the GM offer a menu of things to ask questions about.



I've never said that it was, so I don't know why you keep repeating it to me.  I've explained the difference many times to  you.



> If the players expressed goal is finding a useful item, and half an hour of play is spent _getting to the pont where that goal is actually in issue_, with that half hour essentially the player eliciting information from the GM ("Does anyone know whether there's a curiou shop in town? OK, can someone tell me where it is? Is it open? Does it have anything interesting for sale?"), I am not seeing where the player agency resides.




Yeeeah, that sort of thing doesn't happen.  What's you next suggestion for how we run things?  is the door stuck?  Is it stuck with jam?  Is it stuck with peanut butter?

Why do you consistently offer up ridiculous examples and then try to attribute those to our playstyle?



> This is contradictory. If, at every interaction, the fiction might change (ie _there's never any interaction where the fiction won't change_) then what is the railroad?




I was asking you which it was.



> This same claim has been made by [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]. It's only true under the assumption that the GM is responsible for all content introduction into the fiction. As soon as you drop that assumption, the claim is not true at all.




Sure it is.  If the DM is the one doing the authoring, then it doesn't matter if he authored it in advance or on the spot.  Adding in the players doesn't change that fact, since it's still the DM doing the authoring.  



> For instance - if the reason the GM is talking about wolves is because one of the PCs has an ability to summon and control wolves, it makes a difference. If the reason the GM is talking about Jabal is because a player has declared a Circles check, it makes a difference. If the reason the GM is talking about the Raven Queen, or Orcus, is because a player has just declared that his Raven Queen devotee prays for guidance, it makes a difference.




If I know there is a Raven Queen devotee and that he is likely to play for guidance, what's the difference in pre-authoring something and authoring the identical thing on the spot?  If I know the player can summon and control wolves and I know he will eventually use the ability, then what's the difference if I prepare ahead of time that one that responds is dark grey except for the silver muzzle or if I make the same identical thing up on the spot?



> The basic action of RPGing is conversation. If the conversation takes the form of the players saying to the GM "Tell me stuff", and then the GM replies, it is true that it makes little difference whether the reply is pre-scripted or not. But as soon as the players engage the fiction in some more proactive style - be that "I'm a devotee of the Raven Queen - are the forces of Orcus opposing me here?", or "We go to the market on Enlil to look for alien artefacts - what do we find?", or "While he goes south with the villagers, we're going to make a hard run through the hills to avoid the giants - what happens?" - then the difference between pre-sripted answers and genuine answers is huge.




Nobody is talking about never having to improvise and pre-authoring everything.  As I point out above, though, there is a lot I can know ahead of time and prepare for that will have no difference when it arrives, than if I improvised it.



> And I say _genuine answers_ deliberately: because in a game with robust resolution mechanics, we don't get answers to the players' questions until those mechanics are applied, and the application of the mechanics could mean that things go either way.



So there are mechanics to determine what color the wolves are, or what the answer to a successful or failed guidance might be?


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I'm not _assuming_. I'm doing my best to make sense of what [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is posting.




Dude!  You literally said this...



> Hence when you say that there is more agency in (i) having the GM say "You're in town, what do you do?" then starting things at the situation the player has signalled as salient, *I can only assume that you mean:* there is more agency in choosing from the GM's list of possible situations, and in gettting the GM to tell you more about the world s/he has made up, than there is in actually providing the content of a situation. I don't know what conception of agency you are working with here.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> In Burning Wheel a player is free to change any/all PC Beliefs at any time (unless the Belief is an additional Belief resulting from a particular build element which introduces constraints; and some Belief changes can have knock on effects - eg you lost the Faithful trait if you don't have at least one Belief that expresses your faith).




Okay.  I was genuinely curious about how that worked.



> The GM is entitled to veto a change, however, if (i) s/he takes the view it's an attempt to squib in the face of a challenge to the existing Belief, or (ii) s/he is about to frame a challenge to the existing Belief.




So no cheating.  That seems reasonable.  



> WORDS, NOT DEEDS
> 
> 1 XP	when you begin an action scene with a non-attack action
> 3 XP	when you inflict emotional stress or take mental stress via an argument
> 10 XP when you either foreswear conversation as useless or when you foreswear the initiation of violence​
> You can trigger the 1 XP no more than once per action; the 3 XP no more than once per scene; and the 10 XP only once, which then closes out the milestone and requires the PC to take on a new milestone. You can't change milestones otherwise.




Interesting.  How does one inflict emotional stress?


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> This is bizarrely backwards.
> 
> There is no _clue_. There is a chance for the player to commit - or not, if s/he is feeling weak or cautious. For instance, given that the PC has an Affiliation with a sorcerous cabal, it would be easily open to the player to reach out to a contact and learn what sort of reputation - if any - this peddler has.



It has to be obvious that any player is going to meta-know that you've framed that scene and that pedlar for a reason: because that's where they'll get to determine ultimate success or failure on this part of their journey.  In story terms, you've jumped straight to the climax of this chapter without any real buildup.



> It's a weird conception of agency where (i) we know that what the player is interested in includes items that have the possibility of being useful in confronting a balrog, and (ii) it's judged a burden on agency to present the player with situations that speak to this desire, while (iii) it's considered an _increase_ in agency to make the player jump through essentially GM-driven and mediated hoops (is there a sage? is there a shop? who knows where angel feathers might be sold?) before we actually get to the core moment of play.



How does the PC even know whether confronting a balrog requires an angel feather or an enchanted herb or a Johnson outboard motor...as in at what point did the player/PC glean this information?  You framed him straight into the bazaar in front of the feather merchant, and in so doing might as well have said out loud "don't bother looking anywhere else, this is where to go".  That's as much lead-'em-by-the-nose as the worst of railroads.

That he then turned around and promptly failed the check, saddling himself with a cursed feather, is sucky for him; but also kind of irrelevant here.



> Again, this is all weirdly backwards. You're saying that the GM increases agency by saying _choose from these things I'm offering_ rather than _here, engage with this thing that you've shown you care about_.



No, the DM is increasing agency by saying that while you've got this dramatic thing you care about there's other things going on around your PC as well - you're not in a bubble - so let's test how much you really care about your thing and what other opportunities you're willing to give up in order to pursue it, and while we're at it let's put your character's morals and ethics (a.k.a. alignment) under a lens for a moment via your reaction on seeing a slave being beaten.



> The other bit that's biazarre is that you increase choice by saying "You're in the town" raher than "You're at the bazaar" - as if your playuer has _all the town choices_ pluys, once the PC gets to the bazaar, _all the bazaar choices_. Buit by the time (say, half-an-hour of play) your PC gets to the bazaar (or the sage, or whatever), guess what! - my table has been playing to, and the player at my table has made choices (what to do about the curse, who to ask for work, what to do about spotting the vendor of the cursed feather lurking in Jabal's tower).



Where my table now knows a lot more about the city in general, and can worry about Jabal's tower next session if they want to.



> Tight scene-framing doesn't reduce choice. It just means that the choices more often egnage dramatic need rather than are simply requests for the GM to download setting information.



Leaving the game world as little more than a Hollywood-style facade where you don't dare look behind the walls of the constructed set.  I prefer a bit more depth and solidity than that.



> As choice situations in a RPG, the fictional setup in the second is no more limiting than the first. Given that the bazaar is in a town, the player whose PC is framed into the bazaar has all the same action declaration options vis-a-vis the fiction as does the player whose PC is framed into the town - but in addition, *the framing speaks directly to his/her PC's dramatic need*.



The bit I've bolded just sounds like fancy words for "the PC has been railroaded to where I think it needs to go to further its story".



> But - to go back to the "choose your own adventure" motif - _agency over the content of the shared fiction_ is not established simply by the fact that _in the fiction, the PC has choices_. If the content of all those choices is established by the GM, and if the significant outcomes of them are primarily a function of GM authorship of unrevealed backstory (as in your example of the mage who charms the spy and therefore but unknown to the player allows the attempt to be made on the life of the duke), then the player is not contributing very much to the content of the shared fiction.



The player(s) is(are) contributing to the shared fiction in that their decisions determine what that fiction will end up being.

If the PCs decide go south along the coast to battle some troglodytes rather than go inland to explore Archmage Donalt's ruined tower then guess what: the shared fiction isn't going to say much about Donalt's tower!  It almost certainly will, however, end up with lots of reference to troglodytes.



> It's not an issue of _permission_. It's an issue of _what's the point_. If the plaeyr wants to play a Raven Queen devotee, and the table is in the middle of an exciting sequence dealing with the plots of some Orcus cultists, _what does it add to play_ to tell the players that their PCs come to an intersection?
> 
> That doesn't increase choice, for the reason already described - if I'm not wasting my time on that, I'll instead be framing a situation which invites relevant choices (eg the Orcus cultists are trying to bring the PC's friend back to life as a zombie).
> 
> The only answer I can see is because - for whatever aesthetic reason - one prefers RPGing to consist in the GM telling the players stuff that is independent of player exercise of agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction.



I'm beginning to draw a comparitive analogy between your game and mine (and I dare say most others) in a sports-TV format: your game is the 10-minute highlight show where you see just the goals and key plays while everything in between gets skipped; where mine is the whole 90-minute match including all the buildup and stoppages and everything else, and the viewer doesn't miss anything.

Lan-"plus five minutes stoppage time"-efan


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> So you keep saying.  I disagree with the 'modest' qualifier.
> 
> The conception I'm working with is *choice = agency*.  "You're in town - what do you do?" gives the player a nigh-endless amount of choice.  "You're at a bazaar, there's a pedlar selling feathers - what do you do?" takes away all the possible choices and options (and yes, distractons) between starting in town and finding the pedlar...if the PC ever finds the pedlar at all.




What [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is likely saying is that what the story is ABOUT, what it 'contains' in terms of the SUBJECT MATTER is the domain of the players. The GM draws a picture, framing a scene in which that subject matter will be examined, but the subject itself is of the player's invention.

The BW character's believe selected the subject, a struggle to save his brother from possession by a demon, and a search for an item useful in achieving this goal (with a constraint, 'before I leave the city'). The GM cast the subject in the form of a feather, and cast the location of interacting with this material as a bazaar, but the player had complete freedom to make the story about finding unusual species of snails if he had wanted to. The bazaar might still have been invented as a location in this case, but the goal and consequent action presumably different. 

This is what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] means by "agency with respect to the fiction" and why when you say you have given the player's some choices, potentially even unlimited choices, to interact with the fiction WHICH THE GM INTRODUCED FOR HIS OWN REASONS, that doesn't produce the same agency, no matter how many choices they have. Pemerton calls it 'modest agency'. I presume this is because there is assumed to be some sort of logical progression to the game such that the PC's choices COULD potentially lead in some anticipated fashion towards fictional content which the player particularly wanted to include in the game. Even then the GM still has to decide to cooperate, whereas in BW the GM has literally no choice.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> In that one scene, yes.  But it's only a stepping-stone on the road to the overall success-failure finality of redeeming the brother - I think you two are looking at different scales here.



Yeah, but I think this was an earlier topic of discussion. Unless you want a one hour campaign you probably want incremental steps along the way to final success in the 'big thing'. In BW there may not really be one single 'big thing' even for a PC, as the player could write new beliefs at any point (almost). 



> Yes, but why would they when you-as-DM have given them a hammer-upside-the-head clue that what they seek is in the bazaar - probably from the feather merchant - by framing them there?



They have a choice, and given how Story Now works what will happen is that the player will 'vote with his feet' to engage on different terms (reframe the context of engagement with his goals). I don't want to haggle in the bazaar, I go looking for a library! OK, so be it! The player wants lore. Maybe instead he'll make a contact, or whatever, he he'll PROBABLY find some sort of 'book place'. Or maybe he'll find a bard instead and learn some lore that way, but 'lore and books' are probably going to factor in, right? I mean in standard DM-centered play that wouldn't be unlikely either.



> Why involve hard mechanics at all?  Streetwise, DCs, etc. - don't use unless absolutely necessary!  Let the player tell you what the PC does, then narrate what comes of it based on what you know about 9or have just made up about!) the city.
> 
> I'll quite often use what I call "soft mechanics", where I'll get a roll and use it as a general barometer of success - roll really well and you're good, roll really badly and you're screwed, but roll something in between and I'll scale the narration to the roll - a middling roll of 14 might get you further than a middling roll of 7 - but there's almost never a hard number binarily (is that a word?) dividing success and failure.



I just consider what is happening. If there's really something at stake, the PC is directly going for some goal, taking some risk, there's some decision point with explicit consequence to the path of the narrative, then mechanics are normally engaged, so as to produce some uncertainty of outcome. In reference to what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] said, HoML, my own 4e hack which I often run, has pretty explicit mechanics for resolving conflicts. They are always 4e-like General Challenges (or maybe combats, but this doesn't seem like one of those). Success and you end up with a useful item. Failure and you don't end up with a useful item. Its going to involve some number of checks, and some evolution of fictional position within that part of the narrative (scene). 

Frankly, if something is 'lesser', it doesn't seem to be 'worth' a challenge, then its not worth mechanics IMHO. I call it an interlude and its just narrated. This might be, for example, where something gets mentioned, like your example of the intersection. "You pass many other passageways branching in various directions as you travel."



> I'd like to think that the player isn't so selfish as to only care about the goals on his PC's character sheet, and is willing to engage in the goals of other players/PCs and with the game world at large.
> 
> I've had selfish players like that in the past.  They don't play in my games any more.



I don't think it is selfish to engage with the game in the way it is intended. You take on the persona of a character, right? Is it selfish to build hotels on Boardwalk and take everyone's money in Monopoly? No, its the point of the game. I mean, 'style counts' IMHO, so every instance could be judged on its own merits, but I think as long as the player is cooperating with everyone getting to share equally in the fun of playing there's no selfishness here.



> Sure it is, as it provides choice the players/PCs would not otherwise have had.
> 
> The railroad occurs when you skip a series of possible interactions (e.g. intersections, slaves being beaten, etc.) to get to the "action" one.  The fiction doesn't get the chance to be changed away from the action scene you've already decided comes next.



I think there's a quite obvious reductio ad absurdum here: No game is infinitely detailed. In every case some things are abstracted away and some choices are just assumed, or presumed to be inconsequential. Nobody cares which cobblestones you set foot on, "you advance 30' to the end of the hallway" works fine. This is the same principle at work. If the players want to say "as we move along we'll look for interesting things to investigate" then I think the GM is going to say something. It COULD be 'you see nothing', or its more likely some sort of relevant thing will come up.



> So the DM isn't allowed to introduce hooks, or distractions, or seemingly-superfluous information?
> 
> Letting the mechanics tell the story for you is one way to go about it, I suppose, but hardly my preference.
> 
> Lanefan




The GM is framing scenes. She COULD add some unimportant detail or something, but no, the GM's job is to introduce the relevant scenes. Its the players who decide what kind of material they want. 

4e introduced much more solid mechanics into D&D, ones that aimed to provide quantifiable results and to relate to the fiction in predictable ways, in order to provide players with empowerment. This is generally not really controversial. Mechanics decide story points for a good reason, they're impartial, the players can understand what they're buying into and assess risk and know their capabilities.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, but I think this was an earlier topic of discussion. Unless you want a one hour campaign you probably want incremental steps along the way to final success in the 'big thing'.



Obviously.  And I further suggest you want side quests, detours, and other optional extras as well.



> In BW there may not really be one single 'big thing' even for a PC, as the player could write new beliefs at any point (almost).



Which is good, as it can keep the campaign going even after the first major goal/belief of each PC has been dealt with.



> They have a choice, and given how Story Now works what will happen is that the player will 'vote with his feet' to engage on different terms (reframe the context of engagement with his goals). I don't want to haggle in the bazaar, I go looking for a library! OK, so be it! The player wants lore. Maybe instead he'll make a contact, or whatever, he he'll PROBABLY find some sort of 'book place'. Or maybe he'll find a bard instead and learn some lore that way, but 'lore and books' are probably going to factor in, right? I mean in standard DM-centered play that wouldn't be unlikely either.



In DM-centered play it would be normal.  In this particular example, however, I know I-as-player would be thinking "OK, he's put me in the bazaar, which probably means something is supposed to happen here, so I guess I should engage with it rather than turn my back on it."  If he just puts me in the town then it's on me to do the digging required to get me to the bazaar.

4e module design seemed to do this a lot - sort of want to jump from one elaborate set piece (with fancy battle-map included!) to the next without always bothering to detail what went in between.  As a DM trying to use some 4e modules converted for my game it was annoying, and as a player a DM doing this will put me off a game real quick...and I'm not alone in thinking that way.



> I just consider what is happening. If there's really something at stake, the PC is directly going for some goal, taking some risk, there's some decision point with explicit consequence to the path of the narrative, then mechanics are normally engaged, so as to produce some uncertainty of outcome. In reference to what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] said, HoML, my own 4e hack which I often run, has pretty explicit mechanics for resolving conflicts. They are always 4e-like General Challenges (or maybe combats, but this doesn't seem like one of those). Success and you end up with a useful item. Failure and you don't end up with a useful item. Its going to involve some number of checks, and some evolution of fictional position within that part of the narrative (scene).
> 
> Frankly, if something is 'lesser', it doesn't seem to be 'worth' a challenge, then its not worth mechanics IMHO. I call it an interlude and its just narrated. This might be, for example, where something gets mentioned, like your example of the intersection. "You pass many other passageways branching in various directions as you travel."



It's likely we're just using a different level of detail when determining what counts as 'lesser' as opposed to what's relevant.

But even there, a DM just saying "You pass many other passageways branching in various directions as you travel" is all I'm asking for, while walking to the reliquary with the angels...well, that and the opportunity to say in response "I glance down each one as we pass to see if there's anything of interest, all the while staying alert for threats."

Then it's up to the DM to determine, via whatever means she chooses, whether or not there's anything down any of them for me to see.  If not, all is cool.

What's important is that at least a nod is given to the fact that we-as-PCs are part of a bigger world, and that we're moving through it rather than blipping from scene to scene.



> I don't think it is selfish to engage with the game in the way it is intended. You take on the persona of a character, right? Is it selfish to build hotels on Boardwalk and take everyone's money in Monopoly? No, its the point of the game.



And the point of the game in Monopoly is pure selfishness.  Monopoly might be the most selfish game ever invented.  (probably not the best example you could have picked...) 


> I mean, 'style counts' IMHO, so every instance could be judged on its own merits, but I think as long as the player is cooperating with everyone getting to share equally in the fun of playing there's no selfishness here.



Sure there is - "my story is more important than any other story out there" sounds like a baked-in tenet of that game system; with it being left to the DM to try and weave these stories together such that more than one can be played out simultaneously at the table.



> I think there's a quite obvious reductio ad absurdum here: No game is infinitely detailed. In every case some things are abstracted away and some choices are just assumed, or presumed to be inconsequential. Nobody cares which cobblestones you set foot on, "you advance 30' to the end of the hallway" works fine. This is the same principle at work. If the players want to say "as we move along we'll look for interesting things to investigate" then I think the GM is going to say something. It COULD be 'you see nothing', or its more likely some sort of relevant thing will come up.



I guess I just take "as we move along we'll look for interesting things to investigate" as the baked-in standard until and unless something changes it e.g. the party is fleeing at full speed, or is for whatever reason intentionally trying to ignore their surroundings (usually a good idea in CoC, from what I've heard).



> The GM is framing scenes. She COULD add some unimportant detail or something, but no, the GM's job is to introduce the relevant scenes. Its the players who decide what kind of material they want.



Put that way it sounds like the DM is little more than a CPU or a music streaming service: players input requests for material, DM outputs material to suit.

You probably don't mean it that harshly, but that is what it boils down to.



> 4e introduced much more solid mechanics into D&D, ones that aimed to provide quantifiable results and to relate to the fiction in predictable ways, in order to provide players with empowerment. This is generally not really controversial.



Let me get this straight: you're saying something about 4e design is not controversial?

4e's very existence is controversial.  Its design elements, from my perspective and having dug into it somewhat on its release*, covered a range between about marginally tolerable to hideous.  Every other edition has had for me at least one "aha!" element, where I see a mechanic or system and think "that's brilliant!".  Even the new PF2 has already shown me one of those...but 4e never did.

* - I only bought the initial three core books (DMG,PH,MM) but didn't get the later books as I knew I wasn't going to be doing anything with the system.



> Mechanics decide story points for a good reason, they're impartial, the players can understand what they're buying into and assess risk and know their capabilities.



A DM-driven game can do all of this, and do it more realistically (which equals better IMO).  A DM impartially preauthors the world or adventure or whatever (or should!), then presents it impartially during play either as setting exposition or in reaction to PC actions and-or movements in the game world.  If the players/PCs want to "understand what they're buying into" and-or "assess the risk" they have to take the time to do the requisite investigating or scouting or information gathering, just like reality.  In either system the players in theory know the capabilities of their PCs, and it's perfectly realistic to say they might not always know how well those capabilities will measure up against whatever threat might be looming until some trial and error has occurred.

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> the game world is bigger than the PCs and has more going on in it than the PCs' own drama



You mean the referee's drama?

These aren't real worlds. Those NPCs aren't real voice crying out to be noticed. They're just stuff the GM made up. Saying that paying attention to the GM's stuff is "bigger" than paying attention to the players' stuff doesn't make any sense.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> You mean the referee's drama?
> 
> These aren't real worlds. Those NPCs aren't real voice crying out to be noticed. They're just stuff the GM made up.



And the PCs are just stuff the players made up, for all that; aided by whatever char-gen mechanics the system in use has going for it.  So what?


> Saying that paying attention to the GM's stuff is "bigger" than paying attention to the players' stuff doesn't make any sense.



If you're not even going to acknowledge there's a bigger game world out there than just the PCs immediate surroundings and drama, I can see how you'd think like that.

But consider this: real-world you is walking into town one day from your house, heading for work.  Your thoughts are miles away, concerned with some serious dramatics going on at the office and how you might best deal with or avoid them, and you're paying just enough attention to your walking so as not to step into traffic or any other such thing.  Then down a side street you hear a crash - someone's just driven a Toyota into a telephone pole.  Chances are those thoughts of the goings-on in the office just went away in a hurry...

The same thing can happen to a PC: the greater world can interrupt or forestall or even invalidate the PCs (player's) own drama.  The world is bigger than any one character - or even any one party - in it.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> I'm beginning to draw a comparitive analogy between your game and mine (and I dare say most others) in a sports-TV format: your game is the 10-minute highlight show where you see just the goals and key plays while everything in between gets skipped; where mine is the whole 90-minute match including all the buildup and stoppages and everything else, and the viewer doesn't miss anything.



This is incorrect. Because I also play the game for 90 minutes.


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> I further suggest you want side quests, detours, and other optional extras as well.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> a DM just saying "You pass many other passageways branching in various directions as you travel" is all I'm asking for



Which are you asking for?

But in any event, "You pass many other passageways as you travel is just colour". So is "The sky broods above you as you crest the hills". I have no idea what colour, if any, I narrated in relation to Mal Arundak. Here is the relevant extract from an actual play write up:



pemerton said:


> The "angels" showed the weary travellers to a room where they could rest and freshen up. The invoker/wizard used Purify Water to remove the corrupting sludge from the fountain in the room, and they took a long rest (they also may have done some divination, but the details escape me).
> 
> Reinvigorated, they went back out to speak to the angels, and presented as their principal concern the need to check the bastion's defences, and reinvigorate them if necessary. The paranoid "angels" began to suspect them, however, of wanting to be shown the way to the Flame so they could steal it. Matters came to something of a head when the invoker/wizard, as part of "reinforcing the magic wards", raised a Magic Circle vs Demons at the entrance to the reliquary where the Flame was stored - the angels could sense that they couldn't cross it, and accused him of treachery, but he (and his fellows) retorted that the angels has been corrupted by their long labours on the Abyss, and insisted that they join in a ritual of purification and reinvigoration in the spirit of Pelor. (This had been resolved a social skill challenge, in which the PCs were successful so far.)
> 
> The invoker/wizard then used his Memory of a Thousand Lifetimes to recall a teleport sigil from Pelor's hold in Hestavar, and opened a Planar Portal directly to that point (successful Arcana check), allowing Pelor's divine power to wash over the PCs and the angels. A successful Religion check purged them of their corruption, and they duly thanked the PCs for purifying them, and allowed them to enter the reliquary to learn where the chaos was coming from. (The invoker/wizard's Rod of 5 out of 7 Parts was going nuts with the urgent desire to enter the reliquary.)



If I do say so myself, there is ample colour there: the room the PCs rest in; the corrupting sludge, and its cleansing by the PC; the argument with the angels about who is faithful and who touched by corruption; the opening of a portal to Hestavar so that Pelor's divine radiance could cleanse the angels.

It doesn't scream out to me, "Yes - but were there any intersections!?" And it's not as if the players were lacking in choices to make.



Lanefan said:


> In this particular example, however, I know I-as-player would be thinking "OK, he's put me in the bazaar, which probably means something is supposed to happen here, so I guess I should engage with it rather than turn my back on it."





Lanefan said:


> It has to be obvious that any player is going to meta-know that you've framed that scene and that pedlar for a reason: because that's where they'll get to determine ultimate success or failure on this part of their journey.  In story terms, you've jumped straight to the climax of this chapter without any real buildup.
> 
> How does the PC even know whether confronting a balrog requires an angel feather or an enchanted herb or a Johnson outboard motor...as in at what point did the player/PC glean this information?  You framed him straight into the bazaar in front of the feather merchant, and in so doing might as well have said out loud "don't bother looking anywhere else, this is where to go".  That's as much lead-'em-by-the-nose as the worst of railroads.



The PC is in a bazaar with an angel feather for sale. That's the situation. What does the player make of that? That's up to the player. Nothing is "supposed" to happen here, except in the sense that it's a RPG, so one expects the players to declare actions for their PCs.

When you ask _how does the PC even know_, you are assuming that the GM is writing everything! The PC didn't know. He wondered, and tried to read the feather's aura. In doing so he learned that it was cursed. (Mechanically, he failed the check. Had he succeeded, no cursed feather would have been narrated.) How did the invoker/wizard PC "know" that you can liberate angels on the Abyss from corrupting taint by opening a portal to Hestavar? Because he's an epic tier invoker, wizard, divine philosopher, and sage of ages! How did the player know it? He didn't _know_ it at all - he made it up! If the checks had failed, then it would have turned out that he didn't know it at all, because the attempt to cleanse the angels would have failed in some fashion.

These are illustrations of what I'm talking about when I talk about player agency over the content of the shared fiction.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> How does one inflict emotional stress?



In mechanical terms, the same way that one inflicts physical stress, or mental stress, or establishes an asset, or imposes a complication, or reduces/eliminates a trait. A dice pool is built out of salient character traits), and is rolled to establish a total and an effect die. The opposition (another character, or the doom pool, depending on the fictional situation) then does the same thing. The higher roll wins (ties go to the opposition). The winner's effect die takes effect.

From a small way upthread:

[sblock]







pemerton said:


> In my Cortex+ Fantasy Hack game yesterday, the PCs had split into two groups: the skinchanger was leading rescued villagers to safety in the south, while the other three PC were heading north (on the original quest) following a vision that the god-touched berserker had had (in mechanical terms, the player spent a "plot point" to create a Religious Expert resource). The scene included as distinctions Frightened Villagers and The Giants are Almost Upon Us (following on from the previous seen which had Giants Not Far Behind?; which in turn followed on from the PCs rescuing the villagers from the giants). The skinchanger eliminated the Frightened Villager distinction (in the fiction, by turning into a werewolf and bullying the villagers into some sort of discipline), while the other group eliminated The Giants are Almost Upon Us. The berserker did this, in the fiction by leading the group on a hard run through the hills while avoiding the giants. In the fiction, this made it clear that there was no one between the giants and the group heading south, and so I spent a die from the Doom Pool to introduce a mob of giants attacking the skinchanger.
> 
> The northern group included a seer, who has Oracular Senses as well as Sorcery Supremacy, and it was not contentious that he had a sense of the giant attack taking place to the south. The players then discussed how to respond - try and teleport the skinchanger back to the northern group to save him (and thus sacrificing the villagers), or maybe teleport south themselves along a ley line. The berserker has a milestone which gives him XP for getting in an argument, and so his player was up for one, especially as it was the berserker who had had the vision to head north and who had led them around the giants. So the seer urged him to agree to come south through a teleporting mist summoned on a ley line (mechanically, inflicting a small amount of mental stress) before then conjuring the mist that the warriors stepped through (mechanically, he was able to inflict a Confused by the Mists complication on the giants as well as grant a Out of the Mists asset to the PC swordthane).



[/sblock]


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> And the PCs are just stuff the players made up, for all that; aided by whatever char-gen mechanics the system in use has going for it.  So what?



But the players are real, as are their desires about the game.



Lanefan said:


> If you're not even going to acknowledge there's a bigger game world out there than just the PCs immediate surroundings and drama, I can see how you'd think like that.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> But consider this: real-world



Dude, it's all just imagination! We can talk (admittedly not on this board) about the _politics_ of JRRT's focus on NW Middle Earth in LotR, or about the aesthetics of that (and his desire to create a mythology for England). But it would be ludicrous to complain that the Southrons have been wronged by not being written about!


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Success as you described it is not finality in any way.



Yes it is. It establishes that the feather has whatever trait the player was looking for, and that that trait is useful for making stuff that will help you confront balrogs.

The contrast would be something that is clearly quite possible in [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game: the player learns that the feather has such-and-such trait, but it turns out that such-and-such trait is irrelevant for confronting balrogs.

By _finality_ I don't mean the end of the story. Or the resolution of the Belief. I mean that the outcome of successful action declaration is fixed, and can't be undone unless the players do something that puts it back into jeopardy. [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] discussed this well upthread in relation to the attempt to become king.



Maxperson said:


> They succeeded in something that said that Halika can't beat us to the tower.  If it can be later put in jeopardy by a trip through the catacombs, not only is it not final, but it's not truly successful, either.



Because they put it back into play. They didn't just cross the town to go to the tower; rather, they tried to sneak through the catacombs which (it was already known) were labyrinthine. (I think one of the players wanted a catacombs-wise check for his PC; and the other was happy to try this way of getting into the tower rather than risking the front door.) And so (in the fiction) they got lost, because (at the table) the check failed.

This is an instance of what [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] called _following the fiction where it leads_.

The point about finality is that _the GM has no prerogative to unilaterally undo the success_.



Maxperson said:


> the player gets to decide how best to further his goal. What he decides may or may not truly be the best way, but the player has made that value judgment, not you.



This is an instance of a lack of finality in resolution, resulting from the fact that the GM is establishing unrevealed backstory elements behind the scenes.



Maxperson said:


> So there are mechanics to determine what color the wolves are, or what the answer to a successful or failed guidance might be?



Yes, if anyone cares about it. The colour of wolves has never come up in any game I've run (that I can think of), but in my Cortex+ game the size of an ox (ie its giant size) was established as the result of action resolution. On multiple occasions divine guidance has been established via action resolution.

Sometimes a player asks but doesn't have a view as to what the answer is. In those situations, they are - in effect - inviting the GM to tell them stuff. At which point, obviously, it is the GM exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction, not the player. Although it is likely the parameters for this exercise of  agency will have been established by the player, as an outcome of action resolution.



Maxperson said:


> Your way would be considered a railroad since the players had absolutely no choice in whether or not they went to the bazaar. You decided their movements for them.



How do you start a campaign? Do the players narrate the starting situation?



Maxperson said:


> how do they get to the next important scene.  Do they just get transported to wherever, or do they travel there?  If they are just transported(whether through skipping the travel portion or however), who decides where those places are?



I have a lot of trouble making sense of this question. How do the PCs in your game get from the common room of the tavern to their bedrooms upstairs? _In the fiction_, they step over flagstones and climb every stair. But - again echoing [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] - I assume that you don't play through every such step. Probably everyone at the table agrees that it's bedtime for the PCs, and you then say - in the absence of anything interesting happening overnight - "OK, you wake the next morning."

In the BW game, after dealing with the peddler the PCs went to a tavern to eat some lunch and wait for a message from Jabal. We didn't worry about how many blocks it might have been from the bazaar to the tavern. At the tavern they were approached by Athog, Jabal's enforcer, telling them to leave town. When Athog drew his sword, one of the PCs wrestled disarmed him and wrestled him to the ground, and the PCs then went to confront Jabal in his tower. Again, we didn't worry about how many blocks it might have been from the tavern to the tower.

Later on in the campaign, when the PCs trekked across the Bright Desert from an oasis with a friendly naga to the Abor-Alz, I pulled out the GH maps and we worked out a number of days. But the actual travel was resolved via an Orienteering check. The distance didn't influence the difficulty of that check, but did influence the difficulty of the Forte checks required to avoid dehydration. Otherwise the number of days required was primarily colour.

In my Cortex+ Heroic session on the weekend, the action (continued from our previous session of that particular campaign) started at the house of the Frost Queen. After defeating her, the PCs and the villagers rested the night and then set off the next morning - one PC to the south with the villagers, the rest to the north. The key features of the ensuing situation were established by the scene distinctions: Frightened Villagers, Snow All About, The Giants are Almost Upon You. These are what the players interacted with. The exact number of miles travelled isn't relevant and doesn't need to be worked out. There's no map. We know there are hills, which rise into mountains and glaciers to the north and farmland to the south. That's enough.

None of this is very different from saying "We got to sleep, and then when we wake up we . . ." That's mostly colour also.



Maxperson said:


> If the DM is the one doing the authoring, then it doesn't matter if he authored it in advance or on the spot.  Adding in the players doesn't change that fact, since it's still the DM doing the authoring.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> If I know there is a Raven Queen devotee and that he is likely to play for guidance, what's the difference in pre-authoring something and authoring the identical thing on the spot?  If I know the player can summon and control wolves and I know he will eventually use the ability, then what's the difference if I prepare ahead of time that one that responds is dark grey except for the silver muzzle or if I make the same identical thing up on the spot?



My point is that _you can't preauthor if the players are making action declarations of the sort I describe_.

When the feather turns out to be cursed, what will the PC do? As it turns out, he tries to make contact with Jabal. How can I know in advance that will happen? I can't. So nor can I know that it might (as it did) fail, and hence that I will need an enforcer (Athog) as a fictional element. And then, when the PCs - having bested Athog - go to the tower, how can I know that that will happen? Or what the consequences will be?

There is no scope in this sort of game for pre-authoring. Hence the players can tell that things are not pre-authored. Which is contrary to your claim that no one can tell the difference. Which was my point.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> I've read a few of your BW play reports that featured combat.  In one I recall more clearly, your character was accosted by orcs for failing a check to determine what happened at a sacked farmhouse, and the combat lacked a good deal of tactical depth as well.  At no point did it appear you had options to limit danger occurring or make tactical choices about fictional position to mitigate danger that did appear.  These are part and parcel of the DM-facing style, where players are incentivized to be risk-aware because that has positive benefits for dealing with risk.  In player facing games, risk occurs no matter what on check failures or scene framing, and there's limited logistical (when to rest, stocking up on potions/scrolls, spell expenditure rates, etc) or tactical (posting guards while a player engages in a time consuming task, having weapons drawn, scouting locations, etc) choices to make.  This is because, as a design feature, scene framing is already at a crisis point (go to the action) that requires immediate addressing of events AND failures are meant to increase stakes, so any precautions taken will have limited impacts.  Story Now games offset this by using player resources to possibly mitigate consequences (like Blades' use of the resist mechanic), but this is reactionary and not proactive action declaration -- its a choice after the fact, not behavior the player can engage with prior to failure.





Ovinomancer said:


> It's amusing that you cut out the bits of my post where I specifically point out those mechanics that are after the fact resource expenditures to reduce consequences and then present these exact things as if it refutes my argument.  I'm specifically taking about action declaration to reduce or mitigate risk which is why I called out the post-hoc mechanics.





Ovinomancer said:


> Here's what happened:
> 
> 1.  I posted about post-hoc resolution mechanics as not addressing the agency of players to declare actions to mitigate risk prior to events.
> 
> 2.  You cliped my post to remove this argument, and presented post-hoc resolution mechanics as risk mitigation.  You ALSO began a discussion of the Fight! mechanics in BW to respond to my separate points on tactical decision points.
> 
> 3.  I pointed out that you clipped the relevant portion of my first post in regards to post-hoc mitigation mechanics and how it was amusing that you would present post-hoc mitigation mechanics as a solution while intentionally ignoring my explicit comments about them.
> 
> 3a.  I ALSO responded to your separate comments on the Fight! mechanics.
> 
> 4.  You now claim confusion because my complaint about your clipping out portions of my post doesn't address your post about the Fight! mechanics, which is unrelated and temporally impossible.
> 
> Okay,  that really looks good on you.  Go with that.



I've compiled your posts on this topic.

You said, of combat in BW, that "At no point did it appear you had options to limit danger occurring or make tactical choices about fictional position to mitigate danger that did appear." I pointed out that this claim is wrong (or, at best, that the only reason you drew that inference is because you were not familiar with the system). I provided some examples of how, during the course of that fight, I had the option to manage danger (both to my PC and to Aramina) by making choices about positioning. And I also explained how the scripting system more generally permits tactical choices to manage and mitigate danger.

You linked this (alleged) feature of BW combat to some more general thesis that

scene framing is already at a crisis point (go to the action) that requires immediate addressing of events AND failures are meant to increase stakes, so any precautions taken will have limited impacts.  Story Now games offset this by using player resources to possibly mitigate consequences (like Blades' use of the resist mechanic), but this is reactionary and not proactive action declaration -- its a choice after the fact, not behavior the player can engage with prior to failure.​
I have no idea where this thesis comes from. It is not borne out by BW play - the mage PC in my game, for instance, at one point took the precaution of donning leather armour and that has mitigated danger in subsequent combat. At another point he took the precaution of turning invisible and that mitigated the danger of being detected in an attempt to escape from prison.

It is not borne out by Cortex+ Heroic play either. In my MHRP game, for instance, Bobby Drake's player took the precaution of paying a plot point to have counselling, thus establishing a d6 Pscyhologist's Counselling asset. Later on, he was able to include this asset in a pool to avoid suffering emotional stress.

These are all things done _prior to failure_.

You also asserted, but quite mistakenly, that the play examples I provided of tactical choices and choices made to manage or mitigate risk (eg the seer in our Vikings game managing the Doom Pool downwards; PCs in Burning Wheel starting with weapons drawn to avoid the action cost of having to draw a weapon; a PC choosing to reach out to a lesser personage so as to reduce the severity of any blowback; a PC in the Viking game scouting out the giants' steading - in mechanical terms, establishing assets - so as to set himself up for success in a subsequent social conflict) were all "after the fact resource expenditures to reduce consequences". None of them was.

BW doesn't have such mechanics, except the expenditure of a Persona point to survive a mortal wound. Cortex+ Heroic may allow particular PCs to have them, but across my two games the only PC with such an option is Wolverine (who can spend a plot point to recover physical stress). As I posted, these are relatively common in 4e (as interrupts of various sorts) but none of the examples I gave was of this sort of 4e mechanic.

This is why I have no idea what you're talking about. Your thesis is bizarre to me, and seems to be based on generalising some feature of Blades in the Dark across whole swathes of games that you seem to have not much familiarity with.



Ovinomancer said:


> 1.  Fight! is unpredicatable and has a reasonable likelihood to result in wounding or death.



It's unpredictable if you're poor at scripting. Scripting well is a skill. (Not a skill I have in large quantities. I have a couple of players who are much better - unsurprisingly, they also beat me in war games.)

As I already posted, the likelihood of death is low, and of wounding more severe than a Light is not that high. A typical physically-oriented PC will have a Light wound of 5 and a Midi of 7. A typical Incidental result will be 3 or 4, and a Mark 6 (Power 4 with a spear) or 7 (Power 4 with a sword, Power 5 with a spear).

My PC wears Plate and Mail armour for 6D armour on the chest, and 5D everywhere else. Few weapons have VA better than 1 (eg spears, and superior swords). The likelihood of 2 successes on 5 dice is over 80%. If a Power 5 orc with a spear attacks my PC, to deliver a midi requires 3 successes - assuming a skill of 4 (on the high side for an orc), that is about a 30% chance; and then there is an 80% chance of being blocked by armour (or better if the blow is to the chest, which will be the default - because shifting to a limb costs additional successes). That is a chance around 5% of a midi or worse, and the chance of the worse is very much lower, because 5 successes are hard to get rolling 4 dice.

Fighting in lighter armour is riskier. Fighting stronger people with better weapons is riskier. But those are all matters that can inform the choice to fight.



Ovinomancer said:


> 2.  BW recovery mechanics for wounds are very long and punishing



Recovery takes a long time. My PC currently has a midi wound - not from combat, but from falling masonry. It is at -1D. It hasn't stopped me adventuring.



Ovinomancer said:


> 3.  therefore, entering into Fight! where even skilled combatants against weak foes still have a non-ignorable chance of losing weeks of in-game time to recovering means, generally, getting into combat is a bad idea.  This system disincentivizes combat much more than the normal for RPGs.



Which RPGs are you talking about? I've played a lot of RM, a bit of RQ and related systems, a fair bit of Traveller, and quite a bit of low level D&D.

It is clearly less risky than first level classic D&D, where orcish spears do 1d6 to PCs whose hit points are frequently in the 1 to 6 range. It is less risky than Stormbringer, I would say (because in Stormbringer your armour dice are more likely to fail you, being linear in probability rather than curved). I think it is less risky to unarmoured characters than RQ.

Comparing to Traveller is harder, because most Traveller combat involves weapon fire, and BW Range and Cover is more dangerous than Fight! because IMS is determined by a die of fate rather than via number of successes.



Ovinomancer said:


> I would generally assume that if you're getting into combat that your opponents have dangerous weapons.  This is a given, and I'm confused as to why you'd point it out.



As I have reiterated in this post, different weapons pose different risks: the add to Power affects IMS, and for an armoured character the VA is crucial. The most dangerous weapon against my PC is a mace, because of its high VA.



Ovinomancer said:


> Sorry, but are you actually saying that because you've built a character that wants to fight that this changes how the mechanics work and are built and makes combat a good choice?  Or that because you've chosen it, the choice can't be a bad one?  Really.



Recently, [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] linked to this blog:

Commenter: I remember a good example in a talk by Will Wright. It's that scene in Indiana Jones in which a large boulder almost rolls over him. . . .

Will Wright commented that in a linear narrative such as this, the viewer is aware of the probability space. We are acutely aware, even at a subconscious level, of what would happen if the boulder rolls over him. This creates dramatic tension. Of course in film, things are happening too fast for the audience to rationalise, and disbelieve what they're watching. 

In roleplaying, we don't have that luxury. We are also presented with an even more difficult challenge. Let's say the player fails that check. . . . 

I think that a huge boulder rolling over you kills you - that's the only credible result.

So, from a design standpoint, what do you do? 

. . .

I guess what I'm asking is, can you have your cake and eat it too.

John Harper: Yes, of course! Not only can you have it, you can have it easily.

The basic method is to ask questions and elaborate until there's clarity to invoke the system. It's a conversation, right? You ask questions, you assess the fiction, you make it clear to the players what the characters know (and don't know) and they make choices.

. . .

In other words, you 1) set expectations, 2) invoke the system, then 3) follow through on the results.

Every functional RPG system works that way.

When you get "random deaths" that seem abrupt, it's usually because #1 has been glossed over too vaguely, forgotten, or assumed and left unspoken. A lively, productive conversation (the essence of RPG play) keeps this from happening.

"You have literally NO IDEA what will happen if you snatch that idol and run. Are you sure you want to do that?"
"Yes!"
"You're taking a crazy risk!"
"I know! I'm a crazy risk taker![1] Let's do it."
"Okay, here we go!"

In some systems (3:16, say), that character is now a die-roll away from death. But everyone knows it, and we all lean forward and hold our breath and watch the dice tumble. On a miss, yeah, maybe the giant boulder squashes them flat, the end.

In other systems (SotC, say), the character has a huge safety net under them all the time so we know this roll is really about how much or how little trouble the character is about to get into. On a miss, yeah, they might take harm (there's no way to die from one hit) and now there's a boulder chasing them -- they have a new problem to escape from, and some problematic aspects introduced into the scene.

Either way, there's nothing abrupt or random going on. The fictional situation has been brought to life during the conversation, the player has made an informed choice (or understands they're making a choice without all the information) everyone understands the genre we're playing in, and everyone is clear on the system before it's brought to bear.

Make sense?

[1]This reminds me of another rant I need to write about: How so many gamers create characters that are crazy risk-takers at heart (dungeon raiders, say) and then play them like timid, risk-averse, weenies. Ugh.​
That seems apposite here.

My PC is a Knight of the Iron Tower. He wears plate and mail and carries a shield and mace. He has a whole bunch of relationships, Beliefs and Instincts that are all about his loyalty to the order and to his family, his defence of the innocent, and the pursuit of glory in the name of the Lord of Battle. For this guy, entering combat _is_ a good idea. Getting wounded may be part of that. Perhaps I'll have to spend time in a hospital of my order; or back at my family estate.

The point of the combat system isn't to disincentivise melee. Nor to incentivise it. It's (i) to make it visceral (whether blind scripting does that for you is probably an aesthetic thing), and (ii) to create a sense that it _matters_. There's probably not going to be a fight every session. (Just as not every Traveller session has a fight.)

But if my PC ends up dying because I decided, with no persona points remaining, that some slight to me (or my god, or Aramina) wasn't to be tolerated, well so be it. That's the point of the game!


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Dude, it's all just imagination! We can talk (admittedly not on this board) about the _politics_ of JRRT's focus on NW Middle Earth in LotR, or about the aesthetics of that (and his desire to create a mythology for England). But it would be ludicrous to complain that the Southrons have been wronged by not being written about!




If Tolkien had written only about Gandalf showing up to talk to Frodo about the ring, then skipped ahead and written about only the encounter with the Nazgul in the flight from the Shire, then skipped ahead to the barrow wights and Tom, etc., leaving out everything in-between that tied them together, we wouldn't know his name.  That isn't really a story  The stuff the ties the major points together, and which you skip in your style, is what makes the story cohesive and not just a bunch of disjointed scenes. Having the whole story is important and adds to the enjoyment of that story.  

Now, if you read the Silmarillion and re-read the Lord of the Rings, you will have a greater enjoyment of those books since you will have a greater understanding of the events happening in the Lord of the Rings.  You will know why certain things are happening, where they came from, and have a much fuller understanding of a bunch of very short references and names.  Greater world = greater depth = greater enjoyment.

 [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is not complaining that the Southrons are being wronged by not being written about.  He saying that writing about them adds to the experience of the game, even if they aren't directly related to what the PCs are trying to do.  Especially if they aren't directly related to what the PCs are trying to do, as it adds depth to the world and the players are aware that more is going on out there than just themselves.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Yes it is. It establishes that the feather has whatever trait the player was looking for, and that that trait is useful for making stuff that will help you confront balrogs.
> 
> The contrast would be something that is clearly quite possible in [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game: the player learns that the feather has such-and-such trait, but it turns out that such-and-such trait is irrelevant for confronting balrogs.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> By _finality_ I don't mean the end of the story. Or the resolution of the Belief. I mean that the outcome of successful action declaration is fixed, and can't be undone unless the players do something that puts it back into jeopardy. [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] discussed this well upthread in relation to the attempt to become king.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If that's the definition, then the outcome is fixed in @Lanefan's game, too.  The outcome of the charm was that the duke got pissed.  That's a fixed and final outcome.  It may not be the outcome the players desired, but it is both fixed and final.  The players essentially had a failure with consequences that was also a fixed and final outcome.
> 
> Because they put it back into play. They didn't just cross the town to go to the tower; rather, they tried to sneak through the catacombs which (it was already known) were labyrinthine. (I think one of the players wanted a catacombs-wise check for his PC; and the other was happy to try this way of getting into the tower rather than risking the front door.) And so (in the fiction) they got lost, because (at the table) the check failed.
> 
> This is an instance of what [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] called _following the fiction where it leads_.
> 
> The point about finality is that _the GM has no prerogative to unilaterally undo the success_.
Click to expand...



That doesn't really seem much(if at all) different than how we do things.  If the PCs steal a necklace from the local lord and then wear it around town, there's a chance it will be recognized and they will be in trouble. If that necklace is magic and the lord hires a wizard to walk around detecting magic to locate it, the PCs made that possible by not placing it in a lead box or hiding it somewhere else that it won't be found out.  A decent DM isn't going to be unilaterally undoing what the PCs are doing.  Virtually everything "undone" will be cause by or avoidable by PC actions.



> This is an instance of a lack of finality in resolution, resulting from the fact that the GM is establishing unrevealed backstory elements behind the scenes.




You're going to have to do some serious explaining on this one.  I have absolutely no freaking idea how leaving both coming up of what to do and the choice to do it to the player, can possibly be the DM establishing unrevealed backstory elements behind the scenes.



> Yes, if anyone cares about it. The colour of wolves has never come up in any game I've run (that I can think of), but in my Cortex+ game the size of an ox (ie its giant size) was established as the result of action resolution. On multiple occasions divine guidance has been established via action resolution.
> 
> Sometimes a player asks but doesn't have a view as to what the answer is. In those situations, they are - in effect - inviting the GM to tell them stuff. At which point, obviously, it is the GM exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction, not the player. Although it is likely the parameters for this exercise of  agency will have been established by the player, as an outcome of action resolution.




The DM is a player, too.  If the DM doesn't also have agency unless the players invite it, then not all of the players have full agency, which is a bad thing in my opinion.  The DM should have agency at least equal to that of the other players.



> How do you start a campaign? Do the players narrate the starting situation?



It really depends on the campaign.  They players choose the campaign theme before play begins.  Sometimes the choice of campaign will determine how it starts and I'll just narrate it.  Most times it doesn't and I'll ask them if they want to start the game knowing each other.  Usually, I will start the opening scenes, but I don't put them into a place that of high import like you did.  If a player is seeking an item, I will start that PC off in a neutral place and allow the player to determine the best course of action for his PC.  If I were to put the PC in one such place, I am telling that player that this is the best way by that very act.  It's the clue hammer upside the head that was mentioned earlier.  It very strongly implies to the player that this is the way to do things, which is railroady.



> I have a lot of trouble making sense of this question. How do the PCs in your game get from the common room of the tavern to their bedrooms upstairs? _In the fiction_, they step over flagstones and climb every stair. But - again echoing [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] - I assume that you don't play through every such step. Probably everyone at the table agrees that it's bedtime for the PCs, and you then say - in the absence of anything interesting happening overnight - "OK, you wake the next morning."
> 
> In the BW game, after dealing with the peddler the PCs went to a tavern to eat some lunch and wait for a message from Jabal. We didn't worry about how many blocks it might have been from the bazaar to the tavern. At the tavern they were approached by Athog, Jabal's enforcer, telling them to leave town. When Athog drew his sword, one of the PCs wrestled disarmed him and wrestled him to the ground, and the PCs then went to confront Jabal in his tower. Again, we didn't worry about how many blocks it might have been from the tavern to the tower.
> 
> Later on in the campaign, when the PCs trekked across the Bright Desert from an oasis with a friendly naga to the Abor-Alz, I pulled out the GH maps and we worked out a number of days. But the actual travel was resolved via an Orienteering check. The distance didn't influence the difficulty of that check, but did influence the difficulty of the Forte checks required to avoid dehydration. Otherwise the number of days required was primarily colour.
> 
> In my Cortex+ Heroic session on the weekend, the action (continued from our previous session of that particular campaign) started at the house of the Frost Queen. After defeating her, the PCs and the villagers rested the night and then set off the next morning - one PC to the south with the villagers, the rest to the north. The key features of the ensuing situation were established by the scene distinctions: Frightened Villagers, Snow All About, The Giants are Almost Upon You. These are what the players interacted with. The exact number of miles travelled isn't relevant and doesn't need to be worked out. There's no map. We know there are hills, which rise into mountains and glaciers to the north and farmland to the south. That's enough.




The shorter the distance, the less likely anything is going to happen.  When going upstairs to the rooms, it's very unlikely that anything will happen and I will just tell them that they get to their rooms.  Going 10 blocks to the bazaar takes a lot of time in a city that has a lot going on.  They may be accosted along the way, or some other encounter.



> My point is that _you can't preauthor if the players are making action declarations of the sort I describe_.
> 
> When the feather turns out to be cursed, what will the PC do? As it turns out, he tries to make contact with Jabal. How can I know in advance that will happen? I can't. So nor can I know that it might (as it did) fail, and hence that I will need an enforcer (Athog) as a fictional element. And then, when the PCs - having bested Athog - go to the tower, how can I know that that will happen? Or what the consequences will be?
> 
> There is no scope in this sort of game for pre-authoring. Hence the players can tell that things are not pre-authored. Which is contrary to your claim that no one can tell the difference. Which was my point.




You again seem to be implying that every little possibility is pre-authored.  The DM would pre-author a potential failure, such as the feather being cursed, but since the DM can't predict what the player will do with that knowledge, can't pre-author something like Jabal.  Pre-authoring is a limited exercise in high probabilities that don't always occur.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> As I already posted, the likelihood of death is low, and of wounding more severe than a Light is not that high. A typical physically-oriented PC will have a Light wound of 5 and a Midi of 7. A typical Incidental result will be 3 or 4, and a Mark 6 (Power 4 with a spear) or 7 (Power 4 with a sword, Power 5 with a spear).
> 
> My PC wears Plate and Mail armour for 6D armour on the chest, and 5D everywhere else. Few weapons have VA better than 1 (eg spears, and superior swords). The likelihood of 2 successes on 5 dice is over 80%. If a Power 5 orc with a spear attacks my PC, to deliver a midi requires 3 successes - assuming a skill of 4 (on the high side for an orc), that is about a 30% chance; and then there is an 80% chance of being blocked by armour (or better if the blow is to the chest, which will be the default - because shifting to a limb costs additional successes). That is a chance around 5% of a midi or worse, and the chance of the worse is very much lower, because 5 successes are hard to get rolling 4 dice.



Puhlease!  As Pratchett correctly pointed, out 1 in a million chances occur 9 times out of 10.  You're doomed!


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> But the players are real, as are their desires about the game.



DM's real too, at least for now.  Some systems might function with a robot once robotics has advanced a bit further.



> Dude, it's all just imagination! We can talk (admittedly not on this board) about the _politics_ of JRRT's focus on NW Middle Earth in LotR, or about the aesthetics of that (and his desire to create a mythology for England). But it would be ludicrous to complain that the Southrons have been wronged by not being written about!



OK, let's try another angle.

In both The Hobbit and LotR Tolkein puts a lot of effort and a lot of words into describing the settings through which the parties travel.  He also introduces elements of the greater world, particularly from the historical side, and repeatedly makes it very clear that there's a world out there beyond what the protagonists see or even know of (the Southrons are one example of such).  Unless you skip all these bits when you read the books, you can't help but become immersed in the world of Middle Earth and end up knowing a lot more about it (and wanting to know more yet, most likely) than just what the protagonists saw on their journeys.

Well, the same is true when playing/DMing a fantasy RPG using a homebrew world.  The more description and flavour and richness you can give it the better, in terms of player immersion and depth of imagination.  Sadly I don't have JRRT's gift with words, so my somewhat lesser descriptions will have to do for my table. 

Now both The Hobbit and LotR the setup is such that the "PCs" are on a mission that is so important (to the Dwarves in one, to the whole world in the other) that it can't be ignored or abandoned; and even then it is at various times.  The Hobbit crew have Bilbo leave the party on more than one occasion; they then get diverted by the Wood Elves, which then leads them to Laketown and into another diversion.  The LotR crew get diverted all over the place - Old Man Willow leads to Tom Bombadil; they get back on track just in time to be diverted by the barrow wights, after which they stay on course for a while and gather the fellowship...which then splits into three different groups only one of which carries on with the original goal.  And this is while trying to ignore as many diversions as they can.

And this is in a novel, where the author has complete control over who goes where and does what.  In the more open-ended situation of an RPG where there's options for players to follow up on whatever diversions they want, the only way to keep them on story is to _never present or offer any diversions_.  In other words, keep the game-world descriptions and framed scenes completely focused on what the PC is trying to do at that moment, and ignore everything else.  A soft railroad.  Bleah.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Yes it is. It establishes that the feather has whatever trait the player was looking for, and that that trait is useful for making stuff that will help you confront balrogs.
> 
> The contrast would be something that is clearly quite possible in [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game: the player learns that the feather has such-and-such trait, but it turns out that such-and-such trait is irrelevant for confronting balrogs.



The feather may still be useful, just less directly.  Maybe it's in fact a key allowing access somewhere else to something needed to defeat a balrog.  Hey, or maybe it summons a balrog if given the right command! 

Or maybe it's an element of a completely different adventure or story, which the PCs can investigate and-or follow up on should they (and their players) so desire.



> Because they put it back into play. They didn't just cross the town to go to the tower; rather, they tried to sneak through the catacombs which (it was already known) were labyrinthine. (I think one of the players wanted a catacombs-wise check for his PC; and the other was happy to try this way of getting into the tower rather than risking the front door.) And so (in the fiction) they got lost, because (at the table) the check failed.



This one's fine with me - sure they knocked out Halika but they've no reason to think she'll stay unconscious all night, or that someone won't happen by and tend to her.



> This is an instance of what [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] called _following the fiction where it leads_.



Applicable to both DM- and player-driven games.



> The point about finality is that _the GM has no prerogative to unilaterally undo the success_.



Outright undo?  Maybe not.  Twist, mitigate, alter, or corrupt?  Situationally dependent, but by no means a hard no.  Just like getting wishes from a genie - you think you wished for this but you ended up with that; here it's you think you accomplished this but you in fact did that.



> Sometimes a player asks but doesn't have a view as to what the answer is.



As a player, if I knew the answer I wouldn't be asking.  I might very well know what I'd like the answer to be, but that's not the same thing.



> How do you start a campaign? Do the players narrate the starting situation?



You'll like this: in my current campaign the answer was yes!

A couple of players came up with the idea of having their two initial PCs - a Bard and a Cavalier who already knew each other - start the campaign by just rolling through the farm country bragging at every village about how rich they were gonna get adventuring in the mountains, in hopes that some other suckers - er, brave adventurers - could be persuaded to join them.  The rest of the starting PCs joined in one or two at a time from different villages. (the Bard, as it turned out, was the only one of that initial group of 9 to survive that first adventure)



> I have a lot of trouble making sense of this question. How do the PCs in your game get from the common room of the tavern to their bedrooms upstairs? _In the fiction_, they step over flagstones and climb every stair. But - again echoing [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] - I assume that you don't play through every such step. Probably everyone at the table agrees that it's bedtime for the PCs, and you then say - in the absence of anything interesting happening overnight - "OK, you wake the next morning."



Yes, after I roll some dice to see if anything interesting _does_ happen overnight.



> In the BW game, after dealing with the peddler the PCs went to a tavern to eat some lunch and wait for a message from Jabal. We didn't worry about how many blocks it might have been from the bazaar to the tavern. At the tavern they were approached by Athog, Jabal's enforcer, telling them to leave town. When Athog drew his sword, one of the PCs wrestled disarmed him and wrestled him to the ground, and the PCs then went to confront Jabal in his tower. Again, we didn't worry about how many blocks it might have been from the tavern to the tower.



A fight in the middle of a city and nobody else jumped in, either to break it up or to add to the mayhem?

Dull city. 



> Later on in the campaign, when the PCs trekked across the Bright Desert from an oasis with a friendly naga to the Abor-Alz, I pulled out the GH maps and we worked out a number of days. But the actual travel was resolved via an Orienteering check. The distance didn't influence the difficulty of that check, but did influence the difficulty of the Forte checks required to avoid dehydration. Otherwise the number of days required was primarily colour.



Where I'd probably be rolling each day for some sort of random encounter; asking whether they divert to and-or stop at oases and-or villages seen en route or intentionally avoid them; and making sure I described each day's weather after rolling - relevant if the roll comes up high winds i.e. sandstorm.  I'd also describe the landforms, particularly if there was any significant change e.g. the sand desert becomes a rock desert.

Depth.  It takes time.



> In my Cortex+ Heroic session on the weekend, the action (continued from our previous session of that particular campaign) started at the house of the Frost Queen. After defeating her, the PCs and the villagers rested the night and then set off the next morning - one PC to the south with the villagers, the rest to the north. The key features of the ensuing situation were established by the scene distinctions: Frightened Villagers, Snow All About, The Giants are Almost Upon You. These are what the players interacted with. The exact number of miles travelled isn't relevant and doesn't need to be worked out.



I'd say it's extremely relevant as soon as one group tries to send a message to the other, to determine how long that message might take to arrive.  Even if I didn't bother telling the players, I'd still be keeping track of it in knowledge that it's highly likely to become relevant sooner or later.



> There's no map. We know there are hills, which rise into mountains and glaciers to the north and farmland to the south. That's enough.



The in-my-eyes awful risk you run here is that you could end up with unrealistic travel times and distances.  Geography is important.  Time is important.  The two put together - which you're doing here - can become vitally important; and thus need to be carefully tracked.

Lanefan


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> I've compiled your posts on this topic.
> 
> You said, of combat in BW, that "At no point did it appear you had options to limit danger occurring or make tactical choices about fictional position to mitigate danger that did appear." I pointed out that this claim is wrong (or, at best, that the only reason you drew that inference is because you were not familiar with the system). I provided some examples of how, during the course of that fight, I had the option to manage danger (both to my PC and to Aramina) by making choices about positioning. And I also explained how the scripting system more generally permits tactical choices to manage and mitigate danger.
> 
> You linked this (alleged) feature of BW combat to some more general thesis that
> 
> scene framing is already at a crisis point (go to the action) that requires immediate addressing of events AND failures are meant to increase stakes, so any precautions taken will have limited impacts.  Story Now games offset this by using player resources to possibly mitigate consequences (like Blades' use of the resist mechanic), but this is reactionary and not proactive action declaration -- its a choice after the fact, not behavior the player can engage with prior to failure.​
> I have no idea where this thesis comes from. It is not borne out by BW play - the mage PC in my game, for instance, at one point took the precaution of donning leather armour and that has mitigated danger in subsequent combat. At another point he took the precaution of turning invisible and that mitigated the danger of being detected in an attempt to escape from prison.
> 
> It is not borne out by Cortex+ Heroic play either. In my MHRP game, for instance, Bobby Drake's player took the precaution of paying a plot point to have counselling, thus establishing a d6 Pscyhologist's Counselling asset. Later on, he was able to include this asset in a pool to avoid suffering emotional stress.
> 
> These are all things done _prior to failure_.
> 
> You also asserted, but quite mistakenly, that the play examples I provided of tactical choices and choices made to manage or mitigate risk (eg the seer in our Vikings game managing the Doom Pool downwards; PCs in Burning Wheel starting with weapons drawn to avoid the action cost of having to draw a weapon; a PC choosing to reach out to a lesser personage so as to reduce the severity of any blowback; a PC in the Viking game scouting out the giants' steading - in mechanical terms, establishing assets - so as to set himself up for success in a subsequent social conflict) were all "after the fact resource expenditures to reduce consequences". None of them was.
> 
> BW doesn't have such mechanics, except the expenditure of a Persona point to survive a mortal wound. Cortex+ Heroic may allow particular PCs to have them, but across my two games the only PC with such an option is Wolverine (who can spend a plot point to recover physical stress). As I posted, these are relatively common in 4e (as interrupts of various sorts) but none of the examples I gave was of this sort of 4e mechanic.
> 
> This is why I have no idea what you're talking about. Your thesis is bizarre to me, and seems to be based on generalising some feature of Blades in the Dark across whole swathes of games that you seem to have not much familiarity with.
> 
> It's unpredictable if you're poor at scripting. Scripting well is a skill. (Not a skill I have in large quantities. I have a couple of players who are much better - unsurprisingly, they also beat me in war games.)
> 
> As I already posted, the likelihood of death is low, and of wounding more severe than a Light is not that high. A typical physically-oriented PC will have a Light wound of 5 and a Midi of 7. A typical Incidental result will be 3 or 4, and a Mark 6 (Power 4 with a spear) or 7 (Power 4 with a sword, Power 5 with a spear).
> 
> My PC wears Plate and Mail armour for 6D armour on the chest, and 5D everywhere else. Few weapons have VA better than 1 (eg spears, and superior swords). The likelihood of 2 successes on 5 dice is over 80%. If a Power 5 orc with a spear attacks my PC, to deliver a midi requires 3 successes - assuming a skill of 4 (on the high side for an orc), that is about a 30% chance; and then there is an 80% chance of being blocked by armour (or better if the blow is to the chest, which will be the default - because shifting to a limb costs additional successes). That is a chance around 5% of a midi or worse, and the chance of the worse is very much lower, because 5 successes are hard to get rolling 4 dice.
> 
> Fighting in lighter armour is riskier. Fighting stronger people with better weapons is riskier. But those are all matters that can inform the choice to fight.
> 
> Recovery takes a long time. My PC currently has a midi wound - not from combat, but from falling masonry. It is at -1D. It hasn't stopped me adventuring.
> 
> Which RPGs are you talking about? I've played a lot of RM, a bit of RQ and related systems, a fair bit of Traveller, and quite a bit of low level D&D.
> 
> It is clearly less risky than first level classic D&D, where orcish spears do 1d6 to PCs whose hit points are frequently in the 1 to 6 range. It is less risky than Stormbringer, I would say (because in Stormbringer your armour dice are more likely to fail you, being linear in probability rather than curved). I think it is less risky to unarmoured characters than RQ.
> 
> Comparing to Traveller is harder, because most Traveller combat involves weapon fire, and BW Range and Cover is more dangerous than Fight! because IMS is determined by a die of fate rather than via number of successes.
> 
> As I have reiterated in this post, different weapons pose different risks: the add to Power affects IMS, and for an armoured character the VA is crucial. The most dangerous weapon against my PC is a mace, because of its high VA.
> 
> Recently, [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] linked to this blog:
> 
> Commenter: I remember a good example in a talk by Will Wright. It's that scene in Indiana Jones in which a large boulder almost rolls over him. . . .
> 
> Will Wright commented that in a linear narrative such as this, the viewer is aware of the probability space. We are acutely aware, even at a subconscious level, of what would happen if the boulder rolls over him. This creates dramatic tension. Of course in film, things are happening too fast for the audience to rationalise, and disbelieve what they're watching.
> 
> In roleplaying, we don't have that luxury. We are also presented with an even more difficult challenge. Let's say the player fails that check. . . .
> 
> I think that a huge boulder rolling over you kills you - that's the only credible result.
> 
> So, from a design standpoint, what do you do?
> 
> . . .
> 
> I guess what I'm asking is, can you have your cake and eat it too.
> 
> John Harper: Yes, of course! Not only can you have it, you can have it easily.
> 
> The basic method is to ask questions and elaborate until there's clarity to invoke the system. It's a conversation, right? You ask questions, you assess the fiction, you make it clear to the players what the characters know (and don't know) and they make choices.
> 
> . . .
> 
> In other words, you 1) set expectations, 2) invoke the system, then 3) follow through on the results.
> 
> Every functional RPG system works that way.
> 
> When you get "random deaths" that seem abrupt, it's usually because #1 has been glossed over too vaguely, forgotten, or assumed and left unspoken. A lively, productive conversation (the essence of RPG play) keeps this from happening.
> 
> "You have literally NO IDEA what will happen if you snatch that idol and run. Are you sure you want to do that?"
> "Yes!"
> "You're taking a crazy risk!"
> "I know! I'm a crazy risk taker![1] Let's do it."
> "Okay, here we go!"
> 
> In some systems (3:16, say), that character is now a die-roll away from death. But everyone knows it, and we all lean forward and hold our breath and watch the dice tumble. On a miss, yeah, maybe the giant boulder squashes them flat, the end.
> 
> In other systems (SotC, say), the character has a huge safety net under them all the time so we know this roll is really about how much or how little trouble the character is about to get into. On a miss, yeah, they might take harm (there's no way to die from one hit) and now there's a boulder chasing them -- they have a new problem to escape from, and some problematic aspects introduced into the scene.
> 
> Either way, there's nothing abrupt or random going on. The fictional situation has been brought to life during the conversation, the player has made an informed choice (or understands they're making a choice without all the information) everyone understands the genre we're playing in, and everyone is clear on the system before it's brought to bear.
> 
> Make sense?
> 
> [1]This reminds me of another rant I need to write about: How so many gamers create characters that are crazy risk-takers at heart (dungeon raiders, say) and then play them like timid, risk-averse, weenies. Ugh.​
> That seems apposite here.
> 
> My PC is a Knight of the Iron Tower. He wears plate and mail and carries a shield and mace. He has a whole bunch of relationships, Beliefs and Instincts that are all about his loyalty to the order and to his family, his defence of the innocent, and the pursuit of glory in the name of the Lord of Battle. For this guy, entering combat _is_ a good idea. Getting wounded may be part of that. Perhaps I'll have to spend time in a hospital of my order; or back at my family estate.
> 
> The point of the combat system isn't to disincentivise melee. Nor to incentivise it. It's (i) to make it visceral (whether blind scripting does that for you is probably an aesthetic thing), and (ii) to create a sense that it _matters_. There's probably not going to be a fight every session. (Just as not every Traveller session has a fight.)
> 
> But if my PC ends up dying because I decided, with no persona points remaining, that some slight to me (or my god, or Aramina) wasn't to be tolerated, well so be it. That's the point of the game!




Your "compiled" quotes again selectively edit.  Unsurprisingly, what you chose to selectively edit out is exactly what I complained you selectively edited out to begin with.  

I didn't read anything past that, as there's not much point since you've chosen to continue to frame the discussion in a manner that allows you to ignore inconvenient things I've said.  If you can manage to honestly engage my statement instead of selectively quoting my posts and applying the selectively quoted portions out of context to different arguments, then there's room for productive discussion.

ETA:  Look, I'm trying to have a good discussion here, but when I keep having to point out that you've ignored my points by clipping them out and also I have to keep correcting the discussion to point out that you're taking my statement out of context and applying parts of my posts to parts of the discussion they're not referencing, it's extremely hard to maintain that the other side is acting in good faith.  I want to believe you're acting in good faith, but given how many times I've asked you to stop selectively quoting me and yet you continue to do so in a manner that removes arguments I'm making germane to your response, it's hard, man.  Throw me a bone and stop doing it.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> what is world building _for_ once we're no longer playing a dungeon crawling, puzzle-solving game?



 Scene-setting, genre-emulation, mood, theme, plot hooks - it's the settings and situations that the PCs interact with.  

Even if they're, say, looking for a story, or looking for what happens next, rather than looking to accrue maximum wealth/power with minimum risk, it still helps to have a place to do it, and if that place sparks idea, evokes senseofwonder, or even just calls back favorites from genre and lets you find some easer eggs.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> It has to be obvious that any player is going to meta-know that you've framed that scene and that pedlar for a reason: because that's where they'll get to determine ultimate success or failure on this part of their journey.  In story terms, you've jumped straight to the climax of this chapter without any real buildup.



I think there's plenty of ways that pacing and dramatic structure can be achieved. The biggest one is by how the GM frames things. So, you may have a criticism of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s framing in this instance, which is a legitimate aesthetic question. I'm not sure it is really a generalized flaw of Story Now. In fact I don't even feel like I have a good enough feel for how the specific game was paced or structured in detail to offer criticism myself. I said earlier that the "find something before I leave town" goal seemed rather subsidiary. Making progress on it doesn't seem like it was necessarily bringing up some sort of 'climax'. In fact it feels a lot more prefatory to things that happened later on, part of a larger build up, not some crazy instant major plot crisis. 

Anyway, nothing in my understanding of Story Now demands that you move willy nilly from one climax to the next without anything in between. Just that the in between WILL be related to your player described interests, not just random wanderings in streets and byways, unless that IS your interest. 



> How does the PC even know whether confronting a balrog requires an angel feather or an enchanted herb or a Johnson outboard motor...as in at what point did the player/PC glean this information?  You framed him straight into the bazaar in front of the feather merchant, and in so doing might as well have said out loud "don't bother looking anywhere else, this is where to go".  That's as much lead-'em-by-the-nose as the worst of railroads.
> 
> That he then turned around and promptly failed the check, saddling himself with a cursed feather, is sucky for him; but also kind of irrelevant here.



Exactly! How does he know? The CHARACTER doesn't know, and neither does the player until after he resolves a check which decides the issue, in this case against. What if he succeeded? Maybe the feather still turns out to be only modestly useful. Its really going to be up to the player to determine that in large part. If his choices are to go around using the feather to defeat a balrog, then it will probably turn out to be handy. How, when, or why are still open questions. 



> No, the DM is increasing agency by saying that while you've got this dramatic thing you care about there's other things going on around your PC as well - you're not in a bubble - so let's test how much you really care about your thing and what other opportunities you're willing to give up in order to pursue it, and while we're at it let's put your character's morals and ethics (a.k.a. alignment) under a lens for a moment via your reaction on seeing a slave being beaten.



Does the player care about his alignment? In fact, isn't alignment kind of a burden? I mean, its a system that effectively imposes some GM-determined (because NO two people agree AT ALL on what alignment means, and I won't even consider an argument otherwise, EnWorld is chock full of the proof) standard of behavior on a character and then punishes them for transgressing, often for transgressions that the player doesn't even agree are legitimate. I think, at best, alignment can be a 'character trait' that the player can leverage and the GM can use judiciously as a signal and in framing, but I am not real fond of it. 

In any case, Story Now is full of tests and dilemmas and whatnot. It would be perfectly reasonable to create a hard choice for a character, save your brother or save those children! Its just definitely going to be about something the player cares about.



> Where my table now knows a lot more about the city in general, and can worry about Jabal's tower next session if they want to.



Well, its hard to disagree with this in some abstract sense, but we get to play maybe 30 weekends a year, and I'm not into spending a lot of them on learning the specific layout of the alleyways in lower dockside, which are actually little more than lines drawn on some graph paper late one night. 

I guess what I'm really saying is, there's X amount of creativity and 'juice' that can go into a game, based on people's time and imagination. Exploring many fairly trivial details of an invented location might not usually be the best use of that time and energy. Again, if you really just play for nothing else, that's an agenda and someone should get on with it, but most players only passingly find that kind of thing engaging, and from a pure gaming standpoint details like that can be added in scene framing when they DO make a difference (or in action resolution, etc.).



> Leaving the game world as little more than a Hollywood-style facade where you don't dare look behind the walls of the constructed set.  I prefer a bit more depth and solidity than that.



I just don't think that game worlds get all that deep to be perfectly frank. Most of these vaunted details are forgotten within 20 minutes, perhaps they add some color, but again that doesn't require vast depth. I think, in some sense, a world is DEEPER and MORE meaningful when the action within it speaks to universal dramatic themes.



> The bit I've bolded just sounds like fancy words for "the PC has been railroaded to where I think it needs to go to further its story".



And I honestly think this is a misconception. The player arrived at this point through entirely free choice, not even dictated by the GM. Yes, the GM invented a bazaar, but he did that in your game too! And your bazaar was built to hold what YOU found interesting. You may HOPE that the players also find it interesting, but my bazaar, definitionally interesting to everyone! 



> The player(s) is(are) contributing to the shared fiction in that their decisions determine what that fiction will end up being.



Only if they know substantively what the consequences and ramifications of all their actions will be. Otherwise they're just pulling levers and watching to see what happens. If I, with no other context, describe 5 levers in a wall, does a player congratulate me on giving him a lot of choices when he has to pull one? 



> If the PCs decide go south along the coast to battle some troglodytes rather than go inland to explore Archmage Donalt's ruined tower then guess what: the shared fiction isn't going to say much about Donalt's tower!  It almost certainly will, however, end up with lots of reference to troglodytes.



And this is quite true, and this forms the highest ideal of the form of play you are espousing, but it is the LOWEST possible form with Story Now. It can only go higher from here! 


I'm beginning to draw a comparitive analogy between your game and mine (and I dare say most others) in a sports-TV format: your game is the 10-minute highlight show where you see just the goals and key plays while everything in between gets skipped; where mine is the whole 90-minute match including all the buildup and stoppages and everything else, and the viewer doesn't miss anything.
[/QUOTE]

Again, I largely disagree. A reasonably well-formulated and run Story Now game will feel like a pretty coherent narrative. It MAY deal in less detail with some relatively peripheral things than your game might, but the story will be complete and should feel complete and dramatically cogent to the players. No game I ever ran was ever described by anyone, to my knowledge, as a highlight reel. Nor is it in any sense shorter than your game. Maybe you get to play more than I do? Possible, and good for you, but on the whole we're likely to each play some amount of RPGs and whether its slogging through lots of trivia or high adventure isn't going to change that.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> In DM-centered play it would be normal.  In this particular example, however, I know I-as-player would be thinking "OK, he's put me in the bazaar, which probably means something is supposed to happen here, so I guess I should engage with it rather than turn my back on it."  If he just puts me in the town then it's on me to do the digging required to get me to the bazaar.




I think this is a really interesting point. You are thinking with the mind of a player in a DM-centered game, and applying your conclusions to a Story Now game. The GM in Story Now HAS NO AGENDA. There is nothing significant about the bazaar, whatsoever. It was invented 5 seconds ago and it is a nullity, "gate gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi soha!" It is literally empty of meaning. The GM put the player there so that the player could exercise his interest in a particular theme, in an exercise of RPing. The plot significance of the place will arise out of the interaction of these two (probably more) participants. If the player says "Oh, I want to go to the library, I ask the guy at the stall here which direction to find that in" then that's all the meaning there ever was in that scene. He's not 'missing something' because he didn't stick around. That's exactly the sort of logic which would apply in DM-centered play instead! How many times have I pixel-bitched some room at the end of a hall, thinking "The GM put it here for SOME reason, didn't he!?" In a Story Now game I can just walk out, any potential meaning is unrealized and its meaningless to even ask "what would have happened if I'd stayed there?" 

It is hard to overemphasize this point, it is a sort of category error. Reasoning this way about Story Now is simply not going to make sense.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, its hard to disagree with this in some abstract sense, but we get to play maybe 30 weekends a year, and I'm not into spending a lot of them on learning the specific layout of the alleyways in lower dockside, which are actually little more than lines drawn on some graph paper late one night.




You get weekends?!?  All I get are 4 hours on Thursday nights.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> It's likely we're just using a different level of detail when determining what counts as 'lesser' as opposed to what's relevant.



Yeah, I think the quantity of detail is likely equivalent, it may just be spent on different things.



> What's important is that at least a nod is given to the fact that we-as-PCs are part of a bigger world, and that we're moving through it rather than blipping from scene to scene.



I don't have a problem with this. I think that sometimes it can be leveraged later for more development too, but in a sense it is just color. The world is always kind of really mostly the path that the characters walk. The rest is pretty fuzzy.



> Sure there is - "my story is more important than any other story out there" sounds like a baked-in tenet of that game system; with it being left to the DM to try and weave these stories together such that more than one can be played out simultaneously at the table.



In the games I've played in, of all types, it is common and normal for each player to yield the spotlight and allow other characters to be developed by their players as seems most conducive to fun. I admit, I'm a pretty active player and I don't have trouble getting my time in the sun, but I do try to be considerate. There's nothing about Story Now which changes this equation in the least. 



> I guess I just take "as we move along we'll look for interesting things to investigate" as the baked-in standard until and unless something changes it e.g. the party is fleeing at full speed, or is for whatever reason intentionally trying to ignore their surroundings (usually a good idea in CoC, from what I've heard).



Well, yes, but this doesn't work really in Story Now, does it? I mean, the players could spend their time moving the PCs around poking for what they're interested in, but the whole premise is it can come to you! I realize this is not a recipe for a dungeon crawl, and D&D evolved from that recipe, so its foreign to much of the D&D community, but I think it would behoove them all to learn something about it sometimes. 



> Let me get this straight: you're saying something about 4e design is not controversial?
> 
> 4e's very existence is controversial.  Its design elements, from my perspective and having dug into it somewhat on its release*, covered a range between about marginally tolerable to hideous.  Every other edition has had for me at least one "aha!" element, where I see a mechanic or system and think "that's brilliant!".  Even the new PF2 has already shown me one of those...but 4e never did.
> 
> * - I only bought the initial three core books (DMG,PH,MM) but didn't get the later books as I knew I wasn't going to be doing anything with the system.



Well, you might have missed some good stuff! I have run a mean game of 4e. It works quite well, even if some people don't care for it. There is a lot of very clever design in 4e.



> A DM-driven game can do all of this, and do it more realistically (which equals better IMO).  A DM impartially preauthors the world or adventure or whatever (or should!), then presents it impartially during play either as setting exposition or in reaction to PC actions and-or movements in the game world.  If the players/PCs want to "understand what they're buying into" and-or "assess the risk" they have to take the time to do the requisite investigating or scouting or information gathering, just like reality.  In either system the players in theory know the capabilities of their PCs, and it's perfectly realistic to say they might not always know how well those capabilities will measure up against whatever threat might be looming until some trial and error has occurred.




I think that is another field of player preference. Taking great risks and gambles is a perfectly good thematic concept for a game. It can still be, and maybe inevitably is, pretty player centered. As for 'realism' I can't even define that, so I stopped worrying about it 20 years ago and suddenly found I had achieved a great deal of freedom.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think this is a really interesting point. You are thinking with the mind of a player in a DM-centered game, and applying your conclusions to a Story Now game. The GM in Story Now HAS NO AGENDA. There is nothing significant about the bazaar, whatsoever. It was invented 5 seconds ago and it is a nullity, "gate gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi soha!" It is literally empty of meaning. The GM put the player there so that the player could exercise his interest in a particular theme, in an exercise of RPing. The plot significance of the place will arise out of the interaction of these two (probably more) participants. If the player says "Oh, I want to go to the library, I ask the guy at the stall here which direction to find that in" then that's all the meaning there ever was in that scene. He's not 'missing something' because he didn't stick around. That's exactly the sort of logic which would apply in DM-centered play instead! How many times have I pixel-bitched some room at the end of a hall, thinking "The GM put it here for SOME reason, didn't he!?" In a Story Now game I can just walk out, any potential meaning is unrealized and its meaningless to even ask "what would have happened if I'd stayed there?"
> 
> It is hard to overemphasize this point, it is a sort of category error. Reasoning this way about Story Now is simply not going to make sense.




More and more I'm thinking that preference of one style over the other is a personality thing.  The way you have to think about player facing games reminds me of the way actors talk about their craft.  It takes a different mindset than most of us have(much more left brained).  That also would jive with the difference in the number of DM facing games vs. the number of player facing games.  Just like there are a lot more of the rest of than people who are actors(or think like actors), there are a lot more DM facing games out there.

That's not to say that people can't enjoy both, but I think the preference for one over the other is going to go hand in hand with how people think and perceive the world.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> In both The Hobbit and LotR Tolkein puts a lot of effort and a lot of words into describing the settings through which the parties travel.  He also introduces elements of the greater world, particularly from the historical side, and repeatedly makes it very clear that there's a world out there beyond what the protagonists see or even know of (the Southrons are one example of such).  Unless you skip all these bits when you read the books, you can't help but become immersed in the world of Middle Earth and end up knowing a lot more about it (and wanting to know more yet, most likely) than just what the protagonists saw on their journeys.
> 
> Well, the same is true when playing/DMing a fantasy RPG using a homebrew world.  The more description and flavour and richness you can give it the better, in terms of player immersion and depth of imagination.  Sadly I don't have JRRT's gift with words, so my somewhat lesser descriptions will have to do for my table.
> 
> Now both The Hobbit and LotR the setup is such that the "PCs" are on a mission that is so important (to the Dwarves in one, to the whole world in the other) that it can't be ignored or abandoned; and even then it is at various times.  The Hobbit crew have Bilbo leave the party on more than one occasion; they then get diverted by the Wood Elves, which then leads them to Laketown and into another diversion.  The LotR crew get diverted all over the place - Old Man Willow leads to Tom Bombadil; they get back on track just in time to be diverted by the barrow wights, after which they stay on course for a while and gather the fellowship...which then splits into three different groups only one of which carries on with the original goal.  And this is while trying to ignore as many diversions as they can.
> 
> And this is in a novel, where the author has complete control over who goes where and does what.  In the more open-ended situation of an RPG where there's options for players to follow up on whatever diversions they want, the only way to keep them on story is to _never present or offer any diversions_.  In other words, keep the game-world descriptions and framed scenes completely focused on what the PC is trying to do at that moment, and ignore everything else.  A soft railroad.  Bleah.
> 
> Lanefan




Two points, which you kind of touched on but didn't elaborate, deserve some attention here. 

1) This is an RPG, not a work of fiction. The whole point of an RPG is to play the characters, to explore what the existence and experiences of a character are about, and the ramifications of their beliefs and personality.

2) You're not JRRT! (neither are any of us). If you WERE JRRT, THEN I would, perhaps, acquiesce to basically having you spiel on about your world ad infinitum even when it meant I wasn't doing much actual playing. Heck, that would be ATTRACTION of a JRRT-run RPG, no doubt. 

Sadly we are not JRRT, and we are not writing a novel which is merely the last chapter of something like 10+ million words of material assembled over a period of 50 or more years. Now, I've actually run games in a single persistent fantasy world for 40 years, give or take, and I ASSURE you it isn't even nearly in the same realm of elaboration of history and various other elements. It probably has a lot more descriptions of towns, forests, roads, mountains, etc than 3rd Age M.E. but that's about it. I'm sure I lack the literary gifts of a Tolkien and it shows. 

None of us can hope to reach a fraction of the kind of depth of a Tolkien, so why not play to the strengths of the medium, and our own strengths in it? That's what I do. I have no desire to be something I am not.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> More and more I'm thinking that preference of one style over the other is a personality thing.  The way you have to think about player facing games reminds me of the way actors talk about their craft.  It takes a different mindset than most of us have(much more left brained).  That also would jive with the difference in the number of DM facing games vs. the number of player facing games.  Just like there are a lot more of the rest of than people who are actors(or think like actors), there are a lot more DM facing games out there.
> 
> That's not to say that people can't enjoy both, but I think the preference for one over the other is going to go hand in hand with how people think and perceive the world.




I've found that the vast majority of people are quite capable of enjoying either, when they are done well. Most players have been trained by D&D, which has really never escaped its roots entirely. They come pre-educated with the very thought pattern [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] was using there. It takes some time and familiarity to unlearn and realize that the Story Now game is a much more open book. 

OTOH Children almost invariably attempt to play Story Now. Often the adults try to reign them in, but in fact they are excellent players. The uninitiated of all ages in fact often do this, they attempt to enact their vision of where things should go and how the world works. Typically they get 'taught' to follow someone else's lead. I think you could also say this is something that arises from general socialization. Independence of thought is not encouraged in this world.


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> 1) This is an RPG, not a work of fiction. The whole point of an RPG is to play the characters



Yes. 



> to explore what the existence and experiences of a character are about, and the ramifications of their beliefs and personality.



Dear gods, no!

I don't play to psychoanalyze my characters or deep-dive into their angsts and drama (except for occasional comedic purposes).  If I wanted that I'd find a Vampire LARP where I could angst myself into oblivion.

The purpose of playing an RPG is to play the characters and bring them to life, sure, but also to see what kind of story can be collectively woven by the party these characters are a part of for however long they last.  And to weave that story requires a solid and consistent backdrop...the game-world or setting built either by [insert favoured RPG publisher here] or the DM.



> 2) You're not JRRT! (neither are any of us).



No, I'm not - which means you'd have to put up with my much lesser turn of phrase when it came to setting description, because it's all I've got.



> Now, I've actually run games in a single persistent fantasy world for 40 years, give or take, and I ASSURE you it isn't even nearly in the same realm of elaboration of history and various other elements. It probably has a lot more descriptions of towns, forests, roads, mountains, etc than 3rd Age M.E. but that's about it.



Over 40 years you'd have built up a pretty good knowledge of what's where in that world and how things function, right - good enough to be consistent from session to session and (if necessary) campaign to campaign?  Great - you're good to go! 

Further, with all this game-world knowledge you're in a better position than most to have things happening behind the scenes in an internally-consistent manner.


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think this is a really interesting point. You are thinking with the mind of a player in a DM-centered game, and applying your conclusions to a Story Now game.



I'm looking at it as if I were a player in it, and approaching it from that perspective. 







> The GM in Story Now HAS NO AGENDA. There is nothing significant about the bazaar, whatsoever. It was invented 5 seconds ago and it is a nullity, "gate gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi soha!" It is literally empty of meaning. The GM put the player there so that the player could exercise his interest in a particular theme, in an exercise of RPing. The plot significance of the place will arise out of the interaction of these two (probably more) participants. If the player says "Oh, I want to go to the library, I ask the guy at the stall here which direction to find that in" then that's all the meaning there ever was in that scene. He's not 'missing something' because he didn't stick around. That's exactly the sort of logic which would apply in DM-centered play instead! How many times have I pixel-bitched some room at the end of a hall, thinking "The GM put it here for SOME reason, didn't he!?" In a Story Now game I can just walk out, any potential meaning is unrealized and its meaningless to even ask "what would have happened if I'd stayed there?"



In a DM-centered game I could also just walk out; and in either type I could always later muse on "what might have happened had I stayed there?"



> It is hard to overemphasize this point, it is a sort of category error. Reasoning this way about Story Now is simply not going to make sense.



I think I'd be a lousy story-now player as I'd constantly be asking for enough information to give me choices about what to do next, and constantly asking about what we just potentially missed out on between one framed scene and the next.

I'm a chaotic player - sure I can set goals and beliefs for a character while rolling it up but that doesn't mean I'm going to want to stick to that story if something more interesting happens by; and I'm always going to be on the lookout for that 'something more interesting'.


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Again, I largely disagree. A reasonably well-formulated and run Story Now game will feel like a pretty coherent narrative. It MAY deal in less detail with some relatively peripheral things than your game might, but the story will be complete and should feel complete and dramatically cogent to the players. No game I ever ran was ever described by anyone, to my knowledge, as a highlight reel.



In hindsight, perhaps not.  But in play it would feel like one, at least to me, if we were being jumped from one framed scene to the next with nothing in between.

We had a guy in our crew who ran a 3.xe game for a while, and it was just like that - finish one set-piece scene, jump straight to the next; from highlight to highlight.  A lot of this was due to the DM having about the attention span of a chicken (he's like that with movies too - if there's more than 5 minutes between action scenes he gets bored); but it annoyed the players to no end as they felt very railroaded and never had any chance to interact with anything other than the set-piece scenes.  I'm reminded of that game every time you guys describe this story-now stuff and how it works, as the end result seems so similar.



> Nor is it in any sense shorter than your game. Maybe you get to play more than I do? Possible, and good for you, but on the whole we're likely to each play some amount of RPGs and whether its slogging through lots of trivia or high adventure isn't going to change that.



We may well play about the same # of hours in a year - not sure.

But if a game engages my interest it doesn't matter to me how long it takes (real time) to resolve the story.  2 years?  5 years?  10 years?  So what?  I'm enjoying the game every week, and as long as everyone else is as well then that's all that matters.

Lanefan


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## Lanefan

A question is slowly beginning to occur to me...let's see if I can phrase it at all clearly.

If the game, here somewhat paraphrased, proceeds thusly:

1. Player during char-gen specifies goals, beliefs etc. for her character, at least one of which includes a specific end point or problem to solve (e.g. free my brother from possession by a balrog).

2. Player during play can set the success condition for an action declaraction to be a step toward solving that problem (I check the feather to see if it'll help against balrogs)

3. Player can in effect repeat this as necessary, with variants, until the action declaration succeeds (PC has moved one step closer to freeing her brother)

4. Player can repeat 2 and 3 above, each time getting another step closer to solving the problem provided the dice co-operate, until the fiction reaches a climax point

5. At that climax point, player can specify the success condition being that the problem is solved (e.g. no more balrog in my brother).

My question then is, particularly if the dice rolls go well for this player isn't this all just a slow-motion violation of Czege?  In step 1 the player sets the problem, in steps 2-5 the player also sets the solutions and if the dice go her way she cannot be stopped from achieving them.  Even if the dice don't go her way she can only truly be stopped at 5, with an outright fail on her roll in that climactic situation.

Lan-"Czegemate?"-efan


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## pemerton

[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has several posts just upthread that are really on-point.

It's not more railroading to establish the situation as an exciting one rather than an unexciting one. It's not more railroading for the most salient element in the situation to be "What do I make of this feather-selling peddler?" rather than "Should I look for a bazaar or a sage?" A moral or thematic choice doesn't become more pressing or poignant because framed in terms the GM thinks interesting ("There's a slave being beaten") than terms the player has made salient ("Would you try and steal the feather?" "What do you do when the leader of your cabal asks you to leave town because you're bearing a cursed feather?"). The campaign world doesn't have more depth because more play time was spent asking the GM for information about the fiction, rather than actually engaging with and helping establish the fiction.

An individual player may prefer to be told some fiction rather than contribute to creating some. But that's a property of the player; it doesn't entail any particular properties of the fiction.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I've found that the vast majority of people are quite capable of enjoying either, when they are done well. Most players have been trained by D&D, which has really never escaped its roots entirely. They come pre-educated with the very thought pattern [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] was using there. It takes some time and familiarity to unlearn and realize that the Story Now game is a much more open book.




I think most could enjoy both as well, but they will still have a preference for one over the other.  



> OTOH Children almost invariably attempt to play Story Now. Often the adults try to reign them in, but in fact they are excellent players. The uninitiated of all ages in fact often do this, they attempt to enact their vision of where things should go and how the world works. Typically they get 'taught' to follow someone else's lead. I think you could also say this is something that arises from general socialization. Independence of thought is not encouraged in this world.



Yes.  Once we start teaching the kids critical thinking and other ways to survive and thrive in the real world, the other type of thinking goes away.  For a few, though, the 
actor thinking"(for lack of a better term) remains, and that type of thinking seems to be the mainstay for player facing games.  Anyone can learn that to a degree, but they won't be as good or as comfortable with it as those who never grew out of it like the actors.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has several posts just upthread that are really on-point.
> 
> It's not more railroading to establish the situation as an exciting one rather than an unexciting one. It's not more railroading for the most salient element in the situation to be "What do I make of this feather-selling peddler?" rather than "Should I look for a bazaar or a sage?" A moral or thematic choice doesn't become more pressing or poignant because framed in terms the GM thinks interesting ("There's a slave being beaten") than terms the player has made salient ("Would you try and steal the feather?" "What do you do when the leader of your cabal asks you to leave town because you're bearing a cursed feather?"). The campaign world doesn't have more depth because more play time was spent asking the GM for information about the fiction, rather than actually engaging with and helping establish the fiction.
> 
> An individual player may prefer to be told some fiction rather than contribute to creating some. But that's a property of the player; it doesn't entail any particular properties of the fiction.




The railroading comes in when you as DM move the PC to spots of your choosing, even if the reason that you choose those spots is based on criteria the player came up with.  You have made the determination about the PC moves and where the PC goes, which may be different than the player would have chosen based on his criteria.  Even if the player can then have his PC leave to go somewhere else, the rails have already been installed.  Being able to leave after the railroad trip just means that it isn't as hard of a railroad as it could have been.


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## Aenghus

Even with GM-driven games in the "weight" or "depth" of game settings, from heavily detailed worlds dripping with lore and consequences under every rock, to lightly sketched minimalist settings that get added detail only when PC action makes it necessary. IMO the sort of bottom-up world development that results from starting in a dungeon, adding a village, then a second adventure location, then a town etc is likely to be closer to the lightly-detailed group of settings.

The less detail a setting has, the less consequences are associated with particular locations, and the less there is of detail that would make arbitrary player goals impossible or irrelevant.

I've never seen a "No myth" setting for a GM-driven game, but I have seen extremely light settings that get close.

Framing PCs into a location in a heavy-weight setting may bring with it lots of consequences, some or all unknown to the players, so it could be railroading. 

Framing PCs into a location in a lightweight setting has a lot less inherent consequences, and is less likely to be railroading IMO.

"No myth" locations, as I understand them, only have as much or as little detail as the participants want, and typically don't get in the way of the focus of play which is the player goals. Such locations will often carry no inherent consequences, the focus of play is on the player goals, and the onus is on the dramatic decision points re these goals and their interaction to provide player agency and drive the game, not the location or the setting.  

If everyone involved in a group is content with the level of detail of the setting I see their choice as valid whether that's a highly detailed gameworld or a barely there setting. These choices do have consequences for the type of play they encourage,typically highly detailed worlds constrain the PCs more , low detail worlds constrain PCs less.

This is on the basis that railroading is obstructing meaningful PC decisions. Meaningful decisions rest in different places in different styles of play, whether location-based, event-based, goal-based etc.

I would hope to assume it's obvious that these styles, or any style of play, only works if all participants are sufficiently on board. No style of play can stand up to constant frustration or unhappiness on the part of any of the participants, something has got to give (game changes, players leave, revolution and a new GM, group falls apart etc).


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Yes.
> 
> Dear gods, no!
> 
> I don't play to psychoanalyze my characters or deep-dive into their angsts and drama (except for occasional comedic purposes).  If I wanted that I'd find a Vampire LARP where I could angst myself into oblivion.
> 
> The purpose of playing an RPG is to play the characters and bring them to life, sure, but also to see what kind of story can be collectively woven by the party these characters are a part of for however long they last.  And to weave that story requires a solid and consistent backdrop...the game-world or setting built either by [insert favoured RPG publisher here] or the DM.
> 
> No, I'm not - which means you'd have to put up with my much lesser turn of phrase when it came to setting description, because it's all I've got.
> 
> Over 40 years you'd have built up a pretty good knowledge of what's where in that world and how things function, right - good enough to be consistent from session to session and (if necessary) campaign to campaign?  Great - you're good to go!
> 
> Further, with all this game-world knowledge you're in a better position than most to have things happening behind the scenes in an internally-consistent manner.




See, I don't imagine that I can create an 'internally consistent world'. I don't even know what that means exactly. I tend to set things in this one setting FOR MY AMUSEMENT, not that of the players (I mean, maybe some of them actually are amused when they encounter a 1970's pre-1E PC, [MENTION=2093]Gilladian[/MENTION] would be the one to ask...). Now, I don't think its making it a bad game, but it isn't really needed for Story Now, and I frankly don't think there's a ton of original ideas or truly creative stuff in my world. 

And I'm not sure I care about 'psycho analyzing' anything, but what you describe TO ME involves knowing the character's motives, goals, thoughts, ideals, whatever is at least central to their character. It is called a 'character' for a reason. What I need, in order to explore that, is some sort of tension. You understand people in crisis. This is relatively uncontroversial, and even mundane, all people understand it.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> I'm looking at it as if I were a player in it, and approaching it from that perspective. In a DM-centered game I could also just walk out; and in either type I could always later muse on "what might have happened had I stayed there?"



OK, I agree, in some sense you could. In Story Now that sense would be more like "what sort of tale would we have told in that room?" If you care to take a character perspective you could ask about what 'was in the room', but it isn't a very interesting question to the game participants. 



> I think I'd be a lousy story-now player as I'd constantly be asking for enough information to give me choices about what to do next, and constantly asking about what we just potentially missed out on between one framed scene and the next.



I think you'd do fine. You're going to go for something. I think exploration is a perfectly viable agenda, and one that might even benefit from a more detailed setting, perhaps. I don't think other agendas generally do. You'd ask about what you missed, and next time you'd look at a scene harder, or find out something cool about it. 



> I'm a chaotic player - sure I can set goals and beliefs for a character while rolling it up but that doesn't mean I'm going to want to stick to that story if something more interesting happens by; and I'm always going to be on the lookout for that 'something more interesting'.




You might get caught up in another character's story, or spend your time pushing for more exploration, or find things that you really want to engage with. I think this is also a reason to go on to new games every so often.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> The railroading comes in when you as DM move the PC to spots of your choosing, even if the reason that you choose those spots is based on criteria the player came up with.  You have made the determination about the PC moves and where the PC goes, which may be different than the player would have chosen based on his criteria.  Even if the player can then have his PC leave to go somewhere else, the rails have already been installed.  Being able to leave after the railroad trip just means that it isn't as hard of a railroad as it could have been.




I think this is another one of those spherical cow kind of things. You COULD in theory, perhaps, play a Story Now type of game where the GM frames a scene, something happens, and then without reference to anything else except his own judgment the GM could simply say "OK, now your at place X, and Y is happening" and frame another scene. It just never happens that way.

Reality is that the PCs do some stuff, and change the state of the fiction in a way that represents some sort of choices. They make a pact with the dwarves to go fight giants, instead of exploring the tunnel into the Underdark. The next scene MIGHT be 'fighting giants', but that can hardly be a railroad! Its MUCH MUCH more likely there will be some scenes in between as well. Maybe less important ones where some relationships are established, some gear is procured, further assistance sought, whatever. A whole other agenda could be interjected at that point and unrelated activities centered on being in a dwarf fortress might happen (IE maybe another character had a goal to find out how to make an indestructible breast plate, so he goes and tries to make a deal with the dwarf weapon smiths). 

The trajectory of the game will be in the direction which the player's signal they want to go, but the actual path can be leisurely and even a little wandering at times. Remember, setbacks and failures happen too, and those will tend to deflect the characters from their long-term goals. They may have immediate blowback which requires handling, possibly creating new subsidiary goals along the way.

I think when [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] talked about the PCs leading the villagers out of danger from the giants there was some of that going on.


----------



## ccs

I'm a bit late to this thread, but....

World-building on whatever the scale - Dungeon, wilderness, town, social interaction, etc. - it's really all the same.  As the DM I have to pre-determine various information.  Then the players have to discover what I've written & use that + their characters abilities to figure out how to achieve their objectives.


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> See, I don't imagine that I can create an 'internally consistent world'. I don't even know what that means exactly. I tend to set things in this one setting FOR MY AMUSEMENT, not that of the players (I mean, maybe some of them actually are amused when they encounter a 1970's pre-1E PC, [MENTION=2093]Gilladian[/MENTION] would be the one to ask...). Now, I don't think its making it a bad game, but it isn't really needed for Story Now, and I frankly don't think there's a ton of original ideas or truly creative stuff in my world.



Nor in mine, most likely, but I try to make it that if something works in a certain way 'here and now' it's also going to work that same way 'there and then'.  Which is also why I go to a new world for each campaign, as there's often sweeping rules changes going along with the world change.

That said, I think were I to stay with the same world through multiple rule-sets like you seem to be doing, I'd make all changes retroactive to the dawn of time just to keep some here-and-now consistency.  Thus your 5e PCs would never meet a "pre-1e PC" in its original mechanics form as it would have been converted on the fly to the current system.



> And I'm not sure I care about 'psycho analyzing' anything, but what you describe TO ME involves knowing the character's motives, goals, thoughts, ideals, whatever is at least central to their character.



As do I. However... 







> What I need, in order to explore that, is some sort of tension. You understand people in crisis.



I don't necessarily need the tension or crisis in order to do this.  Sometimes, in fact, the tension and-or crisis just gets in the way, and delays me exploring what I might be trying to explore at the time with a particular character.

This is assuming I'm playing an explorable character, mind you.  Some of mine are really only there for the comedic / entertainment value, as I see entertainment as the main underlying reason for doing all this.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, I agree, in some sense you could. In Story Now that sense would be more like "what sort of tale would we have told in that room?" If you care to take a character perspective you could ask about what 'was in the room', but it isn't a very interesting question to the game participants.



Finding out after the fact all of what we missed in a given adventure can be hilarious, if embarrassing sometimes. 



> You might get caught up in another character's story, or spend your time pushing for more exploration, or find things that you really want to engage with. I think this is also a reason to go on to new games every so often.



Why not do it all in the same game, though?  It's a big world...


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think this is another one of those spherical cow kind of things. You COULD in theory, perhaps, play a Story Now type of game where the GM frames a scene, something happens, and then without reference to anything else except his own judgment the GM could simply say "OK, now your at place X, and Y is happening" and frame another scene. It just never happens that way.



I'll have to take your word for this as regards your own game.  In my eyes pemerton's example of talking to the angels and then jumping straight to the reliquary scene is exactly this.



> Reality is that the PCs do some stuff, and change the state of the fiction in a way that represents some sort of choices. They make a pact with the dwarves to go fight giants, instead of exploring the tunnel into the Underdark. The next scene MIGHT be 'fighting giants', but that can hardly be a railroad! Its MUCH MUCH more likely there will be some scenes in between as well. Maybe less important ones where some relationships are established, some gear is procured, further assistance sought, whatever. A whole other agenda could be interjected at that point and unrelated activities centered on being in a dwarf fortress might happen (IE maybe another character had a goal to find out how to make an indestructible breast plate, so he goes and tries to make a deal with the dwarf weapon smiths).



This all sounds just fine, as long as the players can choose the level of detail.



> The trajectory of the game will be in the direction which the player's signal they want to go, but the actual path can be leisurely and even a little wandering at times.



This can also be the case in DM-driven games.


> Remember, setbacks and failures happen too, and those will tend to deflect the characters from their long-term goals. They may have immediate blowback which requires handling, possibly creating new subsidiary goals along the way.
> 
> I think when [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] talked about the PCs leading the villagers out of danger from the giants there was some of that going on.



Yeah, I've some different issues with that one regarding how he's handling time and distance in the fiction; but the sequence of play sounds cool.

Lanefan


----------



## Sunseeker

Lanefan said:


> A question is slowly beginning to occur to me...let's see if I can phrase it at all clearly.
> 
> If the game, here somewhat paraphrased, proceeds thusly:
> 
> 1. Player during char-gen specifies goals, beliefs etc. for her character, at least one of which includes a specific end point or problem to solve (e.g. free my brother from possession by a balrog).
> 
> 2. Player during play can set the success condition for an action declaraction to be a step toward solving that problem (I check the feather to see if it'll help against balrogs)
> 
> 3. Player can in effect repeat this as necessary, with variants, until the action declaration succeeds (PC has moved one step closer to freeing her brother)
> 
> 4. Player can repeat 2 and 3 above, each time getting another step closer to solving the problem provided the dice co-operate, until the fiction reaches a climax point
> 
> 5. At that climax point, player can specify the success condition being that the problem is solved (e.g. no more balrog in my brother).
> 
> My question then is, particularly if the dice rolls go well for this player isn't this all just a slow-motion violation of Czege?  In step 1 the player sets the problem, in steps 2-5 the player also sets the solutions and if the dice go her way she cannot be stopped from achieving them.  Even if the dice don't go her way she can only truly be stopped at 5, with an outright fail on her roll in that climactic situation.
> 
> Lan-"Czegemate?"-efan




No, because they're not setting the specific challenges they have to overcome, they're only saying that "there are challenges".  When a player (or an IRL person) sets a goal they're always setting the problem (my boss is a jerk) and defining the solution (getting a sweet new job).  What they don't get to set is the challenges between point A and C.  If a player has to investigate every Interesting Item to see if there's a connection, then they're clearly _not_ violating Czege.  All they know is that they need to figure out how to get from A to C, but they don't know what B will look like.  

Point 5 is unnecessary, the resolution was specified in point 1.  "Free my Brother from the Balrog."  The _challenge_ is unspecified, "How do I free Brother?"

The violation occurs when the player specifies challenge _and_ resolution.  The violation is particularly egregious when the challenge is unsatisfactory to the resolution.  IE: Freeing my Brother from the Balrog means I have to eat nothing but kale for 5 days.  Few people will complain about a Czege violation that presents a satisfactory challenge to achieve the resolution, IE: Freeing my Brother from the Balrog means I have to defeat the powerful high-level sorcerer who summoned the Balrog's spirit into my Brother.  We now have a challenge that actually is well, _challenging_ for the player.

It's unrealistic to say that the player determining the challenge and the solution is _always_ a violation, or worse that it is always un-fun.

The risk a violation runs is essentially the player excluding others from participating or creating a situation that is boring.  The Czege Principle basically assumes (rightly or wrongly) that most people suck at writing and creating challenges for themselves.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think this is another one of those spherical cow kind of things. You COULD in theory, perhaps, play a Story Now type of game where the GM frames a scene, something happens, and then without reference to anything else except his own judgment the GM could simply say "OK, now your at place X, and Y is happening" and frame another scene. It just never happens that way.
> 
> Reality is that the PCs do some stuff, and change the state of the fiction in a way that represents some sort of choices. They make a pact with the dwarves to go fight giants, instead of exploring the tunnel into the Underdark. The next scene MIGHT be 'fighting giants', but that can hardly be a railroad! Its MUCH MUCH more likely there will be some scenes in between as well. Maybe less important ones where some relationships are established, some gear is procured, further assistance sought, whatever. A whole other agenda could be interjected at that point and unrelated activities centered on being in a dwarf fortress might happen (IE maybe another character had a goal to find out how to make an indestructible breast plate, so he goes and tries to make a deal with the dwarf weapon smiths).
> 
> The trajectory of the game will be in the direction which the player's signal they want to go, but the actual path can be leisurely and even a little wandering at times. Remember, setbacks and failures happen too, and those will tend to deflect the characters from their long-term goals. They may have immediate blowback which requires handling, possibly creating new subsidiary goals along the way.
> 
> I think when [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] talked about the PCs leading the villagers out of danger from the giants there was some of that going on.




I get that.  It doesn't change the railroad aspect of the playstyle, though.  Let's go with your giants example.  After the players make the pact with the dwarves, if the DM places them anywhere, he's railroading.  Even if he can use their choice as a reference.  If he puts them in a fight in the next scene, it's not only a railroad, but a blatant one.  The players didn't make the decision to go there. That was the DM.  The players may have wanted to engage in one of those intermediary scenes you describe.  Perhaps they want to acquire a giant slaying sword.  Even then, if the DM just pops them into a bazaar or to a wizard, that's also railroading, since it removes their choice on how to go about getting that sword and forces the decision to go to the bazaar or wizard upon them.  The DM is in effect playing their characters and making decisions that only the players are entitled to make.  

The only way to avoid the railroad is for the DM to be completely reactionary to to the desires of the players.  Once they make the pact with the dwarves, he waits for them to decide what they want to do next.  If they say that they want to go to the city of Roaring Squirrel to find a wizard to enchant one of their swords, he can put them there in response or ask for a roll.  It's when the DM gets proactive with trying to meet the goals of the players that he is likely to engage in railroading.  The rails are thin, but they are there.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The DM would pre-author a potential failure, such as the feather being cursed, but since the DM can't predict what the player will do with that knowledge, can't pre-author something like Jabal.  Pre-authoring is a limited exercise in high probabilities that don't always occur.



Why would the GM pre-author the feather being cursed? The existence of the feather in the fiction was established _after the player's build their PCs_, as part of the opening scene of the campaign. The feather was only introduced into that scene, by me as GM, because I was following the lead of the player who decided that one of his PC's Beliefs was that he would acquire an item useful for confronting a balrog. And how would I know that the player is going to decide to have his PC read the aura (as opposed to, say, just buy it? or try and steal it? or ask the peddler more about it?). Pre-authorship of outcomes is not consistent with the idea that the players have genuine choice in action declaration, with that action declaration yielding genuine answers to the questions it poses about the fiction.



Maxperson said:


> Usually, I will start the opening scenes, but I don't put them into a place that of high import like you did.  If a player is seeking an item, I will start that PC off in a neutral place and allow the player to determine the best course of action for his PC.  If I were to put the PC in one such place, I am telling that player that this is the best way by that very act.  It's the clue hammer upside the head that was mentioned earlier.  It very strongly implies to the player that this is the way to do things, which is railroady.



By treating this as a "clue hammer" or "the best course of action" you are building in assumptions that the GM is authoring all the fiction!

There's no _clue_. There's no _best_. There are choices that tell us something about the PC - _This is what I'm willing to do_ - and that, as they are resolved, will tell us something about the situation - _This feather is useful for confronting balrogs_ or _this feather is cursed_ or _this peddler knows very little about the wares he is selling_ or any of a hundred other possibilities depending on what actions are declared.



Maxperson said:


> If Tolkien had written only about Gandalf showing up to talk to Frodo about the ring, then skipped ahead and written about only the encounter with the Nazgul in the flight from the Shire, then skipped ahead to the barrow wights and Tom, etc., leaving out everything in-between that tied them together, we wouldn't know his name.  That isn't really a story  The stuff the ties the major points together, and which you skip in your style



Whether novel or film is a better model for RPGing is an open question. But even focusing on a novel, in fact LotR does not describe every detail. How many flagstones are in the hallway of Bag End?

I would suggest that in  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game, if the GM mentions an uneven flagstone then it is de rigeur to search for traps or secret doors. Does that mean that, by not mentioning every flagstone in the tavern, Lanefan is railroading the players?

Or to put it in the form of direct assertion rather than rhetorical question: there is a finite amount of time available in which the GM tells the players stuff. To spend most of that time telling them stuff that speaks to PCs' dramatic needs, rather than stuff that invites them _simply to get the GM to tell them more stuff_ ("You're at an intersection - which way do you go?" "You notice an uneven flagstone on the floor between your table and the bar - what do you do?") doesn't lessen the players' contributions to the content of the shared fiction. It increases it.



Maxperson said:


> The railroading comes in when you as DM move the PC to spots of your choosing, even if the reason that you choose those spots is based on criteria the player came up with.  You have made the determination about the PC moves and where the PC goes, which may be different than the player would have chosen based on his criteria.  Even if the player can then have his PC leave to go somewhere else, the rails have already been installed.  Being able to leave after the railroad trip just means that it isn't as hard of a railroad as it could have been.



This all rests on an illusion, namely, that the gameworld is real. But it's not. In the approach you are advocating, it's authored by the GM.

When you narrate that the PC is in a "neutral place", you have determined where the PC is. If the PC says "I look for a sage - is there a library nearby" you, as GM, tell the player what the PCs sees, and establish the parameters within which the player can make choices. The whole fiction here is GM-authored, and the player choices are all confined within GM-established parameters. As soon as the GM has one of the NPCs s/he is narrating do stuff (eg decides that someone at the library lies about where a sage might be found), the GM is also starting to drive events on some GM-desired course.

The idea that it is _more_ railroad-y to say to the player "OK, you said you wanted to find items - here's a prospective item, now tell us what you think about it!" is bizarre!


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> The in-my-eyes awful risk you run here is that you could end up with unrealistic travel times and distances.  Geography is important.  Time is important.  The two put together - which you're doing here - can become vitally important; and thus need to be carefully tracked.



Travel times and distances don't matter in this game. In John Boorman's Excalibur, how far did the knights ride on the Grail Quest? It doesn't matter. How long did it take Arthur to ride from Camelot to his final confrontation with Mordred? It doesn't matter.

What matters is that Snow is All About, that The Giants are Almost Upon Us!, and that there are Frightened Villagers. That's why these are called out as scene distinctions.



Lanefan said:


> In both The Hobbit and LotR Tolkein puts a lot of effort and a lot of words into describing the settings through which the parties travel.  He also introduces elements of the greater world, particularly from the historical side, and repeatedly makes it very clear that there's a world out there beyond what the protagonists see or even know of (the Southrons are one example of such).  Unless you skip all these bits when you read the books, you can't help but become immersed in the world of Middle Earth and end up knowing a lot more about it (and wanting to know more yet, most likely) than just what the protagonists saw on their journeys.



As best I recall, everything that is learned about the history of the Ring comes out either through Gandalf telling Frodo, or through various speakers at the Council of Elrond. Unlike the film version, there is no abstracted narrator who tells us this stuff.

But notice that we never learn (for instance) the history of the mayors of the Shire, nor the history of the rulers of the Southrons, nor the nature of agriculture near Laketown and Dale, nor exactly how hobbits get their cheese. There is an indefinite amount of stuff about the world which _is not part of the story_. And in game play, all the stuff that anyone cares about can come out in play, by focusing on the actual concerns of play. Mechanics that can produce it of course vary from system to system, but plenty of systems have mechanics of the right sort: whether those are Lore mechanics, or contacts mechanics, or mechanics for influencing NPCs, or perception/search mechanics, or whatever.

Here is an actual play post (sblocked for length):

[sblock]







pemerton said:


> In our last session, the PCs had escaped into the Mausoleum of the Raven Queen, which had been warded with a Hallowed Temple ritual. Because she is a lich, and hence undead, Jenna Osterneth could not follow them in. Which was good for them, because they were out of encounter powers and had 3 surges across the party, and multiple bloodied PCs including the fighter/cleric on 4 hp.
> 
> Their reason for being there was that the Mausoleum of the Raven Queen - like other lost things - had ended up on The Barrens in the Abyss. And Osterneth, as an agent of Vecna, had gone there to try and learn the Raven Queen's true name from her dead (mortal) body. The PCs were there to stop her - but with various degrees of enthusiasm, because they don't all exactly approve of her and her growing divine power. (Even though nearly everything they do seems to increase this!)
> 
> The Mausoleum had three areas: an entrance room, with a large statue and modest altar; a set of stairs with slightly elevated ramps on either side leading down to the principal room - very large (about 90' x 50') with a huge statue and two pools of water, corrupted by the Abyss; and then a smaller set of stairs leading down to the burial room, with a large altar and five statues and 4 side rooms (the sarcophagus room, the room with canopic jars, the grave goods room and the treasure room).
> 
> The PCs started in the entrance, where they took a short rest. This let them regain encounter powers, allowed the paladin to heal up to full from his ring, and then allowed some healing involving sharing the surges around the party (the ranger-cleric has the Shared Healing feat; our table convention for short rests and healing powers is to allow spending regained encounter healing at the end of the rest). They studied the murals and reliefs in the entrance chamber, which showed the Raven Queen's victories during her life, becoming the most powerful ruler in the world (crushing her enemies, being adulated by her subjects, etc - I told the players to think of Egyptian tomb paintings, Mesopotamian reliefs, and similar).
> 
> The invoker/wizard and ranger-cleric (having the best Perception in the party) then heard a slithering sound on the ramp. With his ring that grants darkvision the invoker/wizard could see a guardian naga. And the sphinx then came out, and told them that they must answer a riddle before they could pass further into the Mausoleum. I had mixed together abilities from a MM and MM2 sphinx, so they could either choose between accepting the challenge but suffering a debuff until answering it; or rejecting the challenge but granting the sphinx a power up. They chose to accept.
> 
> I wrote the riddle a few weeks ago on the train:
> 
> In the green garden, a sapling grows,
> In time the tree dies, a seed remains.
> In the grim garden shall that seed be sown,
> Among the black poplars a new tree, a new name:
> Shade shall it cast,
> Frost endure,
> Dooms outlast,
> Pride cure.​
> Appropriately enough, it was the player of the ridiculously zealous paladin of the Raven Queen who first conjectured that the subject of the riddle was the Raven Queen herself - first her mortal life, than her life after death in which she took on a new name ("the Raven Queen") and took control of the Shadowfell and death, of winter, and of fate.
> 
> When the players had reached agreement on this, they offered their answer. The sphinx accepted it, but insisted that they also tell him _whose _pride will be cured. After generic answers ("everyone dies"), which did not really satisfy the sphinx, the fighter/cleric answered "Us". The sphinx replied "Well, yes, you," and this was the clue for the player of the invoker/wizard, who answered "The gods" - because the fighter/cleric is now God of Jailing, Pain and Torture (having taken up Torog's portfolio). The sphinx then allowed them to pass down the stairs to the principal room, to venerate the dead queen.
> 
> In the principal room, they identified the Abyssal corruptions in the pools, and used a Tide of the First Storm (to summon cleansing water) enhanced by other water-quelling magic (sucked out of a Floating Shield) to purify one, so that they could safely pass it to get to the doorway to the burial room. The mural in the principal room - also a magical hazard if they got too close, which they made sure not to - depicted the mortal queen's magical achievements - including defeating a glabrezu on the Feywild, and travelling to the land of the dead (at that time, a land of black poplars ruled by Nerull).
> 
> The paladin looked in the cleansed pool to see what he could see, and saw episodes from the past depicting the Raven Queen's accretion of domains (fate from Lolth, in return for helping Corellon against her; winter from Khala, in return for sending her into death at the behest of the other gods); and then also the future, of a perfect world reborn following the destruction of the Dusk War, with her as ruler.
> 
> I also decided a further complication was needed: so I explained to the player of the fighter/cleric (who is now the god of imprisonment, and also has a theme that gives him a connection to primordial earth) that he could sense the Elemental Chaos surging up through the earth of the mortal world (because (i) Torog can no longer hold it back, and (ii) the Abyss, having been sealed, is no longer sucking it down the other way); and as a result, an ancient abomination sealed in the earth had been awakened from its slumber and would soon makes it way up to the surface of the world. I then filled them in on my version of the Tarrasque (the MM version with MM3 damage and a few tweaks to help it with action economy). This created suitable consternation, and was taken as another sign of the impending Dusk War.
> 
> At this point there was much debate: at least an hour at the table, I would say. They couldn't agree on what they wanted to do - destroy the body (mabye by bringing in the sphere of annihilation, which had been left outside when they fled into the Mausoleum); perhaps destroy the whole Mausoleum; or, as the fighter/cleric advocated, learn her name first so they could use that to bargain with her and compel cooperation without her getting to acquire new domains.
> 
> The guardians - who could understand all this, given their Supernal tongue, and could follow it, given their high INT and WIS and Arcana and Religion and Insight - insisted that no Sphere of Annihilation might be brought into the Mausoleum, and that the remains of the dead queen, and her burial goods, not be disturbed. The PCs weren't wanting to start any conflict at this point, and at least three of them (paladin, ranger-cleric and invoker/wizard) were happy with this in any event. So they with the guardian's permission they went down the last set of stairs to the burial room.
> 
> This room had a statue in each of four corners - the Raven Queen mortal, ruling death, ruling fate and ruling winter. The fifth statute faced a large altar, and showed her in her future state, as universal ruler. The murals and reliefs here showed the future (continuing the theme of the rooms: the entry room showed her mortal life; the principal room her magical life, including her passage into death; this room her future as a god). I made up some salient images, based on important events of the campaign: an image of the Wolf-Spider; an image of the a great staff or rod with six dividing lines on it (ie the completed Rod of 7 Parts, which is to be the trigger for the Dusk War); an image of an earthmote eclipsing the sun (the players don't know what this one is yet, though in principle they should, so I'll leave it unexplained for now); an image of a bridge with an armoured knight on it, or perhaps astride it - this was not clear given the "flat-ness" of the perspective, and the presence of horns on the knight was also hard to discern (the players immediately recognised this as the paladin taking charge of The Bridge That Can Be Traversed But Once); and an image of the tarrasque wreaking havoc.
> 
> More discussion and debate ensued. Closer inspection showed that where it was possible the queen's name had once been written on the walls, this had been erased. The invoker/wizard decided to test whether this could be undone, by using a Make Whole ritual: he made a DC 52 Arcana check, and was able to do so (though losing a third of his (less than max) hp in the process, from forcing through the wards of the Mausoleum). Which resulted in him learning the name of the Raven Queen. And becoming more concerned than ever that it is vulnerable to others learning it to.
> 
> Asking the guardians confirmed that they also know her name, though will not speak it, as that would be an insult to the dead.
> 
> The new plan  arrived at - now that it seemed that sequestering or destroying the body wouldn't be enough, and would require fighting the guardians also - was to surround the whole thing in a Magic Circle vs "all" while the collapse of the Abyss takes the whole thing. They thought the Circle would have a good chance of keeping out level 40 or so beings (given the invoker/wizard's high Arcana bonus). But this takes 1 minute per square, and a quick calculation showed the circle would need to be about 30 squares radius, for around 3000 squares area, or 50 hours. (I think during the session someone might have mucked up by a factor of 10, because 20 days was bandied about as the time required - either way too long to do without first dealing with Osterneth.)
> 
> So the discussion then shifted to defeating Osterneth. The player of the sorcerer had been very keen on the possibility of a magical chariot among the grave goods, and so I decided that there was a gilt-and-bronze Chariot of Sustarre (fly speed 8, 1x/enc cl burst 3 fire attack). They persuaded the guardians to let them borrow it, as the necessary cost of preventing Osterneth coming in and defiling the body.
> 
> The sorcerer then powered up the Chariot with a quickened version of his Enhance Vessel ritual, making it speed 10 (he spent extra residuum after a successful DC 32 Arcana check). And they pushed open the doors and launched an assault on Osterneth, who was still waiting outside.





pemerton said:


> Because the PCs all have slightly different goals, I keep waiting for the blow-up to come. And because it hasn't, yet, I keep piling on more-and-more. There has been a lot of discussion over the course of the campaign, especially in this final half of the epic tier, about the Raven Queen's aspiration to dominate the world. But this session was the first where I made that an overt fact of the gameworld (with the story and statutes in the Mausoleum).
> 
> Afterwords, the player of the paladin told me that he had passed a note to the player of the ranger-cleric (also a Raven Queen worshipper, but not quite as zealous) that stated that he was getting ready to use the Sword of Kas on the (somewhat anti-Raven Queen) fighter/cleric. But then the fighter/cleric gave up on his idea of trying to get the Raven Queen's name themselves so they could use it to force her to help the other gods without demanding more portfolios as payment.
> 
> And so the blow-up was avoided for another session, which means the stakes will be getting higher and higher on all sides if (when) it finally comes.



[/sblock]I don't think that is lacking in depth or colour. But it did not depend upon the GM introducing random details of intersections and beaten slaves.



Lanefan said:


> The Hobbit crew have Bilbo leave the party on more than one occasion; they then get diverted by the Wood Elves, which then leads them to Laketown and into another diversion.  The LotR crew get diverted all over the place - Old Man Willow leads to Tom Bombadil; they get back on track just in time to be diverted by the barrow wights, after which they stay on course for a while and gather the fellowship...which then splits into three different groups only one of which carries on with the original goal.  And this is while trying to ignore as many diversions as they can.



You are assuming that, in RPGing, this sort of dynamism can only be the result of GM-driven play. But there is simply no evidence that that is the case!

The PCs in my Cortex+ Heroic game set off to find out why the Northern Lights were behaving strangely, but have not yet got very far north. They arrived at a dungeon and entered it, but learned nothing of relevance to their mission. Instead, after getting teleported to the depths by a Crypt Thing, they ended up in dark elf caverns and one of them tricked the drow out of their gold while the others had to fight their way out and trudge home. Since then, they have been caught up trying to save the villagers whose village was destroyed by Ragnarok cultists that the PCs could not defeat.

Your analysis and assumptions completely ignores the significance of player choice (eg a player chooses to go for the gold rather than continue with the quest) and of failed action resolution (the PCs fail to save the village, and so now - if they want to rescue the captured villagers - have to postpone their quest).



Lanefan said:


> In the more open-ended situation of an RPG where there's options for players to follow up on whatever diversions they want, the only way to keep them on story is to _never present or offer any diversions_.



This is all assuming a GM-driven game. It shows a complete failure to grasp how player-driven RPGing actually works.

You may have read these blogs, but I don't think you actually processed what they are saying:

The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end.​
There cannot be any "_the _story" during Narrativist play, because to have such a thing (fixed plot or pre-agreed theme) is to remove the whole point: the creative moments of addressing the issue(s).​
Frame situations that will provoke choices (and not just requests for more setting download), let the players make choices, establish consequences (which may be what the players want, if checks succeed; or not what they want, if checks fail), and then frame something new in light of that. It's pretty simple. And it will produce a story that no one new in advance was going to come. Without the GM having to provide a menu of setting elements for the players to choose from.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> Look, I'm trying to have a good discussion here, .



So why do you say that I provide examples of post-hoc consequence mitigation when I provided not a single example of that? Or why do you say that tactics don't matter in BW, when clearly they do? What points are you trying to make?


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> YThe purpose of playing an RPG is to play the characters and bring them to life, sure, but also to see what kind of story can be collectively woven by the party these characters are a part of for however long they last.  And to weave that story requires a solid and consistent backdrop...the game-world or setting built either by [insert favoured RPG publisher here] or the DM.



What is your evidence for this? What do you think is going on with those of us who have RPGs with interesting, powerful, engaging stories but didn't use the techniques you recommend here?


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> We had a guy in our crew who ran a 3.xe game for a while, and it was just like that - finish one set-piece scene, jump straight to the next



What you're describing here is _massively_ GM-driven RPGing. It has basically nothing in common with what I (or  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]) is talking about.



Lanefan said:


> I'm reminded of that game every time you guys describe this story-now stuff and how it works, as the end result seems so similar.



This is why I think you haven't actually processed the words you have read on the various blogs I've linked to, or even in the descriptions of actual play that I've given.


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> If the game, here somewhat paraphrased, proceeds thusly:
> 
> 1. Player during char-gen specifies goals, beliefs etc. for her character, at least one of which includes a specific end point or problem to solve (e.g. free my brother from possession by a balrog).
> 
> 2. Player during play can set the success condition for an action declaraction to be a step toward solving that problem (I check the feather to see if it'll help against balrogs)
> 
> 3. Player can in effect repeat this as necessary, with variants, until the action declaration succeeds (PC has moved one step closer to freeing her brother)
> 
> 4. Player can repeat 2 and 3 above, each time getting another step closer to solving the problem provided the dice co-operate, until the fiction reaches a climax point
> 
> 5. At that climax point, player can specify the success condition being that the problem is solved (e.g. no more balrog in my brother).
> 
> My question then is, particularly if the dice rolls go well for this player isn't this all just a slow-motion violation of Czege?



Because you are assuming (1) that there are no failed checks, and (2) that the GM introduces no complications into the situation. You are posting a conch-passing game where there is no constraint on the players ability to narrate success for his/her PC. This is not how most RPGs work.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Why would the GM pre-author the feather being cursed? The existence of the feather in the fiction was established _after the player's build their PCs_, as part of the opening scene of the campaign. The feather was only introduced into that scene, by me as GM, because I was following the lead of the player who decided that one of his PC's Beliefs was that he would acquire an item useful for confronting a balrog. And how would I know that the player is going to decide to have his PC read the aura (as opposed to, say, just buy it? or try and steal it? or ask the peddler more about it?). Pre-authorship of outcomes is not consistent with the idea that the players have genuine choice in action declaration, with that action declaration yielding genuine answers to the questions it poses about the fiction.




So forget the feather then if you literally made characters and started the campaign in the same moment.  The rest of my examples stand.  The wolf and such.



> Whether novel or film is a better model for RPGing is an open question. But even focusing on a novel, in fact LotR does not describe every detail. How many flagstones are in the hallway of Bag End?




Eleventy-one. 



> I would suggest that in  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game, if the GM mentions an uneven flagstone then it is de rigeur to search for traps or secret doors. Does that mean that, by not mentioning every flagstone in the tavern, Lanefan is railroading the players?




This is both a Red Herring and a Strawman, as we have not argued that every detail is necessary in a novel or RPG and you keep using it to distract from our position.  In fact, I have repeatedly said that even the most detailed setting I know comprises less than 5% of the world's detail.  



> Or to put it in the form of direct assertion rather than rhetorical question: there is a finite amount of time available in which the GM tells the players stuff. To spend most of that time telling them stuff that speaks to PCs' dramatic needs, rather than stuff that invites them _simply to get the GM to tell them more stuff_ ("You're at an intersection - which way do you go?" "You notice an uneven flagstone on the floor between your table and the bar - what do you do?") doesn't lessen the players' contributions to the content of the shared fiction. It increases it.




If you don't stop at the intersection, though, and just force them down the passage of your choice to whatever dramatic need that you are headed towards, that's a railroad.



> This all rests on an illusion, namely, that the gameworld is real. But it's not. In the approach you are advocating, it's authored by the GM.
> 
> When you narrate that the PC is in a "neutral place", you have determined where the PC is. If the PC says "I look for a sage - is there a library nearby" you, as GM, tell the player what the PCs sees, and establish the parameters within which the player can make choices. The whole fiction here is GM-authored, and the player choices are all confined within GM-established parameters. As soon as the GM has one of the NPCs s/he is narrating do stuff (eg decides that someone at the library lies about where a sage might be found), the GM is also starting to drive events on some GM-desired course.




So, my position does not rest on the game world being real.  It rests on the game world being rational.  What we are describing is a game world that makes sense, and one where we don't railroad the players.

When I narrate that the PC is in a neutral place in the very first moment of the campaign, it's because I have no choice but to place them somewhere, just as you do.  Which is again why I said "After the beginning of the campaign..."  After that, it's the choice of the players.  If they tell me that they are going to the city of Baldur's Gate, they will travel there by the route that they determine.  When they arrive, they will arrive at the gates of the city, because I'm not going to railroad them into a place such as the bazaar or merchant guild.

I'm also going to repeat this.........again.  It's not entirely DM authored, nor is it within DM established parameters.  I don't detail the entire world(again), so I often don't know if there's a specific thing the players are looking for.  If I don't know, it literally cannot be a DM established parameter that it is there or not there.  I can automatically say yes, if there is a 100% chance of it being there, or no if there is a 0% chance of it being there, but in the vast majority of instances, a roll will determine things.  The player is authoring what brings that building or place into being.  I'm simply adjudicating the chances.

I also disagree with your assessment about the library. If an NPC that is untrustworthy is at the library and lies to them.  It's purely because the NPCs is untrustworthy and sees that it's in that NPCs best interest to lie.  It's is absolutely not going to drive events on some DM desired course, as I have no desire as to which way things go.  I literally don't care.  My only care in the game is that the players(including myself) have fun.



> The idea that it is _more_ railroad-y to say to the player "OK, you said you wanted to find items - here's a prospective item, now tell us what you think about it!" is bizarre!



It's not bizarre.  You are depriving the players of choices when you do that, since you are playing their characters and making decisions for those characters as to where they go.  In my game they have the choices to go AND all of those hundreds of other possibilities you mentioned.

I will point out now that it's okay for you to railroad them like that.  They have agreed to that playstyle and are okay with it.  Agreeing to be railroaded like that, though, does not stop the rails from existing.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> So forget the feather then if you literally made characters and started the campaign in the same moment.  The rest of my examples stand.  The wolf and such.
> 
> 
> 
> Eleventy-one.
> 
> 
> 
> This is both a Red Herring and a Strawman, as we have not argued that every detail is necessary in a novel or RPG and you keep using it to distract from our position.  In fact, I have repeatedly said that even the most detailed setting I know comprises less than 5% of the world's detail.
> 
> 
> 
> If you don't stop at the intersection, though, and just force them down the passage of your choice to whatever dramatic need that you are headed towards, that's a railroad.
> 
> 
> 
> So, my position does not rest on the game world being real.  It rests on the game world being rational.  What we are describing is a game world that makes sense, and one where we don't railroad the players.
> 
> When I narrate that the PC is in a neutral place in the very first moment of the campaign, it's because I have no choice but to place them somewhere, just as you do.  Which is again why I said "After the beginning of the campaign..."  After that, it's the choice of the players.  If they tell me that they are going to the city of Baldur's Gate, they will travel there by the route that they determine.  When they arrive, they will arrive at the gates of the city, because I'm not going to railroad them into a place such as the bazaar or merchant guild.
> 
> I'm also going to repeat this.........again.  It's not entirely DM authored, nor is it within DM established parameters.  I don't detail the entire world(again), so I often don't know if there's a specific thing the players are looking for.  If I don't know, it literally cannot be a DM established parameter that it is there or not there.  I can automatically say yes, if there is a 100% chance of it being there, or no if there is a 0% chance of it being there, but in the vast majority of instances, a roll will determine things.  The player is authoring what brings that building or place into being.  I'm simply adjudicating the chances.
> 
> I also disagree with your assessment about the library. If an NPC that is untrustworthy is at the library and lies to them.  It's purely because the NPCs is untrustworthy and sees that it's in that NPCs best interest to lie.  It's is absolutely not going to drive events on some DM desired course, as I have no desire as to which way things go.  I literally don't care.  My only care in the game is that the players(including myself) have fun.
> 
> 
> It's not bizarre.  You are depriving the players of choices when you do that, since you are playing their characters and making decisions for those characters as to where they go.  In my game they have the choices to go AND all of those hundreds of other possibilities you mentioned.
> 
> I will point out now that it's okay for you to railroad them like that.  They have agreed to that playstyle and are okay with it.  Agreeing to be railroaded like that, though, does not stop the rails from existing.



How much of a railroad is it of the players indicate they want to go to wherever but the GM makes them play through every intersection on the way there because the GM wrote down that those intersections exist?

I strongly think you're barking up the wrong tree, here.  Player facing ganes are built so that the next scene is created out of the resolution of the current scene, either by the players expressing a new interest or dealing with the complications created in the current scene.  It falls the definition of railroad, which is the GM forcing outcomes the GM prefers.

The framing into crisis method does, however, reduce some kinds of agency while focusing on and increasing pemertonian agency.  Pointing out the missing agency is a valid point, but it doesn't create a railroad.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> So why do you say that I provide examples of post-hoc consequence mitigation when I provided not a single example of that? Or why do you say that tactics don't matter in BW, when clearly they do? What points are you trying to make?




Go back and read the parts of my pasts you snipped out, it's pretty obvious.  

I never said they didn't matter, I said player facing ganes tend to minimize tactical agency.  BW bolts on an ugly set of combat mechanics to give the appearance of tactical choice, but it's mostly just a random die mechanic that approximates tactics.  For example, it abstracts tactical positioning to bands and uses an opposed roll to solve maneuvering.  Your only choices are to pick a band and win your roll to get positioning.  Fights with more than two combatants become challenging to solve the position puzzle as A beats C and so gets positioning but C beats B, and so gets positioning so long as it doesn't violate A.  Yes, you have choices, but their all tested by mechanics for outcomes.  That's random, not tactics.



Add for my points, if you'd stop snipping them, they'd be obvious.  Your getting confused because your cherry picking what I say and then applying statement it of context to topics they weren't referencing.  For example, the post hoc mitigation point I made was never in direct with BW Fight! mechanics -- you snipped the statement out and then treated it as if it was.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Travel times and distances don't matter in this game. In John Boorman's Excalibur, how far did the knights ride on the Grail Quest? It doesn't matter. How long did it take Arthur to ride from Camelot to his final confrontation with Mordred? It doesn't matter.



In a novel with only one moving piece, it doesn't matter.  In an RPG where one assumes at least a passing nod to realism is being given (and if it isn't, I'm out) if the main party goes north for three days (say, 45 miles made good) and the PC with the villagers goes south for two days (20 miles, they're moving slowly) before finding a refuge for them, if the PC with the villagers now wants to leave them and catch up to the main party how long is that gonna take?  65 miles...assuming normal movement rates etc. that's 3 quite long days or more likely 4 reasonable ones; and that's assuming the main party stays put and doesn't go further north.

Going back to the Middle Earth example - this would have been something JRRT paid meticulous attention to, with all the different pieces in motion across the setting: time and distance.



> As best I recall, everything that is learned about the history of the Ring comes out either through Gandalf telling Frodo, or through various speakers at the Council of Elrond. Unlike the film version, there is no abstracted narrator who tells us this stuff.
> 
> But notice that we never learn (for instance) the history of the mayors of the Shire, nor the history of the rulers of the Southrons, nor the nature of agriculture near Laketown and Dale, nor exactly how hobbits get their cheese. There is an indefinite amount of stuff about the world which _is not part of the story_.



And passing mention is made of a surprising amount of it in JRRT's books, leaving the reader often wondering "what's the story behind that?".  This is why his estate has been able to keep churning out supplemental books, is to answer these questions. 


> And in game play, all the stuff that anyone cares about can come out in play, by focusing on the actual concerns of play. Mechanics that can produce it of course vary from system to system, but plenty of systems have mechanics of the right sort: whether those are Lore mechanics, or contacts mechanics, or mechanics for influencing NPCs, or perception/search mechanics, or whatever.



I say it's still good to have those passing mentions in there, if only to fuel curiosity either then or later.



> Here is an actual play post
> 
> <...>
> 
> I don't think that is lacking in depth or colour. But it did not depend upon the GM introducing random details of intersections and beaten slaves.



That looks like some cool stuff there.

However, it's perhaps a tangential example to what I'm saying, for these reasons:

1. In your write-up it seems the various locations referenced are quite close together - each a staircase apart, if I read it right - and so there's very limited opportunity (or need) to introduce intersections and-or other geographical features.

2. This seems to be an example of epic-level play (one of the PCs is already a god, for Pete's sake!) near or at the end of a campaign, which implies most of the fundamental choices have already been made and any earlier distractions long since dealt with.  It's a bit late to be introducing something as trivial as a slave being beaten.   Yet with that said, you were still introducing DM-driven complications...

3. Further to 2 above, we don't see here how direct or indirect the party's path has been to get to this point; how often they veered off course, or whether there was any point when they could have lost the trail of the story entirely and thus never got this far at all.



> You are assuming that, in RPGing, this sort of dynamism can only be the result of GM-driven play. But there is simply no evidence that that is the case!
> 
> The PCs in my Cortex+ Heroic game set off to find out why the Northern Lights were behaving strangely, but have not yet got very far north. They arrived at a dungeon and entered it, but learned nothing of relevance to their mission. Instead, after getting teleported to the depths by a Crypt Thing, they ended up in dark elf caverns and one of them tricked the drow out of their gold while the others had to fight their way out and trudge home. Since then, they have been caught up trying to save the villagers whose village was destroyed by Ragnarok cultists that the PCs could not defeat.
> 
> Your analysis and assumptions completely ignores the significance of player choice (eg a player chooses to go for the gold rather than continue with the quest) and of failed action resolution (the PCs fail to save the village, and so now - if they want to rescue the captured villagers - have to postpone their quest).



Quite to the contrary, I'm not ignoring the significance of player choice at all - I'm advocating that they get the opportunity to make those choices in the first place!   They see a slave being beaten - do they divert to help the slave or not?  They pass numerous intersections while traversing a passage with the angels - do they divert to explore these or not?  While sneaking through the castle halls to a place where they can eavesdrop on the king's council they pass an open door to a bedroom full of treasure - do they (or does the party thief) divert to steal some or not?  We'll never know if you-as-DM don't mention these little vignettes in passing and give them the opportunity.

This is what I'm after, and it has to come from the DM.



> This is all assuming a GM-driven game. It shows a complete failure to grasp how player-driven RPGing actually works.
> 
> You may have read these blogs, but I don't think you actually processed what they are saying:
> 
> The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end.​
> There cannot be any "_the _story" during Narrativist play, because to have such a thing (fixed plot or pre-agreed theme) is to remove the whole point: the creative moments of addressing the issue(s).​
> Frame situations that will provoke choices (and not just requests for more setting download), let the players make choices, establish consequences (which may be what the players want, if checks succeed; or not what they want, if checks fail), and then frame something new in light of that. It's pretty simple. And it will produce a story that no one new in advance was going to come. Without the GM having to provide a menu of setting elements for the players to choose from.



That sort of game really seems to assume the players will be quite goal-oriented; and if so I'd rather see the DM framing scenes and introducing vignettes in passing that are intended to try and divert them from their goals or frustrate them from achieving such, rather than just relying on the luck of the dice to provide you with these opportunities.

And if a group of players aren't necessarily that goal-oriented and just want to play for gits and shiggles, how's that gonna work?

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Because you are assuming (1) that there are no failed checks,



Yes I am, that's what point 3 (repeat until success) covers. 







> and (2) that the GM introduces no complications into the situation.



Any such complications just make point 3 (repeat until success) take longer. 







> You are posting a conch-passing game where there is no constraint on the players ability to narrate success for his/her PC.



To a large degree there isn't, provided the dice co-operate.  

I check the feather to see if it can help me defeat a balrog.  Check:

Succeeds - I'm one step closer to my goal and just narrated that step myself.

Fails - I'm where I was before in relation to my goal (and have a cursed feather) but can always try again; I go to the jewelry merchant and (after some interaction etc.) check the opal to see if it can help me defeat a balrog...


> This is not how most RPGs work.



No it isn't...only story-now ones, from what I can see. 

Lan-"I stopped by the bazaar today - seems like they had a market-wide special on curses.  In related news, I just melted my d20 with a blowtorch"-efan


----------



## Lanefan

Ovinomancer said:


> How much of a railroad is it of the players indicate they want to go to wherever but the GM makes them play through every intersection on the way there because the GM wrote down that those intersections exist?



Fair point, but I still say it's incumbent on the DM to at least mention that those intersections exist and thus give the players/PCs a choice on whether to do anything differently given this new information. (e.g. maybe one of these intersections provides a safer path to where we're going...we'll never know if we don't explore...)


> Player facing ganes are built so that the next scene is created out of the resolution of the current scene, either by the players expressing a new interest or dealing with the complications created in the current scene.  It falls the definition of railroad, which is the GM forcing outcomes the GM prefers.



But passes the definition of railroad if the definition includes undue reduction or elimination of player/PC choices or options, which IMO it does.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Lanefan said:


> Fair point, but I still say it's incumbent on the DM to at least mention that those intersections exist and thus give the players/PCs a choice on whether to do anything differently given this new information. (e.g. maybe one of these intersections provides a safer path to where we're going...we'll never know if we don't explore...)



Sure, this goes to my points about reduction of tactical and logistic agency.


> But passes the definition of railroad if the definition includes undue reduction or elimination of player/PC choices or options, which IMO it does.




That's a uselessly broad definition.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

AbdulAlhazred said:


> We're still talking about different things. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has stated it pretty explicitly a few times, "agency over the issues they engage within the game" to paraphrase. As with my 'spherical cow' above, the endless maze, if the only choice is left to face orcs and right to face undead, that's SOME agency over the activity of the characters, but it is a SMALL agency because it only allows choices with the absolute bounds of what the GM proposed. A player cannot say here "I try to find the secret passage which leads to the land of the Yuan Ti, my character is obsessed with finding them."




But they still have 100% player agency in both scenarios. What that agency allows them to do is different, and that's my point. The "issues they engage within the game" is dependent upon the rules of the game.

In your spherical cow example, the player _can_ say "I try to find the secret passage which leads to the land of the Yuan Ti, my character is obsessed with finding them." That doesn't mean he'll find it, though.

Of course, if we explore that a bit farther, the answer might be no because:

1. There isn't one (as pre-determined by the DM);
2. There isn't one (as determined by a die roll); or
3. There isn't one (as determined by the DM on the spot)
4. There isn't one (as determined by the player deciding that there shouldn't be one there).

Those are all different mechanical rule approaches but the result is the same. 

Player agency itself isn't any different for any of them. They still have full control over the parts of the game that the rules allow. However, they allow different levels of control of the fiction outside of their characters.

#1 doesn't impact player agency, because in that system of rules, the player doesn't have the ability to influence the placement of a secret door. The DM could impact player agency by lying, even though he had placed a secret door there.

#2 doesn't impact player agency, but it does allow for the placement of such a secret door with a successful die roll. Note that the DM could affect the player's agency through modifiers.

#3 doesn't inherently impact player agency, since the rules allow the DM to decide whether a secret door is present or not. But there is certainly room for abuse, depending on how the rules.

#4 is the only option that puts the player fully in control of the decision, by the rules. The DM might be able to impact player agency by overruling it, but if the rules give the player this capability, that's probably not an easy option for the DM.

Of course, many might indicate that it is within the rights of the DM to overrule any of these, and it was explicitly stated in the AD&D DMG, but most would agree that this is wrong and takes away the player's agency.


----------



## tomBitonti

Ilbranteloth said:


> In your spherical cow example, the player _can_ say "I try to find the secret passage which leads to the land of the Yuan Ti, my character is obsessed with finding them." That doesn't mean he'll find it, though.
> 
> Of course, if we explore that a bit farther, the answer might be no because:
> 
> 1. There isn't one (as pre-determined by the DM);
> 2. There isn't one (as determined by a die roll); or
> 3. There isn't one (as determined by the DM on the spot)
> 4. There isn't one (as determined by the player deciding that there shouldn't be one there).




Additional text omitted.

As far as I understand the systems, I thought player agency meant that they very definitely *do* find a secret passage, with the understanding that the DM will place obstacles to findings and using the passage.  Or rather, that the passage does exist, albeit with obstacles that must be overcome standing between the player and the passage.

Then, the player agency is in declaring that what matters to them is finding the secret passage.  (The player may have a larger goal: Traversing the passage to visit the Yuan-Ti lands.  Traversing the passage to learn mystic arts from a Yuan-Ti Sorcerer.  Traversing the passage to learn mystic arts to create a new shadow cabal and take over the city underworld.  One expects that what matters to the player will both shift and be embellished by the player.)

In a GM driven game, the GM will have already decided whether any secret passage as desired by the player exists, and whether the play can find it.

I thought this was the crux of the difference between player driven and GM driven: With player driven, the plot is presented by the player, then modified in a collaborative fashion with the GM and other players.  With GM driven, a plot is present to players, who accept that they will allow the in-plot goals to become their player goals.  (An alternative to GM driven is a sandbox, where major plot elements are present, and the players pursue those which are of interest.)

In GM driven play, there will be a point outside of the game where the players and GM agree on the "meta".  Say:

GM: Hey, interested in running through Against the Giants the next few months?  You'll be playing adventurers sent by the local Baron to find and stop giants who have recently begun raiding the countryside.

Players: Hmm, can we do the Drow stuff instead?

But even in Player driven play, there are some decisions made in the meta: What game system to use.  What particular rules are allowed.  The power level of the characters.  How many characters each player controls.

Thx!
TomB

(I pretty sure I've written something similar a while ago.  Odd feeling, that.)


----------



## pemerton

Aenghus said:


> typically highly detailed worlds constrain the PCs more , low detail worlds constrain PCs less.



For my part, my interest is not really on how constrained the PCs are but how constrained the players are. There is no strict correlation between the two, and so I prefer to try to un derstand the process at the table, rather than extrapolate that from events in and elements of the fiction.



Aenghus said:


> The less detail a setting has, the less consequences are associated with particular locations
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Framing PCs into a location in a heavy-weight setting may bring with it lots of consequences, some or all unknown to the players, so it could be railroading.
> 
> Framing PCs into a location in a lightweight setting has a lot less inherent consequences, and is less likely to be railroading IMO.
> 
> "No myth" locations, as I understand them, only have as much or as little detail as the participants want, and typically don't get in the way of the focus of play which is the player goals. Such locations will often carry no inherent consequences, the focus of play is on the player goals, and the onus is on the dramatic decision points re these goals and their interaction to provide player agency and drive the game, not the location or the setting.



Another way to describe "inherent consequences" is _a story the GM tells the players_, triggered by the players making moves that engage fictional positioning that the players themselves are unaware of.

 [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s example upthread of the NPC who is (unbeknownst to the players) an agent for the duke, and who therefore fails in her mission when the PCs charm her, is an example of the same thing but in NPC rather than location form.

The essence of "no myth" is found in the examples I've given in the thraed: how do we (as players in the game) establish the properties of the feather? A player delcares an action for his/her PC and makes a check. How do we establish whether the map can be found in the study? A player delcares an action for his/her PC and makes a check.

How do we learn that the Raven Queen's mausoleum is on a layer of the Abyss? Because the PCs find themselves on the Abyss as it is unravelling (because the PCs, some time earlier, sealing it off from its source of matter in the Elemental Chaos), and three of those PCs are Raven Queen devotees, and so the GM frames a scene in which a Demon Lord offers to tell them the location of the maosoleum in exchange for their chaos barge (which they are using to travel through the Abyss, hoping to make their own escape).

Those are the two basic modes for establishing setting in no myth RPGing. A player makes a check. Or the GM frames a scene.

Given that every work of fiction ever produced ever is, of necessity, no myth (because they are fictions, not atlases and biographies), I think it's obvious that there's no truth at all to the claim that "no myth" = no depth of setting.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Finding out after the fact all of what we missed in a given adventure can be hilarious, if embarrassing sometimes.



This absolutely assumes a GM-driven game. In a story now game, there is not "the adventure" which has bits that you miss.



Lanefan said:


> In my eyes pemerton's example of talking to the angels and then jumping straight to the reliquary scene is exactly this.



I actually posted it upthread. Where does it involve "jumping" from anything to anything? What lack of depth was there?


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Let's go with your giants example.  After the players make the pact with the dwarves, if the DM places them anywhere, he's railroading.



Are you really saying the following is railroading?

GM: OK, so you've agreed to help the dwarves against the giants. Your're heading off, right?

Players: Yes, we're heading off as soon as Aster makes some potions of fire resistance for us.

GM: OK, mark down your potions and cross off your residuum. You trek through the Underdark, following the directions the dwarves gave you. Everyone make a DC 20 Endurance check - if you fail, you're down a healing surge by the time you arrive at your destination.

<players adjust equpiment lists, make checks, adjust healing surge totals if required>

GM: Just as the dwarves told you, after a hard trek through the tunnels you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern. It's lit a dull red by the glow of lava that bubbles up through the floor of the cave and flows away in criss-crossing channels. A black, basalt structure stands in the centre - the Hall of the Fire Giant King.​
Where's the railroad?



Maxperson said:


> If he puts them in a fight in the next scene, it's not only a railroad, but a blatant one.



Why?

Let's consider a variation of the above:

. . .

GM: Just as the dwarves told you, after a hard trek through the tunnels you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern. It's lit a dull red by the glow of lava that bubbles up through the floor of the cave and flows away in criss-crossing channels. In the glow of the lava, you can see fire giant sentries on patrol. And it seems that a group of sentries has seen you!​
Where's the railroad?



Maxperson said:


> The players didn't make the decision to go there. That was the DM.



This is entirely your assumption and your projection. It's not what [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] said. It's got no connection to any actual play reports that have been posted.

More generally, you're making some assumptions about the dynamics of play, and the back-and-forth at the table, that are completely different from anything I've experienced except with the most worst GMs who have no conception of how to respond to player action declarations.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

tomBitonti said:


> Additional text omitted.
> 
> As far as I understand the systems, I thought player agency meant that they very definitely *do* find a secret passage, with the understanding that the DM will place obstacles to findings and using the passage.  Or rather, that the passage does exist, albeit with obstacles that must be overcome standing between the player and the passage.
> 
> Then, the player agency is in declaring that what matters to them is finding the secret passage.  (The player may have a larger goal: Traversing the passage to visit the Yuan-Ti lands.  Traversing the passage to learn mystic arts from a Yuan-Ti Sorcerer.  Traversing the passage to learn mystic arts to create a new shadow cabal and take over the city underworld.  One expects that what matters to the player will both shift and be embellished by the player.)
> 
> In a GM driven game, the GM will have already decided whether any secret passage as desired by the player exists, and whether the play can find it.
> 
> I thought this was the crux of the difference between player driven and GM driven: With player driven, the plot is presented by the player, then modified in a collaborative fashion with the GM and other players.  With GM driven, a plot is present to players, who accept that they will allow the in-plot goals to become their player goals.  (An alternative to GM driven is a sandbox, where major plot elements are present, and the players pursue those which are of interest.)
> 
> In GM driven play, there will be a point outside of the game where the players and GM agree on the "meta".  Say:
> 
> GM: Hey, interested in running through Against the Giants the next few months?  You'll be playing adventurers sent by the local Baron to find and stop giants who have recently begun raiding the countryside.
> 
> Players: Hmm, can we do the Drow stuff instead?
> 
> But even in Player driven play, there are some decisions made in the meta: What game system to use.  What particular rules are allowed.  The power level of the characters.  How many characters each player controls.
> 
> Thx!
> TomB
> 
> (I pretty sure I've written something similar a while ago.  Odd feeling, that.)




But even in a system with this definition of "player agency" they don't always find the secret passage. Even if the player is the one declaring the fiction at that point in time, the dice can indicate failure, although most of them espouse the type of "fail forward" of success with complications. But if the circumstances and dice align, then the result could very well be one of failure, and in other discussions, proponents of these systems have indicated that actual failure is possible.

Regardless, my point isn't whether the passage is found or not. It's how the game determines if the passage is found (or even there). 

The GM vs Player driven game is another confusing mess. To some folks, it's a game where the DM doesn't add anything during the course of play. They use a published adventure or the DM preps it ahead of time (and can even show his notes if there's a dispute), and any modifications the DM makes in the course of the game is taking away their player agency. But the players don't add to the fiction of the world, just take actions as their characters. That's not the type of GM driven game you're referring to, though. 

What you're referring to is more a question of how much input the players have into the fiction of the world. In many Story Now games they have a fair amount of it, although Eero's essay advised against them having control of the fiction during the course of play. In D&D I think that there's always an aspect of players adding to the fiction outside of their characters, although it's usually more indirectly. Through backstory and if the DM works their ideas into the game. That's what I do, although they also have more direct input at times as well. For example, during the course of play, when we are in town (their home town) then I ask for their input as to what they know. For example, when meeting an NPC from town, they fill in what they know about that NPC, what their relationship is, etc. In general, regarding lore about the region, etc. we handle things similarly.

Really, I see it more as a continuum, of how much input into the fiction outside of the characters the players have, and how much input/veto the DM has with regards to that input. Most of my players don't want any input into the fiction beyond their characters and their decisions and actions. They are looking to me to fill in what's going on in the world around them. I tend to have some notes for ideas, but most things aren't finalized until they enter play, and may be the opposite, or even completely different from what I have. Of course, a significant portion isn't prepped at all, since I really don't know what the players are going to do. A lot of the plot hooks are based directly on what the players have said along the way.l

So in a "GM driven game" I don't think that the existence of the passage is always a foregone conclusion, although it could be. In some games it may always be. Instead, I see it more as a matter of responsibility. Who is responsible for determining if the passage exists or not? In D&D it's usually the DM, sometimes with the use of dice. In a Story Now approach, the dice can be an influence, and the responsibility lies with whoever's move it is, with potential complications introduced by the GM.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> So why do you say that I provide examples of post-hoc consequence mitigation when I provided not a single example of that? Or why do you say that tactics don't matter in BW, when clearly they do? What points are you trying to make?




You know, I just noticed that you again snipped my post and responded only in part.  If you cannot correct this behavior after being told _repeatedly _it's unwelcome, I can no longer believe you're responding with honest intent.


----------



## tomBitonti

Ilbranteloth said:


> But even in a system with this definition of "player agency" they don't always find the secret passage. Even if the player is the one declaring the fiction at that point in time, the dice can indicate failure, although most of them espouse the type of "fail forward" of success with complications. But if the circumstances and dice align, then the result could very well be one of failure, and in other discussions, proponents of these systems have indicated that actual failure is possible.
> 
> Regardless, my point isn't whether the passage is found or not. It's how the game determines if the passage is found (or even there).
> 
> The GM vs Player driven game is another confusing mess. To some folks, it's a game where the DM doesn't add anything during the course of play. They use a published adventure or the DM preps it ahead of time (and can even show his notes if there's a dispute), and any modifications the DM makes in the course of the game is taking away their player agency. But the players don't add to the fiction of the world, just take actions as their characters. That's not the type of GM driven game you're referring to, though.
> 
> What you're referring to is more a question of how much input the players have into the fiction of the world. In many Story Now games they have a fair amount of it, although Eero's essay advised against them having control of the fiction during the course of play. In D&D I think that there's always an aspect of players adding to the fiction outside of their characters, although it's usually more indirectly. Through backstory and if the DM works their ideas into the game. That's what I do, although they also have more direct input at times as well. For example, during the course of play, when we are in town (their home town) then I ask for their input as to what they know. For example, when meeting an NPC from town, they fill in what they know about that NPC, what their relationship is, etc. In general, regarding lore about the region, etc. we handle things similarly.
> 
> Really, I see it more as a continuum, of how much input into the fiction outside of the characters the players have, and how much input/veto the DM has with regards to that input. Most of my players don't want any input into the fiction beyond their characters and their decisions and actions. They are looking to me to fill in what's going on in the world around them. I tend to have some notes for ideas, but most things aren't finalized until they enter play, and may be the opposite, or even completely different from what I have. Of course, a significant portion isn't prepped at all, since I really don't know what the players are going to do. A lot of the plot hooks are based directly on what the players have said along the way.l
> 
> So in a "GM driven game" I don't think that the existence of the passage is always a foregone conclusion, although it could be. In some games it may always be. Instead, I see it more as a matter of responsibility. Who is responsible for determining if the passage exists or not? In D&D it's usually the DM, sometimes with the use of dice. In a Story Now approach, the dice can be an influence, and the responsibility lies with whoever's move it is, with potential complications introduced by the GM.




Presenting GM vs Player driven in a dichotomous fashion is limiting.  There is a shifting overlap that erases any sharp separation.  But it is useful in a directional sense, of pointing which has greater agency.

To return to the question of whether the Yuan-Ti passage exists, I thought that in certain types of games, the player could force the passage to exist.  The limiting factor would be in regards to how much “authorship” resource the player had left.  And to a degree, how well having the passage exist fit into the story.  And, the player may decide to forgo the goal, perhaps because the challenge was too high, or because another story element became more of interest, or maybe they just changed their mind.  Then the decision as to the actual existence might never be reached.

Thx!
TomB


----------



## MechaPilot

pemerton said:


> So, given these difference between typical contemporary play and "classic" play, what is world building for?




What is world building for?

As I see it, world building has a few purposes on both sides of the screen.

For DMs
World building is a way to exercise one's creativity and individuality.  It's a way to make the game your own.  It's also a way to develop a backdrop that seems to live and breathe, and not just to exist when the PCs are present.  Additionally, world building allows the DM to create a world that caters to her preferences in fantasy (low-magic, high-magic, human-centric, melting-pot, distant-gods, involved-gods, etc).

For Players
World building is about discovery, exploration, and engagement.  Players who don't know the setting get to learn about it and its unique features as they travel the world and interact with its inhabitants.  Players also benefit from having a robust world their characters can engage with.  A character's goals and motivations may not be concrete rules like alignment (no matter what one thinks of it and/or its implementation in D&D), but world building allows character goals and motivations to entwine with the world and create the fabric of the characters' lives.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

tomBitonti said:


> Presenting GM vs Player driven in a dichotomous fashion is limiting.  There is a shifting overlap that erases any sharp separation.  But it is useful in a directional sense, of pointing which has greater agency.
> 
> To return to the question of whether the Yuan-Ti passage exists, I thought that in certain types of games, the player could force the passage to exist.  The limiting factor would be in regards to how much “authorship” resource the player had left.  And to a degree, how well having the passage exist fit into the story.  And, the player may decide to forgo the goal, perhaps because the challenge was too high, or because another story element became more of interest, or maybe they just changed their mind.  Then the decision as to the actual existence might never be reached.
> 
> Thx!
> TomB




Agreed, and that's the case with a lot of these theoretical discussions. But they can be interesting, because a year or two ago if you had asked me if players can help author the world fiction in D&D I would have said no, but as I've parsed through it more I find that it's exactly that, a shifting overlap.

I think you're right, in some games the player probably can force the passage to exist. At least, it's allowable within the rules. I'm not sure if it would always play out that way at the table. I don't know all of the rules systems inside and out.


----------



## Lanefan

Ilbranteloth said:


> Agreed, and that's the case with a lot of these theoretical discussions. But they can be interesting, because a year or two ago if you had asked me if players can help author the world fiction in D&D I would have said no, but as I've parsed through it more I find that it's exactly that, a shifting overlap.



Agreed.



> I think you're right, in some games the player probably can force the passage to exist. At least, it's allowable within the rules.



If this is true in any game system then I'll go on record as saying that is a system worth nothing but outright rejection, as it allows the players to author their own solutions to their problems - whether those problems are self-inflicted or presented by the DM - to the exclusion or minimization of engagement and interaction with the game world around their PCs.

In meta-terms, it's the difference between a player at the table saying or thinking:

"I want to find a passage to the Yuan-Ti, so I'll have my PC start searching for one" with no further knowledge whether one exists or not, the same as her PC.

and

"I want to find a passage to the Yuan-Ti, so I'll just author one into the fiction"; she - and thus her PC - know it must exist because she just arbitrarily put it there.

Systems that allow the player to achieve this authorship only on a successful die roll are somewhere between the two above positions.

Lan-"no matter how hard I try in real life, simply saying or thinking there's a beer in front of me doesn't often put one there"-efan


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Nor in mine, most likely, but I try to make it that if something works in a certain way 'here and now' it's also going to work that same way 'there and then'.  Which is also why I go to a new world for each campaign, as there's often sweeping rules changes going along with the world change.



I want to be consistent 'here and now' because it is required for the players to understand fictional positioning. They can always try to invent some new way to do something, etc. It should still 'hang together' in some sense.



> That said, I think were I to stay with the same world through multiple rule-sets like you seem to be doing, I'd make all changes retroactive to the dawn of time just to keep some here-and-now consistency.  Thus your 5e PCs would never meet a "pre-1e PC" in its original mechanics form as it would have been converted on the fly to the current system.



Yeah, that's what I've done. I mean, I skipped 3.x, so basically the PCs were all 'classic D&D' characters, meaning that the differences were maybe a point or two of AC, few other minor things. You can basically run an OD&D character in 2e and not worry much about doing a 'conversion'. Certainly to run it as an NPC its fine.

4e represents a much larger difference of course. I did convert some old-time PCs to CC/monster stat block format. In terms of using them as NPCs for a short time that works fine. It really works quite well for fighters and other non-casters. Wizard types were so open-ended in the old days that its hard to really capture the workings of high level ones exactly. Given that you will just do a brief fight or interaction with them though they work, and you can always load them up with rituals for the sort of 'campaign stuff'. 

Admittedly, if you went back and examined the precise details of adventures from years ago they might not quite mesh in every detail with 4e, but things are close enough, they're all games of fantasy action with pretty much the same tropes and archetypes.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> If you don't stop at the intersection, though, and just force them down the passage of your choice to whatever dramatic need that you are headed towards, that's a railroad.



What intersection? There is no world, there is no intersection, there are a series of scenes. Maybe we may assume that there are locations which exist between these scenes and which may be traversed, but there's literally no specific thing that any player has been 'railroaded past'. They stated they wanted to go to the reliquary and they went there! How is that a railroad?



> It's not bizarre.  You are depriving the players of choices when you do that, since you are playing their characters and making decisions for those characters as to where they go.  In my game they have the choices to go AND all of those hundreds of other possibilities you mentioned.
> 
> I will point out now that it's okay for you to railroad them like that.  They have agreed to that playstyle and are okay with it.  Agreeing to be railroaded like that, though, does not stop the rails from existing.




Railroading, by definition, isn't something that happens by the player's will. If they are in charge of the decisions which establish the content of the scenes they are in, by their choices, then they weren't railroaded, were they? 

What you are positing is that only a procedure in which every moment of the character's lives from game start to game end is played through at some arbitrary level of detail which you feel is sufficient to represent 'freedom of choice'. ALL we are arguing about is what that level of detail is, in essence. I'm perfectly happy to have the PCs skip a week and end up in another town, you're not. This has NOTHING to do with 'railroading' or 'agency' at all, its about process of play!


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> If I don't know, it literally cannot be a DM established parameter that it is there or not there.  I can automatically say yes, if there is a 100% chance of it being there, or no if there is a 0% chance of it being there, but in the vast majority of instances, a roll will determine things.  The player is authoring what brings that building or place into being.  I'm simply adjudicating the chances.



How are the chances set? Not by the player, as best I can tell. You are deciding whether or not to say no. You are setting the chance. The player is just waiting to be told.



Maxperson said:


> I also disagree with your assessment about the library. If an NPC that is untrustworthy is at the library and lies to them.  It's purely because the NPCs is untrustworthy and sees that it's in that NPCs best interest to lie.  It's is absolutely not going to drive events on some DM desired course, as I have no desire as to which way things go.  I literally don't care.  My only care in the game is that the players(including myself) have fun.



You, as GM, have to choose what the lie is about. You decide that the NPC is untrustworthy. Etc.



Maxperson said:


> This is both a Red Herring and a Strawman, as we have not argued that every detail is necessary in a novel or RPG and you keep using it to distract from our position.  In fact, I have repeatedly said that even the most detailed setting I know comprises less than 5% of the world's detail.



It's not a distraction. It's the whole point.

When you or [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] tell the players that their PCs are at an intersection, or stumble on a raised flagstone, or whatever else is part of you "neutral" framing, all you are doing is choosing (as a GM) to make some details salient. When I tell the player that his PC is at a bazaar where a peddler has an angel feather for sale, I am also choosing (as a GM) to make some details salient. The difference is that you have chosen something that you think is interesting/engaging; whereas I have chosen something that (given the player's signals) I know the player will find engaging/interesting.



Maxperson said:


> If you don't stop at the intersection, though, and just force them down the passage of your choice to whatever dramatic need that you are headed towards, that's a railroad.
> 
> <sip>
> 
> my position does not rest on the game world being real.  It rests on the game world being rational.  What we are describing is a game world that makes sense, and one where we don't railroad the players.



You are choosing whether or not to mention a raised flagstone. Whether or not to mention an intersection. Whether or not to mention a bazaar. Both of us are choosing what to mention to the players.

It's just that I'm choosing on the basis of the evinced dramatic needs of the PCs.

"Stopping at the intersection" isn't a _rational_ world, any more than is one which mentions every flagstone on the floor of the tavern, and every splinter on its wooden stairs. It's just one where the GM is indulging some taste for that particular detail.

I can tell you that if my players want intersections, or flagstone, they're very capable of letting me know!



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The idea that it is more railroad-y to say to the player "OK, you said you wanted to find items - here's a prospective item, now tell us what you think about it!" is bizarre!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It's not bizarre.  You are depriving the players of choices when you do that, since you are playing their characters and making decisions for those characters as to where they go.
Click to expand...


This is just the same point. You think not mentioning the flagstone is not railroading. Why not? You're depriving your players of the chance to study them, assay them, excavate them, fireball them, etc.

But obviously that's ridiculous. These aren't real worlds. They have no objective existence, waiting to be explored. They're fictions, which the players encounter because the GMs tell them to them. Telling the players stuff that _they have signalled_ will be interesting to them is not depriving choices anymore than telling them "neutral" stuff. It's just (in my experience) more exciting!


----------



## pemerton

Ilbranteloth said:


> But they still have 100% player agency in both scenarios. What that agency allows them to do is different, and that's my point. The "issues they engage within the game" is dependent upon the rules of the game.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Player agency itself isn't any different for any of them. They still have full control over the parts of the game that the rules allow. However, they allow different levels of control of the fiction outside of their characters.



This is like saying that chess and snakes and ladders are no different in player agency, because each allows the player full control over the parts of the game that the rules allow.

Or, if you think that's too cheap a shot, then I'll make the same comment about bridge and five hundred. The upshot of the auction + kitty in 500, together with the bower rules (which significantly lengthen the trump suit), means that once the hand actually starts being played players have less agency than they do in bridge. This is why five hundred is a lighter game (in terms of mental overhead) to play than bridge (no trumps can be an obvious exception - at that point the resemblance to bridge becomes much greater).

If, in the context of a RPG, the player has no agency in respect of the shared fiction except to express what his/her player desires (and there are some posters on this board who take that view) then it is self evident that the player has less agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction than one who is playing in a standard Fate or Burning Wheel or HeroWars/Quest or Cortex+ Heroic or 4e game. (Just to pick some examples.)


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> That looks like some cool stuff there.
> 
> However, it's perhaps a tangential example to what I'm saying, for these reasons:
> 
> 1. In your write-up it seems the various locations referenced are quite close together - each a staircase apart, if I read it right - and so there's very limited opportunity (or need) to introduce intersections and-or other geographical features.
> 
> 2. This seems to be an example of epic-level play (one of the PCs is already a god, for Pete's sake!) near or at the end of a campaign, which implies most of the fundamental choices have already been made and any earlier distractions long since dealt with.  It's a bit late to be introducing something as trivial as a slave being beaten.   Yet with that said, you were still introducing DM-driven complications...
> 
> 3. Further to 2 above, we don't see here how direct or indirect the party's path has been to get to this point; how often they veered off course, or whether there was any point when they could have lost the trail of the story entirely and thus never got this far at all.



The GM introduces complications, but look at how and why that is being done:

Appropriately enough, it was the player of the ridiculously zealous paladin of the Raven Queen who first conjectured that the subject of the riddle was the Raven Queen herself . . .

The sphinx accepted it, but insisted that they also tell him whose pride will be cured. After generic answers ("everyone dies"), which did not really satisfy the sphinx, the fighter/cleric answered "Us". The sphinx replied "Well, yes, you," and this was the clue for the player of the invoker/wizard, who answered "The gods" - because the fighter/cleric is now God of Jailing, Pain and Torture (having taken up Torog's portfolio). . . .

The paladin looked in the cleansed pool to see what he could see, and saw episodes from the past depicting the Raven Queen's accretion of domains (fate from Lolth, in return for helping Corellon against her; winter from Khala, in return for sending her into death at the behest of the other gods); and then also the future, of a perfect world reborn following the destruction of the Dusk War, with her as ruler. .  . .

I explained to the player of the fighter/cleric (who is now the god of imprisonment, and also has a theme that gives him a connection to primordial earth) that he could sense the Elemental Chaos surging up through the earth of the mortal world (because (i) Torog can no longer hold it back, and (ii) the Abyss, having been sealed, is no longer sucking it down the other way); and as a result, an ancient abomination sealed in the earth had been awakened from its slumber and would soon makes it way up to the surface of the world. I then filled them in on my version of the Tarrasque (the MM version with MM3 damage and a few tweaks to help it with action economy). This created suitable consternation, and was taken as another sign of the impending Dusk War. . . .

This room had a statue in each of four corners - the Raven Queen mortal, ruling death, ruling fate and ruling winter. The fifth statute faced a large altar, and showed her in her future state, as universal ruler. The murals and reliefs here showed the future (continuing the theme of the rooms: the entry room showed her mortal life; the principal room her magical life, including her passage into death; this room her future as a god). I made up some salient images, based on important events of the campaign: an image of the Wolf-Spider; an image of the a great staff or rod with six dividing lines on it (ie the completed Rod of 7 Parts, which is to be the trigger for the Dusk War); an image of an earthmote eclipsing the sun (the players don't know what this one is yet, though in principle they should, so I'll leave it unexplained for now); an image of a bridge with an armoured knight on it, or perhaps astride it - this was not clear given the "flat-ness" of the perspective, and the presence of horns on the knight was also hard to discern (the players immediately recognised this as the paladin taking charge of The Bridge That Can Be Traversed But Once); and an image of the tarrasque wreaking havoc. . . .

Closer inspection showed that where it was possible the queen's name had once been written on the walls, this had been erased. The invoker/wizard decided to test whether this could be undone, by using a Make Whole ritual: he made a DC 52 Arcana check, and was able to do so (though losing a third of his (less than max) hp in the process, from forcing through the wards of the Mausoleum). Which resulted in him learning the name of the Raven Queen. And becoming more concerned than ever that it is vulnerable to others learning it to.​
All the complications, and the increasing of pressure on the players, is done by reference to PC dramatic needs. This is what player-driven RPGing looks like: the GM frames scenes, and "[e]ach scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character."

There is no "veering off course" or "staying on course". _There is no pre-determined course_. There's just _these_ PCs, with _these_ needs, whose players make _these_ choices when the GM confronts them with _this_ situation. Of course at epic tier the in-game stakes are higher; but the methods are no different.




Lanefan said:


> That sort of game really seems to assume the players will be quite goal-oriented



Yes. This is why they have mechanics like Beliefs or Milestones; or why, in my 4e game, I asked the players at the start of the game to give their PCs a loyalty, and a reason to be ready to fight goblins.



Lanefan said:


> I'd rather see the DM framing scenes and introducing vignettes in passing that are intended to try and divert them from their goals or frustrate them from achieving such, rather than just relying on the luck of the dice to provide you with these opportunities.



But you don't need to try and divert. What does that add? Stories are about challenges to the satisfaction of dramatic need. So you present challenges and complications just as Eero Tuovinen describes - eg Can I save the world from the tarrasque, which will probably need the help of my Raven Queen-worshipping friends, without helping them make the Raven Queen the ruler of the cosmos? Does becoming a god help me stand against her, or make me more likely to be humbled by her? Or, for a different PC: Is the only way to keep the Raven Queen's name safe from others learning it for me to learn it?

This will make stuff happen.



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> you are assuming (1) that there are no failed checks
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes I am, that's what point 3 (repeat until success) covers.
Click to expand...


I'm sure I've posted multiple times upthread that this sort of RPGing depends on finality in resolution. There are no retries.



Lanefan said:


> And if a group of players aren't necessarily that goal-oriented and just want to play for gits and shiggles, how's that gonna work?



Maybe not so well. So maybe the GM starts exercising more agency. But it's hard for me to see that a non goal-oriented, "gits and shiggles" player is at the same time one who is exercising lots of agency over the content of the shared fiction.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION], because quoting all your posts without snipping is quite long, I've sblocked them.

[sblock]







Ovinomancer said:


> Eh, the kinds of choices made are so different that I'm not sure this is even a question that can be answered, much less one that should be answered.  It really doesn't matter.  In both styles, the players have lots of opportunity to make choices that fit the style and the player choices.  Which has more is pointless, and, beside, from your OP and your definition of agency in respect to adding to the fiction, this isn't even important.
> 
> 
> I've read a few of your BW play reports that featured combat.  *In one I recall more clearly, your character was accosted by orcs for failing a check to determine what happened at a sacked farmhouse, and the combat lacked a good deal of tactical depth as well.* *At no point did it appear you had options to limit danger occurring or make tactical choices about fictional position to mitigate danger that did appear.*  These are part and parcel of the DM-facing style, where players are incentivized to be risk-aware because that has positive benefits for dealing with risk.  In player facing games, risk occurs no matter what on check failures or scene framing, and there's limited logistical (when to rest, stocking up on potions/scrolls, spell expenditure rates, etc) or tactical (posting guards while a player engages in a time consuming task, having weapons drawn, scouting locations, etc) choices to make.  This is because, as a design feature, scene framing is already at a crisis point (go to the action) that requires immediate addressing of events AND failures are meant to increase stakes, so any precautions taken will have limited impacts.  Story Now games offset this by using player resources to possibly mitigate consequences (like Blades' use of the resist mechanic), but this is reactionary and not proactive action declaration -- its a choice after the fact, not behavior the player can engage with prior to failure.
> 
> Again, this is intentional -- a specific design goal, even -- that's meant to engage a specific type of play.  And that's peachy awesome and not a bad thing, but, as you've said a few times, analyzing where the trade-offs and impacts are is important and requires dispassionate viewing.  There's a reason Story Now games are not the mainstream of play, and that's not because they're better systems.  They're great systems (again, looking forward to Blades tomorrow, I spent the last few hours making my Roll20 game have everything at hand for character generation and rules references), and they deliver great fun, but they're not superior systems by definition -- they're only superior systems for players/GMs looking for and able to process that style of play.  Given how much [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] continue to miss critical differences in the player-facing playstyle making some of their arguments waaaay off base, you've done similar things in describing their playstyle.  Perhaps you should take a moment and let that sink in.





Ovinomancer said:


> Go back and read the parts of my pasts you snipped out, it's pretty obvious.
> 
> I never said they didn't matter, I said player facing ganes tend to minimize tactical agency.  BW bolts on an ugly set of combat mechanics to give the appearance of tactical choice, but it's mostly just a random die mechanic that approximates tactics.  For example, it abstracts tactical positioning to bands and uses an opposed roll to solve maneuvering.  Your only choices are to pick a band and win your roll to get positioning.  Fights with more than two combatants become challenging to solve the position puzzle as A beats C and so gets positioning but C beats B, and so gets positioning so long as it doesn't violate A.  Yes, you have choices, but their all tested by mechanics for outcomes.  That's random, not tactics.
> 
> 
> 
> Add for my points, if you'd stop snipping them, they'd be obvious.



Sometimes obviousness is in the eye of the beholder. I assume by "add" you means "as".

In any event, I've quoted the whole of your post about my BW game and bolded the salient bit. You said that it did not appear there were tactical choices to be made that would mitigate danger. I've contradicted that. Do you think that has any bearing on your claim?



Ovinomancer said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That particular melee was resolved using the Fight! subsystem.
> 
> Fight! is resolved in exchanges consisting of three volleys each. At the start of each exchange you have to *blind script 3 volleys*. The number of actions in each volley is a function of the Reflex score. The options that are available on each action are fairly standard for a fantasy RPG: strike, block (= parry in some systems), avoid (= dodge in a system like RQ), feint, counterstrike, tackle, push, lock (= grapple in some systems), etc.
> 
> At the top of each exchange you also have to* declare a positioning manoeuvre* (close, maintain or withdraw).
> 
> There are *rules for changing the script of unresolved volleys following the resolution of a volley*, but it requires forfeiture of actions.
> 
> All resolution is simultaneous, volley by volley (for positioning) and then action by action. (My PC, *wearing armour*, has only 3 actions. One thing I have to have regard to in scripting is that a 4 reflex opponent will have one volley with a second option following the first, against which I will have no corresponding action.)
> 
> I don't remember all the details of my scripting in that particular combat, but I do know that I used my positioning to protect my companion (an unarmoured mage); and then later on used positioning to try and reach my horse before the orcs did.
> 
> Plus there were the standard scripting choices of when to attack, etc.
> 
> In my Cortex+ Heroic game, *one of the PCs (an orcale) has an ability that allows for the spending of resources (plot points) to reduce the size of a doom pool die*. The player of that PC uses that ability to modulate risk (in particular, to try and stop the doom pool building up to contain 2d12, which the GM can spend to bring the scene to a peremptory close.
> 
> In BW, players can modulate risk in all sorts of ways - I've described some just above. In the first session of the campaign, *the player of the mage initially thought about reaching out to the Gynarch of Hardby, but then decided to reach out to a lesser personage - Jabal - because the consequences of any blowback should things go wrong were likely to be less.* That is player management of the stakes.
> 
> Because BW is a grity game, where equipment lists matter and gear can easily get lost or broken as a consequence of failure, where healing takes a long time ingame, and where periodic maintenance checks are necessary, logistics can also become important in a way that is not the case in Cortex+ Heroic or (my approach to) 4e.
> 
> In the original version of HeroWars, *extended contest resolution involves a literal stake-setting system in which participants stake more or fewer action points on an exchange* - with zero action points remaining meaning los of the contest. HeroQuest revised maintains a less mathematically and mechanically intricate version of this system.
> 
> Dogs in the Vineyard allows the player,* at every point of resolution, to choose to yield (so as to avoid the risk of fallout)* or *to escalate (so as to try and get more and better dice, at the risk of more extreme fallout)*.
> 
> Etc.
> 
> Again, this sounds like you're not that familiar with a cross-section of systems.
> 
> *Having weapons drawn absolutely matters in BW*. (In Fight! it's two actions to draw a sword.) In my Marvel Heroic game, in one session *War Machine began the session in his civvies (so as to earn a bonus plot point) and then later on had to make a successful check against the Doom Pool in order to have his armour fly to him so he could suit up*.
> 
> In my Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy game, when the PCs came to a giants' steading *the scout PC scouted it (initially establishing an Overview of the Steading Interior Asset by climbing up the pallisade, and then establishing a Giant Ox asset by spotting said ox in the giants' barn)*. This is tactical choice at the table, as it consumes actions (which might otherwise be spent on, say, fighting or talking) and - in this context - it fed into an approach based on social resolution (by trying to sell the giants' ox back to them, relying on their dimwittedness) rather than fighting.
> 
> The significance of these tactical choices is different - in the Cortex+ game (which is a viking game) the player is taking us in the more comedic direction of contests where Thor is trying to drink the ocean or wrestle Jormungandur, rather than the drama of the Ragnarok. And in BW, if you can't make your maintenance check then the game is probably not going to just end with your PC starving in the gutter - the GM might frame that scene ("You've no money, no food, your landlord has kicked you out, you're sitting in the gutter wondering what to do . . .") but then would follow up with something like ('" . . and then a coach pulls up, and Jabal's head pokes out - 'Jobe, I see that you've fallen on hard times'").
> 
> But they're there, in different forms dealing with different subject matter in different games, and they matter to how events unfold in the fiction.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It's amusing that you cut out the bits of my post where I specifically point out those mechanics that are after the fact resource expenditures to reduce consequences and then present these exact things as if it refutes my argument.  I'm specifically taking about action declaration to reduce or mitigate risk which is why I called out the post-hoc mechanics.
> 
> And, yes, I'm aware BW uses a more complicated combat mechanic, and one that is especially brutal and difficult to use.  This isn't common in player-facing games, though, so it's not really a good example of the nature of the genre, just of itself.  That said, the combat mechanics of BW are really designed to make fighting a bad choice -- both from the player perspective by being so overly complicated compared to the rest of the system, and from the character perspective in that even a simple combat has a reasonable chance of leaving you dead.  As such, it's brutality is more of a push to keep the game away from combat rather than a wealth of tactical choices available to the player.
Click to expand...


I've quoted this post in full. You said that you're aware that BW uses a more complicated combat mechanic, so maybe you _were_ aware that it allows tactical choices to manage danger? But had forgotten when you made the earlier post? I don't know - that's why, as I posted upthread, I don't understand what you're trying to get at in this respect.

You also say that _I present these exact things_ - ie_ after the fact resource expenditures to reduce consequences_. But not a single of the examples in the post you quoted - and I've bolded them for ease of reference  - is an example of _after the fact resource expenditure to reduce consequences_. This is why I posted, in reply, that "I don't really know what you mean by this."

Perhaps you'll explain?



Ovinomancer said:


> BW bolts on an ugly set of combat mechanics to give the appearance of tactical choice, but it's mostly just a random die mechanic that approximates tactics.  For example, it abstracts tactical positioning to bands and uses an opposed roll to solve maneuvering.  Your only choices are to pick a band and win your roll to get positioning.  Fights with more than two combatants become challenging to solve the position puzzle as A beats C and so gets positioning but C beats B, and so gets positioning so long as it doesn't violate A.  Yes, you have choices, but their all tested by mechanics for outcomes.  That's random, not tactics.



Have you played this system?[/sblock]


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Maxperson said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> the player gets to decide how best to further his goal. What he decides may or may not truly be the best way, but the player has made that value judgment, not you.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is an instance of a lack of finality in resolution, resulting from the fact that the GM is establishing unrevealed backstory elements behind the scenes.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> You're going to have to do some serious explaining on this one. I have absolutely no freaking idea how leaving both coming up of what to do and the choice to do it to the player, can possibly be the DM establishing unrevealed backstory elements behind the scenes.
Click to expand...


You said _what [the player] decides may or may not truly be the best way_. In other words, the player's action declarations following his/her decision as to how his/her PC will further his/her goal don't determine that matter.

And I'm 99% sure that you don't have in mind the possibiity that the player's chosen approach may turn out to be a mistake because eg an aura reading check fails; because I'm 99% sure you dont' run a system in which these elements of setting are established as consequences of checks rather than inputs into them.



Maxperson said:


> If that necklace is magic and the lord hires a wizard to walk around detecting magic to locate it, the PCs made that possible by not placing it in a lead box or hiding it somewhere else that it won't be found out.



This looks very similar. The resolution of the theft of the necklace is not established with finality. The GM is the one who is making decisions about whether the lord hires a wizard, where the wizard walks and detecs, etc. This is not being done as part of consequence narration, or as the setting of stakes in scene framing.

A contrast would be the resolution of this as a skill challenge in 4e: at a certain point, for instance, the GM might narrate - as part of the framing of a check during the course of resolution - "Word reaches you that a wizard is wasndering the stressts, apparently looking for an enchanted item." The player can then declare an action to indicate how s/he overcomes this obstacle (anything from a Streetwise check to stay ahead of the wziard, or some sort of magical action to conceal the magic of the necklace, as takes the player's fantasy and fits the fiction of his/her PC and whatever is already established about genre and setting). If the skill challenge eventually succeeds, that is finality: the PC's theft of the necklace has defeated the lord's attempt to recover it.

Of cousre if the player deliberately restakes it, that's a different matter. But walking around in it is probably not going to be an instance of that - as opposed to, say, trying to use it to pay off a debt to the self-same lord!


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Are you really saying the following is railroading?
> 
> GM: OK, so you've agreed to help the dwarves against the giants. Your're heading off, right?
> 
> Players: Yes, we're heading off as soon as Aster makes some potions of fire resistance for us.
> 
> GM: OK, mark down your potions and cross off your residuum. You trek through the Underdark, following the directions the dwarves gave you. Everyone make a DC 20 Endurance check - if you fail, you're down a healing surge by the time you arrive at your destination.
> 
> <players adjust equpiment lists, make checks, adjust healing surge totals if required>
> 
> GM: Just as the dwarves told you, after a hard trek through the tunnels you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern. It's lit a dull red by the glow of lava that bubbles up through the floor of the cave and flows away in criss-crossing channels. A black, basalt structure stands in the centre - the Hall of the Fire Giant King.​
> Where's the railroad?




There isn't, because the players indicated what they wanted to do and were able to do it.  Had they walked there more slowly, though, they might have made some allies or acquired some items in the Underdark to help them with the giants.   You did deprive them of those(and more) opportunities in the rush to get them to the giants.



> Let's consider a variation of the above:
> 
> . . .
> 
> GM: Just as the dwarves told you, after a hard trek through the tunnels you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern. It's lit a dull red by the glow of lava that bubbles up through the floor of the cave and flows away in criss-crossing channels. In the glow of the lava, you can see fire giant sentries on patrol. And it seems that a group of sentries has seen you!​
> Where's the railroad?




The railroad is in the last sentence.  You played their PCs for them and decided for them that they would be reckless, taking no precautions to avoid being seen.  You also decided that being seen was automatic.  The players should have been given the opportunity to decide their approach tactics, but instead you forced them down the rails.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> What intersection? There is no world, there is no intersection, there are a series of scenes. Maybe we may assume that there are locations which exist between these scenes and which may be traversed, but there's literally no specific thing that any player has been 'railroaded past'. They stated they wanted to go to the reliquary and they went there! How is that a railroad?




What else is a series of scenes with no intersections?  Being on a train!  

The how it's a railroad involves the how they got there.  See my response to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] above.  It's really easy to railroad the players with that playstyle.



> Railroading, by definition, isn't something that happens by the player's will. If they are in charge of the decisions which establish the content of the scenes they are in, by their choices, then they weren't railroaded, were they?




A buddy of mine who is beginning to DM and is just learning came to us last year and said that he wanted to run a short adventure.  It took 3 months(10ish sessions) to complete.  He let us know ahead of time that because he was new, we wouldn't be able to just do whatever we wanted and go wherever we wanted.  We agreed to that railroad to help him learn to DM.  Just because we were willing to be on that railroad, doesn't mean that the rails went away.  It just means that we weren't kidnapped and forced onto it.  We walked voluntarily.  Walking voluntarily is what the players in [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s game do.  It's okay to railroad if everyone agrees to it.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> How are the chances set? Not by the player, as best I can tell. You are deciding whether or not to say no. You are setting the chance. The player is just waiting to be told.



I don't recall you telling me that the player set the DC for the feather.  You were setting the chance.  The player was just waiting to be told.



> You, as GM, have to choose what the lie is about. You decide that the NPC is untrustworthy. Etc.




The DM is a player, too.  He gets to author things as a playing member of the game.



> It's not a distraction. It's the whole point.
> 
> When you or [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] tell the players that their PCs are at an intersection, or stumble on a raised flagstone, or whatever else is part of you "neutral" framing, all you are doing is choosing (as a GM) to make some details salient. When I tell the player that his PC is at a bazaar where a peddler has an angel feather for sale, I am also choosing (as a GM) to make some details salient. The difference is that you have chosen something that you think is interesting/engaging; whereas I have chosen something that (given the player's signals) I know the player will find engaging/interesting.




It is a distraction, since it doesn't accurately represent the games we are describing.



> You are choosing whether or not to mention a raised flagstone. Whether or not to mention an intersection. Whether or not to mention a bazaar. Both of us are choosing what to mention to the players.




That's not entirely true.  When I describe an area am I deciding to mention the flag stone as part of the description?  Yes.  I am not deciding to mention an intersection, though.  It's there and I have to let the players know about it regardless of what I wish, though I did author it.  I'm also not deciding to mention the bazaar.  The players forced that one on me when they decided to go to the bazaar to look around for something.  Unless the town is too small to have a bazaar(in which case the players won't look for one), there's going to be one somewhere in the city.  They are in effect authoring it by their request.  I have no choice in the matter. 

It's just that I'm choosing on the basis of the evinced dramatic needs of the PCs.



> "Stopping at the intersection" isn't a _rational_ world, any more than is one which mentions every flagstone on the floor of the tavern, and every splinter on its wooden stairs. It's just one where the GM is indulging some taste for that particular detail.




Intersections exist in any rational world.  I wouldn't dream of depriving my players of their choice to decide which way to go by forcing them down the path of my choice.  



> This is just the same point. You think not mentioning the flagstone is not railroading. Why not? You're depriving your players of the chance to study them, assay them, excavate them, fireball them, etc.




I've already told them that they are walking on a flagstone floor.  They know the flagstones exist, and can choose to study them, etc. as they wish.  Once I've told them that the flagstones exist, I don't need to continue to tell them every step of the way.  I DO need to let them know if things change, though, like if they hit an intersection, or if the flagstone floor smooths out into a passageway that is cave like.



> But obviously that's ridiculous. These aren't real worlds. They have no objective existence, waiting to be explored. They're fictions, which the players encounter because the GMs tell them to them. Telling the players stuff that _they have signalled_ will be interesting to them is not depriving choices anymore than telling them "neutral" stuff. It's just (in my experience) more exciting!




They aren't real worlds with objective existence, waiting to be explored.  They ARE rational(dare I say realistic) worlds with imaginary existence, waiting to be explored.


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## pemerton

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]: I've posted a number of actual play reports, and linked to more. What do you think was the pre-planned outcome in the scene with the feather? When the player made contact with Jabal? When the PCs disaremd and defeated Athog?

Or, in a different game, when the PCs decided to go to the Mausoleum of the Raven Queen?

Or, in a different game, when the PCs came to the house of the Snow Queen, and then - the next morning - decided to split into two groups, one going north and the other south with the frightened villagers?

You're so locked into a GM-driven conception of play that you seem to be having trouble actually recognising that it's possible to establish setting and outcomes in play, via the interaction of framing and action resolution.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> This is like saying that chess and snakes and ladders are no different in player agency, because each allows the player full control over the parts of the game that the rules allow.
> 
> Or, if you think that's too cheap a shot, then I'll make the same comment about bridge and five hundred. The upshot of the auction + kitty in 500, together with the bower rules (which significantly lengthen the trump suit), means that once the hand actually starts being played players have less agency than they do in bridge. This is why five hundred is a lighter game (in terms of mental overhead) to play than bridge (no trumps can be an obvious exception - at that point the resemblance to bridge becomes much greater).
> 
> If, in the context of a RPG, the player has no agency in respect of the shared fiction except to express what his/her player desires (and there are some posters on this board who take that view) then it is self evident that the player has less agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction than one who is playing in a standard Fate or Burning Wheel or HeroWars/Quest or Cortex+ Heroic or 4e game. (Just to pick some examples.)




Exactly. Because they are an "agent" of the game. Nobody can control their piece except them. Even in something like Sorry!, you are still in control over your own pieces, even though others can make moves that impact them. In something like Snakes and Ladders you really only have the choice to play or not to play. 

Or to go to the other extreme, 100% player agency could only be achieved by one player in any given game, since any time somebody else has "agency" in respect of the shared fiction, then are taking agency away from another.

Yes, you can define it this way (they are an agent of the story). But by allowing everybody to be an agent of the story without context or rules to determine how much control they have over the story leads to the conch-passing analogy that Eero talks about. The reality is, nobody has agency over the story in that approach since the next person to gain agency can undo everything the prior player did.

You are fond of quoting Eero's "Standard" Narrative Model. In that, he talks about the player's role of one of _advocacy_, not agency. He also argues against giving the players narrative control. As long as "you do not require player(s) to take part in determining ... moments of choice." He elaborates on this point several times throughout the essay.

That's why I'm saying player agency is different than narrative control, or to be more specific, control of the fiction beyond their character.

Eero's model is really no different than what most consider D&D to be: The GM is in control of the narrative, and the players are advocates for the characters. He appears to prefer to leave backstory under the control of the DM, although I think most would agree that the players have considerable freedom in backstory, with the GM having veto power, along with the ability to amend or modify it - including after play has commenced.

The narrative aspect of his model is that the GM frames the action toward the dramatic needs, provoke thematic moments, and introduce complications. In other words, by your definition it puts _more_ agency in the hands of the GM.

The only real restriction placed on the GM in this model is to keep track of backstory. The implication being that the "front" story maintains consistency with the backstory. But it's also clear in his essay that the backstory isn't necessarily fully known to the players, and argues (as I have) against it being entirely known. This brings us back to the OP as well - as world-building is a part or extension of backstory - provides context, and consistency (or at least the appearance of consistency). 

The model itself is not talking about agency, it's talking about the GM's ability to craft an interesting narrative, and is defining "interesting" by "going where the action is," providing moments that "carry weight as commentary on the game's premise," and complications. These all imply an active DM role, changing things on the fly, to what they (the GM) feel meets those goals. In reality, these three "requirements" are qualitative aspects, and in my mind, subjective. They make an assumption as to what the players are expecting to get out of the game. They make sense in his narrativist model, because he's talking about a narrativist style game. But that doesn't apply to all RPGs, and even if he were talking about player agency (which he's not), it wouldn't mean that alternate RPG models provide less agency.

I, personally, don't agree that those three things are the only (or even most important) things that make the game interesting. It _is_ noting that the more narrative control you give the players, the less able the GM is in creating a compelling narrative. And that as a result, the quality of the narrative (particularly from the player's perspective) suffers as a result. I find that interesting.

Some folks want a game that hands more narrative control to the players, and while narrative and backstory consistency are somewhat important in assessing the "quality" of the narrative, they may have different criteria, such as creativity, or dramatic impact, or what have you. But to imply or say that this gives more agency to the players is, in my opinion, misguided. It's _different_, but not necessarily more. It provides more freedom in narrative control, but perhaps less freedom in other areas. To actually compare agency, were it even possible, you'd have to compare the games as a whole, not individual parts. That would be pointless for many reasons, probably starting with the conscious and subconscious goals of the participants.

Personally, I think that it's important as a GM to address not only the narrative needs of the characters, but the players. It's much easier to have an impact on the player if you're addressing their needs too. Which is probably why _Apocalypse World_ never resonated for me. I don't care for their particular "world slang" nor the character types and motivations they've created in their game. I don't really feel any connection to it at all. Yes, the GM can provide a narrative need for the character.

I think one of the main reasons for that for me, is that I'm not a great acting-type role-player. I can't "act," especially in an improvised manner, so as soon as the game requires me to rely solely on the character's internal motivations for drama, I'm lost. I need something else to hang my dramatic hat on, such as the tension created by the unfolding of the narrative itself, the tension created in uncertain situations, where creativity is needed to "solve" the situation, whether it's a combat that is a bit too much for the characters to be comfortable, or a puzzle that requires player ingenuity and not just engaging the rules through DCs and dice. Dice themselves _can_ be an important part of building suspense, but only one part. A big part of the drama is the drama of the setting itself, meaning the impacts that the decisions of the characters have on the world around them, big and small. This is where world-building excites me, because it considers the complex interactions one life has on the world around them. It includes the drama of people, but without the requirement of being a decent actor. 

Don't get me wrong, we have some very good acting-style improvisers in the group, and it's great fun to be a part of that, even if I can't participate in the same way. As the DM, however, I can ensure that they have the opportunity to engage that aspect of their skill set and play style. And that's where I think I differ a bit from Eero's, or similar descriptions. I don't typically need to "go where the action is," or "provide moments...(of) weight,"  or introduce complications. I have no doubt that I do that from time to time. But a lot of the time, it's enough to just let the narrative "write itself." In most of my groups, I often provide very little input beyond a simple description of the location. They take things from there narratively, but not in a world-sense, just their actions and decisions. Much of it is between the players, and I "let the world" react to what they do. Other times I have a more active role and, occasionally, take over the narrative entirely, such as in the realm of things like powerful illusions or hallucinations, dream states or worlds, etc. The illusion being that they have control, when they really don't. It doesn't happen often, always involves magic, and the drama is not only in the events, but the reveal also has an enormous impact if the scenario was done well. I always have clues that something is not quite right, but they usually don't notice those until after the fact. Similar situations would be if characters are captured or imprisoned, whether it's a complex magical trap, or simple apprehension by the local watch after they've chosen to drink a bit too much and black out.

Is that taking away agency? I don't think so, although I know a lot that would argue that it is. It's extremely rare that it can't be avoided, and even in those cases where it can't, it's the result of other choices the PCs have made to get to that point. Is it a more narrativist approach? I think so, at least as defined by Eero in that I'm not handing over narrative control to the players, which is in line with what he recommends. I haven't run into a player personally that didn't like this shifting "agency" in my games, although, at least theoretically, I've met quite a number online that appear to hate the idea.

Which is why expanding "agency" to include "how much" control you have, to me anyway, becomes a futile effort, simply because RPGs are terribly complex. For example, _Apocalypse World_ has a quite restrictive character creation approach, while 4e has an expansive character creation approach. Which has more agency? Or is it just that the agency is different? Is AD&D different than OD&D or 4e? I think it's better to understand what aspects of an RPG you like, what are you trying to get out of it.

If you prefer more narrative control as a player, then _Burning Wheel_ or similar games may be more your style. Certainly the design of 4e is conducive for playing in this style as well. And there's really no reason why D&D can't be played in the same manner, although many D&D players probably don't want to share narrative responsibilities in that way.

Alternatively, to consider games that don't provide the same level of narrative control "choose your own adventure" or "just guessing what's in DMs notes" is disingenuous. Just because a certain game doesn't give players narrative control over the world doesn't mean they can't influence the narrative or world around them indirectly. A DM who has full control of the world narrative can be operating entirely from improvisation, not to mention they could be operating entirely within Eero's model.

If you go back to a lot of Gygax's and Arneson's descriptions of games, particularly early ones, the maps and their keys are starting points. They often changed things on the fly, and had empty rooms that might be filled in the moment. Once a room was explored, those maps and keys became tools to help maintain consistency in the backstory - the backstory now including what prior adventurer's did. The rest of the backstory could be improvised as needed, but once improvised became part of the world itself. For those that don't improvise well, not to mention those who just enjoy the exercise, world-building became an end in itself. It's fun. How strictly a DM sticks to that pre-authored material depends as much on their skill set as it does the needs of the game. A published adventure might include story (narrative) elements in the world-building process.

In a more sophisticated world-building approach, like the Forgotten Realms, story elements are in place, but are designed as background and hooks with undetermined consequences. The Realms relied more on sourcebooks than adventures (although there have been plenty), where the published stories (including novels) provide backstory for the setting, and rumors provide hooks for the DM to flesh out. Where I think they failed, is that they also published novels based on many of those rumors, which often had the effect of "ruining" the DM's own campaigns. Even if they avoided using those rumors altogether, though, altering the state of the setting always runs that risk. They seemed to have a decent handle on that, other than the 4e changes which seemed to spark a specific backlash. I'm still not entirely sure if it was the sheer amount of changes, or that they didn't like the changes they made. I usually incorporate even the changes I don't like into my campaign, because we don't always like what happens in the world. I might make some changes, and there have certainly been some I've outright ignored. But since I utilize the published lore as backstory, as I think it's intended, it's often irrelevant whether or not it actually happened. It might just be a bard's tale, or it might be fact. Usually it lies somewhere in between.

Do some D&D (and other RPGs) rely solely on the published or pre-authored content? Absolutely. Does it remove player agency? I say no. Because in the context of "how much" agency a player has in a game is dependent upon what that player defines as agency. If they are a type that is more focused on their character build, and the primary goal is to gain XP to get to the higher levels of the character, than narrative control isn't necessarily important. They may never have heard of narrative control, nor care to. They might have little interest in the actual story altogether. They might view things that affect their ability to gain XP, or effects that reduce level as impacting their agency.

So I go back to where I started - "player agency" is a useless term without the context of the game being played. Within that context it can have some benefit, but the reality is that most games rarely advocate impacting player agency anyway. Whatever agency the players have is hopefully consistent within the structure of the game. Comparing two different games requires more refined comparisons, centered on the goals of the player.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> You said _what [the player] decides may or may not truly be the best way_. In other words, the player's action declarations following his/her decision as to how his/her PC will further his/her goal don't determine that matter.
> 
> And I'm 99% sure that you don't have in mind the possibiity that the player's chosen approach may turn out to be a mistake because eg an aura reading check fails; because I'm 99% sure you dont' run a system in which these elements of setting are established as consequences of checks rather than inputs into them.




It may not be the best way.  If they go to the wizard and miss their check, he may not help them, or even be able to help them, and it would not be the best way.  If they go to the bazaar and it turns out that there is nothing there to help them, that's a lot of time on what turns out not to be the best way.  Just because the player thinks it will be the best way, doesn't mean that it will end up being the best.  It has nothing to do with pre-authorship or my desires.



> This looks very similar. The resolution of the theft of the necklace is not established with finality. The GM is the one who is making decisions about whether the lord hires a wizard, where the wizard walks and detecs, etc. This is not being done as part of consequence narration, or as the setting of stakes in scene framing.




Sure it is.  He stole it.  Period.  That's final.  What happens next is post final theft.  And yes, it is a consequence of the narration. The narration resulted in a stolen necklace.  The lord's response is a consequence of that narration.  



> A contrast would be the resolution of this as a skill challenge in 4e: at a certain point, for instance, the GM might narrate - as part of the framing of a check during the course of resolution - "Word reaches you that a wizard is wasndering the stressts, apparently looking for an enchanted item." The player can then declare an action to indicate how s/he overcomes this obstacle (anything from a Streetwise check to stay ahead of the wziard, or some sort of magical action to conceal the magic of the necklace, as takes the player's fantasy and fits the fiction of his/her PC and whatever is already established about genre and setting). If the skill challenge eventually succeeds, that is finality: the PC's theft of the necklace has defeated the lord's attempt to recover it.




All of which are possible in my game as well.  I'm not going to frame it as a skill challenge, but the players might learn about the wizard and they can come up with ways to avoid him.  



> Of cousre if the player deliberately restakes it, that's a different matter. But walking around in it is probably not going to be an instance of that - as opposed to, say, trying to use it to pay off a debt to the self-same lord!



While I've read of thieves in the real world being stupid enough to wear clothing they stole to the hearing about the theft, my players are not among that group.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]: I've posted a number of actual play reports, and linked to more. What do you think was the pre-planned outcome in the scene with the feather? When the player made contact with Jabal? When the PCs disaremd and defeated Athog?
> 
> Or, in a different game, when the PCs decided to go to the Mausoleum of the Raven Queen?
> 
> Or, in a different game, when the PCs came to the house of the Snow Queen, and then - the next morning - decided to split into two groups, one going north and the other south with the frightened villagers?
> 
> You're so locked into a GM-driven conception of play that you seem to be having trouble actually recognising that it's possible to establish setting and outcomes in play, via the interaction of framing and action resolution.




Or perhaps that there are more ways than one to get to the same results of play? Because I look at what both of you are posting, and thing that while the mechanics you use are different, the results can be the same.

Looking through both of your posts (and others), the reality is that in all cases, the GM has an influence on the fiction. The methods might be different, but by inclusion/omission alone, the GM will direct the fiction in some fashion. How much, or perhaps how directly, the players have an impact on the fiction might vary.

In an example like the flagstones, I think that in many games (including [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s, but I could be wrong), there are times where the players will ask to do something ("I want to examine the flagstones in this area, something seems off to me") that the GM has to react to. In some games, they very well could just default to nothing out of the ordinary, since nothing has been pre-authored. And for many (most?) casual players, by which I mean they use the rules as written to simply run a published adventure "as is"), this very well may be the case. 

But I think that when presented with a question like this, many GMs will respond with improvisation. As I considered threads like this, it occurred to me that I as a DM would often default to "no" simply because I hadn't considered whether there would be anything there. However, when thinking about it afterwards, I'd often think that I should have:

1 - At least developed the scene. That is, describe the search and what they found (or didn't), rather than just say, "no, or you found nothing"
2 - Consider the setting, the NPCs, etc. I can't pre-author everything (and don't). So would _somebody_ have hidden something here?
3 - My world-building helps determine whether there _should_ be something there. Or more likely, whether there shouldn't be.

I think there are few GMs or players that would object to the GM placing something that wasn't pre-authored in this scenario. Where I think you and I would differ is that, assuming something is found, you would tie it into the current narrative. I, on the other hand, would consider that possibility, mentally (even subconsciously) assign a probability, and then decide if it is related to the current narrative, or something unrelated. In which case it might head off on an entirely new and different direction, should the players/characters choose. Or it might lead nowhere, leaving no clues (or undetected clues) as to its origin, whatever "it" might be.

The fact is, I think in many games, the player do contribute to the fiction in this and similar manners. Again, if you're simply running a published adventure, and that's what the players are enjoying, there's little reason for more. That's not to say that they can't do more, but it's probably not necessary.

However, for the types of campaigns we're talking about, I think there's generally an element of the player's impacting the fiction during the course of play. And each group has a sort of middle ground where they are comfortable allowing the players to have more influence. A common area is something [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] has alluded to. The players are free to make assumptions about the world around them:

"We're in a city, I want to go to the bazaar" - the play moves toward the bazaar.
"I'd like to find my friend, Bob" The PCs go to places they might find Bob.
"I'd like to search the library for secret hiding places, compartments or doors"

These are exploration-type things. But it can include story elements too:

"I'd like to spend some time in the tavern to get a lay for the political state of affairs" - Where the DM might not have considered the politics of this town prior to the request
"I think we can get more out of this thug if we can locate his family or friends, let's let him get away and try to find his local haunts" Where the DM might not have considered the local relationships of the thug, nor his usual movements.

Or my recent favorite:
"My chronic drinker is temporarily magically immune to the effects of alcohol, I wonder if we can find anybody who deals drugs in the caravan?" - Nope, I didn't see this coming at all (and the session where this particular character developed the problem was months ago...)

What differs, I think, is how explicitly the players have control over the fiction. In my case it's a mix. They have full control over their character's decisions and actions, and by extension, the narrative itself. They have further influence because I try to work things that they think of or say during the course of play back into the narrative. What we don't like as a group, are scenarios that seem too contrived. That each scene or event has a direct impact on their current narrative direction.

This is most evident in terms of style of play, where somebody like [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], or I prefer to let the characters explore the world more continuously. The GM doesn't fade from one scene to the next, nor put the PCs in a perilous position, without the players consent.

As an example, the drug scenario occurred once the players decided which characters they were using that night (as they started in their home town), and the characters initially determined that they would be able to gather some information regarding their planned trip to Llorkh in the caravan that arrived from there a day or so earlier. One of them also had a plates from some brigandine armor where the leather parts had decayed, and wanted to see if he could either do something with them, or sell them.

I know that they can definitely gather some information, since the caravan just came from Llorkh. I also "know" that there would be shady individuals, and not-shady individuals, that there would be different types of information available depending on who they asked, and how they went about it. I didn't have any specific information in mind, this is simply because of what I (and they) know about the current state of the world around them. After establishing a little better, through questions, what sort of information they were looking for, I could have framed the scene around a merchant that had some information of note. I could tie this to skill checks that would set the level of trust between them, and give me a good idea of the amount and quality of the information. The information itself would have to be improvised within the context of what I know of the current backstory.

I, on the other hand, don't want to assume that's the direction they would go. While it would make life easier for me, and keep them more "on track," with their stated goals, it was my decision to soft frame it - "so you're walking up to the caravan grounds, where do you go, who do you talk to or search out, really, how are you going about getting this information?" My expectation is that they would decide what type of person - merchant, porter, guard, pilgrim, etc. that might be a good starting point for the information. Instead it was a wistful musing from a sorcerer who had found himself sober for more than a week longer than he wanted to be wondering if he could find another way to dull his senses.

Had I framed it solely for the "needs of the narrative", this would never have happened. By too tightly framing the scene, it eliminates other options. On the other hand, you can't describe everything. The real art of GMing is finding the right balance between tight framing and exploration, of which choices to present, and which ones not to.

The direction the fiction took was probably 80% them, and 20% me. They lacked funds for such an endeavor, since such contraband was rare in such a small town. That necessitated an alternate means of acquiring the goods, in which one option turned out to be taking care of something for the merchant. They debated trying to steal it, but decided that doing some work wasn't an unreasonable request. They either didn't consider that work for a drug dealer might be less than legal, and potentially dangerous, or if they did, they didn't care. When performing the job, I had assumed (or would have allowed) for them to be at least armed, if not in their armor. But when things went south, they made the decision that there wouldn't have been any compelling reason to them to head home first and get their armor and weapons. They had gone to wander around the caravan grounds looking for information, and agreed to transport some goods to their destination. When presented with some orders (with coercion) from the recipient of the contraband, and after they received payment, two of them agreed to the further work, while the other agreed to return the payment to the dealer. Which led to one sorcerer to brewing some tea of questionable legality by himself, while the other two wandered unarmed into the Underdark.

None of this was really pre-authored on my part. The job that he wanted done was a criminal racket I had thought of years ago but never used. It seemed like a good fit here. Beyond that, it was driven, as usual, almost entirely by the players, with my job to adjudicate whether it was possible.

As a D&D DM, this is really what I think has been promoted all along, starting with the AD&D DMG for me: When the players declare what they are doing or want to do, the DM sets a probability, and adjudicates accordingly. If it's a significant chance of success or failure, I usually just go with what's appropriate. If the characters have skills or other relevant modifiers to the circumstance, I take that into account. If the probability is somewhere in the middle, then I'll roll.

Again, the world-building aspect, or backstory, helps me adjudicate these scenarios. For example, in an isolated town of 300 or so, what's the likelihood of finding drugs? Slim for anything significant, but probably decent for some local herb with minor hallucinogenic properties, real or perceived. This was a specific question of one of the players, and they went to collect what they could on the way, since one of the characters was a ranger-type who knows the area well. The likelihood of finding them in a caravan coming from a town of questionable lawfulness, that is willing to trade in things that would be illegal elsewhere, yes, something more substantial may be present. It took a considerable amount of investigation to find somebody that could help, and then a lot of persuasion to be able to make some sort of deal.

Again, I don't think this has anything to do with agency. It's about who has control of the narrative, when, and by how much. So the players can control the narrative in my campaign any time they want, simply by making a decision and acting. Based on the setting as they understand it (and again, this is where world-building comes in, even if it's as simple as describing the setting as similar to 900 AD vikings, or whatever), they can make educated decisions about what things are more likely to be successful. 

The ironic thing, seems to be that the more you go toward a Burning Wheel approach, it seems like the players have more impact on the fiction, having a freer hand in their development of it, they also seem to have _less_ impact on the direction of the narrative itself, based on limitations imposed by the GM's framing. 

Don't get me wrong, it's not bad. It's just a different priority. The players are giving up freedom (you might want to call it agency) in determining how they get to someplace, exploration, and certainly many opportunities for other stories, for the benefit of a more tightly "composed" narrative. The fat is trimmed, but so are options.

And that goes back to not talking about "player agency" so much, and talking about what sort of approach the players like in their narrative. Do they like a comic book (or soap opera) approach where the scenes are tightly framed, and jump from important scene to important scene, or a more exploratory approach, a wide-angle view if you'd like, a la Jordan or Tolkien where the journey, and how they get there is as important as the fact that they get there?


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> What intersection? There is no world, there is no intersection, there are a series of scenes. Maybe we may assume that there are locations which exist between these scenes and which may be traversed, but there's literally no specific thing that any player has been 'railroaded past'. They stated they wanted to go to the reliquary and they went there! How is that a railroad?
> 
> Railroading, by definition, isn't something that happens by the player's will. If they are in charge of the decisions which establish the content of the scenes they are in, by their choices, then they weren't railroaded, were they?



I still say they were, though it's possible that if the players are that dead-set on ignoring everything around their PCs they may have railroaded themselves.

In reality, if I state to myself that I want to go downtown I can quite easily get there be it by car or foot or whatever means...but I can't ignore or skip over the numerous traffic lights en route no matter how much I'd like to. 

Now if I ride a bus I *can* ignore those things...but the tradeoff for this is that I've lost some control over where I go and when I get there.

Were this in a modern-day-set game world and I was entering a town I'd never been in before, on my-as-player/PC statement that I want to go downtown I'd like some mention to be made of the crossing roads and traffic lights and scenery etc. rather than the DM just saying "OK, you're downtown".  Or put another way, I'd rather walk or drive than take the bus.



> What you are positing is that only a procedure in which every moment of the character's lives from game start to game end is played through at some arbitrary level of detail which you feel is sufficient to represent 'freedom of choice'. ALL we are arguing about is what that level of detail is, in essence. I'm perfectly happy to have the PCs skip a week and end up in another town, you're not. This has NOTHING to do with 'railroading' or 'agency' at all, its about process of play!



It's not quite as simple as that, I'm afraid.

There's a spectrum of detail ranging from playing out every second of a PC's day to ignoring absolutely everything that happens between the most major of events.  Each end of this spectrum is ridiculous, and we all fall in the middle somewhere.  What I'm saying is that as you move along the spectrum from more detail toward less, at some point you're going to cross a line after which you *are* impacting player agency through denial of choice.

And while we each probably see that line as being in a different place we can't deny it exists.

Lanefan


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> All the complications, and the increasing of pressure on the players, is done by reference to PC dramatic needs. This is what player-driven RPGing looks like: the GM frames scenes, and "[e]ach scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character."



Other than the reference to 'PC dramatic needs' this could apply to a typical DM-driven game as well.

Something these guys seem to be (intentionally?) ignoring is that beyond the dramatic needs of any individual PC there's also the dramatic needs of the game/campaign as a whole.  The sense seems to be that the PCs are bigger than the game...that the whole world revolves around them...where I prefer both as player and DM to see the PCs as small fish in a big ocean full of lots of bigger fish that are nearly all very hungry.  I also see PCs as being more temporary than their party, and it's the party's story I'm after.



> Yes. This is why they have mechanics like Beliefs or Milestones; or why, in my 4e game, I asked the players at the start of the game to give their PCs a loyalty, and a reason to be ready to fight goblins.



Interesting.

The goal of most of our crew most of the time is just to have some fun at the table.  Occasionally one of us will play a truly goal-oriented character...until the rest of the party gets fed up with it and either runs it out or just stops listening to it...but it's not that common.  Sometimes there's a temporary goal, either achieved quickly or abandoned as unattainable, but rarely if ever is there anything campaign-long.

I've had highly goal-oriented players in my game in the past, and what I found in general was that they also took the whole thing far too seriously for my tastes.

That said, the party as a whole can and does have goals both short and long term.



> But you don't need to try and divert. What does that add?



In-game: depth, intrigue, choices, options, alternatives, sometimes confusion.  At-table: choices, options, alternatives, campaign length, sometimes frustration.  And in this case I see both in-character confusion and at-table frustration to be positives, in moderation.



> I'm sure I've posted multiple times upthread that this sort of RPGing depends on finality in resolution. There are no retries.



Not on the feather - I've already blown that one.  But the opal at the jewel merchant?  The ceremonial sword at the merchant of fine things?  The book of prophesy at the bookseller's?

Yeah, I can keep thinking these up all day. 



> Maybe not so well. So maybe the GM starts exercising more agency. But it's hard for me to see that a non goal-oriented, "gits and shiggles" player is at the same time one who is exercising lots of agency over the content of the shared fiction.



Of course...and I think that more or less encompasses most players out there.  Add to that the players who simply don't see it as thier place to influence setting details related to their PCs except as rules allow (cf 1e stronghold-building) and that puts goal-oriented fiction-bending players in the severe minority, I think.


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## Maxperson

Ilbranteloth said:


> Or perhaps that there are more ways than one to get to the same results of play? Because I look at what both of you are posting, and thing that while the mechanics you use are different, the results can be the same.
> 
> Looking through both of your posts (and others), the reality is that in all cases, the GM has an influence on the fiction. The methods might be different, but by inclusion/omission alone, the GM will direct the fiction in some fashion. How much, or perhaps how directly, the players have an impact on the fiction might vary.
> 
> In an example like the flagstones, I think that in many games (including @Maxperson's, but I could be wrong), there are times where the players will ask to do something ("I want to examine the flagstones in this area, something seems off to me") that the GM has to react to. In some games, they very well could just default to nothing out of the ordinary, since nothing has been pre-authored. And for many (most?) casual players, by which I mean they use the rules as written to simply run a published adventure "as is"), this very well may be the case.
> 
> **Snip**




Amazing post.  Thank you for taking the time to write that.


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## darkbard

Lanefan said:


> The goal of most of our crew most of the time is just to have some fun at the table.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I've had highly goal-oriented players in my game in the past, and what I found in general was that they also took the whole thing far too seriously for my tastes.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Add to that the players who simply don't see it as thier place to influence setting details related to their PCs except as rules allow




I have a very hard time understanding how, on the one hand, you can make comments like these and then, on the other hand, extol the virtues of GM--driven, preauthored backstory play for its "depth," "choices," verisimilitude, and agency.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Fair point, but I still say it's incumbent on the DM to at least mention that those intersections exist and thus give the players/PCs a choice on whether to do anything differently given this new information. (e.g. maybe one of these intersections provides a safer path to where we're going...we'll never know if we don't explore...)
> But passes the definition of railroad if the definition includes undue reduction or elimination of player/PC choices or options, which IMO it does.




But you still aren't grasping the fundamental point. There are no 'intersections'. What makes you insist that there must be these fascinating side alleys to the story that are so compelling that not inventing them all the time is taking away people's choice to..... follow the story line they helped invent and continue to show interest in!? 

I mean, how many 'intersections' per scene is the GM obliged to present before the game transitions to 'not a railroad' by your theory? Why must there be some special number of details that must exist in the world which are unrelated to anything the players have asked about? It just seems like a completely arbitrary standard that you have developed, which could apply to ANY game using ANY techniques, and then you've decided by some process which I admit I find impenetrable, to assign it as a principle attribute of one style of play. 

Honestly, I'm mystified. I mean, in my games there's obviously some sort of understood 'backdrop' that usually provides color and mood. So maybe if you go to the slum you see people are poor and living in shacks and suffering, but if you're there to make a deal with Vim the Weasel, notorious tiefling fence, that stuff is really not specifically relevant. It was invented by the GM to paint a scene. Now, its established as fact, and maybe later the player could use that information. If one of the PCs decides to talk to the beggars on the corner, then so be it, but I'm not going to constantly describe every alley and every beggar and every shack every time the PCs happen to cross through that part of town going from hither to yon. I'm not depriving anyone of anything. I'm just getting on with the game. Its, IMHO, ridiculous to imagine it as a total stream-of-consciousness play where no detail is ever left out. 

I mean, the logical place for the bad guys to jump you is the crapper, but do we constantly describe and discuss and deal with all the bodily function activity of the PCs? No, and by convention it almost never plays a part in anything, its just not that interesting or heroic. Frankly, the world rarely has the level of detail which provides the location of all the privvies.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Ilbranteloth said:


> But they still have 100% player agency in both scenarios. What that agency allows them to do is different, and that's my point. The "issues they engage within the game" is dependent upon the rules of the game.



Yes, which is my point, qualitatively different things *are different things.* When someone says that there's 'just as much agency' in one game as the other, they're trying to argue that 2 different things should be called the same thing. That isn't useful analysis, in fact its obfuscatory.

And nobody is arguing that all games are the same or need be the same. 



> In your spherical cow example, the player _can_ say "I try to find the secret passage which leads to the land of the Yuan Ti, my character is obsessed with finding them." That doesn't mean he'll find it, though.
> 
> Of course, if we explore that a bit farther, the answer might be no because:
> 
> 1. There isn't one (as pre-determined by the DM);



The GM-centered game answer, player has no agency over the fiction here.


> 2. There isn't one (as determined by a die roll); or



Which is only really compatible with some sort of player fiction agency, since presumably there's a possible positive result where such a thing does exist.


> 3. There isn't one (as determined by the DM on the spot)



Why is this different in any real material sense than #1?


> 4. There isn't one (as determined by the player deciding that there shouldn't be one there).



I would expect that the possibility wouldn't even have come up then, in which case we can assume that in the player centered type of Story Now game this implies the player is already suitably engaged, or wants something else. In either case the GM wouldn't introduce such a secret door here, and shouldn't.



> Those are all different mechanical rule approaches but the result is the same.



I see fundamentally 2 approaches here. 

1) The GM is in absolute control over what elements can be added to the fiction, a secret door (or anything else) only exists when he says it does.

2) The player is able to suggest or add elements to the fiction, or change the fictional positioning, in ways that are beyond or aside from what the character could do. This is usually a result of spending some resource and/or making some kind of check, but the exact details depend on the system in question.



> Player agency itself isn't any different for any of them. They still have full control over the parts of the game that the rules allow. However, they allow different levels of control of the fiction outside of their characters.



Yes, it is, as I've just explained above



> #1 doesn't impact player agency, because in that system of rules, the player doesn't have the ability to influence the placement of a secret door. The DM could impact player agency by lying, even though he had placed a secret door there.



You aren't even having a discussion at the same level then. We're not talking about a specific set of rules. This isn't a discussion about player agency in B/X Molday (to pick a 'classic' ruleset). This point #1 you have brought up is only meaningful in relation to other possible ways to play, if you only compare a play technique to itself and then declare that it doesn't do anything different than its own self, this is what I would call a 'tautology' and kind of a waste of column inches!



> #2 doesn't impact player agency, but it does allow for the placement of such a secret door with a successful die roll. Note that the DM could affect the player's agency through modifiers.



Of course it impacts player agency, WRT #1 massively. The player now has an entire capability to express influence over the content of the fiction! To make this statement as you do seems literally nonsensical to me! Its like saying "here we have this orange, but its just an apple!" in direct contravention of what is readily apparent right on the face of the thing!



> #3 doesn't inherently impact player agency, since the rules allow the DM to decide whether a secret door is present or not. But there is certainly room for abuse, depending on how the rules.



Again, this is just #1, and the same comment applies. The 'room for abuse' comment is not really relevant to this particular discussion (though it might bear discussion in the larger context of the whole thread).



> #4 is the only option that puts the player fully in control of the decision, by the rules. The DM might be able to impact player agency by overruling it, but if the rules give the player this capability, that's probably not an easy option for the DM.



Again, this isn't coherent or meaningful. Why would the player be checking for a secret door he has no interest in finding? What relationship to player agency would finding things he's not interested in have? There's nothing to this point at all.



> Of course, many might indicate that it is within the rights of the DM to overrule any of these, and it was explicitly stated in the AD&D DMG, but most would agree that this is wrong and takes away the player's agency.




Well, now I'm not understanding what you're saying. You SEEM to have claimed that there's no issue of player agency at all with #1 and #2 and that somehow they are the same, but they are in fact the 2 possibilities of a binary choice, the GM determines all fiction, or the GM doesn't determine all fiction. Here you seem to be speaking as if you fully understand that, yet you dismissed it a moment ago! If the player's ability to add to the fiction does not represent a field of player agency which does not exist if the GM disallows it, then how can the GM possibly take away player agency?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ilbranteloth said:


> But even in a system with this definition of "player agency" they don't always find the secret passage. Even if the player is the one declaring the fiction at that point in time, the dice can indicate failure, although most of them espouse the type of "fail forward" of success with complications. But if the circumstances and dice align, then the result could very well be one of failure, and in other discussions, proponents of these systems have indicated that actual failure is possible.
> 
> Regardless, my point isn't whether the passage is found or not. It's how the game determines if the passage is found (or even there).
> 
> The GM vs Player driven game is another confusing mess. To some folks, it's a game where the DM doesn't add anything during the course of play. They use a published adventure or the DM preps it ahead of time (and can even show his notes if there's a dispute), and any modifications the DM makes in the course of the game is taking away their player agency. But the players don't add to the fiction of the world, just take actions as their characters. That's not the type of GM driven game you're referring to, though.
> 
> What you're referring to is more a question of how much input the players have into the fiction of the world. In many Story Now games they have a fair amount of it, although Eero's essay advised against them having control of the fiction during the course of play. In D&D I think that there's always an aspect of players adding to the fiction outside of their characters, although it's usually more indirectly. Through backstory and if the DM works their ideas into the game. That's what I do, although they also have more direct input at times as well. For example, during the course of play, when we are in town (their home town) then I ask for their input as to what they know. For example, when meeting an NPC from town, they fill in what they know about that NPC, what their relationship is, etc. In general, regarding lore about the region, etc. we handle things similarly.
> 
> Really, I see it more as a continuum, of how much input into the fiction outside of the characters the players have, and how much input/veto the DM has with regards to that input. Most of my players don't want any input into the fiction beyond their characters and their decisions and actions. They are looking to me to fill in what's going on in the world around them. I tend to have some notes for ideas, but most things aren't finalized until they enter play, and may be the opposite, or even completely different from what I have. Of course, a significant portion isn't prepped at all, since I really don't know what the players are going to do. A lot of the plot hooks are based directly on what the players have said along the way.l
> 
> So in a "GM driven game" I don't think that the existence of the passage is always a foregone conclusion, although it could be. In some games it may always be. Instead, I see it more as a matter of responsibility. Who is responsible for determining if the passage exists or not? In D&D it's usually the DM, sometimes with the use of dice. In a Story Now approach, the dice can be an influence, and the responsibility lies with whoever's move it is, with potential complications introduced by the GM.




I agree with you, there's a spectrum. There are also various approaches that are more or less direct.

For example: In DW (I assume PbtA in general) there are moves like 'Spout Lore' and 'Discern Realities' which a player can take. These moves oblige the GM to describe some new element of fiction, and put some thematic focus on what it is by virtue of the circumstances under which the player makes the move (IE he might pick up a book and 'Spout Lore' about it, if he rolls 7+ the GM is going to have to make up some lore about that book). Usually the character will have a specific goal in mind in using these moves. Its POSSIBLE for the GM to kind of ignore that, but its not really how it is supposed to work. At the very least successful uses of these moves are supposed to give the player USEFUL information.

Thus in DW the players don't really have an explicit mechanism to add new fiction THEMSELVES, but they can 'commission' it at practically any time. It may also be possible for a player to introduce something on a success in other types of moves, but generally DW reserves this to the GM. I think there are a few other moves where the player gets some leeway here, ones that let him describe something for instance.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> How are the chances set? Not by the player, as best I can tell. You are deciding whether or not to say no. You are setting the chance. The player is just waiting to be told.



I think what he's trying to say is that he's rolling to decide if something the PLAYER was interested in exists. What if he handed the %dice to the player and said 'roll, on a 62 or higher there is a secret door', I think that would be representative of player agency. I don't think the GM tossing the dice takes that way. So here he probably IS describing something we would consider player input into the fiction (and agency over it in some measure).



> When you or @_*Lanefan*_ tell the players that their PCs are at an intersection, or stumble on a raised flagstone, or whatever else is part of you "neutral" framing, all you are doing is choosing (as a GM) to make some details salient. When I tell the player that his PC is at a bazaar where a peddler has an angel feather for sale, I am also choosing (as a GM) to make some details salient. The difference is that you have chosen something that you think is interesting/engaging; whereas I have chosen something that (given the player's signals) I know the player will find engaging/interesting.
> 
> You are choosing whether or not to mention a raised flagstone. Whether or not to mention an intersection. Whether or not to mention a bazaar. Both of us are choosing what to mention to the players.
> 
> It's just that I'm choosing on the basis of the evinced dramatic needs of the PCs.
> 
> "Stopping at the intersection" isn't a _rational_ world, any more than is one which mentions every flagstone on the floor of the tavern, and every splinter on its wooden stairs. It's just one where the GM is indulging some taste for that particular detail.
> 
> I can tell you that if my players want intersections, or flagstone, they're very capable of letting me know!
> 
> This is just the same point. You think not mentioning the flagstone is not railroading. Why not? You're depriving your players of the chance to study them, assay them, excavate them, fireball them, etc.
> 
> But obviously that's ridiculous. These aren't real worlds. They have no objective existence, waiting to be explored. They're fictions, which the players encounter because the GMs tell them to them. Telling the players stuff that _they have signalled_ will be interesting to them is not depriving choices anymore than telling them "neutral" stuff. It's just (in my experience) more exciting!




There is a somewhat tangential question here, which actually takes us to an important point about your original question. IF as a GM I fully detail EVERYTHING before play, that is every salient detail of everything which I will ever describe, at least to first order, AND I do so without any respect for any consideration of player interest, proclivities, what character they happen to play, etc. then I'm, in a sense, making a pre-determination of what level of detail the game will focus on and be played at.

This, IMHO, is actually a reason why content is pre-authored, and some GMs favor creating a 'sandbox'. That is they're basically saying "I don't want to have to decide when something is or isn't interesting to you, I'm going to just make a list of ALL the things that are interesting to me, and you can assume anything I describe unprompted when you examine a situation, etc. is 'my stuff'. If you want to talk about 'your stuff' (whatever that is) then go dig around, we'll invent some thing you uncover that will be perhaps more 'up your alley' (because you want to explore dungeons and you pried open doors leading underground or something). 

I'm not saying that makes a game 'player driven' in either of our definitions, but it has some power to explain what GMs are after when they generate this kind of content.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Not on the feather - I've already blown that one.  But the opal at the jewel merchant?  The ceremonial sword at the merchant of fine things?  The book of prophesy at the bookseller's?
> 
> Yeah, I can keep thinking these up all day.




Even you understand that this is silly, with the smiley at the end of it, lol. Obviously the ADVENTURE goes on. Equally obviously there are narrative consequences to things. Not only was the feather not useful, but the character was run out of town over it (he managed to avoid that, but only at the cost of other consequences). If he goes and looks for an 'opal', well maybe he finds one. Maybe the owner wants 20x what it is worth now because the PC made so many enemies! Maybe he can steal it, etc. OK so what? The game IS going to go on. Surely SOMETHING has to happen next! 

If the GM cannot frame scenes that move the fiction on and give it some sort of trajectory, then I'd say that is just bad GMing, its not reflective of the technique.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yes, which is my point, qualitatively different things *are different things.* When someone says that there's 'just as much agency' in one game as the other, they're trying to argue that 2 different things should be called the same thing. That isn't useful analysis, in fact its obfuscatory.
> 
> And nobody is arguing that all games are the same or need be the same.
> 
> 
> The GM-centered game answer, player has no agency over the fiction here.
> 
> Which is only really compatible with some sort of player fiction agency, since presumably there's a possible positive result where such a thing does exist.
> 
> Why is this different in any real material sense than #1?
> 
> I would expect that the possibility wouldn't even have come up then, in which case we can assume that in the player centered type of Story Now game this implies the player is already suitably engaged, or wants something else. In either case the GM wouldn't introduce such a secret door here, and shouldn't.
> 
> 
> I see fundamentally 2 approaches here.
> 
> 1) The GM is in absolute control over what elements can be added to the fiction, a secret door (or anything else) only exists when he says it does.
> 
> 2) The player is able to suggest or add elements to the fiction, or change the fictional positioning, in ways that are beyond or aside from what the character could do. This is usually a result of spending some resource and/or making some kind of check, but the exact details depend on the system in question.
> 
> 
> Yes, it is, as I've just explained above
> 
> 
> You aren't even having a discussion at the same level then. We're not talking about a specific set of rules. This isn't a discussion about player agency in B/X Molday (to pick a 'classic' ruleset). This point #1 you have brought up is only meaningful in relation to other possible ways to play, if you only compare a play technique to itself and then declare that it doesn't do anything different than its own self, this is what I would call a 'tautology' and kind of a waste of column inches!
> 
> 
> Of course it impacts player agency, WRT #1 massively. The player now has an entire capability to express influence over the content of the fiction! To make this statement as you do seems literally nonsensical to me! Its like saying "here we have this orange, but its just an apple!" in direct contravention of what is readily apparent right on the face of the thing!
> 
> 
> Again, this is just #1, and the same comment applies. The 'room for abuse' comment is not really relevant to this particular discussion (though it might bear discussion in the larger context of the whole thread).
> 
> 
> Again, this isn't coherent or meaningful. Why would the player be checking for a secret door he has no interest in finding? What relationship to player agency would finding things he's not interested in have? There's nothing to this point at all.
> 
> 
> 
> Well, now I'm not understanding what you're saying. You SEEM to have claimed that there's no issue of player agency at all with #1 and #2 and that somehow they are the same, but they are in fact the 2 possibilities of a binary choice, the GM determines all fiction, or the GM doesn't determine all fiction. Here you seem to be speaking as if you fully understand that, yet you dismissed it a moment ago! If the player's ability to add to the fiction does not represent a field of player agency which does not exist if the GM disallows it, then how can the GM possibly take away player agency?




Because you and I disagree with the premise that option #1 means the DM determines all the fiction.

That is not the case. The player decides whether they want to search or not. That is a contribution to the fiction. That there isn’t anything to find is irrelevant, they still have complete control over their actions. They search, they don’t find anything, they learned something, and fiction happened.

The player doesn’t have an impact on the result of their search. They can’t determine whether a secret door is there or not, just that they would search for one. 

This fits Eero’s model precisely: the player advocates for the character. The GM is responsible for the backstory and the fiction aside from the player’s ability to take action as the character. 

The rest of my post is dependent upon that understanding.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ilbranteloth said:


> Because you and I disagree with the premise that option #1 means the DM determines all the fiction.



The GM determines everything about the world, which means they have 100% of the input into the scenario that the player finds his character in. This is what we mean, plainly and simply and we have said it again and again. The GM is determining what can be found, he's in charge. 



> That is not the case. The player decides whether they want to search or not. That is a contribution to the fiction. That there isn’t anything to find is irrelevant, they still have complete control over their actions. They search, they don’t find anything, they learned something, and fiction happened.



And they have NO CHANCE that what they were interested in finding will appear in the fiction, unless it behooves the GM to put it there. Total GM agency over the fiction! Pure and simple. 



> The player doesn’t have an impact on the result of their search. They can’t determine whether a secret door is there or not, just that they would search for one.
> 
> This fits Eero’s model precisely: the player advocates for the character. The GM is responsible for the backstory and the fiction aside from the player’s ability to take action as the character.
> 
> The rest of my post is dependent upon that understanding.




No, the rest of your post is exactly as I've described it. Even if we accept that your definition exists, your reasoning isn't making sense. I've shown you how there is a huge difference between the two scenarios, and just because you CAN redefine things such that you use the same word to describe two very different things doesn't make their distinction go away.

I can describe a tree and car factory as 'plants', but that has no bearing on any comparison between them. It doesn't make them more similar (except that they share a name).


----------



## Ilbranteloth

AbdulAlhazred said:


> The GM determines everything about the world, which means they have 100% of the input into the scenario that the player finds his character in. This is what we mean, plainly and simply and we have said it again and again. The GM is determining what can be found, he's in charge.
> 
> 
> And they have NO CHANCE that what they were interested in finding will appear in the fiction, unless it behooves the GM to put it there. Total GM agency over the fiction! Pure and simple.
> 
> 
> 
> No, the rest of your post is exactly as I've described it. Even if we accept that your definition exists, your reasoning isn't making sense. I've shown you how there is a huge difference between the two scenarios, and just because you CAN redefine things such that you use the same word to describe two very different things doesn't make their distinction go away.
> 
> I can describe a tree and car factory as 'plants', but that has no bearing on any comparison between them. It doesn't make them more similar (except that they share a name).




So what you’re saying is that if I run a published adventure as is, without modification and without allowing the players to modify the dungeon as presented, they simply advocate for their characters and the outcome is determined by their actions and decisions within that world, that the GM has all the agency and the players have none?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ilbranteloth said:


> So what you’re saying is that if I run a published adventure as is, without modification and without allowing the players to modify the dungeon as presented, they simply advocate for their characters and the outcome is determined by their actions and decisions within that world, that the GM has all the agency and the players have none?




I'm saying that within that process, the fiction, the universe of things which can be described, is entirely the province of the GM. The adventure will be about and contain exactly the things that were authored into it, nothing more, nothing less. No decision made by a player will change that one iota.

The player's choice is which fiction they evoke. Do they go left or right? They can, at most, try to create some 'different path'. I talked about this far back in the thread WRT to walling up one of the Caves of Chaos and what might ensue from that. The players are still not adding a new element to play. Now we can start to talk about a continuum in terms of what the GM will allow, but it is still his choice. He could simply have the monsters pour out of the cave and attack, he could simply decree that the project is infeasible. He could let it happen. He could even let the players dictate what the outcome will be, but in doing so he's going beyond how play of this type normally works. Its very rare to see players even attempting this kind of thing IME. 

So, my final answer is, "it depends". If the players can generate NEW FICTION, by saying something like "we find bricks, mortar, tools, and lumber necessary to wall off the cave" and that works, then that's some level of agency over the fiction. Its not clear that such is possible in B2, though I think it is not too much to hope it might be allowed. 

The difference is with Story Now the GM doesn't have to 'let it happen', its his job to FACILITATE it. He's allowed to create obstacles, but not to say 'no'.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I'm saying that within that process, the fiction, the universe of things which can be described, is entirely the province of the GM. The adventure will be about and contain exactly the things that were authored into it, nothing more, nothing less. No decision made by a player will change that one iota.
> 
> The player's choice is which fiction they evoke. Do they go left or right? They can, at most, try to create some 'different path'. I talked about this far back in the thread WRT to walling up one of the Caves of Chaos and what might ensue from that. The players are still not adding a new element to play. Now we can start to talk about a continuum in terms of what the GM will allow, but it is still his choice. He could simply have the monsters pour out of the cave and attack, he could simply decree that the project is infeasible. He could let it happen. He could even let the players dictate what the outcome will be, but in doing so he's going beyond how play of this type normally works. Its very rare to see players even attempting this kind of thing IME.
> 
> So, my final answer is, "it depends". If the players can generate NEW FICTION, by saying something like "we find bricks, mortar, tools, and lumber necessary to wall off the cave" and that works, then that's some level of agency over the fiction. Its not clear that such is possible in B2, though I think it is not too much to hope it might be allowed.
> 
> The difference is with Story Now the GM doesn't have to 'let it happen', its his job to FACILITATE it. He's allowed to create obstacles, but not to say 'no'.




So I’m OK with your point about Story Now, that’s the intent and design of the game.

I disagree with your assessment regarding player agency in something like B2. The players have complete agency over the decisions and actions of their characters, in other words, the advocacy that Eero talks about. 

In an RPG, the PCs can do anything that their character can reasonably do. That includes building a wall if that’s what you want to do. 

Ultimately my point remains that even if the GM has control of the world it does not mean the players don’t have agency in the fiction. Just not that part of it. 

To look at it from a different way, in the same B2 scenario, the GM has no agency over the decisions or actions of the PCs. Which is required for the fiction to occur. Otherwise he’s just reading a book without a plot. 

So it is literally impossible for the GM to have all of the agency in that case. It is a shared fiction with a different division of responsibility, that’s all.

I don’t have an issue with the GM facilitating things. However, for the players and the GM to have agency, it’s not required either. 

Not being able to say no is taking away the GM’s agency. So you’re saying there can be no empty rooms? No failure to find a secret door? What “no” is forbidden, and what does it have to do with agency. 

If the PC goes to the market square to purchase a holy sword, and there is no holy sword, how is that impacting their agency?

If they are attempting to infiltrate the castle, and there is no secret door, how is that impacting their agency?


----------



## Lanefan

Ilbranteloth said:


> If the PC goes to the market square to purchase a holy sword, and there is no holy sword, how is that impacting their agency?



For added simplicity let's assume the PC is already in the market square, and declares this action: "I check with such merchants as might be expected to sell such things to determine if there's a holy sword for sale.  If there is, I buy it."   In story now, as far as I can tell a success on the die roll means the PC walks out with a holy sword (and, one assumes, a lighter wallet).  The only recourse the DM has if she thinks a holy sword is overkill for that party or PC in terms of game or character balance is to set an unachievably high DC on finding one - but that's just using more words and dice to say 'no', which ain't allowed.

The thing is, some of these guys have hard-tied their view of what constitutes player agency to how much input* the player has to the 'shared fiction' and either minimize or dismiss all other types of agency, then go on to say or imply that players in a typical non-4e D&D game don't really have any agency.  As you may have already concluded if you've read all the 1400-ish posts so far, I disagree with this view. 

* - be it input from a successful action declaration or straight-on authorship.

When I read Eero's treatise I came away with pretty much the same thoughts on it that you did; only you stated yours better and more clearly: it seems to be advocating away from player input into the fiction, and for the setting and background to be left to the DM.

The whole question around the benefits and drawbacks of "go where the action is", which Eero also advocates, is another headache entirely; potentially impacting a different type of player agency considered lesser by some but important by me.

Lan-"why do I want to go where the action is when I can instead just sneak around it all and steal the treasure while everyone else is busy"-efan


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> I don't recall you telling me that the player set the DC for the feather.  You were setting the chance.



Actually, the player can choose what to search for, which affects the DC. The player can also spend resources or use augments to affect the chance of success.



Maxperson said:


> There isn't, because the players indicated what they wanted to do and were able to do it.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The railroad is in the last sentence.  You played their PCs for them and decided for them that they would be reckless, taking no precautions to avoid being seen.  You also decided that being seen was automatic.  The players should have been given the opportunity to decide their approach tactics, but instead you forced them down the rails.



I don't understand how play works at your table. Do the players need permission to speak?

At my table, if the players want their PCs to be stealthy, or take precautions, they can say so. In some systems - eg Traveller, or AD&D - there are also generic surprise rules that apply, but in 4e (which is the system I was envisaging in the example - as evidenced by the reference to residuum) the players would have to actively declare Stealth checks or something similar.



Maxperson said:


> I've already told them that they are walking on a flagstone floor. They know the flagstones exist, and can choose to study them, etc. as they wish.



So it's not railroading to expect the players to ask about uneven flagstones; but it is railroading to expect them to declare Stealth checks if they want to be sneak up on the giants?

As far as I can see, those things are exactly parallel.



Maxperson said:


> Intersections exist in any rational world. I wouldn't dream of depriving my players of their choice to decide which way to go by forcing them down the path of my choice.



Raised, chipped etc flagstone also exist in any rational world. But you don't tell your players about all of those. You wait for them to ask. Why is that not railroading, but it is railroading to expect them to ask if there are any intersections?

As far as I can see, those things are exactly parallel.



Maxperson said:


> Had they walked there more slowly, though, they might have made some allies or acquired some items in the Underdark to help them with the giants.   You did deprive them of those(and more) opportunities in the rush to get them to the giants.



Again, this is bizarre. Why is narrating an encounter with potential allies, or with potentinal items, less railroading than narrating an encounter with the giants?

And how do you know the giants that have seen them aren't potential allites?

You seem to be locked into a GM-driven mindset - eg where something being a potential ally is a GM decision rather than a player decision.

And you also seem to think it's important to insert GM-authored filler. Why?



Maxperson said:


> When I describe an area am I deciding to mention the flag stone as part of the description? Yes. I am not deciding to mention an intersection, though. It's there and I have to let the players know about it regardless of what I wish, though I did author it.



Upthread you were very insistent that not everything is pre-authored. If it's preauthored, then you are telling the players something you already wrote. You are giving effect to a past decision.

If you did not pre-author it because you're making it up on the spot, you are deciding to mention it at that time.

This is the point I've been making for most of the thread. Authorship is authorship - it's the making of a decision to introduce some element intto the shared fiction. What's at issue is the techniques and principles one uses in deciding when and what to author.



Maxperson said:


> If they go to the bazaar and it turns out that there is nothing there to help them, that's a lot of time on what turns out not to be the best way.



And here we can see those principles at work.

For some reason you think it's not railroading for the GM to either decide, or to determine by die roll, that there's nothing useful in the bazaar - thus blocking the player's goal for his/her PC without the player even getting to make a meaningful action delcaration. But you think it is railroading for the GM to frame the player into a situation where that meaningful action can be delcared and the outcome turns on that.

That sttrikes me as completely backwards.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Other than the reference to 'PC dramatic needs' this could apply to a typical DM-driven game as well.



Why should that be surprsing? It's RPGing. This thread isn't about "Does RPGing involve - among other things - GMs describing stuff to players, and players declaring actions in response." It's about _what_ the GM describes, _how_ s/he works out what that is, _what influence the players have over it_, etc. One way of doing that is respoind to PC dramatid needs. Other ways are different. Those differences aren't trivial when it comes to the experience of RPGing. 



Lanefan said:


> Something these guys seem to be (intentionally?) ignoring is that beyond the dramatic needs of any individual PC there's also the dramatic needs of the game/campaign as a whole.  The sense seems to be that the PCs are bigger than the game...that the whole world revolves around them...where I prefer both as player and DM to see the PCs as small fish in a big ocean full of lots of bigger fish that are nearly all very hungry.



Well, as I've already posted, that "game/campaign as whole" is the stuff the GM has authored and cares about. (Because if the players care about it, then it is subsumed within their PCs' dramatic needs, isn't it?)

You preferences are what they are, but I don't see how you can both emphasise the role of the _GM_ in establkishing the shared fiction, and also assert that the players have maximal agency over that.



Lanefan said:


> it's possible that if the players are that dead-set on ignoring everything around their PCs they may have railroaded themselves.



This is absurd. You don't say that the player who doesn't ask about the flooring is "railroading herself". Or that the player who doesn't ask, as they walk through the town, about whether any slaves are being beaten, is "railroading herself".

Randmon intersections are no more important than flagstones or beatings. If the players don't care, they don't care, and why would we spend time at the table on it?



Lanefan said:


> There's a spectrum of detail ranging from playing out every second of a PC's day to ignoring absolutely everything that happens between the most major of events. Each end of this spectrum is ridiculous, and we all fall in the middle somewhere. What I'm saying is that as you move along the spectrum from more detail toward less, at some point you're going to cross a line after which you *are *impacting player agency through denial of choice.
> 
> And while we each probably see that line as being in a different place we can't deny it exists.



I deny it.

In my Traveller game, when the PCs spend a week in jump space we don't do anything but mark off the time spent. In my BW game, when the PCs spent 18 months in a tower we resovled the upkeep checks, and there were a couple of actions the players declared (eg making contact with elven merchants so as to buy some herbs), but otherwise the time just passed.

What times and distances matter to play depends entirely on the needs of play. I can easily imagine a dungeon room in which the detail of every block in the floor _does_ matter. (I mean, ToH gets pretty close to this in its opening corridor. You have to notice the stucco on the wall, and scrape it off, to have any chance of finding the secret doors. And there is detailed pattern in the floor tiles. Etc.)


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> The goal of most of our crew most of the time is just to have some fun at the table.  Occasionally one of us will play a truly goal-oriented character...until the rest of the party gets fed up with it and either runs it out or just stops listening to it...but it's not that common.  Sometimes there's a temporary goal, either achieved quickly or abandoned as unattainable, but rarely if ever is there anything campaign-long.
> 
> I've had highly goal-oriented players in my game in the past, and what I found in general was that they also took the whole thing far too seriously for my tastes.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I think that more or less encompasses most players out there.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> that puts goal-oriented fiction-bending players in the severe minority, I think.



I'm with [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] on this: I don't see how what you describe here is an indicator of a game with deep backstory, verisimilitudinous characterisation, player agency, etc. It seems to suggest a GM-driven game with the players coming along for a fun ride, contributing the odd bit of characterisation or instigating the odd bit of pretty localised mayhem.


----------



## pemerton

Ilbranteloth said:


> In an RPG, the PCs can do anything that their character can reasonably do.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> If the PC goes to the market square to purchase a holy sword, and there is no holy sword, how is that impacting their agency?
> 
> If they are attempting to infiltrate the castle, and there is no secret door, how is that impacting their agency?



Here are two things a character can reasonably do in a fantasy RPG: find a map hidden in a study; find a secret door into a castle. In some cases, finding a holy sword on sale at a market would be a third such thing.

The GM declaring that such things are not possible is thus a burden on player agency as you have characterised it.



Ilbranteloth said:


> As a D&D DM, this is really what I think has been promoted all along, starting with the AD&D DMG for me: When the players declare what they are doing or want to do, the DM sets a probability, and adjudicates accordingly.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Again, I don't think this has anything to do with agency. It's about who has control of the narrative, when, and by how much. So the players can control the narrative in my campaign any time they want, simply by making a decision and acting.



I don't follow your contrast, given that "control" and "agency" are near enough to synonyms in this context.

But in any event, what you're describing here is not an example of the "standard narratavistic model". The concepts of _dramatic need_, _thematic moment_, etc are doing no work. The context for decision that you describe is all established by the GM independently of those things.



Ilbranteloth said:


> Eero's model is really no different than what most consider D&D to be: The GM is in control of the narrative, and the players are advocates for the characters.





Ilbranteloth said:


> Because you and I disagree with the premise that option #1 means the DM determines all the fiction.
> 
> That is not the case. The player decides whether they want to search or not. That is a contribution to the fiction. That there isn’t anything to find is irrelevant, they still have complete control over their actions. They search, they don’t find anything, they learned something, and fiction happened.
> 
> The player doesn’t have an impact on the result of their search. They can’t determine whether a secret door is there or not, just that they would search for one.
> 
> This fits Eero’s model precisely: the player advocates for the character. The GM is responsible for the backstory and the fiction aside from the player’s ability to take action as the character.





Ilbranteloth said:


> I disagree with your assessment regarding player agency in something like B2. The players have complete agency over the decisions and actions of their characters, in other words, the advocacy that Eero talks about.



This is not at all what Eero Tuovinen is talking about. First, as he says, "Character advocacy is also a common ideal in D&D, although I do admit that there are readings of the game text where advocacy is not present. . . . An alternative reading might be that the player’s job is to create a mechanically powerful character that he then uses to win challenges set up by the GM." The sort of D&D game text where character advocacy is not present would include B2. You can read Luke Crane - a designer of a "standard narrativist model" game (Burning Wheel) contrasting B2 with "story now" RPGing here.

(Luke Crane also makes clear that, in B2, "mechanically powerful characters" aren't that relevant, but winning challenges and solving puzzles is central to play.)

Second, even if there was no actual discussion of this the difference would be obvious.

In the standard narrativist model, the GM's job is to:

frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments (defined in narrativistic theory as moments of in-character action that carry weight as commentary on the game’s premise) by introducing complications . . .

Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end.​
And where do the dramatic needs come from?

The rest of the players each have their own characters to play. They play their characters according to the advocacy role: the important part is that they naturally allow the character’s interests to come through based on what they imagine of the character’s nature and background. . . .

The player’s task in these games is simple advocacy, which is not difficult once you have a firm character. (Chargen is a key consideration in these games, compare them to see how different approaches work.)​
The "advocacy role" is not _player gets to declare actions for the PC_ - which is satisfied by any RPG at all (unless it is some bizarre degenerate thing where the GM is declaring the players' moves for them). It is _player plays the character in accordance with the PC's dramatic needs_. This requires the framing of scenes where those dramatic needs are actually engaged.

It could hardly be more obvious that B2 is not an example of this. Character generation does not yield anything about PCs' natures and backgrounds. And even if they did, there is absolutely no provision in B2 for the GM to frame scenes in a way that responds to those elements of character and thereby provokes thematic moments.

It's almost equally obvious that a game in which the dramatic need is entering a castle, and in which the GM simply blocks - by narrative fiat - an attempt by the PCs to sneak in via a secret door, is not being run on the "standard narrativistic model".



Ilbranteloth said:


> The narrative aspect of his model is that the GM frames the action toward the dramatic needs, provoke thematic moments, and introduce complications. In other words, by your definition it puts _more_ agency in the hands of the GM.
> 
> The only real restriction placed on the GM in this model is to keep track of backstory.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The model itself is not talking about agency, it's talking about the GM's ability to craft an interesting narrative



Have you actually played any of the RPGs that Eero Tuovinen references as exemplifying the "standard narrativstic model"? (The ones he mentions are Sorcerer, Dogs in the Vineyard, Heroquest, The Shadow of Yesterday, Mountain Witch, and Primetime Adventures.)

The most important "restriction" on the GM - which you mention! - is to frame the action so as to provoke thematic moments. And where do the salient themes and dramatic need come from? The players! This is one of significant way in which players exercise agency over the content of the shared fiction.

And it's not about _the GM's ability to craft an interesting narrative_! This is what these games were invented to get away from. Sorcerer, DitV etc are _reactions against_ GM authorship of narrative (as exemplfied eg by a module liek Dead Gods, or the White Wolf games of the 1990s).

The whole point, as Eero Tuovinen puts it, is that "[t]he fun in these games from the player’s viewpoint comes from the fact that he can create an amazing story with nothing but choices made in playing his character". He's not talking here about pseudo-choices (to look for secret doors where there are none, which has no impact on anything). He's talking about _actual choices_ that actually change how things unfold; and that - as he says - yield actual consequences that then feed into subsequent framings.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> When I read Eero's treatise I came away with pretty much the same thoughts on it that you did



Have you ever played, or even read the rules for, the games he mentions? (Sorcerer, DitV, HeroQuest, etc.)


----------



## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> Here are two things a character can reasonably do in a fantasy RPG: find a map hidden in a study; find a secret door into a castle. In some cases, finding a holy sword on sale at a market would be a third such thing.
> 
> The GM declaring that such things are not possible is thus a burden on player agency as you have characterised it.
> 
> I don't follow your contrast, given that "control" and "agency" are near enough to synonyms in this context.
> 
> But in any event, what you're describing here is not an example of the "standard narratavistic model". The concepts of _dramatic need_, _thematic moment_, etc are doing no work. The context for decision that you describe is all established by the GM independently of those things.
> 
> 
> 
> This is not at all what Eero Tuovinen is talking about. First, as he says, "Character advocacy is also a common ideal in D&D, although I do admit that there are readings of the game text where advocacy is not present. . . . An alternative reading might be that the player’s job is to create a mechanically powerful character that he then uses to win challenges set up by the GM." The sort of D&D game text where character advocacy is not present would include B2. You can read Luke Crane - a designer of a "standard narrativist model" game (Burning Wheel) contrasting B2 with "story now" RPGing here.
> 
> (Luke Crane also makes clear that, in B2, "mechanically powerful characters" aren't that relevant, but winning challenges and solving puzzles is central to play.)
> 
> Second, even if there was no actual discussion of this the difference would be obvious.
> 
> In the standard narrativist model, the GM's job is to:
> 
> frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments (defined in narrativistic theory as moments of in-character action that carry weight as commentary on the game’s premise) by introducing complications . . .
> 
> Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end.​
> And where do the dramatic needs come from?
> 
> The rest of the players each have their own characters to play. They play their characters according to the advocacy role: the important part is that they naturally allow the character’s interests to come through based on what they imagine of the character’s nature and background. . . .
> 
> The player’s task in these games is simple advocacy, which is not difficult once you have a firm character. (Chargen is a key consideration in these games, compare them to see how different approaches work.)​
> The "advocacy role" is not _player gets to declare actions for the PC_ - which is satisfied by any RPG at all (unless it is some bizarre degenerate thing where the GM is declaring the players' moves for them). It is _player plays the character in accordance with the PC's dramatic needs_. This requires the framing of scenes where those dramatic needs are actually engaged.
> 
> It could hardly be more obvious that B2 is not an example of this. Character generation does not yield anything about PCs' natures and backgrounds. And even if they did, there is absolutely no provision in B2 for the GM to frame scenes in a way that responds to those elements of character and thereby provokes thematic moments.
> 
> It's almost equally obvious that a game in which the dramatic need is entering a castle, and in which the GM simply blocks - by narrative fiat - an attempt by the PCs to sneak in via a secret door, is not being run on the "standard narrativistic model".
> 
> Have you actually played any of the RPGs that Eero Tuovinen references as exemplifying the "standard narrativstic model"? (The ones he mentions are Sorcerer, Dogs in the Vineyard, Heroquest, The Shadow of Yesterday, Mountain Witch, and Primetime Adventures.)
> 
> The most important "restriction" on the GM - which you mention! - is to frame the action so as to provoke thematic moments. And where do the salient themes and dramatic need come from? The players! This is one of significant way in which players exercise agency over the content of the shared fiction.
> 
> And it's not about _the GM's ability to craft an interesting narrative_! This is what these games were invented to get away from. Sorcerer, DitV etc are _reactions against_ GM authorship of narrative (as exemplfied eg by a module liek Dead Gods, or the White Wolf games of the 1990s).
> 
> The whole point, as Eero Tuovinen puts it, is that "[t]he fun in these games from the player’s viewpoint comes from the fact that he can create an amazing story with nothing but choices made in playing his character". He's not talking here about pseudo-choices (to look for secret doors where there are none, which has no impact on anything). He's talking about _actual choices_ that actually change how things unfold; and that - as he says - yield actual consequences that then feed into subsequent framings.




But this is still all missing my point. I never once indicated that my game is, or that I ever wanted it to be, a “standard narrativist game.” Which means that this specific definition of player agency is irrelevant to me. 

The narrativist model is one way to design or play an RPG. 

Not using that model doesn’t mean the players lack agency.

Character advocacy is to have control of your character. As long as you can make decisions for your character and your character can act appropriately in a given circumstance, you have agency.

Restrictions do not equal lack of agency.

Dramatic need is a subjective thing. What you view as dramatic need is different than what I think. Each player at the table has a different view of what dramatic need is, as does the GM. 

Control and advocacy of the character is not subjective. Either I get to make decisions and choose actions for my character or not.

Restrictions in the fiction do not constitute a lack of player agency. If you were to set a scenario where the characters are interred in a concentration camp on WWII, the player’s agency has not been altered. The character has many restrictions set upon them, but they can still make decisions and take actions as the character. 

A game where the character is imprisoned in an oubliette and chained to the wall does not remove player agency. It makes for a very challenging game where much of the action might occur in the character’s head, but as long as there are no restrictions on the part of the player in playing that character, they have agency.

Who writes the fiction of whether something is there or not does not alter player agency. It alters the fiction.

When parts of the fiction are written is also irrelevant. A player can pre-author something too. However, some things might be more fixed than others.

The GM deciding that there is no secret door in this particular passage 10 years before play does not affect player agency, any more than the DM declaring that in this pseudo-medieval fantasy world there are no space ships, and no, you can’t have one.

If you are playing a standard narrativist model game, however, then some of these things remove player agency. Because by design, some of these things are within the agency of the players, and some of these scenarios or mechanics take that agency away.

That does not apply in other games where the agency that the player has, by design, is different.

If you want to design a football game where the players can alter the circumstance of scoring, or where they can make decisions they are currently within the realm of the referee, you have not altered the agency of the players in the original game. They still have 100% player agency, even though there is now a game that gives them more options.

You, and others, continue to attempt to assess the agency of the players by the lens of your specific game or game model. I have a problem with that because the implication is that others are “doing it wrong” or it raises the possibility that players who don’t make the distinction between games expect something different from other gameplay models.

But I think you are entirely wrong about what constitutes player agency in other games. The goals of the design of the game, the goals of the GM, and the players all help define what agency the players want/get, along with what agency the GM wants/gets. 

The type of agency may be different. And that remains my point - the definition of player agency is dependent upon the game being played.

How does B2 restrict agency at all? The provisions you say are lacking are part of the game system itself. It doesn’t need to be repeated in the adventure. 

In the same “standard” OD&D, AD&D, BECMI, 2e, 2.5e, etc models it doesn’t. 

The characters are free to wander the keep and do whatever they’d like. They can wander the wilderness. They can explore the caves of chaos in whatever manner they choose. They can interact with anything they feel like. 

There are no restrictions that I can discern in the reading of the text that restricts a player’s agency at all. And while there is a lot of material that is already authored, the GM is free to add or alter it accordingly. There is no doubt that the world, and creatures in it, are going to have to react to the actions of the PCs. I’ve never seen two runs through the module the same, because each group’s goals, approaches, and decisions are different. 

It could just as easily be played as a Story Now or Standard Narrativist game where the GM altered whatever is needed as the game progresses. Of course, depending on how much control the players have over the fiction might eliminate much of it from play anyway, but there isn’t anything wrong with that. Within those styles, as long as restrictions aren’t placed on the GM (you must use this text without alteration) or player’s that alter their agency within their game, then the module still doesn’t alter agency.

A different perspective is the player who prefers a simulationist game, where he is a character within a world, and has no control other than “to be me,” then forcing them to take narrative control of the world around them is impacting their agency.

It’s all well and good what those games are reactions against. But this also addresses my point. I’m not interested in those games nor the type of agency they are designed to provide. Their existence does not alter the agency present in my games. They are designed for the people who want to play those types of games. Yay for them!

People who are looking for a different kind of agency don’t have to play them. Yay for us!


----------



## pemerton

Ilbranteloth said:


> But this is still all missing my point. I never once indicated that my game is, or that I ever wanted it to be, a “standard narrativist game.”



I _quoted you _saying that "Eero's model is really no different than what most consider D&D to be" and that "This fits Eero’s model precisely: the player advocates for the character."



Ilbranteloth said:


> You, and others, continue to attempt to assess the agency of the players by the lens of your specific game or game model. I have a problem with that because the implication is that others are “doing it wrong” or it raises the possibility that players who don’t make the distinction between games expect something different from other gameplay models.
> 
> I think you are entirely wrong about what constitutes player agency in other games.



Look, you can tell me as much as you like that players of snakes and ladders have as much agency as do players of chess, but it isn't true. All you do in snakes and ladders is roll the dice and move your piece as the dice and board markings dictate. No choices are made at all.

If you take that to be an implication that players of snakes and ladders are doing it wrong, well, that's on you. Some gamblers play roulette; others play blackjack. That doesn't mean that they each have 100% agency. Rouletee players obviously have 0% agency over the outcome of their bet. Whether that is a reason to play roulette or a reason to play blackjack depends on how much agency you want to exercise.

When it comes to auction-and-trick based card games, my favourite is five hundred. I think it makes for a better social game than bridge precisely because, once the auction finishes and play begins, the amount of player agency is less.



Ilbranteloth said:


> Which means that this specific definition of player agency is irrelevant to me.



OK. But then what is your point?

I assert that a GM-driven game, which relies heavily on the GM to either establish setting in advance and indepndently of the players, or permits the GM to establish setting more-or-less at will in the course of play (including unrevealed setting that permits saying "no"), puts very significant constraints around player agency in respect of the shared fiction. Examples you have given include the finding of an item in a market, or a secret door in a castle. Another that was discussed at length upthread was finding a map hidden in a study.

You may not care about these constraints. You may not even be interested in talking about them. As [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has already posted, that doesn't mean they're not there.

You may even assert that your game offers some _different_ form of player agency. All I've really grasped about that is that players are able to declare actioins for their PCs - which personally I would regard as a basic property of any RPG, and so a baseline for what players do in the game rather than some alternative mode of agency. But that assertion doesn't contradict mine. The fact that you want to assert it in fact suggests that you think I'm _correct_ about agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction.



Ilbranteloth said:


> Character advocacy is to have control of your character.



This is not what Eero Tuovinen means by the term.



Ilbranteloth said:


> Dramatic need is a subjective thing. What you view as dramatic need is different than what I think. Each player at the table has a different view of what dramatic need is, as does the GM.
> 
> Control and advocacy of the character is not subjective. Either I get to make decisions and choose actions for my character or not.



This is completely at odds with what Eero Tuovinen asserts. It's also obviously wrong.

If a player writes a Belief for his PC "I will find an item that will help me confront my balrog-possessed brother before I leave Hardby", then I know what that PC's dramatic need is: _an opportunity to acquire said item_.

If a player writes down, in his PC backstory, "I travel the galaxy, with the support of the Travellers' Aid Society, searching for signs of alien life and civilisation", then I know what that PC's dramatic need is: _an opportunity to confront alien life or culture_.



Ilbranteloth said:


> As long as you can make decisions for your character and your character can act appropriately in a given circumstance, you have agency.



This is also obviously wrong. I have played RPG sessions (on occasion) in which all events are dictated by the GM. The players can declare actions for their PCs, but either (i) the GM ignores the outcome of the resolution mechanics (sometimes called "fudging"), or (ii) the GM manipulates the backstory to introduce elements into the fiction that render the outcome of the resolution mechanics (so eg the PCs defeat opponent X, but the GM brings a new opponent Y into the situation who plays exactly the same role).

In a RPG like I describe the players have no meaningful agency. l mean, they can speak in funny voices and choose whether their PCs use scimitars or longswords, but they don't actually have any impact on the salient content of the fiction.



Ilbranteloth said:


> Who writes the fiction of whether something is there or not does not alter player agency. It alters the fiction.



Again, this is obviously wrong: if the GM has extensive power to establish the fiction, and the players have little such power, then obviously the players lack significant agency over the content of the shared fiction.



Ilbranteloth said:


> Restrictions in the fiction do not constitute a lack of player agency.



They are (self-evidently) limits on the capacity of the players to shape the content of the shared fiction.



Ilbranteloth said:


> If you were to set a scenario where the characters are interred in a concentration camp on WWII, the player’s agency has not been altered. The character has many restrictions set upon them, but they can still make decisions and take actions as the character.



That is not what we are talking about. If I agree to play that game, then the presence of those ficitonal constraints is an _expression_ of my agency.

But if I delcare actions to try and survive in the camp, or escape from it, and _the GM establishes or manipulated unrevealed backstory so that those actions cannot succeed_, that obviously is a limit upon player agency.



Ilbranteloth said:


> The GM deciding that there is no secret door in this particular passage 10 years before play does not affect player agency, any more than the DM declaring that in this pseudo-medieval fantasy world there are no space ships, and no, you can’t have one.



A player agreeing to play in a fantasy RPG is _exercising_ agency.

If, subsequently, that player declares that his/her PC searches for a secret door in a wall and the GM, by reading some pre-authored material, declares the search a failure - that is clearly a case of the player lacking agency over the content of the shared fiction.



Ilbranteloth said:


> When parts of the fiction are written is also irrelevant.



It may be irrelevant to you.

But the basic act of RPGing is conversation: "You are in situation XYZ . . ." "OK, then, I perform action ABC . . ." If the GM has presecripted all his/her contributions to the conversation, that makes a huge difference. Eg it is not going to be very responsive to what the players say. The module Dead Gods is a practical example of this, but only one of dozens.



Ilbranteloth said:


> How does B2 restrict agency at all? The provisions you say are lacking are part of the game system itself. It doesn’t need to be repeated in the adventure.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The characters are free to wander the keep and do whatever they’d like.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> There are no restrictions that I can discern in the reading of the text that restricts a player’s agency at all.



Here's one way that B2 restricts player agency: if a player declares "I want to meet an alchemist in the keep" then, as the module is written, that action will fail.

Which also shows that the characters can't do _whatever they like_. They can do _whatever the established fiction of the keep might permit them to do_.



Ilbranteloth said:


> It could just as easily be played as a Story Now or Standard Narrativist game where the GM altered whatever is needed as the game progresses.



Are you saying this from experience?

I've used B2 twice in a "story now" game. The Caves are irrelevant in that sort of game: at best there are little elements of them (the most striking being the cultist area) which can be adpated for other contexts or purposes. The Keep iteslf needs to be injected with story elements that aren't given in the module - ie it is primarily a map, and a source of a couple of NPCs with motivations (the evil priest the most obvious one). And the whole setup of the module - that the PCs are here to fight chaos by raiding/defeating the Caves - has to be ignored.



Ilbranteloth said:


> If you are playing a standard narrativist model game, however, then some of these things remove player agency. Because by design, some of these things are within the agency of the players, and some of these scenarios or mechanics take that agency away.



What things? Which RPG system are you talking about here - DitV? Burning Wheel? HeroWars/Quest? Cortex+ Heroic? And what scenarios or mechanics do you have in mind?


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Actually, the player can choose what to search for, which affects the DC.  The player can also spend resources or use augments to affect the chance of success.




Do you really think that what the PCs search for and how they go about it doesn't affect the DC in DM facing games?  Also, that still isn't the player setting the DC, so I'll assume from your answer, since you chose not to answer it directly, that players do not in fact set the DCs in your game.



> I don't understand how play works at your table. Do the players need permission to speak?
> 
> At my table, if the players want their PCs to be stealthy, or take precautions, they can say so. In some systems - eg Traveller, or AD&D - there are also generic surprise rules that apply, but in 4e (which is the system I was envisaging in the example - as evidenced by the reference to residuum) the players would have to actively declare Stealth checks or something similar.




You gave them no opportunity in your example.  Here it is again.



> GM: Just as the dwarves told you, after a hard trek through the tunnels you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern. It's lit a dull red by the glow of lava that bubbles up through the floor of the cave and flows away in criss-crossing channels. In the glow of the lava, you can see fire giant sentries on patrol. And it seems that a group of sentries has seen you!




You gave them no opportunity to tell you that they were stealthy in giant territory.   You went from hard trek through the tunnels to being at the entrance and spotted with 0 time in-between.  I on the other hand would have at LEAST(if I was going to fast forward the journey, depriving them of countless opportunities) told them that they were approaching giant territory.  That way they could have a moment to actually tell me how they approach.  

How far in advance do they have to tell you every move that they want to make?  Do they have to give you contingencies for their moves?

Players:We follow the instructions of the dwarves.  When we get close, we start being stealth to avoid being seen.  If we're seen by a giant that can cast spells, we do A.  If we're seen by a giant child, we do B.  If we're seen by a giant patrol, we do C.  If the giants have hell hounds, we do D.   

How much do they have to tell you before they even leave on the journey?  It appears if they don't spell everything out, you're just going to play their PCs and decide things on their behalf.



> So it's not railroading to expect the players to ask about uneven flagstones; but it is railroading to expect them to declare Stealth checks if they want to be sneak up on the giants?
> 
> As far as I can see, those things are exactly parallel.
> 
> Raised, chipped etc flagstone also exist in any rational world. But you don't tell your players about all of those. You wait for them to ask. Why is that not railroading, but it is railroading to expect them to ask if there are any intersections?
> 
> As far as I can see, those things are exactly parallel.




Stop looking down.  I already told you that I described the flagstone floor to them and would let them know if the floor changed.  This idea you have that I have to describe every individual flagstone of the dungeon is absolutely absurd.  It's a deflection on your part from the argument.

Beyond that, the overwhelming difference is that I am not playing their PCs by not describing individual flagstones.  You are playing their PCs by deciding that they just stroll brazenly up to the entrance of giant territory.



> Again, this is bizarre. Why is narrating an encounter with potential allies, or with potentinal items, less railroading than narrating an encounter with the giants?
> 
> And how do you know the giants that have seen them aren't potential allites?
> 
> You seem to be locked into a GM-driven mindset - eg where something being a potential ally is a GM decision rather than a player decision.
> 
> And you also seem to think it's important to insert GM-authored filler. Why?




I don't know what you are talking about.  These sentences do not in any way describe my game or what I have been saying.



> And here we can see those principles at work.
> 
> For some reason you think it's not railroading for the GM to either decide, or to determine by die roll, that there's nothing useful in the bazaar - thus blocking the player's goal for his/her PC without the player even getting to make a meaningful action delcaration. But you think it is railroading for the GM to frame the player into a situation where that meaningful action can be delcared and the outcome turns on that.
> 
> That sttrikes me as completely backwards.




No blocking is being done by nothing being at the bazaar.  There are many other ways to achieve the goals.

Edit: removed some text that I did not respond to.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> I _quoted you _saying that "Eero's model is really no different than what most consider D&D to be" and that "This fits Eero’s model precisely: the player advocates for the character."
> 
> Look, you can tell me as much as you like that players of snakes and ladders have as much agency as do players of chess, but it isn't true. All you do in snakes and ladders is roll the dice and move your piece as the dice and board markings dictate. No choices are made at all.
> 
> If you take that to be an implication that players of snakes and ladders are doing it wrong, well, that's on you. Some gamblers play roulette; others play blackjack. That doesn't mean that they each have 100% agency. Rouletee players obviously have 0% agency over the outcome of their bet. Whether that is a reason to play roulette or a reason to play blackjack depends on how much agency you want to exercise.
> 
> When it comes to auction-and-trick based card games, my favourite is five hundred. I think it makes for a better social game than bridge precisely because, once the auction finishes and play begins, the amount of player agency is less.
> 
> OK. But then what is your point?
> 
> I assert that a GM-driven game, which relies heavily on the GM to either establish setting in advance and indepndently of the players, or permits the GM to establish setting more-or-less at will in the course of play (including unrevealed setting that permits saying "no"), puts very significant constraints around player agency in respect of the shared fiction. Examples you have given include the finding of an item in a market, or a secret door in a castle. Another that was discussed at length upthread was finding a map hidden in a study.
> 
> You may not care about these constraints. You may not even be interested in talking about them. As [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has already posted, that doesn't mean they're not there.
> 
> You may even assert that your game offers some _different_ form of player agency. All I've really grasped about that is that players are able to declare actioins for their PCs - which personally I would regard as a basic property of any RPG, and so a baseline for what players do in the game rather than some alternative mode of agency. But that assertion doesn't contradict mine. The fact that you want to assert it in fact suggests that you think I'm _correct_ about agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction.
> 
> This is not what Eero Tuovinen means by the term.
> 
> This is completely at odds with what Eero Tuovinen asserts. It's also obviously wrong.
> 
> If a player writes a Belief for his PC "I will find an item that will help me confront my balrog-possessed brother before I leave Hardby", then I know what that PC's dramatic need is: _an opportunity to acquire said item_.
> 
> If a player writes down, in his PC backstory, "I travel the galaxy, with the support of the Travellers' Aid Society, searching for signs of alien life and civilisation", then I know what that PC's dramatic need is: _an opportunity to confront alien life or culture_.
> 
> This is also obviously wrong. I have played RPG sessions (on occasion) in which all events are dictated by the GM. The players can declare actions for their PCs, but either (i) the GM ignores the outcome of the resolution mechanics (sometimes called "fudging"), or (ii) the GM manipulates the backstory to introduce elements into the fiction that render the outcome of the resolution mechanics (so eg the PCs defeat opponent X, but the GM brings a new opponent Y into the situation who plays exactly the same role).
> 
> In a RPG like I describe the players have no meaningful agency. l mean, they can speak in funny voices and choose whether their PCs use scimitars or longswords, but they don't actually have any impact on the salient content of the fiction.
> 
> Again, this is obviously wrong: if the GM has extensive power to establish the fiction, and the players have little such power, then obviously the players lack significant agency over the content of the shared fiction.
> 
> They are (self-evidently) limits on the capacity of the players to shape the content of the shared fiction.
> 
> That is not what we are talking about. If I agree to play that game, then the presence of those ficitonal constraints is an _expression_ of my agency.
> 
> But if I delcare actions to try and survive in the camp, or escape from it, and _the GM establishes or manipulated unrevealed backstory so that those actions cannot succeed_, that obviously is a limit upon player agency.
> 
> A player agreeing to play in a fantasy RPG is _exercising_ agency.
> 
> If, subsequently, that player declares that his/her PC searches for a secret door in a wall and the GM, by reading some pre-authored material, declares the search a failure - that is clearly a case of the player lacking agency over the content of the shared fiction.
> 
> It may be irrelevant to you.
> 
> But the basic act of RPGing is conversation: "You are in situation XYZ . . ." "OK, then, I perform action ABC . . ." If the GM has presecripted all his/her contributions to the conversation, that makes a huge difference. Eg it is not going to be very responsive to what the players say. The module Dead Gods is a practical example of this, but only one of dozens.
> 
> Here's one way that B2 restricts player agency: if a player declares "I want to meet an alchemist in the keep" then, as the module is written, that action will fail.
> 
> Which also shows that the characters can't do _whatever they like_. They can do _whatever the established fiction of the keep might permit them to do_.
> 
> Are you saying this from experience?
> 
> I've used B2 twice in a "story now" game. The Caves are irrelevant in that sort of game: at best there are little elements of them (the most striking being the cultist area) which can be adpated for other contexts or purposes. The Keep iteslf needs to be injected with story elements that aren't given in the module - ie it is primarily a map, and a source of a couple of NPCs with motivations (the evil priest the most obvious one). And the whole setup of the module - that the PCs are here to fight chaos by raiding/defeating the Caves - has to be ignored.
> 
> What things? Which RPG system are you talking about here - DitV? Burning Wheel? HeroWars/Quest? Cortex+ Heroic? And what scenarios or mechanics do you have in mind?




This is Eero's definition of advocacy:

_"Character advocacy
Players can have different roles in a roleplaying game. Typical overarching categories are “player roles” and “GM roles”, which are fuzzy and historically determined expressions of natural language. One type of player role is when the game requires a player to be an advocate for a single player character – this advocacy thing is an exact theory term, unlike the fuzzy concept of “player role”. When a player is an advocate for a character in a roleplaying game, *this means that his task in playing the game is to express his character’s personality, interests and agenda for the benefit of himself and other players. This means that the player tells the others what his character does, thinks and feels, and he’s doing his job well if the picture he paints of the character is clear and powerful, easy to relate to*."_

This doesn't require anything on the part of the GM to respond to it in any specific way.

The narrativist model indicates that the GM _should_ take this into account. But the player's agency - to advocate for their character - doesn't change if the GM doesn't address the character's interests. 

In many examples of my play, I've pointed out that I _do_ use many (if not all) of these techiniques to a greater or lesser degree in my campaigns. They are tools among the many tools available as a GM in running a game. Sometimes the circumstances are directly related to the interests and dramatic need of the character, sometimes they aren't. I provide lots of hooks and options, and the players decide which are important to them and their character. It's not a narrativist model, because I'm not directly framing things all the time to press that particular type of drama. 

And despite that, you continue to seem to imply that everything that I, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] and others inflexibly pre-script all of the GMs contributions ahead of time. Your answer regarding B2 and the player looking for an alchemist completely ignores the fact that we (and the AD&D/D&D rulebooks themselves), provide all that is needed for the GM to decide that, yes, in fact, there is an alchemist in town. On the other hand, being able to _do_, or perhaps attempt is a better term, whatever you'd like doesn't mean you'll succeed all the time.

If your group of 1st level characters in a standard narrativist game decides they want to go kill an ancient dragon, are you implying that the players lack agency if they fail to kill the dragon when they wander into its lair and get barbecued? Agency cannot be tied to success, because there's no game if the players can simply declare what they want and then achieve it.

While I get that the general philosophy of the standard narrativist model is for the GM to not say, "no." Saying "no" doesn't require preauthoring at all. I am perfectly capable of improvising such a thing on the spot. Nor does the fact that my notes or thoughts ahead of the game might say "no" prevent me from changing that during the course of the game.

Failure does not equal lack of agency over the content of the fiction. The content of the fiction is the combination of the contributions of all players (including the GM) in an RPG. For example, the secret door:

The rogue searches the area where he suspects a secret door carefully. Any cracks that look out of place? Scuff marks indicating a door that might slide or swing out here? Perhaps the mortar is different, lighter in this area? Despite his best efforts, no secret entrance is found. The wizard indicates that he should move aside and casts _passwall_.

The player of the rogue contributed to the fiction, and the narrative continued. The player of the wizard did too, and also changed their current situation. 

The reason why the rogue failed is really irrelevant here with regard to player agency. Whether the GM knew ahead of time, decided it in the moment, or it was the result of a failed skill check, it just doesn't matter.  

But the fact is, the game is designed for character advocacy, exactly as Eero described. An "exact theory term" as he described it, to _"express his character's personality, interests and agenda for the benefit of himself and other players...(he) tells the players what his character does, things and feels..."_

Rogue: I want to get in the castle undetected. I think there's a secret door here. I'm going to search for a secret door here. Even, "I think that there ought to be a secret door as an escape route, and will go to what looks like the most logical place for it." The GM could frame the scene at "the most logical place for it" and there still not be a secret door. No loss of agency, the player still had full advocacy of his character.


Why do the caves have to be ignored in a Story Now game? Are you saying that the players are not allowed to create characters that are there for the very (basic) premise of the module itself. That you are actively taking away their agency to play that scenario in that manner?

The fact that you ran it twice as a Story Now game, and didn't engage those parts doesn't mean they can't be. It just means that you didn't. Or again, are you saying that as the GM you will dictate what they can and can't do? Of course, I don't believe that to be the case. What I believe is that you and your group have decided that telling the story of the module in that manner is boring. It's a story you don't want to tell, so you tell a different one. Fair enough, but that also doesn't apply to everybody and has nothing to do with player agency. More likely, it was exactly what I describe in my campaigns: The characters found themselves in whatever situation they were in, and decided to do something other than what was authored in the module. One of the things that I do quite frequently, which is to steal bits and pieces without running an entire adventure. I encourage it, and find it very helpful. But I'm not sure I would say I "ran" the module when doing that. The fact that the PCs will tend to do things I don't expect, and won't follow a set plot, so I don't bother, and that's one of the main reasons I don't run published adventures very frequently. 

And again, you'll see that despite the fact that I do have pre-authored (and published materials) in my game, including some story elements, I don't have control over the story of the characters. I can certainly take control, but that's not my role in the game as far as I'm concerned (and really as I think the game was designed). That's not to say that I don't have an impact on it. Of course I do. I have a much greater impact on the setting, and the motivations and actions of the NPCs and monster in the setting. And all of this exerts some control over the story of the characters. But their contribution to their story is probably 60-80% and mine is 20-40%. 

Even Eero's examples can clearly fit B2 as written:

_"The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end.

The player’s task in these games is simple advocacy, which is not difficult once you have a firm character. (Chargen is a key consideration in these games, compare them to see how different approaches work.) The GM might have more difficulty, as he needs to be able to reference the backstory, determine complications to introduce into the game, and figure out consequences. Much of the rules systems in these games address these challenges, and in addition the GM might have methodical tools outside the rules, such as pre-prepared relationship maps (helps with backstory), bangs (helps with provoking thematic choice) and pure experience (helps with determining consequences)."_

The premise of the setting is a that a keep exists on the outskirts of civilization, and it's rumored that there's a monster infested cave filled with treasure.

The players have established a fighter, wizard, cleric and thief. They arrived at the keep this morning. The fighter wants to test his skill and help clear the region of monsters in the hopes he'll be able to one day build his own keep. The wizard is looking for some rare ingredients and components, and scrolls, spellbooks, magic items, etc. The cleric wants to aid his friend the fighter in his quest, and his hope that he'll one day lead a temple in the fighter's keep. And the thief is a childhood friend that's looking for a way to fast riches with little work.

There's nothing that indicates any issue with using preauthored material to present to the characters. 

Chapter #1 The Keep. The characters are free to explore, meet the locals, purchase equipment, and learn of the local lay of the land and potential threats, rumors of lost treasure, etc.

Chapter #2 The Wilderness. The characters have learned that there is a mysterious place called the "Caves of Chaos" nearby. Or at least that's what the rumors say. If any have found it, none have returned. Their most specific information is that it lies to the northeast, but the trustworthiness of the source was a bit suspect. But it's the best information they can go on.

Chapter #3 The Caves of Chaos. The PCs locate the caves, and find that they are indeed infested. However, they survived their first foray, and claimed some treasure before narrowly escaping death. While they could set up camp and stay here, they feel it's better to return to the keep to recover. They decide to conceal their treasure, and tell anybody who asks that they didn't find the caves, but did get attacked by an orc warband. To further support the ruse, they choose to circle around and approach the keep from the northwest.

Chapter #4. The Keep. Resting and reprovisioning, and searching for more rumors. The thief goes behind the others backs to bribe a local to learn any secrets regarding the keep and the caves. Why haven't they been discovered, and why have the monsters been allowed to flourish there?

Maybe not the most compelling story, but all quite possible with the adventure as written. At times the players take a greater role in the content of the fiction, and other times it's simple exploration - is there a secret door here? All using traditional D&D approaches and meeting all of the requirements of Eero's model at the same time, although not necessarily all the time (although I still don't see anything in his theory that would indicate a problem with exploring a wall for a secret door and not finding one). All of it could happen without altering the authored text, and yet additional information can be added as well, as is suggested in the module itself.

A Story Now or Narrativist approach (one that's actually utilizing the caves) might skip the Wilderness part altogether. "We want to find an explore the Caves of Chaos" the players/characters declare. "So after hours (or days) of searching, you find yourself entering a small box canyon well hidden by the surrounding forest." For a great deal of us, that's significantly taking away player agency. Why? Because even though they said they wanted to go to the Caves, it doesn't mean that something else might alter their course - voluntarily or involuntarily. They might have had plans to do something else on the way, which hadn't been expressed yet. Personally, I'm not opposed to skipping ahead, but it requires the input of the players to make that decision, not just a declaration by their characters. And no, I'm not implying that you can't do that as well in a Story Now or Narrativist approach, but it is a potential pitfall of the style.

"Meaningful" agency is undefinable, because meaningful is different for different people. Being able to advocate in the manner I'm describing may be meaningful for one player, and in the way you describe for another. 

In terms of advocacy in the standard narrativist model, Eero even clarifies at the end of the essay:

*"For these purposes it is useful to example games in close reading and find out what it is, actually, that the game requires of a player. This whole post has actually been an overview of how certain types of game require players to be engaged in the role of advocacy (“I play my character to express him into the story”) as opposed to authorship (“I play my character to fill the narrative role allotted to him”). Both are called “playing your character” in different game texts, but psychologically and practically they are rather different processes."*

He spends quite a few words about why authorship, particularly shared authorship by the players, is a problem in games like these, and then arrives at the point that the "job" of the player is one of advocacy. He is clearly separating advocacy from authorship here.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Ilbranteloth said:


> So I’m OK with your point about Story Now, that’s the intent and design of the game.
> 
> I disagree with your assessment regarding player agency in something like B2. The players have complete agency over the decisions and actions of their characters, in other words, the advocacy that Eero talks about.



I look at it this way: What Eero is talking about is an idealization and generalization. He doesn't talk about agency at all, and it isn't addressed, so you cannot use the essay [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] pointed at to support your point, it just EXPLICITLY does not do so. 

To elaborate: Eero talks about games with a variety of possible agendas and sources of agenda. So if we were to analyze B2 in his terms, what we would conclude is that its source of agenda is the authors of the module. If it is addressing a player agenda it is because the players understood the nature of the material and agreed that it suited their needs. In other words, any player agency over the fiction was PURELY exercised before the fact, not during play.

During play the game system (Holmes Basic originally) doesn't provide for any explicit control of the agenda by the players. My copy disintegrated long ago and the text isn't available online, so I can't confirm EXACTLY what Holmes stated about the process of play, but it is pretty much in line with OD&D and Moldvay B/X in general tenor. Nowhere does it talk about agenda, the GM's job, at the table, is to adjudicate the action. The game contemplates, basically, a dungeon delve, and B2 follows that model, adding only a fairly minor side-element of RPing interactions with the Keep inhabitants and locating the Caves of Chaos, which are well under an hour's walk away.

Now, Basic D&D is a fairly 'open ended' system, the PCs are assumed to be relatively capable and able to execute most tasks which the players can envisage and describe, perhaps modulated to some extent by ability scores. Nothing within the text suggests that players have agency over the fiction, only that they have control of their characters actions (though there are various rules which can penalize or reward certain types of actions based on alignment, XP awards for 'in character' RP, etc.). 



> In an RPG, the PCs can do anything that their character can reasonably do. That includes building a wall if that’s what you want to do.
> 
> Ultimately my point remains that even if the GM has control of the world it does not mean the players don’t have agency in the fiction. Just not that part of it.



They don't have agency with respect to the content of the fiction! Whatever you call it, call it 'foobarium' I don't really care, the players DON'T HAVE IT in this type of play!!!!!! How can you still deny this? 



> To look at it from a different way, in the same B2 scenario, the GM has no agency over the decisions or actions of the PCs. Which is required for the fiction to occur. Otherwise he’s just reading a book without a plot.



Yes, he does. He has absolute authority to declare any action the PCs attempt to be impossible, to require any sort of resource expenditure, to have any sort of results or consequences which he feels like decreeing. His authority over the PCs is thus EFFECTIVELY almost absolute. He can't literally tell the player that his character just stabbed himself in the eye (well, actually TECHNICALLY even this doesn't appear to violate the letter of the rules of classic D&D). 



> So it is literally impossible for the GM to have all of the agency in that case. It is a shared fiction with a different division of responsibility, that’s all.



See above: Any agency which the players are granted, and even agency which the CHARACTERS have in a theory of 'character agency' (which is what you're talking about) requires that the GM concur and allow the player to act. At best the player can direct his character to do things which game, genre, and table conventions normally delineate as being within his purview. Nothing is guaranteed, and I've played in any number of games where the GM suddenly asserted his authority and denied me the ability to do something which I considered perfectly reasonable and well within what I expected was my part of the game. 

Now, I don't expect that in ANY game there will never be grey areas or differences of opinion about who gets to decide what, or exactly where the edges are of different areas of responsibility in the game. Still, players in 'classic' D&D can have NO absolute expectation of ANY authority at all. This is totally different from Story Now, where players are in charge of the whole agenda and thus directly influence and shape all the content.

Notice, this is a superset of what Eero was talking about. He's only talking about the PROCESS of Story Now, that a GM frames a scene according to an agenda, the players commit some stakes to resolving the scene, and the consequences of their success/failure produce dividends/costs and then form the input into the next scene frame. 

You CAN play this type of game using the B/X rule set. Some of it will be incoherent to the model of play (wandering monsters for example wouldn't make a lot of sense in a Story Now kind of format, though the GM might utilize that mechanism as a form of content generation or something). Still, you could follow a player agenda, utilize ability checks to regulate player input to the fiction, utilize a 'no myth' scene framing concept for setting elements, etc. I expect that there will be SOME issues with specific spell mechanics, maybe certain class features, etc. but its not impossible to make it work. Its NOT the same as, and produces a very different relationship to the fiction, than classic play in something like B2. 



> I don’t have an issue with the GM facilitating things. However, for the players and the GM to have agency, it’s not required either.
> 
> Not being able to say no is taking away the GM’s agency. So you’re saying there can be no empty rooms? No failure to find a secret door? What “no” is forbidden, and what does it have to do with agency.
> 
> If the PC goes to the market square to purchase a holy sword, and there is no holy sword, how is that impacting their agency?
> 
> If they are attempting to infiltrate the castle, and there is no secret door, how is that impacting their agency?




In all realistic RPG play there are genre conventions and other restraints on the players ability to shape the fiction. Lets imagine a player has invented a character who's agenda is to become the mightiest paladin in history and wield a legendary holy sword. Is he going to find it at the market? No, this would certainly not be in keeping with the genre conventions of a sort of Medieval Knight's Tale sort of fiction, now would it? 

So, what is the player going to encounter? He might go to the market square, with his agenda, but he's much more likely to encounter a young man of apparently humble birth but noble aspect, and end up with a squire! Later the squire might play some key role in the acquisition of said holy sword, in a scene far along later in the story. I guess another possibility is that the sword DOES appear at some early point in the narrative, but the character is rejected as not fit, or it remains 'buried in the stone' or something, requiring further adventures to fully attain.

This is all dictated by conventions and the dramatic needs of emergent story, and the realistic factors of running an RPG which is expected to be ongoing over a number of episodes. Perhaps the entirety of the 'holy sword' gets resolved in episode 1, the character is shown his faults (he makes a morally questionable choice in an attempt to get the sword for instance) and the player changes the agenda to something else, like "attain purity of spirit at any cost" or whatever. I mean lots of things can happen. 

I'd just like to note that something like B2 (and ongoing campaign activity resulting from it or something like it) doesn't really support this sort of thing. The PCs are constantly immersed in a GM generated milieu. No element of play supports the idea of a player stating "I want to wield the legendary holy sword of Magilla!" It isn't up to the player to invent such a thing, he's got little expectation that any of the narrative arising out of his interactions with the setting will lead to this agenda being fulfilled, etc. 

Nobody doubts, either, that great GMs the world over often built their techniques around recognizing these kinds of player agendas and incorporating them into their games. Certainly even early D&D had certain pre-recognized agendas, creating a keep, temple, or thieves guild for example. Often creative GMs incorporated a wider variety of these sorts of things, though in many cases they got caught up in doing it in ways that weren't very much like Story Now. In any case, TO THE EXTENT THAT THEY DID SO, they moved in the direction of direct player agenda over the fiction. They HAD TO! That is the way you address, the only pathway, that leads to the player's agenda becoming the focus of play. 

Even the GM given the players leeway in his adjudications to build a wall across a cave in B2 is a tiny step in that direction, the first step on that road, but it is VASTLY different from the full up real deal. You can say "there is no difference in agency" but AGAIN, this relies on a definition of agency which does no work and has no real value because it is failing to acknowledge the very real distinctions between the two types of game.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> For added simplicity let's assume the PC is already in the market square, and declares this action: "I check with such merchants as might be expected to sell such things to determine if there's a holy sword for sale.  If there is, I buy it."   In story now, as far as I can tell a success on the die roll means the PC walks out with a holy sword (and, one assumes, a lighter wallet).  The only recourse the DM has if she thinks a holy sword is overkill for that party or PC in terms of game or character balance is to set an unachievably high DC on finding one - but that's just using more words and dice to say 'no', which ain't allowed.




I think this is addressed in my previous post, somewhat, but you won't have seen that yet...

There are more considerations than the player's desire to instantly achieve his fondest wishes. First of all, if all the players are interested in doing is achieving everything they want at the snap of their fingers, then why not run that game for them? I predict that they'll outgrow that mode of play in approximately 1 session, but who knows? If you really hate running the resulting game and the players insist on continuing it then clearly they need a new GM...

So, the above 'table considerations' being dealt with; we have that there are genre conventions and dramatic pacing and similar concerns which militate against the instant fulfillment of the player's ultimate goals. There are a few approaches here which could be taken:

1) The DC for instant fulfillment of your desire is simply astronomical. In fact its not an unattainable DC, but it will only be attained after months of play and character advancement. The player is welcome to try to insist on making these checks constantly in every situation, but it will be fruitless and costly. Eventually he will fail entirely and his story will be about the fate of the feckless dreamer or something like that! 

2) The GM can frame the scene to include something useful in the way of getting what the character wants. A strange beggar gives him a vision of a holy sword in a glowing castle somewhere. 

3) Maybe he gets some lesser version of what he wants, or he discovers its not so simple. He finds the sword in the chapel adjacent to the market, but he can't touch it until he has become worthy. 

4) He attains his dream, and then some terrible price immediately arises. He has to choose, keep the sword or save the town! If he chooses the sword, then he'll spend the rest of his days trying to make penance for sacrificing innocent lives, while carrying around a sword that curses him and marks him as a sinner! This one is perhaps a bit of 'dirty pool' in that the GM is sort of subverting the player's character goal, but it actually is OK because the character could just give up the sword, save the town, and then resume his quest for it. I'm pretty sure this basic plot has been used numerous times in legends and movies alike.

In the end, given reasonable GMing and players who are actually interested in playing Story Now, your concerns don't really apply. Its like condemning GM centered gaming because the GM can kill off the characters at any moment, or take away all their goodies and never let them have any fun. In neither type of game are these concerns relevant. Terrible games exist, they generally last a couple sessions and die, or get better.


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> So it's not railroading to expect the players to ask about uneven flagstones; but it is railroading to expect them to declare Stealth checks if they want to be sneak up on the giants?
> 
> As far as I can see, those things are exactly parallel.
> 
> Raised, chipped etc flagstone also exist in any rational world. But you don't tell your players about all of those. You wait for them to ask. Why is that not railroading, but it is railroading to expect them to ask if there are any intersections?
> 
> As far as I can see, those things are exactly parallel.




Again, it boils down to techniques of play. He's objecting on the basis of some specific 'scale' of thing that becomes 'too big to ignore' and that he then decided constitutes a 'must mention in the narrative' or else. Its a technique of play issue, not a conceptual one. Its just that he's confusing the two things. 

In Story Now, if something is relevant to the characters, it is because it was framed into a scene, so there can be none of these questions of 'scale', its a non argument. The question of the surprise of the party in your example above is only slightly different. As you point out, in both your game and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s game the onus is on the players to anticipate the possibility of patrols and surprise and then designate their precautions. It might behoove you as a GM to provide a convenient 'front porch' to this kind of scene where the characters can do this (IE indicate that they are approaching the giant lair 'the air grows noticeably warmer and your eyes water slightly from a thin smoky haze, you must be approaching the lava caves of the giants!'). If the characters now wish to be stealthy the players are getting an explicit opening to use to explain any tactics they wish to employ. Alternatively you could simply have them declare these 'moves' ahead of time.


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Again, it boils down to techniques of play. He's objecting on the basis of some specific 'scale' of thing that becomes 'too big to ignore' and that he then decided constitutes a 'must mention in the narrative' or else. Its a technique of play issue, not a conceptual one. Its just that he's confusing the two things.
> 
> In Story Now, if something is relevant to the characters, it is because it was framed into a scene, so there can be none of these questions of 'scale', its a non argument. The question of the surprise of the party in your example above is only slightly different. As you point out, in both your game and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s game the onus is on the players to anticipate the possibility of patrols and surprise and then designate their precautions. It might behoove you as a GM to provide a convenient 'front porch' to this kind of scene where the characters can do this (IE indicate that they are approaching the giant lair 'the air grows noticeably warmer and your eyes water slightly from a thin smoky haze, you must be approaching the lava caves of the giants!'). If the characters now wish to be stealthy the players are getting an explicit opening to use to explain any tactics they wish to employ. Alternatively you could simply have them declare these 'moves' ahead of time.



Maybe call this step "pre-framing"?  

I see it as somewhat essential in terms of providing player/PC choice in how (or if!) they approach a given situation.

Here, for example, the party on hearing that pre-frame might back off a hundred yards and cast a bunch of fire-protection spells before advancing further; or send an invisible scout ahead to check for the presence and-or deployment of any foes while the noisies stay put; or take steps to mitigate the smoke's effect on thier breathing, etc.  If they're just plopped into the room and the giants see them right away, bang go those options.

Lanefan


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Have you ever played, or even read the rules for, the games he mentions? (Sorcerer, DitV, HeroQuest, etc.)



No, and it's irrelevant whether or not I have done so when analyzing Eero's text for what it says and implies.

Lan-"and by the way what is it that makes Eero any more of an expert on this stuff than the rest of us?"-efan


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I assert that a GM-driven game, which relies heavily on the GM to either establish setting in advance and indepndently of the players, or permits the GM to establish setting more-or-less at will in the course of play (including unrevealed setting that permits saying "no"), puts very significant constraints around player agency in respect of the shared fiction. Examples you have given include the finding of an item in a market, or a secret door in a castle. Another that was discussed at length upthread was finding a map hidden in a study.
> 
> You may not care about these constraints. You may not even be interested in talking about them. As [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has already posted, that doesn't mean they're not there.



If neither I nor the players acknowledge their existence then yes, they might as well not be there.



> You may even assert that your game offers some _different_ form of player agency. All I've really grasped about that is that players are able to declare actioins for their PCs - which personally I would regard as a basic property of any RPG, and so a baseline for what players do in the game rather than some alternative mode of agency.



It's not an "alternative mode of agency", it is their agency.



> If a player writes a Belief for his PC "I will find an item that will help me confront my balrog-possessed brother before I leave Hardby", then I know what that PC's dramatic need is: _an opportunity to acquire said item_.



At some point.  Nothing says it has to happen right away, just that at some point it has to happen, or at least try to.

From a DM-driven standpoint this could be achieved by sending the party into B2 and simply adding an item into the cultists' treasure that gives protection from demons. (thus when the confrontation later occurs the balrog's powers are migitated or blocked, though the possessed brother can still beat him up conventionally)



> If a player writes down, in his PC backstory, "I travel the galaxy, with the support of the Travellers' Aid Society, searching for signs of alien life and civilisation", then I know what that PC's dramatic need is: _an opportunity to confront alien life or culture_.



As this is a nigh-inevitable outcome of any spacefaring game, no problem meeting that goal in any game system. 



> This is also obviously wrong. I have played RPG sessions (on occasion) in which all events are dictated by the GM. The players can declare actions for their PCs, but either (i) the GM ignores the outcome of the resolution mechanics (sometimes called "fudging"), or (ii) the GM manipulates the backstory to introduce elements into the fiction that render the outcome of the resolution mechanics (so eg the PCs defeat opponent X, but the GM brings a new opponent Y into the situation who plays exactly the same role).



Situationally dependent, but on the face of it this might just be an example of bad DMing.



> In a RPG like I describe the players have no meaningful agency. l mean, they can speak in funny voices and choose whether their PCs use scimitars or longswords, but they don't actually have any impact on the salient content of the fiction.
> 
> Again, this is obviously wrong: if the GM has extensive power to establish the fiction, and the players have little such power, then obviously the players lack significant agency over the content of the shared fiction.
> 
> They are (self-evidently) limits on the capacity of the players to shape the content of the shared fiction.
> 
> That is not what we are talking about. If I agree to play that game, then the presence of those ficitonal constraints is an _expression_ of my agency.
> 
> But if I delcare actions to try and survive in the camp, or escape from it, and _the GM establishes or manipulated unrevealed backstory so that those actions cannot succeed_, that obviously is a limit upon player agency.
> 
> A player agreeing to play in a fantasy RPG is _exercising_ agency.
> 
> If, subsequently, that player declares that his/her PC searches for a secret door in a wall and the GM, by reading some pre-authored material, declares the search a failure - that is clearly a case of the player lacking agency over the content of the shared fiction.
> 
> It may be irrelevant to you.



Yep.  This to me is the "alternative form of agency", and even in a DM-driven game can sometimes have a function - usually when dealing with off-screen details the DM doesn't want to bother with such as determining each inhabitant of the PC's home village.  But that type of agency is not a part of the normal run of play, and thus is meaningless in that context.



> Here's one way that B2 restricts player agency: if a player declares "I want to meet an alchemist in the keep" then, as the module is written, that action will fail.



That doesn't restrict their agency at all!  They declared an attempted action (thus exercising their agency) and were told that action failed.



> Which also shows that the characters can't do _whatever they like_. They can do _whatever the established fiction of the keep might permit them to do_.



Yep.  Just like reality, in that regard - if I go to the mall and look for a hardware store, no matter what I do if the mall doesn't have a hardware store I ain't gonna find one there.

Side note: thanks to   [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] and   [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] for saving me loads of typing these last few days. 

Lanefan


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> There are more considerations than the player's desire to instantly achieve his fondest wishes. First of all, if all the players are interested in doing is achieving everything they want at the snap of their fingers, then why not run that game for them? I predict that they'll outgrow that mode of play in approximately 1 session, but who knows? If you really hate running the resulting game and the players insist on continuing it then clearly they need a new GM...



It says a lot that you'd frame it that way - that the players need a new GM rather than I-as-GM need new players, which is equally the case.  Couple that with the fact that if I really dislike running what I'm running I can arbitrarily shut it down (and have, in the past) and it kind of implies a very player-centric view; that the players need for a new GM outweighs my need for new players.  Interesting.



> So, the above 'table considerations' being dealt with; we have that there are genre conventions and dramatic pacing and similar concerns which militate against the instant fulfillment of the player's ultimate goals. There are a few approaches here which could be taken:
> 
> 1) The DC for instant fulfillment of your desire is simply astronomical. In fact its not an unattainable DC, but it will only be attained after months of play and character advancement. The player is welcome to try to insist on making these checks constantly in every situation, but it will be fruitless and costly. Eventually he will fail entirely and his story will be about the fate of the feckless dreamer or something like that!
> 
> 2) The GM can frame the scene to include something useful in the way of getting what the character wants. A strange beggar gives him a vision of a holy sword in a glowing castle somewhere.
> 
> 3) Maybe he gets some lesser version of what he wants, or he discovers its not so simple. He finds the sword in the chapel adjacent to the market, but he can't touch it until he has become worthy.
> 
> 4) He attains his dream, and then some terrible price immediately arises. He has to choose, keep the sword or save the town! If he chooses the sword, then he'll spend the rest of his days trying to make penance for sacrificing innocent lives, while carrying around a sword that curses him and marks him as a sinner! This one is perhaps a bit of 'dirty pool' in that the GM is sort of subverting the player's character goal, but it actually is OK because the character could just give up the sword, save the town, and then resume his quest for it. I'm pretty sure this basic plot has been used numerous times in legends and movies alike.



If the holy sword is the end goal they yes, this all applies.

But if the holy sword is but a stepping stone to the PC's real goal of eventually defeating Orcus in single combat, then what I posit could still be true: simple success on an action declaration could put a holy sword in the PC's hands.  Me, I'd rather be able to flat-out say 'no' to this and instead build an adventure or two or six around the locating and recovery of such an item.



> In the end, given reasonable GMing and players who are actually interested in playing Story Now, your concerns don't really apply. Its like condemning GM centered gaming because the GM can kill off the characters at any moment, or take away all their goodies and never let them have any fun. In neither type of game are these concerns relevant. Terrible games exist, they generally last a couple sessions and die, or get better.



True, but the "rocks fall, everyone dies" criticism gets bandied about all the time - might as well chuck the other extreme out there once in a while. 

Lanefan


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I _quoted you _saying that "Eero's model is really no different than what most consider D&D to be" and that "This fits Eero’s model precisely: the player advocates for the character."



That's okay.  I quoted you saying that you were assuming, when you told me that you weren't assuming.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Well, as I've already posted, that "game/campaign as whole" is the stuff the GM has authored and cares about. (Because if the players care about it, then it is subsumed within their PCs' dramatic needs, isn't it?)




No, it's not subsumed within their characters' dramatic needs.  If my wife has something important to her that she cares about, it becomes important to me and I care about it.  My care doesn't strip it away from her and make it about me.  D&D is no different other than the DM is the partner with the players.  If I introduce something that the players come to care about, it doesn't become theirs.  It becomes a partnered care, just like when I care about something they've established as a important for their character, what they established doesn't become about me.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Again, it boils down to techniques of play. He's objecting on the basis of some specific 'scale' of thing that becomes 'too big to ignore' and that he then decided constitutes a 'must mention in the narrative' or else. Its a technique of play issue, not a conceptual one. Its just that he's confusing the two things.



That's not entirely accurate.  I would already have told them about the flagstones on the floor, so I've taken care of my duty to inform them.  Since I'm not rushing them from place to place, they would have every opportunity to say, "I examine the flagstones near me to see if one is raised or uneven."  Since there's no way in hell that I pre-authored the individual flagstones, I'd tell them okay, fine, and set a DC so that they can find out the answer.  

With the intersection, it's not a matter of scale so much as a matter of change. As I mentioned above, I would tell them if the flagstone passage turned into a smooth cave like floor.  Similarly, when going down a passageway, an intersection represents a change in the environment that I would alert them to.



> In Story Now, if something is relevant to the characters, it is because it was framed into a scene, so there can be none of these questions of 'scale', its a non argument. The question of the surprise of the party in your example above is only slightly different. As you point out, in both your game and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s game the onus is on the players to anticipate the possibility of patrols and surprise and then designate their precautions. It might behoove you as a GM to provide a convenient 'front porch' to this kind of scene where the characters can do this (IE indicate that they are approaching the giant lair 'the air grows noticeably warmer and your eyes water slightly from a thin smoky haze, you must be approaching the lava caves of the giants!'). If the characters now wish to be stealthy the players are getting an explicit opening to use to explain any tactics they wish to employ. Alternatively you could simply have them declare these 'moves' ahead of time.




The problem I have is that if they don't get the "front porch" scene, then unless the players are expected to declare all manner of moves in advance about what might possibly happen, the DM is railroading the players through places by making decisions for the PCs.  If they are expected to declare those moves in advance, the game becomes a giant game of chess where you have to stop the momentum of the game so that the players can strategize about every situation they might encounter and give the DM a plan.  That wastes a bunch of time on things that the players won't ever encounter.  Most of the possibilities won't turn out to be the true situation.


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> Side note: thanks to   [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] and   [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] for saving me loads of typing these last few days.
> 
> Lanefan




You're very welcome!


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Here's one way that B2 restricts player agency: if a player declares "I want to meet an alchemist in the keep" then, as the module is written, that action will fail.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That doesn't restrict their agency at all!  They declared an attempted action (thus exercising their agency) and were told that action failed.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Just like reality, in that regard - if I go to the mall and look for a hardware store, no matter what I do if the mall doesn't have a hardware store I ain't gonna find one there.
Click to expand...


A gameworld isn't a real world. The real world has objective existence, and I can literally interact with it. A gameworld is a fiction, which is authored by the game particiaptns who then tell one another about it.

If the GM decides - by way of authorship - that there is no alchemist, despite the player wanting it to be the case that his/her PC meet such a person, that is clearly an exercise of GM agency over the content of the shared fiction, which correlates with an absence of such agency on the part of the player.



Lanefan said:


> If neither I nor the players acknowledge their existence then yes, they might as well not be there.



I'm not sure how refusing to acknowledge the existence of "story now" RPGing also qualifies you to be an expert on what it does and doesn't involve!

Or to put it another way: a general prerequisite to discussing the difference between X and Y (eg GM aiuthorship of setting vs storynow) is to acknowledge the existence of Y as well as X.



Lanefan said:


> From a DM-driven standpoint this could be achieved by sending the party into B2 and simply adding an item into the cultists' treasure that gives protection from demons. (thus when the confrontation later occurs the balrog's powers are migitated or blocked, though the possessed brother can still beat him up conventionally)



No one disputes that fictional outcomes in a GM-driven game might be the same as in a player-driven game. They might be the same if someone just told a story also.

But RPGing is an activity, and what is relevant to the play experience is the nature of the activity.

The difference between _confronting a situation in which you find out if an item is the one your PC needs_, and having the GM tell you "By the way, this thing you found - it's good against balrogs", is pretty marked.



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Have you ever played, or even read the rules for, the games he mentions? (Sorcerer, DitV, HeroQuest, etc.)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No, and it's irrelevant whether or not I have done so when analyzing Eero's text for what it says and implies.
> 
> Lan-"and by the way what is it that makes Eero any more of an expert on this stuff than the rest of us?"-efan
Click to expand...


I thikn what make Eero Tuovinen more of an expert than you on DitV, Sorcerer etc is that he has read the rules for those games and played them. Whereas you - as you just posted - have not.

I would also say that it's highly relevant to reading a description of the technques of those games that you haven't read them. Eero is not posting an abstract description of something he dreamed up one day. He's posting an account of an actual type of GMing. If yoiu think what he describes applies to traditional AD&D play, then that's enough to show that you've missed his point!


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> A gameworld isn't a real world. The real world has objective existence, and I can literally interact with it. A gameworld is a fiction, which is authored by the game particiaptns who then tell one another about it.



And the closer that game world is set up to resemble a real world in how it operates the better: more consistent, more believable, and easier to relate to.

And before you say "the real world doesn't have magic ... [etc.]" ask yourself - what if it did?  How would the real world look and function if it had D&D-style magic in it, but very little or no modern technology?  Answer that (in whatever manner suits you) and boom: you've got a starting point for building your world.

If the GM decides - by way of authorship - that there is no alchemist, despite the player wanting it to be the case that his/her PC meet such a person, that is clearly an exercise of GM agency over the content of the shared fiction, which correlates with an absence of such agency on the part of the player.



> I'm not sure how refusing to acknowledge the existence of "story now" RPGing also qualifies you to be an expert on what it does and doesn't involve!



You misread me, I think.  I'm not refusing to acknowledge the existence of story-now RPGing - it'd be mighty hard to do that around here! - but I am denying that player agency is solely (or even mostly, or even significantly) defined by how much control the players have over the content of the fiction.



> Or to put it another way: a general prerequisite to discussing the difference between X and Y (eg GM aiuthorship of setting vs storynow) is to acknowledge the existence of Y as well as X.



I can acknowledge the existence of both X and Y while at the same time saying that one of them is IMO built on a foundation of loose sand.



> But RPGing is an activity, and what is relevant to the play experience is the nature of the activity.
> 
> The difference between _confronting a situation in which you find out if an item is the one your PC needs_, and having the GM tell you "By the way, this thing you found - it's good against balrogs", is pretty marked.



Or to rephrase: the difference between having just the item you need handed to you on a platter because your successful action declaration authored its existence, or the serendipitous joy on realizing this item you found on a seemingly-unrelated adventure is in fact exactly what you've been looking for all along.



> I thikn what make Eero Tuovinen more of an expert than you on DitV, Sorcerer etc is that he has read the rules for those games and played them. Whereas you - as you just posted - have not.



On those games, yes.  But taking what he's read and trying to apply it to gaming as a whole, which is what he's doing in that eassy?  I can do that too.  So can you.



> I would also say that it's highly relevant to reading a description of the technques of those games that you haven't read them. Eero is not posting an abstract description of something he dreamed up one day. He's posting an account of an actual type of GMing. If yoiu think what he describes applies to traditional AD&D play, then that's enough to show that you've missed his point!



The impression I got was that he was trying to apply his theories to all RPGs, including all versions of D&D.

Gotta run - a game to play.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> if the holy sword is but a stepping stone to the PC's real goal of eventually defeating Orcus in single combat, then what I posit could still be true: simple success on an action declaration could put a holy sword in the PC's hands.  Me, I'd rather be able to flat-out say 'no' to this and instead build an adventure or two or six around the locating and recovery of such an item.



Here is a quote from an actual play report:



pemerton said:


> Attention now turned to the Aspect of Orcus - it had been trapped by channelling power from Vecna, and the player of the invoker/wizard had already pointed out that Vecna would be alerted if the PCs tried to steal secrets from it; now, a successful Religion check (made easily against a Hard DC, with a +40 bonus) allowed the invoker/wizard to make contact with Vecna and ask him to rip information of a secret entrance into Thanatos from the mind of the Aspect
> 
> <snip>
> 
> With the secret entrance into Everlost, Orcus's palace of bones on Thanatos, now acquired, all that was required was to cast the Planar Portal to teleport there: I read out to the players the description of Thanatos and the palace from the MotP, and they were glad they hadn't tried for a frontal assault
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The session ended there, with the PCs stepping through their portal into the secret way into Orcus's throne room.





pemerton said:


> I took pity on the players, who have not had a treasure drop for a long time, and decided that the Raven Queen intercepted their teleport to Thanatos to give them some power-up items (some other gods also got in on the action, for a few blessings etc).



In one episode of play, we have both (i) the players establishing a secret entrance via successful resolution of declared actions, and (ii) items that are useful for defeating Orcus being handed over in a minor transition scene!


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## AbdulAlhazred

Dear [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] Does the education system in your country teach logic? I'm afraid it is a lost subject in mine, for which I humbly apologize! 



Ilbranteloth said:


> The GM deciding that there is no secret door in this particular passage 10 years before play does not affect player agency, any more than the DM declaring that in this pseudo-medieval fantasy world there are no space ships, and no, you can’t have one.
> 
> If you are playing a standard narrativist model game, however, then some of these things remove player agency. Because by design, some of these things are within the agency of the players, and some of these scenarios or mechanics take that agency away.
> 
> That does not apply in other games where the agency that the player has, by design, is different.
> 
> If you want to design a football game where the players can alter the circumstance of scoring, or where they can make decisions they are currently within the realm of the referee, you have not altered the agency of the players in the original game. They still have 100% player agency, even though there is now a game that gives them more options.
> 
> You, and others, continue to attempt to assess the agency of the players by the lens of your specific game or game model. I have a problem with that because the implication is that others are “doing it wrong” or it raises the possibility that players who don’t make the distinction between games expect something different from other gameplay models.
> 
> But I think you are entirely wrong about what constitutes player agency in other games. The goals of the design of the game, the goals of the GM, and the players all help define what agency the players want/get, along with what agency the GM wants/gets.




What your saying is basically equivalent to "My Honda Civic has just as much horsepower as your Mercedes S Class, because we measure it numbers of hondapowers and in that system the two come out the same, so they're identically powerful." 

This argument is ridiculous to state it bluntly. If you were to have made it in a college-level logic class you'd have been roundly roasted for it. Two things which are not equivalent do not become equivalent simply because you refuse to measure them in a way that actually measures they way that they are qualitatively different. 

Not only that, but the other argument here "you never had X, therefor if I don't give you any of X than you can't possibly be lacking X!" is frankly worthless and doesn't fly at all.

We are not assessing anything by any 'lens', we are measuring OBJECTIVELY how much actual control the players have over the actual narrative in actual games of different types. The fact of control over the narrative is independent of the type of game, I can easily define it and measure it in a way that references nothing more than the essential facts of RPG play (that there are characters played by the players and a narrative that they participate in). 

There is absolutely no point in belaboring this anymore. For whatever reason you guys seem to perceive that imputing a difference in agency to the style of play you favor that is different from that of another style is something you cannot countenance and that must be denied even by the most arcane twists of illogic. The fact that walking down this path leads to such absurd positions as "more choice by the players is actually railroading by the GM" only EMPHASIZE the magnitude of the discord between your position and reason. 

I really honestly don't think any type of play is better or worse in any objective way than another, and I have both GMed and played in games of all descriptions for decades. I also agree that there is a continuum between DM and player driven games. I don't disagree that players have choices of certain types in all games. But the notion that a Story Now game somehow has no extra dimension of freedom to act (agency) simply doesn't stand up to examination. I don't even see why you make this argument, but I feel like it isn't really a worthwhile discussion anymore, and maybe we should move on to some other aspect of the thread?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Maybe call this step "pre-framing"?
> 
> I see it as somewhat essential in terms of providing player/PC choice in how (or if!) they approach a given situation.
> 
> Here, for example, the party on hearing that pre-frame might back off a hundred yards and cast a bunch of fire-protection spells before advancing further; or send an invisible scout ahead to check for the presence and-or deployment of any foes while the noisies stay put; or take steps to mitigate the smoke's effect on thier breathing, etc.  If they're just plopped into the room and the giants see them right away, bang go those options.
> 
> Lanefan




I think a reasonable GM would be amenable to a player saying "hang on boss, can we approach carefully?" Yes, in some minor degree he's let the cat out of the bag by stating that there are some giants who will spot the party, but that's hardly surprising news and even relatively stupid and unwise characters would be likely to anticipate that possibility. So it isn't really a HUGE issue. I'd also point out that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] invented this example off the top of his head and maybe it isn't very 'polished' in that sense. 

Anyway, we agree that the players should have some chances to assert 'character agency' in terms of stopping, preparing, etc. I don't think its necessary to let them turn aside or change their plans in between significant scenes because they've already declared what they want in that respect. Telling them they reach the other end of a road they already chose to travel down isn't 'railroading' for instance. If the players wanted to have stipulations "we won't travel more than 1 day's riding down the road before stopping and reconsidering" they certainly have a chance to interject that sort of thing in play. I would call it a negative characteristic of a GM if they really try to jam the action forward so forcefully at the table that the players never get a word in edgewise to say theses things. I don't think Pemerton would object to that characterization.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> It says a lot that you'd frame it that way - that the players need a new GM rather than I-as-GM need new players, which is equally the case.  Couple that with the fact that if I really dislike running what I'm running I can arbitrarily shut it down (and have, in the past) and it kind of implies a very player-centric view; that the players need for a new GM outweighs my need for new players.  Interesting.



Eh, I guess. I mean, I don't put a huge stock on the way I stated it myself. I'm happy to state it as "the GM needs different players", as that is equally the case. I don't really 'take sides' in those sorts of questions, normally. I just see it as a failure of consensus on agenda. The group should be reformed with different people in it.



> If the holy sword is the end goal they yes, this all applies.
> 
> But if the holy sword is but a stepping stone to the PC's real goal of eventually defeating Orcus in single combat, then what I posit could still be true: simple success on an action declaration could put a holy sword in the PC's hands.  Me, I'd rather be able to flat-out say 'no' to this and instead build an adventure or two or six around the locating and recovery of such an item.



Well, I don't see why in a Story Now game this wouldn't or couldn't also transpire. If said weapon is understood to be powerful and rare, wielded only by an extremely elite type of person, then I would say genre convention would virtually dictate that acquiring it would be a difficult task. 

Alternatively you could go all 'Elfstones of Shannara' on the whole thing and hand it to the PC on day one. Now he's got to deal with figuring out if he can use this McGuffin, living up to the expectations of its wielder, and constantly in fear of those who mark him for possession of it. He may well be 'fated to wield the Sword of Sir McGuffin' but that doesn't have to be a cakewalk! 



> True, but the "rocks fall, everyone dies" criticism gets bandied about all the time - might as well chuck the other extreme out there once in a while.
> 
> Lanefan




Hehe,  Some of this conversation can be a little frustrating, but I always feel like at some level we can all just play together. That's always been my strength as a gamer, only the most horrible game won't amuse me and be fun. Anyway, I'd love to run one of mine for you and some of the other people in this thread. Doubting that will happen, but its an amusing idea at least!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> That's not entirely accurate.  I would already have told them about the flagstones on the floor, so I've taken care of my duty to inform them.  Since I'm not rushing them from place to place, they would have every opportunity to say, "I examine the flagstones near me to see if one is raised or uneven."  Since there's no way in hell that I pre-authored the individual flagstones, I'd tell them okay, fine, and set a DC so that they can find out the answer.
> 
> With the intersection, it's not a matter of scale so much as a matter of change. As I mentioned above, I would tell them if the flagstone passage turned into a smooth cave like floor.  Similarly, when going down a passageway, an intersection represents a change in the environment that I would alert them to.



I don't think you're saying anything different here than I am. Its a matter of technique of play, perhaps also bearing on narrative pacing and some other things, but not a matter of agency. 



> The problem I have is that if they don't get the "front porch" scene, then unless the players are expected to declare all manner of moves in advance about what might possibly happen, the DM is railroading the players through places by making decisions for the PCs.  If they are expected to declare those moves in advance, the game becomes a giant game of chess where you have to stop the momentum of the game so that the players can strategize about every situation they might encounter and give the DM a plan.  That wastes a bunch of time on things that the players won't ever encounter.  Most of the possibilities won't turn out to be the true situation.




As I said in a post written after yours here I think that the players are well within their rights to call a halt to the GM's construction of the next scene and ask about precautions and whatnot. It is probably more convenient for the GM to create a small hiatus to allow for this in a situation like the one narrated about the fire giants, as any reasonable GM can likely anticipate players desires here. In fact you could almost see it as framing an anticipatory scene in keeping with a, minor and local, agenda of succeeding against the fire giants. Alternatively the players might simply take charge and say something like "OK, the party leader raises his right hand in the sign of parley and approaches the giants..." 

As for the thing about wasting time in these preparations. I find it odd that you would say this when the whole GM directed mode of play is rife with these kinds of possibilities, and the main goal in developing Story Now and No Myth techniques was to avoid this problem! I don't stopping outside the fire giant cave to allow PCs to 'suit up' for a coming encounter is exactly a waste. There are no 'might have beens' in Story Now play, things are encountered because of reasons.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> As I said in a post written after yours here I think that the players are well within their rights to call a halt to the GM's construction of the next scene and ask about precautions and whatnot.




I would personally find that to be very unsatisfactory.  Having to re-wind things that have happened is a personal pet peeve.  I'll do it when I've screwed up AND if that screw up has worked against the players, but not for any other reason.  I'd much prefer that the DM not play our PCs in the first place and give us the option as we approach the enemy.



> As for the thing about wasting time in these preparations. I find it odd that you would say this when the whole GM directed mode of play is rife with these kinds of possibilities, and the main goal in developing Story Now and No Myth techniques was to avoid this problem! I don't stopping outside the fire giant cave to allow PCs to 'suit up' for a coming encounter is exactly a waste. There are no 'might have beens' in Story Now play, things are encountered because of reasons.



It's different.  If I have to tell the DM all the different actions I take in response to all of the possibilities that I can think of, I'm wasting a whole lot of time and thought on stuff that will never be relevant.  In a normal DM facing game, you might take precautions against possibilities, but not in the same way.  We aren't going to spend a lot of time thinking of strategies to use if the baron is a vampire, if the baroness is a vampire, if the kid down the block is a vampire, etc., or maybe one of them is a lich and all those strategies, or maybe one of them is a...

We might grab some stakes and holy water, though.  The strategies will happen as wander the baron's castle and see signs of vampires, like no mirrors or food that has no garlic in it.  You only have to spend all that time on contingencies if the DM is the type who will take control of your PCs and just walk you into things if you don't tell him everything in advance.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> In one episode of play, we have both (i) the players establishing a secret entrance via successful resolution of declared actions, and (ii) items that are useful for defeating Orcus being handed over in a minor transition scene!



YOU took pity on them and YOU decided to intercept the teleport to give them items.  How is that not YOU engaging in DM agency?


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think a reasonable GM would be amenable to a player saying "hang on boss, can we approach carefully?" Yes, in some minor degree he's let the cat out of the bag by stating that there are some giants who will spot the party, but that's hardly surprising news and even relatively stupid and unwise characters would be likely to anticipate that possibility.



Still kinda ruins the setup, though; if for no other reason than the party sneak doesn't get a chance to do her thing with some stealthy scouting.  The pre-frame of increasing heat and smoky smell, followed by a chance to prepare and-or pre-scout is the far better option IMO.  


> I'd also point out that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] invented this example off the top of his head and maybe it isn't very 'polished' in that sense.



Fair enough; some of the examples I've tossed out in this thread have been similarly off-the-cuff.  But the point remains, it's too fast of a jump-shift.



> Anyway, we agree that the players should have some chances to assert 'character agency' in terms of stopping, preparing, etc. I don't think its necessary to let them turn aside or change their plans in between significant scenes because they've already declared what they want in that respect. Telling them they reach the other end of a road they already chose to travel down isn't 'railroading' for instance. If the players wanted to have stipulations "we won't travel more than 1 day's riding down the road before stopping and reconsidering" they certainly have a chance to interject that sort of thing in play.



All that's needed is for the players to say to the DM "Tell us if we see anything unusual or interesting along the way"; or for the DM to simply do this unprompted, as standard procedure.


> I would call it a negative characteristic of a GM if they really try to jam the action forward so forcefully at the table that the players never get a word in edgewise to say theses things.



Ditto.

Which is part of my issue - it seems in some of the examples we've seen that the players/PCs aren't always getting the chance to say/do these things.  The giants one is, as we've seen, a rather obvious case in point.  The reliquary one is another - no chance given to find a different or more stealthy approach, no chance given to pre-scout or pre-buff, and so on...though in fairness we don't really know how much the guiding angels had to do with that in the actual run of play whose log we've seen.  I mean, if they just marched the PCs up to the reliquary entrance without so much as a by-your-leave then the PCs are kinda stuck with that, and so be it.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> We are not assessing anything by any 'lens', we are measuring OBJECTIVELY how much actual control the players have over the actual narrative in actual games of different types. The fact of control over the narrative is independent of the type of game, I can easily define it and measure it in a way that references nothing more than the essential facts of RPG play (that there are characters played by the players and a narrative that they participate in).



His point, as I understood it, had nothing to do with narrative control specifically.

I'll try to put it in my own words: different games - including but not at all limited to RPGs - each give players a certain amount of agency within that particular game as defined by that game's rules; and while in many games the players can choose either to exert less agency than the game rules provide or to exert what they have badly (though either is almost always a suboptimal thing to do) they can never choose to exert more; and if they do they are cheating.

In chess I have the agency to move my pieces as the rules allow, one per turn.  If I try to move two per turn I've cheated by exceeding my agency.  Chess does not allow me to exert no agency (i.e. skip my turn) but it does allow me to exert it very badly by making a series of meaningless or flat-out awful (or randomly determined!) moves on my turns.

In most normal RPGs the game rules give me as a player the agency to - within the rules - roll up whatever character I see fit to in a mechanical sense (stats, race, class, etc., depending what the dice or other char-gen system give me to work with) and then give it whatever personality I feel like.  Those rules also then give me the agency within the game to:
- play that character within the fiction as presented (inhabit its persona and interact with the game-world on that basis)
- play that character mechanically (roll the dice, track its h.p., etc.)
- advocate for that character (state its actions)
- reasonably expect the DM to play in good faith

To go beyond this - e.g. by playing someone else's character or falsely tracking its h.p. or demanding that stated actions that are impossible succeed anyway - is exceeding my agency, and may quickly veer into cheating if it's not there already.

In story-now RPGs the agency expands to include some control over content of the fiction along with the other things noted above.  Whether or not this is a good thing (and by extension, whether or not the story-now concept overall is a good thing) is probably the root of this whole debate.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Eh, I guess. I mean, I don't put a huge stock on the way I stated it myself. I'm happy to state it as "the GM needs different players", as that is equally the case. I don't really 'take sides' in those sorts of questions, normally. I just see it as a failure of consensus on agenda. The group should be reformed with different people in it.



OK.



> Well, I don't see why in a Story Now game this wouldn't or couldn't also transpire. If said weapon is understood to be powerful and rare, wielded only by an extremely elite type of person, then I would say genre convention would virtually dictate that acquiring it would be a difficult task.
> 
> Alternatively you could go all 'Elfstones of Shannara' on the whole thing and hand it to the PC on day one. Now he's got to deal with figuring out if he can use this McGuffin, living up to the expectations of its wielder, and constantly in fear of those who mark him for possession of it. He may well be 'fated to wield the Sword of Sir McGuffin' but that doesn't have to be a cakewalk!



The Shannara reference is lost on me.  I once many years ago managed to get through about half of one of those books before giving up, and have never tried again.  But even with that, I see what you're saying; and it's certainly an option.



> Hehe,  Some of this conversation can be a little frustrating, but I always feel like at some level we can all just play together. That's always been my strength as a gamer, only the most horrible game won't amuse me and be fun. Anyway, I'd love to run one of mine for you and some of the other people in this thread. Doubting that will happen, but its an amusing idea at least!



Well at least you and I are on the same continent, even if not by much... 

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> YOU took pity on them and YOU decided to intercept the teleport to give them items.  How is that not YOU engaging in DM agency?



It is GM agency, although (i) the agency is mostly being spent imlementing the treasure parcel guidelines, and (ii) some of it is influenced by player item wishlists.

In 4e, magic items are an asepct of PC build that occupy a different space in relation to GM and player agency than (say) feat selection.

Which also reminds us that this is GM agency over PC build, not so much over the content of the shared fiction. (That the Raven Queen is allied with the PCs, and wants to help them defeat Orcus, is something that has already been established in play and is significantly player-driven.)


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> No blocking is being done by nothing being at the bazaar.  There are many other ways to achieve the goals.



All I can really do is reiterate:

The player's goal for his/her PC is to find an item that might be useful. The game could cut to that chase. Or the player could jump through GM-establilshed hoops (whether pre-authored or rolled for) before getting to that outcome.

I don't understand by what criterion you suggest that the first undermines player agency over the content of the shared fiction while the latter affirms it.



Maxperson said:


> No, it's not subsumed within their characters' dramatic needs.  If my wife has something important to her that she cares about, it becomes important to me and I care about it.  My care doesn't strip it away from her and make it about me.  D&D is no different other than the DM is the partner with the players.  If I introduce something that the players come to care about, it doesn't become theirs.  It becomes a partnered care, just like when I care about something they've established as a important for their character, what they established doesn't become about me.



I don't really follow your point here. What I was saying was a response to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] contrasting "PC dramatic needs" with "the game/campaign as a whole". My point was that if that stuff is something the players actively care about and want to engage with, then it itself has become (on aspect of) PCs' dramatic needs. (Eg if Lanefan mentions slavery, and the players decide to have their PCs fight in the cause of abolition, then ipso facto abolition has become one of the dramatic needs of these protgaonists.)

Hence it follows from Lanefan's contrasting of it with dramatic needs that it has not taken on such a status; and hence is something primarily of interest to the GM. The players may or may not want to go along with it, but if they do that is not any exercise by them of agency over the content of the shared fiction.



Maxperson said:


> when going down a passageway, an intersection represents a change in the environment that I would alert them to.



This is just your opinion on what is salient. You (and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]) care about passageways. I find that they very easily become boring, and if there is nothing at stake and the players don't ask about them I'm happy to disregard them. In my Burning Wheel game I will cheerfully resolve an hours-long trek through the catacombs with a single Catacombs-wise check.

If the player wants to know the layout of some particular place for some particular reason, we can get to that level of detail and work something out (most likely along the lines of "I make a Catacombs-wise check to find the six-way intersction I've heard about underneath the cathedral"); but no one is interested in cataloguing every intersectin down there for the sake of it.



Maxperson said:


> I'm not rushing them from place to place



Again with these meaningless metaphors. Narrating "OK, so you go through the door back into the corridor" and "OK, you travel through the Underdark and arrive at the lava-filled cavern the dwarves described to you" are _identical narrativbe processes_. Neither leaves out more information than the other, or railroads anyone more than the other. That's a fundamental difference between fiction and reality. In reality, every square inch of every surface someone traverses exerts causal influence over them, and they exert the same over it. But in a fiction, there is only what is narrated. You don't give the players more opportunities for choice by narrting only things that are nearby rather than things that are geographically distant!



Maxperson said:


> I would already have told them about the flagstones on the floor



Do you mention every floor covering in every room? Every road surface? Every species of plant in the wilderness? ("Hang on, that's not normally found in these parts! What animal - or evil druid - spread it to here?")

Every wall surface - stone, brick, plastered, painted, bare, scrubbed, filthy, etc? (Think of the plastered wall in ToH for a concrete example of a module which turns on this.)

To be honest I find that impossible to believe.



Maxperson said:


> I would tell them if the flagstone passage turned into a smooth cave like floor.



I live in a typical urban neighbourhood in a multi-million population industrialised city. Walking 100 m down my street involves passing multiple sorts of road and footpath surfaces (cobblestones, asphalt, concrete) plus various "hatches" (some concrete, some metal) plus heavy metal ramps laid over driveways (that my girls love to jump on so as to make a noise). No GM in any modern or sci-fi game every narrated things in that degree of detail.

I've never been to a mediaeval city (obviously), but I've walked through cities that more closely resemble our fantasy cities than does modern Melbourne (I'm thinking especially Fez, Zanzibar and Nairobi). Street surfaces are sometimes dirt, sometimes paved or cobbled, sometimes muddy. Building are sometimes stone or brick, sometimes timber - or a mix of both. Some are permanent, some at least look more temporary (eg rough-hewn timber bound together with cord). There are balconiies, and shutters of various sorts, and cords running across the streets or between buidlings, etc.

No GM in any fantasy game ever narrated all this stuff when the PCs walk down the street. Yet all of it is _potentially_ salient. Is it railroading not to do so?



Maxperson said:


> You gave them no opportunity in your example.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> You gave them no opportunity to tell you that they were stealthy in giant territory.





Maxperson said:


> The problem I have is that if they don't get the "front porch" scene, then unless the players are expected to declare all manner of moves in advance about what might possibly happen, the DM is railroading the players through places by making decisions for the PCs.  If they are expected to declare those moves in advance, the game becomes a giant game of chess where you have to stop the momentum of the game so that the players can strategize about every situation they might encounter and give the DM a plan.  That wastes a bunch of time on things that the players won't ever encounter.



Are those last sentences based on your experience with "story now" play? Or are they just more conjecture?

If the players want to approach the giants stealthily, they can do so. In a 4e game, the whole trip is probably being resolved as a skill challenge, and if the PCs want to put a group Stealth check in there to try and achieve the result _we see the giants before they see us_, they're welcome to. But they don't need me to remind them to do that. They're the ones playing their PCs, and they're the ones who know what they want their PCs to do. They can make these calls if they want.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I would call it a negative characteristic of a GM if they really try to jam the action forward so forcefully at the table that the players never get a word in edgewise to say theses things. I don't think Pemerton would object to that characterization.



This is why I asked [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] if, at his table, the players need permission to speak. In my experience, if the players want their PCs to do something they will say so. Conversely, if they're keen to get from A to B because that's where the action is, it adds nothgin to the play experience for the GM to mention ten different intersctions to fill half-an-hour of the session before we get to B.

In part under the influence of other posters who play more avant-garde games than I do, I've become a big fan of "OK, yep, you did that, but now what about . . .?" - that is, if the players want to make potions or stock up on assault rifles or whatever it is, let's just write it down and knock off the ritual components or credits or whatever it is, but I'm not that interested in the _players_ using this sort of hemming and hawing as a way of putting off hard choices. Or of seeking in-advance assurances from the GM that, if only they pack the right gear, then everything will turn out how they want. I push them towards "story now" rather than "story already written via the equipment list".

That doesn't mean that there are never hour-long logistics interludes in my 4e game, but I prefer to keep them to a minimum.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> And the closer that game world is set up to resemble a real world in how it operates the better: more consistent, more believable, and easier to relate to.
> 
> And before you say "the real world doesn't have magic ... [etc.]" ask yourself - what if it did?  How would the real world look and function if it had D&D-style magic in it, but very little or no modern technology?  Answer that (in whatever manner suits you) and boom: you've got a starting point for building your world.



I don't care about magic or jump drives.

My point is this: the real world is a real thing. I interact with it via causal processes.

The fiction is fiction. I "interact" with it (that word is a metaphor in this context) by either (i) making it up, or (ii) having someone else tell me something they made up about it.

If someone has made up dozens of facts about flagstones in that imaginary world then good for them, but I don't think I can envisage a scenario in which I want them to tell me about it!



Lanefan said:


> the difference between having just the item you need handed to you on a platter because your successful action declaration authored its existence, or the serendipitous joy on realizing this item you found on a seemingly-unrelated adventure is in fact exactly what you've been looking for all along.



That is not quite right, because "handed to you on a platter" is not just metaphor but a pejorative one.

Playing a RPG is playing a RPG. It's not noble struggle, or dingity-conferring labour. Working your way through the GM's dungeon and serendipitously finding that the GM wrote something in that you care about is not some more virtuous than playing through a sequence of challenging situations with the reward emerging (or failing to) at the end of it.

Would my BW game have been _better_ if the mage PC had inadvertantly blown his brother up with a fireball spell because his brother happened to be tied up in a niche down the corridor; rather than the PC seeing his brother slain before his eyes by an assassin who got there first, and all because the mage chose to travel through the catacombs and got lost in them? Personally I'm not seeing it.



Lanefan said:


> The reliquary one is another - no chance given to find a different or more stealthy approach, no chance given to pre-scout or pre-buff, and so on...though in fairness we don't really know how much the guiding angels had to do with that in the actual run of play whose log we've seen.



I'll paste it again:



pemerton said:


> It also became clear to them that there were chaotic forces within Mal Arundak as well as outside it - connected, they assumed, to the Ebon Flame, which they knew to be locked up inside the bastion and believed to contain the essence of the Elder Elemental Eye.
> 
> The "angels" showed the weary travellers to a room where they could rest and freshen up. The invoker/wizard used Purify Water to remove the corrupting sludge from the fountain in the room, and they took a long rest (they also may have done some divination, but the details escape me).
> 
> Reinvigorated, they went back out to speak to the angels, and presented as their principal concern the need to check the bastion's defences, and reinvigorate them if necessary. The paranoid "angels" began to suspect them, however, of wanting to be shown the way to the Flame so they could steal it. Matters came to something of a head when the invoker/wizard, as part of "reinforcing the magic wards", raised a Magic Circle vs Demons at the entrance to the reliquary where the Flame was stored - the angels could sense that they couldn't cross it, and accused him of treachery, but he (and his fellows) retorted that the angels has been corrupted by their long labours on the Abyss, and insisted that they join in a ritual of purification and reinvigoration in the spirit of Pelor. (This had been resolved a social skill challenge, in which the PCs were successful so far.)
> 
> The invoker/wizard then used his Memory of a Thousand Lifetimes to recall a teleport sigil from Pelor's hold in Hestavar, and opened a Planar Portal directly to that point (successful Arcana check), allowing Pelor's divine power to wash over the PCs and the angels. A successful Religion check purged them of their corruption, and they duly thanked the PCs for purifying them, and allowed them to enter the reliquary to learn where the chaos was coming from.



Where is the railroading meant to have happened? What choices were the players denied?



Lanefan said:


> The impression I got was that he was trying to apply his theories to all RPGs, including all versions of D&D.



Eero Tuovinen is describing a particular approach to RPGing - "story now", as achieved by means of the "standard narrativistic model". (There are other approaches to "story now" - eg Apocalypse World and its offshoots, which [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] - of posters in this thread - is probably best qualified to expound on. But the "standard narrativistic model" is what I'm most familiar with, in part because I broadly worked it out for myself c 1987, although reading and play since then have helped me improve my technique somewhat.)

It is possible to adapt D&D to "standard narrativistic model" play - that's what I did in the late 80s - but some aspects of the system will push back. And it's very far from the default approach to playing D&D, as Eero Tuovinen notes. And as this thread has brought out (if there was any lingering doubt).


----------



## pemerton

Ilbranteloth said:


> This is Eero's definition of advocacy:
> 
> _"Character advocacy
> Players can have different roles in a roleplaying game. Typical overarching categories are “player roles” and “GM roles”, which are fuzzy and historically determined expressions of natural language. One type of player role is when the game requires a player to be an advocate for a single player character – this advocacy thing is an exact theory term, unlike the fuzzy concept of “player role”. When a player is an advocate for a character in a roleplaying game, *this means that his task in playing the game is to express his character’s personality, interests and agenda for the benefit of himself and other players. This means that the player tells the others what his character does, thinks and feels, and he’s doing his job well if the picture he paints of the character is clear and powerful, easy to relate to*."_
> 
> This doesn't require anything on the part of the GM to respond to it in any specific way.



Yes it does. At a minimum, it requires the GM to establish situations which permit the player to _paint a picture of his/her character that is clear and powerful_; which permit the player to _express his/her PC's personality, interest and agenda_.

This is why, for instance, one might open a campaign with the PC in a bazaar with an angel feather being offered for sale - this permits the player to paint a clear and powerful picture of his PC, expressing the PC's interest and agenda - rather than in a "neutral" setting where the first action declaration ("I look around for a bazaar") doesn't really do any of those things at all.



Ilbranteloth said:


> Rogue: I want to get in the castle undetected. I think there's a secret door here. I'm going to search for a secret door here. Even, "I think that there ought to be a secret door as an escape route, and will go to what looks like the most logical place for it." The GM could frame the scene at "the most logical place for it" and there still not be a secret door. No loss of agency, the player still had full advocacy of his character.



What does this rogue think and feel? What is his/her agenda? Why is s/he trying to get into the castle? What might s/he sacrifice to do so?

The situation you describe does not involve advocacy of the sort that Eero Tuovinen talks about. As you present it, there is barely a _character_ there at all!



Ilbranteloth said:


> In terms of advocacy in the standard narrativist model, Eero even clarifies at the end of the essay:
> 
> *"For these purposes it is useful to example games in close reading and find out what it is, actually, that the game requires of a player. This whole post has actually been an overview of how certain types of game require players to be engaged in the role of advocacy (“I play my character to express him into the story”) as opposed to authorship (“I play my character to fill the narrative role allotted to him”). Both are called “playing your character” in different game texts, but psychologically and practically they are rather different processes."*
> 
> He spends quite a few words about why authorship, particularly shared authorship by the players, is a problem in games like these, and then arrives at the point that the "job" of the player is one of advocacy. He is clearly separating advocacy from authorship here.



Eero Tuovinen distinguishes advocacy (broadly, first person inhabitation of the PC) from authorship (broadly, thining about the PC as a protagonist in a story). This has no bearing on action resolution. Nowhere does he say that players can't declare actions which might succeed!



Ilbranteloth said:


> If your group of 1st level characters in a standard narrativist game decides they want to go kill an ancient dragon, are you implying that the players lack agency if they fail to kill the dragon when they wander into its lair and get barbecued? Agency cannot be tied to success, because there's no game if the players can simply declare what they want and then achieve it.



By talking about "1st level characters" you're already assuming a particular sort of RPG system.

It is part and parcel of agreeing to play a D&D game (or a game with a similar level device) that story elements are, in some fashion, level-relative. In the "story now" context, this makes long-term pacing a signifcant element of play; and its workability depends upon there being appropriate ways at all levels for the players to engage their dramatic needs at al levels of play in a way that both maintains verisimilitude while not making the later levels of play redundant. This is a non-trivial design challenge. Of level-based games that I'm familiar with (which are D&D and its variants, T&T, RM and DW) I think 4e really pulls this off the best, because of its thorough integration of mechanics with cosmology via the "tiers of play". (Though I may be being unfair to DW here - I don't have the best handle on exactly how its level advancement works.)



Ilbranteloth said:


> Failure does not equal lack of agency over the content of the fiction.



Of course not; not every move in a game is guaranteed to succeed. But failure _because the GM decided that the fiction was otherwise_ certainly does.



Ilbranteloth said:


> The content of the fiction is the combination of the contributions of all players (including the GM) in an RPG. For example, the secret door:
> 
> The rogue searches the area where he suspects a secret door carefully. Any cracks that look out of place? Scuff marks indicating a door that might slide or swing out here? Perhaps the mortar is different, lighter in this area? Despite his best efforts, no secret entrance is found. The wizard indicates that he should move aside and casts _passwall_.
> 
> The player of the rogue contributed to the fiction, and the narrative continued. The player of the wizard did too, and also changed their current situation.



In your example, the rogue player's contribution is to say "I search carefully." And then to ask the GM to relate a few things that the GM has authored. That is _extremely modest_ agency. The rogue player didn't actually establish any fiction except a few facts about mental states and bodily movements of his PC, which ended up having no impact on the actual state of the game.



Ilbranteloth said:


> The reason why the rogue failed is really irrelevant here with regard to player agency. Whether the GM knew ahead of time, decided it in the moment, or it was the result of a failed skill check, it just doesn't matter.



It may not matter to you. It is fundamental to me.

Imagine we were talking about a combat between the rogue and the orc - and that you posted "The reason why the orc killed the rogue doesn't matter - maybe because the GM got lucky in the combat rolls, maybe because the GM decided on the spot that the orc was a better fighter than the rogue, maybe because the GM had written that down ahead of time." I think most RPGers would actually dispute that claim.

Well, I dispute it in the case of the secret door _for exactluy the same reason_. Given that the principal activity of RPGing is sitting around telling one another made-up stuff, the question of _who gets to make up which stuff_ is fundamental.



Ilbranteloth said:


> Why do the caves have to be ignored in a Story Now game? Are you saying that the players are not allowed to create characters that are there for the very (basic) premise of the module itself. That you are actively taking away their agency to play that scenario in that manner?
> 
> The fact that you ran it twice as a Story Now game, and didn't engage those parts doesn't mean they can't be.



I ask again, have you done it?

I can tell you why I don't think it can be done with the Caves as written - because (with the possible exception of the cutlist cave) they don't engage with any dramatic needs nor express any thematic content.

Maybe someone could take one of the orc caves and do the same thing to it as I've done with the cultists - turn it into the site of activity in a game in which war with the orcs is an underlying premise. But that wouldn't be to use the module in anything like the way it is is written or presented for play. (The contrast with Night's Dark Terror, by the way, is very marked here. The goblin caves in that game are very different in this respect, and lend themselves much more straightforwardly to "story now" RPGing - for a start because they are smaller, and separate, and so can be played with a thematic dynamism that doesn't risk swamping the PCs nor turning the thing into a purely operational/logistical slugfest.)



Ilbranteloth said:


> More likely, it was exactly what I describe in my campaigns: The characters found themselves in whatever situation they were in, and decided to do something other than what was authored in the module.



Or you could read the post I linked to - then you'd actually be able to learn what happened instead of making it up!



Ilbranteloth said:


> Even Eero's examples can clearly fit B2 as written:
> 
> _"The actual procedure of play is very simple: once the players have established concrete characters, situations and backstory in whatever manner a given game ascribes, the GM starts framing scenes for the player characters. Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character (or wherever the premise comes from, depends on the game). The GM describes a situation that provokes choices on the part of the character. The player is ready for this, as he knows his character and the character’s needs, so he makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules. Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end.
> 
> The player’s task in these games is simple advocacy, which is not difficult once you have a firm character. (Chargen is a key consideration in these games, compare them to see how different approaches work.) The GM might have more difficulty, as he needs to be able to reference the backstory, determine complications to introduce into the game, and figure out consequences. Much of the rules systems in these games address these challenges, and in addition the GM might have methodical tools outside the rules, such as pre-prepared relationship maps (helps with backstory), bangs (helps with provoking thematic choice) and pure experience (helps with determining consequences)."_
> 
> The premise of the setting is a that a keep exists on the outskirts of civilization, and it's rumored that there's a monster infested cave filled with treasure.
> 
> The players have established a fighter, wizard, cleric and thief. They arrived at the keep this morning. The fighter wants to test his skill and help clear the region of monsters in the hopes he'll be able to one day build his own keep. The wizard is looking for some rare ingredients and components, and scrolls, spellbooks, magic items, etc. The cleric wants to aid his friend the fighter in his quest, and his hope that he'll one day lead a temple in the fighter's keep. And the thief is a childhood friend that's looking for a way to fast riches with little work.
> 
> There's nothing that indicates any issue with using preauthored material to present to the characters.
> 
> Chapter #1 The Keep. The characters are free to explore, meet the locals, purchase equipment, and learn of the local lay of the land and potential threats, rumors of lost treasure, etc.
> 
> Chapter #2 The Wilderness. The characters have learned that there is a mysterious place called the "Caves of Chaos" nearby. Or at least that's what the rumors say. If any have found it, none have returned. Their most specific information is that it lies to the northeast, but the trustworthiness of the source was a bit suspect. But it's the best information they can go on.
> 
> Chapter #3 The Caves of Chaos. The PCs locate the caves, and find that they are indeed infested. However, they survived their first foray, and claimed some treasure before narrowly escaping death. While they could set up camp and stay here, they feel it's better to return to the keep to recover. They decide to conceal their treasure, and tell anybody who asks that they didn't find the caves, but did get attacked by an orc warband. To further support the ruse, they choose to circle around and approach the keep from the northwest.
> 
> Chapter #4. The Keep. Resting and reprovisioning, and searching for more rumors. The thief goes behind the others backs to bribe a local to learn any secrets regarding the keep and the caves. Why haven't they been discovered, and why have the monsters been allowed to flourish there?
> 
> Maybe not the most compelling story, but all quite possible with the adventure as written.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> A Story Now or Narrativist approach (one that's actually utilizing the caves) might skip the Wilderness part altogether. "We want to find an explore the Caves of Chaos" the players/characters declare. "So after hours (or days) of searching, you find yourself entering a small box canyon well hidden by the surrounding forest." For a great deal of us, that's significantly taking away player agency. Why? Because even though they said they wanted to go to the Caves, it doesn't mean that something else might alter their course - voluntarily or involuntarily. They might have had plans to do something else on the way, which hadn't been expressed yet.



The issue is not whether the story is compelling or not. It's that what you're describing here does not fit the model.

You have not identified any scenes framed to speak to your PCs' dramatic needs (a fighter who wants to test his skill and help clear the region of monsters in the hopes he'll be able to one day build his own keep, a wizard is looking for some rare ingredients and components, a cleric wants to aid his friend the fighter in his quest, and a thief who is a childhood friend looking for a way to fast riches with little work). Your chapters 1, 2 and 4 contains nothing that speaks to any of this. And nor does your chapter 3 - just one sign of this is your use of the plural pronoun ("they conceal their treasure", they lie about the caves, etc - how does lying about the caves even fit with the agenda of the fighter and cleric? and where is the mage's agenda in all this?).

And that's before we get to any discussion of _consequences_, and how these might be established given the mechanical and fictional components of the module.

To get "story now" play out of the Caves of Chaos would require a complete rewriting from the bottom up.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> It is GM agency, although (i) the agency is mostly being spent imlementing the treasure parcel guidelines, and (ii) some of it is influenced by player item wishlists.
> 
> In 4e, magic items are an asepct of PC build that occupy a different space in relation to GM and player agency than (say) feat selection.
> 
> Which also reminds us that this is GM agency over PC build, not so much over the content of the shared fiction. (That the Raven Queen is allied with the PCs, and wants to help them defeat Orcus, is something that has already been established in play and is significantly player-driven.)




They were trying to get somewhere and you stopped it and added another step, albeit an easy one.   You called that blocking to me earlier in the thread, since the player desire didn't resolve immediately.  It also does add to the fiction, since the event occurred in game and the fiction was altered by it.  The teleport was interrupted, changing the fiction of travel instantly from one place to another, then they encountered the Raven Queen and had that encounter, which added to the fiction, and then they were given items to use in the fight that they would not have had otherwise, which certainly had an impact on the fiction.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> The player's goal for his/her PC is to find an item that might be useful. The game could cut to that chase. Or the player could jump through GM-establilshed hoops (whether pre-authored or rolled for) before getting to that outcome.




I cut to the chase.  You cut to the catch. 

On a more serious note, I've explained repeatedly how they are not in fact DM established hoops, but you continue to willfully ignore those explanations.



> I don't understand by what criterion you suggest that the first undermines player agency over the content of the shared fiction while the latter affirms it.




If you don't understand, it's because of the willful ignorance you've decided to engage in for some reason.



> This is just your opinion on what is salient. You (and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]) care about passageways. I find that they very easily become boring, and if there is nothing at stake and the players don't ask about them I'm happy to disregard them. In my Burning Wheel game I will cheerfully resolve an hours-long trek through the catacombs with a single Catacombs-wise check.
> 
> If the player wants to know the layout of some particular place for some particular reason, we can get to that level of detail and work something out (most likely along the lines of "I make a Catacombs-wise check to find the six-way intersction I've heard about underneath the cathedral"); but no one is interested in cataloguing every intersectin down there for the sake of it.




It has nothing to do with what is important or not, and everything to do with the PCs will almost surely notice an intersection and it becomes a decision point for the players, important or not.  It's not my job to determine what is or is not important to the players/PCs.  It's my job to give the players, through their PCs, all the information they need to make the decisions they want to make based on what is important to them.

An intersection is one of those things.  I let them know that they've come to a 4 way intersection and they decide which way they want to go.  If it's not important, they'll take about 0.5 seconds to tell me that they continue straight.



> Again with these meaningless metaphors. Narrating "OK, so you go through the door back into the corridor" and "OK, you travel through the Underdark and arrive at the lava-filled cavern the dwarves described to you" are _identical narrativbe processes_. Neither leaves out more information than the other, or railroads anyone more than the other. That's a fundamental difference between fiction and reality. In reality, every square inch of every surface someone traverses exerts causal influence over them, and they exert the same over it. But in a fiction, there is only what is narrated. You don't give the players more opportunities for choice by narrting only things that are nearby rather than things that are geographically distant!




That's just wrong.  Going through a door might leave out, "You see the door jamb as you pas through.", but that's about it.  Traveling through the Underdark is going to leave out tons of information during the travel.  Flora, fauna, passages, possibly surface wealth in the form of raw gems, and God knows what else.  Regardless, it's going to be a lot more than just a door jamb. 



> Do you mention every floor covering in every room? Every road surface? Every species of plant in the wilderness? ("Hang on, that's not normally found in these parts! What animal - or evil druid - spread it to here?")
> 
> Every wall surface - stone, brick, plastered, painted, bare, scrubbed, filthy, etc? (Think of the plastered wall in ToH for a concrete example of a module which turns on this.)
> 
> To be honest I find that impossible to believe.




I hope so.  Do you really expect me to answer those questions again?



> I live in a typical urban neighbourhood in a multi-million population industrialised city. Walking 100 m down my street involves passing multiple sorts of road and footpath surfaces (cobblestones, asphalt, concrete) plus various "hatches" (some concrete, some metal) plus heavy metal ramps laid over driveways (that my girls love to jump on so as to make a noise). No GM in any modern or sci-fi game every narrated things in that degree of detail.




False Equivalence going on here.  Modern society with modern materials and building techniques differ a lot from what was available in the Middle Ages.  You're also talking about many different buildings and materials, which involves far more diversity than the construction involved in a single building or subterranean construction.  It's easier to note the difference in construction when there are far fewer of them.



> No GM in any fantasy game ever narrated all this stuff when the PCs walk down the street. Yet all of it is _potentially_ salient. Is it railroading not to do so?




Why would it be?  I've never claimed it was.  I have, however, repeatedly explained the difference between what you are describing now and what you described involving the giant trip.  Willfully ignoring what I've said to you in favor of repeating this for the umpteenth time is unbecoming.



> Are those last sentences based on your experience with "story now" play? Or are they just more conjecture?




I'm going by what you described to us in your example.



> If the players want to approach the giants stealthily, they can do so. In a 4e game, the whole trip is probably being resolved as a skill challenge, and if the PCs want to put a group Stealth check in there to try and achieve the result _we see the giants before they see us_, they're welcome to. But they don't need me to remind them to do that. They're the ones playing their PCs, and they're the ones who know what they want their PCs to do. They can make these calls if they want.




First, that's not what you described to us.  Second, reducing travel through the extremely dangerous and diverse Underdark to a skill challenge seems like you are cheapening the Underdark considerably.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Playing a RPG is playing a RPG. It's not noble struggle, or dingity-conferring labour. Working your way through the GM's dungeon and serendipitously finding that the GM wrote something in that you care about is not some more virtuous than playing through a sequence of challenging situations with the reward emerging (or failing to) at the end of it.
> 
> Would my BW game have been _better_ if the mage PC had inadvertantly blown his brother up with a fireball spell because his brother happened to be tied up in a niche down the corridor; rather than the PC seeing his brother slain before his eyes by an assassin who got there first, and all because the mage chose to travel through the catacombs and got lost in them? Personally I'm not seeing it.




It might well have been better, yes.  Imagine the horror of realizing that you just killed your brother with your magic.  How would you react?  Would you abandon your magic?  Would you dedicate your life to helping others with that magic?  Would you continue to use fireballs?  Would you seek out burn victims and help them get healed?  Would you become depressed?  How would that depression affect the rest of your goals?  Would you become angry and seek vengeance?  The list goes on.

Seeing the brother killed by the assassin is ALSO a huge turning point for the PC, but it's hard to say whether it was a better way to go or not.



> Where is the railroading meant to have happened? What choices were the players denied?




Again, since you've "missed" it the first few times.  Not everything you do is a railroad.  That's not what we are saying.  However, when you jump around from scene to scene as you describe, it's very easy to accidently railroad the players the way your giants example did.

It's far easier to accidentally railroad someone in your playstyle than it is in mine.  In my playstyle, because I point out so much more and they actually travel from place to place with much more detail about the spaces in-between the larger story/character points, I actually have to go out of my way to try and railroad them.  It's hard to accidentally force the players down a particular passageway when I'm letting them know about the intersection and giving them the choice on which way to go.  It's easy to accidentally force them down a particular passageway if I'm just moving them to the end point and not giving them the option.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Yes it does. At a minimum, it requires the GM to establish situations which permit the player to _paint a picture of his/her character that is clear and powerful_; which permit the player to _express his/her PC's personality, interest and agenda_.




No, it doesn't.  I as a player establish my character's personality, interests and agendas.  Here's the thing.  I don't even have to tell the DM what they are in order for me to bring them out in the game.  Nothing is required on the part of the DM.  

Let's say that I'm playing a dour dwarf(I know, it's a stretch  ) who is interested in fine wines and with an agenda to get drunk on fine wine in every town he comes to.  Without telling the DM any of that, I can seek out taverns in every town, looking for fine wine.  My dour personality will become apparent in my interaction with the NPCs and other PCs.  If a tavern doesn't have fine wine, I can grumpily exit and seek out a place that sells fine wine, showing that it's important to my PC that the wine he drinks be fine.  And I can get drunk on it just fine.  I'd even further show my agenda by keeping a few bottles of fine wine stored carefully in my pack to use just in case I come to a town that doesn't sell fine wine.

Very few interests and agendas need DM help to achieve, and I can't imagine ever needing the DM to help my play my character's personality.



> What does this rogue think and feel? What is his/her agenda? Why is s/he trying to get into the castle? What might s/he sacrifice to do so?
> 
> The situation you describe does not involve advocacy of the sort that Eero Tuovinen talks about. As you present it, there is barely a _character_ there at all!




You're making a fundamental mistake here.  You're assuming that all aspects have to be present in all things to be agency.  In the rogue example the player is clearly and strongly letting the DM know what the PCs is doing and why.  That qualifies as full agency, even if that particular example isn't showing all aspects of what Eero talks about in that paragraph.  

As for those questions, the rogue's agenda is clearly to get inside unnoticed, and he thinks there should be a secret escape route out of the castle.  We don't need to know what he feels for him to be expressing his agency fully in that situation, though if the player had wished, he could have told the DM without DM help, what his PC was feeling.



> Eero Tuovinen distinguishes advocacy (broadly, first person inhabitation of the PC) from authorship (broadly, thining about the PC as a protagonist in a story). This has no bearing on action resolution. Nowhere does he say that players can't declare actions which might succeed!




That's just silly.  I've never even heard of a game or playstyle where players can't declare actions which might succeed.


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## Aenghus

One way to railroad people in a GM-driven game is to throw too many decisions at the players. You wear them out with lots of relatively meaningless decisions, like suspicious flagstones and incongruous npcs, and when they are tired you push them in the direction you desire by not giving them a choice, using "all roads lead to Rome" or giving a magician's choice. 

I've seen this happen a lot in games, particularly in game modules where the PCs have to go in a certain direction for the adventure to continue, but also in bad railroads. I've used this myself in days of yore, sometimes in ways I regret in hindsight.

Decision making takes energy and the limits of decision making and the sort of decisions they like and dislike vary from person to person.

Presenting PCs with lots of decisions isn't strictly superior, and doesn't automatically prevent railroading. It depends on player and GM expectations, but a smaller number of meaningful decisions may well be less railroading than a larger number of neutral decisions. Unless the participants are invested in the latter, which brings us back to this thread.


----------



## Maxperson

Aenghus said:


> One way to railroad people in a GM-driven game is to throw too many decisions at the players. You wear them out with lots of relatively meaningless decisions, like suspicious flagstones and incongruous npcs, and when they are tired you push them in the direction you desire by not giving them a choice, using "all roads lead to Rome" or giving a magician's choice.
> 
> I've seen this happen a lot in games, particularly in game modules where the PCs have to go in a certain direction for the adventure to continue, but also in bad railroads. I've used this myself in days of yore, sometimes in ways I regret in hindsight.
> 
> Decision making takes energy and the limits of decision making and the sort of decisions they like and dislike vary from person to person.
> 
> Presenting PCs with lots of decisions isn't strictly superior, and doesn't automatically prevent railroading. It depends on player and GM expectations, but a smaller number of meaningful decisions may well be less railroading than a larger number of neutral decisions. Unless the participants are invested in the latter, which brings us back to this thread.




Yeah. I'm not saying you can't railroad in a DM facing game.  It's just far harder to accidentally railroad in DM facing games.  It also appears that you are misunderstanding what I am saying.  I'm not saying that I bombard them with choices.  I simply describe the environment and let them choose for themselves what they want to do.  Rather than throw options at them, my goal is not to deprive them of options by moving them forward to some spot of my choosing.


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## Aenghus

Maxperson said:


> Yeah. I'm not saying you can't railroad in a DM facing game.  It's just far harder to accidentally railroad in DM facing games.  It also appears that you are misunderstanding what I am saying.  I'm not saying that I bombard them with choices.  I simply describe the environment and let them choose for themselves what they want to do.  Rather than throw options at them, my goal is not to deprive them of options by moving them forward to some spot of my choosing.




It still seems unfair to keep judging a different style of play by the criteria of another style of play. "Your orange isn't a good apple". 

If the players genuinely want to move from scene to scene, and pile all the decision making into the scenes, like in a play or movie, then the alternate paths that are important to player agency in a conventional GM-driven game are actually a waste of time for this different style of play and content the participants don't want or need.

I suppose there could be a hybrid game, where some players want the big scenes with big dramatic decisions and others want naturalistic slice of life stories with all the (boring to some) filler, but it seems very difficult to run with the different player goals and pacing issues. Much easier to go one way or the other.

Any game style can be run badly, with GMs ignoring legitimate player requests, or players ignoring their responsibilities.


----------



## Maxperson

Aenghus said:


> It still seems unfair to keep judging a different style of play by the criteria of another style of play. "Your orange isn't a good apple".




I haven't been.  I'm not making judgment calls about his playstyle.



> If the players genuinely want to move from scene to scene, and pile all the decision making into the scenes, like in a play or movie, then the alternate paths that are important to player agency in a conventional GM-driven game are actually a waste of time for this different style of play and content the participants don't want or need.




Which I already acknowledged when I told [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] that when players are okay with being railroaded, being railroaded isn't a bad thing.  That's how they like to play and the important thing is that they have fun.

I'm not judging his playstyle good or bad. I'm simply pointing out that it does railroad players.



> I suppose there could be a hybrid game, where some players want the big scenes with big dramatic decisions and others want naturalistic slice of life stories with all the (boring to some) filler, but it seems very difficult to run with the different player goals and pacing issues. Much easier to go one way or the other.




I agree.  Mixing playstyles generally doesn't work out well.



> Any game style can be run badly, with GMs ignoring legitimate player requests, or players ignoring their responsibilities.




I agree with this, too.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> I would personally find that to be very unsatisfactory.  Having to re-wind things that have happened is a personal pet peeve.  I'll do it when I've screwed up AND if that screw up has worked against the players, but not for any other reason.  I'd much prefer that the DM not play our PCs in the first place and give us the option as we approach the enemy.



Nobody is 'playing your PC', you ASKED to go to the fire giant cave, so you were placed there!!!! But see below...



> It's different.  If I have to tell the DM all the different actions I take in response to all of the possibilities that I can think of, I'm wasting a whole lot of time and thought on stuff that will never be relevant.  In a normal DM facing game, you might take precautions against possibilities, but not in the same way.  We aren't going to spend a lot of time thinking of strategies to use if the baron is a vampire, if the baroness is a vampire, if the kid down the block is a vampire, etc., or maybe one of them is a lich and all those strategies, or maybe one of them is a...
> 
> We might grab some stakes and holy water, though.  The strategies will happen as wander the baron's castle and see signs of vampires, like no mirrors or food that has no garlic in it.  You only have to spend all that time on contingencies if the DM is the type who will take control of your PCs and just walk you into things if you don't tell him everything in advance.




Again, this is based on some weird and never-seen-in-the-real-world concept of Story Now. At least in the case of a D&D-like milieu where this kind of possibility is one that rational people can entertain, a GM who thrust the PCs into a situation where preparation and care would be clearly indicated and signs of trouble are at least a convention of the genre, if not outright a matter of logic, are indicated without any chance to do said prep, seems like a bad GM to me! 

OTOH, I can imagine where both a DM-centered game and a Story Now game would do this. Suppose the whole shtick of this vampire family is to fit in with the rest of the world and not be noticed? Maybe that's how they operate, and the whole point is "what do you do when you get dropped into castle Dracula without any prep!?" Its at least a feasible and plausible concept, so I can't categorically condemn it.

PERSONALLY I would think that sniffing out the telltale signs and showing yourselves to be alert, capable, and crafty, would be a big part of any such vampire scenario, so I'd almost undoubtedly frame scenes in which the PCs came to the local tavern of the nearest town, etc. Dark looks, strange remarks, weird happenings, telltale signs of all sorts, and possibly outright explicit warnings given in hushed tones might all happen. These are all perfectly good Story Now elements which could be framed into various prefatory scenes. 

Story Now doesn't mandate that characters are simply hurled unprepared without choice into some terrible danger and ultimate crisis willy-nilly. Any such notion is incorrect. 

In fact, in Story Now play, if we can examine it for a minute, we will instantly see why this wouldn't happen. For a castle full of vampires to figure in the game, there must be a character need which requires (or at least can be met by) such a thing. 

Remember, Story Now is, ideally No Myth, so said castle won't exist simply 'because its on the map'. I guess it could appear as an ancillary detail in some unrelated story line as color simply because the area has been established to be 'dark and evil tree clad mountain ranges decorated with crumbling castles' or somesuch. In that case we're dealing with a minor side issue, a speed bump type of obstacle probably. Here it would seem pretty appropriate for the vampire setup to just appear in a scene frame, be dealt with in the course of whatever, and done.

Otherwise we're dealing with a character need, and probably a player "I want nasty undead" kind of agenda. The character need could be something like "I want to find the monster who took my sister and lay her to rest!" lets say. That would be a very nice BW belief that would probably lead to Castle Dracula! 

So, now we know where we are ultimately headed, why would the GM ever simply frame you there without prep? The whole thrust of the story arc is going to be about finding out where this place is, if it even exists, how to get to it, and what sort of dangers lurk there, preparing to overcome them, etc. Visits to the actual castle could happen more than once, perhaps, depending on the details of the story, but presumably there's one big final showdown where everything comes to a head and stakes are to be distributed to undead hearts. Nobody is coming to this suaree unprepared or being scene framed there unexpectedly!


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> YOU took pity on them and YOU decided to intercept the teleport to give them items.  How is that not YOU engaging in DM agency?




It was a 4e game, and I don't recall 4e saying exactly 'be an advocate for the players', but DW actually says you should be fan of the characters, that part of the GM's job is to create scenarios where they can be big heroes. Not that they have to be handed anything on a platter, just that the tools should be available for them to pick up and use.

I think this is in that vein. It isn't exactly illogical either. The RQ is invested in the success of major followers, and they need help right then. This is a solid, indirect, way for her to help herself. It is certainly plausible.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> His point, as I understood it, had nothing to do with narrative control specifically.
> 
> I'll try to put it in my own words: different games - including but not at all limited to RPGs - each give players a certain amount of agency within that particular game as defined by that game's rules; and while in many games the players can choose either to exert less agency than the game rules provide or to exert what they have badly (though either is almost always a suboptimal thing to do) they can never choose to exert more; and if they do they are cheating.
> 
> In chess I have the agency to move my pieces as the rules allow, one per turn.  If I try to move two per turn I've cheated by exceeding my agency.  Chess does not allow me to exert no agency (i.e. skip my turn) but it does allow me to exert it very badly by making a series of meaningless or flat-out awful (or randomly determined!) moves on my turns.
> 
> In most normal RPGs the game rules give me as a player the agency to - within the rules - roll up whatever character I see fit to in a mechanical sense (stats, race, class, etc., depending what the dice or other char-gen system give me to work with) and then give it whatever personality I feel like.  Those rules also then give me the agency within the game to:
> - play that character within the fiction as presented (inhabit its persona and interact with the game-world on that basis)
> - play that character mechanically (roll the dice, track its h.p., etc.)
> - advocate for that character (state its actions)
> - reasonably expect the DM to play in good faith
> 
> To go beyond this - e.g. by playing someone else's character or falsely tracking its h.p. or demanding that stated actions that are impossible succeed anyway - is exceeding my agency, and may quickly veer into cheating if it's not there already.
> 
> In story-now RPGs the agency expands to include some control over content of the fiction along with the other things noted above.  Whether or not this is a good thing (and by extension, whether or not the story-now concept overall is a good thing) is probably the root of this whole debate.
> 
> Lanefan




Right! And now you understand and you have made the same point I have been making all along! There was no other point beyond this that was made. However it SEEMED that [MENTION=5094]ilbrant[/MENTION]aloth's statement was something like "In Chutes and Ladders you only get to follow the dice, therefor there's no additional agency in Chess because its a game just like Chutes and Ladders is a game." This is obviously flawed logic and my restating it in terms of two totally different games makes that apparent. When he stated it in terms of two very similar games, it was, apparently, not so obvious to everyone! 

I can of course compare the agency of Chutes and Ladders with Chess, and we seem to both be able to do that and arrive at the same agreed conclusion! I hope that everyone who reads this post will now be clear on how this kind of comparison works 

Thanks! I hope I didn't seem unduly frustrated before, lol.


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I don't really follow your point here. What I was saying was a response to @_*Lanefan*_ contrasting "PC dramatic needs" with "the game/campaign as a whole". My point was that if that stuff is something the players actively care about and want to engage with, then it itself has become (on aspect of) PCs' dramatic needs. (Eg if Lanefan mentions slavery, and the players decide to have their PCs fight in the cause of abolition, then ipso facto abolition has become one of the dramatic needs of these protgaonists.)



Right. At most the GM might think to himself "I believe that good pacing dictates that I interject a less (or more) tense scene right here." and thus concern himself with 'dramatic needs of the whole story' as opposed to maybe a laser focus on the character need of a particular PC which might be served equally well by a big showdown at this juncture. The RQ intercepting the teleport seems to potentially fall into this category, a small break in the rising action injects a bit of variety. It obviously had a mechanically motivated element to it in play, but it could also serve dramatic purposes.



> Again with these meaningless metaphors. Narrating "OK, so you go through the door back into the corridor" and "OK, you travel through the Underdark and arrive at the lava-filled cavern the dwarves described to you" are _identical narrativbe processes_. Neither leaves out more information than the other, or railroads anyone more than the other. That's a fundamental difference between fiction and reality. In reality, every square inch of every surface someone traverses exerts causal influence over them, and they exert the same over it. But in a fiction, there is only what is narrated. You don't give the players more opportunities for choice by narrting only things that are nearby rather than things that are geographically distant!
> 
> Do you mention every floor covering in every room? Every road surface? Every species of plant in the wilderness? ("Hang on, that's not normally found in these parts! What animal - or evil druid - spread it to here?")
> 
> Every wall surface - stone, brick, plastered, painted, bare, scrubbed, filthy, etc? (Think of the plastered wall in ToH for a concrete example of a module which turns on this.)
> 
> To be honest I find that impossible to believe.
> 
> I live in a typical urban neighbourhood in a multi-million population industrialised city. Walking 100 m down my street involves passing multiple sorts of road and footpath surfaces (cobblestones, asphalt, concrete) plus various "hatches" (some concrete, some metal) plus heavy metal ramps laid over driveways (that my girls love to jump on so as to make a noise). No GM in any modern or sci-fi game every narrated things in that degree of detail.
> 
> I've never been to a mediaeval city (obviously), but I've walked through cities that more closely resemble our fantasy cities than does modern Melbourne (I'm thinking especially Fez, Zanzibar and Nairobi). Street surfaces are sometimes dirt, sometimes paved or cobbled, sometimes muddy. Building are sometimes stone or brick, sometimes timber - or a mix of both. Some are permanent, some at least look more temporary (eg rough-hewn timber bound together with cord). There are balconiies, and shutters of various sorts, and cords running across the streets or between buidlings, etc.
> 
> No GM in any fantasy game ever narrated all this stuff when the PCs walk down the street. Yet all of it is _potentially_ salient. Is it railroading not to do so?



Yeah, this is the whole point of the 'level of detail' discussion. REALITY, actual world reality, is constructed such that every single element of it is causally connected to every single other element of it in some way! The amount of detail is effectively infinite. Our ability to anticipate and understand it at all is entirely based on the fact that certain configurations of matter are effectively equivalent and we just lump them together, so we can now say "its most likely I can walk down the street and no meteors will strike me" but that isn't actually a statement based on causally connected elements, it is pure induction! 

It is hopeless to attempt to achieve this in the fantasy world, so it is only a matter of what the dramatic effect of any given narration is. Its logical consequences are purely limited to the narrative realm and, given the impossibility of connecting it to anything resembling causal reality, it has no other significance. Thus in game terms you are utterly correct, and this is a point which has long failed to be appreciated by many in the gaming community. That any two narratives with the same logical structure are in fact equivalent and one can only prefer one over the other, or one technique of generating such, for aesthetic reasons. Agency simply cannot logically be a factor in terms of the in-game details of the narrative. Agency arises purely out of who gets to decide the structure of that narrative!



> If the players want to approach the giants stealthily, they can do so. In a 4e game, the whole trip is probably being resolved as a skill challenge, and if the PCs want to put a group Stealth check in there to try and achieve the result _we see the giants before they see us_, they're welcome to. But they don't need me to remind them to do that. They're the ones playing their PCs, and they're the ones who know what they want their PCs to do. They can make these calls if they want.



This point is one that I appreciated so strongly within 4e that when I rewrote it into my own system I canonized it! ALL such sequences are scenes and all scenes are challenges, without exception. The other alternative is to cast it as an interlude, which definitionally cannot have any bearing on the success or failure of the characters in a conflict. This structure makes it very clear to me when I GM exactly what is happening, and forces stakes to be explicit at all times. Thus BEFORE THE TREK TO THE GIANTS HAPPENED, the parameters of the challenge would be established, what the positive and negative outcomes were, and how the characters intended to mitigate risk, what the costs for such risk mitigation were, etc. This universally annihilates any 'Front Porch' type issues as a side benefit. 



> In part under the influence of other posters who play more avant-garde games than I do, I've become a big fan of "OK, yep, you did that, but now what about . . .?" - that is, if the players want to make potions or stock up on assault rifles or whatever it is, let's just write it down and knock off the ritual components or credits or whatever it is, but I'm not that interested in the _players_ using this sort of hemming and hawing as a way of putting off hard choices. Or of seeking in-advance assurances from the GM that, if only they pack the right gear, then everything will turn out how they want. I push them towards "story now" rather than "story already written via the equipment list".
> 
> That doesn't mean that there are never hour-long logistics interludes in my 4e game, but I prefer to keep them to a minimum.




Interesting. I wouldn't favor 'hours long' interludes, but I've found that a more 'operational' and 'strategic' focus to play than what 4e provided can be more interesting. At least I like to have a game which makes these tools available. 

OTOH I also tend to find ways to structure challenges so as to work logistics into the game more as narrative explanation than as a puzzle to solve. So when the party is going to trek across the desert I set the challenge up as "equip yourselves for and execute the journey across the desert." Now if a player wants to say "I make a Survival check to resist the heat of the desert" it can be cast in terms of water (a resource). "Make a Survival check to see if you properly calculated the needed amount of water. If you fail then you've run out and suffered the consequences." This also puts things on a "challenge the character" kind of footing. In practice I don't require the players to sit around calculating the quarts of water needed to get across the desert and juggling the contents of their packs to fit it in. If the journey is 'long' then presumably they acquired a camel and a driver to alleviate some of the capacity issue, and a long desert trek will thus require the time, expense, and involve the presence of, some amount of baggage train. 

Logistics, in this framework, can now also be cast into the realm of cost/benefit and become a part of stakes setting. You could wait 3 days to acquire the needed camel-train, or you can just light out in hot pursuit of the bad guy without prepping and hope you can catch him before you get too deep into the Great Desert! The structure of the challenge is thus dictated by the players and its stakes are set (IE either a severe risk of dehydration and death, or a serious risk of losing the quarry).


----------



## Aenghus

Maxperson said:


> No, it doesn't.  I as a player establish my character's personality, interests and agendas.  Here's the thing.  I don't even have to tell the DM what they are in order for me to bring them out in the game.  Nothing is required on the part of the DM.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Very few interests and agendas need DM help to achieve, and I can't imagine ever needing the DM to help my play my character's personality.




I can think of many, many interests and goals that require DM help to achieve. IMO the set of such goals is significantly larger than the set of goals that don't require DM assistance. (Both being infinite, but DM-required goals are a bigger infinity).

Settling for smaller, meaner goals is certainly less trouble for the GM, and less work. Unless the player deliberately avoids any expectations for the consequences of their modest secret goals, it's entirely possible that the campaign or GM will crush them inadvertently. 

Fundamentally, if I have a character with significant goals,  I want the GM involved, I want him or her to give a damn, and I want the goal to mean something in the context of the campaign. If they can't deliver I can always vote with my feet.

Edit: whatever goals someone wants are fine, whatever their size, so long as they are appropriate to the circumstances. Your drunk dwarf example sure seems smaller and meaner, so to speak.

I've seen drunk PCs get hit with a variety of mechanical penalties (and sometimes bonuses) for their drunkeness. I've seen such PCs voted out of the group before. If penalties and social fallout make the character less fun to play, you might need to negotiate with the GM to keep the character playable. And we are back to needing GM cooperation to play the player goal.


----------



## Lanefan

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] has already nicely covered some things I would otherwise have said, so I'm just going to hit a few specific points here...


pemerton said:


> Yes it does. At a minimum, it requires the GM to establish situations which permit the player to _paint a picture of his/her character that is clear and powerful_; which permit the player to _express his/her PC's personality, interest and agenda_.
> 
> This is why, for instance, one might open a campaign with the PC in a bazaar with an angel feather being offered for sale - this permits the player to paint a clear and powerful picture of his PC, expressing the PC's interest and agenda - rather than in a "neutral" setting where the first action declaration ("I look around for a bazaar") doesn't really do any of those things at all.
> 
> What does this rogue think and feel? What is his/her agenda? Why is s/he trying to get into the castle? What might s/he sacrifice to do so?
> 
> The situation you describe does not involve advocacy of the sort that Eero Tuovinen talks about. As you present it, there is barely a _character_ there at all!



 Well, let's face it - it's not very often that much characterization comes out of what are in effect largely mechanical action declarations.  "This is a logical place for a secret door so I'll search for one" tells us maybe a bit about the character, but mostly that's just a simple Search declaration - not much in it; and it's unfair to point at this as a reason for any lack of characterization or personality.

What we don't see in this example is all the lead-up showing how the rogue got to this point.  The agenda and reasons for being here would very likely have long since been established.  What the rogue thinks and feels at that particular moment would of course be up to the player to narrate on the fly, should she so desire; as would the decision of what if anything to sacrifice or trade off in order to achieve her immediate goal of stealthily getting into the castle.

On a broader scale, characterization and personality mostly tends to develop during what we might consider as "downtime": while sitting around the campfire getting to know the other PCs, or via things done while in town between adventures.  Maxperson's wine-guzzling Dwarf is a fine example - the whole wine business is rarely if ever going to come up while in the field, but it's known to be an ongoing part of the Dwarf's character.  



> Eero Tuovinen distinguishes advocacy (broadly, first person inhabitation of the PC) from authorship (broadly, thining about the PC as a protagonist in a story). This has no bearing on action resolution. Nowhere does he say that players can't declare actions which might succeed!



Agreed.



> By talking about "1st level characters" you're already assuming a particular sort of RPG system.



There's very few if any RPGs out there where the characters don't in some mechanical form get better at what they do over the course of their careers; and "1st-level characters" is as good a term as any to represent those who are just starting out on their career/path/journey/whatever. 



> It is part and parcel of agreeing to play a D&D game (or a game with a similar level device) that story elements are, in some fashion, level-relative.



Maybe, maybe not.  In an open sandbox-style game the PCs/players might blunder into something that's nowhere near level-appropriate!




> Ilbranteloth said:
> 
> 
> 
> The reason why the rogue failed is really irrelevant here with regard to player agency. Whether the GM knew ahead of time, decided it in the moment, or it was the result of a failed skill check, it just doesn't matter.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It may not matter to you. It is fundamental to me.
Click to expand...


And this is something I just don't understand no matter how you try to explain it: why does it matter?



> Imagine we were talking about a combat between the rogue and the orc - and that you posted "The reason why the orc killed the rogue doesn't matter - maybe because the GM got lucky in the combat rolls, maybe because the GM decided on the spot that the orc was a better fighter than the rogue, maybe because the GM had written that down ahead of time." I think most RPGers would actually dispute that claim.
> 
> Well, I dispute it in the case of the secret door _for exactluy the same reason_. Given that the principal activity of RPGing is sitting around telling one another made-up stuff, the question of _who gets to make up which stuff_ is fundamental.



In most RPGs combat mechanics are more or less vastly different from exploration mechanics and-or social mechanics; and any attempt to unify the three things into one overarching set of mechanics is an absolute mistake, and doomed to failure.

The players get to make up stuff about their characters, and the DM gets to make up stuff about the world those characters inhabit.  Seems simple enough to me. 



> I can tell you why I don't think it can be done with the Caves as written - because (with the possible exception of the cutlist cave) they don't engage with any dramatic needs nor express any thematic content.



Well, that might depend on the specific goals the players set out.  If, for example, a player set out pacifism between races as a goal, a DM might introduce the Caves as a shining example of a situation where multiple races of sentient creatures live more or less peacefully in the same small valley...and theat player's/PC's challenge would then become one of stopping the party from killing everything in there. 

Lanefan


----------



## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> Yes it does. At a minimum, it requires the GM to establish situations which permit the player to _paint a picture of his/her character that is clear and powerful_; which permit the player to _express his/her PC's personality, interest and agenda_.
> 
> This is why, for instance, one might open a campaign with the PC in a bazaar with an angel feather being offered for sale - this permits the player to paint a clear and powerful picture of his PC, expressing the PC's interest and agenda - rather than in a "neutral" setting where the first action declaration ("I look around for a bazaar") doesn't really do any of those things at all.
> 
> What does this rogue think and feel? What is his/her agenda? Why is s/he trying to get into the castle? What might s/he sacrifice to do so?
> 
> The situation you describe does not involve advocacy of the sort that Eero Tuovinen talks about. As you present it, there is barely a _character_ there at all!
> 
> Eero Tuovinen distinguishes advocacy (broadly, first person inhabitation of the PC) from authorship (broadly, thining about the PC as a protagonist in a story). This has no bearing on action resolution. Nowhere does he say that players can't declare actions which might succeed!
> 
> By talking about "1st level characters" you're already assuming a particular sort of RPG system.
> 
> It is part and parcel of agreeing to play a D&D game (or a game with a similar level device) that story elements are, in some fashion, level-relative. In the "story now" context, this makes long-term pacing a signifcant element of play; and its workability depends upon there being appropriate ways at all levels for the players to engage their dramatic needs at al levels of play in a way that both maintains verisimilitude while not making the later levels of play redundant. This is a non-trivial design challenge. Of level-based games that I'm familiar with (which are D&D and its variants, T&T, RM and DW) I think 4e really pulls this off the best, because of its thorough integration of mechanics with cosmology via the "tiers of play". (Though I may be being unfair to DW here - I don't have the best handle on exactly how its level advancement works.)
> 
> Of course not; not every move in a game is guaranteed to succeed. But failure _because the GM decided that the fiction was otherwise_ certainly does.
> 
> In your example, the rogue player's contribution is to say "I search carefully." And then to ask the GM to relate a few things that the GM has authored. That is _extremely modest_ agency. The rogue player didn't actually establish any fiction except a few facts about mental states and bodily movements of his PC, which ended up having no impact on the actual state of the game.
> 
> 
> 
> Ilbranteloth said:
> 
> 
> 
> The reason why the rogue failed is really irrelevant here with regard to player agency. Whether the GM knew ahead of time, decided it in the moment, or it was the result of a failed skill check, it just doesn't matter.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It may not matter to you. It is fundamental to me.
> 
> Imagine we were talking about a combat between the rogue and the orc - and that you posted "The reason why the orc killed the rogue doesn't matter - maybe because the GM got lucky in the combat rolls, maybe because the GM decided on the spot that the orc was a better fighter than the rogue, maybe because the GM had written that down ahead of time." I think most RPGers would actually dispute that claim.
> 
> Well, I dispute it in the case of the secret door _for exactluy the same reason_. Given that the principal activity of RPGing is sitting around telling one another made-up stuff, the question of _who gets to make up which stuff_ is fundamental.
> 
> I ask again, have you done it?
> 
> I can tell you why I don't think it can be done with the Caves as written - because (with the possible exception of the cutlist cave) they don't engage with any dramatic needs nor express any thematic content.
> 
> Maybe someone could take one of the orc caves and do the same thing to it as I've done with the cultists - turn it into the site of activity in a game in which war with the orcs is an underlying premise. But that wouldn't be to use the module in anything like the way it is is written or presented for play. (The contrast with Night's Dark Terror, by the way, is very marked here. The goblin caves in that game are very different in this respect, and lend themselves much more straightforwardly to "story now" RPGing - for a start because they are smaller, and separate, and so can be played with a thematic dynamism that doesn't risk swamping the PCs nor turning the thing into a purely operational/logistical slugfest.)
> 
> Or you could read the post I linked to - then you'd actually be able to learn what happened instead of making it up!
> 
> The issue is not whether the story is compelling or not. It's that what you're describing here does not fit the model.
> 
> You have not identified any scenes framed to speak to your PCs' dramatic needs (a fighter who wants to test his skill and help clear the region of monsters in the hopes he'll be able to one day build his own keep, a wizard is looking for some rare ingredients and components, a cleric wants to aid his friend the fighter in his quest, and a thief who is a childhood friend looking for a way to fast riches with little work). Your chapters 1, 2 and 4 contains nothing that speaks to any of this. And nor does your chapter 3 - just one sign of this is your use of the plural pronoun ("they conceal their treasure", they lie about the caves, etc - how does lying about the caves even fit with the agenda of the fighter and cleric? and where is the mage's agenda in all this?).
> 
> And that's before we get to any discussion of _consequences_, and how these might be established given the mechanical and fictional components of the module.
> 
> To get "story now" play out of the Caves of Chaos would require a complete rewriting from the bottom up.
Click to expand...



OK. Part of my issue is the fact that I still don't think Agency is a good term because it can mean too many things to too many people. In my comments, I was referring to agency as what the player is allowed to do within the context of the game.

So when the rules allow something, and the DM blocks the ability to use that. In most cases people complain about this when the DM alters the rules because they've decided something is too powerful. This is fine before players make their characters, but if somebody has been playing a character for several levels, and was looking forward to using that ability. It's simply referring to the DM shifting the rules in the middle of the game. So it makes no difference what game you're playing - Snakes and Ladders, D&D, whatever. Your agency is what you are allowed to do within the rules of the game. 

Obviously, this isn't the way everybody else is looking at it. Fair enough. Instead of a comparison of the rules of the game compared to what the DM is allowing/changing mid-game, this part of the discussion is attempting to compare the amount of different things, or the amount of control, that the player has in the game, or, if you prefer, the amount of agency they have within the game.

Here's my problem with that. The games are very complex. While one game may give more agency in the narrative, they may provide less agency in regards to character creation, mechanical options, whatever. I think it would be virtually impossible to compare whether this game provides more agency than that game, because you'd have to find some way to compare the games as a whole. Perhaps you all feel that's possible, but I'm not sure I do. That's why I've been saying that I prefer agency to be something that is related to the context of the game itself.

Having said that, I'm still just not really understanding the difference in some of our examples. I don't really care if we agree on the agency thing, but I'm interested in seeing how what I do differs from what you do. Or, more importantly, whether what you do would improve what I do.

In my campaigns, I have lots of things that are "set" in the setting. I use a lot of the published materials more or less as is. For example, places in Waterdeep that are in _Volo's Guide to Waterdeep_. Others are things that come from earlier campaigns, since I've been running the majority of my adventures (unless we've tried something different) in this campaign since 1987. So players that have been here for earlier sessions "know" things because they've been there, or their characters still live there, etc. There are tombs where prior PCs have been buried, etc. I also have lots and lots of notes that I use as tools, to help me flesh things out while improvising. These are usually simple things that popped into mind at one point or another, and I make a note of them, and they go back decades. Most have never been used, and probably won't be.

The majority of the time, what actually happens in this campaign is developed on the fly, in response to the actions of the PCs. While some places might exist, if there has been a period of time since the last time characters were to that location, or seen that NPC, then things can/will change. That's done as a combination of what makes sense for the given person/place combined with the motivations and actions that "the NPCs and rest of the world take" in that time. Otherwise it's in direct response to the PCs. Until something actually enters the campaign, nothing is set in stone. 

Most of the sessions are probably 60-80% of the players talking, whether role-playing, making decisions, taking actions, etc. The rest of the time is me responding to them, answering questions, explaining what they see, etc. My responses are based on what's going on in the campaign, what the players have said (including what their goals, motivations, etc. are), randomly determined things, or from my notes (which may or may not change at that point depending on how all that fits together in the moment).

For example, I don't get how a character can fail, if the DM doesn't have the ability to set up a situation where they might. I don't get your statement that "the rogue didn't add anything to the fiction." The example was minimal, sure, but that's not the point. Where are they lacking agency? Maybe they aren't interested in "writing" something significant in the fiction. This is also a single point of a much bigger picture, it's a part of the ongoing fiction. In my example, it was a high level look at the basic directions the players decided to go for various reasons, and the steps that led to those scenarios. For example, the rogue suggested that if others knew that the caves actually existed, and that they had found some treasure, then others would try to get to it first. So they decided to try to keep it a secret from the others in the keep for as long as they could. Secretly, though, the player of the rogue was hoping to learn more about the what's going on in the keep, figuring that there had to be some reason why the Lord hadn't taken care of things yet. 

Also, your example about the DM deciding ahead of time that the orc killed the road doesn't make sense to me. There's a difference between writing whether something is there or not, and whether an orc beats you in combat. Within the rules of D&D that would clearly be taking agency away from the player. 

Things that "exist" within the fictional world are one thing. The results of actions made by the players is entirely different. Yes, searching for a secret door is an action that's taken by the characters, but the expectation is that a successful result is dependent on a secret door being there in the first place. That has not been established from the character's perspective yet. In reality, when a character is searching for a secret door, it's not entirely to find it, but to determine if one even exists. The action is engaging the rules, and the result is dependent in part on the GM determining that a door actually exists. I don't really understand why it matters whether they determined it ahead of time, or in the moment, other than perhaps it helps prevent situations where the GM says "yes" and then realizes later on that there's a problem with that answer, if for no other reason that the logic of a secret door existing in that location falls apart later.

Fighting an orc is a totally different thing. The game clearly gives the player the "agency" to engage the rules to see who wins the fight. Determining the results of that ahead of time is clearly taking agency away from the player. Deciding ahead of time that the orc is a better fighter (higher level) is one thing, even overpowered which might require a different tactic or even a retreat on the part of the PCs. Yes, I get that this is providing some direction in the fiction as well, although the reactions of the players may be quite different than what the DM thinks it would be. At least that's what I've always found. Back when I was running published adventures, or writing adventures in the style of published adventures, the players always did something different, went a different direction, etc. So I've come to see my job as a DM in part as a facilitator. I describe the setting, events, and creatures, and they determine what they do, and I react to that. It's kind of the root of a TTRPG, I think. And I'm not going to say it's a "neutral" environment. I, as the DM, am neutral. But an NPC, for example, might be trying to hunt them down and kill them. The worldbuilding aspect comes into play because the framework for what the NPC is capable of doing is related to that. In some cases, such as adventuring in outer planes, the setting itself might be hostile to their survival.

Going back your complaint is that the PC will fail to find a secret door because the DM determined ahead of time that there is no secret door there. From what I understand, you're saying that the player deciding that they will search for a secret door here should be possible simply because the player has decided that it's important to the fiction at that point in time. At some point the GM, or somebody, is saying "no." No? That not everything a player decides to introduce into the fiction is actually introduced? Or they can just randomly decide that they will go collect the wand that's hidden in that tree, or the hidden cache of gold in that log, or a secret door into the armory of the king. At what point does a player go beyond their narrative agency? And who decides that? Because all of this continues to sound exactly like what Eero was warning against.

So how about this - can you start an example of how you'd start a scenario, so I (and maybe others) can respond as a character and see how this really plays out? Maybe a new thread? I participated in a thread like this for Dungeon World and it showed my how, although the mechanics were different, and how the DM adjudicated things differently, we could end up with the same results. It highlighted a few things I liked (most of which I was already doing, although didn't always recognize), and some that I didn't like in that game's design. It's not just to see how it plays out, but after each step explain to us what you're doing and how.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Nobody is 'playing your PC', you ASKED to go to the fire giant cave, so you were placed there!!!! But see below...




If I tell the DM that I want to go to a city and he places me inside a wizard tower inside that city, he has played my character.  He made decisions for me on where exactly I go.  The same if I say that we are going to go where the dwarves said the giants are.  Saying that I'm going there does not give the DM license to just cause my character to decide to brazenly or stupidly(take your pick) walk up to a giant patrol and be seen.  That isn't a choice that I made by saying that I am going to the giants.



> Again, this is based on some weird and never-seen-in-the-real-world concept of Story Now. At least in the case of a D&D-like milieu where this kind of possibility is one that rational people can entertain, a GM who thrust the PCs into a situation where preparation and care would be clearly indicated and signs of trouble are at least a convention of the genre, if not outright a matter of logic, are indicated without any chance to do said prep, seems like a bad GM to me!




It's a natural consequence of a DM who will make decisions for my character if I say something like, "I will follow the directions the dwarves gave us and go to the giant's territory."  Making decisions for me will force me to try and pin the DM into a box via contingencies so that I avoid the DM playing my PC.  



> OTOH, I can imagine where both a DM-centered game and a Story Now game would do this. Suppose the whole shtick of this vampire family is to fit in with the rest of the world and not be noticed? Maybe that's how they operate, and the whole point is "what do you do when you get dropped into castle Dracula without any prep!?" Its at least a feasible and plausible concept, so I can't categorically condemn it.
> 
> PERSONALLY I would think that sniffing out the telltale signs and showing yourselves to be alert, capable, and crafty, would be a big part of any such vampire scenario, so I'd almost undoubtedly frame scenes in which the PCs came to the local tavern of the nearest town, etc. Dark looks, strange remarks, weird happenings, telltale signs of all sorts, and possibly outright explicit warnings given in hushed tones might all happen. These are all perfectly good Story Now elements which could be framed into various prefatory scenes.
> 
> Story Now doesn't mandate that characters are simply hurled unprepared without choice into some terrible danger and ultimate crisis willy-nilly. Any such notion is incorrect.




That isn't an argument that I made.  I'm not saying that they get hurled unprepared into danger willy nilly.  I'm saying that if the DM is going to make decisions for your PC the way [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] did in his giants example, the players have to be okay with the DM occasionally making decisions for them, plan things out well in advance, including contingencies, or be okay interrupting the DM to re-wind the game so that they can make the decisions for themselves.  None of those things really works for me.  



> In fact, in Story Now play, if we can examine it for a minute, we will instantly see why this wouldn't happen. For a castle full of vampires to figure in the game, there must be a character need which requires (or at least can be met by) such a thing.




In my example it was undead in the area, so the specific type was not a need for the PC.  I made it more generic for a reason   It could be vampires, or liches, or my dear departed grammy come back to cook awesomely delicious brisket for the PCs.



> Otherwise we're dealing with a character need, and probably a player "I want nasty undead" kind of agenda. The character need could be something like "I want to find the monster who took my sister and lay her to rest!" lets say. That would be a very nice BW belief that would probably lead to Castle Dracula!



Or Szass Tam's chateau.  While Castle Dracula would work, it could be a variety of nasty things living in a castle.



> So, now we know where we are ultimately headed, why would the GM ever simply frame you there without prep? The whole thrust of the story arc is going to be about finding out where this place is, if it even exists, how to get to it, and what sort of dangers lurk there, preparing to overcome them, etc. Visits to the actual castle could happen more than once, perhaps, depending on the details of the story, but presumably there's one big final showdown where everything comes to a head and stakes are to be distributed to undead hearts. Nobody is coming to this suaree unprepared or being scene framed there unexpectedly!




Again, if the DM isn't making decisions for the PCs like happened in the giants example, then the kind of contingency prep isn't going to be something I'm concerned about.  I'll have time to react to things that come up, rather than just being placed into situations that I would have approached differently if given the option.



> It was a 4e game, and I don't recall 4e saying exactly 'be an advocate for the players', but DW actually says you should be fan of the characters, that part of the GM's job is to create scenarios where they can be big heroes. Not that they have to be handed anything on a platter, just that the tools should be available for them to pick up and use.
> 
> I think this is in that vein. It isn't exactly illogical either. The RQ is invested in the success of major followers, and they need help right then. This is a solid, indirect, way for her to help herself. It is certainly plausible.




 [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has been saying, "But DM agency stops/reduces player agency!" as a response to things we author things to benefit the PCs.  Now he's gone and admitted he does it, too.  That's my point here.  It also both blocks the PC teleport, stopping it for this act AND causes the successful act of teleporting to not be final.  Both of those are things he has been chiding myself and others here for doing in our games.


----------



## Maxperson

Aenghus said:


> I can think of many, many interests and goals that require DM help to achieve. IMO the set of such goals is significantly larger than the set of goals that don't require DM assistance. (Both being infinite, but DM-required goals are a bigger infinity).
> 
> Settling for smaller, meaner goals is certainly less trouble for the GM, and less work. Unless the player deliberately avoids any expectations for the consequences of their modest secret goals, it's entirely possible that the campaign or GM will crush them inadvertently.
> 
> Fundamentally, if I have a character with significant goals,  I want the GM involved, I want him or her to give a damn, and I want the goal to mean something in the context of the campaign. If they can't deliver I can always vote with my feet.
> 
> Edit: whatever goals someone wants are fine, whatever their size, so long as they are appropriate to the circumstances. Your drunk dwarf example sure seems smaller and meaner, so to speak.
> 
> I've seen drunk PCs get hit with a variety of mechanical penalties (and sometimes bonuses) for their drunkeness. I've seen such PCs voted out of the group before. If penalties and social fallout make the character less fun to play, you might need to negotiate with the GM to keep the character playable. And we are back to needing GM cooperation to play the player goal.




Maybe we just have different definitions of DM help.  Let's say my PC decides to become king of the northern barbarians.  I don't need the DM's help to accomplish this goal.  My PC exists.  The barbarians exist.  I can go there and try to become king.  All I need the DM to do is adjudicate things and play the barbarians.  That's not help.  That's just playing the game.

Can you give me an example of things that actually require DM help to accomplish?


----------



## Aenghus

Maxperson said:


> Maybe we just have different definitions of DM help.  Let's say my PC decides to become king of the northern barbarians.  I don't need the DM's help to accomplish this goal.  My PC exists.  The barbarians exist.  I can go there and try to become king.  All I need the DM to do is adjudicate things and play the barbarians.  That's not help.  That's just playing the game.



But your PC may never get to the country, or discover the barbarians have all been enslaved and dragged to hell or whatever. In a lot of games player goals are irrelevant to the GM and there's no guarantee you will get anywhere near your goal, especially if there's some problem with telling the GM your player goals. Or maybe "Fine, your character goes off on his mission, but the game is here. What's your new character?"



> Can you give me an example of things that actually require DM help to accomplish?




For a start, interacting with anything that doesn't exist in the setting specifically until the player requests it.

Wanting assurances of some level of closure on your player goals, win or lose. 

Actual pact with a higher or lower power, not a delusion.

Questing for a holy sword that the PC has some chance of getting. It won't exist in the first place unless the GM approves it.

Anything that requires GM approval to place in your background as a goal..

Big stuff that will affect the campaign as a whole that shouldn't IMO be unilaterally decided on by one player.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> The issue is not whether the story is compelling or not. It's that what you're describing here does not fit the model.
> 
> You have not identified any scenes framed to speak to your PCs' dramatic needs (a fighter who wants to test his skill and help clear the region of monsters in the hopes he'll be able to one day build his own keep, a wizard is looking for some rare ingredients and components, a cleric wants to aid his friend the fighter in his quest, and a thief who is a childhood friend looking for a way to fast riches with little work). Your chapters 1, 2 and 4 contains nothing that speaks to any of this. And nor does your chapter 3 - just one sign of this is your use of the plural pronoun ("they conceal their treasure", they lie about the caves, etc - how does lying about the caves even fit with the agenda of the fighter and cleric? and where is the mage's agenda in all this?).
> 
> And that's before we get to any discussion of _consequences_, and how these might be established given the mechanical and fictional components of the module.
> 
> To get "story now" play out of the Caves of Chaos would require a complete rewriting from the bottom up.




I would analyze B2 as mostly inappropriate for Story Now for several critical reasons:

1) The entire adventure at the Caves of Chaos, while not scripted in the sense that it must be undertaken in a strictly linear fashion, is a FIXED set of scenes. If these scenes address character needs and player agenda it by pure chance. 

2) The keep itself is, again, not particularly well-adapted to Story Now. It will work as a backdrop to various scenes, but there's nothing especially compelling about it. The Evil Cleric exists as-is. You can confront him, or not, and he will only address player's interests haphazardly at best. There are other characters who are basically either quest-givers or resource dispensers, or both. These characters are mostly peripheral, they could be co-opted into playing a part in the character's story, but nothing about them is ESPECIALLY compelling in this regard, any collection of similar NPCs would do as well. 

3) The general premise, the stronghold on the edge of civilization, may or may not be a suitable setting in which to play out the character's story, but we cannot say unless we know what that story is.

In terms of what [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] has to say about it specifically:

OK, the premise is the keep on the edge of civilization. What does this say about civilization? What does it say about wilderness? About their relationship, and that of people, PCs particularly, to either of those things? 

Establishment of a Fighter, wizard, cleric, and thief: These are generic characters built to classes which are basic archetypes. What is unique about these guys and what compels them? B/X and 1e both ASSUME fighters want to build keeps, wizards want/need components etc, rogues want riches, and clerics want to build temples. What is actually pushing these guys? Does the fighter wish to establish a keep because his family honor is at stake after they lost their holding somewhere else? Is the wizard attempting to achieve some specific magical effect? Why? What is the basis of the cleric's friendship with the fighter? Are they related, old friends, lovers?! What deity does this cleric even serve? Why is the rogue out here on the edge of civilization instead of cutting fat purses in some market town? How did he become friends with a fighter? I mean, Ilbranteloth has made a START, but we still lack specific character motives and goals that are less nebulous than 'be an adventurer' for any of them. This would be a weak start for Story Now play.

The statement about "nothing indicates any issue with using pre-authored material" is a head scratcher. Story Now doesn't fuel itself on pre-authored material. The basic premise is to 'see what happens in play' and 'follow the story'. GM framing of scenes in response to player inputs is DIRECTLY antithetical to pre-authoring! I see nothing wrong with utilizing an existing 'library' of NPCs and similar elements to draw from as you frame scenes (much like in the MSRP example that you gave up thread). Simply feeding the PCs into a pre-generated scenario where we already know what challenges they will face, isn't congruent with Eero's goals or process at all. 

Chapter #1 The Keep. Again, only what is pre-authored is here. Only the fact that the PCs are so thinly drawn that they are just basically blank slate generic adventurers without any real agenda prevents this from explicitly failing to work right here! 

Chapter #2 The Wilderness. Why do they want to find these caves at all? Do the caves address the fighter's wish to build a keep? Why would he build it within 2 miles of KotB? Why not go out and find some land which is NOT monster-infested? The cleric and the thief seem to be basically along for the ride with the fighter, though perhaps the thief will consider treasure to be a draw. This is the thinnest of motives, just basic greed. The wizard may have the most compelling reason to go to the caves, they may contain magic, but AFAIK nothing so far has hinted that this is so. He is just as likely to look elsewhere.

Chapter #3 The Caves of Chaos. This is basically already addressed in #2 above, we have no really compelling motive driving the PCs to find or enter the caves, beyond greed. The fighter might want cash to build with, the cleric might support that as his 'side kick', and the thief might, just on general 'thief principles'. The wizard likewise. So, we have a 'reason', but it is utterly generic, the same reason every other classic D&D party ever entered a dungeon for, loot. 

Chapter #4 more of the same... There's nothing compelling here because there's no substance to the character's motives. 

Indeed, Ilbraneloth calls it 'not the most compelling story'. Well, even most Story Now isn't 'most compelling', its just regular folks playing games, but nothing here seems even dramatic! Indeed, it is all exactly 'quite possible with the adventure as written'. In other words, the author of B2 created all the material that is input to the narrative, and the players basically just picked some of it in an order determined by their choices. Indeed, process-wise, is this really different from a choose-your-own-adventure book? A little, the players have more agency than making a binary choice here and there. Still, its only a small step removed since the actual fiction which was revealed was all pre-generated without regard to any input the players had beyond rolls of dice in combat. 

As for the rest, there's no Story Now approach to using the caves, except perhaps specific ones that happen to correspond with PC motives. Even the vague motives of the PCs described don't engage with all the caves.


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## Maxperson

Aenghus said:


> But your PC may never get to the country, or discover the barbarians have all been enslaved and dragged to hell or whatever. In a lot of games player goals are irrelevant to the GM and there's no guarantee you will get anywhere near your goal, especially if there's some problem with telling the GM your player goals. Or maybe "Fine, your character goes off on his mission, but the game is here. What's your new character?"




A base assumption of mine is that the DM is at least mediocre.  If he's a bad DM as you are describing, then nothing really matters for any playstyle,  Bad DMs are bad.  If the DM as at least mediocre, that stuff isn't going to happen.



> For a start, interacting with anything that doesn't exist in the setting specifically until the player requests it.




This is a violation of the social contract on the part of the player.  By agreeing to play in a setting, the player is agreeing to be bound to the limits of that setting.  So while yes, playing a Cormyrian War Wizard in the Dragonlance setting would need the DM's help, it's something that really shouldn't be asked for by the player.



> Wanting assurances of some level of closure on your player goals, win or lose.




There's no need for this if the DM isn't a bad one like you describe above.  The DM is going to follow your lead on what you tell him your PC is doing, so you'll get closure, win or lose.  Barring the campaign stopping anyway.



> Actual pact with a higher or lower power, not a delusion.




No need at all for DM help on this one.  I'm fully capable of playing a wizard to summon a demon to make a pact with or plane shift to a plane to find one, hiring a wizard to do the same, or find a magic item capable of the same.  Again, the only way this really fails is if the PC dies, or the DM is bad.  demons/devils want souls.



> Questing for a holy sword that the PC has some chance of getting. It won't exist in the first place unless the GM approves it.




I can't recall a campaign setting that specifically excludes holy swords, so they do exist regardless of the DM's approval.  The quest may be short, or it may be long and hard, but unless the DM is a bad one, this is doable without the DM's help.  He will just be setting things up in response to your PCs actions.



> Anything that requires GM approval to place in your background as a goal..




Outside of something that simply doesn't exist in the setting, the player can set any goal he wants, up to and including becoming a god without DM approval.  The loftier the goal, the greater the likelihood of failure, but the goals themselves just don't require any sort of DM approval.  



> Big stuff that will affect the campaign as a whole that shouldn't IMO be unilaterally decided on by one player.



Like what?  I don't see anything that wouldn't fall into the what I just said above.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> On a broader scale, characterization and personality mostly tends to develop during what we might consider as "downtime": while sitting around the campfire getting to know the other PCs, or via things done while in town between adventures.  Maxperson's wine-guzzling Dwarf is a fine example - the whole wine business is rarely if ever going to come up while in the field, but it's known to be an ongoing part of the Dwarf's character.




And why would this be? Is it because that's the only time when the players actually have some agency over the fiction!? When there are ZERO stakes so the GM is not driving things in terms of his or her view of the agenda? Now the dwarf's player gets to 'drink wine'. Is the reluctance of players to have deeper agendas (I mean, this one is pretty trivial, you can accomplish it in real life, you don't need to RP it!) simply because they know better than to have significant ones that get attention and that they are allowed to really drive forward? 

It seems to me that you get what you expect! GMs are largely creating the conditions under which this sort of observation might hold. IME players start out wanting much more. They either stop playing, perhaps becoming GMs or going on to other things, or else they learn to settle. That is unless they have the good fortune to find a [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] to be their GM! 

Now, I don't think that ALL players would rather have some significant agenda that is served by the game all the time, but I think very many more of them really actually do harbor these desires than you give credit for. Their hopes were often buried in intersections and such long ago! 

In my games there may well be times when the PCs are said to recreate and spend time hanging out in a tavern, or whatever. It may represent an interlude or a challenge scene where information is gathered, or etc. If the players explain that their characters indulge in various side interests at these times, that's cool, but the dwarf warrior who is in search of his lost father isn't focused on finding another ale keg, even if he is a fine judge of its quality! At least not in any greater sense. It certainly isn't an 'agenda'. (I could imagine this in a non-serious type of game, and we have had some of those).


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> In most RPGs combat mechanics are more or less vastly different from exploration mechanics and-or social mechanics; and any attempt to unify the three things into one overarching set of mechanics is an absolute mistake, and doomed to failure.



I totally disagree with this statement, for the record. Lets take a look at RPG history, shall we? The first RPG doesn't have non-combat mechanics at all, in a formal sense. I agree that what it has is totally different from combat, but only in the sense that EVERY PARTICULAR THING in OD&D is an independent mechanic that uses different dice in different ways. 

The next major game to come out was Traveler. This game uses a 100% uniform mechanic across all tasks, combat and non-combat. I'll grant that combat tasks involve the potential for the target to make checks to avoid being hit (parry or dodge), but similar techniques are available in other 'opposed' situations, if not spelled out in detail. 

The next famous RPG to make an appearance was Rune Quest, which again has entirely uniform mechanics, again with a slight caveat for parry/dodge (almost as if they read Traveler! Imagine). 

Beyond this games are far too many to mention, but EVEN TSR published a number of games in which uniform mechanics hold sway, such as MHRP, Star Frontiers, and Top Secret (I'm not sure how to classify Boot Hill, as it is virtually just a combat system). A number of other BRP based games also appeared, all like RQ using uniform mechanics. Other famous games with uniform mechanics include GURPS, Fudge, FATE, Shadowrun, and on and on.

Anyway, I don't think most games have non-uniform mechanics and at the very least a vast array of famous game designers have thoroughly overcome any difficulty that might exist in terms of such a thing. It is certainly not 'doomed to failure'.


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## Ilbranteloth

OK, I'm sitting here working on some things while my wife is watching NCIS LA. And the bit of the scene I just saw I think speaks to both what I think many are trying to accomplish with Story Now, and also highlights what I don't like about this approach.

I wasn't paying much attention to the show until I was taking a short break from what I was working on, so I don't know all of the details but:

Several of the agents followed an informant they were trying to get who they thought knew where to find somebody else. I don't know if this was a villain, informant, whatever, it doesn't matter for now, but we'll call him the quarry.

While they were there, several thugs came in and a gunfight started.

In the midst of the gunfight, while they were all shooting, missing, and taking cover (after killing one of the thugs), the quarry told the informant they were following that he would find him later, then left.

The second informant tried to chase him, but an agent pulled him back just before he got shot.

The quarry is seen getting in a car, the agents then one shot all of the thugs, and run outside as the quarry gets away.

--

The "GM" introduced conflict, complications, and dangers, to produce a scene that centered on the agent's dramatic needs at the time (find and catch the quarry).

They are unable to kill the thugs, until after the quarry makes their statement, and then is somehow able to just get out while everybody else is pinned down by gunfire. Once the quarry has escaped, they are able to kill the thugs, but only to watch the quarry escape. In this case, it appears they have escaped for the episode, to show up in a later episode.

So this is the sort of scene that dominated the couple of times I played a Story Now game. The next scene is back at the command center, centering on a sub-plot. The problem that I had with the scene in the show (not my favorite, it has it's moments though and I like some of the characters), and scenes like this is that it feels so contrived.

It's relatively obvious as they frame a scene what's going on - oh, this will be a gunfight scene. The meta aspect of a TV show makes this more obvious since we're either just before or just after the last commercial break. But the scene unfolds in a predictable manner - they can't catch the quarry at this point, so a "dramatic" gunfight ensues, the quarry makes an escape, and now that the drama of the scene has occurred, it's quickly wrapped up.

While I get that it's one way to tell a story, we prefer to let things unfold at a slower pace. We like things to focus more on the characters themselves, getting into their heads, and allowing them to experience the world as if it's a real world, and not a dramatic TV show. I'm sure that's something that can happen in a Story Now game, but the general approach seems to be more about the action and moving from scene to scene, whereas we like the exploration. Exploring the world, exploring the characters, exploring the plots and schemes that are happening within the world, etc. Our game is usually more like _Alien_ than _Aliens_. Both great movies, and we have our share of sessions and even arcs like the second. But most of the time it's longer periods of things occurring between characters, and some exploration.

I'm not surprised that it often resembles B2 in general story form, since that's kind of what I started with and learned how to build a campaign. There are a lot of other influences since then, but the general thrust (as I look back on it) has usually been one of exploration. Allowing the story to unfold through the characters, and experiencing the story from the character's perspective. I love having new gamers at the table, because when they don't know anything yet, they can experience the game in much the same way their character experiences the world. 

And from what little I've experienced about Narrative or Story Now games is that they try to eliminate the exploration and get right to the big dramatic scenes. The same approach is probably reflected in my musical tastes, which started with progressive bands like Yes, Genesis, along with Pink Floyd, particularly the pre-Dark Side era, and moved into more experimental and improvisational long form music, ambient, etc. (among many others). I like the dynamics, the slow builds, the meditative moments where little is happening, and that sort of thing.

So a game which removes those elements when I'm a player is what I see as infringing on my agency. The game is taking away the moments where we have often had the most fun. The GM is trying to skip to the next dramatic scene, when, if given time, we as players don't even really know what that next scene will be. That's why I categorically disagree that Story Now has more player agency. I disagree, I find it infringes on my agency as a player when I've played them. They took away my agency to do "not much at all" or "dig a little deeper" or "head off in a different direction" or "investigate something new," etc.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Ilbranteloth said:


> So how about this - can you start an example of how you'd start a scenario, so I (and maybe others) can respond as a character and see how this really plays out? Maybe a new thread? I participated in a thread like this for Dungeon World and it showed my how, although the mechanics were different, and how the DM adjudicated things differently, we could end up with the same results. It highlighted a few things I liked (most of which I was already doing, although didn't always recognize), and some that I didn't like in that game's design. It's not just to see how it plays out, but after each step explain to us what you're doing and how.




Here's an example: Lets set the parameters. This is an FRPG (we can call it 'D&D' notionally though I am not really fixed on mechanics here, lets assume it has a task resolution system of some kind). Its Story Now and No Myth, so the game will be initiated by the players creating backstory for their characters. Lets say that backstory and play will tell us about tone and sub-genre. We'll just imagine one player for simplicity.

The player decides that his goal is to "Find the undead monster which took his sister, and lay her soul to rest!" (yes, I invented that earlier, but it works). So he creates a backstory for his character, from a small town in a backwater area of mountains and forests, filled with superstition and dread of the undead. He lives in house in a small town, and last fall his sister met a mysterious stranger who stayed with the local landlord, who is the family patron. Several people died mysteriously and the sister vanished in the night along with the stranger. The PC made a vow to recover/avenge/lay her to rest, took vows as a priest of the Sun Goddess, and now searches for clues.

The GM frames a scene, the character is told he must go out to a remote hamlet and perform a burial ritual for several people who died mysteriously. The first scene opens with the character riding into the hamlet where he immediately runs into an old man who waves him down, frightening his horse. He stops and the man grabs his stirrup, yells at him to guard his soul and thrusts a garland of garlic bulbs into his hands. The man then runs off. (the player makes an attempt to stop him, but fails). 

The GM asks what the character intends to do next, ride on to the house where the dead people are reported to be, check in the tavern by the side of the road nearby to learn more about the situation, or perhaps investigate the situation in some other way. The player states he's riding on to his destination, as that is in keeping with the character's obligation as a priest, and certainly seems to directly act on his motivations.

Thus the next scene is framed in an old farmhouse half a mile up the road. As the character rides up he notes that a couple of horses are already tied up in the yard, and he can see some light coming from the house windows as it is now evening. He ties up his horse and walks in...

Things can continue from here in the vein of the PC performing rituals and gathering information which may lead him to his ultimate goal. Assuming this is a fairly long-term game, then clearly his progress will be slow and measured. He may learn something tonight. He may even learn key things, or it may take him a long time to learn much of anything, and in the meantime he deals with his duties and encounters various signs of the vampire menace. 

There are many possible ways the story can go, and the player will generally indicate which one is his preference. If he spends his time investigating and honing his investigating skills, then it will be a game of learning secrets and tracking down hidden foes. If he forges alliances with higher powers and becomes a magically endowed spiritual warrior, then maybe it will become a game of battling horrors face-to-face on a regular basis, fighting off growing hordes of undead or something like that. It could go a lot of ways and the player will choose based on what elements he adds to his character, which things he chooses to do, where he goes, whom he talks to, etc.

All of this is why I liked 4e particularly for this kind of play, as the player has total control of character build! He can signal what he wants with a theme, a PP, an ED, power choices, feat choices, etc. as well as overt actions.


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## Ilbranteloth

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Here's an example: Lets set the parameters. This is an FRPG (we can call it 'D&D' notionally though I am not really fixed on mechanics here, lets assume it has a task resolution system of some kind). Its Story Now and No Myth, so the game will be initiated by the players creating backstory for their characters. Lets say that backstory and play will tell us about tone and sub-genre. We'll just imagine one player for simplicity.
> 
> The player decides that his goal is to "Find the undead monster which took his sister, and lay her soul to rest!" (yes, I invented that earlier, but it works). So he creates a backstory for his character, from a small town in a backwater area of mountains and forests, filled with superstition and dread of the undead. He lives in house in a small town, and last fall his sister met a mysterious stranger who stayed with the local landlord, who is the family patron. Several people died mysteriously and the sister vanished in the night along with the stranger. The PC made a vow to recover/avenge/lay her to rest, took vows as a priest of the Sun Goddess, and now searches for clues.
> 
> The GM frames a scene, the character is told he must go out to a remote hamlet and perform a burial ritual for several people who died mysteriously. The first scene opens with the character riding into the hamlet where he immediately runs into an old man who waves him down, frightening his horse. He stops and the man grabs his stirrup, yells at him to guard his soul and thrusts a garland of garlic bulbs into his hands. The man then runs off. (the player makes an attempt to stop him, but fails).
> 
> The GM asks what the character intends to do next, ride on to the house where the dead people are reported to be, check in the tavern by the side of the road nearby to learn more about the situation, or perhaps investigate the situation in some other way. The player states he's riding on to his destination, as that is in keeping with the character's obligation as a priest, and certainly seems to directly act on his motivations.
> 
> Thus the next scene is framed in an old farmhouse half a mile up the road. As the character rides up he notes that a couple of horses are already tied up in the yard, and he can see some light coming from the house windows as it is now evening. He ties up his horse and walks in...
> 
> Things can continue from here in the vein of the PC performing rituals and gathering information which may lead him to his ultimate goal. Assuming this is a fairly long-term game, then clearly his progress will be slow and measured. He may learn something tonight. He may even learn key things, or it may take him a long time to learn much of anything, and in the meantime he deals with his duties and encounters various signs of the vampire menace.
> 
> There are many possible ways the story can go, and the player will generally indicate which one is his preference. If he spends his time investigating and honing his investigating skills, then it will be a game of learning secrets and tracking down hidden foes. If he forges alliances with higher powers and becomes a magically endowed spiritual warrior, then maybe it will become a game of battling horrors face-to-face on a regular basis, fighting off growing hordes of undead or something like that. It could go a lot of ways and the player will choose based on what elements he adds to his character, which things he chooses to do, where he goes, whom he talks to, etc.
> 
> All of this is why I liked 4e particularly for this kind of play, as the player has total control of character build! He can signal what he wants with a theme, a PP, an ED, power choices, feat choices, etc. as well as overt actions.




First, does "no myth" mean there is no established setting, and it's invented by the players and/or GM as the game progresses?

So, when I read this example I'm just reading a railroad, the only real difference from a traditional railroad is that in theory the "plot" came from the character. But I don't think that's a fair assessment either, it's just the way it reads.

Examples: How far away is the old man? Have I seen him before? I might not want to go see him. Why do I take the garlic bulbs? What if I don't want to? I'm on horseback and he's on foot, why can't I catch him?

Do I have to go with a choice the GM gives (house, tavern)? You say "investigate in some other way." Do I have any restrictions?

Did I pass by anything on the way to the house? Were there other houses, people, businesses, etc.? 

These might have come out in an actual game, but I can't tell. 

From this description, along with many others, it tends to lead me back to the same thought, and perhaps this is where we differ. As a player I'm interested in the experience. That is, when I go home I want to think back and remember the stuff that happened. I like to feel like I'm in control of my character. That I thought like them, made decisions like them, and took actions as them. I (and the other PCs) are in control of what we do, where we go, etc. within the setting that's presented by the DM. I really don't care how they do that. Published adventure, pre-authored notes, improvised, random determination, fudging rolls, whatever. It literally makes no difference to me. I don't even care if they cleverly manipulated us. If the story of the characters is interesting and we felt like we were acting as our characters, then we're happy. 

I get the sense that you, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and many others feel the opposite. That the _how_ the GM does all this matters as much, if not more, as the results themselves. That if the GM somehow made a decision that actually turns your "control" into an illusion, that it ruins your experience. I think that's reasonable, but I really don't _get_ it. Why would that be important? The only way that comes to mind is that people treat it _as_ a game. That is, that the game itself is what's important, and it's "played" like any other game. And to me, the game just exists to help us figure out what happens within our game. That is, the rules are guidelines, and can be adjusted as needed to facilitate whatever the story is we're writing. 

Ironically, I also love game design. I think that a well written rule set does exactly that, without the need for going outside the rules very often. While I don't inherently oppose fudging, illusionism, etc. I also think that it's almost never needed anymore because the rules are so well designed. And we've tweaked many of them for our home campaign too.

Anyway, instead of writing out what _would_ happen, I want to collaborate on what _does_ happen. Frame the initial scene for me (perhaps something different than this one), and I'll provide my input on what my PC does and we can see where it leads.

You've given my my starting point (although I understand I would have come up with this on my own):

_The player decides that his goal is to "Find the undead monster which took his sister, and lay her soul to rest!" (yes, I invented that earlier, but it works). So he creates a backstory for his character, from a small town in a backwater area of mountains and forests, filled with superstition and dread of the undead. He lives in house in a small town, and last fall his sister met a mysterious stranger who stayed with the local landlord, who is the family patron. Several people died mysteriously and the sister vanished in the night along with the stranger. The PC made a vow to recover/avenge/lay her to rest, took vows as a priest of the Sun Goddess, and now searches for clues._

If I could, I'd rather skip the taking vows as a priest, just to avoid magic and other magic special abilities. So I'd prefer to be a rogue, and perhaps the "less favored" sibling to my parents. Not that they don't love me, but that I'm a bit of a disappointment in my level of success in the world. I'm a bit of a procrastinator, but have a tendency to find a way to get out of the problems that creates for me. I've grown up on the family farm, primarily growing barley, but I'm good at managing to do less work than the others. When I do work, I tend to be "lazy" in the sense that I'll struggle to do something in one trip because it's faster, rather than to do it more easily in two trips. I'm happy to take on any work that clearly has a benefit for me.

I prefer to be known as Slant, my sister was Estra. I'm not sure I make the connection between "find the undead monster" and "my sister vanished into the night along with the stranger." What evidence is there that she's dead, much less by an undead monster? Would there be any reason to suspect the stranger to be an undead monster?

I'll go with missing, but with recent events in town several people have gone missing recently, and their bodies later found emaciated, their skin leathery and stretched across their bones, as if mummified. My parents are grieving, and feel it's just a matter of time before her body is found, but are too fearful of the old spirits and the sanctity of the dead to question this as being anything but the will of the gods.

I don't believe my sister is dead, at least not yet, so my goal is to "find her before she dies a horrible death, or find her killer if she is." I suspect that I would have heard about a stranger if one had been present around the time of the other disappearances or deaths. So I probably wouldn't consider him a prime suspect unless there's some evidence to the contrary. I'm also assuming that she has been gone for more than one day, in that I might not have considered that there was any issue that she was gone in the morning (she tended to get up earlier than me), until my parents asked about her, in which case I would have assumed she went someplace. But if she hadn't returned by that evening we'd start asking around, and after she was gone for maybe two or three days, that we'd start to get very worried. Perhaps by day 5, my parents have decided that there is no hope, and that's the point I'm ready to go find her. Other bodies were found perhaps 10 days after their disappearance, although they were often found in relatively remote locations, so they might have been present for a few days. So I'll say the shortest period between disappearance and discovery of the body is 9 days.

I have a few questions. From what I understand, I, as the player, established that the mysterious stranger stayed with the landlord and our patron. What can the landlord tell me about the mysterious stranger? Who determines that, me or the GM? How did the people die, and when the sister "vanished into the night with the stranger" was it something seen, or that when I woke up one day I found my sister was gone, without any obvious trace, and the stranger also happened to be gone? Again, who determines the details? 

Let me know if you can clarify those, and if we're ready, what's my opening scene?

.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> And why would this be? Is it because that's the only time when the players actually have some agency over the fiction!? When there are ZERO stakes so the GM is not driving things in terms of his or her view of the agenda? Now the dwarf's player gets to 'drink wine'. Is the reluctance of players to have deeper agendas (I mean, this one is pretty trivial, you can accomplish it in real life, you don't need to RP it!) simply because they know better than to have significant ones that get attention and that they are allowed to really drive forward?
> 
> It seems to me that you get what you expect! GMs are largely creating the conditions under which this sort of observation might hold. IME players start out wanting much more. They either stop playing, perhaps becoming GMs or going on to other things, or else they learn to settle. That is unless they have the good fortune to find a [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] to be their GM!
> 
> Now, I don't think that ALL players would rather have some significant agenda that is served by the game all the time, but I think very many more of them really actually do harbor these desires than you give credit for. Their hopes were often buried in intersections and such long ago!
> 
> In my games there may well be times when the PCs are said to recreate and spend time hanging out in a tavern, or whatever. It may represent an interlude or a challenge scene where information is gathered, or etc. If the players explain that their characters indulge in various side interests at these times, that's cool, but the dwarf warrior who is in search of his lost father isn't focused on finding another ale keg, even if he is a fine judge of its quality! At least not in any greater sense. It certainly isn't an 'agenda'. (I could imagine this in a non-serious type of game, and we have had some of those).




It was a simple agenda, because that's all it needed to be for my example.  For a more significant agenda, see my example of going north to become king of he northern barbarians.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Ilbranteloth said:


> First, does "no myth" mean there is no established setting, and it's invented by the players and/or GM as the game progresses?



No Myth is a general term for games where setting is not established in any fixed way, yes. I mean, part of the basic premise of the game may dictate certain 'givens', if the game were a 'modern urban fantasy detective' genre concept, then presumably it would involve some more-or-less-fantastic version of some real-world metropolis, with all the potential detail that might bring with it. However, it wouldn't be presupposed what sorts of fantastic beings existed in this world or how they were organized, if they were threats exactly, who the characters were, etc. That would all largely be determined based on player inputs via backstory, expressed interests, build choices, and the actions they choose to take, particularly in early establishing scenes.



> So, when I read this example I'm just reading a railroad, the only real difference from a traditional railroad is that in theory the "plot" came from the character. But I don't think that's a fair assessment either, it's just the way it reads.



I'm not sure I understand how anything here would be a 'railroad'. First the player expressed a belief/goal for his character. This goal, plus additional backstory, established his location, profession, a dramatic need, and what the desired focus (undead monsters or something similar) would be. NONE of this came from the GM, and in fact a GM is really only mentioned at paragraph 3, where he frames a scene.



> Examples: How far away is the old man? Have I seen him before? I might not want to go see him. Why do I take the garlic bulbs? What if I don't want to? I'm on horseback and he's on foot, why can't I catch him?



I see no reason why the player cannot engage with these questions, or take these actions. It wasn't intended that the player had no choices here. I indicated this with "the player makes an attempt to stop him, but fails" to show where a check was attempted and as a result the character didn't get to interact further with this old man character. The player could certainly state that he gets rid of the garlic at this point if he wants. Potentially other checks could have been involved as well, maybe for surprise, for reaction if the player wanted the character to call after the old man and beg him to come back perhaps, etc.

The point is, this is a pretty normal sort of encounter in a 'social exploration' mode of play. It could as easily happen in your game.



> Do I have to go with a choice the GM gives (house, tavern)? You say "investigate in some other way." Do I have any restrictions?



No, I'm not restricting the character. Remember, the player is signifying interest and guiding play by his choices, so if he suddenly decided to tromp off into the woods to find out what was on the other side, then that would be weird and inconsistent with his previously stated character development. I guess it could lead to an entirely different story about druids or something, maybe undead would get factored back in later? I don't know! Most players are not that 'flighty'. 

Still, I think if the player has some other idea or concept about how to address his character's needs, then he could express it here. He could simply refuse to accept the disappearance of the old man, go find some dogs and track the sucker down come hell or high water. I wouldn't find that to be untoward, just unexpected! I'm betting there's someone in the village with a decent hound dog, and that garlic has the guy's scent on it...



> Did I pass by anything on the way to the house? Were there other houses, people, businesses, etc.?



OK, again, a fairly reasonable question, and the GM is going to be able to provide some sort of answer. I think my basic answer would maybe be "its getting dark and you see a few lights here and there, as if people are about their evening activities. As you proceed further on there are fewer houses." 



> These might have come out in an actual game, but I can't tell.



Yeah, if you were a player and you asked any of them I would not find it unusual or problematic.



> From this description, along with many others, it tends to lead me back to the same thought, and perhaps this is where we differ. As a player I'm interested in the experience. That is, when I go home I want to think back and remember the stuff that happened. I like to feel like I'm in control of my character. That I thought like them, made decisions like them, and took actions as them. I (and the other PCs) are in control of what we do, where we go, etc. within the setting that's presented by the DM. I really don't care how they do that. Published adventure, pre-authored notes, improvised, random determination, fudging rolls, whatever. It literally makes no difference to me. I don't even care if they cleverly manipulated us. If the story of the characters is interesting and we felt like we were acting as our characters, then we're happy.
> 
> I get the sense that you, @_*pemerton*_ and many others feel the opposite. That the _how_ the GM does all this matters as much, if not more, as the results themselves. That if the GM somehow made a decision that actually turns your "control" into an illusion, that it ruins your experience. I think that's reasonable, but I really don't _get_ it. Why would that be important? The only way that comes to mind is that people treat it _as_ a game. That is, that the game itself is what's important, and it's "played" like any other game. And to me, the game just exists to help us figure out what happens within our game. That is, the rules are guidelines, and can be adjusted as needed to facilitate whatever the story is we're writing.



I think that I only care about the process in terms of what roles the different persons playing the game take and how they experience play. I don't, for instance, think its 'bad' just because a GM fudged a roll in a DM-centered type of game in order to keep it on track. If the game worked and was fun and the experience was what I wanted then I have nothing to complain about. 

I also think you worry too much about how much the player is in control of the character in Story Now. Players play their characters, they're in charge of them. Yes, the game is not some kind of strict stream-of-consciousness thing where you never skip anything, but no game REALLY is that anyway. Meaningful, that is addressing some character need/agenda/core issue of play, decisions are always made by players, not forced on them by the GM. Other aspects may depend on the system and its focus and intent. For example you might have a check to see if you brought enough torches, or you might have the player decide an exact torch number and track them all. 



> Ironically, I also love game design. I think that a well written rule set does exactly that, without the need for going outside the rules very often. While I don't inherently oppose fudging, illusionism, etc. I also think that it's almost never needed anymore because the rules are so well designed. And we've tweaked many of them for our home campaign too.



Well, its a question IMHO of agenda of the GM. If he's got a fixed idea of where things go, he may NEED to resort to these things, but maybe not. Certainly there are games which eliminate that issue, and don't hand control to players either, but for example 5e is NOT one of them! Illusionism and force are issues in 5e just like in 2e! 



> Anyway, instead of writing out what _would_ happen, I want to collaborate on what _does_ happen. Frame the initial scene for me (perhaps something different than this one), and I'll provide my input on what my PC does and we can see where it leads.
> 
> You've given my my starting point (although I understand I would have come up with this on my own):
> 
> _The player decides that his goal is to "Find the undead monster which took his sister, and lay her soul to rest!" (yes, I invented that earlier, but it works). So he creates a backstory for his character, from a small town in a backwater area of mountains and forests, filled with superstition and dread of the undead. He lives in house in a small town, and last fall his sister met a mysterious stranger who stayed with the local landlord, who is the family patron. Several people died mysteriously and the sister vanished in the night along with the stranger. The PC made a vow to recover/avenge/lay her to rest, took vows as a priest of the Sun Goddess, and now searches for clues._
> 
> If I could, I'd rather skip the taking vows as a priest, just to avoid magic and other magic special abilities. So I'd prefer to be a rogue, and perhaps the "less favored" sibling to my parents. Not that they don't love me, but that I'm a bit of a disappointment in my level of success in the world. I'm a bit of a procrastinator, but have a tendency to find a way to get out of the problems that creates for me. I've grown up on the family farm, primarily growing barley, but I'm good at managing to do less work than the others. When I do work, I tend to be "lazy" in the sense that I'll struggle to do something in one trip because it's faster, rather than to do it more easily in two trips. I'm happy to take on any work that clearly has a benefit for me.
> 
> I prefer to be known as Slant, my sister was Estra. I'm not sure I make the connection between "find the undead monster" and "my sister vanished into the night along with the stranger." What evidence is there that she's dead, much less by an undead monster? Would there be any reason to suspect the stranger to be an undead monster?
> 
> I'll go with missing, but with recent events in town several people have gone missing recently, and their bodies later found emaciated, their skin leathery and stretched across their bones, as if mummified. My parents are grieving, and feel it's just a matter of time before her body is found, but are too fearful of the old spirits and the sanctity of the dead to question this as being anything but the will of the gods.
> 
> I don't believe my sister is dead, at least not yet, so my goal is to "find her before she dies a horrible death, or find her killer if she is." I suspect that I would have heard about a stranger if one had been present around the time of the other disappearances or deaths. So I probably wouldn't consider him a prime suspect unless there's some evidence to the contrary. I'm also assuming that she has been gone for more than one day, in that I might not have considered that there was any issue that she was gone in the morning (she tended to get up earlier than me), until my parents asked about her, in which case I would have assumed she went someplace. But if she hadn't returned by that evening we'd start asking around, and after she was gone for maybe two or three days, that we'd start to get very worried. Perhaps by day 5, my parents have decided that there is no hope, and that's the point I'm ready to go find her. Other bodies were found perhaps 10 days after their disappearance, although they were often found in relatively remote locations, so they might have been present for a few days. So I'll say the shortest period between disappearance and discovery of the body is 9 days.
> 
> I have a few questions. From what I understand, I, as the player, established that the mysterious stranger stayed with the landlord and our patron. What can the landlord tell me about the mysterious stranger? Who determines that, me or the GM? How did the people die, and when the sister "vanished into the night with the stranger" was it something seen, or that when I woke up one day I found my sister was gone, without any obvious trace, and the stranger also happened to be gone? Again, who determines the details?
> 
> Let me know if you can clarify those, and if we're ready, what's my opening scene?
> 
> .




OK, I have to break off now, and we can maybe create a thread for that tomorrow? I think it could be fun!


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I would analyze B2 as mostly inappropriate for Story Now for several critical reasons:
> 
> 1) The entire adventure at the Caves of Chaos, while not scripted in the sense that it must be undertaken in a strictly linear fashion, is a FIXED set of scenes. If these scenes address character needs and player agenda it by pure chance.



Or it's tangential, or is merely building up to something later.



> OK, the premise is the keep on the edge of civilization. What does this say about civilization? What does it say about wilderness? About their relationship, and that of people, PCs particularly, to either of those things?



This early in the campaign, how much of this really matters?  Maybe after this adventure, once the PCs start exploring more widely, answers to these questions may present themselves and-or become relevant; but in the here-and-now of the Keep and the Caves, who cares?



> Establishment of a Fighter, wizard, cleric, and thief: These are generic characters built to classes which are basic archetypes. What is unique about these guys and what compels them? B/X and 1e both ASSUME fighters want to build keeps, wizards want/need components etc, rogues want riches, and clerics want to build temples. What is actually pushing these guys? Does the fighter wish to establish a keep because his family honor is at stake after they lost their holding somewhere else? Is the wizard attempting to achieve some specific magical effect? Why? What is the basis of the cleric's friendship with the fighter? Are they related, old friends, lovers?! What deity does this cleric even serve? Why is the rogue out here on the edge of civilization instead of cutting fat purses in some market town? How did he become friends with a fighter?



Where to start?

Fighters building keeps and clerics building temples are long-term goals that - in 1e - carry at least one specific mechanical requirement: that the PC be of at least a certain level.  MUs needing components and thieves seeking riches are both kind of ongoing goals that don't really have a defined point at which the goal can be declared as achieved.  Thieves starting guilds and MUs building their own labs are those classes' long term goals analagous to the fighter and her keep.

And the Caves can directly help in achieving all of these.  There's treasure in them thar caves, so the immediate goals of the thief (riches) and MU (components scavenged in the field and-or bought with said riches) are satisfied, while still remaining as onging goals as you can never have enough.  And the Caves provide all four classes with a boost toward achievement of their name-level goals (the keep, etc.) by being a fine source of experience points which build (a bit) toward the level required by the stated goal.  Why they each have their own particular goal is, for purposes of play, mostly irrelevant - particularly at such a low level when achievement of the goal is so far away the Hubble couldn't find it. 

Lanefan


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> And why would this be? Is it because that's the only time when the players actually have some agency over the fiction!? When there are ZERO stakes so the GM is not driving things in terms of his or her view of the agenda? Now the dwarf's player gets to 'drink wine'. Is the reluctance of players to have deeper agendas (I mean, this one is pretty trivial, you can accomplish it in real life, you don't need to RP it!) simply because they know better than to have significant ones that get attention and that they are allowed to really drive forward?



There's a number of possible reasons for a "reluctance to have deeper agendas", all of which in the end boil down to the player doesn't want one.



> It seems to me that you get what you expect! GMs are largely creating the conditions under which this sort of observation might hold. IME players start out wanting much more. They either stop playing, perhaps becoming GMs or going on to other things, or else they learn to settle. That is unless they have the good fortune to find a [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] to be their GM!
> 
> Now, I don't think that ALL players would rather have some significant agenda that is served by the game all the time, but I think very many more of them really actually do harbor these desires than you give credit for. Their hopes were often buried in intersections and such long ago!



I've had a number of players over the years get their first introduction to RPGing through my games and (admittedly anecdotally) I would disagree with this statement.

And, if I'm "a player who has a significant agenda that is to be served by the game all the time" that by extension means I don't really want any other players in the game!  It's extremely unlikely our different agendas are going to perfectly line up, and any time spent serving one of their different agendas isn't spent serving mine.  This is a very selfish and entitled stance, and one I want no part of.



> In my games there may well be times when the PCs are said to recreate and spend time hanging out in a tavern, or whatever. It may represent an interlude or a challenge scene where information is gathered, or etc. If the players explain that their characters indulge in various side interests at these times, that's cool, but the dwarf warrior who is in search of his lost father isn't focused on finding another ale keg, even if he is a fine judge of its quality! At least not in any greater sense. It certainly isn't an 'agenda'. (I could imagine this in a non-serious type of game, and we have had some of those).



A dwarf in search of his lost father...a brother trying to save his brother from balrog possession...an lovelorn elf trying to find her true path in the world - navel-gazing angst and personal drama ****.  If this was all the game had to offer you'd hear my screams slowly getting fainter as I ran away as fast as I could!  I'm looking for entertainment, dammit; and while tragedy and drama certainly help with this, in the end it still mostly comes from comedy and action.

Lan-"if your character doesn't somehow make the players at the table laugh at least once a session, you really are doing it wrong"-efan


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> If, for example, a player set out pacifism between races as a goal, a DM might introduce the Caves as a shining example of a situation where multiple races of sentient creatures live more or less peacefully in the same small valley...and theat player's/PC's challenge would then become one of stopping the party from killing everything in there.



Isn't the whole premise that these orcs etc are attacking the local humans?


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> What we don't see in this example is all the lead-up showing how the rogue got to this point.  The agenda and reasons for being here would very likely have long since been established.  What the rogue thinks and feels at that particular moment would of course be up to the player to narrate on the fly, should she so desire; as would the decision of what if anything to sacrifice or trade off in order to achieve her immediate goal of stealthily getting into the castle.



My point is that  [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] doesn't tell us anything about (for instance) any such sacrifice being required. Or anything else that brings character personality or agenda to the fore. The only choice the player of the rogue had to make was _do I declare a search, or do I not bother_? Nothing was at stake.



Lanefan said:


> it's not very often that much characterization comes out of what are in effect largely mechanical action declarations.  "This is a logical place for a secret door so I'll search for one" tells us maybe a bit about the character, but mostly that's just a simple Search declaration - not much in it; and it's unfair to point at this as a reason for any lack of characterization or personality.



What it tells me is that this is not a game in which _advocacy_, in Eero Tuovinen's sense, is important.

And at least in my games most of what we learn about characters comes out of action declarations.

I've posted many actual play links in this thread, and described a number as well. Here are just a handful:

* A Traveller PC asks the bishop whether mysterious mental abilities are part of his religious practice. We see how keen the PC is to find someone to teach her psionics.

* As the mage Joachim is decapitated in front of him, a Burning Wheel PC looks around the room to see if there is a vessel to catch the blood. We see that the PC is committed to ensuring that his dark master gets the blood of this mage so it can be offered to the spirits of the earth and darkness.

* The first thing the mage Jobe does when he returns to his now-ruined tower, after 14 years away, is search for the nickel-silver mace he had left behind when the orcs attacked. We see how important this mace (and, more generally, the prospect of enchanting items) is to this PC.

* The skinchanger scout climbs up the pallisade of the giant steading, looks around and sees a barn, and then takes a giant ox from it to try and trick the giants by offering to sell their own cattle back to them. From this we see that the PC is a trickster.

* War Machine is flying above Washington, DC, with his "date" in his arms. He knows that she has some sort of interest in the Stark tech Multi-Person Orbit and Reentry Vehicle on display at the Smithsonian, and would probably like him to help her steal it. When he receives an alert that intruders are in the museum, he leaves the woman hanging from the top of the Washington monument. We learn from that where his loyalties lie; and also that he is not very ruthless.

* The paladin of the Raven Queen persuades his fellow PCs to pacify rather than kill a wild cave bear that they encounter in a ruined temple. The PCs calm the bear, and the player of the paladin says "I feel really good about not having killed that bear." We learn that the PCs, led by this PC in particular, are not (always) ruthless killers.

* The invoker/wizard decides to let the Raven Queen take the souls that have been freed from the Soul Abattoir, even though he knows that Vecna wants them, and - given that the Eye of Vecna is implanted in the character's imp familiar - may take revenge for the decision. We learn that this PC is loyal to the Raven Queen and is prepared to thwart Vecna (whom he nevertheless, in some sense, worships). (We also see, once again, how liable Vecna is to betrayal! It must be his fate.)

* The chaos sorcerer decides to seal the Abyss, by rendering one of his zones into a permanent and impenetrable zone of entropy, even though this means he will never recharge that daily power. We learn that this PC is prepared to sacrifice his magical power in order to sever the connection between the Abyss and the rest of the cosmos.​
If action declarations aren't telling you anything about the PCs, that's a pretty clear sign that you're not playing a game in the "standard narrativistic model".



Lanefan said:


> On a broader scale, characterization and personality mostly tends to develop during what we might consider as "downtime": while sitting around the campfire getting to know the other PCs, or via things done while in town between adventures.  Maxperson's wine-guzzling Dwarf is a fine example - the whole wine business is rarely if ever going to come up while in the field, but it's known to be an ongoing part of the Dwarf's character.



As with Maxperson's example, this tells me something about the dynamics of your games: the GM is the one who establishes the stakes of situations, with the players having little or no significant input. And there is little or no "advocacy" in Eero Tuovinen's sense.

The following passage from Christopher Kubasik's "Interactive Tookit" seems relevant to this:

Characters drive the narrative of all stories. However, many people mistake _character_ for _characterization_.

Characterization is the look of a character, the description of his voice, the quirks of habit. Characterization creates the concrete detail of a character through the use of sensory detail and exposition. By “seeing” how a character looks, how he picks up his wine glass, by knowing he has a love of fine tobacco, the character becomes concrete to our imagination, even while remaining nothing more than black ink upon a white page.

But a person thus described is not a character. A character must do.

Character is action. That’s a rule of thumb for plays and movies, and is valid as well for roleplaying games and story entertainments. This means that the best way to reveal your character is not through on an esoteric monologue about pipe and tobacco delivered by your character, but through your character’s actions.

But what actions? Not every action is true to a character; it is not enough to haphazardly do things in the name of action. Instead, actions must grow from the roots of Goals. A characterization imbued with a Goal that leads to action is a character.​
This is an early statement (1995, I think) of the ideas that Eero Tuovinen is talking about when he refers to _advocacy_ and "the standard narrativistic model".



Lanefan said:


> In most RPGs combat mechanics are more or less vastly different from exploration mechanics and-or social mechanics; and any attempt to unify the three things into one overarching set of mechanics is an absolute mistake, and doomed to failure.



This was already addressed by  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]. Here are some RPGs I'm familiar with where the gulf you assert is absent: Burning Wheel, Cortex+ Heroic, HeroWars/Quest, Dogs in the Vineyard, The Dying Earth. Here are some where the basic mechanic is the same, although there are extra bells and whistles for combat: Rolemaster, Classic Traveller, Runequest, 4e.

If by "most RPGs" you mean _the versions of D&D that Lanefan is familiar with_, well OK, but that's an idiosyncratic definition of "most".


----------



## Lanefan

Ilbranteloth said:


> So this is the sort of scene that dominated the couple of times I played a Story Now game. The next scene is back at the command center, centering on a sub-plot. The problem that I had with the scene in the show (not my favorite, it has it's moments though and I like some of the characters), and scenes like this is that it feels so contrived.
> 
> It's relatively obvious as they frame a scene what's going on - oh, this will be a gunfight scene. The meta aspect of a TV show makes this more obvious since we're either just before or just after the last commercial break. But the scene unfolds in a predictable manner - they can't catch the quarry at this point, so a "dramatic" gunfight ensues, the quarry makes an escape, and now that the drama of the scene has occurred, it's quickly wrapped up.
> 
> While I get that it's one way to tell a story, we prefer to let things unfold at a slower pace. We like things to focus more on the characters themselves, getting into their heads, and allowing them to experience the world as if it's a real world, and not a dramatic TV show.



There's an element involved here that's too important to ignore: time.

A dramatic TV show only has a certain amount of running time in which to tell its story, and thus is oftentimes forced to skip from scene to scene just to get the story told within the alloted time.

A typical home-played RPG has no such resctriction.  Telling the story has no real-world deadline behind it; and a single session is equivalent to picking up a book at whatever page you put it down, reading a few pages, then putting it down again.  There's nothing forcing a single session to follow a dramatic arc (intro-tension-buildup-climax-denouement).  In fact, probably the only thing that could force an RPG to skip from scene to scene like a TV show is a very limited attention span by its DM and-or players.

I agree with most of the rest of what you said, except for:


> The same approach is probably reflected in my musical tastes, which started with progressive bands like Yes, Genesis, along with Pink Floyd, particularly the pre-Dark Side era, and moved into more experimental and improvisational long form music, ambient, etc. (among many others). I like the dynamics, the slow builds, the meditative moments where little is happening, and that sort of thing.



What does it say then, that depending on mood I'm either a metalhead or an 80's new-waver or (more recently) a synthwave-chillwave fan; yet I also like an explorative game? 

Lanefan


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Isn't the whole premise that these orcs etc are attacking the local humans?



In the example I gave of the player setting pacifism between races as a goal, this could easily be made to fit in: let the player find out in-character about this conflict and see if she tries to intervene or mediate and pacify both sides.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> In the rogue example the player is clearly and strongly letting the DM know what the PCs is doing and why.  That qualifies as full agency, even if that particular example isn't showing all aspects of what Eero talks about in that paragraph.



That example has _zero_ to do with what Eero Tuovinen is talking about. [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] is just wrong to think that declaring a search for a secret door, and looking for scuff marks as part of that, is the sort of thing that Tuovinen has in mind. 



Maxperson said:


> the rogue's agenda is clearly to get inside unnoticed



That's not an _agenda_. It's a means, and a very generic one. Why does the rogue want to enter the castle? What would s/he risk to do so? If s/he is entering stealthily, what provocation would make her reveal herself? These are the sorts of things that show us who the character is, what s/he wants, what her goals are, what sort of person s/he is.



Maxperson said:


> I as a player establish my character's personality, interests and agendas.  Here's the thing.  I don't even have to tell the DM what they are in order for me to bring them out in the game.  Nothing is required on the part of the DM.
> 
> Let's say that I'm playing a dour dwarf(I know, it's a stretch  ) who is interested in fine wines and with an agenda to get drunk on fine wine in every town he comes to.  Without telling the DM any of that, I can seek out taverns in every town, looking for fine wine.  My dour personality will become apparent in my interaction with the NPCs and other PCs.  If a tavern doesn't have fine wine, I can grumpily exit and seek out a place that sells fine wine, showing that it's important to my PC that the wine he drinks be fine.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Very few interests and agendas need DM help to achieve, and I can't imagine ever needing the DM to help my play my character's personality.



This is a very narrow conception of what a PC's interest and agenda might be - after all, it seems that you can achieve it without actually having to play the meaty parts of the game (I've never yet heard of a D&D campaign where the real action was finding taverns that sell wine).

But even your example actually does require the GM - if the GM asserts that no taverns have any wine (maybe a disease destroyed all the grapes? maybe they all sold out?) then you can't get drunk. Likewise if the GM declares that you meet no NPCs (they're all staying home on the occasions your PC happens to turn up in town) then you won't get to show off your dour personality.

Even for what you describe, you need the right framing from the GM.



Maxperson said:


> Let's say my PC decides to become king of the northern barbarians.  I don't need the DM's help to accomplish this goal.  My PC exists.  The barbarians exist.  I can go there and try to become king.



First, who gets to decide that this campaign world contains northern barbarians? (Maybe the tales of their existence are all false. Maybe all the vikings in longships are really gnomes using disguise self and other illusion spells.)

And once we get over the existence on the barbarians within the setting, you need scenes to be framed that actually allow _going there_ to happen; and that allow _becoming king_ to happen. As [MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION] points out, there are any number of ways this framing can fail to obtain. It might be as simple as every time you look for a boat there isn't one; every time you try to cross the mountain passes they're blocked by snow; and every time you try to teleport a strange magnetic-magical field blocks your way.

This all goes back to the fact that these are _fictions_. They have no reality. No one can do anything in respect of them unless a story is told about them. Given the allocation of functions in a typical RPG, the players depend upon the GM to tell them certain stories (eg "OK, after struggling through the mountains you crest the pass - beneath you, you see the rolling hills of the barbarian homelands. What do you do?").



AbdulAlhazred said:


> REALITY, actual world reality, is constructed such that every single element of it is causally connected to every single other element of it in some way! The amount of detail is effectively infinite.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It is hopeless to attempt to achieve this in the fantasy world, so it is only a matter of what the dramatic effect of any given narration is. Its logical consequences are purely limited to the narrative realm and, given the impossibility of connecting it to anything resembling causal reality, it has no other significance. Thus in game terms you are utterly correct, and this is a point which has long failed to be appreciated by many in the gaming community. That any two narratives with the same logical structure are in fact equivalent and one can only prefer one over the other, or one technique of generating such, for aesthetic reasons. Agency simply cannot logically be a factor in terms of the in-game details of the narrative. Agency arises purely out of who gets to decide the structure of that narrative!



It's probably a bit gauche to agree with you agreeing with me, but I'll do so anyway!

All other forms of conveying fictions (novels, films, oral stories) treat detail, geographic and temporal proximity, and the like as purely elements in a narrative. Salience and "causation" is about connections that resonate through a setting, or a character, or a theme. We can make it express (like the red dotted lines in Indiana Jones films - "But what if Indie wanted to jump out of the plane to pursue the wild geese?") or implicit (I watched the fairly ordinary psychics film "Push" on TV the other night, and after a couple of introductory scenes it cuts from place to place and time to time in Hong Kong as pacing required).

In a more-or-less mainstream RPG, it seems to me that the GM has the preeminent control over pacing; but most of what we're discussing in this thread at the moment is _whose view about salience counts_. To posit that there is some "neutral" or "objective" measure of salience, such that to start at the city gate rather than in the bazaar, or to mention the intersections but not the flagstones, is to respect _causation _in some fashion, just makes no sense.



Maxperson said:


> It has nothing to do with what is important or not, and everything to do with the PCs will almost surely notice an intersection and it becomes a decision point for the players, important or not.  It's not my job to determine what is or is not important to the players/PCs.  It's my job to give the players, through their PCs, all the information they need to make the decisions they want to make based on what is important to them.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Going through a door might leave out, "You see the door jamb as you pass through.", but that's about it.  Traveling through the Underdark is going to leave out tons of information during the travel.  Flora, fauna, passages, possibly surface wealth in the form of raw gems, and God knows what else.  Regardless, it's going to be a lot more than just a door jamb.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> reducing travel through the extremely dangerous and diverse Underdark to a skill challenge seems like you are cheapening the Underdark considerably.



This is all bizarre to me.

What you call "information" is just a story told to the players by the GM. If the play of the game doesn't involve the players being told such a story, what have they missed out on? It's not like they were all sitting in suspended animation in the time that might otherwise have been spent on that! They've been playing a game which involves whatever it is that the players cared about - fire giants, in this notional example, and maybe other stuff as well (what happens. for instance, when they learn that Obmi the dwarf is an advisor to the giants, but also the cousin of their patron from the dwarfhold?). While your player were writing down stuff about intersections and gems, the ones in the example were making decisions that are fundamental to the goals, relationships etc that they have established for their PCs.

And this idea that it "cheapens" the Underdark to resolve travel as a skill challenge makes even less sense, if possible; likewise that this is a "reduction". I don't even know what "cheapen" and "reduction" mean here: it's cheap to declare and resolve actions, but not to mark off rations on an equipment list?

Here are four actual play links to skill challenge stuff involving the Underdark. Where did the cheapening happen?



Maxperson said:


> If I tell the DM that I want to go to a city and he places me inside a wizard tower inside that city, he has played my character.



And what does this pertain to in the current discussion? 



Maxperson said:


> The same if I say that we are going to go where the dwarves said the giants are.  Saying that I'm going there does not give the DM license to just cause my character to decide to brazenly or stupidly(take your pick) walk up to a giant patrol and be seen.



_Walking up to a giant patrol_ is your wording, not mine. In the real world people sometimes get seen unexpectedly. Maybe the PCs rounded a corner and - lo and behold - there was the giants' cavern, with a group of giants looking straight at them!



Maxperson said:


> I'm going by what you described to us in your example [about the PCs going to the cavern of the fire giants].



And in my example the players didn't express any desire to be stealthy. They wanted to organise their potions, and that was resolved, and then they headed off. If the particular players I was writing about in my example had wanted to be stealthy, than I would have indicated that!



Maxperson said:


> I'm saying that if the DM is going to make decisions for your PC the way [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] did in his giants example



I'm going to repost the example - with the "variant" included - because you are misdescribing it:



pemerton said:


> GM: OK, so you've agreed to help the dwarves against the giants. Your're heading off, right?
> 
> Players: Yes, we're heading off as soon as Aster makes some potions of fire resistance for us.
> 
> GM: OK, mark down your potions and cross off your residuum. You trek through the Underdark, following the directions the dwarves gave you. Everyone make a DC 20 Endurance check - if you fail, you're down a healing surge by the time you arrive at your destination.
> 
> <players adjust equpiment lists, make checks, adjust healing surge totals if required>
> 
> GM [option 1]: Just as the dwarves told you, after a hard trek through the tunnels you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern. It's lit a dull red by the glow of lava that bubbles up through the floor of the cave and flows away in criss-crossing channels. A black, basalt structure stands in the centre - the Hall of the Fire Giant King.
> 
> GM [variant option]: Just as the dwarves told you, after a hard trek through the tunnels you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern. It's lit a dull red by the glow of lava that bubbles up through the floor of the cave and flows away in criss-crossing channels. In the glow of the lava, you can see fire giant sentries on patrol. And it seems that a group of sentries has seen you!



The GM didn't make decisions for the players. The players decided to head off to the cavern of the fire giants. However many intersections, gemstone etc you narrate along the way, ultimately there is going to be a moment when the PCs arrive at the cavern. At that moment they are liable to be spotted if anyone is looking!

As I already pointed out, these PCs didn't indicate anything about stealth - which obviously it would have been their prerogative to do. (When the PCs in my 4e game visited the Shrine of the Kuo-toa, they used a Seeming ritual to disguise their true appearance. But they didn't do that at the Soul Abattoir - on that occasion they just launched a full-frontal assault! Before entering the Shrine, they prepared magic items - a couple of Caps of Waterbreathing - to help them; they didn't perform any such preparations in anticipation of the Soul Abattoir, although they did get a boat ride there with some devils, and they extracted a promise that the vessel and crew would await their return.)



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Interesting. I wouldn't favor 'hours long' interludes, but I've found that a more 'operational' and 'strategic' focus to play than what 4e provided can be more interesting. At least I like to have a game which makes these tools available.
> 
> OTOH I also tend to find ways to structure challenges so as to work logistics into the game more as narrative explanation than as a puzzle to solve. So when the party is going to trek across the desert I set the challenge up as "equip yourselves for and execute the journey across the desert." Now if a player wants to say "I make a Survival check to resist the heat of the desert" it can be cast in terms of water (a resource). "Make a Survival check to see if you properly calculated the needed amount of water. If you fail then you've run out and suffered the consequences."



What you describe here works for me. Unfortunately by-the-book 4e takes a different approach to potions and ritual components! Hence those occasional irruptions of logistics.

As far as the idea of _pushing the players along_, I see this as part of the pacing function of the referee. As I probably posted somewhere upthread, on a few occasions in 4e and Traveller I've cut off interminable debate by using ad hoc mechanics to determine which of the two sides of the argument wins the debate. (In BW or Cortex+ Heroic, this doesn't need ad hoc mechanics - Duel of Wits can be PvP, as (in Cortex+) can a contest to inflict emotional or mental stress, or some appropriate complication.)


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Not everything you do is a railroad.



 [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] asserted that the reliquary scene was a railroad. I am asking where the railroad is.



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> <stuff about the Raven Queen intercepting a teleport and handing out items>
> 
> 
> 
> 
> They were trying to get somewhere and you stopped it and added another step, albeit an easy one.   You called that blocking to me earlier in the thread, since the player desire didn't resolve immediately.
Click to expand...




Maxperson said:


> pemerton has been saying, "But DM agency stops/reduces player agency!" as a response to things we author things to benefit the PCs.  Now he's gone and admitted he does it, too.  That's my point here.  It also both blocks the PC teleport, stopping it for this act AND causes the successful act of teleporting to not be final.



See, this is wrong. The teleportation was final. Read the actual play report - I didn't add a "step". In fact, I sent an email telling the players what gear their PCs got from the Raven Queen. No checks were required. They were gifted their gear and then arrived at their destination. It was a powerup of exactly the sort that Lanefan decries!

Of course my game includes GM agency. Who do you think frames the scenes? But look even at this example - why did I, as GM, choose the Raven Queen to be the PCs' benefactor? Because the players have chosen to make her salient.



Maxperson said:


> Modern society with modern materials and building techniques differ a lot from what was available in the Middle Ages. You're also talking about many different buildings and materials, which involves far more diversity than the construction involved in a single building or subterranean construction.



I also mentioned some urban areas that are much closer to what a D&D city would look like - Fez (the Old City), Zanzibar and Nairobi. This is why, in the OP or not long after it, I pointed out the significance of the Gygaxian dungeon as an artificial and radically austere environment, in respect of which some sort of approximation to "total description" is possible. But no mediaeval city (or psedo-mediaeval one) is even remotely close to this.


----------



## Aenghus

Maxperson said:


> A base assumption of mine is that the DM is at least mediocre.  If he's a bad DM as you are describing, then nothing really matters for any playstyle,  Bad DMs are bad.  If the DM as at least mediocre, that stuff isn't going to happen.




Thanks for your response. Every player I have met is a distinct individual with their own preferences. It isn't as simple as just good GMs and bad GMs, either, every GM has strengths and weaknesses. Some GMs just don't cater to player goals, or do so in a fitful fashion.  

Safe to say I still prefer a more collaborative approach. Quiet players can't rely on being heard once the game starts, they often get drowned out by louder, pushier players.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> What it tells me is that this is not a game in which _advocacy_, in Eero Tuovinen's sense, is important.
> 
> And at least in my games most of what we learn about characters comes out of action declarations.
> 
> I've posted many actual play links in this thread, and described a number as well. Here are just a handful:
> 
> * A Traveller PC asks the bishop whether mysterious mental abilities are part of his religious practice. We see how keen the PC is to find someone to teach her psionics.
> 
> * As the mage Joachim is decapitated in front of him, a Burning Wheel PC looks around the room to see if there is a vessel to catch the blood. We see that the PC is committed to ensuring that his dark master gets the blood of this mage so it can be offered to the spirits of the earth and darkness.
> 
> * The first thing the mage Jobe does when he returns to his now-ruined tower, after 14 years away, is search for the nickel-silver mace he had left behind when the orcs attacked. We see how important this mace (and, more generally, the prospect of enchanting items) is to this PC.
> 
> * The skinchanger scout climbs up the pallisade of the giant steading, looks around and sees a barn, and then takes a giant ox from it to try and trick the giants by offering to sell their own cattle back to them. From this we see that the PC is a trickster.
> 
> * War Machine is flying above Washington, DC, with his "date" in his arms. He knows that she has some sort of interest in the Stark tech Multi-Person Orbit and Reentry Vehicle on display at the Smithsonian, and would probably like him to help her steal it. When he receives an alert that intruders are in the museum, he leaves the woman hanging from the top of the Washington monument. We learn from that where his loyalties lie; and also that he is not very ruthless.
> 
> * The paladin of the Raven Queen persuades his fellow PCs to pacify rather than kill a wild cave bear that they encounter in a ruined temple. The PCs calm the bear, and the player of the paladin says "I feel really good about not having killed that bear." We learn that the PCs, led by this PC in particular, are not (always) ruthless killers.
> 
> * The invoker/wizard decides to let the Raven Queen take the souls that have been freed from the Soul Abattoir, even though he knows that Vecna wants them, and - given that the Eye of Vecna is implanted in the character's imp familiar - may take revenge for the decision. We learn that this PC is loyal to the Raven Queen and is prepared to thwart Vecna (whom he nevertheless, in some sense, worships). (We also see, once again, how liable Vecna is to betrayal! It must be his fate.)
> 
> * The chaos sorcerer decides to seal the Abyss, by rendering one of his zones into a permanent and impenetrable zone of entropy, even though this means he will never recharge that daily power. We learn that this PC is prepared to sacrifice his magical power in order to sever the connection between the Abyss and the rest of the cosmos.​



Every one of these is a single relatively-isolated incident, which might tell me what the character is thinking in that moment but doesn't tell me much overall until I start seeing a pattern over time.  

Does War Machine treat every date that way, or just this particular one because he really wasn't all that impressed with her?  

Does the invoker who betrays Vecna have a past history of betrayals and disloyalty or is this a sudden departure from the norm?  

Does Jobe's first thought on exploring an area always turn to treasure, or is it just this one item that he wants and otherwise he's not an avaricious sort?

Is the Traveller PC asking the bishop about mysterious mental abilities in his religion because she wants to learn them or because she is gathering information in preparation for launching a war against his church?

Is the skinchanger always looking for the tricky solution or did he just happen to have a flash of inspiration this time?

etc.



> If action declarations aren't telling you anything about the PCs, that's a pretty clear sign that you're not playing a game in the "standard narrativistic model".



Action declarations can only tell me things (or reinforce prior knowledge) over the mdeium to long term.  A thief searching for a secret door once tells me nothing.  A thief searching for secret doors at every opportunity even when just sacking out in a room at an inn tells me the character is either highly inquisitive or somewhat paranoid; and other things he's done or said over time will tell me which it is.

Further, I've learned to determine character through what the character says and does over time in the game rather than what the player might say or write on the character sheet.  An example from the party I DMed earlier tonight: there's one PC about whome whose player would say that while he's not selfless he's certainly helpful and somewhat self-sacrificing.  In play, however, he's much more self-serving and self-preserving than that description would lead you to believe.



> The following passage from Christopher Kubasik's "Interactive Tookit" seems relevant to this:
> 
> Characters drive the narrative of all stories. However, many people mistake _character_ for _characterization_.
> 
> Characterization is the look of a character, the description of his voice, the quirks of habit. Characterization creates the concrete detail of a character through the use of sensory detail and exposition. By “seeing” how a character looks, how he picks up his wine glass, by knowing he has a love of fine tobacco, the character becomes concrete to our imagination, even while remaining nothing more than black ink upon a white page.
> 
> But a person thus described is not a character. A character must do.
> 
> Character is action. That’s a rule of thumb for plays and movies, and is valid as well for roleplaying games and story entertainments. This means that the best way to reveal your character is not through on an esoteric monologue about pipe and tobacco delivered by your character, but through your character’s actions.
> 
> But what actions? Not every action is true to a character; it is not enough to haphazardly do things in the name of action. Instead, actions must grow from the roots of Goals. A characterization imbued with a Goal that leads to action is a character.​
> This is an early statement (1995, I think) of the ideas that Eero Tuovinen is talking about when he refers to _advocacy_ and "the standard narrativistic model".



I kind of agree with what Kubasik says here up to the last bit: I don't agree that to make a character all or even most (or even any?) actions must grow out of goals, if goals are defined as anything bigger than dealing with the immediate here-and-now situation.  Also, 'not every action is true to a character' strongly (and wrongly) implies a character must never act out of character, and combined with the next clause also implies a character should never be unpredictable or chaotic.

Doing things haphazardly just for the sake of doing them can in fact BE the goal of a truly chaotic character. 

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Ilbranteloth said:


> I don't get how a character can fail, if the DM doesn't have the ability to set up a situation where they might.



Here are two ways to bring it about that a player's "find secret passage" check might fail:

(1) Decide, as GM, that there is no passage there;

(2) Have the player roll the check.​
The second method gives the player agency over (that component of) the content of the shared fiction: by declaring the check the player makes the existence of a secret passage salient (which is already an exercise of this sort of agency); and by actually making that check, the player has a chance to bring it about that the fiction is as s/he desires it to be (because if the check succeeds, his/her PC finds a secret passage as s/he was hoping to).

The first method is clearly an exercise of GM agency over the content of the shared fiction.



Ilbranteloth said:


> I don't get your statement that "the rogue didn't add anything to the fiction." The example was minimal, sure, but that's not the point. Where are they lacking agency? Maybe they aren't interested in "writing" something significant in the fiction.



My first response to this is just as it has been to   [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]: if there are players who don't want to exercise significant agency over the content of the shared fiction, of course that's their prerogative. But that doesn't mean they're nevertheless exercising such agency! They're clearly not, because they don't want to!

In your example, what does the rogue player add to the fiction - nothing except that his/her PC looked around and found nothing. As far as RPGing is concerned, that's the most minimal result a player can achieve by declaring a move - _my PC did this thing and nothing interesting resulted from it_. I mean, suppose that a RPG session consisted of _nothing but that_. What sort of session would that be?



Ilbranteloth said:


> There's a difference between writing whether something is there or not, and whether an orc beats you in combat.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Things that "exist" within the fictional world are one thing. The results of actions made by the players is entirely different. Yes, searching for a secret door is an action that's taken by the characters, but the expectation is that a successful result is dependent on a secret door being there in the first place.



When you say "the expectation", whose expectation do you mean? Because you're not giving voice to my expectation.

But anyway, this was discussed at great length upthread. The bottom line is this: as acts of authorship, writing a story in which a rogue meets an orc and kills it, and a rogue searches for a secret door and finds one, are no different. We can break it down more:

event (1), there's a rogue wandering along; event (2), wandering rogue meets orc; event (3), rogue and orc fight; event (4), rogue kills orc;

event (a), there's a rogue wandering along; event(b), wandering rogue comes to a wall; event(c), the rogue searches the wall, hoping to find a secret passage; event(d), rogue finds secret passage.​
The process of authoring these two stories is no different. The orc and the wall come to "exist" in the fiction because someone (typically, the GM) writes them in. The struggle between orc and rogue; and the rogue's search of the wall, also get written in (presumably by the player, unless the game is quite atypical). At the final stage, the orc's death gets written in too - because the mechanics tell us to do so; if the rolls had turned out differently, something else might get written in (the rogue is taken prisoner by the orc, for instance). There is no reason why the mechanics can't equally tell us to write in the discovery of the secret passage (or, if the check fails, to write in something else - maybe the rogue finds and triggers a trap instead; or finds a secret passage that leads to somewhere quite different from where s/he was hoping to go).



Ilbranteloth said:


> Fighting an orc is a totally different thing. The game clearly gives the player the "agency" to engage the rules to see who wins the fight.



Which game? In Cortex+ Heroic, or Burning Wheel, the allocation of agency is no different (I've already posted multiple illustrations upthread - eg the PC in my Cortex+ Heroic fantasy game who found an ox in the giant's barn, and who realised that the mysterious symbols in the dungeon hall were a map).

This thread isn't about getting clear on the D&D rules. Everyone posting in it knows that, by default, players in an AD&D game can't try to shape the fiction by declaring they search for a secret door (although Gygax does in fact author such a mechanic as part of the solo play rules in Appendix A of his DMG). The thread asks _why have such rules_? That is, what is the purpose of rules which make a whole lot of action declarations depend, for their success or failure, not upon the check but upon what the GM has chosen to author about the fiction?



Ilbranteloth said:


> Going back your complaint is that the PC will fail to find a secret door because the DM determined ahead of time that there is no secret door there. From what I understand, you're saying that the player deciding that they will search for a secret door here should be possible simply because the player has decided that it's important to the fiction at that point in time. At some point the GM, or somebody, is saying "no." No? That not everything a player decides to introduce into the fiction is actually introduced? Or they can just* randomly decide* that they will go collect the wand that's hidden in that tree, or the hidden cache of gold in that log, or a secret door into the armory of the king. At what point does a player go beyond their narrative agency? And who decides that? Because all of this continues to sound exactly like what Eero was warning against.



   [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has posted exactly the same things upthread. A lot of assumptions are built into what you both say.

I've highlighted one key phrase you have used - "randomly decide". If a player is playing his/her PC, who has an agenda and personality (of the sort that Eero Tuovinen talks about in relation to "advocacy"), then why is the player going to suddenly ignore that and do something else? If the player's agenda is for his/her PC to find a wand, or to find gold, then s/he can just say so.

In my 4e game, one player does play a PC whose goal, since 2nd level, has been to collect the Rod of Seven Parts. But the player doesn't just look behind trees. First, that would be silly, and the player is not interested in a silly game. (These are the sorts of genre considerations that   [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has rightly emphasised in many posts).

Second, the player knows that it is a 4e game, and hence that "plus" items (of which the Rod is one - +1 per part, and so the only +7 item in the game) are parcelled out on a level-appropriate basis. So he knows the rules of the game don't permit a 2nd level PC to find all the parts of the Rod.

Rather, from time-to-time I make it clear, from the framing, that a part of the Rod is available to be found (here are two examples). The stakes for the player are not _will the PC find the rod_ but rather _is the PC prepared to do what is necessary to restore the rod, such as - eg - helping bring down the duergar by taking their fragment of the Sceptre of Law_. The ultimate question about the Rod, not yet resolved, is whether the player will choose to have his PC fully restore it, even though this is prophesied to bring on the Dusk War.

A different example - from a different campaign using a different system - has already been discussed extensively over the past several pages. One of the players in my Burning Wheel game wrote, as one of his PCs starting Beliefs, "I won't leave Hardby without an item that I might use against my balrog-possessed brother". The opening scene of that campaign had that PC at a bazaar in Hardby, with a peddler offering to sell him an angel feather. What was at stake there was _whether the angel feather would in fact be useful against a balrog_. It turned out that it was cursed (narrated by me as a consequence of a failed aura-reading check), and as a result the PCs was banished from the city by Jabal, a leader of his sorcerous cabal.

A third example - again from a different campaign using a different system - involves the skinchanger trickster in my Cortex+ Fantasy game. Having deciphered the map hidden in the mysterious symbols, the PCs travelled through the dungeon to the land of the drow. There, while his companions fought a fierce battle, the trickster was able to persuade a drow NPC to take him to the treasure chamber, where he tricked her out of the drow's gold. At the beginning of the next scene - some indeterminate time later, after the trickster had been living a fine life spending his gold while the other PCs had made their way out of the dungeon - the trickster PC has a persistent d8 Bag of Gold asset, as a consequence of his victory in the previous scene.

The relevant constraint on framing and action declaration is not 'What will happen if the PCs find the wands or gold they are after?" It's about what sorts of actions the system permits the PCs to declare, and what actions they _want_ to declare (given the PCs they are advocating for), and then how the GM is going to frame scenes that invite those declarations, and how consequences - especially consequences of failure, but sometimes (as in the Cortex+ example) also consequences of success - are narrated and given appropriate mechanical effect.



Ilbranteloth said:


> can you start an example of how you'd start a scenario, so I (and maybe others) can respond as a character and see how this really plays out? Maybe a new thread? I participated in a thread like this for Dungeon World and it showed my how, although the mechanics were different, and how the DM adjudicated things differently, we could end up with the same results. It highlighted a few things I liked (most of which I was already doing, although didn't always recognize), and some that I didn't like in that game's design. It's not just to see how it plays out, but after each step explain to us what you're doing and how.



Here are links to four reports of first sessions: Burning Wheel; 4e Dark Sun; Cortex+ Heroic; Classic Traveller.

You'll see that they all start with character gen (except the Cortex+ one, where the four players chose from 5 pre-gens and voted for a Viking setting over a Japan setting - the pre-gens had been written by me to suit either possibility); and that the start involves setting up the situation in some way that is apt to those characters. In Burning Wheel this is based on the characters' Beliefs. In Traveller this was done by integrating a world that I rolled up with the PCs the players had rolled up with a random patron roll. In Dark Sun this was done by having the players author their "kickers", which reflected their PC races, classes and themes. In Cortex+ this was done by getting the players to come up with a reason they had all gathered at the village to be sent on a mission by the village chief.



Ilbranteloth said:


> First, does "no myth" mean there is no established setting, and it's invented by the players and/or GM as the game progresses?



The easiest way to think of "no myth" in this context is as the opposite of the sort of worldbuilding described in the OP.

The Cortex+ Heroic game described above is "no myth". We know it's Vikings, but other than that everything is established in play. The players establish the reasons for their quest (weird behaviour of the Northern Lights; signs from the spirit world; the "dragon's curse"), and then I make up some geographic colour (hills and valleys to start with) before establishing a giant steading as the first interesting thing the PCs encounter.

The Traveller game is also "no myth". We know it's Traveller, ie science fiction adventure in a far future where jump drives exist but communication technology is around 1970/80s levels (the players laugh at the mass of their PCs' "communicators" and the starship computers). And so we know there is an interstellar navy, an Imperial Scout Service, and the like. The starting world is rolled up, as is the patron, and it's one of the players who suggests that the starting world is a gas giant moon. I have some other worlds pre-generated, and place them onto the (notional) star map as the logic of play demands.

The Burning Wheel game uses a map - Greyhawk - and so the broad geography is established. I start with Hardby because it allows for the hills where the mage PC lived in his tower before his brother was possessed by a balrog (player-authored PC backstory), and also for forest for the PC bandit to come from, and is not too far from Celene, which is the home of the PC elf. (I don't think it's a coincidence that the centre of Gygax's GH maps has basically all the geography one needs to support the standard range of fantasy and S&S tropes.) The players have already established, via PC build, that certain persons (eg the balrog-possessed brother) and organisations (the sorcerous cabal) exist. Within these broad parameters, it is a "no myth" game.

The Dark Sun game also uses a map - we started with the Tyr city map - and a particular take on the sword-and-planet genre tropes. One of the PCs is a Veiled Alliance member, and a preserver; and that PC and another are both eladrins, that is, people from the Land Within the Wind. One reason for using "kickers" to start this campaign was to offset the weight of all this pre-authored setting by allowing the players to set up the initial situations that get things moving for their PCs. This game still uses "no myth" techniques - eg the details of the templars, the merchant houses, the geographic minutiae of Tyr, etc are all established as needed for framing or in response to action declarations - but is less "no myth" than the other three.



Ilbranteloth said:


> As a player I'm interested in the experience. That is, when I go home I want to think back and remember the stuff that happened. I like to feel like I'm in control of my character. That I thought like them, made decisions like them, and took actions as them. I (and the other PCs) are in control of what we do, where we go, etc. within the setting that's presented by the DM. I really don't care how they do that. Published adventure, pre-authored notes, improvised, random determination, fudging rolls, whatever. It literally makes no difference to me. I don't even care if they cleverly manipulated us. If the story of the characters is interesting and we felt like we were acting as our characters, then we're happy.
> 
> I get the sense that you, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and many others feel the opposite. That the _how_ the GM does all this matters as much, if not more, as the results themselves. That if the GM somehow made a decision that actually turns your "control" into an illusion, that it ruins your experience. I think that's reasonable, but I really don't _get_ it. Why would that be important?



I am currently a player in a Burning Wheel game. My number one priority is inhabitation of my PC. _I want to play my character._

Here are some key elements of my PC:

Beliefs
The Lord of Battle will lead me to glory									
I am a Knight of the Iron Tower: by devotion and example I will lead the righteous to glorious victory									
Harm and infamy will befall Auxol no more!									
Aramina will need my protection				

Instincts 
When entering battle, always speak a prayer to the Lord of Battle									
If an innocent is threatened, interpose myself									
When camping, always ensure that the campfire is burning									

Character Traits
Disciplined
Fanatical Devotion		

Relationships 
Xanthippe (Mother, on family estate)		
Aramina (sorceress companion)

Reputations & Affiliations 
+1D aff	von Pfizer family	
+1D aff	Order of the Iron Tower	
+1D aff	nobility
+1D rep	last Knight of the Iron Tower
+1D rep	infamous among demons -	intransigent demon foe​
(That last reputation was earned in play rather than part of original PC build, after my PC stood in battle for several rounds against a demon before it was called back to the hells.)

My PC's skills include a bunch of knightly stuff (sword fighting, armour and shield training, riding, command, etiquette, etc) plus religious training, plus cooking.

The sum total of this means that I am not remotely interested in   [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s intersections. There is nothing in any of that that speaks about architecture. Spending time on intersections would not let me inhabit my PC; it would be a distraction from it. I want the GM to put me into situations which make me think about my family, about my order, about my god, about Aramina. About cooking and campfires. These are situations that will let me play my character.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> A thief searching for a secret door once tells me nothing.  A thief searching for secret doors at every opportunity even when just sacking out in a room at an inn tells me the character is either highly inquisitive or somewhat paranoid; and other things he's done or said over time will tell me which it is.



Is the player trying to play a character with a tic? Otherwise, this doesn't seem to me like a very verisimilitudinous character. (_Maybe_ you're going for something very ironic or tongue-in-cheek, like a certain take on The Dying Earth, but then I would expect the constant searching for secret doors to have amusing consequences which standard D&D rules have no real way of providing for.)



Lanefan said:


> Every one of these is a single relatively-isolated incident, which might tell me what the character is thinking in that moment but doesn't tell me much overall until I start seeing a pattern over time.



Isolated from what? Interpreting a literary or film character is not an exercise in induction from instances! Nor is there some "real" character hidden behind the manifestations that the author happened to tell us about.

My point is that everyone of those action declarations tells us something about the PC. The player, in making the action declaration, gets to tell us something about the PCs goals, values, commitments, etc. This directly contradicts your claim that it is downtime rather than action declaration that reveals the PC's character - which was the point of my post.

(If you want further examples, follow some of the actual play links I've posted in the thread.)


----------



## Michael Silverbane

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I'd also point out that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] invented this example off the top of his head and maybe it isn't very 'polished' in that sense.




This is also an excellent use of GM preauthoring of content. It allows for engagement of the creative process. Coming up with ideas, thinking them over, deciding which ones are good or bad, 'polishing' them, as it were.


----------



## tomBitonti

pemerton said:


> Here are two ways to bring it about that a player's "find secret passage" check might fail:
> 
> (1) Decide, as GM, that there is no passage there;
> (2) Have the player roll the check.​
> The second method gives the player agency over (that component of) the content of the shared fiction: by declaring the check the player makes the existence of a secret passage salient (which is already an exercise of this sort of agency); and by actually making that check, the player has a chance to bring it about that the fiction is as s/he desires it to be (because if the check succeeds, his/her PC finds a secret passage as s/he was hoping to).
> 
> The first method is clearly an exercise of GM agency over the content of the shared fiction.




Additional text omitted.

Wait ... 

What is the difference between not finding the passage (and the passage may or may not be there) and not finding the passage (because it is resolutely not there)?  Or perhaps not finding the passage (which exists, just not where the player expected it to be; or maybe it is there but the player isn't skillful enough to find it).

As a different example, compare with a player's request "to find a receptacle for blood," dripping from a corpse which they just found, which was presented in another thread as an example of a player creating an item in scene.

Thx!
TomB


----------



## hawkeyefan

So I haven't posted in this thread in some time because I didn't think I had that much to add. But I've been keeping my eye on the discussion. 

However, something in my D&D campaign happened and I'd be interested to get the feedback of the posters in this thread. 

Now, I can provide more details if requested, but I think a broad description will suit. My PCs are in Chult. They are there to pursue long term campaign goals. A couple of them also have more short term, personal goals in mind that they may pursue in Chult. Our campaign began at the same time as 5E, but we've incorporated longstanding elements from past campaigns from all editions. The game uses the entire D&D multiverse as its setting (although I've taken plenty of liberties with canon and lore as needed). 

So I've decided to incorporate the WotC adventure Tomb of Annihilation into our campaign. There are many reasons for this; the fact that both Ras Nsi and Acererak, prominent villains in Tomb, have both been longstanding parts of our campaign world is a big one, but I also decided to use it because I liked the idea of putting the PCs up against a classic dungeon. The fact that Chult was such an important location in our campaign and then was also the setting for ToA was also very interesting. 

So the nature of the ToA adventure, without delving into spoilers, is that there's a Death Curse that afflicts anyone who has previously been raised from the dead in some way. This leads investigators and other characters interested in this dark phenomenon to Chult, the seeming source of the curse. 

Three of the six PCs in my campaign have received some kind of raise dead magic (two by the Revivify spell, one by Raise Dead). So they are afflicted by the curse, which means that their HP maximum goes down by 1 HP per day. 

So they have a ticking clock to deal with this situation. Now they have to decide to set aside their personal goals and look into this Death Curse situation, or continue pursuing their goals and risk the effects of the curse becoming much worse. To grant context, they are tantalizingly close to a major step forward in their main goal. 

I feel the introduction of the ToA content has added a dimension that previously didn't exist in the campaign; how important is their main goal? Are they willing to set it aside to deal with another concern? Are they willing to risk the lives of half the party by ignoring the Curse? 

If we consider the main goal of the PCs as the Player Introduced content, and the ToA/Death Curse as the GM Introduced content, then in that case doesn't the GM Introduced Content add meaning to the Player Introduced content? Doesn't it make a statement about how badly they want to achieve that goal? Or at least, can't it potentially say that? 

How the PCs choose to prioritize these goals says something more about them than simply pursuing one goal, no? 

Without GM Introduced Content, is there ever any way to present two potentially opposed goals and force the players to decide which one their characters are going to pursue? In a Story Now game, would such only be possible by taking the goals of two or more PCs and then presenting them as goals in opposition? Would having a player who came up with two goals for his character really qualify if the game placed these two goals in opposition? 

If anyone wants to share their thoughts on this, I'd be interested to hear.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

Lanefan said:


> There's an element involved here that's too important to ignore: time.
> 
> A dramatic TV show only has a certain amount of running time in which to tell its story, and thus is oftentimes forced to skip from scene to scene just to get the story told within the alloted time.
> 
> A typical home-played RPG has no such resctriction.  Telling the story has no real-world deadline behind it; and a single session is equivalent to picking up a book at whatever page you put it down, reading a few pages, then putting it down again.  There's nothing forcing a single session to follow a dramatic arc (intro-tension-buildup-climax-denouement).  In fact, probably the only thing that could force an RPG to skip from scene to scene like a TV show is a very limited attention span by its DM and-or players.
> 
> I agree with most of the rest of what you said, except for:
> What does it say then, that depending on mood I'm either a metalhead or an 80's new-waver or (more recently) a synthwave-chillwave fan; yet I also like an explorative game?
> 
> Lanefan




Agreed.

And, no, I like those too actually. Nothing is really that binary. Just an off-hand thought with no real support, I guess.


----------



## tomBitonti

hawkeyefan said:


> So I haven't posted in this thread in some time because I didn't think I had that much to add. But I've been keeping my eye on the discussion.
> 
> However, something in my D&D campaign happened and I'd be interested to get the feedback of the posters in this thread.
> 
> Now, I can provide more details if requested, but I think a broad description will suit. My PCs are in Chult. They are there to pursue long term campaign goals. A couple of them also have more short term, personal goals in mind that they may pursue in Chult. Our campaign began at the same time as 5E, but we've incorporated longstanding elements from past campaigns from all editions. The game uses the entire D&D multiverse as its setting (although I've taken plenty of liberties with canon and lore as needed).
> 
> So I've decided to incorporate the WotC adventure Tomb of Annihilation into our campaign. There are many reasons for this; the fact that both Ras Nsi and Acererak, prominent villains in Tomb, have both been longstanding parts of our campaign world is a big one, but I also decided to use it because I liked the idea of putting the PCs up against a classic dungeon. The fact that Chult was such an important location in our campaign and then was also the setting for ToA was also very interesting.
> 
> So the nature of the ToA adventure, without delving into spoilers, is that there's a Death Curse that afflicts anyone who has previously been raised from the dead in some way. This leads investigators and other characters interested in this dark phenomenon to Chult, the seeming source of the curse.
> 
> Three of the six PCs in my campaign have received some kind of raise dead magic (two by the Revivify spell, one by Raise Dead). So they are afflicted by the curse, which means that their HP maximum goes down by 1 HP per day.
> 
> So they have a ticking clock to deal with this situation. Now they have to decide to set aside their personal goals and look into this Death Curse situation, or continue pursuing their goals and risk the effects of the curse becoming much worse. To grant context, they are tantalizingly close to a major step forward in their main goal.
> 
> I feel the introduction of the ToA content has added a dimension that previously didn't exist in the campaign; how important is their main goal? Are they willing to set it aside to deal with another concern? Are they willing to risk the lives of half the party by ignoring the Curse?
> 
> If we consider the main goal of the PCs as the Player Introduced content, and the ToA/Death Curse as the GM Introduced content, then in that case doesn't the GM Introduced Content add meaning to the Player Introduced content? Doesn't it make a statement about how badly they want to achieve that goal? Or at least, can't it potentially say that?
> 
> How the PCs choose to prioritize these goals says something more about them than simply pursuing one goal, no?
> 
> Without GM Introduced Content, is there ever any way to present two potentially opposed goals and force the players to decide which one their characters are going to pursue? In a Story Now game, would such only be possible by taking the goals of two or more PCs and then presenting them as goals in opposition? Would having a player who came up with two goals for his character really qualify if the game placed these two goals in opposition?
> 
> If anyone wants to share their thoughts on this, I'd be interested to hear.




A couple of things relating to running ToA specifically:

Failure of the ToA mission would have very major impacts to the game world (and to the players, in particular, those with the curse).  The impacts are so large that player goals are completely eclipsed.

The death curse mechanic doesn't fit all games.  You'll want to consider the implications relative to the power level required to complete the dungeons and how quickly the players must advance in the time frame allowed to them by the curse.

The players suffering from the curse have diminished effectiveness, which grows worse over time.  That probably won't be fun for the affected characters.

The ToA dungeons are real death traps.

For a longer campaign, I'd consider tweaking the curse substantially.  Personally, I'd make it slower and more insidious.

While perhaps not important from a balance perspective, I'd lift the "gods aspects" material and remove some of the re-use limitations.  The mechanic seems wonderful, just not implemented nearly as well as I imagine it could be.

Oh, and the Chult environment outside of the Tombs is rather superb sandbox material.

From the perspective of World Building and Player Agency, I'm thinking this introduction rather takes away player agency, in that they will have very little time to pursue other goals.  That is, unless the curse mechanic is adjusted.

Thx!
TomB


----------



## pemerton

tomBitonti said:


> What is the difference between not finding the passage (and the passage may or may not be there) and not finding the passage (because it is resolutely not there)?  Or perhaps not finding the passage (which exists, just not where the player expected it to be; or maybe it is there but the player isn't skillful enough to find it).



Because one is the result of making a move in the game, and having the dice roll fail; and the other is the result of someone else authoring your failure and telling you a story about it.



tomBitonti said:


> As a different example, compare with a player's request "to find a receptacle for blood," dripping from a corpse which they just found, which was presented in another thread as an example of a player creating an item in scene.



What are you asking me to compare?

What you are referring to here is an example from my Burning Wheel game. The player declared an action for his PC, and it was resolved via a Perception check.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> My first response to this is just as it has been to   [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]: if there are players who don't want to exercise significant agency over the content of the shared fiction, of course that's their prerogative. But that doesn't mean they're nevertheless exercising such agency! They're clearly not, because they don't want to!
> 
> In your example, what does the rogue player add to the fiction - nothing except that his/her PC looked around and found nothing. As far as RPGing is concerned, that's the most minimal result a player can achieve by declaring a move - _my PC did this thing and nothing interesting resulted from it_. I mean, suppose that a RPG session consisted of _nothing but that_. What sort of session would that be?



Frustrating, and at the same time realistic - sometimes things just don't pan out the way you want them to.

And it's these times of frustration that makes times of success all the more rewarding.



> I've highlighted one key phrase you have used - "randomly decide". If a player is playing his/her PC, who has an agenda and personality (of the sort that Eero Tuovinen talks about in relation to "advocacy"), then why is the player going to suddenly ignore that and do something else? If the player's agenda is for his/her PC to find a wand, or to find gold, then s/he can just say so.



If the player's agenda is for her PC to get rich or to accumulate magic items then you're wide open to this sort of thing.



> In my 4e game, one player does play a PC whose goal, since 2nd level, has been to collect the Rod of Seven Parts. But the player doesn't just look behind trees. First, that would be silly, and the player is not interested in a silly game. (These are the sorts of genre considerations that   [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has rightly emphasised in many posts).



Silly, perhaps, but legal by the letter of this narrativistic type of system where success on an action declaration cannot be denied.



> Second, the player knows that it is a 4e game, and hence that "plus" items (of which the Rod is one - +1 per part, and so the only +7 item in the game) are parcelled out on a level-appropriate basis. So he knows the rules of the game don't permit a 2nd level PC to find all the parts of the Rod.



The whole idea of "treasure parcels" just makes it all sound so predetermined in the meta-game...do this much adventuring and you'll get this much treasure.  Kind of like a salary for adventurers.

How dull.

But I digress...



> Rather, from time-to-time I make it clear, from the framing, that a part of the Rod is available to be found (here are two examples). The stakes for the player are not _will the PC find the rod_ but rather _is the PC prepared to do what is necessary to restore the rod, such as - eg - helping bring down the duergar by taking their fragment of the Sceptre of Law_. The ultimate question about the Rod, not yet resolved, is whether the player will choose to have his PC fully restore it, even though this is prophesied to bring on the Dusk War.



Yeah, that Rod is always good for at least seven adventures to find the bits plus at least one or two more to use it.



> A different example - from a different campaign using a different system - has already been discussed extensively over the past several pages. One of the players in my Burning Wheel game wrote, as one of his PCs starting Beliefs, "I won't leave Hardby without an item that I might use against my balrog-possessed brother". The opening scene of that campaign had that PC at a bazaar in Hardby, with a peddler offering to sell him an angel feather. What was at stake there was _whether the angel feather would in fact be useful against a balrog_. It turned out that it was cursed (narrated by me as a consequence of a failed aura-reading check), and as a result the PCs was banished from the city by Jabal, a leader of his sorcerous cabal.



One question that's been bugging me about this example: where were the rest of the PCs during this sequence?  Or had the party not yet formed?



> The relevant constraint on framing and action declaration is not 'What will happen if the PCs find the wands or gold they are after?" It's about what sorts of actions the system permits the PCs to declare, and what actions they _want_ to declare (given the PCs they are advocating for), and then how the GM is going to frame scenes that invite those declarations, and how consequences - especially consequences of failure, but sometimes (as in the Cortex+ example) also consequences of success - are narrated and given appropriate mechanical effect.



One of the true appeals of RPGs is that as player you're (in theory) free to try anything, no matter how ridiculous.  There shouldn't be any system-based limits on the actions players can declare or have thier PCs attempt.  There should and must, however, be some limits on whether those declarations can succeed - in other words, the DM must be able to outright say 'no'.  The onus for maintaining consistency, genre-appropriateness, balance, etc. should be on the DM, not the players.



> The Burning Wheel game uses a map - Greyhawk - and so the broad geography is established.



Along with several boatloads of history, lore, and canon; and by extension a bunch of baked-in expectations from any player familiar at all with the Greyhawk setting.  When using a homebrew setting these all have to be defined and then narrated by the DM, as it's not all done for her and is not in the least familiar to the players ahead of time.



> I start with Hardby because it allows for the hills where the mage PC lived in his tower before his brother was possessed by a balrog (player-authored PC backstory), and also for forest for the PC bandit to come from, and is not too far from Celene, which is the home of the PC elf. (I don't think it's a coincidence that the centre of Gygax's GH maps has basically all the geography one needs to support the standard range of fantasy and S&S tropes.)



A mistake I keep making with my own settings is that I don't find a way to do this; to put all the races etc. together in one reasonably compact area.



> The players have already established, via PC build, that certain persons (eg the balrog-possessed brother) and organisations (the sorcerous cabal) exist. Within these broad parameters, it is a "no myth" game.



Except, of course, for all the baked-in Greyhawk lore etc. as noted above.  The C+ H and Traveller ones seem more like no-myth; but this one really can't be.



> I am currently a player in a Burning Wheel game. My number one priority is inhabitation of my PC. _I want to play my character._
> 
> Here are some key elements of my PC:
> 
> Beliefs
> The Lord of Battle will lead me to glory
> I am a Knight of the Iron Tower: by devotion and example I will lead the righteous to glorious victory
> Harm and infamy will befall Auxol no more!
> Aramina will need my protection
> 
> Instincts
> When entering battle, always speak a prayer to the Lord of Battle
> If an innocent is threatened, interpose myself
> When camping, always ensure that the campfire is burning
> 
> Character Traits
> Disciplined
> Fanatical Devotion
> 
> Relationships
> Xanthippe (Mother, on family estate)
> Aramina (sorceress companion)
> 
> Reputations & Affiliations
> +1D aff	von Pfizer family
> +1D aff	Order of the Iron Tower
> +1D aff	nobility
> +1D rep	last Knight of the Iron Tower
> +1D rep	infamous among demons -	intransigent demon foe​
> (That last reputation was earned in play rather than part of original PC build, after my PC stood in battle for several rounds against a demon before it was called back to the hells.)
> 
> My PC's skills include a bunch of knightly stuff (sword fighting, armour and shield training, riding, command, etiquette, etc) plus religious training, plus cooking.
> 
> The sum total of this means that I am not remotely interested in   [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s intersections. There is nothing in any of that that speaks about architecture. Spending time on intersections would not let me inhabit my PC; it would be a distraction from it. I want the GM to put me into situations which make me think about my family, about my order, about my god, about Aramina. About cooking and campfires. These are situations that will let me play my character.



Any situation imaginable will let you play your character; and many situations will force you to think (in-character) about things other than those you listed.

Your character seems an honourable sort, and one of his 'instincts' is to defend the innocent - this seems like a ripe opportunity for a DM to narrate (at some random time when you're en route to doing something else) that you see a slave being beaten, to challenge that instinct and see what you do about it if anything.  The DM here would be giving you a multi-layered choice: divert from one goal to another or not, and whteher that diversion will be temporary or permanent.

On a more meta scale: the game isn't all about you; and the game-world or setting doesn't revolve around your PC.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Because one is the result of making a move in the game, and having the dice roll fail; and the other is the result of someone else authoring your failure and telling you a story about it.



Both are the result of attempting a move in the game and failing.  In the fiction the result is exactly the same in either instance.  At the table the only differences are a) the mechanics behind said failure, and b) the level of knowledge those mechanics give to the player regarding the reason(s) for said failure.

To expand a bit on b): if the player rolls poorly she knows her failure is due to her PC's incompetence or bad luck; where if the result is simply narrated by the DM (probably after rolling some dice whether needed or not) the player doesn't know if her failure is due to incompetence/bad luck or due to there in fact being nothing there to find at all.

Lanefan


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> On a more meta scale: the game isn't all about you; and the game-world or setting doesn't revolve around your PC.



 If the point of the game is an enjoyable collective-storytelling exercise, and the story about the characters, it's about them, and setting is just a setting for that story...
...if.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton;7379304That's not an [I said:
			
		

> agenda[/I]. It's a means, and a very generic one. Why does the rogue want to enter the castle? What would s/he risk to do so? If s/he is entering stealthily, what provocation would make her reveal herself? These are the sorts of things that show us who the character is, what s/he wants, what her goals are, what sort of person s/he is.




Of course it's an agenda.  Go to a meeting sometime and see what little things are on the agenda.  It can as simple as get a cup of coffee.  Also, while those questions do show character, character is not an agenda, so I'm not sure why you are putting those questions here.



> This is a very narrow conception of what a PC's interest and agenda might be - after all, it seems that you can achieve it without actually having to play the meaty parts of the game (I've never yet heard of a D&D campaign where the real action was finding taverns that sell wine).
> 
> But even your example actually does require the GM - if the GM asserts that no taverns have any wine (maybe a disease destroyed all the grapes? maybe they all sold out?) then you can't get drunk. Likewise if the GM declares that you meet no NPCs (they're all staying home on the occasions your PC happens to turn up in town) then you won't get to show off your dour personality.
> 
> Even for what you describe, you need the right framing from the GM.




So first, I didn't say it was his only goal.  Second, while it does take a DM playing the game, it does not require DM help to accomplish.  Even if there is no wine, I am still showing his personality and goals by making the attempt, and those goals are being addressed by the DM when he informs me that the tavern is out of wine.  I don't need to be successful for it to be addressed and for my goal to come out, and the DM is forced to address it when I state I am looking for fine wine at the tavern.  It isn't as if it's an option for him.  Nor do I need his help in bringing my goal out in the game.



> First, who gets to decide that this campaign world contains northern barbarians? (Maybe the tales of their existence are all false. Maybe all the vikings in longships are really gnomes using disguise self and other illusion spells.)
> 
> And once we get over the existence on the barbarians within the setting, you need scenes to be framed that actually allow _going there_ to happen; and that allow _becoming king_ to happen. As  [MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION] points out, there are any number of ways this framing can fail to obtain. It might be as simple as every time you look for a boat there isn't one; every time you try to cross the mountain passes they're blocked by snow; and every time you try to teleport a strange magnetic-magical field blocks your way.
> 
> This all goes back to the fact that these are _fictions_. They have no reality. No one can do anything in respect of them unless a story is told about them. Given the allocation of functions in a typical RPG, the players depend upon the GM to tell them certain stories (eg "OK, after struggling through the mountains you crest the pass - beneath you, you see the rolling hills of the barbarian homelands. What do you do?").




It's a given for my example.  Maybe they are in the south, east, west, equator.  It doesn't matter.  The setting will have barbarians established in it somewhere.  As for framing, I am forcing the framing to happen by stating to the DM that I am going north(or east, west, etc.) to take over the barbarians.  The DM has to respond.  As with the wine example, he has no choice by to address my goal.  

Now, as for your bad DM examples, those need not apply.  As I said to [MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION], bad DMs are bad and any game they run is going to be bupkis.  Assuming that the DM is not bad, I'm not going to encounter no boats every time I look for one, or every pass blocked by snow, etc.  

Why do you guys persist in constantly giving examples of bad DMing as if they actually mean something to the discussion?



> What you call "information" is just a story told to the players by the GM. If the play of the game doesn't involve the players being told such a story, what have they missed out on? It's not like they were all sitting in suspended animation in the time that might otherwise have been spent on that! They've been playing a game which involves whatever it is that the players cared about - fire giants, in this notional example, and maybe other stuff as well (what happens. for instance, when they learn that Obmi the dwarf is an advisor to the giants, but also the cousin of their patron from the dwarfhold?). While your player were writing down stuff about intersections and gems, the ones in the example were making decisions that are fundamental to the goals, relationships etc that they have established for their PCs.




No, it's not just a story being told.  Giving them the option of which way to go at an intersection invovles more than just story.  You also persist in "overlooking" that during the journey to the giants, things will happen that will aid them in their ultimate goal of defeating said giants, so it's not just "writing down stuff about intersections and gems".



> _Walking up to a giant patrol_ is your wording, not mine. In the real world people sometimes get seen unexpectedly. Maybe the PCs rounded a corner and - lo and behold - there was the giants' cavern, with a group of giants looking straight at them!
> 
> And in my example the players didn't express any desire to be stealthy. They wanted to organise their potions, and that was resolved, and then they headed off. If the particular players I was writing about in my example had wanted to be stealthy, than I would have indicated that!




How much do you require to be said in advance of a journey about what happens at the end of it?  Having to play guess the event and prepare for it for all the possible events that could happen seems tedious and would waste a ton of time.



> ultimately there is going to be a moment when the PCs arrive at the cavern. At that moment they are liable to be spotted if anyone is looking!




Why?  There are tons of ways to prevent or greatly minimize the chances of that.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=29398]See, this is wrong. The teleportation was final. Read the actual play report - I didn't add a "step". In fact, I sent an email telling the players what gear their PCs got from the Raven Queen. No checks were required. They were gifted their gear and then arrived at their destination. It was a powerup of exactly the sort that Lanefan decries!




Teleportation is an instantaneous and uninterrupted transport from one location to another.  It's only final if that happens.  If you interrupt it, not only is it not final, but it's no different than what I described with trying to find the bazaar instead of just putting the PCs there.  You've added a step, which you described as not being final earlier in this discussion.  You can't have it both ways.



> Of course my game includes GM agency. Who do you think frames the scenes? But look even at this example - why did I, as GM, choose the Raven Queen to be the PCs' benefactor? Because the players have chosen to make her salient.




That applies to pretty much every game of pretty much every style.  DMs are exceedingly unlikely to interrupt a teleport to have a visit with the Raven Queen unless she is already an important part of the game.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Or it's tangential, or is merely building up to something later.



Right, I think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] noted that he thought the cultist cave was particularly useful, but I could see almost any of the others as potentially fitting some sort of character concept goal, though some might be fairly niche.

The concept of the Caves generally though? Certainly you could find a way to work clearing them all out into a decent number of character's paths, but MOST will probably only want to hit one cave. The others become more like hazards to avoid than anything else.

So there's nothing WRONG with B2 here, its just not super 'right' either.


> This early in the campaign, how much of this really matters?  Maybe after this adventure, once the PCs start exploring more widely, answers to these questions may present themselves and-or become relevant; but in the here-and-now of the Keep and the Caves, who cares?




Well, I guess why I ask is that a LOT of characters, even the ones mentioned in the original post, are likely to find those questions interesting and related to their goals. Is the wilderness there because it is untamable? Because it is a frontier that is being pushed back? Because its a set boundary, and if so why? I mean, if I am going to build a keep in the wilderness those are very interesting questions indeed! They probably interest a thief too (exactly how much can the law be enforced and reach in there?). Likewise for a cleric, is this region something that can be converted to the faith? Is there some magic in there for wizards? 

Now, I understand what you're saying, and in No Myth there is obviously no answer to these questions, except what comes out in play. Things can come out in play in your style too, but I sort of feel like if you're going to be creating setting, then these would be the big questions to answer. In effect B2 is very thin as a location because we have no insight into how it works or why it is here, etc. Only knowing what the borderlands ARE would really address that.



> Where to start?
> 
> Fighters building keeps and clerics building temples are long-term goals that - in 1e - carry at least one specific mechanical requirement: that the PC be of at least a certain level.  MUs needing components and thieves seeking riches are both kind of ongoing goals that don't really have a defined point at which the goal can be declared as achieved.  Thieves starting guilds and MUs building their own labs are those classes' long term goals analagous to the fighter and her keep.



But why does YOUR fighter Mark the Mighty want to build a keep? I mean, EVERY SINGLE FIGHTER wants to do this by default, all of them. It says nothing about your character unless you can provide some motivations. That's the issue with the initial characters in relation to Story Now, as presented in the earlier post. Simply declaring a class, as was done here, doesn't provide the material required for Story Now. It is easy to provide it, and B/X D&D certainly imposes no impediment to doing so. It just isn't manifest in either the system nor the module in question. Thus I question how these materials support or are 'suitable for' Story Now. 



> And the Caves can directly help in achieving all of these.  There's treasure in them thar caves, so the immediate goals of the thief (riches) and MU (components scavenged in the field and-or bought with said riches) are satisfied, while still remaining as onging goals as you can never have enough.  And the Caves provide all four classes with a boost toward achievement of their name-level goals (the keep, etc.) by being a fine source of experience points which build (a bit) toward the level required by the stated goal.  Why they each have their own particular goal is, for purposes of play, mostly irrelevant - particularly at such a low level when achievement of the goal is so far away the Hubble couldn't find it.
> 
> Lanefan




Yes, but again, these are generic goals which every D&D adventurer ever was endowed with at level 1 by default (unless the player decreed otherwise). While they provide a very basic lampshade over the question of why the PCs are adventuring, they're not exactly great material. The consequence being that the Caves themselves are just very generic locations. 

I mean, if you consider it, why does a guy who simply has a hankering to make a castle go and poke his head in these caves at TERRIBLE RISK to his life. I mean, the chances of his coming back alive, by the B/X rules are actually pretty crappy! Sure, some people are crazy, incredibly foolish/overconfident, or driven by some deep-seated personal need, to take great risks. All we get here is "because there might be some gold there." Its pretty thin gruel.


----------



## Maxperson

Aenghus said:


> Thanks for your response.




Sure thing!



> Every player I have met is a distinct individual with their own preferences. It isn't as simple as just good GMs and bad GMs, either, every GM has strengths and weaknesses.




It really is.  While every DM has strengths and weaknesses, only bad DMs are going to shut down player goals the way you described.  A mediocre DM might not engage them as well as a good DM will, but he's going to try.



> Some GMs just don't cater to player goals, or do so in a fitful fashion.




These would be bad DMs. 



> Safe to say I still prefer a more collaborative approach.



Which is absolutely fine.  We all have our preferences as you mentioned above.  I just don't think bad DMing should be a factor when considering which playstyle you prefer.  Bad DMs are going to wreck any game they run regardless of playstyle.



> Quiet players can't rely on being heard once the game starts, they often get drowned out by louder, pushier players.




This is something the DM should handle.  I have a player who does very well now, but when he started he was quiet and often got overrun by the more forceful personalities in the game.  I took the time to address him directly for input, even to the point of telling him that he can choose to do what he wants for his PC when the other players would give "suggestions."  After a while he grew more and more confident, and now he jumps right in with everyone else.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Isn't the whole premise that these orcs etc are attacking the local humans?




Well, TBH, this is one of my beefs with this module, in terms of its suitability as more than just a basic stage for looting action.

Its an utterly illogical and pretty much bizarre situation. Here we have this keep, which houses several 100 people IIRC. Now several 100 people need about 96 people worth of full-time farmers, at about 10 acres each, so a good solid 1000 acres of tilled land, which we would assume would need to be pretty much near the castle walls, practically speaking. 

Yet there's no sign of any agriculture in the area. There's no mill, no barns stuffed full of hay (they would be BIG) etc. Nothing. And there's about 150 tough, vicious, warlike humanoids 2 MILES AWAY in a series of caves. Humanoids who likewise show no signs of having any means of support or filling their bellies (and I can only imagine that humans, dwarves, elves, etc would do nicely). 

I don't think this situation is stable. I don't think the scenario, as described in the module, would last even 3 days. So its hard to really understand how it all fits together and what the PCs should expect to happen if they do various things. I can't apply ANY sort of 'premise' to anything because it is all so utterly nonsensical to begin with! 

Now, I'm sure people can post a blizzard of hypothetical explanations and rationalizations and theories. No doubt, but the point is its supposed to be a module, a product that is 'ready to go'. Now, you can simply ignore all that and make sure that all the players contemplate doing is playing 'murder hobo' and killing off the Caves inhabitants while they sit around and do virtually nothing about it. OK, you can do that. It is hard to base any kind of dynamic, evolving plot line on that sort of basis. As a 'beer & pretzels' kind of an exercise, there's nothing lacking in it really, but it should stay there, firmly.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> In the example I gave of the player setting pacifism between races as a goal, this could easily be made to fit in: let the player find out in-character about this conflict and see if she tries to intervene or mediate and pacify both sides.




Here's what I find to be the weakness with the B2 scenario in this respect:

A conflict happens, and thus there is drama and story, when NEEDS conflict. Why do 2 countries go to war? Because they can't both get what they perceive they need, one must do without, and neither is willing. Conflict never happens without this opposition of needs (you can talk about man-vs-nature, or man-vs-self here, but character-vs-self is pretty silly, and character-vs-nature is really self-conflict in another guise, the opposing needs simply existing in the same person). 

So, in order to deal with a conflict between the races in the Caves, and between them and the Keep I guess too, there have to be understood needs. The problem is that the scenario is so unrealistic that it couldn't even come to pass in the first place. How are we to gauge the needs of people (loosely speaking) in such an unrealistic scenario? How do the various humanoids make a living? What do they eat? We can't even figure this out, so we can't even make up a story about their basic vital interests being worked out, let alone anything beyond that (and nobody gives 2 shakes about ANYTHING ELSE if they have no kibble! Maselow RULES!).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Michael Silverbane said:


> This is also an excellent use of GM preauthoring of content. It allows for engagement of the creative process. Coming up with ideas, thinking them over, deciding which ones are good or bad, 'polishing' them, as it were.




A reasonable point, but then they're not so directly appropriate to player-directed play! You could certainly argue in response that a GM could anticipate players, and that may well be so, particularly in specific games and situations (IE long association, situation with few choices, etc.). 

I think I, fairly commonly, think of possible abstract scenarios which might fit into different places in games I'm running, and then sometimes this is handy mental preparation for the actuality of play. I might go so far as to draw up some of them now and then, though I usually, nowadays, just pick from the vast array of maps and things you can find online one that might make sense.

I ran a large 4e campaign using MapTool. I literally have 1000's of maps and related materials on the hard drive of my machine, though of course its almost easier to just find them online. Still, with MapTool you HAD to do a certain amount of prep. I now find it too constraining and don't play with any of these kinds of tools anymore, though I am happy to use something like roll20 for rolling dice and keeping track of hit points and such. I may also draw very simple on-the-fly maps during play.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> I feel the introduction of the ToA content has added a dimension that previously didn't exist in the campaign; how important is their main goal? Are they willing to set it aside to deal with another concern? Are they willing to risk the lives of half the party by ignoring the Curse?
> 
> If we consider the main goal of the PCs as the Player Introduced content, and the ToA/Death Curse as the GM Introduced content, then in that case doesn't the GM Introduced Content add meaning to the Player Introduced content? Doesn't it make a statement about how badly they want to achieve that goal? Or at least, can't it potentially say that?
> 
> How the PCs choose to prioritize these goals says something more about them than simply pursuing one goal, no?
> 
> Without GM Introduced Content, is there ever any way to present two potentially opposed goals and force the players to decide which one their characters are going to pursue? In a Story Now game, would such only be possible by taking the goals of two or more PCs and then presenting them as goals in opposition? Would having a player who came up with two goals for his character really qualify if the game placed these two goals in opposition?
> 
> If anyone wants to share their thoughts on this, I'd be interested to hear.




I see nothing wrong with GM content! There is no law against it in Story Now either. GMs have agency WRT the fiction! They must, they frame all scenes.

So, you have put in place a situation where the PCs have to choose to either engage your content (Tomb of Annihilation) or something else they were wanting to do. They can, I'm gathering, either try to continue their own agenda and hope to finish it before 'doomsday' happens, or go do the side quest.

It certainly adds a type of tension, and its hard to say from here how far off the tomb is from what they want to do, maybe its just one of several interesting options for them. If not, then I guess posing it as a 'how much do you want this' question has characterization implications, yes. The idea that they might spend a number of sessions on a side issue would diverge from what I would do, but the essence of the concept is solid IMHO.

Honestly, I'm sure I've done some things sort of like this in the past. I might even do it now, though maybe in a smaller way.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Both are the result of attempting a move in the game and failing.  In the fiction the result is exactly the same in either instance.  At the table the only differences are a) the mechanics behind said failure, and b) the level of knowledge those mechanics give to the player regarding the reason(s) for said failure.
> 
> To expand a bit on b): if the player rolls poorly she knows her failure is due to her PC's incompetence or bad luck; where if the result is simply narrated by the DM (probably after rolling some dice whether needed or not) the player doesn't know if her failure is due to incompetence/bad luck or due to there in fact being nothing there to find at all.
> 
> Lanefan




Yesterday I sat down with my friend and played chess. I lost. At the end of the game I said "Gosh, it didn't matter one bit what moves I made because I was just going to lose!" This is of course an utterly ridiculous statement. I lost BECAUSE OF the moves that I made. 

If the player COULD HAVE succeeded, and he didn't, it is BECAUSE OF that failure, which is A DIFFERENT CAUSE than if the GM said 'YOU FAIL'. Different things are different. Case dismissed.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> It really is.  While every DM has strengths and weaknesses, only bad DMs are going to shut down player goals the way you described.  A mediocre DM might not engage them as well as a good DM will, but he's going to try.




No, and I must say, this is so indicative of the intellectual malaise which rots modern society. Every single thing is demoted down to some simplistic black and white pastiche of itself, which is effectively meaningless. Its shallow to be perfectly blunt.

I played with a guy, FOR DECADES, who is the utter antithesis of everything I do when I GM. The utter antithesis of everything I look for IN a GM when I play. THIS GUY IS A GOD OF GAME MASTERS!!!! You would be so lucky to ever play with a GM 1/10th as good. Rules are fine, they are great guidelines. They simply do not capture all the ground truth, all the nuances of what happens out there in the real world. Seriously, every single thing that you call 'Bad GMing' and just rule out of existence as impossible for any good GM. He does all these things. He's STILL a god of GMs. Your statements, while sometimes I agree with at least some of them, don't capture everything. Good GMs do all sorts of crazy things, and mediocre GMs can still do well and break rules. Its just true.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, TBH, this is one of my beefs with this module, in terms of its suitability as more than just a basic stage for looting action.
> 
> Its an utterly illogical and pretty much bizarre situation. Here we have this keep, which houses several 100 people IIRC. Now several 100 people need about 96 people worth of full-time farmers, at about 10 acres each, so a good solid 1000 acres of tilled land, which we would assume would need to be pretty much near the castle walls, practically speaking.
> 
> Yet there's no sign of any agriculture in the area. There's no mill, no barns stuffed full of hay (they would be BIG) etc. Nothing. And there's about 150 tough, vicious, warlike humanoids 2 MILES AWAY in a series of caves. Humanoids who likewise show no signs of having any means of support or filling their bellies (and I can only imagine that humans, dwarves, elves, etc would do nicely).
> 
> I don't think this situation is stable. I don't think the scenario, as described in the module, would last even 3 days. So its hard to really understand how it all fits together and what the PCs should expect to happen if they do various things. I can't apply ANY sort of 'premise' to anything because it is all so utterly nonsensical to begin with!





AbdulAlhazred said:


> in order to deal with a conflict between the races in the Caves, and between them and the Keep I guess too, there have to be understood needs. The problem is that the scenario is so unrealistic that it couldn't even come to pass in the first place. How are we to gauge the needs of people (loosely speaking) in such an unrealistic scenario? How do the various humanoids make a living? What do they eat? We can't even figure this out, so we can't even make up a story about their basic vital interests being worked out, let alone anything beyond that





AbdulAlhazred said:


> you can simply ignore all that and make sure that all the players contemplate doing is playing 'murder hobo' and killing off the Caves inhabitants while they sit around and do virtually nothing about it. OK, you can do that. It is hard to base any kind of dynamic, evolving plot line on that sort of basis.



I think that all this speaks directly to the OP.

Classic D&D dungeoncrawling isn't meant to "make sense". We don't ask what the monsters eat (or, if we do, the answer - as per Old Geezer on rpg.net - is that they eat at McMonster's (? or something like that) on the bottom level). The constraints of the "puzzle"/maze are tightly confined, by a mixture of stipulation and convention.

B2 is good for that sort of game.

But as soon as we are thinking about a "living, breathing world" with a story that is meant to involve story and character in some meaningful fashion, the Caves of Chaos have nothing to offer. At best, one or two fragments might be pulled out of it and turned into something else.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> That applies to pretty much every game of pretty much every style. DMs are exceedingly unlikely to interrupt a teleport to have a visit with the Raven Queen unless she is already an important part of the game.



The relevant question is, _why_ is the Raven Queen important? Because the GM said so; or because the players said so?



Maxperson said:


> Teleportation is an instantaneous and uninterrupted transport from one location to another.  It's only final if that happens.  If you interrupt it, not only is it not final, but it's no different than what I described with trying to find the bazaar instead of just putting the PCs there.  You've added a step, which you described as not being final earlier in this discussion.  You can't have it both ways.



It's absolutely different. The players didn't have to do anything but write down the goodies the Raven Queen gave them. There is no change to the structure of resolution - the PCs leave point A and arrive at point B - except that an intermediate step is narrated.

The players didn't have to "find" anything, declare any additional actions, etc.

In mechanical terms, the items are purely a contribution to PC build; the gifting of them by the Raven Queen is a moment of pure colour. It's not a _scene_ at all.



Maxperson said:


> it's not just a story being told.  Giving them the option of which way to go at an intersection invovles more than just story.



Telling the players about the intersection is telling them a piece of fiction: "As you walk down the tunnel, you come to an intersection."

The players then have the "option" as to which way to go - but this word "option" is (again) a metaphor, because this is not a real intersection with which real people are interacting. It's a piece of fiction narrated by the GM, and if the players say "We go left" or "We go right", well that is a trigger for the GM to narrate some more fiction.

Why is this more important, more interesting and worth spending time on, compared to actually having the PCs meet the giants that they are interested in interacting with?



Maxperson said:


> You also persist in "overlooking" that during the journey to the giants, things will happen that will aid them in their ultimate goal of defeating said giants, so it's not just "writing down stuff about intersections and gems".



I'm not overlooking it. I'm making the point that if the players aren't interested in that - because they want to confront the giants, not make friends with some other persons - then why spend time on it at the table? You'll note that, in my example, the players made potions that they wanted. If they had wanted to meet allies, they could have talked about that. But they didn't.

It's not hard for players to have their PCs seek out help if the want to. Here's an actual play example:



pemerton said:


> The invoker-wizard also came through the gate, in order to Thunderwave some elementals into the lava, but this turned out to expose him to their vicious melee and he, too, got cut down. In desperate straits as he lay on the ground next to his Gate (he was brought back to consciousness via some sort of healing effect), being hacked down by fire archons, he spoke a prayer to Erathis (one of his patron deities). After speaking the prayer, and after the player succeeded at a Hard Religion check, as the PC looked up into the rock cleft high above him, he saw a duergar standing on a ledge looking down. The PC already knew that the duergar revere Erathis (as well as Asmodeus). The duergar gave the Deep Speech hand sign for "I will offer you aid", and the PC replied with the sign for "The dues will be paid". The duergar then dropped a potion vial down to the PC. (I had already decided that I could place a duergar in the cleft if I wanted some sort of 3rd-party intervention into the fight. The successful prayer was the trigger for implementing that prior decision.)
> 
> The invoker took himself and his potion back through the Gate, and he too stayed on the far side of the river for the rest of the fight.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> At the point where the fighter and wizard went back to the ledge, the general mood was of impending TPK, but there is nothing like a flying ranger to turn the tide!
> 
> <snip>
> 
> They are now hoping to create a Hallowed Temple and take an extended rest, but (unbeknownst to them) will have to deal with the duergar first. After all, the invoker promised that the dues would be repaid!



Your whole presentation of the situation seems to assume a GM-driven game, in which the defeat of the giants is a goal of predetermined difficulty, which therefore might require "aid" of various sorts that will be introduced into the fiction by the GM. As opposed to a player-driven approach, where the players decide whether their PCs are the sort to seek aid or not, and the question of whether or not aid might be needed is settled _via the actual play of the game_, as in the example I just posted.



Maxperson said:


> It's a given for my example.  Maybe they are in the south, east, west, equator.  It doesn't matter.  The setting will have barbarians established in it somewhere.  As for framing, I am forcing the framing to happen by stating to the DM that I am going north(or east, west, etc.) to take over the barbarians.  The DM has to respond.  As with the wine example, he has no choice by to address my goal.
> 
> Now, as for your bad DM examples, those need not apply.  As I said to [MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION], bad DMs are bad and any game they run is going to be bupkis.  Assuming that the DM is not bad, I'm not going to encounter no boats every time I look for one, or every pass blocked by snow, etc.
> 
> Why do you guys persist in constantly giving examples of bad DMing as if they actually mean something to the discussion?



You are the one who keep insisting that your game is different from mine. I don't have any independent knowledge of it.

If in fact you're playing a no myth, player-driven game where the GM introduces story elements and frames scenes in response to the PC goals that players express, well, OK. But then why do you keep insisting that it's GM-driven and different from what I and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] are talking about?


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> tomBitonti said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> What is the difference between not finding the passage (and the passage may or may not be there) and not finding the passage (because it is resolutely not there)? Or perhaps not finding the passage (which exists, just not where the player expected it to be; or maybe it is there but the player isn't skillful enough to find it).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Because one is the result of making a move in the game, and having the dice roll fail; and the other is the result of someone else authoring your failure and telling you a story about it.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Both are the result of attempting a move in the game and failing.  In the fiction the result is exactly the same in either instance.  At the table the only differences are a) the mechanics behind said failure, and b) the level of knowledge those mechanics give to the player regarding the reason(s) for said failure.
Click to expand...


You say this as if differences in mechanics and techniques don't matter! That is, as if all that matters in a RPG is what fiction results.

But that obviously isn't the case. RPGing is about playing a game. Who makes the moves, and how they are resolved, is fundamental to the whole activity.



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In your example, what does the rogue player add to the fiction - nothing except that his/her PC looked around and found nothing. As far as RPGing is concerned, that's the most minimal result a player can achieve by declaring a move - my PC did this thing and nothing interesting resulted from it. I mean, suppose that a RPG session consisted of nothing but that. What sort of session would that be?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Frustrating, and at the same time realistic - sometimes things just don't pan out the way you want them to.
Click to expand...


Upthread, you suggested that your approach to RPGing can yield "story now". But here we see one reason why not.

Four hours (or whatever) of _nothing interesting happening from anything the protagonists do_ is not a story. It might resemble an Andy Warhol movie, but those are deliberate repudiations of story! (And I'm not sure that anyone actually _watches_ Empire.)



Lanefan said:


> And it's these times of frustration that makes times of success all the more rewarding.



_Failure_ is not the same things as _nothing interesting resulting from what is attempted_.



Lanefan said:


> If the player's agenda is for her PC to get rich or to accumulate magic items then you're wide open to this sort of thing.
> 
> Silly, perhaps, but legal by the letter of this narrativistic type of system where success on an action declaration cannot be denied.



If everyone at the table knows that the game is not silly, then everyone equally knows that (in the absence of some context, such as searching the home of a fairy) there is no point looking for wands in trees, as there won't be any there.

This repeated concern, from you and now [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION], that the first things players will do who actually have the power to contribute to the content of the shared fiction will be to find gold and items for their PCs, rests on the same illusion as other concerns you've expressed. The gameworld is not a reality. If you don't want a silly gameworld, it's easy to avoid: just don't author one! If you want PCs who are more than just a Gygaxian id, then build and play them.



Lanefan said:


> One of the true appeals of RPGs is that as player you're (in theory) free to try anything, no matter how ridiculous. There shouldn't be any system-based limits on the actions players can declare or have thier PCs attempt.



I don't understand what you are claiming here, or what purported contrast you are drawing.

What's the DC for your D&D character to flap her arms and fly to the moon? What's the DC for a 1st level character to jump into a volcano and survive? What's the DC for your 1st level fighter PC to try and kill ten orcs in one round?

There are all sorts of limits - some imposed by the mechanics, some by a shared understanding of the fiction - on what actions can be meaningfully attempted in a RPG. (The main one that trips people up in classic D&D is stuff like letting fighters move silently with a DEX check, or climb with a STR check, while forcing thief PCs to use the generally weaker percentage chances - even Luke Crane fell into this rookie trap GMing Moldvay Basic, as he reports in one of his blogs.)



Lanefan said:


> The whole idea of "treasure parcels" just makes it all sound so predetermined in the meta-game...do this much adventuring and you'll get this much treasure.  Kind of like a salary for adventurers.



It is predetermined in the metagame. It's a bit like "hit dice" in AD&D: you don't need to earn your hit dice independent of gaining levels - rolling for additional hit points is part-and-parcel of gaining a level.

But unlike classic AD&D, earning levels in 4e isn't a reward (despite the misleading chapter heading in the 4e DMG) - _provided you actually play the game_ (ie engage with the fiction via your PC) then your PC _will _go up levels. The gaining of levels, and the progression through the tiers of play, is a background to the fiction that the game actually focuses on.



Lanefan said:


> How dull.



Well, it's dull if you want to play a game where the goal of play is to overcome challenges to unlock power ups for your character. It's not dull if you want to play a game that more closely resembles (say) Arthurian legend, or the Iliad, or the Silmarillion, in which equipment is more often a gift or a marker of status, and the goals of the protagonists are to _do stuff_ with their gear.

Of course a 4e game can have some items like the Silmarils as a focus. But those are not the norm. The norm is closer to the Elven rings of power, or Gil-Galad's spear, or the gifts given by the gods to Perseus, or Captain America's shield. They figure as elements of a narrative, not as rewards for skilled play.



Lanefan said:


> One question that's been bugging me about this example: where were the rest of the PCs during this sequence?  Or had the party not yet formed?



Read the actual play report.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> No, and I must say, this is so indicative of the intellectual malaise which rots modern society. Every single thing is demoted down to some simplistic black and white pastiche of itself, which is effectively meaningless. Its shallow to be perfectly blunt.
> 
> I played with a guy, FOR DECADES, who is the utter antithesis of everything I do when I GM. The utter antithesis of everything I look for IN a GM when I play. THIS GUY IS A GOD OF GAME MASTERS!!!! You would be so lucky to ever play with a GM 1/10th as good. Rules are fine, they are great guidelines. They simply do not capture all the ground truth, all the nuances of what happens out there in the real world. Seriously, every single thing that you call 'Bad GMing' and just rule out of existence as impossible for any good GM. He does all these things. He's STILL a god of GMs. Your statements, while sometimes I agree with at least some of them, don't capture everything. Good GMs do all sorts of crazy things, and mediocre GMs can still do well and break rules. Its just true.




First, I'm not talking about game rules.  I house rule the heck out of my games.  Breaking a game rule isn't that big of a deal.  I'm talking about shutting down players when they want to do things with their PCs. That's just bad, even if the person is amazing at the rest of the game, it still makes him a bad DM.  An analogy would be if a man was generous to a fault.  Donated time and money to charities.  Did all kinds of amazing things that make him a great person, but had a thing where he molested children in his basement.  That person would be a bad person, despite all of the other amazing things that he does.  You could argue, and rightly so that he does great good for the world, but he's still a bad guy.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> The relevant question is, _why_ is the Raven Queen important? Because the GM said so; or because the players said so?




Not really.  As you mentioned up thread, things the DM introduces become important to the players and vice versa.  That's how the game is played.  It's a mutual thing.



> It's absolutely different. The players didn't have to do anything but write down the goodies the Raven Queen gave them. There is no change to the structure of resolution - the PCs leave point A and arrive at point B - except that an intermediate step is narrated.
> 
> The players didn't have to "find" anything, declare any additional actions, etc.
> 
> In mechanical terms, the items are purely a contribution to PC build; the gifting of them by the Raven Queen is a moment of pure colour. It's not a _scene_ at all.




I guess I just didn't realize how passive your players are, and it floors me that not one of them would even try to talk to her.  I would, as would all of my players.  You still interrupted the spell that doesn't get interrupted, though, which prevented final resolution until AFTER you were done narrating what you did.  There's no way around that.  What the players tried to do was not final until after your narration.



> Telling the players about the intersection is telling them a piece of fiction: "As you walk down the tunnel, you come to an intersection."
> 
> The players then have the "option" as to which way to go - but this word "option" is (again) a metaphor, because this is not a real intersection with which real people are interacting. It's a piece of fiction narrated by the GM, and if the players say "We go left" or "We go right", well that is a trigger for the GM to narrate some more fiction.
> 
> Why is this more important, more interesting and worth spending time on, compared to actually having the PCs meet the giants that they are interested in interacting with?




If you want to call it a metaphor, go for it.  It's simply not relevant to anything in this discussion whether it is or is not a metaphor.  

What it does do, is give real options.  Even if the intersection is imaginary, the options the players take exist in the real world.  They make the decision on which way to go here, and tell me what it is here.

As for your your question, you sound like my wife.  She will often not like it if I give up a game night with my friends to do something with her, because she knows that I enjoy gaming and want to be there gaming with them.  The thing is, I am fully capable of wanting more than one thing that are in conflict with one another.  Just because I want to and am interested in gaming, doesn't mean that I do not also want to spend time with her and go out to a movie.  

The trip to the giants through the Underdark will garner the players experiences that add to their enjoyment of the game, as well as add to their PCs ability to handle the giants once they arrive.  That makes it both interesting and makes it so that it addresses the goal of defeating the giants.  It's simplistic to try and boil down game enjoyment/interest to a rush to immediately resolve a stated goal.



> I'm not overlooking it. I'm making the point that if the players aren't interested in that - because they want to confront the giants, not make friends with some other persons - then why spend time on it at the table? You'll note that, in my example, the players made potions that they wanted. If they had wanted to meet allies, they could have talked about that. But they didn't.




Players never think of everything.  How do you know that they don't want to meet allies, as opposed to not thinking of something that they would have wanted to do had they thought of it?



> Your whole presentation of the situation seems to assume a GM-driven game, in which the defeat of the giants is a goal of predetermined difficulty, which therefore might require "aid" of various sorts that will be introduced into the fiction by the GM. As opposed to a player-driven approach, where the players decide whether their PCs are the sort to seek aid or not, and the question of whether or not aid might be needed is settled _via the actual play of the game_, as in the example I just posted.




While the example is cool and all, it appears that the player did not seek aid, but rather aid came as a result of his actions.  Nor does it mean that the player will always remember aid as a possibility and mention it to you.



> You are the one who keep insisting that your game is different from mine. I don't have any independent knowledge of it.
> 
> If in fact you're playing a no myth, player-driven game where the GM introduces story elements and frames scenes in response to the PC goals that players express, well, OK. But then why do you keep insisting that it's GM-driven and different from what I and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] are talking about?




What does this have to do with you guys giving examples of bad DMing?


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I don't understand what you are claiming here, or what purported contrast you are drawing.
> 
> What's the DC for your D&D character to flap her arms and fly to the moon? What's the DC for a 1st level character to jump into a volcano and survive? What's the DC for your 1st level fighter PC to try and kill ten orcs in one round?
> 
> There are all sorts of limits - some imposed by the mechanics, some by a shared understanding of the fiction - on what actions can be meaningfully attempted in a RPG.




The DCs are entirely irrelevant to his point.  There is no limit on the attempt of those actions.  My PC can flap his arms in an attempt to fly to the moon and there is no system limitation that stops me from trying.  The same with the volcano and killing 10 orcs in one round, though I'm not sure why you'd have asked for a DC for that one.  Have you not played D&D before?

And who are you to declare what is meaningful and what isn't?  If my PC is crazy, then there is meaning in the attempt to fly to the moon by flapping my arms.  If my PC is not crazy, but I'm trying to freak out a tribe of primitives who are superstitious and don't mess with crazy people, the attempt has meaning.  If my jump into the volcano is part of a heroic sacrifice, it has meaning, even if my PC is desperately hoping for a miracle and hopes beyond reason to survive.  If my PC wants to be the best swordsman in the world and his goal is to kill 10 orcs in one round, his attempts have meaning, even if he doesn't succeed when 1st level.  



> But unlike classic AD&D, earning levels in 4e isn't a reward (despite the misleading chapter heading in the 4e DMG) - _provided you actually play the game_ (ie engage with the fiction via your PC) then your PC _will _go up levels. The gaining of levels, and the progression through the tiers of play, is a background to the fiction that the game actually focuses on.




Yes it is a reward.  Those levels are a reward for playing the game.  A guaranteed reward for doing something is still a reward.  When I tell my son that if he eats all of his dinner he can have desert as a reward, it's guaranteed that if he actually eats his dinner(engages with the food via his mouth and stomach) then he will get desert.


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## Aenghus

When I'm starting out a new campaign I generally have a "Session 0" to hammer out a mutual understanding of what the game will and won't be about in general terms, and how the game is going to be run. This especially applies to new rulesets or editions which require some work to get to grips with. Agreement to play a particular game module, or to abide by preset character goals emerging from character generation or acceptance of a certain amount of railroading etc etc

It's a chance for participants to ask questions or express their doubts.At the end everyone resolves to give the game a fair try and accept the agreements for the campaign, or bows out.

After that I expect players to abide by their agreements. If after the first sessions a player really isn't enjoying the resulting game, they can drop out. What they can't do is misbehave and disrupt the game. I haven't had to go beyond warnings in my own games, though I would eject a player who persisted in dragging down a game for whatever reason (dislike, contrariness, boredom etc).

Now in the case of a "Story Now" game, I'm working from the assumption that the players have all agreed to play the game sincerely and are thus committed to playing out their driving goals, and moving from scene to scene in the process of this in a way that fits the pre-agreed and evolving fiction of the game. 

For me system matters. Playing a game as if it was a different game goes wrong more often than not. Consciously or not, it's a form of sabotage, violating the group social contract and campaign agreement. 

For a "Story Now" game, such behavior would include trying to modify or ignore driving goals in ways that break the rules or agreements, or trying to avoid scenes that logically flow from the direction of play, or ignoring the conflict resolution rules to try and resolve in-game problems in different ways. For me this is all classic  "bad player" behavior, selfish play that violates the social contract, and grounds for a private talking to or even expulsion from that game.

But there are many ways to run games even under the same system. There are people I would play with only under very limited circumstances, and others I could play anything with and probably have fun (and a few who I will never play with again).


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## nugstradamus

I think a good example of world-building would be, like, if there is a war going on 50 miles from where your party actually is. They physically have nothing to do with it (yet, anyway), but the effects of the war are important to the campaign. Trade embargos, uptick in crime, etc. What side of the war does the town you're in support? Is their side winning the war? Maybe people are happier, dancing and drinking at a tavern. Are they losing? Maybe they're sad, downtrodden, more hot headed and on edge.

That war is going on in the background, far enough away from the party that they won't be hearing about specifics as they happen, but you still have to build those stories in such a way that all NPC's actions can be justified.


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> You say this as if differences in mechanics and techniques don't matter! That is, as if all that matters in a RPG is what fiction results.



From the point of view of my PC - through whose eyes I-as-player am viewing the game world - that's exactly right.



> But that obviously isn't the case. RPGing is about playing a game. Who makes the moves, and how they are resolved, is fundamental to the whole activity.



From the player-at-the-table side, yes.  But from the PC-in-the-fiction side, not in the slightest.



> Upthread, you suggested that your approach to RPGing can yield "story now". But here we see one reason why not.
> 
> Four hours (or whatever) of _nothing interesting happening from anything the protagonists do_ is not a story.



In and of itself, no it isn't; though in hindsight it'll without doubt be a part of a bigger story.  Kind of like a ten-game losing streak at some point during a season in which you still win the cup at the end.



> _Failure_ is not the same things as _nothing interesting resulting from what is attempted_.



Depends.  If it's a binary succeed-fail situation (e.g. either you find a secret door or you don't) then failure directly equals nothing-interesting.  If it's a sliding-scale situation where both success and failure can come in degrees then it's sometimes possible to generate interest from failure.



> If everyone at the table knows that the game is not silly, then everyone equally knows that (in the absence of some context, such as searching the home of a fairy) there is no point looking for wands in trees, as there won't be any there.



Sure - but that still doesn't (and IMO can't) stop me from going through the motions of trying. 



> This repeated concern, from you and now [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION], that the first things players will do who actually have the power to contribute to the content of the shared fiction will be to find gold and items for their PCs, rests on the same illusion as other concerns you've expressed. The gameworld is not a reality. If you don't want a silly gameworld, it's easy to avoid: just don't author one! If you want PCs who are more than just a Gygaxian id, then build and play them.



No, my repeated concern - usually expressed in silly terms but with a very serious underlying point - is that players with the power to contribute to the fiction will always ALWAYS sooner or later attempt to bend that contribution to their own unfair or unbalanced advantage, be it over other players/PCs or over the game itself; and the DM in these types of games has no means to stop it.  Human beings are by nature competitive - that's why part of the DM's role is and always has been that of referee.



> I don't understand what you are claiming here, or what purported contrast you are drawing.



That it's the DM's job to say no to things the players try that are impossible, not the player's job to limit themselves to only attempting the possible.



> What's the DC for your D&D character to flap her arms and fly to the moon? What's the DC for a 1st level character to jump into a volcano and survive? What's the DC for your 1st level fighter PC to try and kill ten orcs in one round?



Perhaps infinity, but who cares?  They can still try if they want.



> But unlike classic AD&D, earning levels in 4e isn't a reward



Sure it is.  It just arrives more frequently and (in most cases) more predictably than in AD&D, and unlike AD&D with its level-loss mechanics it can't be taken away later.



> (despite the misleading chapter heading in the 4e DMG) - _provided you actually play the game_ (ie engage with the fiction via your PC) then your PC _will _go up levels.



Unless the DM houserules otherwise... 



> The gaining of levels, and the progression through the tiers of play, is a background to the fiction that the game actually focuses on.



This can be true of any RPG, and speaks more to the players' focus of play.  Some play for the power-ups.  Some play for the story.  Many play for a bit of both.

Lan-"time is short or there'd be more to this"-efan


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> Four hours (or whatever) of _nothing interesting happening from anything the protagonists do_ is not a story.



 It could be a story.  It could be a haunting coming-of-age story about a group of friends playing 1e D&D (it might even sell in the wake of Stranger Things).  Or a gripping, real-life drama of a group of rivals playing 3.5 D&D as adults.  Or a thoughtful comedy with a conscience about millennials playing 5e D&D.  
It would at least be a realistic story.



> ... concern that the first things players will do who actually have the power to contribute to the content of the shared fiction will be to find gold and items for their PCs, rests on the same illusion as other concerns you've expressed. The gameworld is not a reality. If you don't want a silly gameworld, it's easy to avoid: just don't author one! If you want PCs who are more than just a Gygaxian id, then build and play them.



 I think the issue is that the system implies qualities of the world, so if the system seems silly, the world will seem silly.  



> What's the DC for your D&D character to ...?



 "Ask, your DM."  



> The main one that trips people up in classic D&D is stuff like letting fighters move silently with a DEX check, or climb with a STR check, while forcing thief PCs to use the generally weaker percentage chances - even Luke Crane fell into this rookie trap GMing Moldvay Basic, as he reports in one of his blogs.



 I was used to the opposite:  "...well the Thief only has a 25% chance, so clearly your chance should be worse..."



> It's a bit like "hit dice" in AD&D: you don't need to earn your hit dice independent of gaining levels - rolling for additional hit points is part-and-parcel of gaining a level.
> But unlike classic AD&D, earning levels in 4e isn't a reward (despite the misleading chapter heading in the 4e DMG) - _provided you actually play the game_ (ie engage with the fiction via your PC) then your PC _will _go up levels. The gaining of levels, and the progression through the tiers of play, is a background to the fiction that the game actually focuses on.



 It's a reward for showing up, then.  (Honestly, ever since 3.0, that's how leveling has felt, to me.  Everyone's on the same exp table, everyone gets a share of the exp for the session.  I've never actually had 'freeloader' players who contribute nothing and walk away with XP, but technically it could happen....)



> Well, it's dull if you want to play a game where the goal of play is to overcome challenges to unlock power ups for your character.



 Don't forget that the point of the power-ups are so you can take on bigger challenges to unlock better power ups.



> It's not dull if you want to play a game that more closely resembles (say) Arthurian legend



 Oh!  Like Pendragon, sure.  


> , or the Iliad,



  HeroQuest!  







> or the Silmarillion.



 GURPS (OK, maybe that was just my GM who made GURPS feel like endless exposition and no story.)



> , in which equipment is more often a gift or a marker of status, and the goals of the protagonists are to _do stuff_ with their gear



 In 4e (which, I think was what this particular tangent was about), special equipment is more like a character-customization option, just like feats, powers &c, at least in so much as the DM honors the wish list.  



> Of course a 4e game can have some items like the Silmarils as a focus. But those are not the norm. The norm is closer to the Elven rings of power, or Gil-Galad's spear, or the gifts given by the gods to Perseus, or Captain America's shield. They figure as elements of a narrative, not as rewards for skilled play.



 Don't see it.  Most 4e magic items struck me more as price-of-admission (oh, you're going to be Epic, now, better up your gear to +5, or you won't get invited to parties), and could fade into the background unless they did something cool for the character concept.


----------



## Nytmare

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OTOH, I can imagine where both a DM-centered game and a Story Now game would do this. Suppose the whole shtick of this vampire family is to fit in with the rest of the world and not be noticed? Maybe that's how they operate, and the whole point is "what do you do when you get dropped into castle Dracula without any prep!?" Its at least a feasible and plausible concept, so I can't categorically condemn it.




That kinda reminds me of a Vampire: The Masquerade game I played in in college where the set up was essentially that the PCs were the Frog Brothers from The Lost Boys.  We spent 2 or 3 game nights discovering that there was a secret throng of vampires hidden in the city.  All the signs were there if you knew to look for them.  So we stormed the "castle" and discovered to our horror that we had just accidentally happened upon and murdered a bunch of innocent, late 80s, proto-goth, vampire-wanna-bes.


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I think that all this speaks directly to the OP.
> 
> Classic D&D dungeoncrawling isn't meant to "make sense". We don't  ask what the monsters eat (or, if we do, the answer - as per Old Geezer  on rpg.net - is that they eat at McMonster's (? or something like that)  on the bottom level). The constraints of the "puzzle"/maze are tightly  confined, by a mixture of stipulation and convention.
> 
> B2 is good for that sort of game.
> 
> But as soon as we are thinking about a "living, breathing world" with a  story that is meant to involve story and character in some meaningful  fashion, the Caves of Chaos have nothing to offer. At best, one or two  fragments might be pulled out of it and turned into something  else.




Right, an Arnesonian Dungeon is a perfectly good game construct. It  is PURELY gamist however, just about as realistic as the board in  Monopoly, maybe less. The RPG format affords it an open-ended character,  but only within the very narrow scope of "things you can do while  looting a dungeon." 

I really think the format has survived so  well, even with additions of some less highly structured material and  some rationalization (ala Phandelver) is simply because it is so easy to  produce and simple to understand. There is, pretty much by definition,  no market for No Myth adventures (hmmm, have I named a game company  here, or what?). In any case, things like B2 are easy to conceive,  simple to package, and relatively simple to run.


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Well, it's dull if you want to play a game where the goal of play is to overcome challenges to unlock power ups for your character. It's not dull if you want to play a game that more closely resembles (say) Arthurian legend, or the Iliad, or the Silmarillion, in which equipment is more often a gift or a marker of status, and the goals of the protagonists are to _do stuff_ with their gear.
> 
> Of course a 4e game can have some items like the Silmarils as a focus. But those are not the norm. The norm is closer to the Elven rings of power, or Gil-Galad's spear, or the gifts given by the gods to Perseus, or Captain America's shield. They figure as elements of a narrative, not as rewards for skilled play.




This reminds me of the great virtue of 4e in this regard. Its scaling is so transparent, that in effect there's nothing really from a gamist standpoint which matters about 'power ups'. Magic items and whatnot are just (as oft observed) elements of scaling for the sake of scaling (at least to a point, the nature of the fiction is cumulatively impacted, but its not in a classic D&D sense, where a fighter is COMPLETELY distinguished by the fact that he is a wielder of a +2 greatsword and carries a +1 shield and +1 plate armor). 

The point being, the story aspect of these things becomes the only meaningful dimension on which they exist. Treasure falls in the same way, it just does not matter, except as the player wants it to matter. The game is free to be about anything, and these elements are free to become purely narrative support. 

I like the way you tend to weave them into the story by taking their mechanics as inspiration (I guess often this is something your players do). It expands on page 42 in a way that synergizes with a lot of D&D loot tropes. Fun stuff!


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> First, I'm not talking about game rules.  I house rule the heck out of my games.  Breaking a game rule isn't that big of a deal.  I'm talking about shutting down players when they want to do things with their PCs. That's just bad, even if the person is amazing at the rest of the game, it still makes him a bad DM.  An analogy would be if a man was generous to a fault.  Donated time and money to charities.  Did all kinds of amazing things that make him a great person, but had a thing where he molested children in his basement.  That person would be a bad person, despite all of the other amazing things that he does.  You could argue, and rightly so that he does great good for the world, but he's still a bad guy.




Well, first I apologize if my post was unclear. I mean that this person, this amazing GM, broke all of YOUR rules of GMing. Whenever you say to me "this would only happen with a terrible GM" I think of my friend. He did ALL of those things (maybe some of them he only did a little bit and in ways that you might admit weren't exactly all bad, but he did them). 

To call the man a 'bad GM' is literally laughable. I mean I'm actually chuckling to even think of it. And yup, sometimes you'd want to do something in that game, and you'd NEVER get to do it. You'd watch him pull the strings and make it all go a certain way, AND YOU'D JUST SAY WOW, HOLY CRUD THIS IS AMAZING! We'd all get frustrated as heck too. I don't even think he is the best POSSIBLE GM, just pretty close to the best that actually exists. Some things he did you could have said "Mike, if you don't do THAT then it will be better." but it was pointless. He was like a force of nature, his technique just was, it didn't suffer analysis, it wasn't planned or affected in any way. He couldn't use his understaning of GMing to change and do it like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], he's just what he is, and still awesome.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> I guess I just didn't realize how passive your players are, and it floors me that not one of them would even try to talk to her.  I would, as would all of my players.  You still interrupted the spell that doesn't get interrupted, though, which prevented final resolution until AFTER you were done narrating what you did.  There's no way around that.  What the players tried to do was not final until after your narration.




The absurdity of this is becoming downright silly. First freedom of choice is 'railroading', and then active equal partners in forming the game are 'passive', and I'm forgetting a few other absurd things too I'm sure. Oh, the whole treating the game world as if it constitutes a form of reality, and thinking that how the game narrative is formed and by whom doesn't matter.

I feel like you're painting yourself further and further into some completely absurd corner in any attempt to create some kind of definition of things to serve some point which everyone forgot or lost interest in 500 posts ago. 

There was a point at which I felt like there were clarifications that were happening in terms of how I describe the structure and activity in games, and what some of it means. Also what different ways you could come at the same things. That was interesting, but this is just over the Moon, its absurd.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Players never think of everything.  How do you know that they don't want to meet allies, as opposed to not thinking of something that they would have wanted to do had they thought of it?
> 
> While the example is cool and all, it appears that the player did not seek aid, but rather aid came as a result of his actions.  Nor does it mean that the player will always remember aid as a possibility and mention it to you.




I think this is another example of being stuck in one way of thinking. The players in my game are FULL PARTNERS in the process of the RPG experience. This probably also goes for your earlier 'passive' comment. You see the players as some sort of lesser participants, almost like an audience, although I understand that isn't quite the right term. Still, like they only do this one limited thing in the game.

In my games the players DO think of everything. Because THEY ARE IN CHARGE of how they want to engage, they do think in terms of what should happen next. They know that if they evince a desire for allies, then a story about allies, the dangers, costs, and rewards of alliance, etc. would doubtless present itself, and it would almost have to take the form of some event or location intervening between the dwarves and the giant cave. It is PERFECTLY FEASIBLE for that to happen, and quite natural for the players to initiate it.

See, you, in your stream of consciousness sort of thing where every thinking moment of every character's life has to be portrayed regardless of its significance, and the players are wholly stuck in nothing but this mode, then what you say might be true, skipping something would be like 'fast forward' past some part of their lives, oh no! This isn't like that. We're arranging, in linear order, the pieces of a story of the players, playing game rules in order to decide some of it, and maybe doing other things to decide other parts. 

Everyone is doing it, not exactly the same way, but its participatory, and thus the players minds are ranging over the story their characters are in and they're thinking about things like "Wait, my character always likes to hedge his bets, I'm sure he'd keep a sharp eye out for signs of anyone he could convince, or even pay, to come along and lend a hand..." This might translate into telling the GM "hey, Ted, we're traveling quite a ways to this cave, right? I'm going to use my Dungeoneering skill to look for signs of any folks I can talk to, or things I can use against the giants."


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> The absurdity of this is becoming downright silly. First freedom of choice is 'railroading', and then active equal partners in forming the game are 'passive', and I'm forgetting a few other absurd things too I'm sure. Oh, the whole treating the game world as if it constitutes a form of reality, and thinking that how the game narrative is formed and by whom doesn't matter.
> 
> I feel like you're painting yourself further and further into some completely absurd corner in any attempt to create some kind of definition of things to serve some point which everyone forgot or lost interest in 500 posts ago.
> 
> There was a point at which I felt like there were clarifications that were happening in terms of how I describe the structure and activity in games, and what some of it means. Also what different ways you could come at the same things. That was interesting, but this is just over the Moon, its absurd.




Yep.  Those are indeed absurd.  It's probably a good thing for me that those are misrepresentations of what I have said.  Not once did I ever claim freedom of choice was railroading.  As for "active equal partners", that wasn't any part of the Raven Queen tidbit [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] posted.  He said he narrated everything and that there was no scene. Had they interacted with her, there would have been a scene. That's freaking passive as heck.  The Raven Queen interrupts your teleport to give you items you need and they don't even so much as say thank you.  They don't ask if she needs or wants the items back when they are done.  They don't engage in any number of interactions with her.  They just passively received the items and left.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think this is another example of being stuck in one way of thinking. The players in my game are FULL PARTNERS in the process of the RPG experience. This probably also goes for your earlier 'passive' comment. You see the players as some sort of lesser participants, almost like an audience, although I understand that isn't quite the right term. Still, like they only do this one limited thing in the game.




I'm confused on why you would think that very active participants in my game would be lesser participants or audience.  My players are full partners as well.  Being partners does not have to mean that you all do the same thing.  You can divvy up the roles and still have a full partnership.



> In my games the players DO think of everything. Because THEY ARE IN CHARGE of how they want to engage, they do think in terms of what should happen next. They know that if they evince a desire for allies, then a story about allies, the dangers, costs, and rewards of alliance, etc. would doubtless present itself, and it would almost have to take the form of some event or location intervening between the dwarves and the giant cave. It is PERFECTLY FEASIBLE for that to happen, and quite natural for the players to initiate it.




With all due respect, no player can think of everything.  They are going to forget that they wanted to do something and remember it later, or perhaps never remember it at all.  It happens to everyone, even ones that are in charge.



> See, you, in your stream of consciousness sort of thing where every thinking moment of every character's life has to be portrayed regardless of its significance, and the players are wholly stuck in nothing but this mode, then what you say might be true, skipping something would be like 'fast forward' past some part of their lives, oh no! This isn't like that. We're arranging, in linear order, the pieces of a story of the players, playing game rules in order to decide some of it, and maybe doing other things to decide other parts.




This is another misrepresentation.  I've never advocated that every thinking moment be portrayed.  I assume the PCs take dumps and pee, but that has almost never been roleplayed in a game of mine.  And that's just one example.  Just because the PCs travel and encounter interesting things on the way to a goal, doesn't mean that every detail gets played out.



> Everyone is doing it, not exactly the same way, but its participatory, and thus the players minds are ranging over the story their characters are in and they're thinking about things like "Wait, my character always likes to hedge his bets, I'm sure he'd keep a sharp eye out for signs of anyone he could convince, or even pay, to come along and lend a hand..." This might translate into telling the GM "hey, Ted, we're traveling quite a ways to this cave, right? I'm going to use my Dungeoneering skill to look for signs of any folks I can talk to, or things I can use against the giants."



I'm sure they do.  I'm equally sure that sometimes they forget something that would be of importance.  Nobody thinks of everything all the time.  Mistakes get made, and if you rush forward there's less time for the players to rectify the error.

Again, I'm not saying your way is bad, or that the players haven't agreed to and enjoy playing it that way.  I'm just pointing out a weakness in the playstyle.  All styles have strengths and weaknesses.


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> I guess I just didn't realize how passive your players are, and it floors me that not one of them would even try to talk to her.  I would, as would all of my players.  You still interrupted the spell that doesn't get interrupted, though, which prevented final resolution until AFTER you were done narrating what you did.  There's no way around that.  What the players tried to do was not final until after your narration.



As I already posted, _I sent them an email_. I have no recollection, two and a half years later, whether anyone, at our next session, discussed any sort of conversation with her. Here is the entirety of my record of what happened:



pemerton said:


> The session ended there, with the PCs stepping through their portal into the secret way into Orcus's throne room.





			
				email sent by pemerton to players said:
			
		

> the Raven Queen (and perhaps the GM), having an inkling of how hard it might be to take on Orcus on his home plane, feels that it's time for a bit of a treasure download. There's something for everyone! [pre-Orcus power up attached]





			
				pre-Orcus power up document attached to email said:
			
		

> Your teleportation to the secret circle on Thanatos involves a detour, as the Raven Queen takes pity on you! (As does your GM.)
> 
> Derrik, as the mistress of fate, the Raven Queen offers you the following item <snip details>. Moradin also feels that you could use a buff, and so grants you Moradin’s Blessing of Iron <snip details>.
> 
> Jett, as the mistress of fate, the Raven Queen offers you the following item <snip details>. Also, your Boon of Arcane Might increases <snip details> as Corellon rewards you for your victory over Lolth.
> 
> Malstaph, as the mistress of fate, the Raven Queen touches the gloves of your armour, transforming them into <snip detail>. Also, noting your recent victory over Vecna, Ioun takes the opportunity to grant you further power over time. Your Circlet retains it saving throw bonus, but instead of its existing effect <snip details>.
> 
> Ravian, the Raven Queen is pleased with your efforts - she blesses you with The Raven Queen’s Shroud <snip details.. In addition, your Longshot Gloves become at-will rather than 1x/enc.Finally, she bestows upon you the Crown of (Impending?) Victory <snip details>.
> 
> Tillen, the Raven Queen is pleased with your efforts <snip details.​
> After this brief interlude, your teleportation resumes as normal and you find yourselves in a small, dark room with a glowing teleportation circle at your feet.





pemerton said:


> I took pity on the players, who have not had a treasure drop for a long time, and decided that the Raven Queen intercepted their teleport to Thanatos to give them some power-up items (some other gods also got in on the action, for a few blessings etc). (This was emailed through last weekend, so that when the session starts we can get into the action!)





pemerton said:


> With the Raven Queen, I gave the players each a choice of one of three potions - healing, temp hp or regeneration. In the end all chose regen except the demigod, who has an epic destiny feature that gives him regen, and who doesn't get the benefit of temp hp from Cloak of Courage, and who therefore chose temp hp instead. The debates around this didn't make me miss the buff-laden play of past Rolemaster campaigns - I'm glad our campaign hasn't featured many potions or similar buff effects.



I'm sure that in the fiction some of them had a nice chat with the Raven Queen as she was praising them and offering them items, but as best I can recall it didn't figure at the table. It was not really relevant. As the posts I linked to above (and relink here) make clear, the PCs had already found the secret way into Orcus's palace (by extracting the information from an Aspect of Vecna which they had earlier trapped inside wards, which itself had Vecna's recollection of information he had been able to extract from an Aspect of Orcus which the PCs had earlier trapped using power drawn from Vecna). 

And I have _no idea_ what point you are trying to make about finality. What I did _respected_ finality - the PCs teleported into their secret entrance, just as the players declared. All I did was embellish that success: _on your way through, the Raven Queen uses her divine power to divert you via Letherna and gives you some stuff_. When I talk about _finality_ I'm not talking about a rule for passing the speaking-conch. (We don't need permission to speak at my table.) I'm talking about whether resolution resolves the situation. In this case it did - the resolution resolved the question of whether the PCs travel to Orcus's palace.

I am generally wary of excessive GM embellishment of success, but I took a gamble that my players wouldn't object to this particular embellishment. And lo and behold, they didn't!


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> What it [the GM-narrated intersection] does do, is give real options.  Even if the intersection is imaginary, the options the players take exist in the real world.  They make the decision on which way to go here, and tell me what it is here.



But why do those options matter? In the example I gave, the players had an option - do they want to go confront the giants? Or do something else. They chose the former. So why, now, is the GM putting forward a _different option_ that doesn't actually help deliver upon the option they already chose? What's the point?



Maxperson said:


> The trip to the giants through the Underdark will garner the players experiences that add to their enjoyment of the game, as well as add to their PCs ability to handle the giants once they arrive.



And this answer just reinforces my point that the intersection is an impediment to player agency and instead makes GM-authored content the focus of play. The players were already enjoying the game. And they wanted to go and confront some giants. _So why not do that?_

As far as the idea that they have to do this stuff so they can power up, I will take my email of a loot drop from the Raven Queen over that any time. If the PCs need powering up, then change the numbers on the PC sheets and get on with the game! (Or adjust the framing so that the current numbers on the sheets are good enough.)



Maxperson said:


> it appears that the player did not seek aid, but rather aid came as a result of his actions.



To repost:



pemerton said:


> In desperate straits as he lay on the ground next to his Gate (he was brought back to consciousness via some sort of healing effect), being hacked down by fire archons, he spoke a prayer to Erathis (one of his patron deities). After speaking the prayer, and after the player succeeded at a Hard Religion check, as the PC looked up into the rock cleft high above him, he saw a duergar standing on a ledge looking down. The PC already knew that the duergar revere Erathis (as well as Asmodeus). The duergar gave the Deep Speech hand sign for "I will offer you aid", and the PC replied with the sign for "The dues will be paid". The duergar then dropped a potion vial down to the PC.



The PC is in desperate straits. The player declares a prayer for aid. It's always been a bit of an open question in our 4e game to what extent a PC's player can try and use a Religion check as a bit of a catch-all, but that issue didn't come up in this context - the PC was fighting to recover the fourth segment of the Rod of Seven Parts, as he had been directed by Erathis to do, and so it was clearly within the scope of permissible action declarations.



Maxperson said:


> Players never think of everything. How do you know that they don't want to meet allies, as opposed to not thinking of something that they would have wanted to do had they thought of it?



This is obviously silly, isn't it? And I think [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] already posted something about this.

I mean, the implication of what you say is that _we can never cut to the action_, because maybe there is something else the players would have wanted to do if only the GM had drawn it to their attention by narrating 30 extra minutes of travel through the Underdark. If the players may have wanted allies, but didn't think about it, well that's sometime how it happens. They can try and recruit some allies from among the giants. (That doesn't seem that hard. The PCs in my Cortex+ game recruited allies among the giants they met. The PCs in my main 4e game recruited allies among the duergar they met.)

More generally, this is another example of confusion between authorship and reality. In real life, the fact that two events are separated by miles of travel makes the prospects of something significant happening in between them more likely. But when writing, there is no reason why the event I write about _today_ can't be followed straight away by writing about an event that (in the fiction) happens in _ten years time_. If the players indicate that the next event they are interested is their arrival at the giant's cave, then let's cut to that event (or frame a check, or skill challenge, or whatever, to see what happens on the way there).

RPGs have always recognised this in some fashion or other - eg no one adjudicates every moment of a PC's life as if it was a round of combat, requiring an initiative check, action declarations, etc. By applying it in this context the players aren't deprived of any chance to play the game. It's just that more of the time spent playing will speak to stuff that concerns dramatic need, thematic issues, etc. Which is the point of "story now" RPGing.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think this is another example of being stuck in one way of thinking. The players in my game are FULL PARTNERS in the process of the RPG experience. This probably also goes for your earlier 'passive' comment. You see the players as some sort of lesser participants, almost like an audience...



Well, yes, except for the "lesser" bit.  Either as DM or player, I am there to entertain the others at the table; they are my audience.  Equally, I am a part of theirs as they also entertain the gathering.

Lan-"perhaps the primary thing I require from any player in my games is that he or she be entertaining"-efan


----------



## Lanefan

Maxperson said:


> Yep.  Those are indeed absurd.  It's probably a good thing for me that those are misrepresentations of what I have said.  Not once did I ever claim freedom of choice was railroading.  As for "active equal partners", that wasn't any part of the Raven Queen tidbit   [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] posted.  He said he narrated everything and that there was no scene. Had they interacted with her, there would have been a scene. That's freaking passive as heck.  The Raven Queen interrupts your teleport to give you items you need and they don't even so much as say thank you.  They don't ask if she needs or wants the items back when they are done.  They don't engage in any number of interactions with her.  They just passively received the items and left.



In fairness, it's possible the players didn't have much choice here - it's almost the same as if the items simply appeared in the PCs' hands on arrival at the teleport destination along with knowledge of their source.   [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] can clarify, if he hasn't already.

EDIT: and lo and behold, he has!


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION], I think your post was mostly tongue-in-cheek, but where I thought I had something worthwhile to say in response I've said it:



Tony Vargas said:


> I think the issue is that the system implies qualities of the world, so if the system seems silly, the world will seem silly.



Well, the systems that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is talking about include Burning Wheel, Cortex+ Heroic, HeroWars/Quest, a certain approach to 4e, etc.

Which of those is supposed to imply a silly world?



Tony Vargas said:


> It's a reward for showing up, then



In default 4e, showing up doesn't as such earn XP. Playing the game (by engaging encounters, realising quests, and - per the rule in DMG2 - meaningfully engaging the non-encounter fiction) accures XP at a rate of (roughly) 4 level-equivalent monster's worth per hour. Or approximately 3-4 sessions per level.

I think one of the most remarkable things about 4e is how, on the surface, it retains so many D&D mecahnical tropes (hp, XP, attack rolls, magic items, and the like) but uses them to build a game which is a genuine alternative to Gygax-style wargaming.

In the case of XP, what was - in Gygax - a genuine reward system (ie by playing _well_, and having a bit of luck, you deeat monsters and find treasure and thus power up your playing piece) becomes instead a pacing device, that gradually propels the game through the "tiers of play" while allowing the actual _focus_ of play to be on characgter goals, thematic story elements, etc.

As best I understand it, the closest 5e comes to this is to ditch XP altogether for "milestone" - but that makes for an extremely GM-driven game, whereas the 4e XP system is fully compatible with player-driven RPGing.



Tony Vargas said:


> In 4e (which, I think was what this particular tangent was about), special equipment is more like a character-customization option, just like feats, powers &c, at least in so much as the DM honors the wish list.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Most 4e magic items struck me more as price-of-admission (oh, you're going to be Epic, now, better up your gear to +5, or you won't get invited to parties), and could fade into the background unless they did something cool for the character concept.



This is my point about them figuring as elements of the narrative, not as rewards for skilled play. Whether you get your +1 sword from looting a goblin cave or as a gift from your patron is a _big deal_ in classic D&D, because the first is earned but the second not. But in 4e it doesn't matter as far as the actual mechanics and techniques of play are concerened - it only matters from the point of view of _is this a story about goblin looters, or about noble warriors gifted swords by their patrons?_



Tony Vargas said:


> ike Pendragon, sure.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> HeroQuest!



I think 4e can do Arthurian legend and the Iliad.

In the former case, cap at mid-paragon, and allow only martials, paladins, maybe certain STR cleric builds, and maybe some ritual-oriented bard builds (but like Dark Sun, the ritual list would need some culling). Maybe some druids and barbarians are also OK.

Obviously wizards, invokers and the like have to go.

As far as the Iliad is concerned, I'd say martial only, but it goes all the way to epic! Odysseus is a warlord archer, either INT or WIS dependingon taste. Achilles probably works well as a slayer fighter, or if you want non-Essentials only then make him a regular fighter.

Ritual casting is obviously a thing, but the list will need stuff like Teleport and Secret Chest trimmed off it. And there is probably a need for a divine intervention mechanic - maybe based on Religion checks (with +2 bonus for a familial connection to the god, or if the person you are opposing has personal or familial enmity from your god).


----------



## pemerton

nugstradamus said:


> I think a good example of world-building would be, like, if there is a war going on 50 miles from where your party actually is. They physically have nothing to do with it (yet, anyway), but the effects of the war are important to the campaign. Trade embargos, uptick in crime, etc. What side of the war does the town you're in support? Is their side winning the war? Maybe people are happier, dancing and drinking at a tavern. Are they losing? Maybe they're sad, downtrodden, more hot headed and on edge.
> 
> That war is going on in the background, far enough away from the party that they won't be hearing about specifics as they happen, but you still have to build those stories in such a way that all NPC's actions can be justified.



This doesn't seem like it needs much worldbuilding at all.

In my main 4e game, the PCs visited the city of Threshold which was under attack from a hobgoblin army. With populations driven out of local villages, food supplies were under pressure. The leaders of the town are (obviously) concerned about this. Doom and death cults were flourishing. That was about all that was needed. When the PCs eventually assaulted the hobgoblin armies encamped on a plateau to the north of the city, I worked out some details at that point.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> But why do those options matter? In the example I gave, the players had an option - do they want to go confront the giants? Or do something else. They chose the former. So why, now, is the GM putting forward a _different option_ that doesn't actually help deliver upon the option they already chose? What's the point?



Just because my giant-hating Dwarf wants to go and bash some giants doesn't mean his attention won't be severely diverted for a few glorious hours if on the way to the giants he notices that he's passing a room full of undefended gold coins! 



> As far as the idea that they have to do this stuff so they can power up, I will take my email of a loot drop from the Raven Queen over that any time. If the PCs need powering up, then change the numbers on the PC sheets and get on with the game! (Or adjust the framing so that the current numbers on the sheets are good enough.)



On the odd occasion I'll drop in some power-up stuff kind of like what you did here; on other occasions, particularly if it's levels they need, I'll lob a side-trek adventure in their way and see if they bite.



> I mean, the implication of what you say is that _we can never cut to the action_, because maybe there is something else the players would have wanted to do if only the GM had drawn it to their attention...



That's exactly right!  Maybe there IS something else they'd rather do instead...but they won't ever have the chance to unless you... 







> ...by narrating 30 extra minutes of travel through the Underdark.



...do this, by making mention of anything interesting they pass during those 30 minutes.

Chances are they'll still go on to the giants, either right away or later, but if they find the slimy passage or the room with the knight's skeleton nailed to the wall more interesting on the way, let 'em at it! 



> If the players may have wanted allies, but didn't think about it, well that's sometime how it happens. They can try and recruit some allies from among the giants. (That doesn't seem that hard. The PCs in my Cortex+ game recruited allies among the giants they met. The PCs in my main 4e game recruited allies among the duergar they met.)



Last time we dealt with giants our party also had giant allies...until we killed them, because the enemy of my enemy is still also my frickin' enemy. 



> More generally, this is another example of confusion between authorship and reality. In real life, the fact that two events are separated by miles of travel makes the prospects of something significant happening in between them more likely. But when writing, there is no reason why the event I write about _today_ can't be followed straight away by writing about an event that (in the fiction) happens in _ten years time_. If the players indicate that the next event they are interested is their arrival at the giant's cave, then let's cut to that event (or frame a check, or skill challenge, or whatever, to see what happens on the way there).



Just because the players say the next event they're interested in is the giant's cave doesn't mean the giant's cave will be the next event they encounter...or that the intervening encounter won't end up being even more interesting...or less; you don't know until you do it.

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I don't understand what you are claiming here, or what purported contrast you are drawing.
> 
> What's the DC for your D&D character to flap her arms and fly to the moon? What's the DC for a 1st level character to jump into a volcano and survive? What's the DC for your 1st level fighter PC to try and kill ten orcs in one round?
> 
> There are all sorts of limits - some imposed by the mechanics, some by a shared understanding of the fiction - on what actions can be meaningfully attempted in a RPG.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The DCs are entirely irrelevant to his point.  There is no limit on the attempt of those actions.  My PC can flap his arms in an attempt to fly to the moon and there is no system limitation that stops me from trying.  The same with the volcano and killing 10 orcs in one round, though I'm not sure why you'd have asked for a DC for that one.  Have you not played D&D before?
> 
> And who are you to declare what is meaningful and what isn't?  If my PC is crazy, then there is meaning in the attempt to fly to the moon by flapping my arms.  If my PC is not crazy, but I'm trying to freak out a tribe of primitives who are superstitious and don't mess with crazy people, the attempt has meaning.  If my jump into the volcano is part of a heroic sacrifice, it has meaning, even if my PC is desperately hoping for a miracle and hopes beyond reason to survive.  If my PC wants to be the best swordsman in the world and his goal is to kill 10 orcs in one round, his attempts have meaning, even if he doesn't succeed when 1st level.
Click to expand...


I will repost the context of my post to which you replied:



pemerton said:


> The relevant constraint on framing and action declaration [in "story now" RPGing] is not 'What will happen if the PCs find the wands or gold they are after?" It's about what sorts of actions the system permits the PCs to declare, and what actions they want to declare (given the PCs they are advocating for), and then how the GM is going to frame scenes that invite those declarations, and how consequences - especially consequences of failure, but sometimes (as in the Cortex+ example) also consequences of success - are narrated and given appropriate mechanical effect.





Lanefan said:


> One of the true appeals of RPGs is that as player you're (in theory) free to try anything, no matter how ridiculous. There shouldn't be any system-based limits on the actions players can declare or have thier PCs attempt.





pemerton said:


> I don't understand what you are claiming here, or what purported contrast you are drawing.
> 
> What's the DC for your D&D character to flap her arms and fly to the moon? What's the DC for a 1st level character to jump into a volcano and survive? What's the DC for your 1st level fighter PC to try and kill ten orcs in one round?
> 
> There are all sorts of limits - some imposed by the mechanics, some by a shared understanding of the fiction - on what actions can be meaningfully attempted in a RPG.



So your examples of pretending to flap your arms and fly to the moon to scare people, or of playing a crazy PC who (wrongly) believes s/he can do that, are not to the point. The first is some sort of Bluff or Performance check; the second is not an action declaration at all, but just narrating the crazy behaviour of your crazy PC. And if you jump into the volcano as a heroic sacrifice, then - ispo facto - you're not trying to survive!

So I'll try again: the assertion that there are no limits on action declarations in a RPG can be useful for explaining to a boardgame player the idea that the "flavour text" - ie the shared fiction - actually matters to resolution; but it's not useful when people who _already know how RPGing works_ are trying to analyse the techniques of play in a serious fashion. Thus, if a player of a 1st level PC declares, in D&D, "I cut down the 10 orcs before me!" - that is not a permissible action declaration. The rules of the game require the GM to ask "Which one?" - or perhaps (especially in AD&D) to roll a d10 to see which one the PC attacks. There is a genuine contrast with, say, HeroWars/Quest, or Cortex+ Heroic, where "I cut down the 10 orcs before me!" _is_ a permissible action declaration for any PC who - in the fiction - is wielding a sword.

If a player of a 1st level PC declares, in D&D, "I flap my arms so as to fly to the moon", the GM is entitled to reply "You can't do that", and even "You know you can't do that" - where the second person pronoun refers to both player and PC. There is a genuine contrast with, say, Toon, where (without knowing the game that well) I imagine this may well be a permissible action declaration.

A really famous example of an impermissible action declaration in many D&D games is "I get my hired alchemist to concoct a compound of charcoal, sulfur and saltpetre" - because in many campaigns that would be a genre-breaker.

And I haven't even canvassed impermissible action declarations for reasons of propriety and good taste.

The constraints on action declaration that I referred to, and which [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] responded to, are primarily constraints related to genre and taste. If the players don't want to play a silly game, then they can refrain from declaring silly actions. If everyone understands that, in this game, holy swords are not just found for sale at local markets, then declaring "I go to the market to by a holy sword" is an impermissible action declaration.

As I indicated in my first post on this particular point, the GM's framing of the situation is also a relevant constraint. Burning Wheel sets a difficulty for finding a modest amount of loot in a dungeon (from memory, it's an Obstacle 3 Scavenging check to find 1D of cash); but for obvious reasons if it's established in the fiction that the village the PCs currently are in is impoverished, and its inhabitants starving, then the Obstacle for a Scavenging check that will turn up gold in said village is obviously going to be higher than that (after all, there can't be any gold that's easy to find, as the starving inhabitants would have found it!)



Maxperson said:


> Yes it is a reward.  Those levels are a reward for playing the game.  A guaranteed reward for doing something is still a reward.  When I tell my son that if he eats all of his dinner he can have desert as a reward, it's guaranteed that if he actually eats his dinner(engages with the food via his mouth and stomach) then he will get desert.



I'm not interested in debating the semantics of "reward".

In Gygaxian D&D, a session of play could - if the players play poorly, or get unlucky - result in virtually no XP earned: the PCs are bested by or flee from wandering monsters, and fail to find or scavenge any loot. Earning XP is not a guaranteed outcome of playing the game; it is a reward. And a significant goal of play is to earn that reward so as to boost you character. As Gyagx makes amply clear in his DMG, _having a high level PC is a mark of skill as a player_. He allows for the "artificial" rolling up of high level PCs, to get a one-off experience, but he doesn't approve of it as the principal mode of play. The game is about starting at low level and working your character up.

In 4e, having a high level PC isn't a mark of skill. Assuming the PCs was started at 1st level, then reaching high level is a sign of _having played the game_. The XP system functions as a pacing mechanism: as levels are gained, the PCs become mechanically more complicated, gain access to certain mechanical abilities (with fictional correlates) that are "level-gated" (eg flight, invisibility, domination, stun, long range teleport, planar travel, etc), and - most importantly - the fiction escalates through the "tiers of play".

I guess if you really enjoy mechanical complexity, _and_ feel for some reason that it would be cheating just to build yourself a 12th (or whatever) level PC, then you get a reward for playing the game. But it seems obvious to me that the "reward" for playing 4e D&D isn't that your PC gets more mechanically complex. The main rewards are (i) a wargaming-type enjoyment of tactical combat, and (ii) a RPG-type enjoyment of a rich shared fiction that you are helping to establish.

4e offers both (i) and (ii) as much at 1st level play as at 30th, so you don't need to level up your PCs in order to enjoy those "rewards". It's the progression through the "tiers of play", the basic story of D&D - from confronting goblins to confronting Orcus - that the XP system achieves.

I think this reconceptualisation of the function of the XP mechanic is an innovative bit of game design. I think retaining the language of "reward" was a mistake, though. That word doesn't help players new to D&D understand what's going on, and it confuses players already familiar with D&D, by misleading them into thinking that the XP system is meant to work more-or-less as it did in Gygax's D&D, when it doesn't.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> The absurdity of this is becoming downright silly. First freedom of choice is 'railroading', and then active equal partners in forming the game are 'passive', and I'm forgetting a few other absurd things too I'm sure. Oh, the whole treating the game world as if it constitutes a form of reality, and thinking that how the game narrative is formed and by whom doesn't matter.
> 
> I feel like you're painting yourself further and further into some completely absurd corner in any attempt to create some kind of definition of things to serve some point which everyone forgot or lost interest in 500 posts ago.
> 
> There was a point at which I felt like there were clarifications that were happening in terms of how I describe the structure and activity in games, and what some of it means. Also what different ways you could come at the same things. That was interesting, but this is just over the Moon, its absurd.



Yes, I feel much the same way.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think this is another example of being stuck in one way of thinking.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> In my games the players DO think of everything. Because THEY ARE IN CHARGE of how they want to engage, they do think in terms of what should happen next. They know that if they evince a desire for allies, then a story about allies, the dangers, costs, and rewards of alliance, etc. would doubtless present itself
> 
> <snip>
> 
> thus the players minds are ranging over the story their characters are in and they're thinking about things like "Wait, my character always likes to hedge his bets, I'm sure he'd keep a sharp eye out for signs of anyone he could convince, or even pay, to come along and lend a hand..." This might translate into telling the GM "hey, Ted, we're traveling quite a ways to this cave, right? I'm going to use my Dungeoneering skill to look for signs of any folks I can talk to, or things I can use against the giants."



There are a lot of affinities here with what I posted in reply to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] before reading your posts.

When the PCs in my main 4e game went off to hunt the purple worm that had swallowed the duergar Frameth who was carrying a box holding the fifth segment of the Rod of Seven Parts, they arranged to acquire some limestone before setting out, their theory being that that would help negate the stomach acid inside the worm. (I just had a look at my notes of this - it dropped the damage from 30/round to 20/round.) I don't need to "arrange", as GM, for the PCs to encounter a wise old alchemist who suggests "Why don't you take some of my limestone with you?" I mean, it would never have occurred to me in any event! (I'm a humanities scholar, not a cook or a chemist.) I can't remember what sort of check we made - maybe Dungeoneering to find some in a hurry from one of the duergar workroom? - but it was resolved quickly and then we got back to the main action.

If the players want allies, or limestone, or whatever, they'll declare those actions and we'll resolve them. If not, then not. No GM hand-holding or intersection-narration required!


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Yep.  Those are indeed absurd.  It's probably a good thing for me that those are misrepresentations of what I have said.  Not once did I ever claim freedom of choice was railroading.  As for "active equal partners", that wasn't any part of the Raven Queen tidbit [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] posted.  He said he narrated everything and that there was no scene. Had they interacted with her, there would have been a scene. That's freaking passive as heck.  The Raven Queen interrupts your teleport to give you items you need and they don't even so much as say thank you.  They don't ask if she needs or wants the items back when they are done.  They don't engage in any number of interactions with her.  They just passively received the items and left.



Well, to follow on from [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s diagnosis of reversals - you are describing players who _accept the GM's embellishment of their successful action, but then get back to the action they were interested in _as _passive_.

So it counts as _active_ play to try to build up a sidepoint that everyone knows is just colour; but _passive_ play to leave it there as colour and actually get on with playing the game? The way you present it, it's as if there was no scene because they ignored the Raven Queen. Whereas the whole point of play at that moment that there was a scene - the PCs' confrontation with Orcus - that everyone at the table wanted to get on with!

(And why is the GM's narration of the Raven Queen gifting them goodies just colour? Because the real thing that is happening is that the PCs' stats are changing, to bring them closer in line with what is appropriate for their level. Describing this as a gift of items from the Raven Queen is simply establishing an ingame reason. _But it's not where the action is_)

(Second parentheses - why would people given a gift ask whether they have to return the gift?)


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> From the point of view of my PC - through whose eyes I-as-player am viewing the game world - that's exactly right.



When I play a RPG I'm not interested in whether my PC is having a good time. (In fact, often s/he is not.) I'm interested in whether _I'm_ having a good time. Hence why I am talking about real things - ways in which games are played - rather than pretend things (eg imaginary events that occur to imaginary people).



Lanefan said:


> If it's a binary succeed-fail situation (e.g. either you find a secret door or you don't) then failure directly equals nothing-interesting.  If it's a sliding-scale situation where both success and failure can come in degrees then it's sometimes possible to generate interest from failure.



It's as if no one ever invented the concept of "fail forward", even though - as a piece of RPGing technology - it's about 20 years old now (I'm thinking back to Maelstrom Storytelling, c 1997).



Lanefan said:


> my repeated concern - usually expressed in silly terms but with a very serious underlying point - is that players with the power to contribute to the fiction will always ALWAYS sooner or later attempt to bend that contribution to their own unfair or unbalanced advantage, be it over other players/PCs or over the game itself; and the DM in these types of games has no means to stop it.  Human beings are by nature competitive - that's why part of the DM's role is and always has been that of referee.



Yet my experience is that this isn't so. Especially not for money and items, which are the main things you mention. You are taking one aspect of one sort of D&D play, and projecting it onto all RPGing, on the basis of no experience of the actual RPGs or play techniques in question.


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## darkbard

Lanefan said:


> No, my repeated concern - usually expressed in silly terms but with a very serious underlying point - is that players with the power to contribute to the fiction will always ALWAYS sooner or later attempt to bend that contribution to their own unfair or unbalanced advantage, be it over other players/PCs or over the game itself; and the DM in these types of games has no means to stop it.  Human beings are by nature competitive - that's why part of the DM's role is and always has been that of referee.




I find it particularly ironic that you make statements like this and also, with some frequency, level charges against Story Now, player-facing gamers as being mistrustful of the GM.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> There is, pretty much by definition, no market for No Myth adventures



This is an interesting point.

Marvel Heroic ships (or shipped) with AP-style "events". In my view there is a clear incoherence between- on the one hand - the sort of play the mechanics support, and the advice given to GMs and players, and - on the other hand - this karaoke-style adventure format. I've used one or two scenes from the Civil War event in my MHRP game, because they seemed fun and I had an idea of what I might do with them, but I don't see how one could realistically play through the events as published.

HeroWars (in the original 2001(?) edition) came in two rulebooks - general rulebook, and "narrator's guide". The latter included four scenarios. I've run one of them - "Demon of the Red Grove" - albeit rather loosely adapted to 4e. They all involve more than one scene as published, but are rather modest vignettes (the shortest is 8 pages (in a normal sized book, not a typical RPG-sized book) and the longest 18, with quite a bit of that being creature stats, especially in the long one).

The Burning Wheel Adventure Guide includes some scenarios. One (which is also available as a free download) is framed as a single scene. The others are pretty tightly contained, similar to the HeroWars ones.

At least in my experience GMing a "story now"-type game, vignettes or tight scenarios are useful.  In my 4e game I got some use out of Thunderspire Labyrinth, ignoring the overarching setting of the module and adapting its variouis fragments to my purposes. I got good use out the B/X module Night's Dark Terror also, but it is already vignette-ish in its presentation, and to the extent that it isn't I mostly ignored it's overarching plotline also.

My view is that, to be useful for this, the opposition should have clear motivations (other than just "we're here to be killed by the PCs), and it needn't be very subtle in its presentation - after all, the subtlety approrpriate to my campaign can be worked out in play! H2 and B10 both involve raiders/slavers - an easy idea to work with. H2 also has gnoll cultists - another fairly easy idea to work with.

This is also why I've been able to use the Keep part of B2 on two separate occasions. It has the requisite vignette-ish quality, and the evil cultist priest is an easy idea to pick up on.

However, while I think this sort of thing could be useful, I'm not sure there's a big market for it. It's pretty much the opposite of the AP in published adventure design, but that seems to be all the rage these days.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> But why do those options matter? In the example I gave, the players had an option - do they want to go confront the giants? Or do something else. They chose the former. So why, now, is the GM putting forward a _different option_ that doesn't actually help deliver upon the option they already chose? What's the point?
> 
> And this answer just reinforces my point that the intersection is an impediment to player agency and instead makes GM-authored content the focus of play. The players were already enjoying the game. And they wanted to go and confront some giants. _So why not do that?_




Why do you act like the players only have one goal?  I have yet to meet a player who did not enjoy exploring the game world and finding new things.  Why not kill two birds with one stone?



> As far as the idea that they have to do this stuff so they can power up, I will take my email of a loot drop from the Raven Queen over that any time. If the PCs need powering up, then change the numbers on the PC sheets and get on with the game! (Or adjust the framing so that the current numbers on the sheets are good enough.)




I guess that works for some people.  Most of the ones I've games with, at least after exiting high school, don't want things just handed to them like that.  I'm not trying to disparage your players.  I just honestly cannot remember encountering a player who wanted stuff handed to him like that after leaving high school.     



> I mean, the implication of what you say is that _we can never cut to the action_, because maybe there is something else the players would have wanted to do if only the GM had drawn it to their attention by narrating 30 extra minutes of travel through the Underdark. If the players may have wanted allies, but didn't think about it, well that's sometime how it happens. They can try and recruit some allies from among the giants. (That doesn't seem that hard. The PCs in my Cortex+ game recruited allies among the giants they met. The PCs in my main 4e game recruited allies among the duergar they met.)
> 
> More generally, this is another example of confusion between authorship and reality. In real life, the fact that two events are separated by miles of travel makes the prospects of something significant happening in between them more likely. But when writing, there is no reason why the event I write about _today_ can't be followed straight away by writing about an event that (in the fiction) happens in _ten years time_. If the players indicate that the next event they are interested is their arrival at the giant's cave, then let's cut to that event (or frame a check, or skill challenge, or whatever, to see what happens on the way there).
> 
> RPGs have always recognised this in some fashion or other - eg no one adjudicates every moment of a PC's life as if it was a round of combat, requiring an initiative check, action declarations, etc. By applying it in this context the players aren't deprived of any chance to play the game. It's just that more of the time spent playing will speak to stuff that concerns dramatic need, thematic issues, etc. Which is the point of "story now" RPGing.




This is treading very close to being a False Dichotomy.  There are whole ranges of things that can be done in-between adjudicating every moment of a PCs' life as a round of combat and cutting immediately to the action.  Many people enjoy a bit more realism in their games than just jumping from one significant thing to the next, and it feeds their desire to explore and see new things that I mentioned.  

Another thing to consider is that the little things highlight the important ones.  If everything you get is fabulous, then really nothing you receive is fabulous.  Fabulous has become the new average and a new fabulous thing doesn't mean a lot.  However, if you have a bunch of little things and get something fabulous, it really IS fabulous.  It shines next to the little things that put it in perspective.


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## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas], I think your post was mostly tongue-in-cheek,



 Yep, can't help answering rhetorical questions,  sometimes...



> Well, the systems that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] is talking about include Burning Wheel, Cortex+ Heroic, HeroWars/Quest, a certain approach to 4e, etc.
> Which of those is supposed to imply a silly world?



 Presumably all of them, since they're designed to be games and/or model a story rather than to act as laws of physics for an implied world.


> In default 4e, showing up doesn't as such earn XP. Playing the game (by engaging encounters, realising quests, and - per the rule in DMG2 - meaningfully engaging the non-encounter fiction) accures XP



 Sure, that's what I meant by showing up - playing the game is not something you fail at unless you set at to do so.  Success/failure is within the game, and exp acrues,  regardless.


> I think one of the most remarkable things about 4e is how, on the surface, it retains so many D&D mecahnical tropes (hp, XP, attack rolls, magic items, and the like) but uses them to build a game which is a genuine alternative to Gygax-style wargaming.



 Well, can be used that way - I've run temple of the frog in Essentials and run 4e in ways that directly evoked old school...



pemerton said:


> I think 4e can do Arthurian legend and the Iliad.



 Its a reasonably flexible, if not particularly powerful system, thanks to Skill Challenges, and it does go right ahead and model Legendary Monarchs and Demi-gods and the like, so you're not going through convolution like Giants in the Earth or the current 5e threads about Achilles & Lancelot did.  



> Obviously wizards, invokers and the like have to go.



 Wizards have always been genre-problematic, even the 4e version was still a bit Vancian, but why Invokers? It's be a way to work the Gods into it...



> And there is probably a need for a divine intervention mechanic - maybe based on Religion checks (with +2 bonus for a familial connection to the god, or if the person you are opposing has personal or familial enmity from your god).



 Or that.  Also, in the illiad, the Gods just came right down and did stuff (and got stabbed for it).


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> (Second parentheses - why would people given a gift ask whether they have to return the gift?)



 The Raven Queen is a grim goddess of death & fate, who became a goddess by betraying & destroying her predecessor.  While there's nothing to be gained in distrust, exactly, being cautious of any strings attached to such a gift might be prudent...
...it might or might not be in character ...
...which is another thing: in a game modeling a story a player might have his character do something shout-at-the-screen 'stupid' because its in-character, will move the story, and has a chance if setting the character up for something awesome, later.
In old-school, that's suicide, and part of the appeal has always been  playing through those shout-at-the-screen moments and _doin' it right..._
...frankly, I'm surprised there aren't more play-the-villain RPGs.


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## Lanefan

Side question:


pemerton said:


> [MENTION=996]In default 4e, showing up doesn't as such earn XP. Playing the game (by engaging encounters, realising quests, and - per the rule in DMG2 - meaningfully engaging the non-encounter fiction) accures XP at a rate of (roughly) 4 level-equivalent monster's worth per hour. Or approximately 3-4 sessions per level.



I never bought or read 4e's DMG2 - one was quite enough, thank you! - but are you saying that in DMG2-version 4e a PC gets x.p. as a direct reward simply based on the amount of real-time spent playing it at the table, regardless of what it does in the fiction?

If yes, as a design philosophy that probably couldn't be further from how I view and award x.p.


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## Imaro

pemerton said:


> In Gygaxian D&D, a session of play could - if the players play poorly, or get unlucky - result in virtually no XP earned: the PCs are bested by or flee from wandering monsters, and fail to find or scavenge any loot. Earning XP is not a guaranteed outcome of playing the game; it is a reward. And a significant goal of play is to earn that reward so as to boost you character. As Gyagx makes amply clear in his DMG, _having a high level PC is a mark of skill as a player_. He allows for the "artificial" rolling up of high level PCs, to get a one-off experience, but he doesn't approve of it as the principal mode of play. The game is about starting at low level and working your character up.




It's been a while since I played 4e so refresh my memory but I thought if you loose an encounter or do not complete a quest then you don't gain the XP from them?  If so then XP is still serving the function of a reward... right?

EDIT: Or do you mean it doesn't server the purpose of individual rewards?  If so I can kind of see your point but quests are still individual PC awards....


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> are you saying that in DMG2-version 4e a PC gets x.p. as a direct reward simply based on the amount of real-time spent playing it at the table, regardless of what it does in the fiction?



In the 4e DMG, XP are awarded for success in encounters (whether combat or skill challenges) and for completing quests. DMG2 adds what it calls "drama rewards" (p 25): "you can give player characters experience rewards for time spent in dramatic scenes of interaction . . . as if they had defeated one monster of their level for every 15 minutes they spend in significant, focused roleplaying that advances the story".

The Rules Compendium further adds (p 161) that experience points are accrued for a skill challenge "[w]hether the adventurers succeed or fail".

The upshot of these rules, in combination, is that around each hour to an hour-and-a-half's play (that is actually focused on the fiction, whether via resolving encounters or free roleplaying) accrues an "encounter's" worth of XP. 8 to 10 such awards are sufficient for a level. Hence the PCs gain about one level every three to four sessions.



Lanefan said:


> If yes, as a design philosophy that probably couldn't be further from how I view and award x.p.



This is why I said that the function of XP in 4e is very different from in classic D&D, although the workings of the system superficially similar.



Imaro said:


> It's been a while since I played 4e so refresh my memory but I thought if you loose an encounter or do not complete a quest then you don't gain the XP from them?



See above for skill challenges. Combat encounters are less clear, but there is at least a suggestion that you get XP for the monster you defeat even if you lose overall - I think the absence of a similar implicit option for "partial success" awards on skill challenges helps explain the Rules Compendium change.

Quest XP are generally a modest fraction of overall XP - perhaps a quarter to a third? - and I think that it is unlikely that the bulk of quests that are aimed at will not be achieved. If you play solidly by engaging the encounters and fiction of the game, some quests will be achieved. (I should add, I'm taking it for granted - in the context of this thread - that quests will generally be player-generated, as per the advice in the PHB and DMG. If the quests are GM-generated, then it is less likely they will be achieved, but that is already starting to push the game into a rather sucky direction. It's pacing mechanic will start to show some strain under those conditions also.)


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## Emerikol

You guys are still at it.  I don't think Pemerton and Lanefan are ever going to really agree.  Other than that they don't think much of the others playstyle.  

It's like a tennis player arguing with a golfer.  They both use a ball.  You hit the ball.  There are some superficial similarities.  Which is better?  The one YOU enjoy the most.

I don't mean to kill the thread but what is both of your goals?  

My only wish is that roleplaying as a gaming concept wasn't so vague that if you aren't careful you'll sort through a few games before you find the style you want if you are pulling notices off the bulletin board at a hobby store.  I wish the two of you could categorize your various differences and a few others as well and provide a "pattern" style language that people can use to find what they want.   There really is no converting us.  We love to argue but we don't really change all that much.

Here is my own style again....
1.  Players only know and act as their characters.
2.  DM does a LOT of prep for a sandbox campaign world.  
3.  Pleasure is derived exploring the world created by the DM.
4.  Adventures are often contests of skill.  
5.  Going through a dungeon is about working as a team to beat the obstacles be it trap or monster to achieve the reward.
6.  In fact, you could liken adventuring as a group to a cooperative board game with a lot more flexibility.
7.  I don't like mechanics that break immersion by forcing the player to act instead of the character.

I play that style and I like it.  I'm sure it would not be to the taste of many.  So?  Don't play that style then.  Play one you like.  The entire world doesn't have to join your group.  Only a set of people with like interests.  I'm sure you can find them.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> So your examples of pretending to flap your arms and fly to the moon to scare people, or of playing a crazy PC who (wrongly) believes s/he can do that, are not to the point. The first is some sort of Bluff or Performance check; the second is not an action declaration at all, but just narrating the crazy behaviour of your crazy PC. And if you jump into the volcano as a heroic sacrifice, then - ispo facto - you're not trying to survive!




The second is an action declaration.  The crazy person is fully trying to fly to the moon and is declaring that as an action.  As for the heroic sacrifice, I may be jumping in, but I'm sure as hell going to try and land on a ledge so that I can sneak out later.  Why die when you can be the hero AND live?



> So I'll try again: the assertion that there are no limits on action declarations in a RPG can be useful for explaining to a boardgame player the idea that the "flavour text" - ie the shared fiction - actually matters to resolution; but it's not useful when people who _already know how RPGing works_ are trying to analyse the techniques of play in a serious fashion. Thus, if a player of a 1st level PC declares, in D&D, "I cut down the 10 orcs before me!" - that is not a permissible action declaration. The rules of the game require the GM to ask "Which one?" - or perhaps (especially in AD&D) to roll a d10 to see which one the PC attacks. There is a genuine contrast with, say, HeroWars/Quest, or Cortex+ Heroic, where "I cut down the 10 orcs before me!" _is_ a permissible action declaration for any PC who - in the fiction - is wielding a sword.




There are no limits.  Declaring that he's going to cut down 10 orcs is permissible.  It's just doomed to failure.  Automatic failure does not negate or prevent the declaration of the action.  The only difference in the systems above is that with AD&D the action cannot succeed, were with the others it can succeed.



> A really famous example of an impermissible action declaration in many D&D games is "I get my hired alchemist to concoct a compound of charcoal, sulfur and saltpetre" - because in many campaigns that would be a genre-breaker.




Or, you allow it to succeed but the compound is inert in that universe.  There's no good reason that I can see why the action should not be permitted, even in a campaign where it won't succeed.



> The constraints on action declaration that I referred to, and which @_*Lanefan*_ responded to, are primarily constraints related to genre and taste. If the players don't want to play a silly game, then they can refrain from declaring silly actions. If everyone understands that, in this game, holy swords are not just found for sale at local markets, then declaring "I go to the market to by a holy sword" is an impermissible action declaration.




Sure.  Nobody is saying that they can't opt not to take certain actions.  You've told me repeatedly that I am viewing things through the lense of DM oriented gaming.  Now you're the one doing viewing this through the lense of your playstyle.  "I go to the market to buy a holy sword" is absolutely a permissible action declaration in a game where they can't be found at local markets.  The result of the action is that the PC wanders around for a while and doesn't find one.  Why would I railroad the player by not allowing the PC to go look for something that the player knows can't be found?  Maybe his PC is frantic to find one and looks places he knows rationally won't be there, but in an act of desperation looks there anyway.



> In Gygaxian D&D, a session of play could - if the players play poorly, or get unlucky - result in virtually no XP earned: the PCs are bested by or flee from wandering monsters, and fail to find or scavenge any loot. Earning XP is not a guaranteed outcome of playing the game; it is a reward. And a significant goal of play is to earn that reward so as to boost you character. As Gyagx makes amply clear in his DMG, _having a high level PC is a mark of skill as a player_. He allows for the "artificial" rolling up of high level PCs, to get a one-off experience, but he doesn't approve of it as the principal mode of play. The game is about starting at low level and working your character up.
> 
> In 4e, having a high level PC isn't a mark of skill. Assuming the PCs was started at 1st level, then reaching high level is a sign of _having played the game_. The XP system functions as a pacing mechanism: as levels are gained, the PCs become mechanically more complicated, gain access to certain mechanical abilities (with fictional correlates) that are "level-gated" (eg flight, invisibility, domination, stun, long range teleport, planar travel, etc), and - most importantly - the fiction escalates through the "tiers of play".




I didn't play 4e.  They still get exp if they get unlucky and lose every fight, and fail every test?

Edit: I saw you answer this after I posted.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> (Second parentheses - why would people given a gift ask whether they have to return the gift?)



Because it's a freaking god giving them the items, AND IT'S THE RAVEN QUEEN!  That would freak my PC out and I'd want to make sure that I wasn't doing anything to piss her off.  Or a number of other reasons I could come up with.  I'd still want to thank her so as not to be rude, and depending on how she played into the campaign prior to this point, perhaps speak with her about other things.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> That it's the DM's job to say no to things the players try that are impossible, not the player's job to limit themselves to only attempting the possible.




Its the 'job' of everyone at the table to decide what and how they will play, it doesn't fall to one person or another. This is just as true in a 'standard' D&D game, where most DMs will hesitate to accept certain kinds of characters, behavior, etc. Players in these games are also likely to do certain things and abstain from certain things in order to 'keep order'. Heck, 3.5e is virtually unplayable unless the players agree (tacitly or not) to refrain from doing 'broken' things. That may be a bit of an extreme case, but all games work this way. 

So, I don't find it at all unusual that players would ask themselves questions like "Do I want to play a game where PCs pull wands out of their ***es?" and they usually answer 'no'. Anyway, if the GM is capable of delivering a reasonably fun, entertaining game, then there's little reason for players to try to undermine that. True troublemakers would be booted out regardless of rules or style of play as well, so I don't see that as a criticism or weakness of one type of game.

Now, does that mean the players and the GM will always agree completely on what SHOULD be in the game? I don't think so, and I don't think players will always agree with EACHOTHER either, but the same goes for standard D&D games where players disagree all the time on how to proceed. Somehow they come to a consensus, usually. If a player introduced some factor into a Story Now game that other players didn't think belonged for whatever reason (genre, tone, dramatic reasons, etc.) they CAN object. If all you get is constant profound irreconcilable difference of opinion, then you need to change games or players.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Its the 'job' of everyone at the table to decide what and how they will play, it doesn't fall to one person or another. This is just as true in a 'standard' D&D game, where most DMs will hesitate to accept certain kinds of characters, behavior, etc. Players in these games are also likely to do certain things and abstain from certain things in order to 'keep order'. Heck, 3.5e is virtually unplayable unless the players agree (tacitly or not) to refrain from doing 'broken' things. That may be a bit of an extreme case, but all games work this way.
> 
> So, I don't find it at all unusual that players would ask themselves questions like "Do I want to play a game where PCs pull wands out of their ***es?" and they usually answer 'no'. Anyway, if the GM is capable of delivering a reasonably fun, entertaining game, then there's little reason for players to try to undermine that. True troublemakers would be booted out regardless of rules or style of play as well, so I don't see that as a criticism or weakness of one type of game.
> 
> Now, does that mean the players and the GM will always agree completely on what SHOULD be in the game? I don't think so, and I don't think players will always agree with EACHOTHER either, but the same goes for standard D&D games where players disagree all the time on how to proceed. Somehow they come to a consensus, usually. If a player introduced some factor into a Story Now game that other players didn't think belonged for whatever reason (genre, tone, dramatic reasons, etc.) they CAN object. If all you get is constant profound irreconcilable difference of opinion, then you need to change games or players.




That seems more like a social contract thing, rather than a PC can't perform an action thing.  Outside of highly limited situations like a PC whose entire body is bound attempting to run, the vast majority of actions, even ones impossible to achieve, can at least be attempted.  The social contract, though, will keep certain actions from being attempted in the first place.  Heck, even with the bound PC example, the PC can struggle in the attempt and then I'd just narrate failure.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Well, yes, except for the "lesser" bit.  Either as DM or player, I am there to entertain the others at the table; they are my audience.  Equally, I am a part of theirs as they also entertain the gathering.
> 
> Lan-"perhaps the primary thing I require from any player in my games is that he or she be entertaining"-efan




Fair enough, I think 'lesser' isn't quite what I'm trying to say, I'm just not always super articulate. In the narrative fiction, the players role seems 'subsidiary' in some sense. In Story Now its different from the GM's role, but EQUAL. Certainly they're the ones that will be thinking of 'things that could happen' in the story. The GM is more there to both fill in and make sure that whatever that element is that it challenges what the PCs are, want, value, or stand for (maybe this is not a complete list).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Just because my giant-hating Dwarf wants to go and bash some giants doesn't mean his attention won't be severely diverted for a few glorious hours if on the way to the giants he notices that he's passing a room full of undefended gold coins!



Now, wait a minute... You guys accused us of RAILROADING the party because we glossed over the trip to the giants, but WE GAVE THEM A CHOICE TO DO OTHER THINGS and they said "no, go to the giants", and now I have to give them YET MORE choices of different things to do when they ALREADY told me EXACTLY what they wanted to do and had a chance to do something else! I don't accept this judgment, I don't even accept that it is a reasonable or fair characterization, AT ALL! Can you guys at least understand why that would be?



> On the odd occasion I'll drop in some power-up stuff kind of like what you did here; on other occasions, particularly if it's levels they need, I'll lob a side-trek adventure in their way and see if they bite.



I think lootz play a quite different role in different games, so its certainly not like there's a 'right way' to do it  With 4e's style of system certainly there's less of a need to cast it in terms of strictly a 'reward', although gear CAN be a goal. A character in my 1st 4e campaign had a goal to find a certain weapon. Actually the goal was to find the maker of the weapon, but finding the handiwork was very interesting in its own right to her, and the item later explained several plot elements.



> That's exactly right!  Maybe there IS something else they'd rather do instead...but they won't ever have the chance to unless you... ...do this, by making mention of anything interesting they pass during those 30 minutes.



NO NO NO! We already gave them the choice to 'do something else'. The players could have even MADE UP that something else, in effect, by just pursuing some other interest. There's no need to keep constantly dangling one distraction after another when the players have already signaled what they want to do. Its not even just silly, it gets actually obfuscatory and even rude at a certain point if the GM won't just GET ON WITH IT! 



> Chances are they'll still go on to the giants, either right away or later, but if they find the slimy passage or the room with the knight's skeleton nailed to the wall more interesting on the way, let 'em at it!



Again though, if the players want some dungeon crawly "lets wander the Underdark in search of fun" they can say so, we gave them the choice of 'other stuff'. If they ask "has anyone heard of any interesting areas to explore" or something like that, I'll happily oblige them, although I'll work in things one or more of the players have shown interest in before.

So, a skeleton nailed to a wall sounds fun, maybe someone asks about finding the grave of the legendary Sir Mallory! Again, the players are partners here, they're free to make history checks or whatever to generate inputs that can generate new framing. 

Fundamentally we just have, in Story Now, a streamlined way of introducing content. Instead of long and often tedious sequences of blundering around in lots of side passages hoping to find the 'interesting thing' they want, we figure out what that is, mechanically create the possibility that it will exist in the fiction, and get to it. 



> Just because the players say the next event they're interested in is the giant's cave doesn't mean the giant's cave will be the next event they encounter...or that the intervening encounter won't end up being even more interesting...or less; you don't know until you do it.




But I DO know it. Because it was told to me outright by the players, 'go to the giants now GM'. POSSIBLY the GM is so clever that he's made up something even better to put in their way, but then why were the giants even there? If they're not that likely to be interesting to the players they probably wouldn't ask, and the GM (me) would presumably go on in some other direction.

Admittedly, Story Now is NOT about the GM throwing random stuff at the party that he just thought of or rolled on a table or whatever. There's no denying that. I'm asserting that those techniques don't generate the same sort of story as going to the action does. Its fun! Other things may be fun too, matter of taste!


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Now, wait a minute... You guys accused us of RAILROADING the party because we glossed over the trip to the giants, but WE GAVE THEM A CHOICE TO DO OTHER THINGS and they said "no, go to the giants", and now I have to give them YET MORE choices of different things to do when they ALREADY told me EXACTLY what they wanted to do and had a chance to do something else! I don't accept this judgment, I don't even accept that it is a reasonable or fair characterization, AT ALL! Can you guys at least understand why that would be?
> 
> NO NO NO! We already gave them the choice to 'do something else'. The players could have even MADE UP that something else, in effect, by just pursuing some other interest. There's no need to keep constantly dangling one distraction after another when the players have already signaled what they want to do. Its not even just silly, it gets actually obfuscatory and even rude at a certain point if the GM won't just GET ON WITH IT!




Yes, yes, yes!  Why?  It goes back to the players not being capable(at any table) of thinking of everything.  Sure, they told you they wanted to go to the giants.  What they didn't tell you, because they didn't think of it, was what a cool thing it would be to examine an ancient dwarven altar lost near the giant lands as they pass by.  But thank you DM for putting it there.  It was a blast we didn't consider.  

As much as they enjoy your game, your players are missing out on a lot of great fun exploring.

P.S. it was [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] who glossed over the trip to the giants, not you, so there is no "we" there.  Also, he was not accused of railroading(at least not by me) for glossing over the trip.  It was railroading because he made decisions on behalf of the PCs in their approach to the giants.



> Again though, if the players want some dungeon crawly "lets wander the Underdark in search of fun" they can say so, we gave them the choice of 'other stuff'. If they ask "has anyone heard of any interesting areas to explore" or something like that, I'll happily oblige them, although I'll work in things one or more of the players have shown interest in before.




Which is fine.  Every playstyle has pros and cons, and one con of the Story Now style is that it is weaker on options.  If the players fail to think of something they would find fun, they miss out.  The DM who knows them and knows what they find enjoyable doesn't get to set up fun things for the players outside of what they say they want to do.


----------



## pemerton

Emerikol said:


> I wish the two of you could categorize your various differences and a few others as well



Ron Edwards at the Forge did this. It made a lot of people angry.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> It goes back to the players not being capable(at any table) of thinking of everything.  Sure, they told you they wanted to go to the giants.  What they didn't tell you, because they didn't think of it, was what a cool thing it would be to examine an ancient dwarven altar lost near the giant lands as they pass by.



As [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and I have already pointed out - and even if we ignore the paternalistic assumption that the GM knows better than the players what would be fun right now (which in my experience is a dubious assumption at best) - this thing that you and  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] keep saying is silly.

Players: We want to do X.

GM: Ah, but wouldn't you prefer Y?

Players: OK, let's do Y.

GM: Ah, but wouldn't you prefer Z?

Players: OK, let's do Z.

GM: Ah, but wouldn't you prefer  . . . <and so on ad infinitum>​
Does the game ever actually get to happen? If the answer is yes, then why not just go with X?

If you're buying a car, or a house, it makes sense to hem and haw a bit, make a few comparisons, weight up some options, seek out the advice of reliable others. But we're talking about playing a game! If the players say they want to do something with giants, there's a pretty good chance they do. What does it add to second guess that? (Other than GM control running roughshod over expressed player preferences.)


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> I have yet to meet a player who did not enjoy *exploring the game world and finding new things*.



The bolded phrase is key here. _Exploring the game world and finding new things_ = making moves that trigger the GM to tell you stuff. (Because there is no _actual_ world that is _actually_ being explored. There is just the fiction, which is being authored by - in this case - the GM.) Of course if you have never met players who don't enjoy that, then you wouldn't play "story now" RPGs. But I can tell you one player who doesn't really care for that - _me_.

If I want to "explore a world and find new things" then I'll read a fantasy story written by a better writer than my GM. When I play an RPG, I want to learn the fate of _my character_ - so if my character is a knight of a holy order, who is committed to defending the innocent and upholding the values of his god and the honour of his family, then that's what I want to learn about.

And as a GM I don't want to tell my players a story about stuff I made up. I want to learn the fates of _there_ characters. What will and won't they do to achieve their goals? How will they reconcile seemingly incompatible aspirations? If they don't, what conflicts will result?



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> As far as the idea that they have to do this stuff so they can power up, I will take my email of a loot drop from the Raven Queen over that any time. If the PCs need powering up, then change the numbers on the PC sheets and get on with the game! (Or adjust the framing so that the current numbers on the sheets are good enough.)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I guess that works for some people.  Most of the ones I've games with, at least after exiting high school, don't want things just handed to them like that.  I'm not trying to disparage your players.  I just honestly cannot remember encountering a player who wanted stuff handed to him like that after leaving high school.
Click to expand...


Maybe you're not familiar with how 4e works. The DMG has a table indicating the treasures that are to be distributed at each level - so-called "treasure parcels".

As I've already posted several times, my 4e game was several treasure parcels behind. So I provided some parcels, as gifts from the Raven Queen.

The treasure would not have been _more_ earned, the players _more_ worthy of it, if - instead of handing out in the way I did - I had (say) narrated them finding a treasure storeroom when they tore up Torog's Soul Abattoir. It's still just treasure parcels correlating to encounters resolved and hence XP accrued and hence levels gained.

As far as player satisfaction, the players in my 4e game seem not to have objected to the narrative of treasures and powers being bestowed as gifts. The first such gift happened at 1st or 2nd level, when a member of a household whom the PCs saved from goblins gifted one of them a neck ornament which (it turned out) was a +1 amulet of protection.

This is hardly at odds with the genre literature. In The Phoenix on the Sword, Conan is gifted a magical sword. The Fellowship is gifted magical items by Galadriel; and Narsil/Anduril is inherited by Aragorn, not taken as loot. Etc, etc. (Even the Foreword to Moldvay Basic described the slayer of the dragon tyrant as having received a magical sword as a gift from a mysterious hermit, although - unlike 4e - the rules of the game don't actually support that mode of treasure acquisition.)

You are looking at the game through a very narrow lens if you treat treasure that - in the fiction - is a gift, as "unearned" in comparison to treasure actually taken off the body or from the treasuries of defeated foes.



Maxperson said:


> Because it's a freaking god giving them the items, AND IT'S THE RAVEN QUEEN!  That would freak my PC out and I'd want to make sure that I wasn't doing anything to piss her off.  Or a number of other reasons I could come up with.  I'd still want to thank her so as not to be rude, and depending on how she played into the campaign prior to this point, perhaps speak with her about other things.



One of the PCs is a demigod. One of the PCs is Marshall of Letherna. One is an Emergent Primordial. One is an Eternal Defender. The last is a Sage of Ages. These are epic tier PCs. They have already killed a god (Torog) in order to further the Raven Queen's interests. They obtained the destination they teleported to by outwitting and deceiving Vecna, the god of secrets.

I'm not sure you're appreciating the situation as an epic tier one.



Maxperson said:


> Another thing to consider is that the little things highlight the important ones.  If everything you get is fabulous, then really nothing you receive is fabulous.  Fabulous has become the new average and a new fabulous thing doesn't mean a lot.  However, if you have a bunch of little things and get something fabulous, it really IS fabulous.  It shines next to the little things that put it in perspective.



I want every movie I watch to be great. The greatness of a movie is not primarily comparative, it's primarily inherent - story, editing, acting, staging, etc. I don't make sure I watch a re-run of Ace Ventura in between each decent movie I watch.

I want every novel I read to be great. Sometimes that doesn't happen, but it would be my ideal. If every fantasy short story I read was as good as Tower of the Elephant, that would make my life _better_, not worse. I every serious novel I read was as good as 9say) The Quiet American, that likewise would make my life _better_, not worse.

I want every academic paper I read to be great, full of clever insight and skilled argument. If every paper I read was as good as Hilary Putnam's "Dreaming and 'Depth Grammar'", that would make my life easier and happier, as I wouldn't have to wade through mediocre contributions to the literature.

This is also true of my RPGing. If _every session was absolutely awesome_ then that would just make my RPGing better. I don't need boring interludes to remind me of why I enjoy the good stuff - the good stuff speaks for itself.

Now if what you meant was not the above, but that - for instance - pacing is important, well my games have pacing. I'm not a pacing genius, but I think I'm moderately competent. Spending time telling players about intersections and potential allies and stuff that no one cares about isn't any sort of solution to pacing problems - or, at least, if there's a problem to which it _is _a solution I don't know what that problem is, and certainly don't have it in my games.



Maxperson said:


> This is treading very close to being a False Dichotomy.  There are whole ranges of things that can be done in-between adjudicating every moment of a PCs' life as a round of combat and cutting immediately to the action.  Many people enjoy a bit more realism in their games than just jumping from one significant thing to the next, and it feeds their desire to explore and see new things that I mentioned.



This is treading very close to being an Unwarranted Generalisation - who are these "many people" (clearly there are _some_, eg you and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and your friends)? It is also treading very close to a Truth-obscuring Projection - because _you_ (for whatever reasons) regard it as "unrealistic" to elide significant periods of time, so that must be unrealistic per se. But obviously that's not true - quite naturalistic novelists, film makers etc do this all the time. For instance, in LotR there are extensive time cuts in the first few chapters, and the last couple, but this doesn't make it "unrealistic" - the reader (correctly) infers that nothing interesting happened to Frodo in that time.

Likewise, there is nothing "unrealistic" about saying "OK, you travel through the underdark and arrive at a cave filled with lava . . . etc, etc . . .". No doubt the PCs passed numerous intersections, even crossed some flagstones and descended some stairs, but _no one at the table cares_. Those are not things anyone is interested in authoring, and so they remain unauthored.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The second is an action declaration.  The crazy person is fully trying to fly to the moon and is declaring that as an action.



No. The crazy person doesn't exist, and isn't declaring any actions. So let's try again: In the fiction, a crazy person is trying to fly to the moon; and, at the table, the player of the crazy person declares "My PC flaps his/her arms trying to fly to the moon." That is not an action declaration of an attempt to fly to the moon - and given that it doesn't need resolution, it's probably not even an action declaration of any sort - it's simply a description of what one's PC is doing.



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If everyone understands that, in this game, holy swords are not just found for sale at local markets, then declaring "I go to the market to buy a holy sword" is an impermissible action declaration.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> "I go to the market to buy a holy sword" is absolutely a permissible action declaration in a game where they can't be found at local markets.  The result of the action is that the PC wanders around for a while and doesn't find one.  Why would I railroad the player by not allowing the PC to go look for something that the player knows can't be found?  Maybe his PC is frantic to find one and looks places he knows rationally won't be there, but in an act of desperation looks there anyway.
Click to expand...


This is like the crazy PC example. If the player knows that there are no swords to be found, then s/he can't meaningfully declare "I go to the market to buy a holy sword", because she knows that there is no action to resolve! S/he can describe the PC frantically hunting for one if s/he likes, but there's no actual declaration to be resolved there as the player already knows what is going to happen. It's just colour!

(Not everything a player says about what his/her PC does is an action declaration. "I tighten my belt to make sure it doesn't slip off" isn't an action declaration in D&D, given that the game has no rules for belt tightness nor belts falling off. It's just colour, like "I lick my lips before taking the shot" narrated by a player whose PC is in an archery contest; or "I wear a headband to keep the sweat out of my eyes", given that D&D has no rules for being blinded by one's own sweat.)



Maxperson said:


> There are no limits.  Declaring that he's going to cut down 10 orcs is permissible.  It's just doomed to failure.  Automatic failure does not negate or prevent the declaration of the action.  The only difference in the systems above is that with AD&D the action cannot succeed, were with the others it can succeed.



Here are the rules from pp 71 of the 5e Basic PDF (I choose these because they're ready-to-hand, but earlier editions aren't wildly different in this respect):

When you take your action on your turn, you can take one of the actions presented here, an action you gained from your class or a special feature, or an action that you improvise . . .

The most common action to take in combat is the Attack action, whether you are swinging a sword, firing an arrow from a bow, or brawling with your fists.

With this action, you make one melee or ranged attack.​
How much clearer could the game be that "I attack the 10 orcs in front of me!" is not a permissible action declaration?

Here's another example, from p 78:

Before a spellcaster can use a spell, he or she must have the spell firmly fixed in mind, or must have access to the spell in a magic item.​
So the player of a fighter, or the player of a 1st level wizard, who has no magic items, can't declare "I cast a Wish spell" - because the conditions for that action declaration (namely, that the character - having access to the spell in a magic item - must have the spell firmly fixed in mind) are not satisfied.

There are all sorts of limits on action declarations in D&D. (Another example I just remembered: in 1st ed AD&D Unearthed Arcana, only a fighter or cavalier-type can declare an attempt to disarm.) Given that it actually has one of the more intricate action economies of any RPG (a legacy of its wargame roots) this is hardly surprising!


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> As @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ and I have already pointed out - and even if we ignore the paternalistic assumption that the GM knows better than the players what would be fun right now (which in my experience is a dubious assumption at best) - this thing that you and  @_*Lanefan*_ keep saying is silly.Players: We want to do X.
> 
> GM: Ah, but wouldn't you prefer Y?
> 
> Players: OK, let's do Y.
> 
> GM: Ah, but wouldn't you prefer Z?
> 
> Players: OK, let's do Z.
> 
> GM: Ah, but wouldn't you prefer  . . . <and so on ad infinitum>​
> Does the game ever actually get to happen? If the answer is yes, then why not just go with X?




Again with the misrepresentations of the playstyle.  It has nothing to do with anything paternalistic, or the DM knowing best.  And when you get down to it, X+2 is greater than X, right?



> If you're buying a car, or a house, it makes sense to hem and haw a bit, make a few comparisons, weight up some options, seek out the advice of reliable others. But we're talking about playing a game! If the players say they want to do something with giants, there's a pretty good chance they do. What does it add to second guess that? (Other than GM control running roughshod over expressed player preferences.)




If I'm buying a car, I'm driving to the car lot to view and test drive.  On the way I pass a great food place and I didn't realize that I was hungry, so I stop and get food.  Alternatively, I pass a great food place, make a note of it since I'm not hungry and might be later, and keep driving.  That could not have happened if Scotty had just beamed me to the car lot.  Nobody is running roughshod over anyone else.  It's not about DM control or any other misrepresentation you'd like to come up with next.  

I'd love it if for once, rather than misrepresenting the playstyle and responding to your own misrepresentations, you'd actually respond to what we are saying.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> The bolded phrase is key here. _Exploring the game world and finding new things_ = making moves that trigger the GM to tell you stuff. (Because there is no _actual_ world that is _actually_ being explored. There is just the fiction, which is being authored by - in this case - the GM.) Of course if you have never met players who don't enjoy that, then you wouldn't play "story now" RPGs. But I can tell you one player who doesn't really care for that - _me_.




Except that we've already determined that making moves to trigger the DM to tell you stuff is also what happens in your game, so that doesn't mean anything.  If you aren't making moves that trigger the DM to tell  you stuff, you aren't playing a game that has a DM.  It's just a game with players at that point.



> If I want to "explore a world and find new things" then I'll read a fantasy story written by a better writer than my GM. When I play an RPG, I want to learn the fate of _my character_ - so if my character is a knight of a holy order, who is committed to defending the innocent and upholding the values of his god and the honour of his family, then that's what I want to learn about.




I never realized that the only way to learn about that was to reach the destination.  There's NEVER an innocent that needs defending anywhere along the way.  The values of your got and honor of your family can't possibly come to the fore during the journey.



> And as a GM I don't want to tell my players a story about stuff I made up. I want to learn the fates of _there_ characters. What will and won't they do to achieve their goals? How will they reconcile seemingly incompatible aspirations? If they don't, what conflicts will result?




It's not as if you can't engage in that during the journey.  Why is it that you think that the end point of the journey is the only place that will be accomplished?



> One of the PCs is a demigod. One of the PCs is Marshall of Letherna. One is an Emergent Primordial. One is an Eternal Defender. The last is a Sage of Ages. These are epic tier PCs. They have already killed a god (Torog) in order to further the Raven Queen's interests. They obtained the destination they teleported to by outwitting and deceiving Vecna, the god of secrets.
> 
> I'm not sure you're appreciating the situation as an epic tier one.




I don't trivialize gods by having them hunted down and killed, so that's not really a viewpoint I had considered.  That said, even if I was a demigod or person of equal stature, I'd still tread very lightly near a full god, especially one like the Raven Queen.  Even epic PCs are still less than she is.  In fact, it's a testament to being epic that I'd try to talk to her, rather than just pee my pants and pass out like a lower level PC would likely do.



> I want every movie I watch to be great. The greatness of a movie is not primarily comparative, it's primarily inherent - story, editing, acting, staging, etc. I don't make sure I watch a re-run of Ace Ventura in between each decent movie I watch.
> 
> I want every novel I read to be great. Sometimes that doesn't happen, but it would be my ideal. If every fantasy short story I read was as good as Tower of the Elephant, that would make my life _better_, not worse. I every serious novel I read was as good as 9say) The Quiet American, that likewise would make my life _better_, not worse.
> 
> I want every academic paper I read to be great, full of clever insight and skilled argument. If every paper I read was as good as Hilary Putnam's "Dreaming and 'Depth Grammar'", that would make my life easier and happier, as I wouldn't have to wade through mediocre contributions to the literature.
> 
> This is also true of my RPGing. If _every session was absolutely awesome_ then that would just make my RPGing better. I don't need boring interludes to remind me of why I enjoy the good stuff - the good stuff speaks for itself.
> 
> Now if what you meant was not the above, but that - for instance - pacing is important, well my games have pacing. I'm not a pacing genius, but I think I'm moderately competent. Spending time telling players about intersections and potential allies and stuff that no one cares about isn't any sort of solution to pacing problems - or, at least, if there's a problem to which it _is _a solution I don't know what that problem is, and certainly don't have it in my games.




What I meant was that if everything is important, then important is reduced to common place and average.  Again with the misrepresentations, since I wasn't talking about bad, boring or anything else negative.  I'm just saying that if every moment shines with importance, the moments drown each other out in the light.  It's okay, even good for there to be average moments that allow the moments that shine to be seen in the best light.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> No. The crazy person doesn't exist, and isn't declaring any actions. So let's try again: In the fiction, a crazy person is trying to fly to the moon; and, at the table, the player of the crazy person declares "My PC flaps his/her arms trying to fly to the moon." That is not an action declaration of an attempt to fly to the moon - and given that it doesn't need resolution, it's probably not even an action declaration of any sort - it's simply a description of what one's PC is doing.




Again with the semantics.  Just let it go.  You understand that some of us play deeply in character, so just go with it and respond.  Now on to the rest, actions whose results are not in doubt still need to be resolved.  That resolution is the narration that the action failed.  Given that the PC acted(attempted to fly to the moon by flapping his arms), there must have been an action declaration involved.  



> This is like the crazy PC example. If the player knows that there are no swords to be found, then s/he can't meaningfully declare "I go to the market to buy a holy sword", because she knows that there is no action to resolve! S/he can describe the PC frantically hunting for one if s/he likes, but there's no actual declaration to be resolved there as the player already knows what is going to happen. It's just colour!




First, what makes you think that there has to be meaning to actions or action declarations.  Second, given that in my example it's part of the PC's character to go looking there, it is in fact a meaningful declaration.  Third, there is an action to resolve, as the PC is taking an action that I as the player declared.  Automatic failure does not stop an action or action declaration from happening.

Earlier you and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] were referring to what I was doing as absurd.  I guess it's your turn.  Trying to take actions and action declarations and cause them to somehow not be actions or action declarations just because they automatically fail or aren't meaningful is patently absurd.



> (Not everything a player says about what his/her PC does is an action declaration. "I tighten my belt to make sure it doesn't slip off" isn't an action declaration in D&D, given that the game has no rules for belt tightness nor belts falling off. It's just colour, like "I lick my lips before taking the shot" narrated by a player whose PC is in an archery contest; or "I wear a headband to keep the sweat out of my eyes", given that D&D has no rules for being blinded by one's own sweat.)




Where does it say that you need rules in order for actions or declarations of actions do be actions and declarations of actions?  If I declare that my PC is walking to the bar, that's an action the PC is taking and a declaration of that action on my part.



> Here are the rules from pp 71 of the 5e Basic PDF (I choose these because they're ready-to-hand, but earlier editions aren't wildly different in this respect):
> 
> When you take your action on your turn, you can take one of the actions presented here, an action you gained from your class or a special feature, or an action that you improvise . . .
> 
> The most common action to take in combat is the Attack action, whether you are swinging a sword, firing an arrow from a bow, or brawling with your fists.
> 
> With this action, you make one melee or ranged attack.​
> How much clearer could the game be that "I attack the 10 orcs in front of me!" is not a permissible action declaration?




One, it's pretty disingenuous to try and reduce this to just combat.  And two, you can indeed declare the act of attacking 10 orcs.  Your combat action(different than other actions) just can only be one orc at a time.  Two different actions are being declared there.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> No. The crazy person doesn't exist, and isn't declaring any actions. So let's try again: In the fiction, a crazy person is trying to fly to the moon; and, at the table, the player of the crazy person declares "My PC flaps his/her arms trying to fly to the moon." That is not an action declaration of an attempt to fly to the moon



Sure sounds like one to me.

An impossible*-in-the-fiction one, mind you, but still a declaration of an attempted action.

* - and who's to say - maybe some trickster god happens to be watching and when the character flaps its arms, it's up up and away......



> This is like the crazy PC example. If the player knows that there are no swords to be found, then s/he can't meaningfully declare "I go to the market to buy a holy sword", because she knows that there is no action to resolve! S/he can describe the PC frantically hunting for one if s/he likes, but there's no actual declaration to be resolved there as the player already knows what is going to happen. It's just colour!



The player meta-knows this but the PC in the fiction doesn't know it, and thus if one is to play in character as if one's player knowledge equals their PC's knowledge "I go to the market to buy a holy sword" becomes a perfectly valid - if perhaps naive - declaration of action...to which the DM goes through whatever motions she goes through and then narrates some version of "You don't find one", and the game moves on.



> (Not everything a player says about what his/her PC does is an action declaration. "I tighten my belt to make sure it doesn't slip off" isn't an action declaration in D&D, given that the game has no rules for belt tightness nor belts falling off. It's just colour, like "I lick my lips before taking the shot" narrated by a player whose PC is in an archery contest; or "I wear a headband to keep the sweat out of my eyes", given that D&D has no rules for being blinded by one's own sweat.)
> 
> Here are the rules from pp 71 of the 5e Basic PDF (I choose these because they're ready-to-hand, but earlier editions aren't wildly different in this respect):
> 
> When you take your action on your turn, you can take one of the actions presented here, an action you gained from your class or a special feature, or an action that you improvise . . .
> 
> The most common action to take in combat is the Attack action, whether you are swinging a sword, firing an arrow from a bow, or brawling with your fists.
> 
> With this action, you make one melee or ranged attack.​
> How much clearer could the game be that "I attack the 10 orcs in front of me!" is not a permissible action declaration?



Ah...but remember the founding tenet of 5e is "rulings, not rules", which opens up absolutely anything to be a possible declaration of attempted action and then expects the DM to rule on it.



> Here's another example, from p 78:
> 
> Before a spellcaster can use a spell, he or she must have the spell firmly fixed in mind, or must have access to the spell in a magic item.​
> So the player of a fighter, or the player of a 1st level wizard, who has no magic items, can't declare "I cast a Wish spell" - because the conditions for that action declaration (namely, that the character - having access to the spell in a magic item - must have the spell firmly fixed in mind) are not satisfied.
> 
> There are all sorts of limits on action declarations in D&D. (Another example I just remembered: in 1st ed AD&D Unearthed Arcana, only a fighter or cavalier-type can declare an attempt to disarm.) Given that it actually has one of the more intricate action economies of any RPG (a legacy of its wargame roots) this is hardly surprising!



You're looking at this all backwards, I think.

A player is never - NEVER! - bound by the rules in what she can state as an attempted action.

The DM, however, IS bound by the rules (as amended by her own rulings and possibly as amended by the in-game situation) when determining what results from said declaration.  This comes back to the fact that part of the DM's role is that of referee.

Hence the player of a dumb-like-ox fighter is quite free to declare "Trog see Fizban wave hands and make fire.  Trog wave hands and make fire too.  Trog burn them all!"; and the DM is quite free to respond to this with some variant on "Nothing happens" without recourse to the dice.

This is one of the great attractions of tabletop RPG play: a player is free to try anything, no matter how absurd; and it's down to the DM to adjudicate and say no.  It's the one big advantage TTRPGs have over computer-based RPGs which have built-in limits on what players can attempt.

Lan-"and a fighter trying a wish every now and then is never wrong: who knows what that new magic ring might have in it"-efan


----------



## tomBitonti

So ... how much of this is setting the "scale limit" to which players (and the GM) are able to change the game world?

The GM may set a basic outline, while leaving player declarations so long as they fit within that basic outline.

Then, absent powerful magic, the rules of physics are "basic D&D": Falls and lava hurt (but not as much as they should); normal people can't fly, and so forth.  A player cannot make a declaration which affects these rules.

On the other hand, while the GM may have placed two major cities a ways apart on a coastline (say, Boston and NY), that is a very coarse level of detail: Perhaps a play can "create" by declaration a village somewhere in-between.

With "scale limit", this likely changes over time: Initially, larger scale issues must be determined.  As those issues are settled, the focus turns to issues of a smaller scale.  Maybe, backing up at times to reset an issue which wasn't working out so well, but mostly not allowing large, previously settled issued to be changed.  (But, allowing for re-interpretation!)

Also, similar to a "scale limit" there are likely "breadth of impact" limits: A player can only go so far to make a declaration which affects other players:

Player 1: My parents were killed in a raid by Evil Draconians.  I have a deep hatred for dragons and their ilk.
Player 2 (who is the brother of player 1): Say what?

Then there are "don't offend grandmother by being one of these" limits: This would be, say, a player declaration made solely to mess with the GM or other players.  But also, a GM who changes the scene on the fly to confound players.

I think that in any system that allows action declarations, there will be reasonable limits to what can be declared, and we need to be careful to focus on what is reasonable.  Otherwise, the arguments are just spinning straw.

One notable point from a recent post was the question of whether the GM's fictional world and plot were sufficient to the player's interest.  In a lot of games, players very much want the GM to provide a plot outline which details the adversity and challenges that the players will face.  In other games (as expressed above), players want to have more of a part in detailing the fictional world.  That seems to me to be a basic control with a slider reaching from Player on one end to GM on the other.

Thx!
TomB


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Again with the misrepresentations of the playstyle.



What's the misrepresentation? Your argument against "going where the action is" - in this case, a fairly light-touch narration of the trip to the giants' cage - is that the players might have forgotten something. Hence the GM needs to interpose various possibilities between the players' decision to go to the giants' cave, and the narration of their arrival there.

I'm asking, what is the basis on which the GM decides that enough such additional possibilities have been interposed? When are the players to be allowed to actually act on their decision?

You haven't answered that question. As is obvious, I think there is no principled answer, and that this whole line of argument is silly.

The argument that "I narrate extra possibilities because my players enjoy them" is one that I'll buy. You know your players better than I do. The agument that "I narrate extra possibilities because my players might have made a mistake about wanting to go straight to the giants' cave", though, just makes no sense.


----------



## pemerton

tomBitonti said:


> while the GM may have placed two major cities a ways apart on a coastline (say, Boston and NY)



I just want to think about this example, and how it plays out in two different systems. I am not focusing particularly upon player agency over the content of the shared fiction; I am just looking at the impact, on play, of the GM's pre-authorship of this geographic state of affairs.

In AD&D, the rules for travel begin with "miles per day". Then there are "encounters per day". There is also "food required per day", and there is "gp required per unit of food".

So, suppose that a player declares "My PC goes from AD&D New York to AD&D Boston." The movement rate - a mechanical property of the character - interacts with the GM's decision about geography to determine a number of gp the player must cross of his/her PC sheet (to get enough food) and also a number of encounter dice rolls to which the player is subject.

In Cortex+ Heroic, travelling from NY to Boston would generally be part of a transition scene. It will mostly be done by free narration, provided that fits with the PC's established backstory (eg if the game is MHRP, and one of the PCs is War Machine, then the player can just declare "We take the Stark company Jet!" - this is what happened when the PCs in my MHRP game wanted to travel from Washingon, DC to Tokyo). If the player wants to make a bigger deal of it - eg wants to have the Stark company jet available to contribute to actions declared in a subsequent action scene (= roughly, in D&D terms, an encounter) - then the player can spend a player-side resource (a plot point) to establish a useful resource (generally rated at either d6 or d8).

If the player backstory doesn't simply provide for easy travel from NY to Boston (eg the PC in the MHRP game is Bruce Banner/the Hulk, broke and on the run from Thunderbolt Ross) then the player will have to spend a plot point to create some sort of resource to permit the travel, or otherwise is going to be stuck in NY - or, at least, is going to get caught up in some sort of action scene before making it to Boston. (In Banner's case, if an action scene results in transformation into the Hulk, then he can of course leap from NY to Boston no worries.)

With Cortex+ Heroic mechanics, basically nothing turns on the details of the geography that the GM has come up with. In mechanical terms, travelling from A to B is basically the same process whether A and B are NY and Boston or Washinton, DC and Tokyo. There are no rules for movement rates; no rules for food consumption; no rules for wealth; no rules for random encounters. The mechanical framing is completely different from AD&D.

Games like HeroWars/Quest and Fate could easily be played in a way very similar to what I've just described for Cortex+ Heroic. So could 4e, if one wanted - although 4e does have a "keep track of gp" wealth system, the impact of food on that at any level above low heroic is so minimal that it can be easily ignored, and there is no exhaustion system or spell duration system or anything else like that that _forces_ keeping track of travel time. All travel could just be resolved by a mixture of skill challenges and free narration. Likewise Burning Wheel, if some of the optional subsystems (eg the upkeep rules, which depend on tracking the passage of time and so generate some pressure to keep track of travel times) are ignored.

This is another reason why I find [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s insistence that the GM _must_ tell the players about the intervening intersection (or, in the NY to Boston example, some crossroad encountered along the way), and that it is "cheapening" or "railroading" to just free narrate the travel and arrival, as bizarre. That insistence rests on very specific assumptions about the mechanics for the resolution of travel that simply aren't true for a wide range of RPGs, which (not coincidentally) also tend to be the sorts of RPGs best suited to Eero Tuovinen's "standard narrativistic model".


----------



## Lanefan

tomBitonti said:


> So ... how much of this is setting the "scale limit" to which players (and the GM) are able to change the game world?
> 
> The GM may set a basic outline, while leaving player declarations so long as they fit within that basic outline.
> 
> Then, absent powerful magic, the rules of physics are "basic D&D": Falls and lava hurt (but not as much as they should); normal people can't fly, and so forth.  A player cannot make a declaration which affects these rules.



Are you referring to a) a player trying to actually change the rules of the game or its physics; or b) a player simply stating a PC action which would violate these rules if successful?

a) is right out.
b) is always allowed - a player can try anything - but is extremely unlikely to succeed.



> On the other hand, while the GM may have placed two major cities a ways apart on a coastline (say, Boston and NY), that is a very coarse level of detail: Perhaps a play can "create" by declaration a village somewhere in-between.



Most DMs, including me, would be cool with this provided it wasn't expected to or likely to affect the run of play.  To follow up your example, if most or all of the game play is expected to be on a rough axis between Los Angeles and Vancouver nobody's going to care very much if a player invents and fleshes out a village in Iowa.



> I think that in any system that allows action declarations, there will be reasonable limits to what can be declared, and we need to be careful to focus on what is reasonable.  Otherwise, the arguments are just spinning straw.



It's a fine point, but an important one: the reasonable limits should not be on what can be declared or attempted but on what the DM (or game) will allow to succeed.

Otherwise what you say (including what I deleted) makes lots of sense.

Lanefan


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> The player meta-knows this but the PC in the fiction doesn't know it, and thus if one is to play in character as if one's player knowledge equals their PC's knowledge "I go to the market to buy a holy sword" becomes a perfectly valid - if perhaps naive - declaration of action
> 
> <snip>
> 
> A player is never - NEVER! - bound by the rules in what she can state as an attempted action.
> 
> The DM, however, IS bound by the rules (as amended by her own rulings and possibly as amended by the in-game situation) when determining what results from said declaration.  This comes back to the fact that part of the DM's role is that of referee.
> 
> Hence the player of a dumb-like-ox fighter is quite free to declare "Trog see Fizban wave hands and make fire.  Trog wave hands and make fire too.  Trog burn them all!"; and the DM is quite free to respond to this with some variant on "Nothing happens" without recourse to the dice.



PCs don't declare actions. PCs just do things.

_Declaring actions_ - a concept that I think has its origins in wargaming, and is the counterpart to the boardgame notion of _making a move_ or the cardgame notio of _playing a card_ - is something done by real people who are sitting around a table and playing a game.

The player who knows that there is no hope of finding a holy sword at the market is, of course, free to describe what his/her PC is doing however s/he likes. The player of Trog is free to do the same thing. But neither player is actually engaging an action resolution process. It's all just colour. 



Lanefan said:


> It's a fine point, but an important one: the reasonable limits should not be on what can be declared or attempted but on what the DM (or game) will allow to succeed.



This speaks directly to agency. Telling players that any action can be declared while (more or less secretly) resolving that some will automatically fail, undermines, it doesn't further, player agency in the context of a RPG.



Lanefan said:


> and who's to say - maybe some trickster god happens to be watching and when the character flaps its arms, it's up up and away



This is a completely separate point.

I could write on my PC sheet "Wears a purple hat". If, subsequently in the game, my PC turns up at a town where the GM has decided that all purple hat wearers get free board and lodging with the mayor for a week (so fond is said personage of stylish headgear!), well so it goes! But that doesn't mean that I declared an action for my PC "Don purple hat so as to get free board and lodging." This is just the GM making decisions based on the established fiction.

The same applies if the GM decides that a trickster god flies the arm-flapping PC to the moon. This is not the outcome of any PC action declaration to that affect - it's the GM authoring some fiction following from the player's description of what his/her PC does.

Now it's true that there are many GMs, especially D&D ones in my experience, who think that all playes ever do is describe what their PCs do, and it is _always_ up to the GM to actually decide if anything flows from this. (An exception is in relation to combat - it's generally regarded as very controversial for a D&D GM to treat "I attack" as simply a description that the GM is free to narrate new ficiton around, rather than an actual action declaration that invokes a particular set of mechanics.)

This is not the case in any of the RPGs I play, however, all of which have an actual notion of _action declaration_ that applies in a range of non-combat as well as combat contexts.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Most DMs, including me, would be cool with this provided it wasn't expected to or likely to affect the run of play.  To follow up your example, if most or all of the game play is expected to be on a rough axis between Los Angeles and Vancouver nobody's going to care very much if a player invents and fleshes out a village in Iowa.



This seems to suggest that player input is most welcome when it won't matter!

That does not suggest a high degree of player agency!


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> In AD&D, the rules for travel begin with "miles per day". Then there are "encounters per day". There is also "food required per day", and there is "gp required per unit of food".



Other than the encounters-per-day bit, all these rules are just trying to enforce some vague semblance of realism.  Travel takes time (unless you can teleport); time taken requires sustenance; and sustenance requires either wealth to spend acquiring it, magic to generate it, or the means and wherewithal to steal it.



> So, suppose that a player declares "My PC goes from AD&D New York to AD&D Boston." The movement rate - a mechanical property of the character - interacts with the GM's decision about geography to determine a number of gp the player must cross of his/her PC sheet (to get enough food) and also a number of encounter dice rolls to which the player is subject.



It also forces the DM to determine how many days the journey takes, important if for any reason something is running to a schedule or time limit.



> With Cortex+ Heroic mechanics, basically nothing turns on the details of the geography that the GM has come up with. In mechanical terms, travelling from A to B is basically the same process whether A and B are NY and Boston or Washinton, DC and Tokyo. There are no rules for movement rates; no rules for food consumption; no rules for wealth; no rules for random encounters.



No rules for random encounters is cool; they're supposed to be random, after all, not guaranteed. 

But assuming a typical medieval-fantasy setting where the PCs can't just hop on the Stark jet and get there in an hour or three, any journey of any length at all is going to take significant time; and time is important.  Washington DC to Tokyo could take several months travelling overland followed by several weeks at sea during which if nothing else seasonal variations and weather could become huge factors; not to mention the possibilities of disease, environment-caused mishap e.g. a flood or landslide, or - and here's yer random encounters - encounters with local wildlife or inhabitants.

Handwaving a journey like this is going a bit far.  Boston to New York?  Not quite so bad unless it's winter.

Does "no rules for wealth" apply just in this sort of case, as in there's no rules for minor wealth spent during travel; or are there no rules for wealth at all in that system?



> This is another reason why I find [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s insistence that the GM _must_ tell the players about the intervening intersection (or, in the NY to Boston example, some crossroad encountered along the way), and that it is "cheapening" or "railroading" to just free narrate the travel and arrival, as bizarre. That insistence rests on very specific assumptions about the mechanics for the resolution of travel that simply aren't true for a wide range of RPGs, which (not coincidentally) also tend to be the sorts of RPGs best suited to Eero Tuovinen's "standard narrativistic model".



How I'd do this would depend on the situation.  Let's say that the Boston-NY corridor is fairly safe, while anything much west of that is wild land and the Pacific Ocean is thought to be full of beasties.

For a Boston to New York trip in summer I'd probably roll once to see if anything untoward happens, work out how long the trip takes based on a consistent speed of travel, ask what they're doing for food and lodging along the way, and get 'em to knock off some arbitrary small amount of g.p. if food and lodging are being purchased.

For the same trip in winter I'd be a lot more stringent on what's being done and how, and would be rolling for weather each day.  Speed of travel would not at all be guaranteed - weather conditions could slow them down or even stop them at any time - and I'd be more careful about food and lodging costs and requirements.

For Washington to Tokyo I'd almost look at the journey as a mini-adventure in itself - there's the prairies (possible risks: local inhabitants, stampedes, weather e.g. tornadoes in summer and bitter cold in winter), the western mountains (possible risks: local wildlife, navigational woes, flash floods in summer, weather e.g. thunder and lightning in summer and snowstorms in winter), the coast (fewer risks but I'd want to know what they're doing about a sturdy boat to get across the ocean, 'cause I'm betting they didn't bring one with them!), and the ocean (possible risks: sea monsters, pirates, weather, navigational woes, rocks reefs and shoals near land).

Lan-"I've driven from here almost to the east coast and that's bad enough; I sure as hell wouldn't want to walk it"-efan


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> However, while I think this sort of thing could be useful, I'm not sure there's a big market for it. It's pretty much the opposite of the AP in published adventure design, but that seems to be all the rage these days.




Exactly. Story Now is self-limiting. You can produce 100's of little niche story games, but its very hard to produce packaged adventures. This means its just not a very lucrative format. By the very nature of the thing, even if 'classic' RPGs were less appreciated, they would still individually be the big sellers because there are only a few of them, and they sell 'APs' or 'modules' quite well. 

Furthermore, if you're a GM its an easy pattern to fall into, just pick up a module and you're all set for the next 2-3 months of play. All you need to do is read ahead some every week, and present the material. As long as the players are ready and willing to go ahead and play to the assumptions of the material and follow the given story, pretty much, it all goes OK. Now and then maybe the GM has to kind of 'jigger' things a little to keep it moving in the prescribed direction, but on the whole it 'works'. 

Many of the D&D modules, particularly earlier ones, were in any case of the sort of you're in over your head type, you couldn't really 'back out' easily. The A series for instance pretty much, you could beat feet at some points, but only if you want to give up on the premise the series starts with, finding the slaves.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Side question:
> I never bought or read 4e's DMG2 - one was quite enough, thank you! - but are you saying that in DMG2-version 4e a PC gets x.p. as a direct reward simply based on the amount of real-time spent playing it at the table, regardless of what it does in the fiction?
> 
> If yes, as a design philosophy that probably couldn't be further from how I view and award x.p.




Well, what DMG2 allows for, optionally, is XP awards for things like participation and basically 'doing cool/thematic/interesting stuff'. It isn't actually a LOT of XP, but lest you think it is out of keeping with 'classic' D&D Gygax, in 1e DMG, explains that this is part of being a good DM as well. Also 1e has a HUGE bonus system for 'good play' where the training time multiplier defaults to 4 weeks/level and 'good play' can reduce it down to as little as 1 week/level (this is geometric, 1 week at level 1, 2 weeks at level 2, 3 weeks at level 3, etc. all multiplied by from 1-4). Since each week of training ALSO costs 1000gp/level of the trainer (who must be 2 levels higher than your PC) its a GARGANTUAN savings in money! In fact, at anything more than the 1x multiplier it costs FAR more to train for the next level than the GP to get the XP to get to that level! This means that a 'participation reward' type of system is built into D&D from the start, effectively.

4e DMG2 is one of several 4e books which are arguably the finest D&D books ever written. Its a really good book and has a huge amount of excellent advice about how to run a game, and techniques for doing so.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> What's the misrepresentation? Your argument against "going where the action is" - in this case, a fairly light-touch narration of the trip to the giants' cage - is that the players might have forgotten something. Hence the GM needs to interpose various possibilities between the players' decision to go to the giants' cave, and the narration of their arrival there.




Your entire example was a misrepresentation.  Games simply don't play out like that........ever.  At least not without a bad DM abusing the playstyle.



> I'm asking, what is the basis on which the GM decides that enough such additional possibilities have been interposed? When are the players to be allowed to actually act on their decision?




They're acting on it from the 1st step forward towards the giants.  None of the encounters along the way stops that.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> It's been a while since I played 4e so refresh my memory but I thought if you loose an encounter or do not complete a quest then you don't gain the XP from them?  If so then XP is still serving the function of a reward... right?
> 
> EDIT: Or do you mean it doesn't server the purpose of individual rewards?  If so I can kind of see your point but quests are still individual PC awards....




XP is awarded for completing Quests, this is "the fundamental story framework of an adventure- the reason the characters want to participate in it." --DMG p102

"Minor quests are the subplots of an adventure, complications or wrinkles in the overall story." --DMG p103

Major quests are worth as much as an encounter of the same level (as the adventurers generally, quests are not usually 'over' or 'under' leveled). Minor quests are worth as much as one standard monster, and usually go to one specific PC they relate to.

There is also a provision for 'Player-Designed Quests', which is pretty close to being a direct player input to the fiction rule! 

Chapter 7, 'Rewards' states "Characters gain [XP] for every encounter they complete." later on the page this is clarified somewhat as "Every monster slain, skill challenge, puzzle solved, and trap disabled (these are all the enumerated types of encounters in the previous chapters) is worth an XP reward."

It never outright states that an encounter must be 'defeated', and in fact the plain reading of the rules would be that attempting a Skill Challenge is enough to gain the XP reward, though oddly you must solve puzzles and disable traps. Page 120 later does make it more clear that encounters must be 'overcome' in order to grant an XP reward.

So, in a sense, this IS a little like previous editions, at least on the surface. HOWEVER, context is everything. 4e is a game where the expected (and the DMG in Chapters 6 and 7 makes this QUITE clear) pattern is of encounters that are close to the level of the PCs, and within certain fairly specific parameters. That is a 'standard encounter' will have 5 equal-level monsters, or monsters with an equivalent XP value (which will be the XP reward for defeating them). Since the game is designed around allowing the PCs to complete roughly 4-5 such encounters in a day there are 2 characteristics which emerge.

1. The rate of encounters will be within a predicted margin.
2. The difficulty of encounters will be within a predicted range.

Since these are ALWAYS true, and forward progress in adventures is fairly dependent on success in encounters, you can pretty much calculate that a party will gain 50% of a level worth of XP every day, REGARDLESS OF WHAT THEY DO as long as they adventure and make progress.

Contrast this with, say, AD&D 1e where XP is granted on a sliding scale. A level 1 PC gets 1.0x the XP value of a monster that is 'at his level' (has a HD equivalency equal to his level, the DMG lists these for MM1 monsters and gives guidelines for their estimation). The XP value multiplier is a ratio of Monster Effective Hit Die/PC Level. Furthermore you get XP for GP and GP value of magic, which are at least nominally drawn from a table which gives more for higher level encounters. Again the XP value is subject to the same multiplier. Thus XP reward is modulated not by forward progress, but by the level of danger the PCs subject themselves to. This is reinforced by the 'monster level follows dungeon level' design of the core dungeon environment, which gives the players control over selecting a danger level (IE by going down more/less flights of stairs). 

1e rewards you for living dangerously, its a reward system. 4e rewards you for playing, effectively its a pacing mechanic.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, what DMG2 allows for, optionally, is XP awards for things like participation and basically 'doing cool/thematic/interesting stuff'. It isn't actually a LOT of XP, but lest you think it is out of keeping with 'classic' D&D Gygax, in 1e DMG, explains that this is part of being a good DM as well. Also 1e has a HUGE bonus system for 'good play' where the training time multiplier defaults to 4 weeks/level and 'good play' can reduce it down to as little as 1 week/level (this is geometric, 1 week at level 1, 2 weeks at level 2, 3 weeks at level 3, etc. all multiplied by from 1-4). Since each week of training ALSO costs 1000gp/level of the trainer (who must be 2 levels higher than your PC) its a GARGANTUAN savings in money! In fact, at anything more than the 1x multiplier it costs FAR more to train for the next level than the GP to get the XP to get to that level! This means that a 'participation reward' type of system is built into D&D from the start, effectively.



Yeah, that's a rule/concept I threw out before I even started DMing.

We still have training requirements, but the whole "good play" bit is long, long gone.  It was also tied to 'properly' playing to your alignment, which when no two people can ever agree on what each alignment defines as is just ripe for headaches.



> 4e DMG2 is one of several 4e books which are arguably the finest D&D books ever written. Its a really good book and has a huge amount of excellent advice about how to run a game, and techniques for doing so.



I'll take your word for that - I was somewhat underwhelmed by the first 4e DMG and even more so by the PH.  The MM was worthwhile, as is any book that has monsters I haven't seen before that I can scoop and convert. 

Lanefan


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> There is also a provision for 'Player-Designed Quests', which is pretty close to being a direct player input to the fiction rule!



I just read that section.  How is that different than what I described about the player who wanted to become the leader of the northern barbarians?  I described how players in my games can establish goals for themselves and then pursue them, forcing me to react to their authorship.  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] kept fighting me every step of the way, telling me that I was the one authoring everything and the players could only do things to cause me to respond with information.  Now you're saying it's really close to direct player input into the fiction.


----------



## tomBitonti

pemerton said:


> I just want to think about this example, and how it plays out in two different systems. I am not focusing particularly upon player agency over the content of the shared fiction; I am just looking at the impact, on play, of the GM's pre-authorship of this geographic state of affairs.
> 
> In AD&D, the rules for travel begin with "miles per day". Then there are "encounters per day". There is also "food required per day", and there is "gp required per unit of food".
> 
> So, suppose that a player declares "My PC goes from AD&D New York to AD&D Boston." The movement rate - a mechanical property of the character - interacts with the GM's decision about geography to determine a number of gp the player must cross of his/her PC sheet (to get enough food) and also a number of encounter dice rolls to which the player is subject.
> 
> In Cortex+ Heroic, traveling from NY to Boston would generally be part of a transition scene. It will mostly be done by free narration, provided that fits with the PC's established backstory (eg if the game is MHRP, and one of the PCs is War Machine, then the player can just declare "We take the Stark company Jet!" - this is what happened when the PCs in my MHRP game wanted to travel from Washington, DC to Tokyo). If the player wants to make a bigger deal of it - eg wants to have the Stark company jet available to contribute to actions declared in a subsequent action scene (= roughly, in D&D terms, an encounter) - then the player can spend a player-side resource (a plot point) to establish a useful resource (generally rated at either d6 or d8).
> 
> If the player backstory doesn't simply provide for easy travel from NY to Boston (e.g. the PC in the MHRP game is Bruce Banner/the Hulk, broke and on the run from Thunderbolt Ross) then the player will have to spend a plot point to create some sort of resource to permit the travel, or otherwise is going to be stuck in NY - or, at least, is going to get caught up in some sort of action scene before making it to Boston. (In Banner's case, if an action scene results in transformation into the Hulk, then he can of course leap from NY to Boston no worries.)
> 
> With Cortex+ Heroic mechanics, basically nothing turns on the details of the geography that the GM has come up with. In mechanical terms, traveling from A to B is basically the same process whether A and B are NY and Boston or Washington, DC and Tokyo. There are no rules for movement rates; no rules for food consumption; no rules for wealth; no rules for random encounters. The mechanical framing is completely different from AD&D.
> 
> Games like HeroWars/Quest and Fate could easily be played in a way very similar to what I've just described for Cortex+ Heroic. So could 4e, if one wanted - although 4e does have a "keep track of gp" wealth system, the impact of food on that at any level above low heroic is so minimal that it can be easily ignored, and there is no exhaustion system or spell duration system or anything else like that that _forces_ keeping track of travel time. All travel could just be resolved by a mixture of skill challenges and free narration. Likewise Burning Wheel, if some of the optional subsystems (e.g. the upkeep rules, which depend on tracking the passage of time and so generate some pressure to keep track of travel times) are ignored.
> 
> This is another reason why I find [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s insistence that the GM _must_ tell the players about the intervening intersection (or, in the NY to Boston example, some crossroad encountered along the way), and that it is "cheapening" or "railroading" to just free narrate the travel and arrival, as bizarre. That insistence rests on very specific assumptions about the mechanics for the resolution of travel that simply aren't true for a wide range of RPGs, which (not coincidentally) also tend to be the sorts of RPGs best suited to Eero Tuovinen's "standard narrativistic model".




Most generally, I'm not seeing a big difference between those two examples (AD&D; Cortex+Heroic).  AD&D will have encounter tables (generally a detail set during world building) which will be consulted.  Cortex+Heroic putting in a transition scene feels to be about the same, in that a mechanic is used when changing locations.  That is: Cortext+Heroic use a fact established during world building (the two cities are far apart) to decide that a transition scene is appropriate.  I'm seeing "rolling on encounter table" and "insert a transition scene" as being very close.

That is: Both system have a measurement of distance (AD&D: Chance of encounter per distance traveled; Cortex+Heroic: Big enough to call for a transition scene) and a consequence of large enough distances.

In either case, the game style will dictate whether a quick transition is acceptable.  I'm thinking this case doesn't really invoke agency, other than, perhaps the players *are* looking for trouble along the way, or need an amount of player downtime to train or craft or finish up side deals.  When I have this sort of case, if an event free transition works, I'll ask the players if they are alright to shift ahead a week to the destination, and only do so if there are no objections.  That gives room for player agency (Player 1: Sure, but can I get a first class room to myself so that I can unpack my portable lab and make some potions?)  The objection that I heard about the transition was not about the transition per se, but rather, that the general transition was made and was alright (getting the players _close_ to the Fire Giant's lair), then a transition from the general to the detail was made which was not alright (where the players _approached_ the lair and were spotted).  *That* second part is spot on a circumstance which will infuriate a lot of players.

Whether intermediate encounters _must_ occur rather seems more a style issue.  Maybe the story is reaching a climax point and the encounters would distract from the rising tension.  Or maybe the players are short of experience and supplies, and the GM wants to bolster them before the next major challenge.  Or maybe there haven't been any meaty fights in a while, and players want to simply lay into a thick fight.  Or, maybe the Fire Giants have spies on the route, and the GM needs cover to potentially have the player's approach discovered, while at the same time making sure the players have the ability to notice and react to the spies.  Having the players arrive at the Lair only to find out they were trailed by a spy along the way, but providing no opportunity to figure that out, would upset a lot of players.

Thx!
TomB


----------



## tomBitonti

To followup: There is another case where encounters are appropriate.  That is when the players are in exploratory mode.  I'm thinking, for example, of players wandering into the Isle of Dread, and having to explore heretofore unknown hexes.

(There was a board game which combined this with random hex generation: Source of the Nile, where the contents of each hex were randomly generated and would be crayoned in to the board on first discovery.  There were some constraints on hex generation, for example, if an adjacent hex was a river hex, but otherwise hexes were discovered as you explored the continent.)

Then, in exploratory mode, encounters are both appropriate and should be expected.

Thx!
TomB


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> That seems more like a social contract thing, rather than a PC can't perform an action thing.  Outside of highly limited situations like a PC whose entire body is bound attempting to run, the vast majority of actions, even ones impossible to achieve, can at least be attempted.  The social contract, though, will keep certain actions from being attempted in the first place.  Heck, even with the bound PC example, the PC can struggle in the attempt and then I'd just narrate failure.




I would propose that MOST of what happens at the table in ANY RPG is a 'social contract thing'. Genre conventions, codes of behavior for players WRT other player's characters, etc. are all basically a big code of conduct. 

Beyond that though, I think its either understood or codified into the rules of most games using Story Now (4e for instance does reiterate 'rule 0') that when players attempt to resolve some check, or spend a resource, etc. to create some input to the narrative outside of their character's purview, then there's a constraint of GM acceptance. Likewise the GM cannot simply frame any old scene, it has to address a player concern, or a thematic concern of the game in question. 4e doesn't really have a 'rule' to enforce this, as it doesn't explicitly deal with this kind of play. So there are obviously games where both things are convention and convention alone. I would say table conventions are STRONGER than rules (they often result in the ignoring or changing of rules).


----------



## pemerton

tomBitonti said:


> Most generally, I'm not seeing a big difference between those two examples (AD&D; Cortex+Heroic).



Have you ever played Cortex+ Heroic? Or read its rules?



tomBitonti said:


> AD&D will have encounter tables (generally a detail set during world building) which will be consulted.



The GM's decision as to geographic distance affects the following:

* How many encounters (because these are proportionate to ingame time, which is in turn proportionate to ingame distance assuing a constant PC movement rate);

* How much gp spent (because gp is proportionate to unit of food, which is proportionate to ingame time, which is in turn proportionate to ingame distance assuing a constant PC movement rate).​
GP spent is a direct depletion of player-side resources. Encounter checks have a mediated (by dice rolls and resolution processes) affect on player-side resources (hit points, if damage suffered is greater than available healing spells; magic item charges, scrolls, etc; flaming oil; etc).



tomBitonti said:


> Cortex+Heroic putting in a transition scene feels to be about the same, in that a mechanic is used when changing locations.



What do you mean by "a mechanic"?



tomBitonti said:


> That is: Cortext+Heroic use a fact established during world building (the two cities are far apart) to decide that a transition scene is appropriate.  I'm seeing "rolling on encounter table" and "insert a transition scene" as being very close.



This is what makes me ask whether you've played or read  Cortex+ Heroic.

The "insertion" of a transition scene has nothing to do with the cities being far apart. In the first session of MHRP that I ran, War Machine and Titanium Man fought an aerial duel which began above Washington, DC and ended over Florida, in the course of a single Action Scene.

The reason that the travel involves a transition scene has nothing to do with the distance, but is the result of what is taking place in the fiction: _traveling from NY to Boston would generally be part of a transition scene_ (to requote from my post that you quoted). _Generally_ (not universally) travel is transition between action scenes, rather than an element of action in itself. (What would be examples of departures from this generality? I gave one already; another might be if the action is taking place on a train or a plane travelling from NY to Boston.)



tomBitonti said:


> That is: Both system have a measurement of distance (AD&D: Chance of encounter per distance traveled; Cortex+Heroic: Big enough to call for a transition scene) and a consequence of large enough distances.



In Cortex+ Heroic, there is no _big enough to call for a transition scene_. From the MHRP rulebook (pp OM33 OM40):

*Transition Scenes* connect Action Scenes together and are usually used to recover, gather information, or plan the next Scene. . . .

Action and adventure is what most of us think of when we imagine a super hero story set in the Marvel Universe, but these stories are more than just big brawls and conflict. Between these Scenes, linking them together are Scenes of reflection, recovery, and regrouping. We call these Transition Scenes, and they allow the characters involved to do something with what they’ve learned  before the next conflict is met head-on.

As well as being used for recovery actions, a Transition Scene’s purpose is to determine what the next Action Scene is. If this is already settled, then the Transition Scene helps to put that into context.​
So within the context of Cortex+ Heroic, there are three ways to establish a new geographic location:

(1) The location changes in the course of an action scene (as per the above examples);

(2) The location changes in the course of a transition scene;

(3) The framing of a new act establishes a change in location.​
(3) can be understood as a special case of (2), as the end of the previous act will have involved a transiation scene (in which the PCs can recover, the players can spend XP, etc).

(The Fantasy Hack version of Cortex+ Heroic in the Hacker's Guide allows for a variant form of transition scene called an "Exploration Scene". It doesn't make any difference of substance to what I've said above.)



tomBitonti said:


> In either case, the game style will dictate whether a quick transition is acceptable.



I dont understand what you mean by this.



tomBitonti said:


> if an event free transition works



I don't know what you mean by this either. The only "events" that occur during a Cortex+ Heroic transition scene are events of PCs acquiring resources, which is the result of the pkayer spending a Plot Point.



tomBitonti said:


> I'll ask the players if they are alright to shift ahead a week to the destination, and only do so if there are no objections.  That gives room for player agency (Player 1: Sure, but can I get a first class room to myself so that I can unpack my portable lab and make some potions?)



What system are you envisaging here? I assume AD&D or some similar version of D&D.

In Cortex+ Heroic, "making some potions" is simply spending a plot point to create a resource.



tomBitonti said:


> Whether intermediate encounters _must_ occur rather seems more a style issue.



I don't know what you mean by an "intermedieate encounter". Can you explain what this means in a game of Cortex+ Heroic?

Are you suggesting, for instance, that the GM and players (i) establish that, in the course of a transition scene, the PCs travel from NY to Boston, and then (ii) the GM frames an action scene that takes place somewhere between NY and Boston? Because that makes no sense!



tomBitonti said:


> maybe the players are short of experience and supplies, and the GM wants to bolster them before the next major challenge.



This seems to be assuming AD&D or a similar game. What you say barely makes sense in 4e (because the measure of "supplies" is treasure parcels, and the GM could just have had the dwarves gift these, as the Raven Queen did in my game; and stepping down the level of a creature or an encounter is trivial). It makes no sense in Cortex+ Heroic or Burning Wheel.



tomBitonti said:


> The objection that I heard about the transition was not about the transition per se, but rather, that the general transition was made and was alright (getting the players _close_ to the Fire Giant's lair), then a transition from the general to the detail was made which was not alright (where the players _approached_ the lair and were spotted).  *That* second part is spot on a circumstance which will infuriate a lot of players.



There are so many assumptions here - about system and other things - that again it is hard for me to make sense of what you mean.

You seem to be assuming that the GM has a map drawn, and will (at a certain stage in the narration) tell the players something about where their PCs are which is read off the map; and then the players will describe where their PCs are going by reference to what they have learned of the GM's map.

In Cortex+ Heroic there is no _clost to_ versus _approaches_. Likewise if the travel is being resolved as a skill challenge in 4e. 

As to what will or won't "infurate a lot of players" - if the players know that the GM is not going to use a lot of GM-authored padding, then they will equally know that if (eg) they want to approach the giants stealthily than all they have to do is declare something to that effect. Eg in Cortex+ Heroic, the player can spend a point in the preceding transition scene to establish an appropriate resource (like Secret Entrance to Giants' Cavern) which can then contribute to their pool in the following action scene. In 4e, if a skill challenge is being used then a Stealth check might be made as part of that; or the players can just say "When we feel the tunnels warming up, we advance stealthily."



tomBitonti said:


> Having the players arrive at the Lair only to find out they were trailed by a spy along the way, but providing no opportunity to figure that out, would upset a lot of players.



Again, there seem to be so many assumptions about system and technique built into this that it's hard to know where to start.

Here's just one example of what I mean: AD&D has no way for the GM to establish what you describe except by GM fiat.

In 4e, though, it would be the sort of consequence to be narrated as the result of a failed Stealth check, or a failure in a skill challenge. Burning Wheel would be similar - it is the sort of thing that will follow from a failed check. In Cortex+ Heroic it would probably be a scene complication (Tracked by Fire Giant Spies) which the GM has to spend a die from the doom pool to establish. 

Etc.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Yes, yes, yes!  Why?  It goes back to the players not being capable(at any table) of thinking of everything.  Sure, they told you they wanted to go to the giants.  What they didn't tell you, because they didn't think of it, was what a cool thing it would be to examine an ancient dwarven altar lost near the giant lands as they pass by.  But thank you DM for putting it there.  It was a blast we didn't consider.



So, basically, the players are some lesser form of beast that doesn't have the ability to decide for itself what it wants? If they want an Altar, they can, by gosh, come up with a story element that potentially involves an altar! Lets suppose one of the PCs is a dwarf cleric of Moradin and he has an established interest in such things, then perhaps that interest will be addressed at this time, its at least a possibility. 



> As much as they enjoy your game, your players are missing out on a lot of great fun exploring.



NO they are not!!!! They are simply 'missing out' on lots of things being irrelevant to their expressed interests in the game. Remember, interests don't have to be narrowly conceived. For instance there was another [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] example of the guy who wanted to conquer the world, remember? That kind of goal could be leveraged for a vast, unlimited, set of possible elements that the GM thinks to add to the game. The giants, the altar, the 'knight hung from the wall', any of those things could be intended as a hook to engage that interest (I'd generally formulate such things in terms of OTHER interests, consequences of past actions, related to known story elements, etc. but that isn't a hard rule). 



> P.S. it was @_*pemerton*_ who glossed over the trip to the giants, not you, so there is no "we" there.  Also, he was not accused of railroading(at least not by me) for glossing over the trip.  It was railroading because he made decisions on behalf of the PCs in their approach to the giants.



You guys, and maybe there's a subtle distinction here with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], certainly claimed we were railroading players by only presenting specific elements. I think you're splitting hairs here personally. I fully endorse Pemerton's technique, though I stated it could possibly be worth providing an explicit chance for the PCs to do some last-minute prep/tactics in that one situation. RAILROADING is crud like when the GM says "Yeah, that NPC you hired last week was really a spy for the bad guy and he knows all your secret plans, too bad I guess you'll have to assault the castle instead of sneaking in, sorry guys!" or even worse "You missed!" (when you actually hit the NPC that the GM is now giving plot armor to because it protects his backstory). 



> Which is fine.  Every playstyle has pros and cons, and one con of the Story Now style is that it is weaker on options.  If the players fail to think of something they would find fun, they miss out.  The DM who knows them and knows what they find enjoyable doesn't get to set up fun things for the players outside of what they say they want to do.




I disagree that it is 'weaker on options'. It is STRONGER on options! Players have an infinite number of things they can think of which are fun. They are JUST AS CAPABLE OF DOING SO as the GM!!!!! To claim that this is not so isn't to claim a weakness in Story Now, it is to claim that players, as a type of game participant, are uniquely unqualified to come up with fun material. This is IMHO just balderdash, not even you actually believe it, but again you're going out on these weird limbs because you simply want to make certain unsupportable rhetorical points, I guess. It simply won't fly, players can take care of themselves.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Again with the misrepresentations of the playstyle.  It has nothing to do with anything paternalistic, or the DM knowing best.  And when you get down to it, X+2 is greater than X, right?



No, actually too many choices degrades most experiences. Its better to keep focused and have specific openings to change directions and a limited menu of explicit options. If the players want to make other choices, they can quite easily break in and nominate those choices. 



> If I'm buying a car, I'm driving to the car lot to view and test drive.  On the way I pass a great food place and I didn't realize that I was hungry, so I stop and get food.  Alternatively, I pass a great food place, make a note of it since I'm not hungry and might be later, and keep driving.  That could not have happened if Scotty had just beamed me to the car lot.  Nobody is running roughshod over anyone else.  It's not about DM control or any other misrepresentation you'd like to come up with next.
> 
> I'd love it if for once, rather than misrepresenting the playstyle and responding to your own misrepresentations, you'd actually respond to what we are saying.




But you aren't talking about a play style here, you're talking about real life and using it as an example of play, which doesn't work. In REAL LIFE you have no choice, you have to drive down to the car lot, that's the way the world works. In an RPG the goal is to have fun playing your character, and the character's actions can be depicted in ANY fashion which meets that goal. 

You are free to imagine that your way is 'better', and to the extent it is purely a matter of taste there's no dispute. Its not providing 'more choices' though. In fact, IN PRACTICE, I can easily assert that Story Now gives the PCs more choices in the narrative. It certainly is hard to argue it gives less, since 'choice per unit time' is the only possible measure of 'more' or 'less' in this situation please explain to me how the players will have to wait longer to make choices in Story Now. I don't think they will. Nor will the quality of the choices be less, though this is again a subjective measure so I won't try to make silly pointless arguments about it.


----------



## pemerton

tomBitonti said:


> To followup: There is another case where encounters are appropriate.  That is when the players are in exploratory mode.  I'm thinking, for example, of players wandering into the Isle of Dread, and having to explore heretofore unknown hexes.
> 
> (There was a board game which combined this with random hex generation: Source of the Nile, where the contents of each hex were randomly generated and would be crayoned in to the board on first discovery.  There were some constraints on hex generation, for example, if an adjacent hex was a river hex, but otherwise hexes were discovered as you explored the continent.)
> 
> Then, in exploratory mode, encounters are both appropriate and should be expected.



Again, you are making very strong assumptions about system and technique here.

In 4e, one natural way to do "exploratory mode" is via a skill challenge. But because, in 4e, encounters aren't (by default) a bad or undesired thing, how the skill challenge consequences interact with the occurence of encounters isn't a straightforward matter. Just for starters, it would depend upon what exactly the stakes of the skill challenge were.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Except that we've already determined that making moves to trigger the DM to tell you stuff is also what happens in your game, so that doesn't mean anything.  If you aren't making moves that trigger the DM to tell  you stuff, you aren't playing a game that has a DM.  It's just a game with players at that point.



This is a mischaracterization which is pretty fundamental. You REALLY believe this??!!! I'm skeptical!

Yes, in every game the player's actions are likely to elicit different responses from the GM, and vice versa. This is the fundamental nature of all human interactions. So your assertion is ridiculous on the face of it, and obfuscatory at best. The QUALITY of the interaction is vastly different, which is what is important here. In a GM-centered game, the GM always presents whatever fiction suites him, aside from cases dictated by the rules (IE in D&D usually the combat system, maybe some others to an extent). In a Story Now game the GM is inventing a scene frame, or consequences of an action resolution, from whole cloth purely in response and answer to the player's elicitation of fiction ON THAT SUBJECT. 

Now, sometimes in GM-centered play the fiction is a direct response to the players, though it is fairly often unrelated to their agenda (IE it is pre-defined content and thus unresponsive to player's story desires), or even contrary to it and quashing it in some cases. Sometimes in Story Now the GM might relate something that is only tangentially or incidentally related to the player's immediate concerns. The RQ interrupting a teleport is sort of like that, although it is a brief interjection and does bear pretty clearly on the following action. 



> I never realized that the only way to learn about that was to reach the destination.  There's NEVER an innocent that needs defending anywhere along the way.  The values of your got and honor of your family can't possibly come to the fore during the journey.



But of course Story Now absolutely DEMANDS that we do NOTHING ELSE but go directly to the most central climactic point in the story IMMEDIATELY (even though said thing doesn't even exist yet). Don't be silly. The GM is perfectly free to, and probably should if it will improve the story, challenge the character's beliefs by placing a 'damsel in distress' along the way. 



> It's not as if you can't engage in that during the journey.  Why is it that you think that the end point of the journey is the only place that will be accomplished?



And where did anyone say that you have to go to 'the end of the story' right away? Why do you think this absurd thing? What even IS the end of the story when no story has yet been written??!! 



> I don't trivialize gods by having them hunted down and killed, so that's not really a viewpoint I had considered.  That said, even if I was a demigod or person of equal stature, I'd still tread very lightly near a full god, especially one like the Raven Queen.  Even epic PCs are still less than she is.  In fact, it's a testament to being epic that I'd try to talk to her, rather than just pee my pants and pass out like a lower level PC would likely do.



Oh, come now, you're just trying to nitpick, nobody takes this seriously. Furthermore, in the WA cosmology, Torog is pretty much explicitly set up to be challenged. He's probably the weakest of the gods (except Lolth, and maybe Zehir, both evil gods designed to be opponents). He's certainly the most accessible, in theory you can literally trudge on foot to his realm and meet him in person without any supernatural anything. He literally just lives in a cave (albeit a huge cave very deep in the Earth, etc.). 



> What I meant was that if everything is important, then important is reduced to common place and average.  Again with the misrepresentations, since I wasn't talking about bad, boring or anything else negative.  I'm just saying that if every moment shines with importance, the moments drown each other out in the light.  It's okay, even good for there to be average moments that allow the moments that shine to be seen in the best light.




Again, this seems itself like a mischaracterization. There will be a wide variety of significance and degree of relevance to the character's core issues in the various scenes and actions in a Story Now game. The action is guaranteed to relate to SOME character's 'needs', or to a central theme of the genre, or something like that, but 4 out of 5 PCs probably aren't fully engaged by any one scene, and a scene might be only a tiny step on a way to some goal.

Consider, 4e assumes 8 encounters per level x30 levels = 240 encounters (plus at least 2 quests per level = 60 quests) in a full campaign before the narrative reaches its resolution. PLENTY of those are bound to be scenes where the characters are simply working through some situation many steps removed from any final resolution of even intermediate goals.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> But you aren't talking about a play style here, you're talking about real life and using it as an example of play, which doesn't work. In REAL LIFE you have no choice, you have to drive down to the car lot, that's the way the world works. In an RPG the goal is to have fun playing your character, and the character's actions can be depicted in ANY fashion which meets that goal.



I feel I have made this point to an ad nauseum extent, in reply both to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION].



AbdulAlhazred said:


> In fact, IN PRACTICE, I can easily assert that Story Now gives the PCs more choices in the narrative. It certainly is hard to argue it gives less, since 'choice per unit time' is the only possible measure of 'more' or 'less' in this situation please explain to me how the players will have to wait longer to make choices in Story Now. I don't think they will. Nor will the quality of the choices be less, though this is again a subjective measure so I won't try to make silly pointless arguments about it.



And I feel I've made this point to, especially in reply to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]. While the players in one game are learning more about an intersection, the players in another game are deciding what to do about the giants. By the time the players in the first game actualy get to make choices about the giants, the players in the second game are making some choice about some other thematically/dramatically salient thing.

The intersection doesn't give more choice, it just makes the choices less thematically/dramatically salient, and makes the GM's interests (in architecture; in the stuff the GM writes up as being at the end of each corridor; etc) a bigger part of the fiction than it otherwise would be.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> But assuming a typical medieval-fantasy setting where the PCs can't just hop on the Stark jet and get there in an hour or three, any journey of any length at all is going to take significant time; and time is important.  Washington DC to Tokyo could take several months travelling overland followed by several weeks at sea during which if nothing else seasonal variations and weather could become huge factors; not to mention the possibilities of disease, environment-caused mishap e.g. a flood or landslide, or - and here's yer random encounters - encounters with local wildlife or inhabitants.
> 
> Handwaving a journey like this is going a bit far.  Boston to New York?  Not quite so bad unless it's winter.



Why is it 'a bit far', but the trip to the privy isn't? I don't understand... (really, I don't). If there's nothing expected to be particularly interesting happening in the 5 months it takes to get to Tokyo it is perfectly acceptable to simply narrate "you have a long, tedious, sometimes dangerous, and often uncomfortable trip to Tokyo" and be done with it. I'm not saying that HAS to be the right answer, but it is perfectly acceptable in a wide variety of games.



> Does "no rules for wealth" apply just in this sort of case, as in there's no rules for minor wealth spent during travel; or are there no rules for wealth at all in that system?



MANY RPGs have only abstract wealth systems, or maybe even no explicit wealth system at all. d6 Space (old d6 Star Wars basically) has an abstract wealth system. Characters have a number of dice which represent their 'wealth', and various classes of expenditures require checks of a given level in order to successfully buy something. Buying a pair of boots might be a difficulty 3 check, buying a small merchant type starship might be a difficulty 40 check. Some actions can also cause some depletion of wealth (like buying a starship probably will). There is also income in that system, which gives you an idea of your affordable ongoing expenses (starships have upkeep). There actually are cited credit cost values of things, so you can compare and use the numbers in fiction, but PCs don't normally track specific quantities of cash, unless it has a very specific function in a given story. 



> How I'd do this would depend on the situation.  Let's say that the Boston-NY corridor is fairly safe, while anything much west of that is wild land and the Pacific Ocean is thought to be full of beasties.
> 
> For a Boston to New York trip in summer I'd probably roll once to see if anything untoward happens, work out how long the trip takes based on a consistent speed of travel, ask what they're doing for food and lodging along the way, and get 'em to knock off some arbitrary small amount of g.p. if food and lodging are being purchased.
> 
> For the same trip in winter I'd be a lot more stringent on what's being done and how, and would be rolling for weather each day.  Speed of travel would not at all be guaranteed - weather conditions could slow them down or even stop them at any time - and I'd be more careful about food and lodging costs and requirements.
> 
> For Washington to Tokyo I'd almost look at the journey as a mini-adventure in itself - there's the prairies (possible risks: local inhabitants, stampedes, weather e.g. tornadoes in summer and bitter cold in winter), the western mountains (possible risks: local wildlife, navigational woes, flash floods in summer, weather e.g. thunder and lightning in summer and snowstorms in winter), the coast (fewer risks but I'd want to know what they're doing about a sturdy boat to get across the ocean, 'cause I'm betting they didn't bring one with them!), and the ocean (possible risks: sea monsters, pirates, weather, navigational woes, rocks reefs and shoals near land).
> 
> Lan-"I've driven from here almost to the east coast and that's bad enough; I sure as hell wouldn't want to walk it"-efan




See, what bothers me about this as a technique is there's NO reference at all to what the particular scenario is about, any relation to player interests/agenda, stakes (IE does it matter how long the trip takes, narratively) etc. The only consideration is some empty notion that you have to serve some kind of non-existent requirement to present the PC's experience with no appreciable gaps at all. This is just not a genuine need in RPGs.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Your entire example was a misrepresentation.  Games simply don't play out like that........ever.  At least not without a bad DM abusing the playstyle.
> 
> 
> 
> They're acting on it from the 1st step forward towards the giants.  None of the encounters along the way stops that.




You still didn't answer the question. How does the GM know he's put enough opportunities in the player's path to 'think of everything' or 'do all the possible interesting things', or 'enough interesting things' along the way? Isn't this an AESTHETIC CHOICE, and thus ONLY subject to taste???!!! Yes! In our case we have an aesthetic that indicates things should MOVE ALONG and that's at least got the advantage of giving a consistent unambiguous answer to how many digressions are too many, ANY AT ALL!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Yeah, that's a rule/concept I threw out before I even started DMing.



Well, we pretty much ignored it as well. Still, the point stands, even Gygax had some sort of reward of 'good RP' in mind when he developed his game. I guess we could theorize it was actually a deliberately-unworkable sop to people he disagreed with, intended to scuttle their arguments and be unworkable and thus never used in practice. Who knows?



> We still have training requirements, but the whole "good play" bit is long, long gone.  It was also tied to 'properly' playing to your alignment, which when no two people can ever agree on what each alignment defines as is just ripe for headaches.



Well, yeah, we pretty much ignored alignment from day 2. It was, at best, a sort of 'character trait' you wrote on your sheet. I never utilized any of the silly alignment languages and nonsense either. In fact I simply scrapped the whole 'Great Wheel' pretty much from day one. That did make a few items and spells ambiguous, but that was OK, they just didn't work reliably! lol. I mean, if you hit a demon with something that hurt CE beings, it would hurt! If you hit a PC with it, they better be incredibly depraved and actively engaged in some really depraved activity. 



> I'll take your word for that - I was somewhat underwhelmed by the first 4e DMG and even more so by the PH.  The MM was worthwhile, as is any book that has monsters I haven't seen before that I can scoop and convert.
> 
> Lanefan




The 4e DMG1 has a LOT of great stuff in it. Chapters 6 and 7 are excellent for example. The places where it seems to fall down a bit are in the respect of actually expounding a single consistent concept of play. It is rather undecided there. First it says "go to the action!" "say yes" "let the player's invent their own quests" etc. And then it also provides rules for exactly how you break down doors, jump a certain number of feet, how much food you need every day and how many miles you can walk. It describes pre-generated content as an expected norm, and yet presents all the process and material you would need to play Story Now and even No Myth. Plus some of the rules are really not quite fully tested.

DMG2 is just more polished, but similar overall.

The PHB1 is a good solid book. It isn't the most exciting book to read, but it works and does its job. I think all 3 core books could have used a whole additional PT and editing cycle though. 4e should have been slated for 2010, not 2008.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> I just read that section.  How is that different than what I described about the player who wanted to become the leader of the northern barbarians?  I described how players in my games can establish goals for themselves and then pursue them, forcing me to react to their authorship.  @_*pemerton*_ kept fighting me every step of the way, telling me that I was the one authoring everything and the players could only do things to cause me to respond with information.  Now you're saying it's really close to direct player input into the fiction.




I think his commentary was in respect to the conventions of GM-directed play. 1) there may be established fiction which could lead the GM to block these actions. 2) The GM is not obliged to cater to the player's agenda, at all. 3) The GM is free to, even expected to, interject other material concerning his own interests or what he considers may be interesting. 

These points establish the overall point, the GM isn't obliged or expected to allow for the PC to become king of barbarians. In Story Now it will CERTAINLY become a point of narrative, though the PC may still never accomplish it he is virtually guaranteed to at least have a narrative path which leads there.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> So, basically, the players are some lesser form of beast that doesn't have the ability to decide for itself what it wants? If they want an Altar, they can, by gosh, come up with a story element that potentially involves an altar! Lets suppose one of the PCs is a dwarf cleric of Moradin and he has an established interest in such things, then perhaps that interest will be addressed at this time, its at least a possibility.




Yes, except for the part that's no, which is all of it.  How come it's so hard for you to understand that people can enjoy something that they didn't think of?  Do you become some sort of lesser beast whenever something comes up in real life that you didn't think of, but enjoy?  I sure don't, and neither have any of the hundreds of players that I've played with over the decades.



> NO they are not!!!! They are simply 'missing out' on lots of things being irrelevant to their expressed interests in the game. Remember, interests don't have to be narrowly conceived. For instance there was another [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] example of the guy who wanted to conquer the world, remember? That kind of goal could be leveraged for a vast, unlimited, set of possible elements that the GM thinks to add to the game. The giants, the altar, the 'knight hung from the wall', any of those things could be intended as a hook to engage that interest (I'd generally formulate such things in terms of OTHER interests, consequences of past actions, related to known story elements, etc. but that isn't a hard rule).



So as long as you can connect it to a PC interest, however tenuous, it's okay?



> You guys, and maybe there's a subtle distinction here with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], certainly claimed we were railroading players by only presenting specific elements. I think you're splitting hairs here personally. I fully endorse Pemerton's technique, though I stated it could possibly be worth providing an explicit chance for the PCs to do some last-minute prep/tactics in that one situation. RAILROADING is crud like when the GM says "Yeah, that NPC you hired last week was really a spy for the bad guy and he knows all your secret plans, too bad I guess you'll have to assault the castle instead of sneaking in, sorry guys!" or even worse "You missed!" (when you actually hit the NPC that the GM is now giving plot armor to because it protects his backstory).




Railroading is also taking control of the PCs without having an in game reason for the control, eliminating choices, and more.



> I disagree that it is 'weaker on options'. It is STRONGER on options! Players have an infinite number of things they can think of which are fun. They are JUST AS CAPABLE OF DOING SO as the GM!!!!!



It can't be stronger on options.  Players in both styles can think of all the same things, but only one of the styles has a DM also thinking of things for the players to have fun with.  Also, nice bit of hyperbole with the whole infinite fun things.  People are flat out incapable of even coming close to thinking of infinite things, let alone infinite things that are fun.  Heck, at any given moment they aren't even capable of thinking of all the things that they have had fun with in their lives.



> To claim that this is not so isn't to claim a weakness in Story Now, it is to claim that players, as a type of game participant, are uniquely unqualified to come up with fun material.




No, that's provably false.  If you can think of even one thing that is fun, your statement there is false.  I never said they couldn't think of fun things.  I said they can't think of all things that they would find fun, and that's a fact.  People are limited, even geniuses.



> But you aren't talking about a play style here, you're talking about real life and using it as an example of play, which doesn't work. In REAL LIFE you have no choice, you have to drive down to the car lot, that's the way the world works. In an RPG the goal is to have fun playing your character, and the character's actions can be depicted in ANY fashion which meets that goal.




Yes, I know that you can opt to miss out on the fun things along the trip in an RPG.  My point with the example was to demonstrate through an analogy that you can encounter enjoyable things along a trip that you didn't think of yourself.  This is a fact.  In an RPG you can indeed not think of something, have the DM think of it, and still enjoy it.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yes, in every game the player's actions are likely to elicit different responses from the GM, and vice versa. This is the fundamental nature of all human interactions.



Which is why I give an example of play [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s statements that, "The players are saying things to get the DM to give information." are so bloody worthless.  It doesn't mean anything. He should be specifying things that matter, not making a statement that applies to all RPGs. 



> The QUALITY of the interaction is vastly different, which is what is important here. In a GM-centered game, the GM always presents whatever fiction suites him, aside from cases dictated by the rules (IE in D&D usually the combat system, maybe some others to an extent).




This is false.  I run a GM centered game, and I often present fictions that don't suit me, but have to be presented because of what the players have their PCs do.  If a player tells me that his PC is walking north to take over the ice barbarians, I have no choice but to present fictions that fall in line with that.  To do anything else is to both break the social contract and be a bad DM.



> The GM is perfectly free to, and probably should if it will improve the story, challenge the character's beliefs by placing a 'damsel in distress' along the way.




The vast majority of things that I add to a journey can be related to a PC is some way, even if it's sometimes a stretch.  Remember, my goal is for the players to have fun.



> And where did anyone say that you have to go to 'the end of the story' right away? Why do you think this absurd thing? What even IS the end of the story when no story has yet been written??!!




No idea man.  I didn't say anything about "the end of the story".  I specifically said journey.



> Furthermore, in the WA cosmology, Torog is pretty much explicitly set up to be challenged. He's probably the weakest of the gods (except Lolth, and maybe Zehir, both evil gods designed to be opponents). He's certainly the most accessible, in theory you can literally trudge on foot to his realm and meet him in person without any supernatural anything. He literally just lives in a cave (albeit a huge cave very deep in the Earth, etc.).




Okay.  What does this have to do with what I said?


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> You still didn't answer the question. How does the GM know he's put enough opportunities in the player's path to 'think of everything' or 'do all the possible interesting things', or 'enough interesting things' along the way? Isn't this an AESTHETIC CHOICE, and thus ONLY subject to taste???!!! Yes! In our case we have an aesthetic that indicates things should MOVE ALONG and that's at least got the advantage of giving a consistent unambiguous answer to how many digressions are too many, ANY AT ALL!




There isn't such a thing as "all the possible", "enough", "not enough", "think of everything", etc. The question doesn't apply. The DM simply places some things that he thinks the players will find interesting.  If they do, they engage.  If they don't, they pass it by.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think his commentary was in respect to the conventions of GM-directed play. 1) there may be established fiction which could lead the GM to block these actions. 2) The GM is not obliged to cater to the player's agenda, at all. 3) The GM is free to, even expected to, interject other material concerning his own interests or what he considers may be interesting.
> 
> These points establish the overall point, the GM isn't obliged or expected to allow for the PC to become king of barbarians. In Story Now it will CERTAINLY become a point of narrative, though the PC may still never accomplish it he is virtually guaranteed to at least have a narrative path which leads there.




That's not correct though.  To point number 1, 30+ years of play, I haven't seen any established fiction that would block all possible ways to accomplish the PC's goals, without B) being established in such a way that the player wouldn't be breaking the social contract with his declaration.  An example of B would be if the campaign world didn't have barbarians.  A player would be violating the social contract by declaring the goal in the first place.  To point number 2, the DM is obliged by the social contract to do so.  Not doing so is being an asshat and a bad DM.  To point number 3, the DM really shouldn't be putting in things for himself.  The DM's job is to provide an entertaining game for the players, so while yes, he can put in stuff that he thinks is interesting to the players, he is not going to be running the game with his own interests in mind, since that would also be a violation of the social contract.  

The DM isn't obliged or expected to ensure that the PC becomes the king of the barbarians, but he is obliged and expected to allow and support the attempt.


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> No, actually too many choices degrades most experiences. Its better to keep focused and have specific openings to change directions and a limited menu of explicit options. If the players want to make other choices, they can quite easily break in and nominate those choices.



In theory, yes.  In practice, most of the time players will only make other choices, or even consider making other choices or changes of course, if they know a) the option to make those choices exists and b) what options they have to choose from.



> But you aren't talking about a play style here, you're talking about real life and using it as an example of play, which doesn't work. In REAL LIFE you have no choice, you have to drive down to the car lot, that's the way the world works.



And that's also the way a fictional world would work for its inhabitants, were it somewhat realistic.


> In an RPG the goal is to have fun playing your character, and the character's actions can be depicted in ANY fashion which meets that goal.



In an RPG one of the goals is to have fun playing your character.  It's not the only goal by any means.



> You are free to imagine that your way is 'better', and to the extent it is purely a matter of taste there's no dispute. Its not providing 'more choices' though. In fact, IN PRACTICE, I can easily assert that Story Now gives the PCs more choices in the narrative. It certainly is hard to argue it gives less, since 'choice per unit time' is the only possible measure of 'more' or 'less' in this situation please explain to me how the players will have to wait longer to make choices in Story Now. I don't think they will. Nor will the quality of the choices be less, though this is again a subjective measure so I won't try to make silly pointless arguments about it.



I guess the difference is that in one game type it's on the DM to provide some choices and distractions and options thus giving the players knowledge that such exist, where in the second game type it's more on the players to author their own choices and distractions and options...which can be more or less hard to do depending on how open the table is to such authorship.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Why is it 'a bit far', but the trip to the privy isn't? I don't understand... (really, I don't). *If there's nothing expected to be particularly interesting* happening in the 5 months it takes to get to Tokyo it is perfectly acceptable to simply narrate "you have a long, tedious, *sometimes dangerous,* and often uncomfortable trip to Tokyo" and be done with it. I'm not saying that HAS to be the right answer, but it is perfectly acceptable in a wide variety of games.



My point is that the bits I bolded contradict each other.  "Sometimes dangerous" automatically means "interesting" because as soon as there's danger then either combat mechanics (for combat) or some other sort of hazard-resolution mechanics (for other hazards e.g. landslide or getting lost) come into play; with all the attendant risks of bad dice luck leading to someone dying or losing a pile of gear or whatever.

And, even though there might not in the end have been any risk to the PCs at all you and they can't know this until the trip is over; and assuming your game world has weather patterns similar to ours the odds are very good that at least one or two significant weather hazards would arise during a trip that long.  Never mind monsters or hostile inhabitants of an area.



> MANY RPGs have only abstract wealth systems, or maybe even no explicit wealth system at all. d6 Space (old d6 Star Wars basically) has an abstract wealth system. Characters have a number of dice which represent their 'wealth', and various classes of expenditures require checks of a given level in order to successfully buy something. Buying a pair of boots might be a difficulty 3 check, buying a small merchant type starship might be a difficulty 40 check. Some actions can also cause some depletion of wealth (like buying a starship probably will). There is also income in that system, which gives you an idea of your affordable ongoing expenses (starships have upkeep). There actually are cited credit cost values of things, so you can compare and use the numbers in fiction, but PCs don't normally track specific quantities of cash, unless it has a very specific function in a given story.



In a futuristic game I can sort of see wealth being handled differently - part of the whole 'futuristic' thing - but in a typical coin-based medieval-fantasy setting I can't imagine not tracking wealth.

Besides, if people don't have wealth what are the thieves supposed to steal?  



> See, what bothers me about this as a technique is there's NO reference at all to what the particular scenario is about,



I've no clue on any of that - it was your example to start with. 


> any relation to player interests/agenda, stakes (IE does it matter how long the trip takes, narratively) etc. The only consideration is some empty notion that you have to serve some kind of non-existent requirement to present the PC's experience with no appreciable gaps at all. This is just not a genuine need in RPGs.



The relation to player agenda/stakes etc. is that they want to get to Tokyo and this is what's involved in getting there.

In a setting where a journey from Washington to Tokyo is potentially dangerous and certainly time-consuming, when the players state they want their PCs to make this journey, a DM who says in response words to the effect of "OK, you're in Tokyo" is being far too easy on his PCs via bypassing all the risk and danger of the trip. (though he's also denying them some possible xp they might have accrued in dealing with said risks...)

Just because the players say they want to go to Tokyo doesn't mean the PCs have to get there right now, or even this session.

Your point about presenting the PCs' experience without appreciable gaps is also valid...I hate it when something (e.g. research or item-crafting or whatever) becomes relevant later and players want to retcon into gaps and say "Oh, I could have done it during those four months of travel it took us to get here".  I reply with something like "You can't have done it then because you didn't think of it then", and boom: instant argument.  Bleah.

I've learned that the way to prevent this is to a) not leave big gaps behind whenever possible, and b) get players to tell you clearly what their PCs are doing during downtime, at least in general terms.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, yeah, we pretty much ignored alignment from day 2. It was, at best, a sort of 'character trait' you wrote on your sheet. I never utilized any of the silly alignment languages and nonsense either. In fact I simply scrapped the whole 'Great Wheel' pretty much from day one. That did make a few items and spells ambiguous, but that was OK, they just didn't work reliably! lol. I mean, if you hit a demon with something that hurt CE beings, it would hurt! If you hit a PC with it, they better be incredibly depraved and actively engaged in some really depraved activity.



I've kept alignment, and my universe and its deities/planes/etc. are very much alignment-based, but there's lots of gray fuzzy areas when it comes to sentient beings.  Everything smart enough to think has an alignment; though sometimes in the case of PCs the results gained by casting _Know Alignment_ that come from me don't entirely line up with what's written on the character sheet. 

I also tossed the alignment tongues, and - years later - also tossed Thieves' and Assassins' cants as nobody ever used them.



> The PHB1 is a good solid book. It isn't the most exciting book to read,



Dry as dust, is how I remember it. 


> but it works and does its job. I think all 3 core books could have used a whole additional PT and editing cycle though. 4e should have been slated for 2010, not 2008.



If you like such things.

Me, I'd rather they'd have gone straight to what's become 5e.


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## Lanefan

Maxperson said:


> There isn't such a thing as "all the possible", "enough", "not enough", "think of everything", etc. The question doesn't apply. The DM simply places some things that he thinks the players will find interesting.  If they do, they engage.  If they don't, they pass it by.



More importantly, but perhaps not quite as obvious:

The DM placing some things that might be interesting has a use even if the players/PCs don't find those particular things interesting at the time: it informs and-or reminds the players (and PCs) that there's more to the world than what's right in front of their noses nad- in meta terms - it also quietly serves notice that neither the players nor the DM are required to stay tied to whatever story path they might be on.

Sometimes the players also place things of possible interest to other players.  I've run a PC in an adventure set by another player's PC during an ongoing campaign.  She-as-PC set the adventure and left the area; she-as-player gave instructions (and the adventure details) to the DM ahead of time and then sat and watched during the session(s?) where myself and another player played through it.

Howzat for player agency! 

Lan-"somewhat surprisingly I got out of that adventure on time and in one piece, unlike my overly-greedy companion"-efan


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> I've kept alignment, and my universe and its deities/planes/etc. are very much alignment-based, but there's lots of gray fuzzy areas when it comes to sentient beings.  Everything smart enough to think has an alignment; though sometimes in the case of PCs the results gained by casting _Know Alignment_ that come from me don't entirely line up with what's written on the character sheet.




Alignment in my game is used on the DM side as vague guide to how a creature behaves.  I don't have the luxury that the players do of concentrating one just one being, so alignment is invaluable to me.  However, alignments just can't capture anywhere near the entire personality of a person, so for the PCs if a player wants to put an alignment down he can, but I don't care about it for game play.  I'd much rather have the players roleplay a complex personality than the simple caricature that trying to stay within one alignment creates.



> I also tossed the alignment tongues, and - years later - also tossed Thieves' and Assassins' cants as nobody ever used them.




Me, too, except you can add druidic to the mix.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Yes, except for the part that's no, which is all of it.  How come it's so hard for you to understand that people can enjoy something that they didn't think of?  Do you become some sort of lesser beast whenever something comes up in real life that you didn't think of, but enjoy?  I sure don't, and neither have any of the hundreds of players that I've played with over the decades.



It isn't hard for me to understand anything at all! I'm not arguing that. You're the one that claimed that I'm doing it wrong because the players had to actually decide what they wanted and think of things. I'm not saying its 'wrong' to feed them some pre-built story, or make all the decisions about what is in the story, unless they don't want that. I DO believe that players are, generally speaking, very willing and interested in coming up with stuff. More than you give them credit for sometimes. There's no right or wrong way to play. I only object to statements like you telling me I'm denying them choices because I don't play your way. It just isn't like that. Understand?



> So as long as you can connect it to a PC interest, however tenuous, it's okay?



No, what I think is that when you put forward an element like "the skeleton of a knight chained to a wall" it is so general that it COULD relate to almost anything. The knight could hold some secret that can be obtained by laying his bones to rest. His bone could be magical. Finding his resting place could earn a reward or garner favor somewhere. One of the characters might see it as a duty to lay him to rest, despite resistance or danger. He could be a relative of a PC and his death require vengeance. He could owe the PCs a debt that he will repay in some future time. I can think of 50 different ways to tie that into various PC agendas. The problem is I can make up INFINITE things like that, drawn from myth, legend, literary sources, my own imagination, player suggestions, etc. I need some filter, some process with which to winnow down the content included in THIS game at THIS time to something manageable so that the game can flow instead of just flailing around from one minor incident to another. Expressed player interest, campaign or genre focus, etc., all used in Story Now games, can be such a rule. Its a good one because it does mostly guarantee interest in the content.



> Railroading is also taking control of the PCs without having an in game reason for the control, eliminating choices, and more.



Nobody is dictating character actions here. Just narrating the effects of player choices. The players stated they wanted to travel to the giant cave, so they did. Its literally absurd to call that 'railroading'. When you do so you lose all credibility in terms of your analysis. Its like somebody that tells me some absurd IT Architecture fable, I just laugh and stop listening to them, they're clearly not a source of reliable analysis in that field.



> It can't be stronger on options.  Players in both styles can think of all the same things, but only one of the styles has a DM also thinking of things for the players to have fun with.  Also, nice bit of hyperbole with the whole infinite fun things.  People are flat out incapable of even coming close to thinking of infinite things, let alone infinite things that are fun.  Heck, at any given moment they aren't even capable of thinking of all the things that they have had fun with in their lives.



I don't agree, in Story Now, the GM is framing the scenes. He can bring in practically any element he can think of as long as he can tie it into the story and make it relevant (or I guess if it is just purely color then whatever). When I say 'infinite things' I mean that I, and presumably a lot of other people who play RPGs, can keep thinking of 'stuff' indefinitely. If you ask me to give you some sort of piece of game material, and you keep rejecting my offerings, I can keep supplying new ones. I don't know of any limit to my ability to do so, though I guess after a while they might start to become more and more similar to old material. I don't know if that constitutes a proper infinite set or not, it isn't really important to me. The point is I can generate material sufficient to absorb any conceivable amount of time people would actually have to play it in the real world. That is sufficient for the argument at hand. 



> No, that's provably false.  If you can think of even one thing that is fun, your statement there is false.  I never said they couldn't think of fun things.  I said they can't think of all things that they would find fun, and that's a fact.  People are limited, even geniuses.



But they CAN think of the things that they personally find fun. They are uniquely qualified to do that, and nobody else is so qualified. I MIGHT think of things my friends will find fun. If I know them well enough that's even likely, but they're the ones who can navigate their own moods, changing interests, whims, ideas and interests they've never conveyed before, and know what they are bored by and tired of, or just not wanting to do today. That is sufficient. The GM is less qualified to do that FOR the players. What your claim represents is AT LEAST that you will do a better job of it than the players, or I guess alternatively that you are so set on your style of play that you'd rather play a game less interesting to the players in order to play a certain way. 

Now, I think you can make a reasonable case that there are things some players don't want from Story Now, maybe they really DON'T want to think about their motives, maybe they want you to tell them a story. Maybe they want to sip wine in taverns and listen to tales. Maybe a lot of things. I don't NEED to impose a style of gaming on people. I only assert that players often want to engage their own interests and that Story Now does that, and does it best! 



> Yes, I know that you can opt to miss out on the fun things along the trip in an RPG.  My point with the example was to demonstrate through an analogy that you can encounter enjoyable things along a trip that you didn't think of yourself.  This is a fact.  In an RPG you can indeed not think of something, have the DM think of it, and still enjoy it.




I can opt to miss out on BORING things in an RPG. That's one of the major attractions. I don't have to deal with things that aren't interesting. Yes, the GM COULD invent something interesting for me to do along the way, or he could end up boring me. If I chose my own destination with an eye to what I wanted to do, then chances are extremely good that I will have fun there. 

Beyond that, if the GM can engage my interests with some sort of challenge that interposes between me and the destination I wanted to reach, fine! Maybe its in the form of something I could move on past too. Maybe War Machine sees a car crash and he can decide to save people or else go on and finish up what he's doing. Instead of proceeding to New York he stops. OK, that could easily be considered "challenging a character's belief", but I wouldn't want to overuse that kind of ploy. Its fine as a way of illustrating the "price of being a hero" and creating a dilemma that helps define the character, but constantly dangling such things along every path would be silly. Dangling utterly unrelated things along the way is just gumming up the works IMHO. It is totally hit and miss. 

I also don't agree about your 'pacing argument' that there has to be 'trivial stuff' along the way to make the 'good stuff' stand out. There are a lot of ways to produce pacing and rising and falling tension. Cluttering the story with trivia is crude at best IMHO. Notice what both Jackson and Bakshi cut from Fellowship of the Ring, Bombadil. While it is a cool and interesting story in its own right, and JRRT was a great storyteller, so he makes it work, it is still a sidetrack. MANY people who read the books lost interest there. Many skipped the whole section. These sorts of side plots and distractions are questionable at best, and in many cases simply bad news. Unless players signal they're really wanting to go off in some other direction, I don't TRY to introduce them. I certainly don't try to introduce pointless little 'intersections' that lead nowhere and just bog down play. I can create a break in the tension in a fun and interesting way instead, or the players can do that.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Which is why I give an example of play @_*pemerton*_'s statements that, "The players are saying things to get the DM to give information." are so bloody worthless.  It doesn't mean anything. He should be specifying things that matter, not making a statement that applies to all RPGs.



I think there IS a meaningful distinction in terms of what the GM is telling the players and who's engaged by it, and in what way. My point was that, since all gaming is interaction back and forth between participants, then the QUALITY of that interaction is what is meaningful, not its existence. So when you said "its all the same" I objected. I believe that was Pemerton's objection as well...



> This is false.  I run a GM centered game, and I often present fictions that don't suit me, but have to be presented because of what the players have their PCs do.  If a player tells me that his PC is walking north to take over the ice barbarians, I have no choice but to present fictions that fall in line with that.  To do anything else is to both break the social contract and be a bad DM.



I believe you, and I agree! So the question of the thread is now, basically, "why not run it No Myth?" Why have a fixed setting with established facts created by the GM ahead of time, which may become inconvenient stumbling blocks in the way of achieving the desired type of story? I don't mean that to say "why put challenges in the way of the character's goals" either. I could, in No Myth, state that the character has to survive a long and grueling trek far to the north. He could run into all sorts of problems along the way that test his resolve, tempt him to abandon his quest, provide opportunities to gain valuable support/equipment/knowledge, etc. We can both do that. 

Given that you didn't know about the character's goal before the game was started, does it serve your interests to have things predefined. What if there was no place on your map for northern barbarians? It would present some difficulty. You could revamp the map, maybe nobody has anything vested in the current version, but I didn't even make a map, so I have no issue. I mean, we established that there are people who believe backstory and world detail have specific values. I'm pretty equivocal about that myself, but at least we're willing to agree there is a coherent argument there and its not ridiculous, even if we aren't that into it.



> The vast majority of things that I add to a journey can be related to a PC is some way, even if it's sometimes a stretch.  Remember, my goal is for the players to have fun.



Yes, I said the same thing, basically, in a post that probably came after this one. 



> No idea man.  I didn't say anything about "the end of the story".  I specifically said journey.



Well, a lot of comments have had the tenor of "why can't the players just go to the end of the story?" (IE buy the holy sword in the local market on day one). So, when I hear this kind of statement I think of it as a question about pacing and who has responsibility and control over that. 



> Okay.  What does this have to do with what I said?




It was more of an aside  Just saying that in WA Cosmology killing Torog is sort of the on ramp to divine levels of power. Its set up that way. Sort of like killing a demon lord, doable if you're REALLY bad-assed, but then you ARE really bad-assed at that point! Still, its not something that a GM has to cheapen his game to introduce. [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s characters in that game are effectively myths. They're the most powerful members of their races who have ever lived. That's the conceit of 4e, Epic tier is where you're almost like a god. Sort of like 20th level play in AD&D (or the super high-level stuff in BECMI).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> There isn't such a thing as "all the possible", "enough", "not enough", "think of everything", etc. The question doesn't apply. The DM simply places some things that he thinks the players will find interesting.  If they do, they engage.  If they don't, they pass it by.




OK, and I posit that one of the 'right' answers to this is 'zero things', and that's usually what I choose. There's no number that is magically 'railroading' or 'not railroading' (which was the original assertion, that Pemerton was railroading). Again, this is an aesthetic choice and an 'authorial' choice, and is perfectly consonant with good DMing! IMHO as you add more such distractions and 'dross' you degrade the focus of the game and it becomes less engaging. Still, you can add some fairly relevant thing, particularly if it is an obstacle or presents a choice (IE challenges the player's agenda/character beliefs).


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> It isn't hard for me to understand anything at all! I'm not arguing that. You're the one that claimed that I'm doing it wrong because the players had to actually decide what they wanted and think of things. I'm not saying its 'wrong' to feed them some pre-built story, or make all the decisions about what is in the story, unless they don't want that. I DO believe that players are, generally speaking, very willing and interested in coming up with stuff. More than you give them credit for sometimes. There's no right or wrong way to play. I only object to statements like you telling me I'm denying them choices because I don't play your way. It just isn't like that. Understand?




What's with the Strawman?  I've never once argued that you were doing it wrong.  I'm making an argument as this is a discussion, but not only have I never said you were doing it wrong, I've said it was okay to do it that way.  As long as people are having fun, it's not wrong.



> No, what I think is that when you put forward an element like "the skeleton of a knight chained to a wall" it is so general that it COULD relate to almost anything. The knight could hold some secret that can be obtained by laying his bones to rest. His bone could be magical. Finding his resting place could earn a reward or garner favor somewhere. One of the characters might see it as a duty to lay him to rest, despite resistance or danger. He could be a relative of a PC and his death require vengeance. He could owe the PCs a debt that he will repay in some future time. I can think of 50 different ways to tie that into various PC agendas.




Yes.  Lots of very interesting things to be done that the players probably didn't think of.



> The problem is I can make up INFINITE things like that, drawn from myth, legend, literary sources, my own imagination, player suggestions, etc. I need some filter, some process with which to winnow down the content included in THIS game at THIS time to something manageable *so that the game can flow instead of just flailing around from one minor incident to another.* Expressed player interest, campaign or genre focus, etc., all used in Story Now games, can be such a rule. Its a good one because it does mostly guarantee interest in the content.




And this is another misrepresentation of our playstyle. I've played in, or run a game that was like that.



> I don't agree, in Story Now, the GM is framing the scenes. He can bring in practically any element he can think of as long as he can tie it into the story and make it relevant (or I guess if it is just purely color then whatever). When I say 'infinite things' I mean that I, and presumably a lot of other people who play RPGs, can keep thinking of 'stuff' indefinitely. If you ask me to give you some sort of piece of game material, and you keep rejecting my offerings, I can keep supplying new ones. I don't know of any limit to my ability to do so, though I guess after a while they might start to become more and more similar to old material. I don't know if that constitutes a proper infinite set or not, it isn't really important to me. The point is I can generate material sufficient to absorb any conceivable amount of time people would actually have to play it in the real world. That is sufficient for the argument at hand.




You don't agree?  You really think that people can sit down and literally think of every possible thing that could happen?  You could sit here for the rest of your life and not think of everything.  No matter how much you think of, there will be something(many things(yuge things)) that you miss and others might think of.



> But they CAN think of the things that they personally find fun. They are uniquely qualified to do that, and nobody else is so qualified. I MIGHT think of things my friends will find fun. If I know them well enough that's even likely, but they're the ones who can navigate their own moods, changing interests, whims, ideas and interests they've never conveyed before, and know what they are bored by and tired of, or just not wanting to do today. That is sufficient. The GM is less qualified to do that FOR the players. What your claim represents is AT LEAST that you will do a better job of it than the players, or I guess alternatively that you are so set on your style of play that you'd rather play a game less interesting to the players in order to play a certain way.




They are not uniquely qualified to do so.  They are more qualified than I am, but as I know my players well, I am also qualified to think of things that they will find to be fun.  And no, I've never said I will do a better job.  I've said that can do an additional job.  Please stop misrepresenting what I say.



> Now, I think you can make a reasonable case that there are things some players don't want from Story Now, maybe they really DON'T want to think about their motives, maybe they want you to tell them a story. Maybe they want to sip wine in taverns and listen to tales. Maybe a lot of things. I don't NEED to impose a style of gaming on people. I only assert that players often want to engage their own interests and that Story Now does that, and does it best!




That's an opinion and nothing more.  I've played with people who don't want to have to think that hard about their characters.  They have told me that they just want to tell me what they are interesting and asked me to do the heavy lifting for them to realize their interest.  Your way is a way, but it's not the best or worst.  It's just one way that is best for YOU.



> I also don't agree about your 'pacing argument' that there has to be 'trivial stuff' along the way to make the 'good stuff' stand out. There are a lot of ways to produce pacing and rising and falling tension. Cluttering the story with trivia is crude at best IMHO. Notice what both Jackson and Bakshi cut from Fellowship of the Ring, Bombadil. While it is a cool and interesting story in its own right, and JRRT was a great storyteller, so he makes it work, it is still a sidetrack. MANY people who read the books lost interest there. Many skipped the whole section. These sorts of side plots and distractions are questionable at best, and in many cases simply bad news. Unless players signal they're really wanting to go off in some other direction, I don't TRY to introduce them. I certainly don't try to introduce pointless little 'intersections' that lead nowhere and just bog down play. I can create a break in the tension in a fun and interesting way instead, or the players can do that.



That's fine.  Disagreement makes the world go 'round and we all have different opinions, likes and dislikes, desires, etc.  As for Bombadil, I don't think it was cut because it was a side track.  I think it was cut because the movie was already 257663 hours long and things had to be cut.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> That's not correct though.  To point number 1, 30+ years of play, I haven't seen any established fiction that would block all possible ways to accomplish the PC's goals, without B) being established in such a way that the player wouldn't be breaking the social contract with his declaration.  An example of B would be if the campaign world didn't have barbarians.  A player would be violating the social contract by declaring the goal in the first place.



But this still makes my point #1, the GM may block these actions on the basis of some GM-established fictional setting parameters which are of no consequence or interest to the player. Now, if the genre simply doesn't admit of 'northern barbarians' as a concept (there could be a couple flavors of these possibly) then its not a possible goal. This speaks more to the advantages of No Myth than anything else, IMHO. Though even in No Myth I could see a general genre "this just isn't part of the milieu" happening. Still, its a problem most identified with established settings. Middle Earth for example has no viking analogs. It could, but it is established cannon that there are none.



> To point number 2, the DM is obliged by the social contract to do so.  Not doing so is being an asshat and a bad DM.



And to that extent your concept of social contract at the table is consonant with Story Now, and we agree. That is still not a commonly, or certainly at least universally, held position though. I mean, when I discuss with you or other participants, I assume this is a broader discussion than [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s process of play vs AbdulAlhazred's process of play.



> To point number 3, the DM really shouldn't be putting in things for himself.  The DM's job is to provide an entertaining game for the players, so while yes, he can put in stuff that he thinks is interesting to the players, he is not going to be running the game with his own interests in mind, since that would also be a violation of the social contract.



Again, I think this is like point 2, we agree. Still, there are many, probably MOST GMs who play in a fairly 'classic' process who would not agree with this. It certainly raises questions about sandboxes and such things for instance (though I think there are some nuances here too).



> The DM isn't obliged or expected to ensure that the PC becomes the king of the barbarians, but he is obliged and expected to allow and support the attempt.




See, we really agree on a number of things. I still don't really agree with your notion of insisting that the game be a largely continuous narrative filled with lots of extra details that don't relate to anything immediately interesting, nor that skipping such is forcing choices on players. Otherwise we can agree on many things.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> My point is that the bits I bolded contradict each other.  "Sometimes dangerous" automatically means "interesting" because as soon as there's danger then either combat mechanics (for combat) or some other sort of hazard-resolution mechanics (for other hazards e.g. landslide or getting lost) come into play; with all the attendant risks of bad dice luck leading to someone dying or losing a pile of gear or whatever.



Meh, I don't think there's any big contradiction. The players have an agenda, a focus for play. If they travel for 5 months and its 'dangerous' in ways that aren't addressing that, then its just color. You can say, if asked, "Yeah, there was a time you almost got lost in a snowstorm, and then there was this time when you laid low for 3 days to avoid an Apache war party." As I said, its not MANDATORY that you skip all that, but it could well be dramatically more interesting to telescope it all into a transition (I call them interludes). My real point is, there's no fixed time period or distance which makes an elision from the narrative 'too much'. 



> In a futuristic game I can sort of see wealth being handled differently - part of the whole 'futuristic' thing - but in a typical coin-based medieval-fantasy setting I can't imagine not tracking wealth.



HoML does it. The PCs start with X amount of gear (like in 4e, there's a list with associated costs and they get 100sp to spend). From then on their wealth is basically abstract. They might, narratively, find '1000gp', but there's a simple chart that shows what fictional amounts equate to 'trivial', 'significant', and 'great' wealth/expenditure. The basic assumption is that treasures give the PCs 'significant' money, they can achieve significant expenses in the ordinary course of play, possibly with a check required, but not a really difficult one. If the fictional positioning of the game results in a PC becoming separated from his wealth (IE losing all his goods) then he's going to be stuck scraping to make a 'trivial' expense, but normally those are just assumed. 'great' expenses are going to require the characters to pool all their resources, or obtain some unusually rich source of money, and will require difficult checks. Its possible some PC might find this kind of check within his modest reach if, narratively, he's focused on and insured that he acquires wealth as a specific asset (this would probably constitute a major boon in my game, the equivalent of what you gain for going up a level in 4e). It does work. Clearly if the players are going to try to break that system, then the GM will have to push back, but I've never seen that be a real problem in actual games.



> Besides, if people don't have wealth what are the thieves supposed to steal?



Oh, wealth exists, we are just not obsessed with tracking gold coins. Fictionally there's some specific amount of money that anyone possesses. If a player insists that his character count it out, then he can, but there's little point. If you pick a pocket I'll tell you if the haul you got was nothing, trivial, routine, good, or great maybe, but the net effect is still abstract. I mean, in 4e such a haul would simply be part of a treasure parcel and the picking of pockets would be an SC, probably covering many individual attempts. 



> I've no clue on any of that - it was your example to start with.
> The relation to player agenda/stakes etc. is that they want to get to Tokyo and this is what's involved in getting there.



Right, and I acknowledged that its an open question what should be involved. It could be trivial, you asserted that it HAD to be played out.



> In a setting where a journey from Washington to Tokyo is potentially dangerous and certainly time-consuming, when the players state they want their PCs to make this journey, a DM who says in response words to the effect of "OK, you're in Tokyo" is being far too easy on his PCs via bypassing all the risk and danger of the trip. (though he's also denying them some possible xp they might have accrued in dealing with said risks...)



This is filled with notions of play that are very specific to certain ways of running games. I merely assert that your 'universals' are not universal at all.



> Just because the players say they want to go to Tokyo doesn't mean the PCs have to get there right now, or even this session.
> 
> Your point about presenting the PCs' experience without appreciable gaps is also valid...I hate it when something (e.g. research or item-crafting or whatever) becomes relevant later and players want to retcon into gaps and say "Oh, I could have done it during those four months of travel it took us to get here".  I reply with something like "You can't have done it then because you didn't think of it then", and boom: instant argument.  Bleah.
> 
> I've learned that the way to prevent this is to a) not leave big gaps behind whenever possible, and b) get players to tell you clearly what their PCs are doing during downtime, at least in general terms.
> 
> Lanefan




Yeah, well, I wouldn't generally do such a retcon either, but I don't feel a need to build my campaign around avoiding the opening. I just tell the player that doing so would be relying on knowledge of the future they didn't have back then. I guess you could also go back and retcon in a portent or something if you wanted. I might go along with that sort of thing if it was really apropos (IE your character has an established history/backstory/associations that make that plausible on the face of it). 

As I said to Maxperson, I just feel like my general rule is 'zero added extraneous things along the way' is a valid option and the option that is at least a consistent rule I can follow. OTOH I am not known for being 100% consistent, I might add something in the middle of the Tokyo trip if it seems like it would be interesting and relevant, and dramatically 'works'.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> That's fine.  Disagreement makes the world go 'round and we all have different opinions, likes and dislikes, desires, etc.  As for Bombadil, I don't think it was cut because it was a side track.  I think it was cut because the movie was already 257663 hours long and things had to be cut.




I agree, it was cut because of time, and it was the LEAST relevant part of the story, so it was cut first and both directors made the same call. I would have loved it to have been there myself, but I'm not a film maker. In games I try to also avoid similar digressions, as a rule. I figure we can always make up some other characters and go back and explore different material in the next campaign if we want. This is one reason I have tended to keep using the same setting over and over, the roads not taken are still there.


----------



## Lanefan

Maxperson said:


> Alignment in my game is used on the DM side as vague guide to how a creature behaves.  I don't have the luxury that the players do of concentrating one just one being, so alignment is invaluable to me.  However, alignments just can't capture anywhere near the entire personality of a person, so for the PCs if a player wants to put an alignment down he can, but I don't care about it for game play.  I'd much rather have the players roleplay a complex personality than the simple caricature that trying to stay within one alignment creates.



Agreed, though I-as-DM still need to keep a vague track of their alignments so I know who that Lawful-loving weapoin is going to accept and who it's going to painfully reject. 



> Me, too, except you can add druidic to the mix.



Heh - I'd forgotten they even had one.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I also don't agree about your 'pacing argument' that there has to be 'trivial stuff' along the way to make the 'good stuff' stand out. There are a lot of ways to produce pacing and rising and falling tension. Cluttering the story with trivia is crude at best IMHO. Notice what both Jackson and Bakshi cut from Fellowship of the Ring, Bombadil.



Yes, and may they both rot in hell for that.


> While it is a cool and interesting story in its own right, and JRRT was a great storyteller, so he makes it work, it is still a sidetrack.



I think this might hit one of the underlying differences in our hpilosophies here: I'm firmly of the opinion that if a movie has 8 hours worth of good story to tell then make the damn movie 8 hours long!

People complain that the three LotR movies are too long.  I complain that they're not long enough, particularly the first one where so much was skipped.

The Hobbit movies, on the other hand, just didn't have enough story to fill 3 movies...though the extra stuff they put in works quite well IMO.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> No, what I think is that when you put forward an element like "the skeleton of a knight chained to a wall" it is so general that it COULD relate to almost anything. The knight could hold some secret that can be obtained by laying his bones to rest. His bone could be magical. Finding his resting place could earn a reward or garner favor somewhere. One of the characters might see it as a duty to lay him to rest, despite resistance or danger. He could be a relative of a PC and his death require vengeance. He could owe the PCs a debt that he will repay in some future time. I can think of 50 different ways to tie that into various PC agendas. The problem is I can make up INFINITE things like that, drawn from myth, legend, literary sources, my own imagination, player suggestions, etc. I need some filter, some process with which to winnow down the content included in THIS game at THIS time to something manageable so that the game can flow instead of just flailing around from one minor incident to another.



Where I say just throw it all in!  Oftentimes I've found that what you call "flailing around from one minor incident to another" (which is what the first few adventures in my campaigns usually consist of) is the genesis of what later grows to be important in the game, be it via player interest or the DM's pre-conceived story or (most commonly) a combination of both.

So hang the flippin' knight on the wall and see what they make of it!  Hell, for all that it could have been just some random unlucky bonehead who ended up chained to a wall. 



> Expressed player interest, campaign or genre focus, etc., all used in Story Now games, can be such a rule. Its a good one because it does mostly guarantee interest in the content.



True - the hung knight could tie in to something they've already thought about...or it could give them something entirely new to think about.  Either way, it's good.


----------



## darkbard

Lanefan said:


> True - the hung knight




He heh. [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] made a funny.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> But this still makes my point #1, the GM may block these actions on the basis of some GM-established fictional setting parameters which are of no consequence or interest to the player. Now, if the genre simply doesn't admit of 'northern barbarians' as a concept (there could be a couple flavors of these possibly) then its not a possible goal. This speaks more to the advantages of No Myth than anything else, IMHO. Though even in No Myth I could see a general genre "this just isn't part of the milieu" happening. Still, its a problem most identified with established settings. Middle Earth for example has no viking analogs. It could, but it is established cannon that there are none.




The DM is not blocking them, though. By agreeing to play in Darksun, the players have agreed that clerics don't exist, so no blocking is done.   I would also think that by agreeing to play in Darksun, that particular theme is of interest to the players.



> And to that extent your concept of social contract at the table is consonant with Story Now, and we agree. That is still not a commonly, or certainly at least universally, held position though. I mean, when I discuss with you or other participants, I assume this is a broader discussion than [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s process of play vs AbdulAlhazred's process of play.




I think it is broader, though.  The enjoyment of the players should be a universally held position, and killing player ideas the way you are suggesting the DM can do is not fun.



> Again, I think this is like point 2, we agree. Still, there are many, probably MOST GMs who play in a fairly 'classic' process who would not agree with this. It certainly raises questions about sandboxes and such things for instance (though I think there are some nuances here too).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I've seen too many DMPCs to think that DMs putting in things for themselves isn't a thing.  However, most, if not all of those DMs have gone past doing that.  It's sort of an evolution of DMing, with DMs progressing through various phases as they become better and more experienced.  I don't know that it's a "classic" position, so much as classic play makes it easier to happen and so you see it more often there.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> See, we really agree on a number of things. I still don't really agree with your notion of insisting that the game be a largely continuous narrative filled with lots of extra details that don't relate to anything immediately interesting, nor that skipping such is forcing choices on players. Otherwise we can agree on many things.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yeah.  I think that's probably true of most of us here.  Once we get past arguing about all the small things and pet issues, we really have more in common than not.
> 
> Click to expand...
Click to expand...


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> HoML does it. The PCs start with X amount of gear (like in 4e, there's a list with associated costs and they get 100sp to spend). From then on their wealth is basically abstract. They might, narratively, find '1000gp', but there's a simple chart that shows what fictional amounts equate to 'trivial', 'significant', and 'great' wealth/expenditure. The basic assumption is that treasures give the PCs 'significant' money, they can achieve significant expenses in the ordinary course of play, possibly with a check required, but not a really difficult one. If the fictional positioning of the game results in a PC becoming separated from his wealth (IE losing all his goods) then he's going to be stuck scraping to make a 'trivial' expense, but normally those are just assumed. 'great' expenses are going to require the characters to pool all their resources, or obtain some unusually rich source of money, and will require difficult checks. Its possible some PC might find this kind of check within his modest reach if, narratively, he's focused on and insured that he acquires wealth as a specific asset (this would probably constitute a major boon in my game, the equivalent of what you gain for going up a level in 4e). It does work. Clearly if the players are going to try to break that system, then the GM will have to push back, but I've never seen that be a real problem in actual games.




The original Marvel Superheroes of the '80s was also like that.  You had resources of a specific ranking and you made purchases by rolling on a chart.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, and I posit that one of the 'right' answers to this is 'zero things', and that's usually what I choose. There's no number that is magically 'railroading' or 'not railroading' (which was the original assertion, that Pemerton was railroading). Again, this is an aesthetic choice and an 'authorial' choice, and is perfectly consonant with good DMing! IMHO as you add more such distractions and 'dross' you degrade the focus of the game and it becomes less engaging. Still, you can add some fairly relevant thing, particularly if it is an obstacle or presents a choice (IE challenges the player's agenda/character beliefs).




I agree that 0 can be a right answer.  That said, I will again say that I didn't call it railroading because he had 0 things on the way to the giants.


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> Agreed, though I-as-DM still need to keep a vague track of their alignments so I know who that Lawful-loving weapoin is going to accept and who it's going to painfully reject.




See, as the DM I can see how they are playing their PC, so I know whether they will be a fit with a particular item or not.  I don't need to see it in terms of LG, CE or whatever.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> There isn't such a thing as "all the possible", "enough", "not enough", "think of everything", etc. The question doesn't apply. *The DM simply places some things that he thinks the players will find interesting.*  If they do, they engage.  If they don't, they pass it by.



The question [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and I are asking pertains to the bolded bit: _why_?

And the assertion I am adding to that is: you are spending time at the table on something that the GM has injected that - even if in the end the players ignore it - sucks up time at the table on fiction that the GM wants to relate to the players. Hence it is a burden on player agency with respect to the content of the shared fiction.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> The DM is not blocking them, though. By agreeing to play in Darksun, the players have agreed that clerics don't exist, so no blocking is done.   I would also think that by agreeing to play in Darksun, that particular theme is of interest to the players.



I don't disagree that genre, or in the case of DS a specific milieu that has particular genre conventions that are desired, isn't an OK reason to make certain specific options unavailable. So, yes, if the players agree to play DS and then insist they want to go off to visit the northern barbarians who don't exist in that game and aren't genre appropriate for it, then its on them, not me as GM. But if they're playing in generic fantasy land, which covers MOST D&D campaigns more-or-less, then its a little less clear why that shouldn't be allowed, or that the players ruled it out.



> I think it is broader, though.  The enjoyment of the players should be a universally held position, and killing player ideas the way you are suggesting the DM can do is not fun.



So, now Story Now techniques are 'killing player ideas'??? Ummmmm? Huh? What? Gotten lost in a maze of posts or something? Sorry, you're not making any sense to me here. The universal position is that players knowledge of what they want is deeper than anyone else's and that their interests should be played to, that's NOT killing their ideas! 



> I've seen too many DMPCs to think that DMs putting in things for themselves isn't a thing.  However, most, if not all of those DMs have gone past doing that.  It's sort of an evolution of DMing, with DMs progressing through various phases as they become better and more experienced.  I don't know that it's a "classic" position, so much as classic play makes it easier to happen and so you see it more often there.



Yeah, I could imagine a DMPC in Story Now, nothing prevents it, but it seems like it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense. Certainly not in the fairly distasteful way that most such creatures exist (IE as a sort of Mary Sue and plot enforcer). Anyway, I guess we agree on this one . 



> Yeah.  I think that's probably true of most of us here.  Once we get past arguing about all the small things and pet issues, we really have more in common than not.




In a lot of ways, though I think we do GM using fairly diverse strategies. There are common techniques though, and the ultimate goal is the same for the most part.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> The original Marvel Superheroes of the '80s was also like that.  You had resources of a specific ranking and you made purchases by rolling on a chart.




Right, that might have been the origin of the whole thing. That game was way ahead of its time in many respects.


----------



## Emerikol

pemerton said:


> Ron Edwards at the Forge did this. It made a lot of people angry.




I think Ron's problem was he tried to explain why and how people liked something instead of just categorizing things.  So people got mad that they were or weren't this or that.  It was stupid.


----------



## Emerikol

pemerton said:


> Because the real world is not a fiction that someone authored. Asking _who has agency over the content of the real world_ doesn't make any sense. The real world isn't _content/I], it's actual stuff that enters into actual causal processes.
> _



_

Just because someone sets a chess board on the table, doesn't mean you don't have the agency of moving the pieces.  I think the big gap here between our styles is that you assume a lot is getting made up on the spot and it's either the DM controlling whats made up on the spot or the PC's.

The world is built.  Mostly ahead of time.  If a player asks about something here is the process I would go through.

1.  Is it obviously something that exists.  My map shows a building with a window.  So no further need to check anything.

2.  Is it something that likely exists if any sort of effort is put out.  Like finding a stone on the side of a road.  If there is no pressure then I just say yes.   If there is pressure, then I examine the designed world's notes and I make an educated guess at what the probability is that a stone is right there and I roll.  

3.  Suppose they need information about some magic item they found.  Is it rare?  Is it common?  The design of my world will dictate those things.  So again I roll a die in most cases based on the probability that someone in this village knows that information.  Of course, if I already know that a powerful archmage lives in the village perhaps I roll and then just say yes regardless.  

4.  On the other hand, there are times when I know with certainty that the answer is no.  This is somewhat rare and mostly revolves around well defined features.  

5.  For NPC's that I've bothered to detail out very well, I will know how easily they are bribed or not and I will roll a die to see if they succeed in their bribe attempt.   In other cases, suppose it's a guard that I haven't detailed that well.  Then I will probably base it upon how well I believe guards in general in this area are corruptible.  I definitely have the locale detailed out enough to make a very educated guess.

You see I am merely a moderator. The world is created. Yes there is a limit. I'm not God. But I can make reasonable assumptions based on what I do know.  The closer to the center of the sandbox someone is the more likely I am to know the exact details.  If it's about some far off Kingdom, and the question is very specific, then I may have to roll a dice.

My players though enjoy knowing that the world mostly exists.  I'm not making it up nor are they but rather they feel they are actually in a living breathing world.  As DM, I work hard to foster that feeling.  Why?  Because that is fun.  

I am not big on Player fostered world matter that is not closely related to their character.  If they want to define something about their background or they want to detail out an organization they are building up or something, they will meet with me and mostly it will go.  I can reject something though if it clashes with the world.  The players wouldn't have it any other way.  They want the world to be consistent and with a high degree of verisimilitude._


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> But if they're playing in generic fantasy land, which covers MOST D&D campaigns more-or-less, then its a little less clear why that shouldn't be allowed, or that the players ruled it out.



Are you saying it's unclear that the DM should allow the players to go after their goal, or that it's unclear whether the players agreed not to go after that particular goal?



> So, now Story Now techniques are 'killing player ideas'??? Ummmmm? Huh? What? Gotten lost in a maze of posts or something? Sorry, you're not making any sense to me here. The universal position is that players knowledge of what they want is deeper than anyone else's and that their interests should be played to, that's NOT killing their ideas!




Deep breaths, man.  Deep breaths.  

You were talking about my style of play and said that the DM was not obligated to follow the players goals.  I said that yes, the DM is obligated through the social contract not to be an asshat.  You responded with it not being a universal thing and that you assumed that it was a broader discussion than just how you and I do things.  That brings us to my last response which was that not being an asshat and allowing players to follow their goals should be a universally held position, as not doing so kills fun.  At no time was I saying or implying that Story Now kills player ideas.


----------



## Campbell

Here's what I find entirely frustrating about this conversation: I cannot speak to how  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] runs his game or  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] runs his game unless they clearly speak to the principles that determine how they frame situation. I get that you guys identify with the orthodoxy, but that profession does not seem to line up with any particular text. There has also been indications at least from  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] that seem to run counter to orthodox play. Also the reluctance to address the actual social environment that exists at the table is something I find vexing. No matter how much we choose to ignore them the very real social pressures that exist at our tables inform and influence the way we play these games. We see this in the way  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has indicated more goal focused players have been pressured to abandon those goals in games he has played in and run. How am I suppose to address my criticism when my criticism of the orthodox play culture is met by those who pledge fealty to the orthodox culture, but are not part of it as I understand it and have experienced it respond with _not in my game_?

The other frustrating thing for me is the continued insistence that matters of technique, principles, and play environment should not matter to players in the face of continued criticism of alternative play techniques, principles, and social expectations that divert from mainstream thought. I see only an insistence that no meaningful expectations should be brought to play.

I will take this moment to explain why this stuff matters to me: as far as I am concerned what is theoretically permitted at the table does not matter. What matters to me is what each participant is socially free to do, what behaviors they are socially rewarded for, what we are socially free to object to, and how we are expected to respond to one another. It does not matter if I can theoretically declare an action if no one else will accept it. It does not matter if there is freedom of action if the social expectation is that we should be following the GM's adventure to the T. It does not matter to me if a player can declare a bunch of stuff about their character if no one else cares and the GM is socially free to treat a player character character as if they landed from an alien spacecraft in all the ways that matter.

For the type of play that I like the most what I want is a sense of vigorous collaboration. I want everyone to bring something to the table and for us to find out together what everything really means. It's important to me that we all play with integrity and passion because the moment *demands* we do so.  The most fundamental requirement is that we are all fans of each others' characters and that our focus is on them. Nothing is more crucial. I don't care about individual creativity. I care about shared creativity. The interesting part is when we get to mess with each other's stuff.


----------



## Maxperson

Campbell said:


> I get that you guys identify with the orthodoxy, but that profession does not seem to line up with any particular text.



That's going to be difficult, especially in 5e where they write vaguely and to encourage multiple styles of play.



> Also the reluctance to address the actual social environment that exists at the table is something I find vexing. No matter how much we choose to ignore them the very real social pressures that exist at our tables inform and influence the way we play these games.




We haven't ignored the social environment.  We address it every time we mention the social contract.  



> How am I suppose to address my criticism when my criticism of the orthodox play culture is met by those who pledge fealty to the orthodox culture, but are not part of it as I understand it and have experienced it respond with _not in my game_?




This sentence makes no sense.  I need you to explain it more clearly so I can understand exactly what it is that you are trying to say.  



> The other frustrating thing for me is the continued insistence that matters of technique, principles, and play environment should not matter to players in the face of continued criticism of alternative play techniques, principles, and social expectations that divert from mainstream thought. I see only an insistence that no meaningful expectations should be brought to play.




By who?  I haven't seen a single person insist that no meaningful expectations should be brought to play.  Even [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] who is probably the most traditional of those who are in this discussion hasn't said that.



> I will take this moment to explain why this stuff matters to me: as far as I am concerned what is theoretically permitted at the table does not matter. What matters to me is what each participant is socially free to do, what behaviors they are socially rewarded for, what we are socially free to object to, and how we are expected to respond to one another.




This is going to vary from table to table with the social contract.



> It does not matter if I can theoretically declare an action if no one else will accept it. It does not matter if there is freedom of action if the social expectation is that we should be following the GM's adventure to the T. It does not matter to me if a player can declare a bunch of stuff about their character if no one else cares and the GM is socially free to treat a player character character as if they landed from an alien spacecraft in all the ways that matter.




Okay.  Nobody is saying that you have to follow the adventure to the T.  That's railroading.  



> For the type of play that I like the most what I want is a sense of vigorous collaboration. I want everyone to bring something to the table and for us to find out together what everything really means. It's important to me that we all play with integrity and passion because the moment *demands* we do so.  The most fundamental requirement is that we are all fans of each others' characters and that our focus is on them. Nothing is more crucial. I don't care about individual creativity. I care about shared creativity. The interesting part is when we get to mess with each other's stuff.



That's fine.  You can opt for the story now style


----------



## Aenghus

Any RPG involves two somewhat-separate activities, the game itself, and the social event around the game, meeting up face to face or online, catching up with each other, and other activities and rituals that become associated with the game. How much people care about the game itself, or the social event varies hugely.

Most games can tolerate passengers, people who attend the game but don't participate. 

I get the feeling that conventional GM-driven games can more easily facilitate casual or less-invested players. The player can generate or be given a PC, often a simpler one, and the GM can handle the bulk of the work to customise the game experience to the aesthetics and mechanical preferences of the particular player. This can translate to not punishing players for a lack of system mastery. More casual players have a detailed gameworld to interact with, and can take small actions in the gameworld that lack the inherent weight of actions in Story Now games. 

Story Now games seem to demand a lot more investment from players to pay off. I'm not saying that casual players can't participate at all, but a lack of mechanical engagement or system mastery will limit their interaction with the game (unless there's fudging). Similarly, I've seen GM-driven games that insist on high system mastery from all participants, as that's the aspect of the game the group emphasises. I've seen other GM-driven groups that emphasise roleplay and downplays rules.

RPGs permit an infinity of content and options, but for reasons of sanity and practicality etc most groups place voluntary limits on what they use. These limits can be on rules, content, standards of social interaction etc etc.

I know some players like to argue and debate, sometimes to levels I find personally belligerent and unacceptable. Conversely, I prefer a more collaborative game with a clear social contract, that some might deem boring, though it certainly isn't to me or my players. It's a big world, room enough for all. We don't have to play in the same game, and don't have to aim for watered-down lowest common denominator gaming.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Aenghus said:


> Story Now games seem to demand a lot more investment from players to pay off. I'm not saying that casual players can't participate at all, but a lack of mechanical engagement or system mastery will limit their interaction with the game (unless there's fudging). Similarly, I've seen GM-driven games that insist on high system mastery from all participants, as that's the aspect of the game the group emphasises. I've seen other GM-driven groups that emphasise roleplay and downplays rules.




I don't know. I don't think there's any specific degree of system mastery or player skill/experience that is demanded by Story Now IN GENERAL. Many such systems are very simple and easy to master. Moreover, if the emphasis is really on the STORY part, then the mechanics are mostly a way of expressing that. There's not so much of a problem as there might be in a game where you better understand how Fireball works, or else you'll toast the party! In a game where you declare what you WANT to happen, then that's a much more natural language. Not saying all Story Now games are like that, some like BW are quite complex, mechanically. I think, at worst, it isn't worse than with other types of games. Probably over all things are about the same. How friendly a game is probably depends more on the table than the rules.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> in a typical coin-based medieval-fantasy setting I can't imagine not tracking wealth.
> 
> Besides, if people don't have wealth what are the thieves supposed to steal?



No one is saying people don't have wealth. I'm saying that there is no wealth mechanic.

There are other ways to adjudicate the results of an attempt at theft than changing numbers on sheets under a "gp" heading.



Lanefan said:


> The DM placing some things that might be interesting has a use even if the players/PCs don't find those particular things interesting at the time: it informs and-or reminds the players (and PCs) that there's more to the world than what's right in front of their noses and- in meta terms - it also quietly serves notice that neither the players nor the DM are required to stay tied to whatever story path they might be on.



Given that there is no "story path" in the games I run, there is no need to "serve notice" in the way you describe.

And I don't need to "inform the players" that there's "more to the world" by narrating irrelevant stuff either. I've never had any trouble conveying the scope of the world in my games when I've wanted to.



Lanefan said:


> "Sometimes dangerous" automatically means "interesting" because as soon as there's danger then either combat mechanics (for combat) or some other sort of hazard-resolution mechanics (for other hazards e.g. landslide or getting lost) come into play; with all the attendant risks of bad dice luck leading to someone dying or losing a pile of gear or whatever.



This assume we're playing a wargame or something similar. But otherwise there's no reason to spend time on this stuff if it's not interesting.

"You make your way through the Underdark for several arduous weeks before arriving at a lava-filled cavern that looks like the one the dwarves described to you. Every make a DC 20 Endurance check - if you fail, you're down a healing surge when you arrive."

That's enough to convey a dangerous and challenging journey through the Underdark, if it's not where the action is going to be.



Lanefan said:


> even though there might not in the end have been any risk to the PCs at all you and they can't know this until the trip is over; and assuming your game world has weather patterns similar to ours the odds are very good that at least one or two significant weather hazards would arise during a trip that long.  Never mind monsters or hostile inhabitants of an area.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> In a setting where a journey from Washington to Tokyo is potentially dangerous and certainly time-consuming, when the players state they want their PCs to make this journey, a DM who says in response words to the effect of "OK, you're in Tokyo" is being far too easy on his PCs via bypassing all the risk and danger of the trip. (though he's also denying them some possible xp they might have accrued in dealing with said risks...)



I don't play RPGs to model (with incredibly weak models!) what might happen to random people travelling from Washingto to Tokyo.

And I can frame as many challenging scenes in Tokyo as I can in a voyage thereto. Which give the players just as much opportunity to play and advance their PCs.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Maybe War Machine sees a car crash and he can decide to save people or else go on and finish up what he's doing. Instead of proceeding to New York he stops. OK, that could easily be considered "challenging a character's belief", but I wouldn't want to overuse that kind of ploy. Its fine as a way of illustrating the "price of being a hero" and creating a dilemma that helps define the character, but constantly dangling such things along every path would be silly. Dangling utterly unrelated things along the way is just gumming up the works IMHO.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I also don't agree about your 'pacing argument' that there has to be 'trivial stuff' along the way to make the 'good stuff' stand out. There are a lot of ways to produce pacing and rising and falling tension. Cluttering the story with trivia is crude at best IMHO.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I certainly don't try to introduce pointless little 'intersections' that lead nowhere and just bog down play. I can create a break in the tension in a fun and interesting way instead, or the players can do that.



Right. War Machine saving some car crash victims while flying back to DC from his fight with Titanium Man is just colour. We don't normallly need to spend time on it - if it matters at all, it can be narrated briefly in the course of framing the next scene.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I can opt to miss out on BORING things in an RPG. That's one of the major attractions. I don't have to deal with things that aren't interesting. Yes, the GM COULD invent something interesting for me to do along the way, or he could end up boring me. If I chose my own destination with an eye to what I wanted to do, then chances are extremely good that I will have fun there.



Agreed.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Nobody is dictating character actions here. Just narrating the effects of player choices. The players stated they wanted to travel to the giant cave, so they did. Its literally absurd to call that 'railroading'.



I'll go further: it's not railroading to tell the players that their PCs have been spotted by sentries.


----------



## pemerton

Emerikol said:


> Just because someone sets a chess board on the table, doesn't mean you don't have the agency of moving the pieces.



Sure. Those are actual things that a real person does in the real world, involving various physical things (pieces, board) understood to have a certain siginficance as game pieces.

The clearest analogue in a RPG is declaring an action for your PC, and rolling dice to see whether or not the action succeeds.

The biggest difference between chess and a RPG is that a RPG involves a shared fiction, which provides context for action declaration and action resolution.



Emerikol said:


> I think the big gap here between our styles is that you assume a lot is getting made up on the spot and it's either the DM controlling whats made up on the spot or the PC's.



No. In the context of "GM-driven" RPGing, I mostly wrote about the GM reading things from, or referring to, his/her notes. It is [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] who has insistied that even in GM-driven RPGing most stuff is being made up during the course of play.



Emerikol said:


> The world is built.  Mostly ahead of time.  If a player asks about something here is the process I would go through.
> 
> 1.  Is it obviously something that exists.  My map shows a building with a window.  So no further need to check anything.
> 
> 2.  Is it something that likely exists if any sort of effort is put out.  Like finding a stone on the side of a road.  If there is no pressure then I just say yes.   If there is pressure, then I examine the designed world's notes and I make an educated guess at what the probability is that a stone is right there and I roll.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> 5. For NPC's that I've bothered to detail out very well, I will know how easily they are bribed or not and I will roll a die to see if they succeed in their bribe attempt.   In other cases, suppose it's a guard that I haven't detailed that well.  Then I will probably base it upon how well I believe guards in general in this area are corruptible.  I definitely have the locale detailed out enough to make a very educated guess.



This is all more-or-less as per Gygaxian dungeoneering. As I said in the OP, I think it breaks down once worlds get remotely verimilitudinous.

Eg a PC goes to a baker in a moderately sized city to look for a mince pie. Does the baker have one for sale? What is the probability?

At a beach, what is the probability of some driftwood being within reach?

In a bar, what is the probability of someone starting a fight if a PC is rude to him/her?

And do the players know these probabilities? If not, how are they meant to meaningfully declare actions for their PCs?



Emerikol said:


> there are times when I know with certainty that the answer is no.  This is somewhat rare and mostly revolves around well defined features.



This is an example of what I describe as "hidden" or unrevealed backstory being used to defeat player action declarations, by being treated as an aspect of the fictional positioning that determines the outcome, although the player didn't know about it.

In classic dungeon play, a significant goal of play is for the players to _learn this stuff_ - ie to learn, by means of "exploration", the content of the GM's notes. But in "living, breathing world" play I think that that sort of goal becomes much harder, as the parameters of the "exploration" task become almost completely open-ended.



Emerikol said:


> You see I am merely a moderator. The world is created.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> My players though enjoy knowing that the world mostly exists.  I'm not making it up nor are they but rather they feel they are actually in a living breathing world.  As DM, I work hard to foster that feeling.  Why?  Because that is fun.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The players <snippage> want the world to be consistent and with a high degree of verisimilitude.



I think there are some non-sequiturs here.

As a GM, I work hard to foster a feeling of a "living, breathing world", with a high degree of consitency and verisimilitude. My own view is that I do a reasonable job - the gameworlds of my campaigns seems as rich and evocative as most examples I read about on ENworld, for instance, and moreso than many.

There is no general connection between these goals for setting, and having the setting authored by the GM in advance so that a signficant goal of play is the players learning what that is. If players enjoy play oriented around such learning, well, obviously that's their preference and their prerogative. I'm just denying that there is any special connection betwen that particular technique, and a rich and verisimilitudinous setting.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> And I don't need to "inform the players" that there's "more to the world" by narrating irrelevant stuff either. I've never had any trouble conveying the scope of the world in my games when I've wanted to.




Sure, the scope of the world is say, 7.  You narrate 7, conveying the scope.  We tell them 2+2+2+1 = 7, conveying depth about that scope, which gives it a different feel.  



> This assume we're playing a wargame or something similar. But otherwise there's no reason to spend time on this stuff if it's not interesting.
> 
> "You make your way through the Underdark for several arduous weeks before arriving at a lava-filled cavern that looks like the one the dwarves described to you. Every make a DC 20 Endurance check - if you fail, you're down a healing surge when you arrive."
> 
> That's enough to convey a dangerous and challenging journey through the Underdark, if it's not where the action is going to be.




I've played 1e, 2e, 3e and 5e and never played a wargame when I did so.  Not once.



> And I can frame as many challenging scenes in Tokyo as I can in a voyage thereto. Which give the players just as much opportunity to play and advance their PCs.




Sure,  but you do it without the same depth of scope that our style has.  Fast forwarding from one major even to another has the effect of diminishing depth of the world in order to enhance depth of character.  I'm not yet convinced that the trade-off is worth it.  Our style can get some very good depth of character without sacrificing depth of world.



> I'll go further: it's not railroading to tell the players that their PCs have been spotted by sentries.



It is if you deprived them of the chance to approach stealthily by giving them about .5 seconds between you leave the dwarves and you are spotted.  I personally don't care to play "Guess what the DM will do to us if we don't prepare for every contingency before we leave."  I don't have information about what the area the giants live in is like, so I can't properly give you those sorts of instructions in advance.  If you then play my PC and bypass the approach to the giant's territory and cause me to be spotted, that's a railroad.  I should be given the chance to see what the approach is like in order to convey to you what I would like my PC to do on that approach.


----------



## pemerton

Aenghus said:


> Most games can tolerate passengers, people who attend the game but don't participate.
> 
> I get the feeling that conventional GM-driven games can more easily facilitate casual or less-invested players. The player can generate or be given a PC, often a simpler one, and the GM can handle the bulk of the work to customise the game experience to the aesthetics and mechanical preferences of the particular player. This can translate to not punishing players for a lack of system mastery. More casual players have a detailed gameworld to interact with, and can take small actions in the gameworld that lack the inherent weight of actions in Story Now games.
> 
> Story Now games seem to demand a lot more investment from players to pay off. I'm not saying that casual players can't participate at all, but a lack of mechanical engagement or system mastery will limit their interaction with the game





AbdulAlhazred said:


> I don't know. I don't think there's any specific degree of system mastery or player skill/experience that is demanded by Story Now IN GENERAL. Many such systems are very simple and easy to master.



I think "story now" is demanding not so much in the mechanical sense (4e or BW is mechanically demanding, but HeroQuest revised or Cortex+ Heroic really aren't) but in that the player has to have some vision for where s/he wants the game to go.

And in any game that's not completely light-hearted, s/he has to be prepared to stick to some sort of vision even as his/her PC suffers adversity. I think that can turn out to be surprisingly hard for some players.



Campbell said:


> For the type of play that I like the most what I want is a sense of vigorous collaboration. I want everyone to bring something to the table and for us to find out together what everything really means. It's important to me that we all play with integrity and passion because the moment *demands* we do so.  The most fundamental requirement is that we are all fans of each others' characters and that our focus is on them. Nothing is more crucial. I don't care about individual creativity. I care about shared creativity. The interesting part is when we get to mess with each other's stuff.



This clear statement of preference made me think about my own.

Introspection is hard, but I think I want to say this: most important to me is player engagement with, and investment in, the fiction. I want the players to care what happens in the game. I want it to go beyond mere pretending and into (what I call) "inhabitation". Things I think of are a player saying "I feel really good about not having killed that bear" - where they chose to tame rather than fight the bear not because it was easier (an elite 13th (?) level challenge either in combat or as a skill challenge) but because they cared about the life of an animal. Or the party spending an hour debating what to do about the name of the Raven Queen, because some want to promote her and others want to constrain here. Or the player of the epic tier fighter who is now the god of imprisonment giving an impassioned speech in the court of Yan-C-Bin about the fate that will befall any djinni who help precipitate a Dusk War - and spending an action point to make sure that the Intimidate check is a success.

I've got nothing against crunchy mechanics - I play 4e and Burning Wheel, and spent nearly 20 years playing Rolemaster - but I don't want my RPGing to feel like wargaming. The mechanics should support inhabitation, and help my character feel like my character. They shouldn't create a pull to expedience that gets in the way of playing my character.

For me, it is these reasons that make me favour a player-driven game. I'm sure creativity is in there somewhere, but that's not the primary concept or description that I emphasise.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> No. In the context of "GM-driven" RPGing, I mostly wrote about the GM reading things from, or referring to, his/her notes. It is [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] who has insistied that even in GM-driven RPGing most stuff is being made up during the course of play.




That's because, no matter how detailed the notes about the world, you aren't going to write up more than 5% of it, which means a lot will happen outside of those notes and you will  have to guess/make up things.  See the #5 you quoted.



> This is all more-or-less as per Gygaxian dungeoneering. As I said in the OP, I think it breaks down once worlds get remotely verimilitudinous.
> 
> Eg a PC goes to a baker in a moderately sized city to look for a mince pie. Does the baker have one for sale? What is the probability?
> 
> At a beach, what is the probability of some driftwood being within reach?
> 
> In a bar, what is the probability of someone starting a fight if a PC is rude to him/her?
> 
> And do the players know these probabilities? If not, how are they meant to meaningfully declare actions for their PCs?




Players don't need to know the probabilities in order to meaningfully declare actions for their PCs.  I've gone in to strange places and had plenty of meaningful interactions, without knowing anything about the place in advance other than it was a post office, store, party, or whatever.  The meaning is in the interaction between the PC being rude and the bar patron, not in whether a fight happens or not.  



> As a GM, I work hard to foster a feeling of a "living, breathing world", with a high degree of consitency and verisimilitude. My own view is that I do a reasonable job - the gameworlds of my campaigns seems as rich and evocative as most examples I read about on ENworld, for instance, and moreso than many.




I don't see how that's even possible.  One of the biggest hallmarks of a "living, breathing world" is that stuff goes on in the world outside of the PCs, the influence of the PCs, and what they are interested in.  They will hear stories and rumors about what is happening in Waterdeep, even as they go about their own interests in the far south.  In story now, nothing goes on outside of the PCs like that.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> I've played 1e, 2e, 3e and 5e and never played a wargame when I did so.  Not once.



OK. I don't see how that has any bearing on my reply to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]. Are you agreeing or disagreeing with him that ""Sometimes dangerous" automatically means "interesting" because as soon as there's danger then either combat mechanics (for combat) or some other sort of hazard-resolution mechanics (for other hazards e.g. landslide or getting lost) come into play"?



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I can frame as many challenging scenes in Tokyo as I can in a voyage thereto. Which give the players just as much opportunity to play and advance their PCs.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Sure,  but you do it without the same depth of scope that our style has.  Fast forwarding from one major even to another has the effect of diminishing depth of the world in order to enhance depth of character.
Click to expand...


How do you know this? Were you at the table? Would the world have been "deeper" because I mentioned a near-miss with a light plane flying without a licence over Siberia? And made the players roll to see whether or not they collided with it?

Where are your actual play posts that show this depth of world resulting from your techniques?



Maxperson said:


> Sure, the scope of the world is say, 7.  You narrate 7, conveying the scope.  We tell them 2+2+2+1 = 7, conveying depth about that scope, which gives it a different feel.



I have no idea what this metaphor is meant to convey.

I've got dozens of actual play posts on these boards, with several links to some of them in this thread. Here are extracts from two of them:

[sblock]







pemerton said:


> Not long after defeating Paldemar, the PCs explored an ancient necromancer's tower (the Bloodtower on the Moorland, from Open Grave). Therein they found:
> 
> an imposing statue carved in the likeness of some ancient, alien creature with too many eyes in its head and a body type similar to a cross between a dwarf and a skinned corpse.
> 
> An inscription in the statue’s base reads in the Rellanic script, “Ometh watches from beyond the grave.”
> 
> . . .
> 
> Runes etched on the sanctum walls reveal that this chamber was once a chapel to an entity known as Ometh, once an exarch of a deity of death.​
> In the course of play, this got elaborated on somewhat: Ometh was an exarch of Nerrul who was taken by the Raven Queen into her service when she overthrew the former death god. At the time, the paladin was suspicious of any exarch recruited in such circumstances, moreso when a statue to it is found in a Vecna-ites tower.
> 
> Ometh recurred from time to time as a subject of conversation among the players, and an object of the paladin's hostility, but only came to prominence again when the PCs reached Epic tier. At that point, the paladin had a dream of a part of the Shadowfell he had not heard of before - the Bridge that may be Traversed but Once. He saw the wailing souls of the dead trudging across it, into some unknowable distance, under the cruel supervision of Ometh. The paladin then became more convinced than ever that Ometh was no good, and resolved that he would somehow remove Ometh from his role as keeper of the bridge.
> 
> A couple of levels later, and the PCs are debating whether to continue through the Underdark to find and liberate Torog's Soul Abattoir (this is the paladin's quest) or instead to travel to Mal Arundak, a fortress of Pelor on another plane, to liberate it from siege. The Mal Arundak faction wins the debate (in the end I made them roll dice to settle an argument that seemed interminable and had carried over two sessions), and so the PCs find themselves on The Barrens riding towards Mal Arundak on conjured steeds. (The Barrens is the Abyssal realm of Oublivae, from Demonomicon. Mal Arundak is described in The Plane Below. I am merging the two setting elements, and also borrowing from the description of the Deadhold Wasteland from module P2.) En route they find a deep pit, which - upon inspection - turns out to have been an oubliette trapping the spirit, or some other remnant, or Elidyr, the last king of Nerath. The paladin says a prayer to help Elidyr's spirit to rest, and in the process sees (in a vision) Elidyr's spirit at the Bridge that may be Traversed but Once. A further prayer frees Elidyr from that fate and sees him off to a happier afterlife, much to the chagrin of Ometh. Further en route they find a buried Nerathis castle - all ruins of civilisation and things lost end up in The Barrens - and discover skeletons of the dead within it. The paladin says prayers over them, and frees both from Ometh and the (uncertain, but unpleasant) fate of the Bridge.
> 
> The player of the paladin was enjoying the repeated thwarting of Ometh, and so I decided it was time for Ometh to appear!
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The highlight for me came when Ometh was bloodied, and the paladin confronted him as to his motivations and (suspected) treachery. And Ometh explained the basis on which he had entered into the Raven Queen's service - he had helped her hide her name "with beings beyond the stars", and in return had been allowed to continue serving as an exarch of death. And he warned that, were he to be killed, the pact would be broken and the Raven Queen's name no longer safe.
> 
> This decision to link Ometh to the idea of a pact with the Far Realm to hide the Raven Queen's name wasn't quite spontaneous - I had come up with the idea at the same time I statted up Ometh as an aberrant undead - but it did catch the PCs (and the players) by surprise. The paladin wanted to reach some sort of accommodation, but the ranger-cleric of the Raven Queen was still up for killing Ometh, and the fighter-cleric of Moradin, who is increasingly fed up with the Raven Queen and her cultists, was even keener to finish off Ometh once he realised that doing so might hurt the Raven Queen. So negotiations broke down after only a round, and Ometh was killed - the paladin striking the killing blow in the end.





pemerton said:


> They were preparing to take another extended rest, but the paladin and ranger-cleric (who also serves the Raven Queen) received an urgent vision from their mistress, where they saw a blue-white star falling through the sky from behind the purple star Caiphon, oddly sitting high above the horizon. The general theory is that this is related to the fact that killing Ometh broke the Raven Queen's pact with the Far Realm to keep her name secret, so the PCs will now head off to deal with this. (As the paladin put it, "My mistress is not one to be blackmailed by a giant inside-out dwarf.")



[/sblock]

I have no idea how you think that maps onto your arithmetic theory of narration - but as far as rich, "living breathing worlds" are concerned I'm pretty happy with it.



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'll go further: it's not railroading to tell the players that their PCs have been spotted by sentries.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> It is if you deprived them of the chance to approach stealthily by giving them about .5 seconds between you leave the dwarves and you are spotted.  I personally don't care to play "Guess what the DM will do to us if we don't prepare for every contingency before we leave."  I don't have information about what the area the giants live in is like, so I can't properly give you those sorts of instructions in advance.  If you then play my PC and bypass the approach to the giant's territory and cause me to be spotted, that's a railroad.  I should be given the chance to see what the approach is like in order to convey to you what I would like my PC to do on that approach.
Click to expand...


This is all you just making stuff up.

Here's a repost of the actual example:



pemerton said:


> GM: OK, so you've agreed to help the dwarves against the giants. Your're heading off, right?
> 
> Players: Yes, we're heading off as soon as Aster makes some potions of fire resistance for us.
> 
> GM: OK, mark down your potions and cross off your residuum. You trek through the Underdark, following the directions the dwarves gave you. Everyone make a DC 20 Endurance check - if you fail, you're down a healing surge by the time you arrive at your destination.
> 
> <players adjust equpiment lists, make checks, adjust healing surge totals if required>
> 
> GM: Just as the dwarves told you, after a hard trek through the tunnels you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern. It's lit a dull red by the glow of lava that bubbles up through the floor of the cave and flows away in criss-crossing channels. A black, basalt structure stands in the centre - the Hall of the Fire Giant King.​
> <snip>
> 
> Let's consider a variation of the above:
> 
> . . .
> 
> GM: Just as the dwarves told you, after a hard trek through the tunnels you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern. It's lit a dull red by the glow of lava that bubbles up through the floor of the cave and flows away in criss-crossing channels. In the glow of the lava, you can see fire giant sentries on patrol. And it seems that a group of sentries has seen you!​



So where did I say that this bit - <players adjust equpiment lists, make checks, adjust healing surge totals if required> - takes 5 seconds? Or 5 minutes? Where did I say that the players had no chance to declare Stealth if they wanted to? That's all just your assumption and projection.

And as far as the variant is concerned, where did I "bypass the approach to the giants' territory"? I described it: "you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern." What makes you assume that the PCs must be able to spot the giants before the giants spot them?

And finally, here is a quote from AbdulAlhazred, that started this whole discussion of fire giants:



AbdulAlhazred said:


> You COULD in theory, perhaps, play a Story Now type of game where the GM frames a scene, something happens, and then without reference to anything else except his own judgment the GM could simply say "OK, now your at place X, and Y is happening" and frame another scene. It just never happens that way.
> 
> Reality is that the PCs do some stuff, and change the state of the fiction in a way that represents some sort of choices. They make a pact with the dwarves to go fight giants, instead of exploring the tunnel into the Underdark. The next scene MIGHT be 'fighting giants', but that can hardly be a railroad!
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The trajectory of the game will be in the direction which the player's signal they want to go



You are assuming that it is a _bad thing_ for the players that their PCs have been spotted by giants. Whereas, following AbdulAlhazred's post, I was envisaging that the players _want to fight giants_. (If they didn't, presumably they would have taken some steps to avoid the risk of a fight. It's sheer projection on your part to assume that they weren't able to because <reasons>.)


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> As a GM, I work hard to foster a feeling of a "living, breathing world", with a high degree of consitency and verisimilitude. My own view is that I do a reasonable job - the gameworlds of my campaigns seems as rich and evocative as most examples I read about on ENworld, for instance, and moreso than many.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I don't see how that's even possible.  One of the biggest hallmarks of a "living, breathing world" is that stuff goes on in the world outside of the PCs, the influence of the PCs, and what they are interested in.  They will hear stories and rumors about what is happening in Waterdeep, even as they go about their own interests in the far south.  In story now, nothing goes on outside of the PCs like that.
Click to expand...


_Impossible_ - and yet it is happening all the time! For my part, when I want to understand how "story now" RPGing works I ask people who are familiar with it, rather than people who (by their own account) have never engaged in it.

Here's one thing that's gone wrong in your assumptions: in this sentence, "One of the biggest hallmarks of a "living, breathing world" is that stuff goes on in the world outside of the PCs, the influence of the PCs, and what they are interested in," the word _they_ refers to the PCs. Yet the anchor for "story now" RPGing is player-established themes, dramatic need etc. And as even a cursory familiarity with literature and film will reveal, something can speak to a protagonist's dramatic need although s/he is not (yet) interested in it.

Here's another thing: making up rumours about what is going in Waterdeep takes about 5 seconds, if that. I don't need to have writen down anything in advance, or read it in a book that someone else wrote. Sometimes the players will even make it up and save me the trouble!

Or there can be synergy between the two: for instance (to give another actua play report), a player might make a Circles check because his PC wants to meet with elven merchants to buy some herbs. When the chdck succeeds, it is established that merchants do indeed pass by the PCs out-of-the-way tower, on their way from Hardby to Urnst, and having heard that an elven princess is staying there. The ensuing conversation reveals that the Gynarch of Hardby is engaged to be married to Jabal! Later on, when the PCs arrive at a borderlands keep, a lady of Urnst is spending the night there en route to Hardby for the wedding.

Before you know it, there's a living, breathing world, criss-crossed by merchants and wedding guests bearing all sorts of tale and rumour!


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> OK. I don't see how that has any bearing on my reply to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]. Are you agreeing or disagreeing with him that ""Sometimes dangerous" automatically means "interesting" because as soon as there's danger then either combat mechanics (for combat) or some other sort of hazard-resolution mechanics (for other hazards e.g. landslide or getting lost) come into play"?



I wouldn't say automatically interesting, but it usually is.  The problem you are having here seems to be that you think using mechanics = wargame.  It doesn't.  D&D minis was a wargame.  Using combat mechanics in a combat or other mechanics to navigate a hazard(if even necessary, which sometimes it isn't) isn't wargaming.



> How do you know this? Were you at the table? Would the world have been "deeper" because I mentioned a near-miss with a light plane flying without a licence over Siberia? And made the players roll to see whether or not they collided with it?




You've described your game to us many times.  None of those descriptions convey the same depth that our style accomplishes.  Story now as a concept doesn't get there, either.  I'm just going by what I've seen from you and those who play your style of game.



> Where are your actual play posts that show this depth of world resulting from your techniques?




If I don't forget, I'll post it AGAIN tonight after I get home from work.



> I have no idea what this metaphor is meant to convey.



Depth of scope.  You can convey size of the world with a narrative, but the depth of that scope isn't achieved unless the PCs can see it.  Hence 7 vs. 2+2+2+1 = 7.  Only in the latter 7 can you see the depth.



> I've got dozens of actual play posts on these boards, with several links to some of them in this thread. Here are extracts from two of them:




Yes, the depth of your game is linked to what has already been established.  You build on things.  That's a much more limited depth than is accomplished in our playstyle.  We also have that sort of depth that builds on what came before during play, but we also have the depth that is added when the world actually moves outside of the PCs, creating a living,  breathing world.  Without the world moving outside of the PCs, it's not living, breathing at all.  It's dead except when interacting with the PCs.



> This is all you just making stuff up.
> 
> Here's a repost of the actual example:
> 
> 
> So where did I say that this bit - <players adjust equpiment lists, make checks, adjust healing surge totals if required> - takes 5 seconds? Or 5 minutes? Where did I say that the players had no chance to declare Stealth if they wanted to? That's all just your assumption and projection.




You say I'm making it  up, then post showing that I'm not.  Once they set off(without knowledge of the giants territory), you gave them no opportunity to decide how to approach once they gained that knowledge.  You are requiring them to play, "Guess what the DM will do" in advance, and without proper knowledge.  Either that or get screwed when you just waltz them past where they need to be to make that decision and up to the giants.



> And as far as the variant is concerned, where did I "bypass the approach to the giants' territory"? I described it: "you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern." What makes you assume that the PCs must be able to spot the giants before the giants spot them?




Where were the signs of patrols going by?  Where did you stop and tell them that they were getting close to giant territory?  Where did you give them the option not to play, "Guess the DM" and make an informed decision?


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Once they set off(without knowledge of the giants territory), you gave them no opportunity to decide how to approach once they gained that knowledge.



The GM said "Your're heading off, right?" and - after the players replied "yes" - described them travelling through the Underdark. That was when the players knew they were approaching the giants, and _that was the players' chance to say they wanted to be sneaky, if they wanted to be_. In my exmample the players didn't say any such thing. From which we can infer that the didn't care to be sneaky.

(And how do you know they had no knowledge of the giants' territory? Where did I say that? Where did [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] say that? Maybe the dwarves told them all about it - again, you're just making stuff up.)



Maxperson said:


> You are requiring them to play, "Guess what the DM will do" in advance, and without proper knowledge.  Either that or get screwed when you just waltz them past where they need to be to make that decision and up to the giants.
> 
> Where were the signs of patrols going by?  Where did you stop and tell them that they were getting close to giant territory?  Where did you give them the option not to play, "Guess the DM" and make an informed decision?



There's no need to guess what the GM will do! The GM asked "Are you going to the giants", and they said "yes", so that's what is happening. A clever 3 year old could manage that guess!

And that's their informed decision - knowing that they have promised the dwaves to help with the giants, they go off to keep their promise?

And as I already asked - what makes you think they knew they were getting close to the giants' territory before they saw the cave? Why would there be signs of patrols? Everything you say here is framed in terms of a GM-driven railroad: the GM is railroading the players into a confrontation with the giants, but "telegraphs" by narrating signs of patrols, and other contrived evidence of "giant territory", so that the players can make "skilled play" choices that will optimise their chances in the forthcoming, GM-arranged confrontation with the giants.

But that is not the example the [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] gave and I offered some elaboration of. That was an example of player-driven play. If the players want to fight giants, they don't need "warning" or "telegraphing" that they're facing giants. That's inherent in them expressing their desire. And - as I've already said many times - if they want to approach stealthily then that's up to them. Maybe they don't want to be!


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> I wouldn't say automatically interesting, but it usually is.  The problem you are having here seems to be that you think using mechanics = wargame.



No.

   [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] says that combat or landslide equals interesting. He makes no similar assumption about, say, meeting a friendly border guard. Or a pleasant fellow traveller. It is this assumption that physical danger, with combat as the paradigm, is the core of what is interesting that I am questioning. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't. _Only in wargaming_ is there a straightforward equation of _combat = interesting_.



Maxperson said:


> You've described your game to us many times.  None of those descriptions convey the same depth that our style accomplishes.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Depth of scope.  You can convey size of the world with a narrative, but the depth of that scope isn't achieved unless the PCs can see it.  Hence 7 vs. 2+2+2+1 = 7.  Only in the latter 7 can you see the depth.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> the depth of your game is linked to what has already been established.  You build on things.  That's a much more limited depth than is accomplished in our playstyle.  We also have that sort of depth that builds on what came before during play, but we also have the depth that is added when the world actually moves outside of the PCs, creating a living,  breathing world.  Without the world moving outside of the PCs, it's not living, breathing at all.  It's dead except when interacting with the PCs.



I have no idea what this means. It's all just words.

I mean, what does _unless the PCs can see it_ mean? Or _it's dead except when interacting with the PCs_? The PCs don't exist. So what they can see, and what interacts with them, depends completely on what we make up. And I can - and do - make up just as much stuff as you can! You imagine the PCs in your game hearing all these wild tales of far places when they sit around in taverns? Well, so do I.

But until you actually _tell _those tales, in real time, to real people, sitting at a real table, they make zero contribution to the depth of a setting. You sitting at home reading a FR book fillled with "rumours of Waterdeep" doesn't make your gameworld deep. Those rumours only establish "depth" for your setting when you mention them to your players. And I can do that too.

But regardless of rumours of far places, I play a game in which meeting a friendly border guard might be as important and interesting as fighting a combat.   [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] (it seems) doesn't. Nor - to judge by your agreement with him - do you. From my point of view, that is case closed on depth of setting.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> No one is saying people don't have wealth. I'm saying that there is no wealth mechanic.



In a medieval or modern-day setting this seems - to say the very least - unrealistic.



> And I don't need to "inform the players" that there's "more to the world" by narrating irrelevant stuff either. I've never had any trouble conveying the scope of the world in my games when I've wanted to.



Well, these kinda contradict each other in a way: irrelevant stuff is only irrelevant until it becomes relevant, and without it the scope of the 'world' is limited to only that which the PCs are directly interacting with.



> This assume we're playing a wargame or something similar. But otherwise there's no reason to spend time on this stuff if it's not interesting.
> 
> "You make your way through the Underdark for several arduous weeks before arriving at a lava-filled cavern that looks like the one the dwarves described to you. Every make a DC 20 Endurance check - if you fail, you're down a healing surge when you arrive."



 'Down a healing surge' is nothing.  'Dead' or 'diseased' or 'separated from the group and lost' or 'down some significant gear including magic items' are more what I'd be checking for after a long Underdark journey, along with how masny xp they'd picked up in the process.



> That's enough to convey a dangerous and challenging journey through the Underdark, if it's not where the action is going to be.



 'Down a healing surge' conveys nothing more to me than I didn't get a good night's sleep.  It completely trivializes the risks and dangers of such a journey.



> And I can frame as many challenging scenes in Tokyo as I can in a voyage thereto. Which give the players just as much opportunity to play and advance their PCs.



Why not give them both opportunities - the journey, and the events after they arrive?



> I'll go further: it's not railroading to tell the players that their PCs have been spotted by sentries.



It is if the playsrs haven't been given any chance to take reasonabel precautions against being spotted.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] says that combat or landslide equals interesting. He makes no similar assumption about, say, meeting a friendly border guard. Or a pleasant fellow traveller. It is this assumption that physical danger, with combat as the paradigm, is the core of what is interesting that I am questioning. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't. _Only in wargaming_ is there a straightforward equation of _combat = interesting_.



This is a fair point, so I'll explain my reasoning.

Meeting a friendly border guard or pleasant fellow travellers is interesting, no doubt there; and if people want to RP that I'm all in.  But, the chances of such RP generating any mechanical changes to the PCs are extremely low.  Ditto for all the RP the characters would also likely do with each other during this time; the romances*, the minor arguments, etc.

Combat and risk and danger, on the other hand, have a quite decent chance of generating mechanical changes - lost gear or wealth, major injuries, death, getting separated, etc. - and that's what I-as-DM need to know about: how has the party that left Washington changed or been changed by the time it gets to Tokyo. (and there's always the very tiny chance of a TPK meaning they never reach Tokyo at all)

* - the only mechanical change I might have to worry about here is if someone gets pregnant...



> I mean, what does _unless the PCs can see it_ mean? Or _it's dead except when interacting with the PCs_? The PCs don't exist. So what they can see, and what interacts with them, depends completely on what we make up. And I can - and do - make up just as much stuff as you can! You imagine the PCs in your game hearing all these wild tales of far places when they sit around in taverns? Well, so do I.



But do you ever tell them these wild tales?



> But until you actually _tell _those tales, in real time, to real people, sitting at a real table, they make zero contribution to the depth of a setting. You sitting at home reading a FR book fillled with "rumours of Waterdeep" doesn't make your gameworld deep. Those rumours only establish "depth" for your setting when you mention them to your players. And I can do that too.



And once you do, those rumours could instantly become adventure hooks!



> But regardless of rumours of far places, I play a game in which meeting a friendly border guard might be as important and interesting as fighting a combat.   [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] (it seems) doesn't. Nor - to judge by your agreement with him - do you. From my point of view, that is case closed on depth of setting.



Well, if you say so...


----------



## Emerikol

pemerton said:


> There is no general connection between these goals for setting, and having the setting authored by the GM in advance so that a signficant goal of play is the players learning what that is. If players enjoy play oriented around such learning, well, obviously that's their preference and their prerogative. I'm just denying that there is any special connection betwen that particular technique, and a rich and verisimilitudinous setting.




I think there is for many people even if you don't agree for yourself.  Poor world design is the biggest reason I reject a DM.  The real difference is - are the players authoring the setting itself or are they just authoring the moves of their character.  It's in character viewpoint play vs story creation play perhaps.  I have no interest in authoring a story as a goal.  I want to play a character and only operate through that characters eyes.  I want my DM to relay to me what my senses detect and then I act on that knowledge.  The DM is the describer of the world for the players so they can act within it.

I do think it's classical Gygaxian play.  I think it's a great way to play.  You obviously don't.  That is okay. Different strokes for different folks.  But verisimilitude and those things we disagree on are subjective.  For me it is about verisimilitude and your style wouldn't provide that to me.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> The GM said "Your're heading off, right?" and - after the players replied "yes" - described them travelling through the Underdark. That was when the players knew they were approaching the giants, and _that was the players' chance to say they wanted to be sneaky, if they wanted to be_. In my exmample the players didn't say any such thing. From which we can infer that the didn't care to be sneaky.




Here is your quote.



> *GM: Just as the dwarves told you, after a hard trek through the tunnels you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern. It's lit a dull red by the glow of lava that bubbles up through the floor of the cave and flows away in criss-crossing channels. In the glow of the lava*, you can see fire giant sentries on patrol. And it seems that a group of sentries has seen you!




Up until the bolded part ends, there was nothing to indicate that they were near the giants territory yet, or that they should talk to you about stealth.  They had all of a split second to tell you they wanted to be stealthy, after you got to "you can see fire giant sentries...", it was too late.



> (And how do you know they had no knowledge of the giants' territory? Where did I say that? Where did @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ say that? Maybe the dwarves told them all about it - again, you're just making stuff up.)




I can only go by the information you give.



> There's no need to guess what the GM will do! The GM asked "Are you going to the giants", and they said "yes", so that's what is happening. A clever 3 year old could manage that guess!




There are many ways to go to the giants.  Let's see if your 3 your old can guess them all.



> And as I already asked - what makes you think they knew they were getting close to the giants' territory before they saw the cave? Why would there be signs of patrols? Everything you say here is framed in terms of a GM-driven railroad: the GM is railroading the players into a confrontation with the giants, but "telegraphs" by narrating signs of patrols, and other contrived evidence of "giant territory", so that the players can make "skilled play" choices that will optimise their chances in the forthcoming, GM-arranged confrontation with the giants.




You REALLLLLY need to learn what a railroad is.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> In a medieval or modern-day setting this seems - to say the very least - unrealistic.



Does your modern-day setting have a mechanic to track credit ratings? Vaccinations? Familiarity with a wide range of cuisines (whether as consumer or as cook)?

Does your fantasy setting have a mechanic to track holes in shoes and clothing? Blunting of blades? Shoeing of horses?

In my BW game there is a Resources mechanic. That game is about (among other things) gritty survival.

In my Cortex+ Heroic game, there is no wealth mechanic. That is a game about vikings trying to find out why there are strange portents from the spirits of the wood and in the Northern Lights. Wealth is largely irrelevant. When one of the PCs robbed the drow of their gold, he earned a persistent d8 Back of Gold asset. There is no need for a special mechanic to track that.



Lanefan said:


> Meeting a friendly border guard or pleasant fellow travellers is interesting, no doubt there; and if people want to RP that I'm all in.  But, the chances of such RP generating any mechanical changes to the PCs are extremely low.  Ditto for all the RP the characters would also likely do with each other during this time; the romances*, the minor arguments, etc.
> 
> Combat and risk and danger, on the other hand, have a quite decent chance of generating mechanical changes - lost gear or wealth, major injuries, death, getting separated, etc. - and that's what I-as-DM need to know about: how has the party that left Washington changed or been changed by the time it gets to Tokyo. (and there's always the very tiny chance of a TPK meaning they never reach Tokyo at all)



Let's just start with one assumption: that social interaction won't change the party.

That is already so far removed from my RPGing experience that it's hard to know what to do with the rest of what you say.

In the real world, people travel from A to B and survive; even flourish! In fantasy fiction, people travel from A to B without dying or being maimed along the way. (Conan does a fair bit of it, for instance; so do the protagonists in LotR.)

If you want to play a RPG in which more time is spent worrying about random encounters with jermlaine than finding out whether or not the PCs can keep their promise to the dwarves to help them with the giants, well, no one's stopping you. But that sort of focus is not inherent in the idea of RPGing.



Lanefan said:


> Why not give them both opportunities - the journey, and the events after they arrive?



The answer to this is simple: if everyone wants to play an encounter with giants, why would we bother spending time on a trip through the Underdark? (Or from DC to Tokyo. Or whatver.) If you like that stuff, then good for you - knock yourself out! But if the players want to go to where the giants are, then a quick narration is fine.



Lanefan said:


> 'Dead' or 'diseased' or 'separated from the group and lost' or 'down some significant gear including magic items' are more what I'd be checking for after a long Underdark journey
> 
> <snip>
> 
> 'Down a healing surge' conveys nothing more to me than I didn't get a good night's sleep. It completely trivializes the risks and dangers of such a journey.



And you know this because . . .? What level are these PCs? How powerful are their healers? What other magic are they using? How heroic are the martial characters? And how long is it since they took an extended rest?

Aragorn didn't become dead, diseased or lost travelling through Moria. Nor did Pippin.

The original Underdark module, D1-D3, doesn't imply that the PCs will become dead, diseased or lost travelling from the fire giant dungeon to the Vault of the Drow.

There's so much assumption and projection in these comments, that they're very hard to take seriously as analysis of gaming techniques.



Lanefan said:


> But do you ever tell them these wild tales?





Lanefan said:


> irrelevant stuff is only irrelevant until it becomes relevant, and without it the scope of the 'world' is limited to only that which the PCs are directly interacting with.



Like I said to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], this is all just nonsense. I posted, upthread, an actual play account of the session in my main 4e game where the PCs were in the mausoleum of the Raven Queen. At one point, one of them had a vision of the tarrasque breaking out of the earth onto the surface of the world.

In my Dark Sun game, the opening scene took place in an arena, where the crowd were responding to news of the death of the Sorcerer-King of Tyr.

Just a handful of posts upthread, I posted an account of how the PCs in my BW game, while living in a tower in the Abor-Alz, heard tales of happenings in Hardby and in Urnst.

The PCs are not directly interacting with the tarrasque, or the Sorcerer-King and his assassins, or Hardby, or Urnst, and yet these things figure as part of the shared fiction!



Lanefan said:


> And once you do, those rumours could instantly become adventure hooks!



In a player-driven game the players hook the GM, not vice versa.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Sure, the scope of the world is say, 7.  You narrate 7, conveying the scope.  We tell them 2+2+2+1 = 7, conveying depth about that scope, which gives it a different feel.
> 
> 
> 
> I've played 1e, 2e, 3e and 5e and never played a wargame when I did so.  Not once.
> 
> 
> 
> Sure,  but you do it without the same depth of scope that our style has.  Fast forwarding from one major even to another has the effect of diminishing depth of the world in order to enhance depth of character.  I'm not yet convinced that the trade-off is worth it.  Our style can get some very good depth of character without sacrificing depth of world.




Horse potatoes. 

I just completely disagree with you, there's no 'increased depth' to be had from playing in a pre-generated environment. I mean, there's no objective standard, IMNSHO, by which to measure such 'depth' anyway, so arguing about it is pointless. Even if we just talked about the # of hours of time put into thinking about setting, I've got 6 game participants doing that during play, which is going to make up for, I'm guessing, whatever hours you might possibly spend outside of play doing it yourself. On top of that I can always engage the players outside of table time too! 

I might buy some kind of statement like "different playing styles may generate more or less exploration of different aspects of the world." Even then, I'm not strongly convinced that's an overwhelmingly true statement. It may be weakly true. Perhaps GMs who draw up world maps have a little more established geography, but does any more of it actually matter in play than in some Zero Myth game where its made up on the fly? Do NPCs and locations that the PCs never see make any difference or add some mysterious quality of depth? I don't think so. Maybe its true that some people create richer detailed worlds by pre-generation, and others do it with collaboration. Maybe that's true.


----------



## pemerton

Emerikol said:


> The real difference is - are the players authoring the setting itself or are they just authoring the moves of their character.  It's in character viewpoint play vs story creation play perhaps.  I have no interest in authoring a story as a goal.  I want to play a character and only operate through that characters eyes.



I feel that I have been around this topic before (at least a dozen times already upthread, I would guess).

_In this thread I am talking about declaring actions "through the character's eyes"_. When I say _As we travel along the river, I look out for any signs of fellow members of my order_, that is an action declaration through my character's eyes. It is not an attempt to "author a story".

One way to answer my question is for the GM to just tell me. (Based on his/her notes, or his/her best guess, or his/her random rol, or whatever.) Another way is for me to make a Circles check, with the result of the check being binding on the GM as well as the player.

The second approach doesn't require me to step outside my character viewpoint anymore than rolling an attack die does.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]:

If the players declare, "We go to the giants' cave", and then the appropriate checks are resolved, and then the GM narrations "OK, you're at the giants' cave" that is not a railroad. The players weren't prevented from sneaking - they chose not to declare any stealth.



Maxperson said:


> There are many ways to go to the giants.  Let's see if your 3 your old can guess them all.



How do you know there are many ways to go to the giants? This is another thing you are making up.

Furthermore, it shows yet more assumption that the game is a GM-driven one based on pre-authorship of stuff which the players are then expected to have told to them.

The dwaves, the giants and their caves - _none of them are real_. They have no real geography. It's all just story.

So if the only bit of the story that gets authored - because that's the only bit of the story anyone cares about it - _we leave the dwarves, and arrive at the giants' cave_ - well, that's what it is.

If the players wanted a different story, they had the capacity to declare some different action. But they didn't.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> The GM said "Your're heading off, right?" and - after the players replied "yes" - described them travelling through the Underdark. That was when the players knew they were approaching the giants, and _that was the players' chance to say they wanted to be sneaky, if they wanted to be_. In my exmample the players didn't say any such thing. From which we can infer that the didn't care to be sneaky.
> 
> (And how do you know they had no knowledge of the giants' territory? Where did I say that? Where did @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ say that? Maybe the dwarves told them all about it - again, you're just making stuff up.)
> 
> There's no need to guess what the GM will do! The GM asked "Are you going to the giants", and they said "yes", so that's what is happening. A clever 3 year old could manage that guess!
> 
> And that's their informed decision - knowing that they have promised the dwaves to help with the giants, they go off to keep their promise?
> 
> And as I already asked - what makes you think they knew they were getting close to the giants' territory before they saw the cave? Why would there be signs of patrols? Everything you say here is framed in terms of a GM-driven railroad: the GM is railroading the players into a confrontation with the giants, but "telegraphs" by narrating signs of patrols, and other contrived evidence of "giant territory", so that the players can make "skilled play" choices that will optimise their chances in the forthcoming, GM-arranged confrontation with the giants.
> 
> But that is not the example the @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ gave and I offered some elaboration of. That was an example of player-driven play. If the players want to fight giants, they don't need "warning" or "telegraphing" that they're facing giants. That's inherent in them expressing their desire. And - as I've already said many times - if they want to approach stealthily then that's up to them. Maybe they don't want to be!




I just want to add, the WHOLE EXAMPLE was something I made up out of my head as I was typing it, and I have a typing speed fast enough to jam an IBM Selectric (like 200WPM). I've been known to write BOOK LENGTH material in a day, end-to-end. So, TOPS 5 seconds went into that example, I mean, really, max 5 seconds. 

It wasn't meant to be a recording of the entire dialog of a sequence of play. It was just an illustration of the concept of what might happen, described at a fairly high level with just enough detail to convey the general concept I was getting at. I don't think you should judge my (and probably not [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s) entire technique based on this example. 

Chances are, in actual play, the players would fiddle and digress and wrangle with the dwarves a bit, and ask questions, probably discuss some sort of plan, etc. If they really couldn't get ANY information on their objective then they'd probably start to outright consider what sort of additional measures they should take. Maybe they would send out word for anyone with intel, or ask the dwarves to scout ahead, or approach in a stealthy manner. 

Now, mostly my players are guys and gals that cut their teeth on B1 hot off the presses and remember when the 1e MM hit the shelf and amazed us all with its hardcover goodness. So they're perhaps not representative of the degree of experience and adventurer-grade expertise of every group. They might also choose to RP being foolish or whatever, but my guess is they, and probably most other players, will ask questions and be proactive. I MOST SURELY will not get in the way of that! Certainly not in a D&D game. Maybe in Paranoia you sic the computer on them for being clever, but that's a bit different story...


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Like I said to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], this is all just nonsense. I posted, upthread, an actual play account of the session in my main 4e game where the PCs were in the mausoleum of the Raven Queen. At one point, one of them had a vision of the tarrasque breaking out of the earth onto the surface of the world.
> 
> In my Dark Sun game, the opening scene took place in an arena, where the crowd were responding to news of the death of the Sorcerer-King of Tyr.
> 
> Just a handful of posts upthread, I posted an account of how the PCs in my BW game, while living in a tower in the Abor-Alz, heard tales of happenings in Hardby and in Urnst.
> 
> The PCs are not directly interacting with the tarrasque, or the Sorcerer-King and his assassins, or Hardby, or Urnst, and yet these things figure as part of the shared fiction!
> 
> In a player-driven game the players hook the GM, not vice versa.




Yes, and I found it really interesting how you said, "Yet the anchor for "story now" RPGing is player-established themes, dramatic need etc. And as even a cursory familiarity with literature and film will reveal, something can speak to a protagonist's dramatic need *although s/he is not (yet) interested in it*."  You've been chiding me for putting in things I think the player will find interesting, even though he's not interested in it yet, and there you go doing it yourself.  This is like the third or fourth time you've asked me why I do something, implying your way is different, and then posted examples of you doing it, too.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]:
> 
> If the players declare, "We go to the giants' cave", and then the appropriate checks are resolved, and then the GM narrations "OK, you're at the giants' cave" that is not a railroad. The players weren't prevented from sneaking - they chose not to declare any stealth.
> 
> How do you know there are many ways to go to the giants? This is another thing you are making up.
> 
> Furthermore, it shows yet more assumption that the game is a GM-driven one based on pre-authorship of stuff which the players are then expected to have told to them.
> 
> The dwaves, the giants and their caves - _none of them are real_. They have no real geography. It's all just story.
> 
> So if the only bit of the story that gets authored - because that's the only bit of the story anyone cares about it - _we leave the dwarves, and arrive at the giants' cave_ - well, that's what it is.
> 
> If the players wanted a different story, they had the capacity to declare some different action. But they didn't.




I'll go further, there ARE many ways to the giant's cave, as many as the players choose to invoke! If the action declaration was "Lets find a way to sneak into the Giant's Cave by the back door" then, you guessed it... (actually maybe there isn't a back door, maybe they fail their dungeoneering check on that one and end up in the Cave of the Flumphs.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> How do you know there are many ways to go to the giants? This is another thing you are making up.




Making up facts, sure.  Right off the bat I can think of, 1) going to the giants at a normal pace, 2) going to the giants at a fast pace, 3) going to the giants at a stealthy pace, 4) going to the giants at a normal rate until we get close, then being stealth, 5) going to the giants at a fast, pace, then being stealthy, and so on.  There are many ways to go to the giants.


----------



## Lanefan

Breaking one bit out here...


pemerton said:


> In the real world, people travel from A to B and survive; even flourish! In fantasy fiction, people travel from A to B without dying or being maimed along the way. (Conan does a fair bit of it, for instance; so do the protagonists in LotR.)
> 
> ...
> 
> Aragorn didn't become dead, diseased or lost travelling through Moria. Nor did Pippin.



Yet the party that reached Lothlorien was not the same as the party that left Rivendell: they arrived down by a wizard.  That's a rather big change to the party that wouldn't happen if the journey was simply handwaved.

Further, were this an RPG all the other characters would have gained some decent xp for events along that journey.

And to take this to the next stage: the party that left Lothlorien didn't in fact arrive anywhere, as it split in three (and lost a PC) partway along.



> The original Underdark module, D1-D3, doesn't imply that the PCs will become dead, diseased or lost travelling from the fire giant dungeon to the Vault of the Drow.



Perhaps not, but in the other big underdark adventure _Night Below_ any travel through the underdark involves serious risk.


----------



## Lanefan

And now for the other bits...


pemerton said:


> Does your modern-day setting have a mechanic to track credit ratings? Vaccinations? Familiarity with a wide range of cuisines (whether as consumer or as cook)?
> 
> Does your fantasy setting have a mechanic to track holes in shoes and clothing? Blunting of blades? Shoeing of horses?



In order: not unless needed, no, if someone wanted to roll for this for a PC then no problem; then no, no but it probably should, and no.

And none of these are as important - by a huge factor - as tracking wealth.



> In my BW game there is a Resources mechanic. That game is about (among other things) gritty survival.
> 
> In my Cortex+ Heroic game, there is no wealth mechanic. That is a game about vikings trying to find out why there are strange portents from the spirits of the wood and in the Northern Lights. Wealth is largely irrelevant. When one of the PCs robbed the drow of their gold, he earned a persistent d8 Back of Gold asset. There is no need for a special mechanic to track that.



So in the vikings game they don't know how much coin they have? (and it's not a "special mechanic", it's simple recording money in vs. money out)  Now don't get me wrong - I dislike economics etc. probably more than the next guy, but even then I want to know how much wealth my PC has at any given time...and I also want to know what's out there for me to spend it on.



> Let's just start with one assumption: that social interaction won't change the party.
> 
> That is already so far removed from my RPGing experience that it's hard to know what to do with the rest of what you say.



 "Irrelevant" social interaction e.g. with a friendly gate guard is great to RP through but is very unlikely to generate any quantifyable mechanical change to the party.  It might change their views or their level of knowledge or whatever, but nothing quantifyable.

"Irrelevant" combat with a sea monster in the Pacific has all kinds of opportunity to generate mechanical change to the party: Falstaff drops his magic sword overboard, Gwenivere gets hauled off the ship and drowns (and her body is never found), and Halfred's spellbook gets soaked and some of the spells in it are ruined.



> If you want to play a RPG in which more time is spent worrying about random encounters with jermlaine than finding out whether or not the PCs can keep their promise to the dwarves to help them with the giants, well, no one's stopping you. But that sort of focus is not inherent in the idea of RPGing.



That sort of focus was inherent from day 1 - wandering monsters.



> The answer to this is simple: if everyone wants to play an encounter with giants, why would we bother spending time on a trip through the Underdark? (Or from DC to Tokyo. Or whatver.) If you like that stuff, then good for you - knock yourself out! But if the players want to go to where the giants are, then a quick narration is fine.



This is my point, though: just because the players want to go where the giants are doesn't mean the game world should just let them, particularly when the intervening risks are already known and even still when they are not.

If the players want to go to the giants they will almost certainly get there at some point.  But neither they nor I will know how much time (both fictional and real) it'll take until we play it out.



> And you know this because . . .? What level are these PCs? How powerful are their healers? What other magic are they using? How heroic are the martial characters? And how long is it since they took an extended rest?



For whatever party I'm running I would know these things, but it wouldn't get to this point as I'd have played out the dangerous bits in full.  But even if I didn't I could factor their abilities in if it came to a shorthand determination of what changes may have occurred during the trip.

Being down a healing surge is trivial - a good night's rest and you're set to rock.



> There's so much assumption and projection in these comments, that they're very hard to take seriously as analysis of gaming techniques.



My main assumptions are: 

- any game set in what could be a real-world setting with magic added on will at least try to maintain some form of general realism where and how it can;
- where maintaining this realism takes time (e.g. playing out the risky bits of a long journey) that time will be taken;
- that I have control over my character and its resources (e.g. I know how much money it has!)
- that real-world time is not a limiting factor



> Like I said to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], this is all just nonsense. I posted, upthread, an actual play account of the session in my main 4e game where the PCs were in the mausoleum of the Raven Queen. At one point, one of them had a vision of the tarrasque breaking out of the earth onto the surface of the world.
> 
> In my Dark Sun game, the opening scene took place in an arena, where the crowd were responding to news of the death of the Sorcerer-King of Tyr.



Cool.  This is the sort of thing I was asking about.



> In a player-driven game the players hook the GM, not vice versa.



The Sorcerer-King of Tyr just died?  That's not a hook, it's a trawling net! 

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I just completely disagree with you, there's no 'increased depth' to be had from playing in a pre-generated environment. I mean, there's no objective standard, IMNSHO, by which to measure such 'depth' anyway, so arguing about it is pointless. Even if we just talked about the # of hours of time put into thinking about setting, I've got 6 game participants doing that during play, which is going to make up for, I'm guessing, whatever hours you might possibly spend outside of play doing it yourself. On top of that I can always engage the players outside of table time too!
> 
> I might buy some kind of statement like "different playing styles may generate more or less exploration of different aspects of the world." Even then, I'm not strongly convinced that's an overwhelmingly true statement. It may be weakly true. Perhaps GMs who draw up world maps have a little more established geography, but does any more of it actually matter in play than in some Zero Myth game where its made up on the fly?



The risk with making stuff like this up on the fly is that you'll make something up that's geologically or geographically implausible or impossible and not realize it until it's too late, by which time you're stuck with it because it's affected play somehow.  If you at least map out your world (or at least the bits of it most likely to see play) ahead of time you can find and fix these errors before they get baked in...or intentionally bake in some implausibilities as you've had the time to come up with good in-game rationales for them (e.g. the 3000-mile-long mile-high cliff in my game world called the Godswall - geologically ridiculous but I've a good in-game reason for its being there which I won't post here as none of my players know what that reason is yet)

Also, having a basic map of things that would be known to the PCs allows the players to make informed decisions as you can simply plop the map down in front of them and they can use it just like I use an atlas to plan a road trip.  _We've got two weeks to kill while the wizard trains up? OK - it's 6 days walk to Karnos _(port town)_ then probably another week at sea to get to Spieadeia _(big city)_ - nope, we can't get there and back in time; shopping will have to wait._



> Do NPCs and locations that the PCs never see make any difference or add some mysterious quality of depth? I don't think so.



I know I as player have looked at a DM's player-side map and wondered what a particular place was all about, even though I'd never had a PC anywhere near it.

Lanefan


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> The risk with making stuff like this up on the fly is that you'll make something up that's geologically or geographically implausible or impossible and not realize it until it's too late, by which time you're stuck with it because it's affected play somehow.  If you at least map out your world (or at least the bits of it most likely to see play) ahead of time you can find and fix these errors before they get baked in...or intentionally bake in some implausibilities as you've had the time to come up with good in-game rationales for them (e.g. the 3000-mile-long mile-high cliff in my game world called the Godswall - geologically ridiculous but I've a good in-game reason for its being there which I won't post here as none of my players know what that reason is yet)




White walkers?


----------



## Lanefan

Maxperson said:


> White walkers?



Cliff, not wall.   The land to the east of it is about 5000' higher in elevation (with local variance, of course) than the land to the west of it.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Yes, and I found it really interesting how you said, "Yet the anchor for "story now" RPGing is player-established themes, dramatic need etc. And as even a cursory familiarity with literature and film will reveal, something can speak to a protagonist's dramatic need *although s/he is not (yet) interested in it*."  You've been chiding me for putting in things I think the player will find interesting, even though he's not interested in it yet, and there you go doing it yourself.  This is like the third or fourth time you've asked me why I do something, implying your way is different, and then posted examples of you doing it, too.



No.

Once again you ignore the difference between player and PC. The protagonist is the PC; it is the player who establishes the protagonist's dramatic need.

This is just one manifestation of a general faiilure to distinguish fiction from reality, and to treat an analysis of _the fiction_ as doing duty for an analysis of how play actually happens.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I just want to add, the WHOLE EXAMPLE was something I made up out of my head as I was typing it, and I have a typing speed fast enough to jam an IBM Selectric (like 200WPM). I've been known to write BOOK LENGTH material in a day, end-to-end. So, TOPS 5 seconds went into that example, I mean, really, max 5 seconds.
> 
> It wasn't meant to be a recording of the entire dialog of a sequence of play. It was just an illustration of the concept of what might happen, described at a fairly high level with just enough detail to convey the general concept I was getting at. I don't think you should judge my (and probably not [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s) entire technique based on this example.
> 
> Chances are, in actual play, the players would fiddle and digress and wrangle with the dwarves a bit, and ask questions, probably discuss some sort of plan, etc. If they really couldn't get ANY information on their objective then they'd probably start to outright consider what sort of additional measures they should take. Maybe they would send out word for anyone with intel, or ask the dwarves to scout ahead, or approach in a stealthy manner.
> 
> Now, mostly my players are guys and gals that cut their teeth on B1 hot off the presses and remember when the 1e MM hit the shelf and amazed us all with its hardcover goodness. So they're perhaps not representative of the degree of experience and adventurer-grade expertise of every group. They might also choose to RP being foolish or whatever, but my guess is they, and probably most other players, will ask questions and be proactive. I MOST SURELY will not get in the way of that! Certainly not in a D&D game. Maybe in Paranoia you sic the computer on them for being clever, but that's a bit different story...



I don't type as quickly as you, and I probably spent a couple of minutes writing up my half-dozen lines of dialogue.

What the example reminded me of, though, was when the PCs in my 4e game pursued a purple worm as it carried off a (swallowed) segment of the Rod of Seven Parts. I don't remember all the details 5 or so years later, but I don't think anyone worried about declaring stealth. And I don't remember exactly how the narrarion proceeded, but I don't think we spent very long mucking about with the travel. The focus of the action was on the PCs' arrival in a cavern where they fought the purple worm and two mechanically different Fang Titan Drakes.

The PCs' prep was collecting some lime to dilute the purple worm stomach acid. Which worked (30/rd dmg > 20/rd dmg).

For me, the bigger picture is the idea that every situation has to have a "lead up", a "telegraphing", where instead of getting into it the GM putzes around giving the players the chance to putz around some more. Let's just get on with it!



Lanefan said:


> Breaking one bit out here...
> Yet the party that reached Lothlorien was not the same as the party that left Rivendell: they arrived down by a wizard.



But Gandalf walked through a lot of Moria without dying, or even getting hurt!

If the players want to fight giants, I'm happy to leave the risk of Gandalf-death to that point.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> I know I as player have looked at a DM's player-side map and wondered what a particular place was all about, even though I'd never had a PC anywhere near it.



And I know as both player and GM I've looked at a character sheet and wondered what would become of that character.

These are aesthetic preferences. They don't tell us what is _possible _, or necessary, in RPGing.



Lanefan said:


> My main assumptions are:
> 
> - any game set in what could be a real-world setting with magic added on will at least try to maintain some form of general realism where and how it can;
> - where maintaining this realism takes time (e.g. playing out the risky bits of a long journey) that time will be taken;
> - that I have control over my character and its resources (e.g. I know how much money it has!)
> - that real-world time is not a limiting factor



These are aesthetic preferences. Realism has nothing to do with it.

There's nothing more realistic about a story in which the PCs inspect an intersection and one in which they arrive at the giants' cave.



Lanefan said:


> just because the players want to go where the giants are doesn't mean the game world should just let them



The gameworld doesn't let anyone do anything. Nor forbid it. It's just a story.

If a group wants to find out what happens when the PCs fight giants, nothing is stopping them. If a group prefers to see what the GM wants to do, that's their prerogative. But you can't tell me that's giving the other members of the group more agency!



Lanefan said:


> none of these are as important - by a huge factor - as tracking wealth.



Iin a game about travelling through a wilderness, shoes might matter more than wealth.

And wealth can be "tracked" without a mechanic. I can just write down that someone is rich, or poor - much as I write down that they are young or old, tall or short, amusing or boring, clean-living or a drunkard.



Lanefan said:


> So in the vikings game they don't know how much coin they have? (and it's not a "special mechanic", it's simple recording money in vs. money out)  Now don't get me wrong - I dislike economics etc. probably more than the next guy, but even then I want to know how much wealth my PC has at any given time...and I also want to know what's out there for me to spend it on.



In Cortex+ Heroic, if a player wants a piece of gear for his/her PC s/he can spend a plot point to create a resource (eg the player of the swordthane can spend a point to gain a riding resource, typically a horse). Assets can be created. Etc. The game doesn't use equipment lists. It simply isn't about gear in the D&D sense.



Lanefan said:


> "Irrelevant" social interaction e.g. with a friendly gate guard is great to RP through but is very unlikely to generate any quantifyable mechanical change to the party.  It might change their views or their level of knowledge or whatever, but nothing quantifyable.
> 
> "Irrelevant" combat with a sea monster in the Pacific has all kinds of opportunity to generate mechanical change to the party: Falstaff drops his magic sword overboard, Gwenivere gets hauled off the ship and drowns (and her body is never found), and Halfred's spellbook gets soaked and some of the spells in it are ruined.



This just reinforces my point.

Let's put to one side that D&D actually has no mechanics for the dropping of swords overboard, or the soaking of spellbooks. There is no reason inherent in RPGing why a random encounter with a sea monster should matter more than a random encounter with a striking individual. THat's a purely wargaming instinct.



Lanefan said:


> The risk with making stuff like this up on the fly is that you'll make something up that's geologically or geographically implausible or impossible
> 
> <snip>
> 
> the 3000-mile-long mile-high cliff in my game world called the Godswall - geologically ridiculous but I've a good in-game reason for its being there



The thing is, stuff like your cliff can be made up as needed. Stories of magical geology can be made up as needed. Your Godswall doesn't become more ridiculous, or less, because it is authored at time X rather than time Y. And it doesn't become more exciting as an element of the fiction because a reason has already been made up by the GM. It might be exciting even if no one has authored a reason yet!


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> No.
> 
> Once again you ignore the difference between player and PC. The protagonist is the PC; it is the player who establishes the protagonist's dramatic need.
> 
> This is just one manifestation of a general faiilure to distinguish fiction from reality, and to treat an analysis of _the fiction_ as doing duty for an analysis of how play actually happens.




This is pure evasion on your part.  You refuse to understand, and it is an outright refusal on your part as it is both obvious and I've told it to you, that I use PC and player interchangeably.  How about you actually respond to my post, and this time use player, okay?


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> But Gandalf walked through a lot of Moria without dying, or even getting hurt!




And if Tolkien had been writing in Story Now, he would not only have survived, but only been down maybe a healing surge.  After all, their goal was to get to Mordor, so the journey was of no interest to the players. They should have left Rivendell and shown up at Mordor in the next scene.


----------



## darkbard

Maxperson said:


> And if Tolkien had been writing in Story Now, he would not only have survived, but only been down maybe a healing surge.  After all, their goal was to get to Mordor, so the journey was of no interest to the players. They should have left Rivendell and shown up at Mordor in the next scene.




This is patently untrue. In LotR, the travel route is of high importance to the characters. The RPG equivalent would be the route of travel being of high importance to the players, and thus it would take a central role in a Story Now approach. But in the hypothetical example, the players indicate that the travel route is not the concern, the destination is, and so play transitions to that stated focus.


----------



## Maxperson

darkbard said:


> This is patently untrue. In LotR, the travel route is of high importance to the characters. The RPG equivalent would be the route of travel being of high importance to the players, and thus it would take a central role in a Story Now approach. But in the hypothetical example, the players indicate that the travel route is not the concern, the destination is, and so play transitions to that stated focus.




The travel route was only important in LotR, because Tolkien didn't fast forward it, playing a standard D&D game instead of fast forwarding like Story Now.  They actually had to walk and plan their way through obstacles that @_*pemerton*_ says are unimportant in his example.  The thing of high importance was getting the ring to Mt. Doom in Mordor.  Secondarily, it was important that Aragorn become king.  That's it.  Nobody sat the council at Rivendell and said, "It's important to me that we see Moria on the way to Mt. Doom", or "Hey, one of my goals is to see Lothlorien."  You're making up importance to characters that wasn't there.


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## clearstream

pemerton said:


> This is not what Eero Tuovinen means by the term.



Foremost, thank  you for drawing Tuovinen's blog to my attention  Something jarred here and maybe I didn't understand it. In summarising player advocacy, he writes



			
				Tuovinen said:
			
		

> This means that the player tells the others what his character does



If I tell others what a character I am advocating for _does_ don't I therefore have control of that character?


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## darkbard

Maxperson said:


> You're making up importance to characters that wasn't there.




No, I'm trying to extrapolate from the rather imperfect example of comparing across genres. But such a venture is likely pointless, for LotR is a work of fiction authored by a single person, not an RPG played by a group of people with various goals and desiderata for their PCs and game play.

What you consistently seem to miss, or ignore, or whatever in this branch of the discussion, no matter how many times [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] or [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] explain it to you, is that if the players in a game express their goals by declaring actions for their PCs, it reduces player agency for the GM to intervene other material of interest to the GM only in place of engaging the stated goals. Essentially, by the players not declaring that they approach stealthily, search for hidden altars along the route, etc. they are indicating such things are not of interest to them at this moment of play. You may not enjoy this mode of play, but your insistence that such players *must* be presented with obstacles, etc. to their expressed action declarations in the interest of their own agency is, as already noted, illogical and silly.


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## Maxperson

darkbard said:


> What you consistently seem to miss, or ignore, or whatever in this branch of the discussion, no matter how many times  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] or [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] explain it to you, is that if the players in a game express their goals by declaring actions for their PCs, it reduces player agency for the GM to intervene other material of interest to the GM only in place of engaging the stated goals.




 [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] admitted to doing exactly that a few pages ago.  He said he brought up things that were not yet of interest to the players.  If they aren't of interest to the players yet, they aren't a stated goal that he is engaging.  Either those things were of interest to the DM only, or he was doing what I do and coming up with things that he thought they might become interested in, which would be a plot hook that he says he doesn't do.



> Essentially, by the players not declaring that they approach stealthily, search for hidden altars along the route, etc. they are indicating such things are not of interest to them at this moment of play. You may not enjoy this mode of play, but your insistence that such players *must* be presented with obstacles, etc. to their expressed action declarations in the interest of their own agency is, as already noted, illogical and silly.



Or they didn't think of it.  I find the assumption that Story Now players are perfect and never overlook anything to be amusing.  I find the idea that if I am playing Story Now, I have to plot out possible things that might happen at the end of the trip so that I can see if I need to tell the DM before my character leaves what I want to do, to be disheartening.  I don't like having to play a mental game of chess with the DM, plotting out my moves well in advance.  And I find the constant twisting of my words in this thread into things that I didn't say or mean to be annoying.  Nothing I've said represents an obstacle to the declarations of the players.


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## darkbard

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], it has become clear to me over weeks of your posting to this thread that you are not really interested in honest analysis but rather staunchly adhering to your set perspectives, logic and evidence to the contrary be damned. If that floats your boat, go for it. But I don't see the point in engaging further...


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## Maxperson

darkbard said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], it has become clear to me over weeks of your posting to this thread that you are not really interested in honest analysis but rather staunchly adhering to your set perspectives, logic and evidence to the contrary be damned. If that floats your boat, go for it. But I don't see the point in engaging further...




Then you haven't been paying attention.  I haven't been arguing that mine is right and/or others are wrong. I've been saying that the two styles are very similar except for motivations.  Story Now involves most of the techniques that we use.  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has steadily shown through example that he uses many the things he has been saying is railroading or choose your own adventure when he talks about our style.  It's just apparently okay when he does it.  Analysis fails when one side is only analyzing the other, pointing it out as negative, and failing to see that it engages in much of the same activity.


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## tomBitonti

Lanefan said:


> The risk with making stuff like this up on the fly is that you'll make something up that's geologically or geographically implausible or impossible and not realize it until it's too late, by which time you're stuck with it because it's affected play somehow.  If you at least map out your world (or at least the bits of it most likely to see play) ahead of time you can find and fix these errors before they get baked in...or intentionally bake in some implausibilities as you've had the time to come up with good in-game rationales for them (e.g. the 3000-mile-long mile-high cliff in my game world called the Godswall - geologically ridiculous but I've a good in-game reason for its being there which I won't post here as none of my players know what that reason is yet)
> 
> Also, having a basic map of things that would be known to the PCs allows the players to make informed decisions as you can simply plop the map down in front of them and they can use it just like I use an atlas to plan a road trip.  _We've got two weeks to kill while the wizard trains up? OK - it's 6 days walk to Karnos _(port town)_ then probably another week at sea to get to Spieadeia _(big city)_ - nope, we can't get there and back in time; shopping will have to wait._
> 
> I know I as player have looked at a DM's player-side map and wondered what a particular place was all about, even though I'd never had a PC anywhere near it.
> 
> Lanefan




Much of the discussion has stayed away from this sort of practical question.

I've found that WorldBuilding is necessary when I GM so that I can present options to the players in a coherent, consistent fashion.  I find that the more that I make up on the spot, the harder it is to stay consistent, especially if players have repeat encounters with a location or creature.

Putting in a rough timeline in which the players are operations enables the placement events and encounters around the players chosen activities so to increase the sense of being immersed in a real world.

Neither of these purposes is there to take away player agency, in any serious fashion.  If anything, they provide a framework from which players can base their actions.

Thx!
TomB


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> For me, the bigger picture is the idea that every situation has to have a "lead up", a "telegraphing",



Not every situation.  If the party had been surprised by some giants appearing a few miles before they'd normally have been expected then sure, no lead-up required.  But in the situation as presented the PCs had every reason to suspect there'd be giants ahead, and as written there's no indication given as to whether either side gained surprise (or system equivalent). 



> where instead of getting into it the GM putzes around giving the players the chance to putz around some more. Let's just get on with it!



Patience, Iago.  Patience.   We don't have to play through it all tonight...there's always next session...



> But Gandalf walked through a lot of Moria without dying, or even getting hurt!



Sure he did.  Still doesn't mean he made it to Lothlorien, even though (going by Galadhriel's reaction) he was expected to.



> If the players want to fight giants, I'm happy to leave the risk of Gandalf-death to that point.



If the players want to fight giants and there's risks or dangers or hazards between where they are and where the giants are, I want to see what effects those risks-dangers-hazards might have on the party so that both I and the players know what they have left (and-or maybe what they've gained!) by the time they reach the giants.

Lanefan


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Iin a game about travelling through a wilderness, shoes might matter more than wealth.
> 
> And wealth can be "tracked" without a mechanic. I can just write down that someone is rich, or poor - much as I write down that they are young or old, tall or short, amusing or boring, clean-living or a drunkard.



How rich?  If hiring a couple of porters to carry my heavy stuff through the jungle is going to cost me 2 g.p. per day per porter, I'd like to be able to just look at my character sheet, see I've got 105 g.p. right now, and know I can confidently hire these guys for 20 days (80 g.p.) and still have a bit left over.  (and next I'll be on to the DM for some geography in order that I can - using maps and local knowledge/lore - make a reasonable estimate of how long this trip is gonna take and whether paying my hirelings is going to run me out of money before we even get to the adventure)

Or how poor?  Can I afford to buy a spare set of good shoes at 3 g.p. or am I restricted to the cheap ones at 12 s.p. that'll wear out faster?



> In Cortex+ Heroic, if a player wants a piece of gear for his/her PC s/he can spend a plot point to create a resource (eg the player of the swordthane can spend a point to gain a riding resource, typically a horse). Assets can be created. Etc. The game doesn't use equipment lists. It simply isn't about gear in the D&D sense.



Again, absolutely unrealistic.  

The more you tell me about this game the more it seems like the game completely turns its back on any sort of realism, or resource management, or small-scale grittiness.  Yes I know it has "Heroic" in its name and that alone should red-flag me as to what to expect but come on, man: even heroes have to pay for food and count their arrows.

I sure hope these resources can only be created when it makes sense they be available e.g. if you can create a horse while on a ship at sea that's right over the top.

And what happens if while deep in a dungeon somewhere it suddenly becomes extremely important whether or not someone has some particular piece of mundane gear e.g. iron spikes to wedge a door shut?  They can't be allowed to 'create' them there and then; they either had some all along or they didn't, and if they did they'd be noted somewhere and if they didn't then they're out of luck.  Otherwise it'd be like these plot points are almost like little tiny Wishes - bleah.



> Let's put to one side that D&D actually has no mechanics for the dropping of swords overboard, or the soaking of spellbooks.



Depending on system or houserules either of these could be a fumble result; and the spellbook mishap could also be a result of a failed item save: _Halfred, this isn't your day: a tentacle sweeps your backpack overboard!  The backpack gets a save each round to see how long it can keep the water out, but after that fails anything in it that could be damaged by water will need to make its own save._


> There is no reason inherent in RPGing why a random encounter with a sea monster should matter more than a random encounter with a striking individual. THat's a purely wargaming instinct.



If the random encounter with a striking individual has the potential to make significant changes to the party e.g. someone might get charmed out of the group, or killed, or said striking individual might end up joining the party, I'll run it longhand.  But a friendly gate guard (the original example) most of the time doesn't count as "striking". 



> The thing is, stuff like your cliff can be made up as needed. Stories of magical geology can be made up as needed. Your Godswall doesn't become more ridiculous, or less, because it is authored at time X rather than time Y. And it doesn't become more exciting as an element of the fiction because a reason has already been made up by the GM. It might be exciting even if no one has authored a reason yet!



You've either ignored or missed my point.  Sure things like this could be made up on the fly, but doing so gives no opportunity to think it through ahead of time and work out the possible consequences (both in and out of fiction) and-or rationales.

Putting the Godswall where it is makes east-going non-magical travel extremely difficult.  If anyone at the table (including me as DM) has any reason for the party to go east or for anything to have been coming from the east that trip just became a lot more challenging.  I've also just munged up the climate and weather patterns over about a quarter of a continent, retroactive through every minute of the PCs' played careers.  _Guys, remember that days-long rainstorm and flood you hit while you were out chasing down the Kapoor Crystal last year?  Yeah, well that massive cliff I threw in last week means there's no possible way that rainstorm could have happened as putting the Godswall where it is means - now I've worked out the climate patterns - it simply can't rain there that much.  Ever._  No.  Just no.

And if I don't catch this sort of thing, chances are a player will; which would in this example probably lead to either a demand for a retcon of the Kapoor Crystal adventure (or at least of the flood part if said flood had any lasting effects) or - more likely - an unspoken invalidation of that adventure and maybe of the whole campaign.

This stuff has to be got right the first time.  Making it up on the fly might work out once in a while if you get lucky with it but in the long run is just asking for disaster.

Lan-"regarding the Godswall retroactively changing the weather during the Kapoor expedition, before anyone even thinks of suggesting I should just gloss it all over and hope nobody notices: forget it.  I'll have noticed, and I'm not the kind of DM to bury a mistake like that"-efan


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Breaking one bit out here...
> Yet the party that reached Lothlorien was not the same as the party that left Rivendell: they arrived down by a wizard.  That's a rather big change to the party that wouldn't happen if the journey was simply handwaved.
> 
> Further, were this an RPG all the other characters would have gained some decent xp for events along that journey.
> 
> And to take this to the next stage: the party that left Lothlorien didn't in fact arrive anywhere, as it split in three (and lost a PC) partway along.
> 
> Perhaps not, but in the other big underdark adventure _Night Below_ any travel through the underdark involves serious risk.




Well, lets just say that there was AT LEAST one PC (Gimli) who was QUITE well served in his interests by a more detailed exploration of Moria. Several scenes also developed various characters. Pipin made a fool of himself, Frodo was 'dead' for a while (testing the other characters), Gimli discovered the fate of Balin, Sam discovered a bold streak, they discovered the nature of Durin's Bane, Gandalf fell, Aragorn became the party leader. These were all fairly interesting scenes that certainly relate to these characters, have a close tie to the general campaign theme, etc. It was more than a journey. 

I would note, OTOH, that Tolkien equally skipped over the trip through Dunland which came right before Moria (and was 3x longer in time, and probably 100x longer in distance traveled). He merely touched up much of what the various PCs saw/did in Lothlorien as well. Later much of the travels of the 9 Walkers were summarized. Sometimes even parts where they faced significant danger, adversity, and in a few cases even outright fighting. 

Does travel through the Underdark involve serious risk? There is no answer to this question. Any answer is simply invented by whomever answers it, as there's no such thing as the Underdark, and most of what might live there is utterly fantastical and thus also made up. It is exactly as risky as is required to elicit the type of story that is wanted, no more, no less. This is true regardless of what story-telling technique you use. 

I mean, in D&D genre lore, the Underdark is a place which certainly contains a wide range of exceedingly deadly foes, and is usually thought of as a location for fairly high-level adventures. Moreover, drow, kuo-toa, duergar, etc. are generally held to exist there and be some of the more 'mundane' of the creatures to be found. That doesn't mean that every trek of 10 miles or even 50 miles is filled with actual danger. It seems to me that, in many cases, color could be created by explicating this danger somewhat. This could take the form of encountering the remains of unfortunate travelers, signs of powerful malevolent creatures, possibly even seeing such creatures, meeting other non-threatening travelers with tales of danger, etc. etc. etc. Obviously ACTUAL dangerous encounters, difficult/dangerous/deadly terrain, etc. is also a possibility, IF you want to spend more time on this element. That might be true if the players have evinced a desire to explore this region, if such an encounter serves some useful story purpose, etc. 

IN GENERAL when PCs have a destination with story significance in mind, there's little reason to fiddle around delaying them more than to describe what they see, and maybe require a check as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] did. Honestly I don't even go for the check stuff anymore. I just tell the players "You can spend a Vitality Point (HS) and reach your destination without further incident, or you can play out an SC to get there, but in that case failure might have bigger consequences."


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> And none of these are as important - by a huge factor - as tracking wealth.



What makes it important? It may be important TO YOU because tracking it is something you like to do, or you like to have PCs with goals like "accumulate a huge amount of gold" or something like that. Admittedly that's a fairly common motivation amongst people...



> So in the vikings game they don't know how much coin they have? (and it's not a "special mechanic", it's simple recording money in vs. money out)  Now don't get me wrong - I dislike economics etc. probably more than the next guy, but even then I want to know how much wealth my PC has at any given time...and I also want to know what's out there for me to spend it on.



As I said, I'd want to know in SOME situations. MOST of the time I've found that players don't even really track it accurately anyway. One guy says "Oh, we'll split the treasure from last week" and writes 20% of it on his sheet, and the guy that had it all written on HIS sheet didn't bother to mark that. 3 weeks later nobody even remembers. I assert that, for any party above level 2, in any D&D game that the coins marked on their sheet are just some sort of approximation, convenient number, or even simply made up "Oh, didn't I find 200gp in that orc cave? Yeah I must have that on me somewhere....". Its pretend money, it has no fixed amounts associated with it, and mostly in D&D it was just rolled randomly on some dice anyway.



> "Irrelevant" social interaction e.g. with a friendly gate guard is great to RP through but is very unlikely to generate any quantifyable mechanical change to the party.  It might change their views or their level of knowledge or whatever, but nothing quantifyable.



But I don't play to find out how the numbers on my sheet change. I play to learn about my character, his place in the world, what he's going to do next, and even who he is connected with. Numbers are boring, I crunch them with large clusters of computers all day, they mean less than nothing in the end.



> "Irrelevant" combat with a sea monster in the Pacific has all kinds of opportunity to generate mechanical change to the party: Falstaff drops his magic sword overboard, Gwenivere gets hauled off the ship and drowns (and her body is never found), and Halfred's spellbook gets soaked and some of the spells in it are ruined.
> 
> That sort of focus was inherent from day 1 - wandering monsters.



Again, so what? I mean, these things MIGHT be significant, but there are plenty of significant things that the players ASKED FOR that I can inflict them with. Random sea monsters weren't on that list, so lets just move on! If all we are getting out of this is effectively the color "here be monsters" then I can describe the trip as long and tedious, except when the sea monster was sighted.

Wandering monsters were invented pretty much as an anti-5-minute-workday rule. If you try to rest in the dungeon, you get gnawed on all night until you either leave or die.



> This is my point, though: just because the players want to go where the giants are doesn't mean the game world should just let them, particularly when the intervening risks are already known and even still when they are not.



And that is our point, YES IT SHOULD!



> If the players want to go to the giants they will almost certainly get there at some point.  But neither they nor I will know how much time (both fictional and real) it'll take until we play it out.



And we did play it out. I described the trip to the giant cave. Actually I think it was [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] that described it, I sort of just implied it was the next thing up. It just wasn't dramatically signficant.



> My main assumptions are:
> 
> - any game set in what could be a real-world setting with magic added on will at least try to maintain some form of general realism where and how it can;
> - where maintaining this realism takes time (e.g. playing out the risky bits of a long journey) that time will be taken;
> - that I have control over my character and its resources (e.g. I know how much money it has!)
> - that real-world time is not a limiting factor



I think your assumptions have some fundamental flaws, but we've already covered that ground.



> The Sorcerer-King of Tyr just died?  That's not a hook, it's a trawling net!




As I recall from the bits of description of it I read that event pretty much drove all the action from there on out, either directly or indirectly.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> The risk with making stuff like this up on the fly is that you'll make something up that's geologically or geographically implausible or impossible and not realize it until it's too late, by which time you're stuck with it because it's affected play somehow.  If you at least map out your world (or at least the bits of it most likely to see play) ahead of time you can find and fix these errors before they get baked in...or intentionally bake in some implausibilities as you've had the time to come up with good in-game rationales for them (e.g. the 3000-mile-long mile-high cliff in my game world called the Godswall - geologically ridiculous but I've a good in-game reason for its being there which I won't post here as none of my players know what that reason is yet)



Geologically speaking, we know little enough about the internal dynamics of the Earth that its difficult to make conjectures about what is or is not possible. Now translate that to some other 'planet' with some completely alien origin etc. and IMHO any considerations of geographical plausibility are pretty much out the window. 

CONSISTENCY might be a goal, IMHO mostly because it allows the players to reason about their character's actions (IE if we go 52 miles in this direction trigonometry says we should end up at location X). 

While there's no 5000km long 1500m high ridge on Earth its not actually THAT far off from reality. The East African Rift forms a scarp on its eastern side which is 1000's of feet high and runs for more than 1000 miles (I'm sure there are breaks and I don't know exactly how high all of it is, but if you have been there you will know its a HUGE geological feature, you can't even see the other side).

My point is, I'm not super worried about it, nor am I constrained in terms of what I can frame into existence (or that the players can).



> Also, having a basic map of things that would be known to the PCs allows the players to make informed decisions as you can simply plop the map down in front of them and they can use it just like I use an atlas to plan a road trip.  _We've got two weeks to kill while the wizard trains up? OK - it's 6 days walk to Karnos _(port town)_ then probably another week at sea to get to Spieadeia _(big city)_ - nope, we can't get there and back in time; shopping will have to wait._
> 
> I know I as player have looked at a DM's player-side map and wondered what a particular place was all about, even though I'd never had a PC anywhere near it.
> 
> Lanefan




Fair enough, but none of that seems out of reach to me if I'm creating things whole cloth. I can't set the map down in front of the players, but I can ask them what they want to do.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, lets just say that there was AT LEAST one PC (Gimli) who was QUITE well served in his interests by a more detailed exploration of Moria. Several scenes also developed various characters. Pipin made a fool of himself, Frodo was 'dead' for a while (testing the other characters), Gimli discovered the fate of Balin, Sam discovered a bold streak, they discovered the nature of Durin's Bane, Gandalf fell, Aragorn became the party leader. These were all fairly interesting scenes that certainly relate to these characters, have a close tie to the general campaign theme, etc. It was more than a journey.




And it was never supposed to happen.  They were supposed to go over the mountains, but their goal was blocked(to use a Story Now term) by encounters.



> IN GENERAL when PCs have a destination with story significance in mind, there's little reason to fiddle around delaying them more than to describe what they see, and maybe require a check as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] did. Honestly I don't even go for the check stuff anymore. I just tell the players "You can spend a Vitality Point (HS) and reach your destination without further incident, or you can play out an SC to get there, but in that case failure might have bigger consequences."



Which prevents Moria from happening in a Story Now game.  They had a significant destination in mind before they were blocked and had to go through Moria instead.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> And that is our point, YES IT SHOULD!




Why should the game world just let them get to where they want to go?  I mean, I get why the metagame in a Story Now campaign should let them, but why should the game world be the same way?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> The travel route was only important in LotR, because Tolkien didn't fast forward it, playing a standard D&D game instead of fast forwarding like Story Now.  They actually had to walk and plan their way through obstacles that @_*pemerton*_ says are unimportant in his example.  The thing of high importance was getting the ring to Mt. Doom in Mordor.  Secondarily, it was important that Aragorn become king.  That's it.  Nobody sat the council at Rivendell and said, "It's important to me that we see Moria on the way to Mt. Doom", or "Hey, one of my goals is to see Lothlorien."  You're making up importance to characters that wasn't there.




Again, Gimli was QUITE interested in Moria and several times mentioned going there. In fact I think he even said so at the Council of Elrond (well before it was on the table as an actual route). Aragorn was VERY interested in going to Lothlorien, as his girlfriend was there! And truthfully, all the adventures of the 9 Walkers were of key importance. Aragorn and Gandalf arrived at Theoden's Hall at a very critical point, as did Merry and Pippin arrive at Fangorn. Again and again it was clear that the events set in motion by the Fellowship were critical. The War of the Ring would have been radically different, even lost, had they turned out differently. 

In fact, IMHO, it was the very struggle, the exercise of will to do all these things to resist Sauron which was the whole point of the story. By their choice the weak took up the highest duty, the strong gave them to chance to accomplish it, the final acts of the defiance of the Noldor against the Valar was played out, etc.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> How rich?  If hiring a couple of porters to carry my heavy stuff through the jungle is going to cost me 2 g.p. per day per porter, I'd like to be able to just look at my character sheet, see I've got 105 g.p. right now, and know I can confidently hire these guys for 20 days (80 g.p.) and still have a bit left over.  (and next I'll be on to the DM for some geography in order that I can - using maps and local knowledge/lore - make a reasonable estimate of how long this trip is gonna take and whether paying my hirelings is going to run me out of money before we even get to the adventure)
> 
> Or how poor?  Can I afford to buy a spare set of good shoes at 3 g.p. or am I restricted to the cheap ones at 12 s.p. that'll wear out faster?



Rich, or poor, enough to possibly be a motivation to adventure, if that's stated as one of the character's needs is money (he is desirous of such). Otherwise I have little desire to muck around with making the players delay the whole thing so they can what? Pick some pockets for a few extra gold? I mean, feasibly (though I think its a bit thin and I can come up with better) you could use this as an option in some sort of time-constrained situation where the PCs have to gather resources so they can launch their expedition before plot consequence #12 kicks in. In any case, a wealth check can work just as well as arithmetic here "make a check, ok, you passed, you've got enough gold in your purse to pay the porters for several weeks of travel. You know this SHOULD be enough time to get to the Lost City."



> Again, absolutely unrealistic.
> 
> The more you tell me about this game the more it seems like the game completely turns its back on any sort of realism, or resource management, or small-scale grittiness.  Yes I know it has "Heroic" in its name and that alone should red-flag me as to what to expect but come on, man: even heroes have to pay for food and count their arrows.



Realism, in a literal sense of mechanics which are a simulation of some real-world processes, is NOT the same thing as verisimilitude. The later is actually notoriously hard to define and more of a 'you know it when you see it' thing. 



> I sure hope these resources can only be created when it makes sense they be available e.g. if you can create a horse while on a ship at sea that's right over the top.



Like all other parts of Story Now, genre logic and fictional positioning are always significant factors.



> And what happens if while deep in a dungeon somewhere it suddenly becomes extremely important whether or not someone has some particular piece of mundane gear e.g. iron spikes to wedge a door shut?  They can't be allowed to 'create' them there and then; they either had some all along or they didn't, and if they did they'd be noted somewhere and if they didn't then they're out of luck.  Otherwise it'd be like these plot points are almost like little tiny Wishes - bleah.



And how many times have the 10th level PCs in your game thought this, and then pulled out the spike they bought at level 1 and wrote on their sheet? It happened quite a bit in my game, but nobody ever really bothered to track how realistic it was that those spikes stayed in the pack for 15 months of high action adventuring! Nor am I so compulsive in my desire to record-keep that I'm going to catch the dozen instances where they might be lost and make all the players check for it, or record exactly how many the elf has expended over that time. My solution? Dice for it. If you're wise and experienced you probably kept up your supplies, but not every character is...



> Depending on system or houserules either of these could be a fumble result; and the spellbook mishap could also be a result of a failed item save: _Halfred, this isn't your day: a tentacle sweeps your backpack overboard!  The backpack gets a save each round to see how long it can keep the water out, but after that fails anything in it that could be damaged by water will need to make its own save.
> _



Yeah, this kind of thing was pretty close to the first casualty of AD&D play in my group. Nobody wanted the tedium and sheer compulsive rulishness of demanding item saving throws and such at every turn. UGH! 



> Putting the Godswall where it is makes east-going non-magical travel extremely difficult.  If anyone at the table (including me as DM) has any reason for the party to go east or for anything to have been coming from the east that trip just became a lot more challenging.  I've also just munged up the climate and weather patterns over about a quarter of a continent, retroactive through every minute of the PCs' played careers.  _Guys, remember that days-long rainstorm and flood you hit while you were out chasing down the Kapoor Crystal last year?  Yeah, well that massive cliff I threw in last week means there's no possible way that rainstorm could have happened as putting the Godswall where it is means - now I've worked out the climate patterns - it simply can't rain there that much.  Ever._  No.  Just no.



Seriously? You know more than NOAA does about these things? humbug!



> And if I don't catch this sort of thing, chances are a player will; which would in this example probably lead to either a demand for a retcon of the Kapoor Crystal adventure (or at least of the flood part if said flood had any lasting effects) or - more likely - an unspoken invalidation of that adventure and maybe of the whole campaign.
> 
> This stuff has to be got right the first time.  Making it up on the fly might work out once in a while if you get lucky with it but in the long run is just asking for disaster.
> 
> Lan-"regarding the Godswall retroactively changing the weather during the Kapoor expedition, before anyone even thinks of suggesting I should just gloss it all over and hope nobody notices: forget it.  I'll have noticed, and I'm not the kind of DM to bury a mistake like that"-efan




This is pure theorycrafting silliness. Nobody knows that much about climate and weather, NOBODY. Nobody that I have ever played with or even HEARD OF is so crazy as to try to question some long past adventure on the basis of their made-up interpretation of the weather consequences of some invented geography. 

I mean, sure, some player could call you on how your streets don't line up in the town, but my answer would be "Oh, yeah, that's very interesting! Now, does your character spend the next 3 days figuring it out? Yes? OK, roll a Streetwise check. You succeeded? OK, what did you discover?"


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> And it was never supposed to happen.  They were supposed to go over the mountains, but their goal was blocked(to use a Story Now term) by encounters.
> 
> Which prevents Moria from happening in a Story Now game.  They had a significant destination in mind before they were blocked and had to go through Moria instead.




They tried to go over the mountains. In RPG hypothetical LoTR land they failed some sort of mechanical challenge and were turned back. Then they went to Moria. Here we see EXACTLY why you don't skip to the end of the story! The GM said "Oh, you want to go to Mordor and dispose of the ring... OK, you have to cross the Misty Mountains Dark and Cold!" This is HOW Story Now evolves story. The GM introduces scenes which frame putting the character's goals and beliefs to the test, which is another word for CONFLICT. 

Sauron himself is an adversary (as is Saruman). These adversaries are substantial elements of the drama. Without them, without problems to overcome there's no story. Its not 'Story Ends Now'. Our hypothetical JRRT, GM extraordinaire, wisely put a challenge in the player's way. Now, they had a choice, to try to up the stakes on Caradharas and push on, into very likely death, or retreat and choose the grim and uncertain Mines of Moria. The fact that Gimli is served by going to the mines is useful to the GM, but its only one of his goals and not the most central one. In fact in Story Now No Myth, the Mines ONLY EXISTED because the PCs failed on the Mountain and the GM then noted Gimli's "I want to find out the fate of my cousin Balin, Lord of Moria." and hatched a plan (framed a new scene).

This is how these games work.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Why should the game world just let them get to where they want to go?  I mean, I get why the metagame in a Story Now campaign should let them, but why should the game world be the same way?




I daresay you already know the answer...


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> What makes it important? It may be important TO YOU because tracking it is something you like to do, or you like to have PCs with goals like "accumulate a huge amount of gold" or something like that. Admittedly that's a fairly common motivation amongst people...
> 
> As I said, I'd want to know in SOME situations. MOST of the time I've found that players don't even really track it accurately anyway. One guy says "Oh, we'll split the treasure from last week" and writes 20% of it on his sheet, and the guy that had it all written on HIS sheet didn't bother to mark that. 3 weeks later nobody even remembers. I assert that, for any party above level 2, in any D&D game that the coins marked on their sheet are just some sort of approximation, convenient number, or even simply made up "Oh, didn't I find 200gp in that orc cave? Yeah I must have that on me somewhere....".



Well, around here that sure ain't true.  We track finances as closely as we track anything else (except encumbrance, we kinda gave up on that  ) and after each adventure the accumulated and carefully recorded treasure is divided evenly among the party with magic items being treated as if they were their worth in coin (a major reason we have a magic item price list!).  If someone just starts putting random numbers on their finance sheet that's cheating just as much as if they arbitrarily changed their hit points.



> Its pretend money



Not to the PCs on whose behalf we are tracking it. 



> it has no fixed amounts associated with it



Er...huh?  200 g.p. is 200 g.p.



> But I don't play to find out how the numbers on my sheet change. I play to learn about my character, his place in the world, what he's going to do next, and even who he is connected with.



As do I, but there's these annoying things called game mechanics we also have to deal with.  My preferences certainly run toward less mechanics rather than more but I'll still admit there have to be some.  Many of these are numbers which for the game to function have to be carefully tracked and recorded...and among these tracking money is among the least of the problems.



> Numbers are boring, I crunch them with large clusters of computers all day, they mean less than nothing in the end.



I seem to keep coming back to my assertion that the boring bits, while boring, are still an essential part of the game and shouldn't be ignored or handwaved.  This includes long-distance travel during which things might happen.  This includes tracking wealth and arrows and time and distance.  This includes resting for three days in the wilderness because the party's all just been beat to ratpoop and need to recover.

Same level and type of essential as the bass player who only plays a repeating three note riff through the whole song - boring as hell for him but the song wouldn't be any good without his contribution.



> Again, so what? I mean, these things MIGHT be significant, but there are plenty of significant things that the players ASKED FOR that I can inflict them with. Random sea monsters weren't on that list, so lets just move on! If all we are getting out of this is effectively the color "here be monsters" then I can describe the trip as long and tedious, except when the sea monster was sighted.



Random sea monsters might not have been on that list but travel was, and if that travel takes 'em through sea monster territory there's a chance they're gonna find trouble...or trouble is gonna find them.



> Wandering monsters were invented pretty much as an anti-5-minute-workday rule. If you try to rest in the dungeon, you get gnawed on all night until you either leave or die.



Oddly enough, I rarely use them for that purpose.   In most of my dungeon-type adventures I've usually got the occupants accounted for, and few are "wandering".  Some might be doing guard patrols or whatever, but even then I'll know thier routes etc.

What I do use wandering monsters for most often is situations just like this - a party is travelling through some potentially dangerous territory, let's see what finds them.  So: wandering monsters, meet wandering party. 



> As I recall from the bits of description of it I read that event pretty much drove all the action from there on out, either directly or indirectly.



Makes sense - an event like that is a hook with a million potential sub-hooks and the players jumped at it.

Lanefan


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Geologically speaking, we know little enough about the internal dynamics of the Earth that its difficult to make conjectures about what is or is not possible. Now translate that to some other 'planet' with some completely alien origin etc. and IMHO any considerations of geographical plausibility are pretty much out the window.



I think we know enough about how Earth works and almost enough about how some other planets work to be able to more or less conjecture a consistent pattern as to how they're formed and what they're probably made of...and from there working out the basic geology isn't a big stretch.

That said, I've put my geology knowledge (of which I've a bit - it was my field in college) to a severe test when designing my current world; along the lines of "If *this* gets done to an otherwise innocent and ordinary planet, what happens? OK, how about this?  And then this? [etc.]"  The Godswall is a result of one of these "this"es.



> CONSISTENCY might be a goal, IMHO mostly because it allows the players to reason about their character's actions (IE if we go 52 miles in this direction trigonometry says we should end up at location X).



Yep, and if we make the same trip next year it should take roughly the same amount of time and we should arrive in roughly the same place. 



> While there's no 5000km long 1500m high ridge on Earth its not actually THAT far off from reality. The East African Rift forms a scarp on its eastern side which is 1000's of feet high and runs for more than 1000 miles (I'm sure there are breaks and I don't know exactly how high all of it is, but if you have been there you will know its a HUGE geological feature, you can't even see the other side).



I've never been there but I've heard of it, and there's a few similarities with the Godswall in my world.  A few. 



> My point is, I'm not super worried about it, nor am I constrained in terms of what I can frame into existence (or that the players can).



I do worry about it mostly because I don't want to end up constantly having to explain away things that don't make sense.


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Rich, or poor, enough to possibly be a motivation to adventure, if that's stated as one of the character's needs is money (he is desirous of such). Otherwise I have little desire to muck around with making the players delay the whole thing so they can what? Pick some pockets for a few extra gold?



Or make the decision to do without the gold.  It forces a choice on to the players/PCs.



> In any case, a wealth check can work just as well as arithmetic here "make a check, ok, you passed, you've got enough gold in your purse to pay the porters for several weeks of travel. You know this SHOULD be enough time to get to the Lost City."



Taken in isolation, sure.  But when taken in context of all the other things a PC might want to spend money on while in town (restocking supplies, bribes for information, high-roller living, commissioning scrolls or potions, whatever) it's better just to track it properly.



> Realism, in a literal sense of mechanics which are a simulation of some real-world processes, is NOT the same thing as verisimilitude. The later is actually notoriously hard to define and more of a 'you know it when you see it' thing.



Yes.  IMO however, v-tude is much _much_ easier to achieve if there's a solid foundation of realism underlying it.



> And how many times have the 10th level PCs in your game thought this, and then pulled out the spike they bought at level 1 and wrote on their sheet?



About as often as it happens where they suddenly realize they don't have something so simple because it isn't noted on anyone's sheet.

Hard and fast rule: if it's not noted on your character sheet, you don't have it.



> It happened quite a bit in my game, but nobody ever really bothered to track how realistic it was that those spikes stayed in the pack for 15 months of high action adventuring! Nor am I so compulsive in my desire to record-keep that I'm going to catch the dozen instances where they might be lost and make all the players check for it, or record exactly how many the elf has expended over that time. My solution? Dice for it. If you're wise and experienced you probably kept up your supplies, but not every character is...



Dice-for-it does come up now and then, for sure, though only in non-essential situations.



> Yeah, this kind of thing was pretty close to the first casualty of AD&D play in my group. Nobody wanted the tedium and sheer compulsive rulishness of demanding item saving throws and such at every turn. UGH!



This will NEVER be taken out of my games.  Hell, magic item fragility is the main reason I can keep giving out lots of neat funky magic items for them to play with! 

Never mind that sometimes when they break they go boom or have some other odd effect.

Magic is dangerous stuff.



> Seriously? You know more than NOAA does about these things? humbug!



I'm a weather geek in real life, so of course that's going to translate into my games! 

When designing my current game world one of the things I did was work out the rough climate patterns and zones for the part of the world I expected most of the play to be in, so I could then have a vague idea of what types of weather would make sense for what times of year based on where they happen to be at the time.  What actually gets narrated each day is based on a certain amount of expected variance from these norms, as run through my tables if I'm being diligent and my head if I'm not. 



> This is pure theorycrafting silliness. Nobody knows that much about climate and weather, NOBODY. Nobody that I have ever played with or even HEARD OF is so crazy as to try to question some long past adventure on the basis of their made-up interpretation of the weather consequences of some invented geography.



I know enough about the climate and weather in my own game world to say that sticking a mile-high thousands-mile-long cliff somewhere is going to have some serious effects on the weather and climate of the areas relatively close to it.  And as that cliff has in theory always been there (it didn't just appear out of nothing!) but is only just now being authored into play, so would its effects have in theory always been there...and thus would have affected elements of play in the past had they been known about at the time.  To me this invalidates the previous play, which is something I adamantly oppose.

An analogy might be changing some significant game rule in mid-campaign, trying to retro-act the change all the way back to the start for consistency, and finding the old rule had in the past allowed or caused some major things to happen which in theory under the new rule could not have happened (or vice versa).  To me this invalidates what came before...and in this example would cause me to abandon the rule change; I'd be stuck with the old rule until I changed campaigns or game worlds.  (right now I've got a list of things I want to change but can't, for just this reason)



> I mean, sure, some player could call you on how your streets don't line up in the town, but my answer would be "Oh, yeah, that's very interesting! Now, does your character spend the next 3 days figuring it out? Yes? OK, roll a Streetwise check. You succeeded? OK, what did you discover?"



 Character wouldn't need to spend three days in the streets figuring it out - fifteen minutes with a good map ought to suffice; and in most cases medieval street plans looked like spaghetti anyway. 

Lanefan


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> They tried to go over the mountains. In RPG hypothetical LoTR land they failed some sort of mechanical challenge and were turned back. Then they went to Moria. Here we see EXACTLY why you don't skip to the end of the story! The GM said "Oh, you want to go to Mordor and dispose of the ring... OK, you have to cross the Misty Mountains Dark and Cold!" This is HOW Story Now evolves story. The GM introduces scenes which frame putting the character's goals and beliefs to the test, which is another word for CONFLICT.



The DM said "Oh, you want to go from Washington to Tokyo [to do whatever]?  OK, you have to cross the open endless plains, the dangerous western mountains, and the monster-infested ocean!"

Same thing, ain't it?



> Sauron himself is an adversary (as is Saruman). These adversaries are substantial elements of the drama. Without them, without problems to overcome there's no story. Its not 'Story Ends Now'. Our hypothetical JRRT, GM extraordinaire, wisely put a challenge in the player's way. Now, they had a choice, to try to up the stakes on Caradharas and push on, into very likely death, or retreat and choose the grim and uncertain Mines of Moria. The fact that Gimli is served by going to the mines is useful to the GM, but its only one of his goals and not the most central one. In fact in Story Now No Myth, the Mines ONLY EXISTED because the PCs failed on the Mountain and the GM then noted Gimli's "I want to find out the fate of my cousin Balin, Lord of Moria." and hatched a plan (framed a new scene).
> 
> This is how these games work.



OK, sounds great!

As long as we can all agree the same result could easily be achieved in a DM-driven or traditonal game, we're good on this one. 

Lanefan


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> I use PC and player interchangeably



This is obvisouly hopeless for analysis. It's even hopeless for everyday conversation - if you tell me that a PC died in your game yesterday, am I to take it that there was a tragedy at the table?

Without drawing the distinction, you can't make sense of my point, which was this: something can be interesting to a _player_, because answering in some fashion to the dramatic need/thematic concerns s/he has established for his/her PC, yet not be interesting (yet) to a PC.

And vice versa, too. _That s/he is under attack_ is probably interesting to a PC, but may be uninteresting, even tedious, to a player. This point has actually been recognised for a long time in RPGing - for instance, complaints about "hack and slash" RPGing being boring are nearly as old as the hobby, but those aren't complaints about the _PCs_ being bored, are they?



Maxperson said:


> Nobody sat the council at Rivendell and said, "It's important to me that we see Moria on the way to Mt. Doom", or "Hey, one of my goals is to see Lothlorien." You're making up importance to characters that wasn't there.



See, this is the sort of stuff that results from a failure to distinguish the author of a fiction from the fiction s/he is authoring. It's a mistake that children sometimes make, especially when the fiction is written in first person or _presents itself_ as documentary (I'm thinking of, eg, the preface to The Princess Bride).

Turning to RPGing techniques, once again it seems that you are not able to think outside the context of a GM-driven railroad. You seem to be literally _incapable_ of envisaging a story, in the sense of a narratively meaningful sequence of events, being the result of the play of a RPG, where players declare actions for their PCs and then outcomes are establsihed via the mediatin of system..

For instance, imagine how a RPG session played "story now" might actually produce the Moria sequence. It's a bit long (and sblocked for that reason), but that's because genuine actual play reports, with serioous analysis, tend to be. This one is imaginary, but aspires to the same sort of seriousness.

[sblock]One PC has, as a goal (whether formally established, in the manner of a BW Belief or a Cortex+ Heroic Mileston, or informally flagged as it might be in 4e) _I will meet my cousin Balin in Khazad Dum".

Another has the goal "Having escaped from Saruman [in an earlier episode of play], I will thwart his desire for the ring." And also has the character descriptor (again, in BW this would be a Belief, in Cortex+ Heroic a trait, in 4e it might be an element of a theme or paragon path) "I am a wielder of the Secret Fire!"

A third has the goal "I will show that I am fit to be king, and leader of the Free Peoples".

A fourth has the descriptor "I am an elf of the woodlands, a peerless traveller".

(For the present, I ignore the hobbits and Boromir. The journey through Moria is not such an important part of their stories.)

Through whatever mechanism is being used (eg in BW it would most likely be an Orienteering check; in 4e it would probably be a Nature check in the context of a skill challenge), the players *fail *a check that corresponds to their safe travel from Eregion into the Vales of Anduin. The GM narrates, as the consequence for failure, that the Mountains steand before them as a significant obstacle.

The next thing that occurs in play is that it is established - the method is something I'll elaborate on - that the PCs know of two ways to get to the other side: the Path of Caradhras, or the Mines of Moria.

There are multiple ways this might be established, depending on system, mood, whim, etc. Eg the players might declare knowledge-type checks; the GM might just tell the players; etc.

Let's suppose, for the sake of this example, that it unfolds in the following way.

To begin, let's take it that it's already established in the fiction that Moria is known to offer a path under the mountains (eg this seems implicit in one PC's established goal). Gandalf's player then declares an Ancient History check, with a buff from Legolas, to establish some useful bit of knoweldge about the mines. But the check fails - and so instead (the GM explains) Gandalf and Legolas recalls that there is terrible danger in Moria, awoken by the dwarven  miners. (The GM is getting ready here to play with Legola's identification as an elf, with Gandalf's identification as a wielder of the Secret Fire, and with Gimli's goal to visit Balin in Moria.)

Gandalf, therefore, cautions another way. The GM calls for another check (in 4e it would be Nature; in BW it might be Mist Mountains-wise). Again, it *fails*, and the GM narrates, "You know of the Pass of Caradhras, but the snow seems to have set in early this year. It will be hard going." (In Dungwon World that's what they call a "soft" GM move.) Aragorn's player advocates for passage through Moria, but Gandalf's player encourages the group to take the pass. In BW, this could be resolved as Duel of Wits between the two PCs (which would obviously implicate Aragorn's Belief about leadership); 4e doesn't have a comparable mechanic. In any event, the group resolves to take the pass. 
The players then make a group Athletics or Endurance check (maybe both, maybe one, depending on system and what the GM calls for), but it *fails*, and the GM narrates the snow all around. And, picking up on Gandalf's character elements about Saruman and about the Secret Fire, adds in a hint of magicsal malice to the description. Gandalf's player, playing the fiction in the sort of fashion that    [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] has talked about upthread, declares an Arcana check in response to try and tame the storm. This also *fails*, and the GM informs the players "Your hobbits will die unless you turn back." So the players decide that the party turns back. Now they have to try Moria.

Free narration gets us to the west gate, but the GM describes it as closed. A *failed *History check by Gandalf's player is narrated as him not knowing the password. Frodo's player offers an after-the-fact augment (in our 4e game that is acceptable if an action point is spent), but the *success comes at a cost*: the watcher stirs and attacks the PCs. There are different ways to do success at a cost - in BW, it is one way of establishing "fail forward" narration; in 4e, it could similarly be part of the narration of a skill challenge.

The PCs retreat into the mines without defeating the watcher, leaving it free to block the door behind them. Gimili's player then makes a Circles check (in BW) or perhaps a Diplomacy check (in 4e) to make contact with the dwarven colony. But this check also *fails*, and so the GM narrrates an undesired consequence instead - the dwarves are dead, killed by orcs with drums in the deep! (This narration plays on the Belief written for Gimili, and also is another "soft" move that cumulates with the earlier one establishing the danger in Moria.)

It is now clear that Moria is inhabited by bad things, and so the players declare, or the GM calls for, a group Stealth check as the party crosses to the east. The player of Pippin *fails*, and the GM narrates this as him carelessly dropping something down a shaft. The drums start up! (Another "soft" move, that further ratchets up the stakes of failing in the attempt to travel through Moria.) But the group as a whole *succeeds* on the check, and so they aren't immediately attacked.

There are different ways to imagining the fight scene being framed. One is that another check - perhaps a Dungeoneering check, for successful navigation - is failed, and it is the "hard" move made by the GM in response. Alternatively, the GM just frames it as a consequence of what has already taken place, but - because the group Stealth check was on balance a success - allows the players the advantage of being attacked in a defensible position (a room with a door) rather than pinned in an open hallway.

The fight is a *success* for the PCs, although the GM is now pouring on the pressure, and Gandalf's player has him cast an Arcane Lock spell to hold the door against the implied hordes beyond. The spell is broken, though. There are different ways to imagine that happening. In 4e, the GM is free to have introduced a monster into the situation (in this case, a balrog) with a "spellbreaker" ability. In BW, this would more likely be the result of another failed check - perhaps not everyone succeeded on the Speed check to make it to the final bridge.

However exactly it comes about, the final scene of Moria is framed as the PCs trying to flee across the bridge while Gandalf holds off the balrog. In BW, Aragorn's player makes a Command check to break the hesitation the other PCs suffer from the balrog, so they are able to flee. (And this speaks directly to his leadership Belief, earning him a fate point.) In 4e, Aragorn is probably statted as a warlord or hybrid warlord, and uses some power to buff his allies' movement, so they are able to flee.

Neither BW nor 4e has a "pyrrhic victory" rule which would enable Gandalf's player to buff his attempt to hold off the balrog by risking his own life (but such a rule is not purely speculation - HeroQuest revised does have one, and Cortex+ Heroic has options in the neighbourhood). So we have to assume that Gandalf's "shatter" effect is subject to an interrupt from the balrog (which is part of the 4e mechanics; and in BW a lot of action resolution is simultaneous following blind declaration, so the balrog can declare "ensnare with whip" while Gandalf declares "shatter the bridge"). And so is dragged down even as the other PCs get away.[/sblock]

What does that example show?

First, it illustrates how important failures are in "story now" RPGing, as they generate the unwanted consequences that drive things forward in ways that are unexpected, in some sense undesired, and yet continue to speak to player-established concerns.

Second, and related, it reminds us how the trip through Moria is a story of failure upon failure - as Aragorn later laments. By my count (with fails and successes bolded in my account)  there are at least 5 failures, interrupted only by a success with a cost, before the players eventually succeed at a combat. The final confrontation is then another success with a cost (ie Gandalf dies). It would be quite unlucky to get this happening in 4e, as 4e is quite a mathematically generous system. BW is capable of giving this sort of thing, though. It is mathematically pretty brutal.

Third, it shows how "no myth" works. From a bit of backstory and some Beliefs/descriptors, the participants at the table have all that they need to establish a setting with mountain passes, magically sealed gates, watchers in the water, orc-and-balrog infested halls where a dwarven colony has perished, etc. But at no point is any of that stuff pre-given: had Gimli's player's Circles check succeeded, for instance, then the fiction would have unfolded completely differently. The dwarves would have been able to guide them through Moria. Because of the earlier "soft" move in which the GM established that there is danger in Moria, some sort of check would still have been required - there's no real point speculating what sort of check, because we don't know how the ensuing interaction with the dwarven colonists would have gone. All we can say is that the story would have been very different.



Maxperson said:



			And if Tolkien had been writing in Story Now, he would not only have survived, but only been down maybe a healing surge. After all, their goal was to get to Mordor, so the journey was of no interest to the players. They should have left Rivendell and shown up at Mordor in the next scene.
		
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   [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION]'s reply to this deals with the obvious point. I'lll add - the notion of writing a novel by way of a RPGing technique is obviously nonsense, and it's not even clear what rhetorical point it's meant to serve.



Maxperson said:



			They were supposed to go over the mountains, but their goal was blocked(to use a Story Now term) by encounters.

Which prevents Moria from happening in a Story Now game.  They had a significant destination in mind before they were blocked and had to go through Moria instead.
		
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And this is so obviously wrong it's hard to credit its assertion. It has been a repeated theme, though, from    [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] also - I (and others) emphasise how important action declarations and resolution are, and how important the contrast between success (= player's desire for the fiction is realied) and failure (= GM narrates some defeating consequence), and you simply don't seem to believe it.

Failed checks is how, in "story now" RPGing, adverse consequences become part of the fiction. This is why PCs don't always get what they want; and why players' plans don't always work out. (It's not because they guessed wrong about what is in the GM's notes.) The imagined Moria recount shows how this can happen. 



Maxperson said:



			The travel route was only important in LotR, because Tolkien didn't fast forward it
		
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And how does this contradict what    [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] said? If the players don't want to "gloss over" the travel, then they won't. I gave an example where they did so want.

For examples of glossing over travel in LotR, consider the joureny from Rivendell through Eregion (I think the chapter is called The Ring Goes South), or the journey from Fangorn to Edoras, or the journey from Helm's Deep to Isengard, or the return journey from Gondor to the northwest.

Wheher JRRT had a good sense of narrativ pacing is obviously a matter of contention, but it's clear that he didn't regard himself as being under any obligation to correlate wordage with in-fiction mileage. The journey through a few halls of Moria gets more attention than the the trip across Eregion. (Having written this post, I see that   [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has made the same point. And also sketched out a Moria scenario. Having already written this post, I'm posting it anyway in spite of having been ninja-ed.)

And to return to the players of the giants-in-the-Underdark game: suppose, having been spotted by giants, they decide to retreat rather than fight. (Or maybe they try to fight but the giants get the better of them.) Now, as a consequence of failure, is the occasion for the GM to place obstacles in their way. Not pointless ones, of course, but obstacles that also speak to the player-evinced dramatic needs of the PCs. The imagined Moria recount above shows how this is done._


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] admitted to doing exactly that a few pages ago.  He said he brought up things that were not yet of interest to the players.



No I didn't. Here's the quote, for anyone who missed it first time around:



pemerton said:


> Here's one thing that's gone wrong in your assumptions: in this sentence, "One of the biggest hallmarks of a "living, breathing world" is that stuff goes on in the world outside of the PCs, the influence of the PCs, and what they are interested in," the word _they_ refers to the PCs. Yet the anchor for "story now" RPGing is player-established themes, dramatic need etc. And as even a cursory familiarity with literature and film will reveal, something can speak to a protagonist's dramatic need although s/he is not (yet) interested in it.



That says nothing about the player not being interested. The player is not the protagonist. The PC is the protagonist.



Maxperson said:


> If they aren't of interest to the players yet, they aren't a stated goal that he is engaging.  Either those things were of interest to the DM only, or he was doing what I do and coming up with things that he thought they might become interested in, which would be a plot hook that he says he doesn't do.



Even bracketing the bizarre confusion of player and PC, this is wrong. Something can be _of interest_ to a person although, as a matter of current psychological state, that person _is not interested in it_ because (eg) s/he doesn't yet know about it.

For instance, if my PC description includes _servant of the Secret Fire_, then the fact that an NPC wields the Flame of Udun is _of interest to me_, and engages my PC's dramatic need, although I mightn't yet know that the NPC wields the Flame of Udun (eg because at the moment the GM is portraying the NPC as a friendly person helping me to stable my steed). Part of the skill of GMing a "story now" game is being able to think of situations, and story elements, that will speak to PCs' dramatic needs in new and engaging ways. Eero Tuovinen expresses this requirement when he says that:

One of the players is a gamemaster whose job it is to . . . frame scenes according to dramatic needs (that is, go where the action is) and provoke thematic moments . . .

Each scene is an interesting situation in relation to the premise of the setting or the character . . .

The GM . . . needs to be able to reference the backstory, determine complications to introduce into the game, and figure out consequences.​


Maxperson said:


> I find the assumption that Story Now players are perfect and never overlook anything to be amusing.  I find the idea that if I am playing Story Now, I have to plot out possible things that might happen at the end of the trip so that I can see if I need to tell the DM before my character leaves what I want to do, to be disheartening.  I don't like having to play a mental game of chess with the DM, plotting out my moves well in advance. .



All this reinforces what is already clear, namely, that you don't understand how non-GM-driven play works.

The notion of _overlook_ has no work to do hear. Suppose I go to a carnival. I choose to go on the ferris wheel rather than the ghost train. Perhaps I would have enjoyed the ghost train more - who knows? But I didn't _overlook_ that possibility. I choose to do something else. Suppose that there was also a superslide that I didn't know about - maybe I would have enjoyed that the most! But I chose the ferris wheel. C'est la vie. I'm certainly not going to spend my life scouring every carnival I might go to trying to identify what ride I might enjoy the most! And I'm not going to be dragged around by someone else, being shown rides rather than going on one.

In the context of "story now" RPGing, the notion is doubly inapplicable - not only for the reasons that can be extrapolated from the metaphor of the carnival ride, but also because the players have their PCs sheets in front of them, and are playing their PCs, and so _will know_ if their PCs are sneaky sneaks or forthright assailants. These are some of the most basic of fantasy tropes. The players aren't going to overlook their PCs' fundamental natures.

The notion of "plotting out possible things" and "playing mental chess with the GM" is also bizarre. _Well in advance_ of what? Given that your complaint is that the narration of the trip to the giant cavern takes only a few seconds, where do you envisage this "mental chess" taking place? And who are you trying to outwit?

To reiterate: GM - "Players, are you going to the giants?"; Players - "Yes"; GM - "OK, you're at the giant cave". Where did this mighty struggle of wits take place? Was it in the Gm asking the question "Are you going to the giants?' Or was it in the players saying "Yes"? And once the players say "Yes", do you really think they're going to be shocked to be told that their PCs are at the cave?

You are treating "Are you going to the cave?" as short hand for "Are you ready for all these things that I'm going to tell you about your trip to the cave?" Which, in a GM-driven game, it may well be. But that wasn't what I, or [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION], or [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], was talking about.


----------



## clearstream

Lanefan said:


> I do worry about it mostly because I don't want to end up constantly having to explain away things that don't make sense.



Or because it can inspire, too, right?


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Not every situation.  If the party had been surprised by some giants appearing a few miles before they'd normally have been expected then sure, no lead-up required.  But in the situation as presented the PCs had every reason to suspect there'd be giants ahead, and as written there's no indication given as to whether either side gained surprise (or system equivalent).



I already discussed this c 200 posts upthread. I sketched the example in 4e. 4e doesn't have generic surprise rules. The players could have declared stealth. They didn't.

Maybe when they are spotted by the giants, they want to attack with an initiative bonus. There are various warlord and other powers that permit this. Maybe they want to use one of those. I don't know - it's a made-up example, and I didn't write that bit yet.



Lanefan said:


> If the players want to fight giants and there's risks or dangers or hazards between where they are and where the giants are, I want to see what effects those risks-dangers-hazards might have on the party so that both I and the players know what they have left



But those _risks and hazards_ are nothing more than _stuff the GM made up_. So wanting to see what their effects are is nothing different from _wanting to find out what happens when the GM tells the players about this stuff s/he made up in his/her worldbuilding_.

I think everyone posting in this thread knows that you have that preference. But I don't see what bearing it has on the possibility of other ways of RPGing. It does reinforce what was clear from very early in this thread, though, that one purpose of worldbuilding is to give the GM stuff to tell the players.



Lanefan said:


> The DM said "Oh, you want to go from Washington to Tokyo [to do whatever]?  OK, you have to cross the open endless plains, the dangerous western mountains, and the monster-infested ocean!"
> 
> Same thing, ain't it?



The first quetion in "story now" play is, does the GM call for a check or simply "say 'yes'". This is a decision about drama, pacing, what's at stake.

Much of the time there is no reason not to just say "yes". In my MHRP game, no one was interested in the question of whether or not the Stark Corp private jet had been tampered with by rivals. They wanted to find out what happened at the Yashida headquarters in Tokyo. So that was the next scene I framed.

There is nothing unrealistic about having an uneventful flight from DC to Tokyo. Many hundreds of people are doing it every day!



Lanefan said:


> How rich?  If hiring a couple of porters to carry my heavy stuff through the jungle is going to cost me 2 g.p. per day per porter, I'd like to be able to just look at my character sheet, see I've got 105 g.p. right now, and know I can confidently hire these guys for 20 days (80 g.p.) and still have a bit left over.



For someone who's into realism, that's not very realistic! In the real world, money gets lost, unexpected or forgotten debts fall due, credit is granted or refused, etc.

But in any event, in Cortex+ Heroic, hiring porters is either pure colour - so it just gets narrated by the player - or else is the creation of a resource, which requires the expenditure of a plot point. Nothing in that system involves adding or subtracting numbers to a running tally _except_ earning and spending XP.



Lanefan said:


> The more you tell me about this game the more it seems like the game completely turns its back on any sort of realism, or resource management, or small-scale grittiness. Yes I know it has "Heroic" in its name and that alone should red-flag me as to what to expect but come on, man: even heroes have to pay for food and count their arrows.
> 
> I sure hope these resources can only be created when it makes sense they be available e.g. if you can create a horse while on a ship at sea that's right over the top.
> 
> And what happens if while deep in a dungeon somewhere it suddenly becomes extremely important whether or not someone has some particular piece of mundane gear e.g. iron spikes to wedge a door shut? They can't be allowed to 'create' them there and then; they either had some all along or they didn't, and if they did they'd be noted somewhere and if they didn't then they're out of luck. Otherwise it'd be like these plot points are almost like little tiny Wishes - bleah.



Well obviously it's far less realistic than White Plume Mountain, The Ghost Tower of Inverness, and Zuggtmoy the Demoness Lady of Fungi!

But in any event, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy! Eg many heroes in fact do not pay for their food, but are billetted by those they are helping (see eg The Seven Samurai). Some people are able to acquire horses on board a ship (eg by buying one from the captain, or another passenger).

As far as iron spikes are concerned, they're not going to come up very often (I think it must be 20 years or more since I've thought about iron spikes, except maybe running one AD&D session a year or two ago). But suppose that a player wants to create a Door Spiked Shut asset (eg to impede the actions of some threatening monster) - that would be a check against the Doom Pool. If it fails, there are a number of possible narrations - one might be "You're out of iron spikes!"



Lanefan said:


> Sure things like this could be made up on the fly, but doing so gives no opportunity to think it through ahead of time and work out the possible consequences (both in and out of fiction) and-or rationales.
> 
> Putting the Godswall where it is makes east-going non-magical travel extremely difficult. If anyone at the table (including me as DM) has any reason for the party to go east or for anything to have been coming from the east that trip just became a lot more challenging. I've also just munged up the climate and weather patterns over about a quarter of a continent, retroactive through every minute of the PCs' played careers.



Actually, I think you missed my point.

Maybe the weather across the continent is magical? Maybe last year's rainstorm was caused by a druid the PCs never knew anything about (go "living, breathing world"!)?

And if the trip to the east becomes more challenging, well that's what happens when you establish fiction. It has consequences for play. That's the point.


----------



## pemerton

pemerton said:


> In my Dark Sun game, the opening scene took place in an arena, where the crowd were responding to news of the death of the Sorcerer-King of Tyr.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> In a player-driven game the players hook the GM, not vice versa.





Lanefan said:


> The Sorcerer-King of Tyr just died?  That's not a hook, it's a trawling net!





AbdulAlhazred said:


> As I recall from the bits of description of it I read that event pretty much drove all the action from there on out, either directly or indirectly.





Lanefan said:


> Makes sense - an event like that is a hook with a million potential sub-hooks and the players jumped at it.



Here is the relevant actual play post:

[sblock]







pemerton said:


> As the final part of PC building, and trying to channel a bit of indie spirit, I asked the players to come up with "kickers" for their PCs.
> 
> From The Forge, here is one person's definition of a kicker:
> 
> A Kicker is a term used in Sorcerer for the "event or realization that your character has experienced just before play begins."
> 
> For the player, the Kicker is what propels the character into the game, as well as the thing that hooks the player and makes him or her say, "Damn! I can't wait to play this character!"
> 
> It's also the thing that the player hopes to resolve at the end of the game. At the start of the next game with the same character, the resolution of the Kicker alters the character in some way, allowing the player to re-write the character to reflect changes.​
> In my case, I was mostly focused on the first of those things: an event or realisation that the character has experienced just before play begins, which thereby propels the character into the game. The main constraint I imposed was: your kicker somehow has to locate you within Tyr in the context of the Sorcerer-King having been overthrown. The reason for this constraint was (i) I want to be able to use the 4e campaign books, and (ii) D&D relies pretty heavily on group play, and so I didn't want the PCs to be too separated spatially or temporally.
> 
> The player of the barbarian came up with something first. Paraphrasing slightly, it went like this:
> 
> I was about to cut his head of in the arena, to the adulation of the crowd, when the announcement came that the Sorcerer-King was dead, and they all looked away.​
> So that answered the question that another player had asked, namely, how long since the Sorcerer-King's overthrow: it's just happened.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Discussion of PC backgrounds and the like had already established that the eladrin was an envoy from The Lands Within The Wind, aiming to link up with the Veiled Alliance and thereby to take steps to save his homeland from the consequences of defiling. So his kicker was
> 
> My veiled alliance contact is killed in front of me as we are about to meet.​
> (A lot of death accompanying the revolution!)
> 
> With all that in place, we started the session proper. I started with the barbarian, describing him standing over his defeated foe in the arena as the cry comes through the crowd "The tyrant is dead!" - taking all attention away from his victory and the pending kill.



[/sblock]

Those are some examples of what I mean by "the players hook the GM". To see how it worked out, you can read the rest of the post.


----------



## pemerton

clearstream said:


> In summarising player advocacy, he writes
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This means that the player tells the others what his character does
Click to expand...


Here is the full passage:

When a player is an advocate for a character in a roleplaying game, this means that his task in playing the game is to express his character’s personality, interests and agenda for the benefit of himself and other players. This means that the player tells the others what his character does, thinks and feels, and he’s doing his job well if the picture he paints of the character is clear and powerful, easy to relate to.​


clearstream said:


> If I tell others what a character I am advocating for _does_ don't I therefore have control of that character?



I'm not sure what you mean by "have control of that character"? I guess I'm also not sure what you having in mind when you talk about "telling others what a character I am advocating for does".

In playing White Plume Mountain, a player might say "My PC takes the doors of the hinges, so that we can use them to ride down the frictionless corridor without falling into the tetanus pits".

In playing Tomb of Horrors, a player might say "My PC uses a 10' pole to probe the floor as I walk down it. I also tap the wall with the paintings on it."

But neither of these is advocacy in Eero Tuovinen's sense. No "picture of the character" has been painted, let alone a clear and powerful one. The character has not had any personality, interests or agenda expressed. Nothing has been conveyed about what the character thinks or feels.

A minimum requirement for character advocacy as Tuovinen describes it is that the GM establishes situations that permit the player to paint that picture by expressing an agenda, thoughts, feelings. You can have character advocacy in games that aren't "story now" or "standard narrativistic model" (eg classic White Wolf games), but there is likely to be tension if the player's advocacy comes into collision with the GM's conception of how the fiction should be.

(One way of describing the function of alignment mechanics, in 2nd ed AD&D (and perhaps since then, too, to the extent that the 2nd ed practice has continued) is to put a limit on character advocacy so as to avoid those sorts of collisions. ("Your character wouldn't do that because she's LG" is the most extreme version of how this can work.))

In any event, I think it's fairly clear that the more that the GM decides what flows from advocating for one's character, the less control the player has over the content of the shared fiction. Personally, I also think that the more the GM decides what flows from advocating for one's character, the less control the player has over _the character_, as it is the GM who is deciding _what it means_ to be someone with this agenda, these interests, these particular thoughts and feelings.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Again, Gimli was QUITE interested in Moria and several times mentioned going there. In fact I think he even said so at the Council of Elrond (well before it was on the table as an actual route). Aragorn was VERY interested in going to Lothlorien, as his girlfriend was there! And truthfully, all the adventures of the 9 Walkers were of key importance. Aragorn and Gandalf arrived at Theoden's Hall at a very critical point, as did Merry and Pippin arrive at Fangorn. Again and again it was clear that the events set in motion by the Fellowship were critical. The War of the Ring would have been radically different, even lost, had they turned out differently.




The adventures of the 9 members of the company were important, but they were not goals.  Pippin did not have the goal of becoming a guard to the steward.  That happened as a result of the journey not being rushed to the conclusion, but instead being walked out.  Merry and Pippin did not have goals to go to Fangorn and meet ents, but rather that also happened as a result of the journey.  The same with the rest of them.  The only two real goals were destroy the ring at Mt. Doom and the lesser goal of become king for Aragorn.  This is a great example of the style that I and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] espouse.  The journey can result in all kinds of awesome roleplaying, character changing, and world changing events.  Those events are missed out on in Story Now when you just put the PCs at the giants, because that's what the interest/goal is.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I daresay you already know the answer...




Yep.  The answer is that it shouldn't.  The game world doesn't care about the PCs' success or failure.  It just is.  The only issue here is whether the DM is going to override the neutrality of the game world and force the PCs to always be allowed to get to where they want unhindered(Story Now), or whether the DM is going play out the journey and leave success or failure to be determined impartially(DM Facing).


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Turning to RPGing techniques, once again it seems that you are not able to think outside the context of a GM-driven railroad.




I can't think inside or outside of something that doesn't exist.  



> For instance, imagine how a RPG session played "story now" might actually produce the Moria sequence. It's a bit long (and sblocked for that reason), but that's because genuine actual play reports, with serioous analysis, tend to be. This one is imaginary, but aspires to the same sort of seriousness.
> 
> First, it illustrates how important _failures_ are in "story now" RPGing, as they generate the unwanted consequences that drive things forward in ways that are _unexpected_, in some sense _undesired_, and yet continue to speak to player-established concerns.
> 
> Second, and related, it reminds us how the trip through Moria is a story of failure upon failure - as Aragorn later laments. By my count (with fails and successes bolded in my account)  there are at least 5 failures, interrupted only by a success with a cost, before the players eventually succeed at a combat. The final confrontation is then another success with a cost (ie Gandalf dies). It would be quite unlucky to get this happening in 4e, as 4e is quite a mathematically generous system. BW is capable of giving this sort of thing, though. It is mathematically pretty brutal.
> 
> Third, it shows how "no myth" works. From a bit of backstory and some Beliefs/descriptors, the participants at the table have all that they need to establish a setting with mountain passes, magically sealed gates, watchers in the water, orc-and-balrog infested halls where a dwarven colony has perished, etc. But at no point is any of that stuff pre-given: had Gimli's player's Circles check succeeded, for instance, then the fiction would have unfolded completely differently. The dwarves would have been able to guide them through Moria. Because of the earlier "soft" move in which the GM established that there is danger in Moria, some sort of check would still have been required - there's no real point speculating what sort of check, because we don't know how the ensuing interaction with the dwarven colonists would have gone. All we can say is that the story would have been very different.




I didn't say you couldn't create goals for them that match what happened on the journey.  I said that the only goals given are the two I mentioned.  Every last "goal" you mentioned as an example of Story Now, also works as stuff the DM pre-authored as interesting things for the the players and PCs to encounter along the way.   You have to invent goals that are not present in the books in order to make the LotR into Story Now, I just have to point to the books and say see it matches my style of play.  I don't have to make up a single thing.



> [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION]'s reply to this deals with the obvious point. I'lll add - the notion of _writing a novel by way of a RPGing technique_ is obviously nonsense, and it's not even clear what rhetorical point it's meant to serve.




You can't really write a book based on Story Now, that's for certain.  With my style of play, though, there is certainly enough to establish an entire plot, journey, and culmination of the goal to write a book around it.  I've read novels that play out like an adventure.  Plenty of them.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> That says nothing about the player not being interested. The player is not the protagonist. The PC is the protagonist.




Dude.   You've told me repeatedly that PCs can't have interests, because they are imaginary.  Only the player can.  You keep trying to have things both ways in this thread.

I'll respond to the rest later.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> With my style of play, though, there is certainly enough to establish an entire plot, journey, and culmination of the goal to write a book around it.



This is why I describe GM-driven play as "the GM reading out his/her notes to the players".


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The answer is that it shouldn't.  The game world doesn't care about the PCs' success or failure.  It just is.  The only issue here is whether the DM is going to override the neutrality of the game world and force the PCs to always be allowed to get to where they want unhindered(Story Now), or whether the DM is going play out the journey and leave success or failure to be determined impartially(DM Facing).



The gameworld is not "neutral". Nor "biased". Those are properties of judges, or of policies, but not of authored works.

You are claiming, in effect, that RPGers have a moral duty to play in a style that you like. It's absurd.

Your use of the word "force" is also absurd. "Hey everyone, should the story be about X?" "Yep, OK!" "OK, you come upon this Xiness. What do you do?" Are you really saying that everyone was _forced_ to engage with X?


----------



## clearstream

pemerton said:


> In playing Tomb of Horrors, a player might say "My PC uses a 10' pole to probe the floor as I walk down it. I also tap the wall with the paintings on it."
> 
> But neither of these is advocacy in Eero Tuovinen's sense. No "picture of the character" has been painted, let alone a clear and powerful one. The character has not had any personality, interests or agenda expressed. Nothing has been conveyed about what the character thinks or feels.



In usual language I would take a broader reading of the word "controlling" to include determining any and all of the motives and behaviour i.e. every act attributable to the character including such acts as are intended to paint the character. Having a thought is a thing the character does. I don't feel prescriptive about it: I'd be happy to limit the definition of "controlling" for this particular discussion.

Anyway. For me, strictly, there was no need to go beyond "does". I realise he wanted to make his point clearer, but thinking is doing, just as much as opening a door is. How do other players know that I am struggling with slaying the dragon that I know is really my romantic interest, who has been cursed to ravage the land in that dreadful form? I enunciate it. In every case that I've encountered, that is as much a speech act as the "doing" of my character opening a door. In order to paint the clear and powerful picture, spoken word was used. In order to open the door, spoken word was used. A possible weakness of narrativism is to take so literal a reading of the action. A dragon in a story is _already_ symbolic.



pemerton said:


> A minimum requirement for character advocacy as Tuovinen describes it is that the GM establishes situations that permit the player to paint that picture by expressing an agenda, thoughts, feelings. You can have character advocacy in games that aren't "story now" or "standard narrativistic model" (eg classic White Wolf games), but there is likely to be tension if the player's advocacy comes into collision with the GM's conception of how the fiction should be.
> 
> (One way of describing the function of alignment mechanics, in 2nd ed AD&D (and perhaps since then, too, to the extent that the 2nd ed practice has continued) is to put a limit on character advocacy so as to avoid those sorts of collisions. ("Your character wouldn't do that because she's LG" is the most extreme version of how this can work.))
> 
> In any event, I think it's fairly clear that the more that the GM decides what flows from advocating for one's character, the less control the player has over the content of the shared fiction. Personally, I also think that the more the GM decides what flows from advocating for one's character, the less control the player has over _the character_, as it is the GM who is deciding _what it means_ to be someone with this agenda, these interests, these particular thoughts and feelings.



For me, mechanics like alignment have always been about inspiring coherent motivations. I can and have run extensive RPG without rules. Rules serve a purpose. As does world building. I would keep coming back to that word inspiration. When the four characters imagine their backstories etc, I think the springboard of a built world transports the whole group into a new, shared place. Otherwise Bob might be harming Alice's gumshoe fiction with his heroic fantasy.

So for me, the answer to the OP is always consistency and inspiration. As Tolkien pointed out, it is critical for fantasy worlds to be consistent. If they are not consistent they stop being believable, and unravel. One way to achieve consistency is to work it out beforehand i.e. world build. Not every detail, but the fact that your character can be warforged, mine can be blood of the banished, etc. Springboards for imagination.

I generally find, both in professional and personal creative effort, that constraints elevate.


----------



## clearstream

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] Thinking further, perhaps the difference arises from the model of how the character and player relate. If we picture that the emotional journey is happening in the mind of the player (as the character has no mind) and the in-world acts are happening in the described actions of the character (or whatever agency the player has to work through, in the game world) then we could restrict as I think you do "controlling" to relate to the latter and not the former.

The springboard of a consistent world that is in some sense _external_ to all the characters is then critical. It is a terrible lack to try to do without it. So the model looks like this

1. The mind of the player, in which an emotional journey takes place
2. The agent of the player, capable of in-world actions
3. The consistent framing, that serves as a basis for coherent inspiration that will reverberate powerfully

The world-build serves 3. We should be asking questions about how the world changes, as much as how our characters change.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Free narration gets us to the west gate, but the GM describes it as closed. A *failed *History check by Gandalf's player is narrated as him not knowing the password. Frodo's player offers an after-the-fact augment (in our 4e game that is acceptable if an action point is spent), but the *success comes at a cost*: the watcher stirs and attacks the PCs. There are different ways to do success at a cost - in BW, it is one way of establishing "fail forward" narration; in 4e, it could similarly be part of the narration of a skill challenge.
> 
> The PCs retreat into the mines without defeating the watcher, leaving it free to block the door behind them.



Is the aborted combat with the watcher a success (they avoided the creature and thus would get xp for it) or a failure (they stirred it up in the first place)?



> And this is so obviously wrong it's hard to credit its assertion. It has been a repeated theme, though, from    [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] also - I (and others) emphasise how important action declarations and resolution are, and how important the contrast between success (= player's desire for the fiction is realied) and failure (= GM narrates some defeating consequence), and you simply _don't seem to believe it_.



I believe it.  That doesn't mean I like it.



> Failed checks is how, in "story now" RPGing, adverse consequences become part of the fiction. This is why PCs don't always get what they want; and why players' plans don't always work out. (It's not because they guessed wrong about what is in the GM's notes.)



This is great as long as you can guarantee there will be some failures along the way to make things interesting and-or challenging.  But one assumes the players are within reason maxing their odds of success as best they can, meaning that what has the potential to be an exciting and interesting adventure (LotR as written) could instead turn into a rather boring cakewalk (they just go around the south end of the mountains and reach the Rohan unopposed) if the dice allow it.



> And to return to the players of the giants-in-the-Underdark game: suppose, having been spotted by giants, they decide to retreat rather than fight. (Or maybe they try to fight but the giants get the better of them.) _Now_, as a consequence of failure, is the occasion for the GM to place obstacles in their way. Not pointless ones, of course, but obstacles that also speak to the player-evinced dramatic needs of the PCs. The imagined Moria recount above shows how this is done.



Either way, the failure vs. the giants is not the players' fault this time - it's on the DM for not giving the players a chance to prepare and-or determine the PCs' method and direction of approach.

The DM can mitigate her error by not having the giants chase the PCs if they retreat, but even then the giants will suddenly be much more alert than before and the PCs will have a harder time trying any sort of stealth approach.  Or if the PCs decide to fight and are getting pasted due to lack of preparedness she can find a reason for the giants to pull back.  Either way, it's poorly done.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I already discussed this c 200 posts upthread. I sketched the example in 4e. 4e doesn't have generic surprise rules. The players could have declared stealth. They didn't.



They couldn't, unless they were rude and interrupted you while you were talking.



> Maybe when they are spotted by the giants, they want to attack with an initiative bonus. There are various warlord and other powers that permit this. Maybe they want to use one of those. I don't know - it's a made-up example, and I didn't write that bit yet.



System dependent, I suppose...4e's not my cup of tea for a boatload of reasons, this just points out two (1. no surprise rules 2. the warlord class and all it entails)



> The first quetion in "story now" play is, does the GM call for a check or simply "say 'yes'". This is a decision about drama, pacing, what's at stake.
> 
> Much of the time there is no reason not to just say "yes". In my MHRP game, no one was interested in the question of whether or not the Stark Corp private jet had been tampered with by rivals. They wanted to find out what happened at the Yashida headquarters in Tokyo. So that was the next scene I framed.
> 
> There is nothing unrealistic about having an uneventful flight from DC to Tokyo. Many hundreds of people are doing it every day!



You've twisted the example; it has nothing to do with flight!  I was originally talking about a medieval-fantasy journey from Washington to Tokyo (in comparison with a similar journey from Boston to New York) and even joked there about not having the Stark jet available.

Yes, a jet plane makes the trip quite a trivial thing.  But having to do it on foot/wagon/ship is not trivial at all, which was and still is my point.



> For someone who's into realism, that's not very realistic! In the real world, money gets lost, unexpected or forgotten debts fall due, credit is granted or refused, etc.



Yep, happens in the game too.  I was trying not to make the example too cloudy.



> But in any event, in Cortex+ Heroic, hiring porters is either pure colour - so it just gets narrated by the player - or else is the creation of a resource, which requires the expenditure of a plot point. Nothing in that system involves adding or subtracting numbers to a running tally _except_ earning and spending XP.



So in a bizarre way it's come full circle from 1e D&D - there g.p. = x.p. and here x.p. = g.p.

What about ammunition e.g. arrows, bolts, bullets - is that tracked?



> Well obviously it's far less realistic than White Plume Mountain, The Ghost Tower of Inverness, and Zuggtmoy the Demoness Lady of Fungi!



Hey, I'm not saying old-school D&D doesn't have its whacked-out moments!   This is why I always put the qualifier "where it can" on my statement that a game world should try to reflect reality, as I'm well aware there'll be all kinds of situations where it can't.



> As far as iron spikes are concerned, they're not going to come up very often (I think it must be 20 years or more since I've thought about iron spikes, except maybe running one AD&D session a year or two ago). But suppose that a player wants to create a Door Spiked Shut asset (eg to impede the actions of some threatening monster) - that would be a check against the Doom Pool. If it fails, there are a number of possible narrations - one might be "You're out of iron spikes!"



A more relevant example: at the moment in my game the party are counting every drop of oil they brought with them, as they're up against trolls.  Lots of trolls... 



> Actually, I think you missed my point.
> 
> Maybe the weather across the continent is magical? Maybe last year's rainstorm was caused by a druid the PCs never knew anything about (go "living, breathing world"!)?



A druid that could generate a 4-day rainstorm would be high-level enough to have already ascended to divinity!   But the rainstorm being divinely-caused would likely end up being the explanation I'd have to fall back on, and fortunately there's other mythos besides just Christian that have floods as part of their story.



> And if the trip to the east becomes more challenging, well that's what happens when you establish fiction. It has consequences for play. That's the point.



Consequences for future play are great - I'm all for that!

It's consequences that should have impacted past play but didn't that I abhor.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

Maxperson said:


> You can't really write a book based on Story Now, that's for certain.



Actually maybe you could, if you did it in a pure stream-of-consciousness style and could somehow find a way to write as fast as you think.

Lan-"maybe Alice in Wonderland was written in Story-Now mode"-efan


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## Arilyn

Lanefan said:


> Actually maybe you could, if you did it in a pure stream-of-consciousness style and could somehow find a way to write as fast as you think.
> 
> Lan-"maybe Alice in Wonderland was written in Story-Now mode"-efan




I think you are continuing to misunderstand Story Now games. Looking at literature, Tolkien engaged in exhaustive world building. Peter S. Beagle does not, and I would use his writing as a very good example of Story Now, assuming we're going to compare rpging to novels at all. Both authors have created beautiful, lasting works of literature. Beagle's body of work does not suffer in comparison to Tolkien, because his stories strongly focus on character goals and drives and less on where exactly every village lines up in a fictional space.

Surely, if players are claiming they've had rich rpging, using a Story Now approach, they are not just rushing to the end, and having things pop into existence, as implied by your Alice in Wonderland example. Their players must be making lots of decisions, and engaging in a world. It's just more of a Beagle than a Tolkien world.


----------



## Greenstone.Walker

World building creates reasonable and predictable consequences for my actions, which increases my agency.

If I know about the land and its culture and politics, then I can predict that actions ("attack the innkeeper") will lead to consequences ("pursued by the town guard"), which gives me agency when deciding whether or not to attack the guy who watered down my ale.


----------



## Lanefan

Arilyn said:


> Looking at literature, Tolkien engaged in exhaustive world building. Peter S. Beagle does not, and I would use his writing as a very good example of Story Now, assuming we're going to compare rpging to novels at all.



I'll have to take your word for this, having never heard of Peter S. Beagle before reading this post.


----------



## Arilyn

Lanefan said:


> I'll have to take your word for this, having never heard of Peter S. Beagle before reading this post.




Most famous for "Last Unicorn", but lots of other good novels and short stories too, like "Innkeeper' s Song", "Tamsin", and "Giant Bones."  

Also did the screenplay for the original "Lord of the Rings" movie, but don't hold that against him.


----------



## pemerton

All writing of fiction stories is "story now", in the sense that a person - the author - sits down _now_ and writes a story.

Unlike RPGing, however, most published stories have been through processes of revision and editing. The relative lack of editing is one reason - obviously not the only one - why the stories generated via RPG play are likely to be less polished than those that are published by typical publishing houses.

The idea that you can't generate narratives like Tower of the Elephant or the trip through Moria via "story now" RPGing is obviously wrong. Those stories _were actually written by someone_, an author was attempting to convey a dramatic series of events that shine some sort of interesting light on some characters (moreso for the Moria sequence) and some themes (moreso, perhaps, for Tower of the Elephant, though hardly irrelevant for LotR). RPGing in accordance with "the standard narrativistic model" is intended to do the same thing. Where it differs is (i) it allocates different roles to different participants in the activity, and (ii) the nature of the activity is game-playing rather than pure storytelling.

The idea that you would _ever_ produce something like the Moria sequence via dungeon-crawl type RPGing, where every corridor is mapped out and the arrival at every intersection is narrated by the GM, followed by the players describing how they cross through it, is obviously laughable. Because the Moria sequence does not contain that sort of material.

If the claim is that, by _editing and revising_ a transcript of a dungeon-crawl type RPGing, you might get something that resembles the Moria sequence, well, that is utterly unsurrprising. All that amounts to is the claim that the Moria sequence is a writable story about fantastic personages making their way through a fantastic underworld - which claim is trivially true.

The goal of "story now" RPGing isn't to produce something that can be _edited and rewritten_ to make a story. It's to produce a nd experience a story _in the actual moment of play_.

And for those who think it can't be done, well, they're wrong. How do I know? Because I've experienced it.


----------



## pemerton

More on the Moria sequence. I am now typing out the text on page 332 of my one-volume edition of LotR:

For eight dark hours, not counting two brief halts, they marched on; and they met no danger, and heard nothing, and saw nothing but the faint gleam of the wizard's light, bobbing like a will-o'-the-wisp in front of them. The passage they had chosen wound steadily upwards. As far as they could judge it went in great mounting curves, and as it rose it grew loftier and wider. There were now no openings to other galleries or tunnels on either side, and the floor was level and sound, without pits or cracks. Evidently they had struck what once had been an important road; and they went forward quicker than they had done on their first march.

In this way they advanced some fifteen miles, measured in a direct line east, although they must have actually walked twenty miles or more.​
That takes less than a minute to read. In the style that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] advocate, it cannot be resolved in a minute at the table. That's sufficient to show that the style in quetsion can't deliver the Moria sequence in play.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Well, around here that sure ain't true.  We track finances as closely as we track anything else (except encumbrance, we kinda gave up on that  ) and after each adventure the accumulated and carefully recorded treasure is divided evenly among the party with magic items being treated as if they were their worth in coin (a major reason we have a magic item price list!).  If someone just starts putting random numbers on their finance sheet that's cheating just as much as if they arbitrarily changed their hit points.



Yeah, yet another chore in what is supposed to be fun. Its just far too easy to get it twisted up, and it has nothing to do with cheating! Half the time different people write stuff down at different times, in different places, nobody is 100% sure 3 weeks later exactly what was written where and which notes/scribbles on the margin of a character sheet, etc. are 'correct', etc. Its just not worth the trouble! I mean, basically, what we found was that we were quite capable, either by tracking it or by creating an abstract system, of knowing of the PCs were totally broke, had a few coins, enough cash to get by, plenty of cash, great loads of cash, or some gargantuan fortune. So why do the boring task of tracking actual numbers? 



> Not to the PCs on whose behalf we are tracking it.
> 
> Er...huh?  200 g.p. is 200 g.p.



I'm pretty sure you know what my response is to anything claiming any sort of 'existence' or 'facts' about a made up world... 



> As do I, but there's these annoying things called game mechanics we also have to deal with.  My preferences certainly run toward less mechanics rather than more but I'll still admit there have to be some.  Many of these are numbers which for the game to function have to be carefully tracked and recorded...and among these tracking money is among the least of the problems.



No, we don't have to deal with them, not beyond what actually makes the game play the way we want it to! There's no requirement beyond that, its pure entertainment nothing is mandated. I frequently employ a system, PACE, which is 4 pages long and has 2 permanent numbers, and one resource pool per player (and one for the GM). That's it. No money, no tracking things, nothing. It works VERY VERY well for many types of games. It doesn't even use dice.



> I seem to keep coming back to my assertion that the boring bits, while boring, are still an essential part of the game and shouldn't be ignored or handwaved.  This includes long-distance travel during which things might happen.  This includes tracking wealth and arrows and time and distance.  This includes resting for three days in the wilderness because the party's all just been beat to ratpoop and need to recover.



Yeah, but as with all the other times you have asserted this, you can only assert that you have this preference for tracking and handling lots of things. There's no inherent reason for that. When Gygax wrote all that stuff in the DMG about how you HAD to track time, etc. etc. etc. EVEN THEN my 16yr-old self chuckled and wondered what he was smoking. 



> Same level and type of essential as the bass player who only plays a repeating three note riff through the whole song - boring as hell for him but the song wouldn't be any good without his contribution.



Yeah, I think you can get all the same results without all the tedium and trouble. 



> Random sea monsters might not have been on that list but travel was, and if that travel takes 'em through sea monster territory there's a chance they're gonna find trouble...or trouble is gonna find them.



Right, so when this journey starts, or gets to the ocean, there COULD be a scene where the PCs decide that getting to Tokyo faster/cheaper/whatever is worth some chance of sea monsters. That's a potential play for a GM in a Story Now type of game, particularly if there are players who have some interest in the subject. It will depend on the game, which is what I've maintained the whole time. You simply cannot make these blanket statements about what is important in an RPG.



> Oddly enough, I rarely use them for that purpose.   In most of my dungeon-type adventures I've usually got the occupants accounted for, and few are "wandering".  Some might be doing guard patrols or whatever, but even then I'll know thier routes etc.
> 
> What I do use wandering monsters for most often is situations just like this - a party is travelling through some potentially dangerous territory, let's see what finds them.  So: wandering monsters, meet wandering party.



Which is fine, if the party wants to wander around and explore and meet stuff. There's this forest in my campaign. It is a dangerous place. One of the PCs learned that his missing brother was probably held in this forest somewhere. The deal was that he could wander around in the forest looking for his brother, but he was going to run into trouble. Still, none of the trouble was RANDOM, I just made a list, and when he failed in the SC to find his brother, the next monster on the list showed up, wherever he was physically located at that time (I do have a map of this area, made in the 1980's, so I could actually guestimate what location he was in and describe it. This worked well, it was basically "Here are the stakes, take your chances." I am not sure I'd call it 'wandering' monsters, though it probably does something similar to what you did.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> This is great as long as you can guarantee there will be some failures along the way to make things interesting and-or challenging.  But one assumes the players are within reason maxing their odds of success as best they can, meaning that what has the potential to be an exciting and interesting adventure (LotR as written) could instead turn into a rather boring cakewalk (they just go around the south end of the mountains and reach the Rohan unopposed) if the dice allow it.



I thought you didn't like railroads? But now you're asserting that there _must_ be railroading lest things be boring!

Of course there is no guarantee that, when you sit down to play, any particular set of events will occur. 







			
				http://www.indie-rpgs.com/_articles/narr_essay.html said:
			
		

> Ron Edwards pointed that out back in 2004



 when he said "*There cannot be any "the story" during Narrativist play*, because to have such a thing (fixed plot or pre-agreed theme) is to remove the whole point". (The bolding is mine, the italics are his.)

But because the players _will_ fail checks (unless their dice are loaded or the maths and system of the game are broken) things will happen. Why would it be boring for the Fellowship to reach Rohan unopposed? It wasn't boring for them to reach the Misty Mountains unopposed, because then exciting things happened. Well, exciting things might happen in Rohan too.

As Tolkien writes it, there is a lot of _success_ in Rohan: Aragorn, Legolas and Gimili *succeed* in tracking the orcs, and *succeed* in finding a brooch (therefore ensuring that it is true, in the fiction, that the hobbits were still alive at that point), and *succeed* in befriend Eomer and getting horses from him, and *succeed* in finding signs of the hobbits where the orcs were burned, and *succeed* in meeting Gandalf. Gandalf and the hobbits *succeed* in activating the Ents. Gandalf then *succeeds* in activating Theoden and the Rohirrim, *succceeds* again in bringing Erkenbrand to Helm's Deep, and *succeeds* in besting Saruman on the steps of Isengard.

Failure at any of those points would produce exciting fiction. It would be different from what JRRT wrote. But that's the point of "story now" RPGing - to play to find out, rather than to be railroaded through the GM"s preconceived exciting story.



Lanefan said:


> the failure vs. the giants is not the players' fault this time - it's on the DM for not giving the players a chance to prepare and-or determine the PCs' method and direction of approach.





Lanefan said:


> They couldn't, unless they were rude and interrupted you while you were talking.



I'll repost for what I think is the fourth time:



pemerton said:


> Are you really saying the following is railroading?
> 
> GM: OK, so you've agreed to help the dwarves against the giants. Your're heading off, right?
> 
> Players: Yes, we're heading off as soon as Aster makes some potions of fire resistance for us.
> 
> GM: OK, mark down your potions and cross off your residuum. You trek through the Underdark, following the directions the dwarves gave you. Everyone make a DC 20 Endurance check - if you fail, you're down a healing surge by the time you arrive at your destination.
> 
> <players adjust equpiment lists, make checks, adjust healing surge totals if required>
> 
> GM: Just as the dwarves told you, after a hard trek through the tunnels you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern. It's lit a dull red by the glow of lava that bubbles up through the floor of the cave and flows away in criss-crossing channels. A black, basalt structure stands in the centre - the Hall of the Fire Giant King.​
> <snip>
> 
> Let's consider a variation of the above:
> 
> . . .
> 
> GM: Just as the dwarves told you, after a hard trek through the tunnels you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern. It's lit a dull red by the glow of lava that bubbles up through the floor of the cave and flows away in criss-crossing channels. In the glow of the lava, you can see fire giant sentries on patrol. And it seems that a group of sentries has seen you!​



The players had ample chance to say they wanted to be stealthy. When they mentioned the making of potions before they left. When the <stuff> happened. When the GM described them arriving at the entrance to a massive cavern.

I think I asked  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] whether players at his table need permission to speak. I can tell you that my players, if they were intending to be stealthy upon arriving at the cavern entrance, would let me know. We might then frame a check in which they try to (say) create a Wizard's Screen before the fire giant sentries notice them.



Lanefan said:


> it's come full circle from 1e D&D - there g.p. = x.p. and here x.p. = g.p.



I don't understand. Earning XP in Cortex+ Heroic has nothing in particular to do with gp, or wealth. XP get spent to change the PC sheet (eg change distinctions, change affiliations) or to add new abilities or to step up existing ones.



Lanefan said:


> What about ammunition e.g. arrows, bolts, bullets - is that tracked?



No. If an ability has the Gear limit then it can be shut down (at the instigation of the player or the GM). That could be narrrated as running out of ammunition.



Lanefan said:


> I was originally talking about a medieval-fantasy journey from Washington to Tokyo (in comparison with a similar journey from Boston to New York) and even joked there about not having the Stark jet available.
> 
> Yes, a jet plane makes the trip quite a trivial thing.  But having to do it on foot/wagon/ship is not trivial at all, which was and still is my point.



Yet some people made those trips and - whatever rigours they suffered along the way - arrived in relatively good health. There's nothing unrealistic about the PCs doing the same.

That their arrival in good health is a matter of narrative stipulation is not especially shocking. Most fiction is the result of stipulation, even when RPGing.


----------



## pemerton

Not all games involve resource management. Backgammon is my favourite board game; it has no resource management. Five hundred is my favourite card game; it has no resource management.

Not all RPGs involve resource management. Burning Wheel has very little. Cortex+ Heroic has some on the GM-side (the Doom Pool) but almost none on the player side. Obviously there are mechanically simpler games with none at all (eg Cthulhu Dark).

The idea that you _have_ to track (say) ammunition is bizarre. It's a preference, not an iron law of fantasy RPGing.

The idea that _unless you track ammunition_ then characters can get off infiintely many shots is also bizarre. That just shows an ignorance of the range of actual and posssible RPG mechanics. Here's one I just made up: the player delcares a missile attack. The dice are rolled; the check fails. The GM declares "You go to draw an arrow from your quiver, only to realise that it's empty!"


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> I think we know enough about how Earth works and almost enough about how some other planets work to be able to more or less conjecture a consistent pattern as to how they're formed and what they're probably made of...and from there working out the basic geology isn't a big stretch.
> 
> That said, I've put my geology knowledge (of which I've a bit - it was my field in college) to a severe test when designing my current world; along the lines of "If *this* gets done to an otherwise innocent and ordinary planet, what happens? OK, how about this?  And then this? [etc.]"  The Godswall is a result of one of these "this"es.



Well, I was a chem major, but I ate science for breakfast and I still read a lot about many subjects. So the other day I read on Ars Technica all about yet another (of several) theories and advances in the understanding of Western North America. What did I get out of it? We know almost squat. SOME sort of really complex plate tectonics is going on, but its like trying to decipher where all the swirls came from in the chocolate chip swirl ice cream. Except its a giant 4.5 billion yr old pudding. 

Its not that we know NOTHING, but from first principles we're not even close to being able to figure out what sort of terrain would result from a given set of conditions, nor if some hypothesized terrain is realistically possible or not, beyond a certain point. 

As for other planets, we have very little understanding of the basic planetary geology of Mars, like how its crust is structured, what layers it has, etc. Anything beyond that? We can deduce something about the various moons of Jupiter/Saturn from gravimetry, but we're still just guessing about the processes involved in surface formations and why the various moons all look so different when they are effectively all made from very similar starting materials. 

The point is, you could hypothesize almost anything that wasn't stupidly extreme like 500 mile tall mountains with an Earth-level gravity, and nobody could really call it 'impossible', or even be sure if its improbable, given that we have one sample Earth to judge by. In terms of more local smaller-scale features, I think there's a certain understanding "this basin was formed because of crustal extension, see those extension faults over there that you call hills?" but WHY was there extension? Nobody is quite sure...



> Yep, and if we make the same trip next year it should take roughly the same amount of time and we should arrive in roughly the same place.
> 
> I've never been there but I've heard of it, and there's a few similarities with the Godswall in my world.  A few.
> 
> I do worry about it mostly because I don't want to end up constantly having to explain away things that don't make sense.




I've yet to be called on anything. I have mile-tall trees in my campaign, floating chunks of rock (only one that anyone has found so far, but still) etc. I expect if I hand you my largest-scale map you'd mostly decree the geography to be modestly plausible, but nobody has ever bothered to comment on it, and I think only 2-3 players ever got interested enough to even look at it for more than 5 seconds.


----------



## pemerton

clearstream said:


> So for me, the answer to the OP is always consistency and inspiration. As Tolkien pointed out, it is critical for fantasy worlds to be consistent. If they are not consistent they stop being believable, and unravel. One way to achieve consistency is to work it out beforehand i.e. world build.



Yet Middle Earth is not consistent. The economics and sociology of The Shire are absurd (there is so much metal, but where is it minded and smelted? it is isolated, and yet appears to have almost unlimited supplies of traded goods; etc). Where do the elves of Lorien get their food?

The narrative achievement of JRRT's Lorien is not to make that place _consistent_, but to make the "faerie queen" trope believable in the context of a more-or-less naturalistic novel. (As opposed to in what would more clasically be thought of as a fairy tale.)

The "consistency" of fantasy worlds is about tropes and genre. Which is, in fact, what most "story now" games rely upon to support framing and setting.



clearstream said:


> The springboard of a consistent world that is in some sense _external_ to all the characters is then critical. It is a terrible lack to try to do without it.



In my experince it's actually not that hard.

But in any event, my main contention for the past 500+ posts is this: the more that the GM is authoring, and the more the GM is authoring unilaterally, then the less the players are authoring. Hence their agency over the content of the shared fiction is reduced.

If the game is mainly about establishing a shared fiction, then it follows that their agency per se is reduced. As the OP noted, not all RPGing is about establishing a shared fiction - eg classic Gygaxian D&D is closer to a type of puzzle-solving - but I think that a lot of contemporary RPGing is not classic D&D.


----------



## pemerton

clearstream said:


> IFor me, strictly, there was no need to go beyond "does". I realise he wanted to make his point clearer, but thinking is doing, just as much as opening a door is.



Thinking may be doing, but not all doing is thinking, feeling or expressing an agenda. _Character advocacy_ is not just _each player gets to delcare actions for his/her PC_. It is about conveying a personality, an orientation, aspirations, for the PC.

Not all RPGs have the scope for that, even if the player is telling us what his/her PC is trying to do.

(_Trying to do_ is also not the same thing as doing. This also matters to character advocacy, because if all _trying _falls flat, for GM pre-authored reasons, then it is really the GM who is telling us what this character is about - ie futiity or failure - rather than the player.)


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> The DM said "Oh, you want to go from Washington to Tokyo [to do whatever]?  OK, you have to cross the open endless plains, the dangerous western mountains, and the monster-infested ocean!"
> 
> Same thing, ain't it?
> 
> OK, sounds great!
> 
> As long as we can all agree the same result could easily be achieved in a DM-driven or traditonal game, we're good on this one.
> 
> Lanefan




Not disagreeing with you, crossing the Pacific Ocean could be something you'd play out. Crossing the Misty Mountains COULD be something you'd skip over. There aren't some hard and fast rules about what you should do or have to do or may do or not do. That's what constitutes the art of GMing an FRPG! 

I don't object to the concept of playing out things. I object to the concept of playing them out 'just because'. I want REASONS why I do these things, just like Steven Spielberg wants reasons to shoot a scene for an adventure movie. The reasoning may be different, but the overall concept is the same, tell an exciting and interesting story that has some direction and focus to it. 

As for what 'can be achieved' in different games. I think both types of game often achieve similar results, but I don't think they are exactly the same.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Second, and related, it reminds us how the trip through Moria is a story of failure upon failure - as Aragorn later laments. By my count (with fails and successes bolded in my account)  there are at least 5 failures, interrupted only by a success with a cost, before the players eventually succeed at a combat. The final confrontation is then another success with a cost (ie Gandalf dies). It would be quite unlucky to get this happening in 4e, as 4e is quite a mathematically generous system. BW is capable of giving this sort of thing, though. It is mathematically pretty brutal.
> 
> Failed checks is how, in "story now" RPGing, adverse consequences become part of the fiction. This is why PCs don't always get what they want; and why players' plans don't always work out. (It's not because they guessed wrong about what is in the GM's notes.) The imagined Moria recount shows how this can happen.




This brings up a fine point of game design. Where 4e tends to a theory of granting success, and thus forward continuation of the story in the direction favored by the players, BW and even DW (6 or less fails, tougher odds than 4e SCs generally have) are much less generous. I think this partly stems from 4e's equivocal position as a Story Now game. The designers seem to have more envisaged play as a kind of mix of GM-generated content with "go to the action." Where it is incoherent it suffers.

When I wrote HoML, I found that DCs really needed to be considerably higher, and there aren't 'easy', 'medium', and 'hard' DCs either. If something is worth dicing for, then its 'hard'! That doesn't mean a skilled character is super likely to fail (maybe 25% of the time, or even 35% sometimes) but there's a lot of "things didn't quite go right" and the game generally specifies that missing your check by 5 or less points is a 'soft fail'. Beyond that you probably went from frying pan directly into fire. It works a bit better than the 4e math, IMHO.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> More on the Moria sequence. I am now typing out the text on page 332 of my one-volume edition of LotR:
> 
> For eight dark hours, not counting two brief halts, they marched on; and they met no danger, and heard nothing, and saw nothing but the faint gleam of the wizard's light, bobbing like a will-o'-the-wisp in front of them. The passage they had chosen wound steadily upwards. As far as they could judge it went in great mounting curves, and as it rose it grew loftier and wider. There were now no openings to other galleries or tunnels on either side, and the floor was level and sound, without pits or cracks. Evidently they had struck what once had been an important road; and they went forward quicker than they had done on their first march.
> 
> In this way they advanced some fifteen miles, measured in a direct line east, although they must have actually walked twenty miles or more.​
> That takes less than a minute to read. In the style that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] advocate, it cannot be resolved in a minute at the table. That's sufficient to show that the style in quetsion can't deliver the Moria sequence in play.



Actually it could, in that a DM narrating what you quoted would be fine except replacing "they" with "you" where relevant.

Why?

There are no intersections: "no openings to other galleries and tunnels on either side"; no distractions; no rubble or unsound ceiling, no danger.  All of this is neatly summed up in that narration, which also doesn't just plop the characters at the end of the passage but _describes what they are passing through to get there_.

We did exactly this in the game I play in, last session: we walked through two days worth of almost-uniform boring straight-line passage.  Thing was, we'd been warned by the locals that this passage was full of dangers - orcs used it as a hiding place, giant crocodiles roamed its length, etc. - and so we were on our guard the whole time and expecting trouble all the way.  But in the end the only stops were, in order:

- we found a crack big enough to cause concern, the Dwarf checked for stability and all was good (very quick at the table)
- we found a campsite used by orcs; a quick look around and we carried on (took a minute or two at most at the table)
- ws stopped for an overnight rest (this took some time at the table due to some ongoing inter-PC role-play, due to the clerics having a hard time getting their spells back each monring, and due to us all having to check against a quasi-permanent local effect that wants to mess with our minds)
- we found a second, larger crack that led outdoors; a druid shapeshifted into a small bird and went out to see what was going on and where we were in relation to our destination, then came back (this took a few minutes at the table while what he saw was narrated)

The last noteworthy thing:

- we found a dead orc with its back burnt; this told us we were nearing the passage's end as we know from local info-gathering (and our own observation from a great distance) there be dragons ahead where the passage comes out; and very soon after this we also found a couple of landmarks within the passage the locals had told us about as signs we were nearing the end

This caused us to stop and camp out again, and the session ended there with us still making plans.  Next session (and next morning) we spell up and then go take on - or evade - something like 15 (!) dragons that we need to get past in order to get where we're going.

Lan-"to tell the story of why we need to go where we're going would take far too long for me to want to type out"-efan


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> This is why I describe GM-driven play as "the GM reading out his/her notes to the players".




Thereby demonstrating that you completely got what I said wrong.  I actually believe it was a genuine mistake this time, though, so I'll explain further.

I wasn't saying it was all or mainly pre-authored, as your post implies.  Rather, after the game plays out you can see from beginning to end what happened and write it down.  It's not at all about the DM reading out of notes.  Our style of play doesn't skip a huge portion of what would be interesting in a novel, though, like yours does.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> The gameworld is not "neutral". Nor "biased". Those are properties of judges, or of policies, but not of authored works.




The game world is the game world.  It's absurd for the PCs to always have an easy, instant journey to wherever they have interest, but that's exactly what happens in your style of play if the players don't have an interest in travel.  It stretches belief.  It's like red coming up 1000 times in a row at roulette, because the players aren't interested in black or green.



> You are claiming, in effect, that RPGers have a moral duty to play in a style that you like. It's absurd.



LOL (the only response this deserves)



> Your use of the word "force" is also absurd. "Hey everyone, should the story be about X?" "Yep, OK!" "OK, you come upon this Xiness. What do you do?" Are you really saying that everyone was _forced_ to engage with X?



It was a bit odd.  That's what I get for posting in a hurry this morning.  I mean that you are forced into the absurdity of always allowing them to get where they are interested in going, despite possible and probably dangers along the way at least SOME of the time, just because they have no interest in travel and want to cut to the chase.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> The adventures of the 9 members of the company were important, but they were not goals.  Pippin did not have the goal of becoming a guard to the steward.  That happened as a result of the journey not being rushed to the conclusion, but instead being walked out.  Merry and Pippin did not have goals to go to Fangorn and meet ents, but rather that also happened as a result of the journey.  The same with the rest of them.  The only two real goals were destroy the ring at Mt. Doom and the lesser goal of become king for Aragorn.  This is a great example of the style that I and @_*Lanefan*_ espouse.  The journey can result in all kinds of awesome roleplaying, character changing, and world changing events.  Those events are missed out on in Story Now when you just put the PCs at the giants, because that's what the interest/goal is.




I don't really agree with this. I mean, I can't say what in theory is possible in GM-centered play, it TOTALLY depends on what the specific GM pre-authored, how they relate that to the PCs, etc.

But I think that all the characters have significant motivations. Merry and Pippin are the least developed characters, besides Legolas who is almost really a minor character. They seem to be the quintessential "just along to have an adventure" types TBH. Even they find things which challenge them. Pippin comes face to face with madness and grief, and becomes torn between duty founded on honoring his oath to Denethor and love and pity for Faramir. I don't think this is just random stuff! Tolkien is turning Pippin into a fully-formed character here and creating a profound human conflict which he must resolve.  Later he's expelled from service to the Tower for his actions, though clearly everyone finds those actions laudable.

Likewise Merry learns about true bravery and loyalty and about pushing yourself beyond the normal bounds of what is possible. He picks himself up and hews the flesh of the Ring Wraith regardless of terror, all for the love of an old man whom he hardly knows, and a woman he doesn't know at all! In the process he fulfills a prophecy, which is to say in Tolkien's parlance he plays his part in God's Plan of his own free will. This is not random stuff! 

Now, what agendas do hypothetical players of these 'characters' have? Well, at the point where those things happen, that's fairly obvious. What was Pippin's motivation when he hooked up with Frodo on his way to Took Land? We don't know, maybe just to find out how a foolish young man would mature in the face of danger. 

I think, partly, the trouble here is in not having a full explication of all the elements of Story Now. While we talk a lot about player agenda and character goals and relate the two, there ARE other formulations of Story Now. Eero Tuovinen mentioned some in passing. The entire milieu could present a question/challenge/agenda for example. I think this is a central point of Tolkien's work BTW, the question of free will and the 'playing of a part' in the unfurling of Illuvatar's plan, as shaped by the Great Music even before the founding of Arda. Melkor's great crime isn't opposing Illuvatar, his 'rebellion' is a vital part of Illuvatar's plan, NOTHING can truly be against the will of God! No, Melkor's great crime is the imposition of his will onto others. The evil that Sauron represents in LotR is just that, the will to dominate others and force them to do your bidding. This is the very reason why the Ring is unusable by free people, because its power is domination, it cannot be anything BUT evil and do anything but evil in accord with Tolkien's conception of good and evil. 

The point is that this makes the actions and plot of all the events in LotR quite central and vitally important. They directly address the central question. When Merry and Pippin arrive in Fangorn they become the catalyst which finally drives the Ents to assert THEIR free will, one of many such acts which collectively lead to the downfall of Sauron.


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, yet another chore in what is supposed to be fun. Its just far too easy to get it twisted up, and it has nothing to do with cheating! Half the time different people write stuff down at different times, in different places, nobody is 100% sure 3 weeks later exactly what was written where and which notes/scribbles on the margin of a character sheet, etc. are 'correct', etc.



I guess I look for a somewhat more robust form of tracking that notes and scribbles in the margin. 

And IME getting it twisted up has a lot to do with cheating, because the twistings almost invariably end up in the PC's favour - sometimes massively so.  (one instance: our DM got suspicious of one player's PC wealth and ran a quick audit - he added up the treasury shares the PC would have received over its career then compared the total to what was on the character sheet.  The character sheet number was *higher just in coin alone*, never mind what had been spent in addition on magic items, gear, etc. along the way!  Suffice to say that player wasn't in that game for much longer...)



> Its just not worth the trouble! I mean, basically, what we found was that we were quite capable, either by tracking it or by creating an abstract system, of knowing of the PCs were totally broke, had a few coins, enough cash to get by, plenty of cash, great loads of cash, or some gargantuan fortune. So why do the boring task of tracking actual numbers?



In the game I play in our last couple of adventures have been pretty lucrative; yet one of my characters is nearly out of g.p. again because she's spent it all on magic items, spell acquisition, MU-guild dues, and other expenses.  If I didn't track her wealth carefully I could easily have spent far more than she had available...which is unfair.



> I'm pretty sure you know what my response is to anything claiming any sort of 'existence' or 'facts' about a made up world...



All that tells me is that you're not seeing any of this through the eyes of the PCs, to whom all of this is quite real.



> No, we don't have to deal with them, not beyond what actually makes the game play the way we want it to! There's no requirement beyond that, its pure entertainment nothing is mandated.



Were it not for the goal of trying to make the game world a believable place I'd probably be on board with this train of thought.  But requirement number one is that the game world be believable - or at least as believable as it can be, given the nature of fantasy - and that's what many of the game mechanics I've been referring to are in aid of.



> Yeah, but as with all the other times you have asserted this, you can only assert that you have this preference for tracking and handling lots of things. There's no inherent reason for that. When Gygax wrote all that stuff in the DMG about how you HAD to track time, etc. etc. etc. EVEN THEN my 16yr-old self chuckled and wondered what he was smoking.



Where I took that to be one of his truly solid bits of advice.  Unfortunately he then himself goes on to overturn it when he says that each day between game sessions should also represent a day passing in the game world, which makes no in-game sense whatsoever!  That's the bit which caused me to question his choice of recreational mind-benders. 



> Right, so when this journey starts, or gets to the ocean, there COULD be a scene where the PCs decide that getting to Tokyo faster/cheaper/whatever is worth some chance of sea monsters. That's a potential play for a GM in a Story Now type of game, particularly if there are players who have some interest in the subject. It will depend on the game, which is what I've maintained the whole time. You simply cannot make these blanket statements about what is important in an RPG.



Sure I can; when coming from the basis that having a sound, consistent game-world or setting in which to play is a foundational requirement of any RPG and without which at least one big aspect of an RPG - exploration - simply cannot work as intended.  Despite what you and others have claimed here, I maintain you just can't make it all up on the fly and hope to remain forward- and backward-consistent for any length of time, for two reasons:

1. Nobody's memory is good enough to remember it all unless the campaign is just a few sessions long, and
2. There's so much risk of backward inconsistency (e.g. my example earlier of the Godswall) that it's pretty much inevitable that it will happen at some point in a big enough way as to invalidate something that happened earlier in play, which is unacceptable.



> Which is fine, if the party wants to wander around and explore and meet stuff. There's this forest in my campaign. It is a dangerous place. One of the PCs learned that his missing brother was probably held in this forest somewhere. The deal was that he could wander around in the forest looking for his brother, but he was going to run into trouble. Still, none of the trouble was RANDOM, I just made a list, and when he failed in the SC to find his brother, the next monster on the list showed up, wherever he was physically located at that time (I do have a map of this area, made in the 1980's, so I could actually guestimate what location he was in and describe it. This worked well, it was basically "Here are the stakes, take your chances." I am not sure I'd call it 'wandering' monsters, though it probably does something similar to what you did.



Had you rolled on the list for what he met instead of just taking the next one up you'd be very close to a wandering monster set-up. 

Lanefan


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> This is great as long as you can guarantee there will be some failures along the way to make things interesting and-or challenging.  But one assumes the players are within reason maxing their odds of success as best they can, meaning that what has the potential to be an exciting and interesting adventure (LotR as written) could instead turn into a rather boring cakewalk (they just go around the south end of the mountains and reach the Rohan unopposed) if the dice allow it.




Odds of success at what? Making the game boring?! 

Here let me note that for YEARS, during the Great Edition Wars, whenever someone would contrast 4e's balanced PCs against 3e's crazy disparities and potentially monstrously overpowered things like 'CoDzilla' we were told that this was of no concern because players simply aren't interested in ruining games, or at the very least the GM can just give them a 'slap' or something and its all just OK. But the very notion that it could be in the player's hands when its Story Now is a terrible failing of the whole technique. Now, I am certainly not accusing you of taking the former position on 3e, but it is amusing how ANYTHING can be argued against! 

The point is, I think its perfectly feasible to give players some credit. Maybe its also best to provide them with mechanics that don't tempt them to bend the game that way, as they are likely to be advocates of their characters and thus the temptation exists. I do firmly advocate for a system where 'creating a dramatically interesting character' and 'creating a mechanically useful character' are consistent goals. I'd say it points out that coherent games with rules centered on character exposition and definition are probably a good thing!


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> More on the Moria sequence. I am now typing out the text on page 332 of my one-volume edition of LotR:
> 
> For eight dark hours, not counting two brief halts, they marched on; and they met no danger, and heard nothing, and saw nothing but the faint gleam of the wizard's light, bobbing like a will-o'-the-wisp in front of them. The passage they had chosen wound steadily upwards. As far as they could judge it went in great mounting curves, and as it rose it grew loftier and wider. There were now no openings to other galleries or tunnels on either side, and the floor was level and sound, without pits or cracks. Evidently they had struck what once had been an important road; and they went forward quicker than they had done on their first march.
> 
> In this way they advanced some fifteen miles, measured in a direct line east, although they must have actually walked twenty miles or more.​
> That takes less than a minute to read. In the style that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] advocate, it cannot be resolved in a minute at the table. That's sufficient to show that the style in quetsion can't deliver the Moria sequence in play.




That's simply  not true.  It can indeed be done in our style.  If you take a game played out in our style, even if it takes 2000 hours of game play to get those 15 miles, it would still be written as Tolkien wrote it.  The detail of our style doesn't make for good novel writing, so you have to condense portions.  You wouldn't write out every fork paused at or door examined.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I can tell you that my players, if they were intending to be stealthy upon arriving at the cavern entrance, would let me know. We might then frame a check in which they try to (say) create a Wizard's Screen before the fire giant sentries notice them.



Rewinding time is unsatisfactory to me as a player and as a DM.  The giants had already seen them, which makes it too late to be stealthy without a rewind happening.


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I thought you didn't like railroads? But now you're asserting that there _must_ be railroading lest things be boring!
> 
> Of course there is no guarantee that, when you sit down to play, any particular set of events will occur.



I agree with the second line but disagree with the first.  There doesn't have to be any railroading, there merely need to be challenges put in place that the PCs are more or less likely to run across, depending where they go.

Were I a DM setting up LotR as an RPG, once the discussion of what route to take came up I'd put the known hazard Saruman and his patrols on the player's map, make sure Gandalf's player knew about the pass, make sure Gimli's player (and Gandalf's) knew about Moria in different ways, put the map on the table and ask where they're going.

I'd already know the possible things they might face if they choose to try and go by Isengard; if they choose the mountain pass; or if they choose Moria.*  I already have the watcher at the gate statted out, I already know the odds for Saruman's crows spotting the party if they're caught in the open (and for Gandalf noticing them in turn), I know the chances for Saruman catching on to their attempt to cross the pass and messing it up, I've got the Balrog statted out, I've got the mines partly hard-mapped and partly randomized, I've got the orcs statted out at least by numbers and types (I'll worry about individuals if and when combat with them come sup), etc. etc.

* - and if they choose a plan D I haven't seen coming e.g. try going through Mirkwood (good luck!) and coming in from the north I've at least got enough knowledge of the game world to make up challenges on the fly for that session, then during the week I can tighten it up.

And yes I know some of what I've pre-done is going to go by the boards because their path won't take them there.  Doesn't bother me.



> But because the players _will_ fail checks (unless their dice are loaded or the maths and system of the game are broken) things will happen.



The system does seem to depend on this, yes.



> Why would it be boring for the Fellowship to reach Rohan unopposed? It wasn't boring for them to reach the Misty Mountains unopposed, because then exciting things happened. Well, exciting things might happen in Rohan too.



Er...exciting things did happen in Rohan and very likely would have even if the PCs had skipped the mountains/Lothlorien etc. entirely. But the game/book would be the poorer for having skipped all that, and nowhere near as exciting or interesting. (never mind the party would still have been nine, unless Boromir chose a different time and place to go PvP on them)



> As Tolkien writes it, there is a lot of _success_ in Rohan: Aragorn, Legolas and Gimili *succeed* in tracking the orcs, and *succeed* in finding a brooch (therefore ensuring that it is true, in the fiction, that the hobbits were still alive at that point), and *succeed* in befriend Eomer and getting horses from him, and *succeed* in finding signs of the hobbits where the orcs were burned, and *succeed* in meeting Gandalf. Gandalf and the hobbits *succeed* in activating the Ents. Gandalf then *succeeds* in activating Theoden and the Rohirrim, *succceeds* again in bringing Erkenbrand to Helm's Deep, and *succeeds* in besting Saruman on the steps of Isengard.



Gandalf also succeeds on his resurrection roll... 

All that success, however, is built upon a string of failures: everybody fails to notice Boromir (or fails to act on what they do notice), Boromir ultimately fails at everything and dies for his trouble, everyone except Sam manages to lose track of Frodo and thus the ring (in other words, blown goals for all except Frodo and Sam), Merry and Pippin fail to hide and instead get themselves captured, etc.

re the giants example:


> The players had ample chance to say they wanted to be stealthy. When they mentioned the making of potions before they left. When the <stuff> happened. When the GM described them arriving at the entrance to a massive cavern.



It's the 'alternate' version I've been looking at, the one where the fire giants notice the party as soon as they arrive.  The version where the DM describes them arriving at the cavern entrance before any giants have been sighted is just fine in and of itself, though there's no mention of any narration of what was passed through in order to get there (see Moria exampels above).



> I don't understand. Earning XP in Cortex+ Heroic has nothing in particular to do with gp, or wealth. XP get spent to change the PC sheet (eg change distinctions, change affiliations) or to add new abilities or to step up existing ones.



From the way you put it I read it as spending x.p. to acquire plot points which in turn could then be used to acquire needed gear, which boils down to buying gear with x.p. rather than g.p.



> No. If an ability has the Gear limit then it can be shut down (at the instigation of the player or the GM). That could be narrrated as running out of ammunition.



What player is ever going to narrate their PC as running out of ammunition when she doesn't have to? 

Lanefan


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> They couldn't, unless they were rude and interrupted you while you were talking.




I think what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is getting at is that in a game which is so player-centered the players are really the ones in charge of how the next scene is going to be framed, because it will address THEIR interests.

So, if they're a bunch of sneaky bastards who wouldn't march straight into trouble for any money, then the GM could be faulted for the narration that was presented, because it would clearly be missing what the PCs are all about! OTOH it would be a fine narration of a bunch of bold warriors marching to glory! Lord Jus of Demonland would most certainly approve! Maybe more realistically a party that was interested in a more 'wargame like' kind of tactical maximization approach might be flexible, but then I would expect THAT party to ask about what they are in store for, deliberately gather intel, perform recon, etc. I wouldn't expect them to just say "yes" when GM asks if they're heading to the giant cave. I would expect, again in a player-centered game, for these players to start elaborating plans and etc. Soon they should be making checks to find the Giant's defenses, the weaknesses in such, and the ways around them, etc. etc. etc. not just saying 'yes we approach'.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Greenstone.Walker said:


> World building creates reasonable and predictable consequences for my actions, which increases my agency.
> 
> If I know about the land and its culture and politics, then I can predict that actions ("attack the innkeeper") will lead to consequences ("pursued by the town guard"), which gives me agency when deciding whether or not to attack the guy who watered down my ale.




I would, personally, think that genre logic and associated "things by default should make sense in the world" would be enough. The fact that an inn can exist, and a keeper run it implies that there is some degree of law and order. That in turn implies authorities (as does the existence of legal tender, another necessity for inns). Genre logic then supplies a form for those authorities, like 'town guard', or 'kingsmen' or whatever. I agree that these conventions do work as you state, and help to create agency. I'm just not sure that specifically named inns, in specifically mapped out towns, positioned in a known geographical relation to other things, etc. is really all that critical an element of that.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Not all games involve resource management. Backgammon is my favourite board game; it has no resource management. Five hundred is my favourite card game; it has no resource management.



Neither backgammon nor five hundred (whatever that is) are RPGs and thus neither is relevant here.



> Not all RPGs involve resource management.



Maybe not, but they should.  Part of playing a character's role is to manage its possessions along with its abilities and personality; and an RPG that eschews this is ignoring a key aspect of what playing a role entails.  Ditto for the party as a whole: its collective possessions etc. e.g. acquired treasure also need to be carefully managed.



> Burning Wheel has very little. Cortex+ Heroic has some on the GM-side (the Doom Pool) but almost none on the player side. Obviously there are mechanically simpler games with none at all (eg Cthulhu Dark).



These then aren't fully living up to the RP part of RPG.



> The idea that you _have_ to track (say) ammunition is bizarre. It's a preference, not an iron law of fantasy RPGing.
> 
> The idea that _unless you track ammunition_ then characters can get off infiintely many shots is also bizarre. That just shows an ignorance of the range of actual and posssible RPG mechanics. Here's one I just made up: the player delcares a missile attack. The dice are rolled; the check fails. The GM declares "You go to draw an arrow from your quiver, only to realise that it's empty!"



If ammunition isn't tracked there's two obvious possible results:

- the character can shoot an infinite number of times, or
- the character cannot shoot at all as there is no ammuniton listed on its sheet.

Something like your idea quoted above is a third option, to be sure; but mechanically much clunkier than just tracking the ammo would be in that each time a shot is taken there'll be an extra roll involved: the check for successfully getting the shot away and then the more usual roll to hit.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, I was a chem major, but I ate science for breakfast and I still read a lot about many subjects. So the other day I read on Ars Technica all about yet another (of several) theories and advances in the understanding of Western North America. What did I get out of it? We know almost squat. SOME sort of really complex plate tectonics is going on, but its like trying to decipher where all the swirls came from in the chocolate chip swirl ice cream. Except its a giant 4.5 billion yr old pudding.



I happen to live in the middle of the most geologically complex bit of western NA and from what I can tell they've got what's going on mostly figured out in terms of what is moving where and how fast, and what has resulted from which particular events in the past.  They've also got a handle on what will happen next - the Juan de Fuca plate, for example, will eventually disappear - but they're no closer to predicting specific events e.g. earthquakes than before.



> Its not that we know NOTHING, but from first principles we're not even close to being able to figure out what sort of terrain would result from a given set of conditions, nor if some hypothesized terrain is realistically possible or not, beyond a certain point.



Perhaps, but that "certain point" is more than good enough for our world-design purposes.



> As for other planets, we have very little understanding of the basic planetary geology of Mars, like how its crust is structured, what layers it has, etc. Anything beyond that? We can deduce something about the various moons of Jupiter/Saturn from gravimetry, but we're still just guessing about the processes involved in surface formations and why the various moons all look so different when they are effectively all made from very similar starting materials.



True, though I think we know or can deduce a bit more than you're allowing for. 



> The point is, you could hypothesize almost anything that wasn't stupidly extreme like 500 mile tall mountains with an Earth-level gravity, and nobody could really call it 'impossible', or even be sure if its improbable, given that we have one sample Earth to judge by. In terms of more local smaller-scale features, I think there's a certain understanding "this basin was formed because of crustal extension, see those extension faults over there that you call hills?" but WHY was there extension? Nobody is quite sure...



The why in this case doesn't matter all too much, just the end results that show up on the map.

But, in game design a DM can always toss in the why if she feels like it.



> I've yet to be called on anything. I have mile-tall trees in my campaign, floating chunks of rock (only one that anyone has found so far, but still) etc. I expect if I hand you my largest-scale map you'd mostly decree the geography to be modestly plausible, but nobody has ever bothered to comment on it, and I think only 2-3 players ever got interested enough to even look at it for more than 5 seconds.



I guess I'd be that guy, then - I'd call you on the floating rocks for sure, if only to ask in-character "How the ...?".

As for the map, I'd gladly critique it if asked but otherwise wouldn't call you on it, though I might inwardly cringe if there was anything egregiously wrong.

Same as I do with most of the maps included at the front of various fantasy novels - they're almost always cringe-worthy.  Even Middle Earth has at least one bit that makes me wince every time I see it: the rectangular mountain range around Mordor looks more than a bit artificial... 

Lanefan


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> I'll have to take your word for this, having never heard of Peter S. Beagle before reading this post.




Well, _A fine and Private Place_, and _The Last Unicorn, _both written before he was 30 are definitely in the same literary league as LotR. In fact he was the author of Ralph Bakshi's screenplay for LotR as well! He has won multiple literary awards, a Hugo, a Nebula, a World Fantasy Award, etc. 

So, you have a new treat in order! His stories are quite interesting, but it is true, world building is not a big part of these stories. The Last Unicorn is a bit reminiscent of the works of people like David Lindsay, though much less abstract and vastly more readable. Maybe Doris Lessing would be another comparison point, though very different in many respects.

That reminds me: Lindsay was a central influence on non other than JRR Tolkien! This shows that Tolkien was not simply a fantasist, his work is founded in deep philosophical and spiritual concerns. I guess his association with C. S. Lewis would already be enough to establish that, as Lewis is certainly as much philosopher and fantasy author (though again this is often not appreciated by many casual readers).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> I guess I look for a somewhat more robust form of tracking that notes and scribbles in the margin.
> 
> And IME getting it twisted up has a lot to do with cheating, because the twistings almost invariably end up in the PC's favour - sometimes massively so.  (one instance: our DM got suspicious of one player's PC wealth and ran a quick audit - he added up the treasury shares the PC would have received over its career then compared the total to what was on the character sheet.  The character sheet number was *higher just in coin alone*, never mind what had been spent in addition on magic items, gear, etc. along the way!  Suffice to say that player wasn't in that game for much longer...)
> 
> In the game I play in our last couple of adventures have been pretty lucrative; yet one of my characters is nearly out of g.p. again because she's spent it all on magic items, spell acquisition, MU-guild dues, and other expenses.  If I didn't track her wealth carefully I could easily have spent far more than she had available...which is unfair.
> 
> All that tells me is that you're not seeing any of this through the eyes of the PCs, to whom all of this is quite real.
> 
> Were it not for the goal of trying to make the game world a believable place I'd probably be on board with this train of thought.  But requirement number one is that the game world be believable - or at least as believable as it can be, given the nature of fantasy - and that's what many of the game mechanics I've been referring to are in aid of.
> 
> Where I took that to be one of his truly solid bits of advice.  Unfortunately he then himself goes on to overturn it when he says that each day between game sessions should also represent a day passing in the game world, which makes no in-game sense whatsoever!  That's the bit which caused me to question his choice of recreational mind-benders.
> 
> Sure I can; when coming from the basis that having a sound, consistent game-world or setting in which to play is a foundational requirement of any RPG and without which at least one big aspect of an RPG - exploration - simply cannot work as intended.  Despite what you and others have claimed here, I maintain you just can't make it all up on the fly and hope to remain forward- and backward-consistent for any length of time, for two reasons:
> 
> 1. Nobody's memory is good enough to remember it all unless the campaign is just a few sessions long, and
> 2. There's so much risk of backward inconsistency (e.g. my example earlier of the Godswall) that it's pretty much inevitable that it will happen at some point in a big enough way as to invalidate something that happened earlier in play, which is unacceptable.
> 
> Had you rolled on the list for what he met instead of just taking the next one up you'd be very close to a wandering monster set-up.
> 
> Lanefan




All of this just goes to show that we play a completely different game, despite any similarities. I'm mystified by your insistence that it is basically impossible to run a campaign without all this tracking and pretend 'realism' and such. And yet, I've been doing it for decades... It works FINE. It is certainly working great for me! I have no interest in making anyone else do it my way, but it can only make me chuckle when you effectively tell me I'm doing it wrong!


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Our style of play doesn't skip a huge portion of what would be interesting in a novel, though, like yours does.



This is like  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] saying that the passage of time in real life isn't, or oughtn't to be, a factor in game design. Ie it seems completely untenable.

What "huge portion" is skipped in my imaginary novel which contains the episode about the fire giants? (And for the sake of argument, let's suppose that it's already at 1,500 pages.) are you really saying the novel would be _even more awesome_ if it contained an extra 50-page section describing the trip from the dwarfhold to the giants' cavern, noting all the intersections that the protagonists passed by and through, wondering whether they should proceed down them but eventually choosing to continue on to the cavern?

All published fiction involves editing. Choices about pacing. About when the protagonists fail, and when they succeed. A "story now" _game_ (I emphasise that word deliberately) does not involve _choices_ about failure - that is dictated by mechanics. It only involves _choices_ about success when the stakes are low (such as the trip from the dwarves to the giants' cavern); when the stakes are high, success is also dictated by mechanics.

It does involve choices about pacing. By choosing to "say 'yes'" a referee can signal that the stakes are low, and thereby affect pacing. By narrating the consequences of failure as "hard" or "soft" moves (to use the DW terminology), the GM can affect pacing. Decisions about framing and the introduction of complications affect pacing. Because RPGing doesn't involve any _editing_, these pacing choices made in real time become all the more important.

Because the fire giant example is MADE UP (by his own testimony,  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] spent whole seconds on it; I spent a couple of minutes), NO ONE knows anything about the pacing of that session, the pacing conventions at that (imaginary) table, etc. It's therefore obviously impossible to assert that there is anything objectionable about the GM's decision to "say 'yes'" to the desire to arrive at the cavern.

To assert, therefore, that it skips "a huge portion" of what might be interesting is just silly. Do you really lie in bed at night wondering what fascinating things happened to the Fellowship on their trek across Eregion, that JRRT didn't bother to tell you?



Lanefan said:


> Actually it could, in that a DM narrating what you quoted would be fine except replacing "they" with "you" where relevant.
> 
> Why?
> 
> There are no intersections: "no openings to other galleries and tunnels on either side"; no distractions; no rubble or unsound ceiling, no danger.  All of this is neatly summed up in that narration, which also doesn't just plop the characters at the end of the passage but _describes what they are passing through to get there_.



How do the players know there are no secret doors? Did the GM just "railroad them through" without letting them check? Heresy!

Did the GM roll for wandering monsters? Every 3 turns? That's 16 checks - even if none of them came up 6 (a 1 in 20 chance, or thereabouts), that would take more than a minute to do.

And how wide is the corridor? Without having been told that, how were the players meant to make sensible choices about marching order?

I don't see how you can possibly think that the JRRT-style narration would be OK, yet object to the fire giant example. Suppose a player asks, "Did we pass any intersections?" the Gm can simply answer "No, you didn't - it was just a gradually descending tunnel the whole time."


EDIT: I wrote the above before reading the following post from Maxperson:



Maxperson said:


> If you take a game played out in our style, even if it takes 2000 hours of game play to get those 15 miles, it would still be written as Tolkien wrote it.  The detail of our style doesn't make for good novel writing, so you have to condense portions.  You wouldn't write out every fork paused at or door examined.



So your game plays just like JRRT wrote it _provided that_ you rewrite what actually happened to cut out the 1999 hours and 59 minutes of detail. That's my point: your style of play _does not_ give the Moria sequence. It doesn't give "story now", and it only gives "story later" with editing and rewriting.

That's fine if you like it: but when I say "story now" I mean what I say. I play RPGs in a way that can actually yield the Moria sequence, or something like it, in play.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> This brings up a fine point of game design. Where 4e tends to a theory of granting success, and thus forward continuation of the story in the direction favored by the players, BW and even DW (6 or less fails, tougher odds than 4e SCs generally have) are much less generous. I think this partly stems from 4e's equivocal position as a Story Now game. The designers seem to have more envisaged play as a kind of mix of GM-generated content with "go to the action." Where it is incoherent it suffers.



I think this true to a significant extent. Also, D&D has always had a strong "power fantasy" vibe, and 4e's maths caters to that fairly well.

But 4e also gets a lot of its pacing from _within_ the resolution context. Although most combats will be won, there are moments of loss within them. Although most skill challenges will succeed, there are moments of failure within them.


----------



## clearstream

pemerton said:


> Yet Middle Earth is not consistent. The economics and sociology of The Shire are absurd (there is so much metal, but where is it minded and smelted? it is isolated, and yet appears to have almost unlimited supplies of traded goods; etc). Where do the elves of Lorien get their food?



That's more a statement that ME's consistency is not complete, and that was in line with what I understand of Tolkien's focus. He says that he was concerned to ensure geographic, chronological and linguistic consistency. He did not always succeed, but he was hugely helped in those goals through his prior world-building. His books would not be the achievement they are, were it not for his world-building. 



pemerton said:


> But in any event, my main contention for the past 500+ posts is this: the more that the GM is authoring, and the more the GM is authoring unilaterally, then the less the players are authoring. Hence their agency over the content of the shared fiction is reduced.
> 
> If the game is mainly about establishing a shared fiction, then it follows that their agency per se is reduced. As the OP noted, not all RPGing is about establishing a shared fiction - eg classic Gygaxian D&D is closer to a type of puzzle-solving - but I think that a lot of contemporary RPGing is not classic D&D.



This captures quite well why GNS comes under criticism for turning a blind eye to some kinds of roleplaying. I would call stories set in the Wild Card setting "shared fiction" and yet many details of that setting arrive to authors as part of the world backstory. The point being, participants can share creation of fiction in a setting that was created by a subset, or none (!) of those participants. Say we choose to play in an authentic 5th century Roman setting? None of us create that setting, but our fiction is shared. We might add some fantasy to it in specific ways. Indeed, to the extent that concepts pre-exist or arise in the minds of some and not all participants, the fiction is never shared in the sense you want.

Possibly that is because the sense you want is very purist, and it for me isn't fully admitting what is going on. If my character nominates a fictional manufacturer of her fictional grav bike, then other players should accept my fiction. They shouldn't say - no, that manufacturer doesn't exist so your character cannot be sitting on her grav bike, that said manufacturer putatively crafted. Thus, they accept something that they had no agency over. This is a constant. The only question is the scale and siting of who is doing what.

If someone comes to my group with Barker's EPT and we feel excited about that world, we can still weave our own tales into it, with full agency over our part, our fictions, without needing to have agency over the details the world-build provides. Or in our shared world, I might be obsessed with the cartography, while Alice is obsessed with the politics: a shared world-build is still a world-build.

And if we come down to - is the question really about whether a world-build can be shared? Then sure, of course it can. But not everyone wants to do it, and even when they do they frequently have different parts they are interested in. The value of the world-build remains the same. For shared fiction to work, each player must accept the fictional contributions of other players, and all must accept historical contributions they have chosen to rely on, and if that is more on one player, a DM, and less on others, the P/Cs, that is fine. It cannot be tarred "classic" DnD and mildly denigrated as "puzzle-solving"! It can and should be narratively rich.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The game world is the game world.  It's absurd for the PCs to always have an easy, instant journey to wherever they have interest, but that's exactly what happens in your style of play if the players don't have an interest in travel.  It stretches belief.



What do you mean by "instant journey"? For all you know, the PCs in the fire giant example spent a week trekking through the underdark to get from the dwarves to the cavern.

But you are correct that if the players in a RPG I am GMing are not interested in travel as a focus or dramatic need for their PCs, then it is unlikely to loom large unless it concerns a location or geography that speaks in some other fashion to those dramatic needs. Ensuring that the game deals with material of interest to the players is something that I call "good GMing".

And why does it stretch belief? I read Jack the Giant Killer the other day (in the Blue Fairy Book version). Jack travels around and collects magic items. And kills giants. The travel doesn't feature as important in the story. John Boorman's version of Excalibur has an extended treatment of the Grail Quest, but travel per se doesn't figure - it is particular locations (Morgana's forest and the knight's hanged by Mordred; the river; the magical castle that holds the Grail) that play a prominent role.

It's simply not true that _travel_, per se, must be a prominent part of any engaging or versimilitudinous fantasy story. If I could run a game that had a tenth of the dramatic power of Boorman's movie I'd be pretty pleased with myself!


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I can tell you that my players, if they were intending to be stealthy upon arriving at the cavern entrance, would let me know. We might then frame a check in which they try to (say) create a Wizard's Screen before the fire giant sentries notice them.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Rewinding time is unsatisfactory to me as a player and as a DM.  The giants had already seen them, which makes it too late to be stealthy without a rewind happening.
Click to expand...


What does rewinding time have to do with anything?

GM: Just as the dwarves told you, after a hard trek through the tunnels you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern. It's lit a dull red by the glow of lava that bubbles up through the floor of the cave and flows away in criss-crossing channels. In the glow of the lava, you can see fire giant sentries on patrol. . . <players interject>

Players: OK, can we throw up a Wizard's Screen before they notice us?​


AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is getting at is that in a game which is so player-centered the players are really the ones in charge of how the next scene is going to be framed, because it will address THEIR interests.
> 
> So, if they're a bunch of sneaky bastards who wouldn't march straight into trouble for any money, then the GM could be faulted for the narration that was presented, because it would clearly be missing what the PCs are all about! OTOH it would be a fine narration of a bunch of bold warriors marching to glory! Lord Jus of Demonland would most certainly approve! Maybe more realistically a party that was interested in a more 'wargame like' kind of tactical maximization approach might be flexible, but then I would expect THAT party to ask about what they are in store for, deliberately gather intel, perform recon, etc. I wouldn't expect them to just say "yes" when GM asks if they're heading to the giant cave. I would expect, again in a player-centered game, for these players to start elaborating plans and etc. Soon they should be making checks to find the Giant's defenses, the weaknesses in such, and the ways around them, etc. etc. etc. not just saying 'yes we approach'.



Well, mostly I had in mind what I just posted in reply to Maxperson - contra [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], I don't think it's "rude" for the players to interrupt GM exposition to clarifiy what their PCs are doing. That's pretty standard in playing the game.

But what you said is all good too. The GM has a duty to respect the players' characterisation of their PCs in his/her narration. In practice I think this is fairly easily achieved by back-and-forth at the table.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Neither backgammon nor five hundred (whatever that is) are RPGs and thus neither is relevant here.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Part of playing a character's role is to manage its possessions along with its abilities and personality; and an RPG that eschews this is ignoring a key aspect of what playing a role entails.  Ditto for the party as a whole: its collective possessions etc. e.g. acquired treasure also need to be carefully managed.



This is such a narrow conception of what a RPG might be about that it is hard to credit.

How important are equipment lists, or tallies of gold pieces, in Star Wars? The Seven Samurai? A Wizard of Earthsea? Gear is a narrative device; in a RPG it can be managed by any number of mechanics and/or narrative techniques.



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> the idea that you have to track (say) ammunition is bizarre. It's a preference, not an iron law of fantasy RPGing.
> 
> The idea that unless you track ammunition then characters can get off infiintely many shots is also bizarre. That just shows an ignorance of the range of actual and posssible RPG mechanics. Here's one I just made up: the player delcares a missile attack. The dice are rolled; the check fails. The GM declares "You go to draw an arrow from your quiver, only to realise that it's empty!"
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If ammunition isn't tracked there's two obvious possible results:
> 
> - the character can shoot an infinite number of times, or
> - the character cannot shoot at all as there is no ammuniton listed on its sheet.
> 
> Something like your idea quoted above is a third option, to be sure; but mechanically much clunkier than just tracking the ammo would be in that each time a shot is taken there'll be an extra roll involved: the check for successfully getting the shot away and then the more usual roll to hit.
Click to expand...


No. Do you really not get it? You can have a single roll to see if the attack succeeds, which incorporates everything - does the shooter have ammunition? does the target duck? does the shot penetrate armour? etc.

It's doubly bizarre that you run the line you are running _as a D&D player_, because D&D has never separated out the question of _ducking_ from the question of _armour penetration_ (contrast, say, RuneQuest or Burning Wheel). Just as those processes _can _be distinguished in resolution mechanics, but don't have to be, so likewise the availability of ammunition does not have to be broken out.


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=71699]clearstream[/MENTION], I think I would find your posts easier to respond to if I had some sense of what RPGs, or what sorts of play experiences, you have in mind when you make your observations.



clearstream said:


> This captures quite well why GNS comes under criticism for turning a blind eye to some kinds of roleplaying.



What kind? It has a very thorough description of RPGing that involves pre-authorship of setting with the goal being for the GM to tell the players about that setting. It's a form of "high concept simulationism". 



clearstream said:


> If my character nominates a fictional manufacturer of her fictional grav bike, then other players should accept my fiction. They shouldn't say - no, that manufacturer doesn't exist so your character cannot be sitting on her grav bike, that said manufacturer putatively crafted. Thus, they accept something that they had no agency over. This is a constant. The only question is the scale and siting of who is doing what.



I am not following your point. Yes, as Vincent Baker has pointed out for a long time now, the core function of a RPG system is to establish what stuff gets incorporated into the shared fiction, and how. (I think this claim may need some qualification if we're talking about classic dungeon-crawling, but I'm not and I don' think you are either.)

How does that shine light on the function of pre-play authorship of setting by a GM?



clearstream said:


> If someone comes to my group with Barker's EPT and we feel excited about that world, we can still weave our own tales into it, with full agency over our part, our fictions, without needing to have agency over the details the world-build provides.



But manifestly you have less agency over the content of the shared fiction then you would in a "no myth" game.

And more to the point for this thread, if the GM uses the pre-authored details of EPT to declare action declarations unsuccessful by reference to unrevealed elements of fictional positioning ("secret/hidden backstory") then it is the GM whose agency is pre-eminent. 



clearstream said:


> is the question really about whether a world-build can be shared? Then sure, of course it can. But not everyone wants to do it, and even when they do they frequently have different parts they are interested in. The value of the world-build remains the same. For shared fiction to work, each player must accept the fictional contributions of other players, and all must accept historical contributions they have chosen to rely on, and if that is more on one player, a DM, and less on others, the P/Cs, that is fine. It cannot be tarred "classic" DnD and mildly denigrated as "puzzle-solving"! It can and should be narratively rich.



I don't understand the second-last sentence.

As far as I can tell (by reading blogs, reading threads on ENworld, etc) most contemporary RPGing is _not_ classic D&D, _does_ involve rather extensive GM world building (either directly, or by choosing to use a setting authored by another), and _does_ involve only modest player agency in respect of the shared fiction. As best I can tell, a significant amount of player action declarations have the purpose and function of triggering the GM to tell the players more about the setting (either by reading from notes, or by telling them stuff that is actually made up on the spot but that notionally is coming from the notes - "I did such a good job of winging it that the players couldn't tell!" is the typical hallmark of this sort of thing). And a significant amount of player choice is dependent on this - the players first get the GM, in effect, to provide a list of possibilities by narrating elements of the world, and then choose from among them.

Whether or not this is "fine" obviously is a matter of taste.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I don't really agree with this. I mean, I can't say what in theory is possible in GM-centered play, it TOTALLY depends on what the specific GM pre-authored, how they relate that to the PCs, etc.
> 
> But I think that all the characters have significant motivations. Merry and Pippin are the least developed characters, besides Legolas who is almost really a minor character. They seem to be the quintessential "just along to have an adventure" types TBH. Even they find things which challenge them. Pippin comes face to face with madness and grief, and becomes torn between duty founded on honoring his oath to Denethor and love and pity for Faramir. I don't think this is just random stuff! Tolkien is turning Pippin into a fully-formed character here and creating a profound human conflict which he must resolve.  Later he's expelled from service to the Tower for his actions, though clearly everyone finds those actions laudable.
> 
> Likewise Merry learns about true bravery and loyalty and about pushing yourself beyond the normal bounds of what is possible. He picks himself up and hews the flesh of the Ring Wraith regardless of terror, all for the love of an old man whom he hardly knows, and a woman he doesn't know at all! In the process he fulfills a prophecy, which is to say in Tolkien's parlance he plays his part in God's Plan of his own free will. This is not random stuff!



And the point I'm making is that none of that requires Story Now.  All of it can and is easily done with my playstyle.  None of it has any obvious Story Now goals that are plastered on the character, except for the quest to destroy the ring and becoming king.  You have to rationalize that such goals were written down and then apply them, when there is no evidence of such goals existing.  



> Now, what agendas do hypothetical players of these 'characters' have? Well, at the point where those things happen, that's fairly obvious. What was Pippin's motivation when he hooked up with Frodo on his way to Took Land? We don't know, maybe just to find out how a foolish young man would mature in the face of danger.




In the first sentence you say it's it's fairly obvious what the agenda is, and in the third you contradict yourself and say you don't know.  The third sentence is correct, because you don't know and it isn't at all obvious.  However, since that event(and all the other character growth and challenges) are part and parcel to my style of play, I don't need to invent hypothetical agendas to have it fit my playstyle.



> I think, partly, the trouble here is in not having a full explication of all the elements of Story Now. While we talk a lot about player agenda and character goals and relate the two, there ARE other formulations of Story Now. Eero Tuovinen mentioned some in passing. The entire milieu could present a question/challenge/agenda for example. I think this is a central point of Tolkien's work BTW, the question of free will and the 'playing of a part' in the unfurling of Illuvatar's plan, as shaped by the Great Music even before the founding of Arda. Melkor's great crime isn't opposing Illuvatar, his 'rebellion' is a vital part of Illuvatar's plan, NOTHING can truly be against the will of God! No, Melkor's great crime is the imposition of his will onto others. The evil that Sauron represents in LotR is just that, the will to dominate others and force them to do your bidding. This is the very reason why the Ring is unusable by free people, because its power is domination, it cannot be anything BUT evil and do anything but evil in accord with Tolkien's conception of good and evil.




This is a more plausible than inventing hypotheticals, but I think it's still a bit of a stretch. Exploring free will is exceptionally broad as an agenda.  It literally allows everything you choose to do to be exploration of that agenda, including domination of others since you are engaging in your free will when you do so.  Also, if nothing can truly be against the will of god, then domination is also a part of the will of god.  Lastly, the ring is usable by anyone, free or not.  Gollum used it, Frodo used it, Bilbo used it, Galadriel could have used it, Gandalf could have used it, and so on.  Some of it's powers were dependent on the powers of the wielder, and it amplified those powers.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> What does rewinding time have to do with anything?
> 
> GM: Just as the dwarves told you, after a hard trek through the tunnels you find yourself at the entrance to a massive cavern. It's lit a dull red by the glow of lava that bubbles up through the floor of the cave and flows away in criss-crossing channels. In the glow of the lava, you can see fire giant sentries on patrol. . . <players interject>
> 
> Players: OK, can we throw up a Wizard's Screen before they notice us?​




Okay, so you require them to think of what they would like to do and interrupt you in the .5(or less) seconds between seeing the patrol and being seen?  Or are you pausing for a while right there to give them time?


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Okay, so you require them to think of what they would like to do and interrupt you in the .5(or less) seconds between seeing the patrol and being seen?  Or are you pausing for a while right there to give them time?



You'd have to ask the players at the table in the example what their practice is!

It seems like you think it's a really demanding thing for the players to declare meaningful actions in the back-and-forth of play, but that's so different from my experience that obviously there's no uniform practice here. At my table, if I mentioned giant sentries the players would not have any trouble responding or interjecting something like "OK, can we hide? - Maybe, I could cast Wizard's Screen" or "OK, I'll move in and take them down" or "I call out a greeting in Deep Speech" or whatever else seems sensible to them, and then we'd work out together what's going on.

It's not some sort of RPG equivalent of "touch it, move it" chess.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> AbdulAlhazred said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Now, what agendas do hypothetical players of these 'characters' have? Well, at the point where those things happen, that's fairly obvious. What was Pippin's motivation when he hooked up with Frodo on his way to Took Land? We don't know, maybe just to find out how a foolish young man would mature in the face of danger.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In the first sentence you say it's it's fairly obvious what the agenda is, and in the third you contradict yourself and say you don't know.
Click to expand...


There's no contradiction. [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] says that the agenda is fairly obvious _at the point where those things happen_, and the thing he mentioned in relation to Pippin was choosing between fealty to Denethor and love of Faramir. What he says we don't know is Pippin's dramatic need at the start of the story. That choice happens very close to its end.

It's not uncommon, especially in multi-character fiction, for one protagonists dramatic need to emerge only later on in the story.



Maxperson said:


> And the point I'm making is that none of that requires Story Now.  All of it can and is easily done with my playstyle.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The third sentence is correct, because you don't know and it isn't at all obvious.  However, since that event (and all the other character growth and challenges) are part and parcel to my style of play, I don't need to invent hypothetical agendas to have it fit my playstyle.



And here is the real contradiction: because your playstyle _can't_ easily "do it all". You can't have character growth without character dramatic needs, because it's in the nature of such growth to relate in some fashion to those needs.

And frankly I doubt very much that your actual play delivers dramatic arcs even remotely comparable to JRRT. I'm happy to read your actual play reports that contradict my doubt, but to date you've not pointed me to them. I'll point to three of my own actual play reports to illustrate what I regard as examples of story that have occurred _during actual play_ as a direct result of the GM framing scenes that (to borrow some terminology from Eero Tuovinen) provoke choices because they are thematically salient moments. There are links in those reports that will take you to others if you're interested.



Maxperson said:


> AbdulAlhazred]<snip summary of Pippin and Merrry's moments of truth in LotR>
> 
> This is not random stuff!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> None of it has any obvious Story Now goals that are plastered on the character, except for the quest to destroy the ring and becoming king.  You have to rationalize that such goals were written down and then apply them, when there is no evidence of such goals existing.
Click to expand...


I take it that you're not a literary critic in your day job!

As AbdulAlhzared said, it's obvious to any reader of LotR that JRRT didn't just write down some random stuff. AbdulAlhzared's point, in referring to the two hobbits as "the least developed characters, besides Legolas", is that _even these least developed characters_ have significant dramatic arcs established for them by the author. (He is right to say that Legolas really doesn't. Nor does Butterburr.)

If you can't appreciate fairly obvious dramatic arcs in a fairly straightforward fantasy story, that does help explain why you're not interested in "story now" RPGing. Suffice it to say that most people don't regard it as "rationalising" to notice that Pippin and Merry have character-defining moments in the third volume of LotR. And the point of "story now" RPGing - as Eero Tuovinen tells us in the context of the "standard narrativistic model" - is to allow the player of a character to "let the other players know in certain terms what the character thinks and wants", which will be facilitated by the GM framing scenes that are "interesting situation(s) in relation to the premise of the setting or the character." These will include "complications" (eg the man to whom you swore fealty, because his sone died saving you from orcs is now threatening to burn alive his other son, whom you love) and thereby "provoke thematic moments (defined in narrativistic theory as moments of in-character action that carry weight as commentary on the game’s premise)" (eg you choose love over fealty, and so disobey a direct order from your commander).

To quote Ron Edwards, who writes the following under the heading "ouija-board roleplaying":

How do Ouija boards work? People sit around a board with letters and numbers on it, all touching a legged planchette that can slide around on the board. They pretend that spectral forces are moving the planchette around to spell messages. What's happening is that, at any given moment, someone is guiding the planchette, and the point is to make sure that the planchette always appears to everyone else to be moving under its own power.

Taking this idea to role-playing, the deluded notion is that Simulationist play will yield Story Now play without any specific attention on anyone's part to do so. The primary issue is to maintain the facade that "No one guides the planchette!" The participants must be devoted to the notion that stories don't need authors; they emerge from some ineffable confluence of Exploration per se. . . .

My call is, you get what you play for. Can you address Premise this way? Sure, on the monkeys-might-fly-out-my-butt principle. But the key to un-premeditated artistry of this sort (cutup fiction, splatter painting, cinema verite) is to know what to throw out, and role-playing does not include that option, at least not very easily. Participants in Ouija-board play do so through selective remembering. I have observed many such role-players to refer to hours of unequivocally bored and contentious play as "awesome!" given a week or two for mental editing.​
You assert that you can achieve significant dramatic arcs by way of GM-driven RPGing that nevertheless relentlessly prioritises exploration of the setting by treating "the gameworld" as something "neutral" that constrains action resolution and creates its own demands (eg the table can't just go to where the action is). For the reasons that Edwards gives, I don't think this can be done. You yourself said that to achieve the Moria sequence in play you would have to edit out all the stuff that isn't relevant to the story. Now you are saying that you can't even _recognise_ the obvious story trajectory of the two non-ringbearing hobbits in LotR.

As I already asked in this post, where are the actual play reports?


----------



## clearstream

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=71699]clearstream[/MENTION]I am not following your point. Yes, as Vincent Baker has pointed out for a long time now, the core function of a RPG system is to establish what stuff gets incorporated into the shared fiction, and how. (I think this claim may need some qualification if we're talking about classic dungeon-crawling, but I'm not and I don' think you are either.)
> 
> How does that shine light on the function of pre-play authorship of setting by a GM?
> 
> But manifestly you have less agency over the content of the shared fiction then you would in a "no myth" game.
> 
> And more to the point for this thread, if the GM uses the pre-authored details of EPT to declare action declarations unsuccessful by reference to unrevealed elements of fictional positioning ("secret/hidden backstory") then it is the GM whose agency is pre-eminent.
> 
> I don't understand the second-last sentence.
> 
> As far as I can tell (by reading blogs, reading threads on ENworld, etc) most contemporary RPGing is _not_ classic D&D, _does_ involve rather extensive GM world building (either directly, or by choosing to use a setting authored by another), and _does_ involve only modest player agency in respect of the shared fiction. As best I can tell, a significant amount of player action declarations have the purpose and function of triggering the GM to tell the players more about the setting (either by reading from notes, or by telling them stuff that is actually made up on the spot but that notionally is coming from the notes - "I did such a good job of winging it that the players couldn't tell!" is the typical hallmark of this sort of thing). And a significant amount of player choice is dependent on this - the players first get the GM, in effect, to provide a list of possibilities by narrating elements of the world, and then choose from among them.
> 
> Whether or not this is "fine" obviously is a matter of taste.



I'd like to explore one question in response here, without meaning to imply that other questions you raise aren't worth answering. Only that time is limited and I'd like to make progress on this strand.

*Premise* - For player A to enjoy agency, player B must cede them agency over some aspects of the fiction, and vice versa. Sometimes ideas will come to both at the same time, but other times one will have a thing they want to express, explore, do or introduce, and the other will have to allow them to express, explore, do or introduce that thing. If B does not, for instance if B was always editing over A's contributions, then A can't really be said to have had agency.

*Example* - Bob and Alice have come to be (in their fiction) in a market. I won't worry about how they got there, but Alice narrates that she will buy a rosy ripe apple from the local orchards, free from the taint of disease or infestation, paying with one of the small copper bits common in these parts. I don't think Bob can at this point just get rid of those things, without eroding or destroying Alice's agency. Bob's agency over the fiction from there then, is to add to, transmute or expand on, but not deny or destroy, Alice's contributions.

That suggests to me that the question is one of who is doing how much of what, rather than whether or not there will be pre-existing contributions that some participants will concede a lack of agency over. Concretely, there will be such contributions, and for the authors of those contributions to enjoy agency, others must give up some agency, at least in respect of those parts.

*Another Premise* - After a time participants in a shared fiction come to naturally rely on elements that become canonical. Elements becoming canonical is a way that world-building happens. It's not all or nothing, and it can proceed organically. Tolkien worried about genealogies because they mattered to what he was focused on creating. Maybe Bob cares about such things, and Alice doesn't give a fig, but is happy to draw inspiration from Bob's contribution.

*Another Example* - Taking for this example a story-focused, freeform game that I created and played with others decades ago called Masters of Luck and Death (MOLAD), participants frequently made their own notes. My memory was good so I also kept track of a lot of things for the group. Additionally, I had the original creative idea, which other participants liked so much that they wanted to enter that world and create fictions within it themselves.

That suggests to me that creating fiction isn't and all or nothing thing, and it isn't impugned by being set within or using elements that come from somewhere else. It's as much an act of creating fiction to play out the life of a fictional slave in ancient Rome, with perhaps one or two twists but many authentic elements taken as canonical, as it is to invent the city of Ryme and play out the life of a chimney-sweep there. After all, chimney-sweeps existed outside of fiction to start with, so playing one is in a sense giving up agency: accepting something already made up for one.

Contemplating these sorts of ideas, it seems to me very clear what world-building can do for contemporary RPG. Whether that is principally the work of one of the participants or is the work of all, is a side-issue. It doesn't take away from its value. Concretely, where I am so far from having this discussion is that I can see that it is valuable to be flexible about that. Say I'm a principal participant - a GM - but Alice is into weather and comes to me with a weather chart for Ryme and suggestions for how that will impact on the unfolding fiction. Maybe weather with magical elements to it. That could become canonical for us.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> "ouija-board roleplaying"



 While that's fair enough, I'm afraid it slightly misrepresents Ouija.  The idea is that everyone touches the planchette and /moves with it/.  You feel it start to move, you move it in that direction - you're helping the spirit a long, you see.  So it's a bit like detecting N-rays, and it doesn't require intentional deception on the part of anyone participating...

...though it is, of course, entirely susceptible to such duplicity.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Well, mostly I had in mind what I just posted in reply to Maxperson - contra [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], I don't think it's "rude" for the players to interrupt GM exposition to clarifiy what their PCs are doing. That's pretty standard in playing the game.



Standard in Australia maybe, but we're polite here in Canada. 

That, and from experience both as player and DM I've learned that interrupting the DM in mid-flight is highly likely to cause said DM to then forget to mention something vitally important that she hadn't got to yet.



> But what you said is all good too. The GM has a duty to respect the players' characterisation of their PCs in his/her narration. In practice I think this is fairly easily achieved by back-and-forth at the table.



The DM also has a duty to allow opportunities for that back-and-forth during expositional monologues. 

In the example above, the next words from the DM after she says "...you can see fire giant sentries on patrol." really ought to be either "what do you do?" or nothing at all as she stops to give the players a chance to respond to this news.


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> No. Do you really not get it? You can have a single roll to see if the attack succeeds, which incorporates everything - does the shooter have ammunition? does the target duck? does the shot penetrate armour? etc.



So the first time I miss I might be out of ammo?  Hmmm....

I think as a player I'd be tracking it anyway, regardless of system; if for no other reason that it's part of my agency as a player to control and record my character's resources even if the game system in use doesn't require me to.



> It's doubly bizarre that you run the line you are running _as a D&D player_, because D&D has never separated out the question of _ducking_ from the question of _armour penetration_



Not mechanically, but the game gives enough info that if you want to find out in detail exactly why a shot "missed" you can.

Using 1e descending AC: target's AC is 10 - 2 (dex) - 7 (plate mail) - 2 (+2 magic armour) -2 (shield*) for a net of -3.

* - we've given 2 AC for shield since time immemorial, it took the game a few editions to catch up with us 

If the shot would miss AC 10 (or, one might argue, if the to-hit was a natural 1) it missed entirely.  If it would hit AC 10 or 9 it missed entirely as the target ducked or dodged (the dex part of the AC).  If it would hit AC 8 or 7 the shield stopped it; and anything between 6 and -2 clanged off the armour.



> (contrast, say, RuneQuest or Burning Wheel). Just as those processes _can _be distinguished in resolution mechanics, but don't have to be, so likewise the availability of ammunition does not have to be broken out.



There's a question of relevance here.  In hard game mechanical terms it rarely if ever matters why a shot didn't hit for damage, only that it binarily hit or did not hit.  This means going into detail as to why a shot missed is, while quite possible as I've shown, not mechanically necessary.  The game doesn't care if you handwave it.

But knowing whether I've got any ammo left is mechanically necessary as without it missile fire ceases to be a useful option for me until I acquire some.  And to know whether I have any left I have to know a) what I started with and b) how much of it I've used and not been able to recover.

Now if my missile fire consists of throwing rocks and I'm standing on a coarse-gravel beach then who cares?  But if my missile fire consists of using a crossbow I can't just grab any old stick and use it as a bolt - they have to be tipped, and more or less the right size.  Which means I'd better have some bolts on hand if I plan to use the xbow, and I'd better keep track of how many I have left as they're not something I can easily make for myself in the field.

And the same goes for wealth.  Even in Star Wars where the whole franchise doesn't seem bothered with wealth*, republic credits (and the acceptance or not thereof, q.f. Qui-Gon trying to buy parts from Watto in TPM) are still a relevant thing and I for one would like to know how many I have access to.

* - perhaps because most of the stories deal with the top 1% of the top 1% of the galactic population, maybe?

Lanefan


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> There's no contradiction. [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] says that the agenda is fairly obvious _at the point where those things happen_, and the thing he mentioned in relation to Pippin was choosing between fealty to Denethor and love of Faramir. What he says we don't know is Pippin's dramatic need at the start of the story. That choice happens very close to its end.
> 
> It's not uncommon, especially in multi-character fiction, for one protagonists dramatic need to emerge only later on in the story.



It's also possible, in the type of game I envision, for all the PCs to have their dramatic needs emerge during play rather than be pre-determined by the player before play begins.



> And here is the real contradiction: because your playstyle _can't_ easily "do it all". You can't have character growth without character dramatic needs, because it's in the nature of such growth to relate in some fashion to those needs.



I completely disagree with this statement, in that character growth and development is very possible without any overt 'dramatic needs' or suchlike behind it.

I know this because most of the characters I play grow and develop in exactly this manner.  They don't (usually) have overt dramatic needs or goals beyond "let's go adventuring: we'll get rich and-or die trying!".



> And frankly I doubt very much that your actual play delivers dramatic arcs even remotely comparable to JRRT.



I'll freely admit that mine doesn't; but in my defense I'll also freely admit that neither I nor any of my players can hold a candle to JRRT's talent when it comes to authorship.



> I'm happy to read your actual play reports that contradict my doubt, but to date you've not pointed me to them.



You won't get much out of them but here's about 34 years' worth:

Telenet 1984-94
Riveria 1995-2007
Decast 2008-present

The adventure logs are very event-based and don't often (if ever!) go into character motivations or any of that stuff, and the older ones aren't all that detailed.  But, they're all I've got... 

Lan-"and then you go on to quote Ron Edwards, which might just send me running for the hills about now"-efan


----------



## Emerikol

pemerton said:


> I feel that I have been around this topic before (at least a dozen times already upthread, I would guess).
> 
> _In this thread I am talking about declaring actions "through the character's eyes"_. When I say _As we travel along the river, I look out for any signs of fellow members of my order_, that is an action declaration through my character's eyes. It is not an attempt to "author a story".
> 
> One way to answer my question is for the GM to just tell me. (Based on his/her notes, or his/her best guess, or his/her random rol, or whatever.) Another way is for me to make a Circles check, with the result of the check being binding on the GM as well as the player.
> 
> The second approach doesn't require me to step outside my character viewpoint anymore than rolling an attack die does.




Yes but you can't possibly know in all cases what the odds of someone from your Circle being along that river.  You don't know the world.  So here are the possible cases.

1.  Nobody knows anything about it and a roll is made.  This is a sign of a poor DM though who knows nothing about it.

2.  The DM thinks it's possible given the setting, determines a probability BASED ON THE WORLD and rolls.

3.  The DM knows it's impossible or extremely unlikely.  Perhaps your example this case is unlikely but it is true in some situations.  For example, he knows that a particular sect of a particular religion will not be out on a particular night.  The player does not know this yet because he hasn't discovered it.  

4.  The DM knows it is certain.  For example in your case, the DM had already known someone was traveling down the trail at that time.  Again not a perfect example but there are times the DM knows with certainty and those times he doesn't roll.

The problem with "forcing" a DM to accept some random roll to change the nature of his campaign world is that he knows a lot about that world.  Some random roll could throw all that effort out the window.  

The players just don't know everything.  Discovery is half the fun.  And while I exercise my DM authority with restraint, I do consider the final say on something in the campaign to be the DMs.


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## Lanefan

clearstream said:


> Taking for this example a story-focused, freeform game that I created and played with others decades ago called Masters of Luck and Death (MOLAD) ...



I think Master of Luck and Death is about to become one of my level titles for the Monk class.  Brilliant!


----------



## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> If everyone at the table knows that the game is not silly, then everyone equally knows that (in the absence of some context, such as searching the home of a fairy) there is no point looking for wands in trees, as there won't be any there.
> 
> This repeated concern, from you and now [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION], that the first things players will do who actually have the power to contribute to the content of the shared fiction will be to find gold and items for their PCs, rests on the same illusion as other concerns you've expressed. The gameworld is not a reality. If you don't want a silly gameworld, it's easy to avoid: just don't author one! If you want PCs who are more than just a Gygaxian id, then build and play them.
> 
> ...
> 
> What's the DC for your D&D character to flap her arms and fly to the moon? What's the DC for a 1st level character to jump into a volcano and survive? What's the DC for your 1st level fighter PC to try and kill ten orcs in one round?
> 
> There are all sorts of limits - some imposed by the mechanics, some by a shared understanding of the fiction - on what actions can be meaningfully attempted in a RPG. (The main one that trips people up in classic D&D is stuff like letting fighters move silently with a DEX check, or climb with a STR check, while forcing thief PCs to use the generally weaker percentage chances - even Luke Crane fell into this rookie trap GMing Moldvay Basic, as he reports in one of his blogs.)




So the absurd examples is really to have you answer this question: If it's not obvious by the fiction, and the rules don't give clarity, who decides yes or no?

And it's not so much about people doing absurd things like giving themselves a holy sword. It's about the players who aren't as fully invested in the story or the direction it's going and decides they are going to go someplace else. It's also about stories that aren't driven by these types of motivations. Maybe they're just serving their two weeks in the town militia on guard duty. Or the story model is more like a TV show where there are weekly things that are going on, life, if you will, and then there are the long-term motivations of the characters that are separate story arcs that are addressed as well, although not necessarily every week. Or even if there are strong motivations, the characters don't share the same motivations. 

There are so many types of stories to tell, and that's what I still can't wrap my head around. Are these other types of stories possible in a Story Now game? If something is unclear in terms of success or failure, or a player authors something that other players don't like or agree with, then how is that addressed? If that's part of the job of the GM, then explain how that's really different than what we're talking about, other than perhaps the threshold where the GM steps in.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> That example has _zero_ to do with what Eero Tuovinen is talking about. [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] is just wrong to think that declaring a search for a secret door, and looking for scuff marks as part of that, is the sort of thing that Tuovinen has in mind.




And I say that I obviously need you to show me where that's wrong. Because he specifically recommends that the players don't have any authority to author the fiction outside of advocacy of their characters, other than possibly (part of) the backstory. After that point, what happens in the world around the PCs is in the hands of the GM.

_"The problem we have here, specifically, is that when you apply narration sharing to backstory authority, you require the player to both establish and resolve a conflict, which runs counter to the Czege principle. You also require the player to take on additional responsibilities in addition to his tasks in character advocacy; this is a crucial change to the nature of the game, as it shapes a core activity into a completely new form. Now, instead of only having to worry about expressing his character and making decisions for him, the player is thrust into a position of authorship: he has to make decisions that are not predicated on the best interests of his character, but on the best interests of the story itself."_

_"Can you see how this underlying fundamental structure is undermined by undiscretionary use of narrative sharing? The fun in these games from the player’s viewpoint comes from the fact that he can create an amazing story with nothing but choices made in playing his character; this is the holy grail of rpg design, this is exactly the thing that was promised to me in 1992 in the MERP rulebook. And it works, but only as long as you do not require the player to take part in determining the backstory and moments of choice. If the player character is engaged in a deadly duel with the evil villain of the story, you do not ask the player to determine whether it would be “cool” if the villain were revealed to be the player character’s father. The correct heuristic is to throw out the claim of fatherhood if it seems like a challenging revelation for the character, not ask the player whether he’s OK with it – asking him is the same as telling him to stop considering the scene in terms of what his character wants and requiring him to take an objective stance on what is “best for the story”. Consensus is a poor tool in driving excitement, a roleplaying game does not have teeth if you stop to ask the other players if it’s OK to actually challenge their characters."_

That pretty much sounds exactly like what we're talking about. The player makes decision and takes actions, and the GM adjudicates (and authors) the world.


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I think this true to a significant extent. Also, D&D has always had a strong "power fantasy" vibe, and 4e's maths caters to that fairly well.
> 
> But 4e also gets a lot of its pacing from _within_ the resolution context. Although most combats will be won, there are moments of loss within them. Although most skill challenges will succeed, there are moments of failure within them.




True, SCs are certainly filled with a lot of detail and plot.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

clearstream said:


> That's more a statement that ME's consistency is not complete, and that was in line with what I understand of Tolkien's focus. He says that he was concerned to ensure geographic, chronological and linguistic consistency. He did not always succeed, but he was hugely helped in those goals through his prior world-building. His books would not be the achievement they are, were it not for his world-building.



Honestly, JRRT's world building never impressed me in the slightest. Between the Declaration of the Doom of Mandos (which comes at almost the same time that the Sun and Moon first appear and thus the start of real timekeeping in the First Age) when the Noldor returned to ME and the Fall of Sauron at the end of the Third Age is something on the order of SIX THOUSAND YEARS, and yet only 3 human nations exist amongst the Dunedain in all this time, and they can trace their individual ancestries back all the way to men like Hurin and Turin (or at least their generation). Vast periods of time fill just the Third Age, 3000 years, in which basically NOTHING happens, society is in complete stasis. There's NOTHING realistic about the history of ME, nothing at all!

It has no realistic (or really any) economy, very little society (most areas are simply lawless wilds which seem to remain so throughout the entire period), a completely static technology, etc.

In fact it is the very AVOIDANCE of all of these things which gives ME its mythic abstract character. It is NOT really a living breathing world, its a sort of diorama. Its a bit like a train set, the trains go round and round, but nothing else ever changes. The Shire is the exception, and it is no coincidence that all the really humanized characters and details of everyday life are pretty much drawn from that one location. The Hobbit and LotR (some parts at least) are VERY different from the rest of Tolkien's mythic work, and required their own little reservation to inhabit. 



> This captures quite well why GNS comes under criticism for turning a blind eye to some kinds of roleplaying. I would call stories set in the Wild Card setting "shared fiction" and yet many details of that setting arrive to authors as part of the world backstory. The point being, participants can share creation of fiction in a setting that was created by a subset, or none (!) of those participants. Say we choose to play in an authentic 5th century Roman setting? None of us create that setting, but our fiction is shared. We might add some fantasy to it in specific ways. Indeed, to the extent that concepts pre-exist or arise in the minds of some and not all participants, the fiction is never shared in the sense you want.
> 
> Possibly that is because the sense you want is very purist, and it for me isn't fully admitting what is going on. If my character nominates a fictional manufacturer of her fictional grav bike, then other players should accept my fiction. They shouldn't say - no, that manufacturer doesn't exist so your character cannot be sitting on her grav bike, that said manufacturer putatively crafted. Thus, they accept something that they had no agency over. This is a constant. The only question is the scale and siting of who is doing what.
> 
> If someone comes to my group with Barker's EPT and we feel excited about that world, we can still weave our own tales into it, with full agency over our part, our fictions, without needing to have agency over the details the world-build provides. Or in our shared world, I might be obsessed with the cartography, while Alice is obsessed with the politics: a shared world-build is still a world-build.
> 
> And if we come down to - is the question really about whether a world-build can be shared? Then sure, of course it can. But not everyone wants to do it, and even when they do they frequently have different parts they are interested in. The value of the world-build remains the same. For shared fiction to work, each player must accept the fictional contributions of other players, and all must accept historical contributions they have chosen to rely on, and if that is more on one player, a DM, and less on others, the P/Cs, that is fine. It cannot be tarred "classic" DnD and mildly denigrated as "puzzle-solving"! It can and should be narratively rich.




All of this is great, but what is the common reality?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> And the point I'm making is that none of that requires Story Now.  All of it can and is easily done with my playstyle.  None of it has any obvious Story Now goals that are plastered on the character, except for the quest to destroy the ring and becoming king.  You have to rationalize that such goals were written down and then apply them, when there is no evidence of such goals existing.



OK, you COULD do it with your playstyle, I already stated that I am not excluding that possibility, how does that change any of my points? I disagree that there are no goals or perhaps they should be labeled 'themes' in this specific context of LotR. I expostulated a deep theme, the nature of evil, that it takes the form of dominance, etc. This is a deep theme which the players can explore with their characters in a setting. Tolkien DOES explore it with his characters, albeit in a novel and not an RPG. I'm not 'rationalizing' any goals. In fact I dispute that Frodo's goal is to destroy the ring! He certainly takes on a quest to do so, and I think its reasonable to assume that for SOME part of the story he works towards it steadily. I don't think it is really the core of what he is about though. In fact, you could see the final chapter of his journey to Mt Doom as a rejection. In fact I think that part of the problem he has there is he's NOT really resolved to destroy the ring. In the end it overthrows his mind. Only Gollum's intervention, fate, spares the world from a new Age of Darkness.



> In the first sentence you say it's it's fairly obvious what the agenda is, and in the third you contradict yourself and say you don't know.  The third sentence is correct, because you don't know and it isn't at all obvious.  However, since that event(and all the other character growth and challenges) are part and parcel to my style of play, I don't need to invent hypothetical agendas to have it fit my playstyle.



We're not inventing hypothetical agendas because we're not determining some agenda after the fact and trying to view an existing story through that lens. When we RPG we are creating a story, using an agenda or a theme. Thus you have no substance for objection here.



> This is a more plausible than inventing hypotheticals, but I think it's still a bit of a stretch. Exploring free will is exceptionally broad as an agenda.  It literally allows everything you choose to do to be exploration of that agenda, including domination of others since you are engaging in your free will when you do so.  Also, if nothing can truly be against the will of god, then domination is also a part of the will of god.  Lastly, the ring is usable by anyone, free or not.  Gollum used it, Frodo used it, Bilbo used it, Galadriel could have used it, Gandalf could have used it, and so on.  Some of it's powers were dependent on the powers of the wielder, and it amplified those powers.




Yes, it amplified their powers, making it possible for them to DOMINATE OTHERS. Remember the words of Galadriel. "Instead of a *Dark Lord*, you would have a queen, not *dark*  but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Tempestuous as the sea, and  stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love me and  despair!" 

The very spell of making of the One Ring is a spell of domination "One Ring to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them!" All of the lesser ring bearers, even mighty Isildur, descendant of higher beings though he is, falls immediately under its influence.  

This is a mighty theme! A wonderful theme! Filled with all kinds of potential. Here is the whole reason for Boromir, with his "don't you see! The Ring is a gift..." and finally "It should be mine! It WILL be mine!" I don't know that such a lofty theme can be utilized successfully in an RPG, it would take a very specific sort of players to execute that kind of play, but that doesn't make thematic play invalid. It just means that GM's and players need to consider their aims carefully in order to have fun. I don't see how that is different from the idea that a GM such as yourself needs to construct interesting adventures.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ilbranteloth said:


> So the absurd examples is really to have you answer this question: If it's not obvious by the fiction, and the rules don't give clarity, who decides yes or no?



Some systems have definite answers to this, or it may depend. So, for instance, if 2 players contradict one another, it could be that they are only stating possible consequences of actions they wish to resolve. Usually someone will have to decide who goes first, and once the action is established in fiction then the other player will have to respect it. They could still fail to cooperate in terms of getting in each other's way. There's no known formula for a rule that effectively says "players have to cooperate" in ANY RPG.



> And it's not so much about people doing absurd things like giving themselves a holy sword. It's about the players who aren't as fully invested in the story or the direction it's going and decides they are going to go someplace else. It's also about stories that aren't driven by these types of motivations. Maybe they're just serving their two weeks in the town militia on guard duty. Or the story model is more like a TV show where there are weekly things that are going on, life, if you will, and then there are the long-term motivations of the characters that are separate story arcs that are addressed as well, although not necessarily every week. Or even if there are strong motivations, the characters don't share the same motivations.
> 
> There are so many types of stories to tell, and that's what I still can't wrap my head around. Are these other types of stories possible in a Story Now game? If something is unclear in terms of success or failure, or a player authors something that other players don't like or agree with, then how is that addressed? If that's part of the job of the GM, then explain how that's really different than what we're talking about, other than perhaps the threshold where the GM steps in.




I would suggest that 

A) most players DO become invested in the story when given a chance, though poor play or an exceedingly uninterested player might not. I would venture that those aren't system problems per-se.

B) Episodic play can work. It has some advantages and disadvantages. One advantage might be facilitating more varied goals. A game like that might play out like 'Star Trek' where there's an overall theme and character relationships, but each episode challenges specific characters and has a specific central theme. A question them becomes who regulates the setting of these themes and the plot? I would devise an RPG specifically for this purpose, though it would be easy enough to do so based on existing games, like BW or Cortex (or FATE, FUDGE, PACE, etc.). 

C) GMs 'step in' in terms of framing scenes. So they have a lot of thematic input into the game. Their job is primarily to translate what the game is about into a concrete description of situations and consequences of actions which speak to the characters and help define them. The players then answer these descriptions as their characters, further defining them. Should a GM 'step in' to resolve some sort of issue between players? I think its a table thing, it could as easily be another player.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> So the first time I miss I might be out of ammo? Hmmm



Why would the GM narrate nonsense?

But in Cortex+ Heroic it is open to the GM to narrate, in response to the first declared shot, "You reach for your quiver, only to have the strap break and your arrows spill out." And to pay the appropriate resource cost for triggering the Gear limit. That would then shutdown the Bow power, and so the player would have to declare a different sort of action. The shutdown would last until the player succeeds at the appropriate action to restore the power - typically, in the case of Gear, a successful action against the Doom Pool.

So the first time I miss I might be out of ammo? Hmmm[/quote]Why would the GM narrate nonsense?

But in Cortex+ Heroic it is open to the GM to narrate, in response to the first declared shot, "You reach for your quiver, only to have the strap break and your arrows spill out." And to pay the appropriate resource cost for triggering the Gear limit. That would then shutdown the Bow power, and so the player would have to declare a different sort of action. The shutdown would last until the player succeeds at the appropriate action to restore the power - typically, in the case of Gear, a successful action against the Doom Pool.



Lanefan said:


> There's a question of relevance here. In hard game mechanical terms it rarely if ever matters why a shot didn't hit for damage, only that it binarily hit or did not hit. This means going into detail as to why a shot missed is, while quite possible as I've shown, not mechanically necessary. The game doesn't care if you handwave it.
> 
> But knowing whether I've got any ammo left is mechanically necessary as without it missile fire ceases to be a useful option for me until I acquire some.



You present this as if it's a _justification_ of D&D's mechancis, but it's just a reiteration of them.

In RQ it's crucial to distinguish dodging and parrying from armour, because you get to make a dodge or shield parry check to avoid being hit by an arrow, and only if you are hit does your armour factor in (by way of damage reduction). Also, RQ (and BW) have rules for degradation of armour due to being repeatedly struck by weapons - and that is another reason why, in those systems, it is quite important to know why a shot didn't hit for damage.

Conversely, though, in both BW and Cortex+ Heroic there is a mechanic for determining whether or not a character runs out of ammunition which does not depend upon tracking it, and so it's simply not true, in those systems, that you need to track ammunition in order to know whether or not you have ammunition left.



Lanefan said:


> I think as a player I'd be tracking it anyway, regardless of system; if for no other reason that it's part of my agency as a player to control and record my character's resources even if the game system in use doesn't require me to.



Well, nothing stops you having a number written on your sheet. But in Cortex+ it will have no mechanical affect on your capacity to shoot your bow. If you think that you've run out of arrows, you can activate your own limit to gain a plot point - but that doesn't depend upon you having tracked a number down to zero. And the fact that your number is 12, not zero, doesn't put any constraints on the GM's ability to trigger your limit (which can just as easily be narrated as a bowstring snapping, for instance).

Your tracking would be purely colour, like a D&D player keeping track of how many brusies his/her PC has.I think as a player I'd be tracking it anyway, regardless of system; if for no other reason that it's part of my agency as a player to control and record my character's resources even if the game system in use doesn't require me to.[/quote]Well, nothing stops you having a number written on your sheet. But in Cortex+ it will have no mechanical affect on your capacity to shoot your bow. If you think that you've run out of arrows, you can activate your own limit to gain a plot point - but that doesn't depend upon you having tracked a number down to zero. And the fact that your number is 12, not zero, doesn't put any constraints on the GM's ability to trigger your limit (which can just as easily be narrated as a bowstring snapping, for instance).

Your tracking would be purely colour, like a D&D player keeping track of how many brusies his/her PC has.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> You'd have to ask the players at the table in the example what their practice is!
> 
> It seems like you think it's a really demanding thing for the players to declare meaningful actions in the back-and-forth of play, but that's so different from my experience that obviously there's no uniform practice here. At my table, if I mentioned giant sentries the players would not have any trouble responding or interjecting something like "OK, can we hide? - Maybe, I could cast Wizard's Screen" or "OK, I'll move in and take them down" or "I call out a greeting in Deep Speech" or whatever else seems sensible to them, and then we'd work out together what's going on.
> 
> It's not some sort of RPG equivalent of "touch it, move it" chess.




I didn't ask you what they did.  I asked you what YOU did.  Do you expect them to think of a response and then interrupt you in under half a second, or do you pause to allow them the time to say those things?


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Between the Declaration of the Doom of Mandos (which comes at almost the same time that the Sun and Moon first appear and thus the start of real timekeeping in the First Age) when the Noldor returned to ME and the Fall of Sauron at the end of the Third Age is something on the order of SIX THOUSAND YEARS, and yet only 3 human nations exist amongst the Dunedain in all this time, and they can trace their individual ancestries back all the way to men like Hurin and Turin (or at least their generation). Vast periods of time fill just the Third Age, 3000 years, in which basically NOTHING happens, society is in complete stasis. There's NOTHING realistic about the history of ME, nothing at all!
> 
> It has no realistic (or really any) economy, very little society (most areas are simply lawless wilds which seem to remain so throughout the entire period), a completely static technology, etc.
> 
> In fact it is the very AVOIDANCE of all of these things which gives ME its mythic abstract character. It is NOT really a living breathing world, its a sort of diorama.



I think this is right, and very nicely put.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> The Shire is the exception, and it is no coincidence that all the really humanized characters and details of everyday life are pretty much drawn from that one location. The Hobbit and LotR (some parts at least) are VERY different from the rest of Tolkien's mythic work, and required their own little reservation to inhabit.



That's because they're the people of England, for whom the myths are being written!


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Why would the GM narrate nonsense?
> 
> But in Cortex+ Heroic it is open to the GM to narrate, in response to the first declared shot, "You reach for your quiver, only to have the strap break and your arrows spill out." And to pay the appropriate resource cost for triggering the Gear limit. That would then shutdown the Bow power, and so the player would have to declare a different sort of action. The shutdown would last until the player succeeds at the appropriate action to restore the power - typically, in the case of Gear, a successful action against the Doom Pool.
> 
> In RQ it's crucial to distinguish dodging and parrying from armour, because you get to make a dodge or shield parry check to avoid being hit by an arrow, and only if you are hit does your armour factor in (by way of damage reduction). Also, RQ (and BW) have rules for degradation of armour due to being repeatedly struck by weapons - and that is another reason why, in those systems, it is quite important to know why a shot didn't hit for damage.



OK, so those systems force more detail - cool.  Within reason, forcing more detail is almost always fine with me.  I just don't want to see less detail to the point where important things like ammunition and wealth are getting handwaved.



> Conversely, though, in both BW and Cortex+ Heroic there is a mechanic for determining whether or not a character runs out of ammunition which does not depend upon tracking it, and so it's simply not true, in those systems, that you need to track ammunition in order to know whether or not you have ammunition left.
> 
> Well, nothing stops you having a number written on your sheet. But in Cortex+ it will have no mechanical affect on your capacity to shoot your bow. If you think that you've run out of arrows, you can activate your own limit to gain a plot point - but that doesn't depend upon you having tracked a number down to zero. And the fact that your number is 12, not zero, doesn't put any constraints on the GM's ability to trigger your limit (which can just as easily be narrated as a bowstring snapping, for instance).



The strap breaking on the quiver, or the bowstring snapping, are both essentially fumbles - which tells me that any time I miss a DM can just narrate a fumble if the mood strikes her?

And if I've been tracking my ammunition and think I have 12 shots left yet on a miss the DM arbitrarily says I'm out of ammo, the conversation that came next would not be pleasant.



> Your tracking would be purely colour...



Which seems an odd statement coming from you, who is always such a champion of player agency.  Curious.

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

Emerikol said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In this thread I am talking about declaring actions "through the character's eyes". When I say "As we travel along the river, I look out for any signs of fellow members of my order", that is an action declaration through my character's eyes. It is not an attempt to "author a story".
> 
> One way to answer my question is for the GM to just tell me. (Based on his/her notes, or his/her best guess, or his/her random rol, or whatever.) Another way is for me to make a Circles check, with the result of the check being binding on the GM as well as the player.
> 
> The second approach doesn't require me to step outside my character viewpoint anymore than rolling an attack die does.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes but you can't possibly know in all cases what the odds of someone from your Circle being along that river.  You don't know the world.  So here are the possible cases.
> 
> 1.  Nobody knows anything about it and a roll is made.  This is a sign of a poor DM though who knows nothing about it.
> 
> 2.  The DM thinks it's possible given the setting, determines a probability BASED ON THE WORLD and rolls.
> 
> 3.  The DM knows it's impossible or extremely unlikely.  Perhaps your example this case is unlikely but it is true in some situations.  For example, he knows that a particular sect of a particular religion will not be out on a particular night.  The player does not know this yet because he hasn't discovered it.
> 
> 4.  The DM knows it is certain.  For example in your case, the DM had already known someone was traveling down the trail at that time.  Again not a perfect example but there are times the DM knows with certainty and those times he doesn't roll.
> 
> The problem with "forcing" a DM to accept some random roll to change the nature of his campaign world is that he knows a lot about that world.  Some random roll could throw all that effort out the window.
> 
> The players just don't know everything.  Discovery is half the fun.  And while I exercise my DM authority with restraint, I do consider the final say on something in the campaign to be the DMs.
Click to expand...


Your (2), (3) and (4) all rest on the premise that the GM has already established the details of the setting, _or_ is the only one with authority to do that. You then come out and say as much in the last two paragraphs.

I don't think it can be controversial to say that, under those circumstances, _the players have at best modest authority over the content of the shared fiction_. And also that a significant component of play will involve _the GM telling the players about his/her world_. This is what "discovery" will involve.

Now the original point I was making, which I want to reiterate, is this: *it is possible to move away from that sort of GM authority without the players having to do anything besides declare actions from the character point of view*. That was why I gave the example of the Circles check: I can declare a Circles check without having to depart from the character point of view (_As we ride alongside the river, I keep my eyes peeled for any signs of members of my order, or their passage._)

The technique that permits _moving away from that sort of GM authority_ yet allows _players to declare actions from their PC point of view_ is to have robust mechanics for things like Circles, Lore, Perception, Searching etc which _allow actions to be declared by players_, and _adjudicated by GMs_, without anyone having to know in advance what the resulting content will be. So the "discovery" becomes mutual between players and GM: _everyone_ is "playing to find out" what exactly the setting is, and contains.

So consider the example of the Circles check. The rules of the game (Burning Wheel) say that base obstacle is 1. I am looking around for signs of any members of my order, or their passage. That falls under the category "The NPC is somewhere local to you, and it is an unusual location for him/her, and you make contact in the current game session" (which is +2 Ob) but not "The NPC turns up here and now, however unlikely or in an utterly unlikely place" (which would be +3 Ob). That is an overall obstacle of 3.

My PC's base circle rating is 3 dice. I have a +1D reputation (last knight of the Iron Tower) and a +1D affiliation (Order of the Iron Tower) which are both relevant in this context, making it more likely I will meet members of my order. So the final check is 5 dice against an obstacle of 3, a 50% chance of success (ie at least 3 of the dice showing 4+) before any dice pool manipulation by spending fate or persona points.

If the check succeeds (as it actually did when I declared it at the game table), then my intention is realised and I meet a knight of my order. If the check fails then, by the rules of the game, the GM has two options to choose from: the PC meets no one; or the PC does meet someone (perhaps the sort of person sought; perhaps someone different), but they are hostile or opposed in some fashion. The GM who takes this second option is expected to make the enmity speak, in some fashion, to the agenda and dramatic needs of the PC. So had my Circles check failed, the GM might have decided that I do meet a member of my order, but someone who is angry at me (the last knight of the Iron Tower) for having allowed the order to come to an end; or the GM might have decided that I meet someone who is _hostile_ to my order. If the GM couldn't think of anything interesting along those lines, or already had some other idea in mind for what was going to happen in the game before I declared the Circles check, then he is allowed to simply say that nothing happens, but generally that's the more boring option.

This is one example of how a consistent, "living breathing" world can be built up out of the resolution of players' action declarations for their PCs, in a way that (i) gives the players, as well as the GM, significant agency over the content of the shared fiction, but (ii) does not require the players to do anything but declare actions from the point of view of their PCs.


----------



## clearstream

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Honestly, JRRT's world building never impressed me in the slightest. Between the Declaration of the Doom of Mandos (which comes at almost the same time that the Sun and Moon first appear and thus the start of real timekeeping in the First Age) when the Noldor returned to ME and the Fall of Sauron at the end of the Third Age is something on the order of SIX THOUSAND YEARS, and yet only 3 human nations exist amongst the Dunedain in all this time, and they can trace their individual ancestries back all the way to men like Hurin and Turin (or at least their generation). Vast periods of time fill just the Third Age, 3000 years, in which basically NOTHING happens, society is in complete stasis. There's NOTHING realistic about the history of ME, nothing at all!



I wouldn't conflate world-building with realism or argue that it need be complete in order to be valuable.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> It has no realistic (or really any) economy, very little society (most areas are simply lawless wilds which seem to remain so throughout the entire period), a completely static technology, etc.



Tolkien wasn't interested in those things. He says in his various lectures, letters and articles that he was concerned with a consistent map (this seems more about the location of things, than deeper details like geology), chronology, languages and genealogies. I can't recall a statement from him about wanting a working economy or any concerns about technology. He failed in a few places to achieve even the ends he sought, which I think is reasonable. His prior and ongoing world-build was invaluable in his impressive and influential achievements.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> In fact it is the very AVOIDANCE of all of these things which gives ME its mythic abstract character. It is NOT really a living breathing world, its a sort of diorama. Its a bit like a train set, the trains go round and round, but nothing else ever changes. The Shire is the exception, and it is no coincidence that all the really humanized characters and details of everyday life are pretty much drawn from that one location. The Hobbit and LotR (some parts at least) are VERY different from the rest of Tolkien's mythic work, and required their own little reservation to inhabit.



Here we can simply assert that no fantasy world ever created by a human has been complete and real. That's partly an issue with simulation: a simulation can't map 1:1 to the real without being the real. Partly an issue with available effort. Fortunately neither of those things need to be ideal, because it is also a result of what is necessary. A valuable, inspiring world like Glorantha can be created and used. Or if we choose to set our play in Dickensian London then we have either Dickens (incomplete, not entirely realistic), or recorded history (also incomplete, and by degrees a distortion of reality), or both, to thank. Progressive shared fiction relies on shared points of reference. World-building helps supply those. It doesn't need to end when the game starts. And who does what is scalable.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> All of this is great, but what is the common reality?



That seems like a non-sequitur. Could you expand on your question? What are you trying to get at?


----------



## clearstream

pemerton said:


> I don't think it can be controversial to say that, under those circumstances, _the players have at best modest authority over the content of the shared fiction_. And also that a significant component of play will involve _the GM telling the players about his/her world_. This is what "discovery" will involve.



It seems controversial to me because I really don't believe that creators need to create every part in order to be "doing fiction properly". If a group chooses to set their play in the universe of Frank Herbert's Dune, then there will be parts that they relinquish agency over. They do that in order to be inspired. Their fiction-making efforts, or more accurately the fiction arising as a side-effect of their play, is just as genuine and complete. I feel like this is an important point of divergence between us. If I play in Dickensian London, I relinquish agency about some things in that setting, while retaining agency about everything I care about (my character's motives, choices, acts etc).  How is it that drawing on ideas like knights and orders is not surrendering agency, while drawing on say warforged would be? Is it that it is only agency if it comes out of the player's own knowledge and creativity, no matter what would be gained by furbishing them with other sources of inspiration?

A group can move away from GM authority, but for me that is moot. (At least in respect of one of your core concerns.) MOLAD was intensively focused on character journey, and that is an important reason why the game was successful for our group. I ran that game in the 80s and 90s. But the question was never whether or not authority was equal at the table, but whether interest, time and tolerance was given for players to explore character concerns within their game, other than if they can spot a pit trap before stepping on it, etc!

There is a separate line of argument that needs to be unpacked, which is that of resolution. What is different about acquiescing to Luke Crane's stipulated obstacle levels, from acquiescing to some other person's nominated obstacle level?


----------



## pemerton

Ilbranteloth said:


> So the absurd examples is really to have you answer this question: If it's not obvious by the fiction, and the rules don't give clarity, who decides yes or no?
> 
> And it's not so much about people doing absurd things like giving themselves a holy sword. It's about the players who aren't as fully invested in the story or the direction it's going and decides they are going to go someplace else. It's also about stories that aren't driven by these types of motivations. Maybe they're just serving their two weeks in the town militia on guard duty. Or the story model is more like a TV show where there are weekly things that are going on, life, if you will, and then there are the long-term motivations of the characters that are separate story arcs that are addressed as well, although not necessarily every week. Or even if there are strong motivations, the characters don't share the same motivations.
> 
> There are so many types of stories to tell, and that's what I still can't wrap my head around. Are these other types of stories possible in a Story Now game? If something is unclear in terms of success or failure, or a player authors something that other players don't like or agree with, then how is that addressed? If that's part of the job of the GM, then explain how that's really different than what we're talking about, other than perhaps the threshold where the GM steps in.



One implication here, in the reference to "players who aren't as fully invested", is that the job of the GM is a type of _parenting_ or troupe leader: to keep everyone together.

But now think about all the situations in which people get together in groups of around half-a-dozen or so and do things together _without_ needing a leader to coordinate them: going to lunch or dinner; going to the movies; meeting up for a picnic; etc.

The same social techniques that work in those contexts can work in RPGing - whether "OK, this session we'll do your thing; next session it's my PC's turn", or finding some higher synthesis in which everyone can get what they want out of the same activity. In my group the more dominant personalities also tend to be enthusiastic for quite a wide range of possibilities, and so the compromises and agreements seem easy to reach.

Because we're talking about RPGing, some of these issues will be occurring _within the game_ - eg PC 1 wants to go to place A, while PC 2 wants to go to place B - and that means that sometimes the solution to player disagreement is a game mechanical one. In Burning Wheel, the two PCs might fight a duel of wits to see if one can persuade the other. In my Traveller game, a couple of times I've made the two sides in a protracted disagreement dice off, giving a bonus modifier to the side that has the PC with Leader skill, and a bonus to the side whose PC has the highest Social Standing. I once did a similar thing in my 4e game (using CHA as the relevant stat), when an argument about where to go next had been going on without resolution for more than a session, no resolution was in sight, and the game could not go on without a decision being made.

Other sorts of differences or disagreements might be of the "I attack them!" "No, don't do that, I want to talk to them!" variety. I don't see that player-driven RPGing has to be any more prone to this than GM-driven, unless the GM's driving is so strong that it regulates and screens huge chunks of action declaration. (I know this does happen at some tables, but I would regard that sort of play as rather degenerate RPGing.)

Sometimes this sort of conflict can be something that is resolved mechanically. For instance, in my Cortex+ game the swordthane knocked on the door of the giant steading, because - as per one of his milestones - the player wanted his PC to be able to ask the occupant for advice about the PC's quest. When a giant opened the door, the berserker PC immediately charged him in a screaming rage - because the player of that PC wanted to earn XP, as per one of _his_ milestones, for having his first action in a scene be violent. The swordthane used his ability to take a blow in lieu of an intended target, and so - in the fiction - caught the haft of the axe of the berserker as it was halfway through it's swing; and then chided the berserker that these were _friendly _giants, not giants to be fought.

But sometimes it is primarily a social thing, which can be resolved through social means.

I'm not really sure what you mean by _something is unclear in terms of success or failure_. When a player declares an action for his/her PC, that establishes what success looks like. In most "story now" RPGs, narrating _failure_ is the responsibility of the GM. The most boring version of failure is "nothing happens" or "nope, there's no secret door there"; but typically in these games the GM is expected to use "fail forward" techniques ie failure results in some affirmative thing occurring which itself demands some sort of response from the PCs (and thus the players). (Note that the "forward" in the phrase "fail forward" refers to the narrative trajectory, not the individual PC's trajectory. When interpreted in the latter sense "fail forward" becomes "succeed with a cost" which I think tends to be rather insipid except in pretty modest doses, and really is a hallmark of GM-driven railroads which can't accommodate genuine failures without derailing.)

As far as story types are concerned, there are obviously some RPGs that lend themselves well to episodic games. Dogs in the Vineyard is one, as its basic structure has the PCs moving from town to town to enforce the religious law. Each town is an episode which allows the players to explore and evince their PCs' responses to the various sorts of troubles and sins that the people of the imagined land get up to.

Cortex+ Heroic is another. Because player goal/theme in Cortex+ Heroic is expressed as Milestones, ie particular actions or events which earn a PC experience points, the external circumstances aren't that important. Eg if Captain America earns 10 XP either when he becomes leader of a new superhero team, or hands over leadership of his current team to a new leader, that can happen (and be built up to) in a variety of situations that follow on from one another.

4e also handles episodic play fairly straightforwardly. The default arc in 4e is very long: levels 1 to 30, with a level gained every 3 to 4 sessions, means something like 100+ sessions of play in a campaign. There's a lot of scope in there for sub-arcs and the like. Unlike DitV, the rules for encounter design in 4e don't _guarantee _that each moment in those 100+ sessions will be thematically engaging, but it's not that hard to achieve that in 4e, because the relevant themes are pretty clear and strong, and the default cosmology, mythic history and Monster Manual of 4e provides plenty of elements that speak to those themes.

Burning Wheel, on the other hand, is less well suited to episodic play, because PC relationship and affiliations and so on are a big part of the game, and players are expected to give their PCs Beliefs which connect to these various "external" elements of the gameworld. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but I don't think it is what BW is best for.



Ilbranteloth said:


> And I say that I obviously need you to show me where that's wrong. Because he specifically recommends that the players don't have any authority to author the fiction outside of advocacy of their characters, other than possibly (part of) the backstory. After that point, what happens in the world around the PCs is in the hands of the GM.
> 
> _"The problem we have here, specifically, is that when you apply narration sharing to backstory authority, you require the player to both establish and resolve a conflict, which runs counter to the Czege principle._



_Here is where you are wrong: declaring an action is not exercising backstory authority.

A player who declares "I search for a secret door" is not exercising backstory authority. If that check succeeds, and thus - in the fiction - a secret door is found, that is not an exercise of backstory authority. It's an exercise of the authority to declare an action for one's PC. The backstory was established by the GM in framing the scene.

The games that Eero Tuovinen actually mentions as exemplifying the "standard narrativistic model" are (from memory) Sorcerer, DitV, Primetime Adventures and HeroWars/Quest (the lattermost at least in some moods). I would add Burning Wheel, Fate and Cortex+ Heroic (the latter two, again, in some but not all moods). Have you ever played any of these games, or read the rulebooks for them?



Ilbranteloth said:





			
				Eero Tuovinen said:
			
		


			The correct heuristic is to throw out the claim of fatherhood if it seems like a challenging revelation for the character
		
Click to expand...



Click to expand...


It's not a coincidence that the phrase used is "the claim of fatherhood." This is not the same as the truth of that claim.

How the claim is established as true or false will depend upon the particular resolution mechanics of the system, and how the player engages them - if at all - in response to that claim. For instance, in Burning Wheel the PC could go on a quest to refute the claim - say, collecting evidence as to the location of the putative father relative to the character's mother in the period 9 months or so before the character was born - and if these actions succeeded then they would be binding on the GM as much as the player.



Ilbranteloth said:





			
				Eero Tuovinen said:
			
		


			it works, but only as long as you do not require the player to take part in determining the backstory and moments of choice.
		
Click to expand...


That pretty much sounds exactly like what we're talking about. The player makes decision and takes actions, and the GM adjudicates (and authors) the world.
		
Click to expand...


The backstory and the "moment of choice" is just that - the framing of the scene. It's not all this other, unrevealed stuff that already answers the question and tells us whether the character's agenda and feelings are right or wrong. As Ron Edwards - whom Eero expressly references - says, in "story now" RGGing There cannot be any "the story".

Is the villain the hero's father, or not? That is not to be authored in advance secretly by the GM. Assuming that it's something that anyone cares about (ie it would be a "challenging revelation"), then it's one of the things that we play to find out._


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Which seems an odd statement coming from you, who is always such a champion of player agency.  Curious.



I'm also a big fan of actually following the rules of a game I'm playing!

In D&D I can't just decide to track my divine luck and hence decree that I _must_ make the next saving throw. There are rules that require dice to be rolled, which permits the result that the gods have abandoned my PC once again.

So likewise in Cortex+ Heroic you can't just track your ammunition and hence decree that you _must_ have enough left for your next shot. The rules of the game permit the GM to trigger your limit, and thereby shut down your Bow power.



Lanefan said:


> if I've been tracking my ammunition and think I have 12 shots left yet on a miss the DM arbitrarily says I'm out of ammo, the conversation that came next would not be pleasant.



But the GM can introduce whatever narration s/he likes that fits the established fiction: you miscounted when you filled your quiver (plausible enough for a mediaeval type person); on your last shot you in fact pulled two arrows out when you only wanted one, and you _thought_ the spare one dropped back inside the quiver but in fact it landed on the ground and you didn't notice that and so didn't pick it back up; etc, etc.



Lanefan said:


> The strap breaking on the quiver, or the bowstring snapping, are both essentially fumbles - which tells me that any time I miss a DM can just narrate a fumble if the mood strikes her?



At any time the GM can trigger a limit, by offering the player a plot point and - if they decline - then spending a die from the Doom Pool. A player can also trigger his/her limit at any time, earning a plot point.

This is part of the apparatus the GM enjoys, in this particular system, to manage pacing and introduce complications.



Lanefan said:


> OK, so those systems force more detail - cool.  Within reason, forcing more detail is almost always fine with me.  I just don't want to see less detail to the point where important things like ammunition and wealth are getting handwaved.



Can't you see how arbitrary this is? You standard for the _acceptable_ amount of detail is nothing more than _how D&D does it_!

I mean, consider the following example. OGL Conan distinguishes dodging, which requires moving position, from parrying, which doesn't. RQ doesn't make the same distinction in that respect - dodging and parrying are both just % chances to avoid a blow. Now, suppose a RQ player says "Within reason, more detail is almost always fine with me. So I'd be happy with a system that distinguishes dodging from parrying as far as changing position is concerned. I just don't want to see less detail to the point where important things, like the difference between dodging or parrying a blow, and having armour absorb or deflect it, are getting handwaved."

What can you say to that criticism of D&D? All you have to offer is that you happen to like the way that D&D does it - but that's hardly a powerful rebuttal!

For my part, when I play D&D I dutifully track my ammunition, because that's what the rules require, but I don't regard it as anything essential for a RPG. When I play other systems that treat ammunition in other ways, I follow the rules of those games.

(And not tracking ammunition is not "handwaving" it. I've described an actual alternative mechanic - from Cortex+ Heroic - and an imaginary alternative mechanic that I made up, in recent posts, including this one.)


----------



## pemerton

clearstream said:


> It seems controversial to me because I really don't believe that creators need to create every part in order to be "doing fiction properly". If a group chooses to set their play in the universe of Frank Herbert's Dune, then there will be parts that they relinquish agency over. They do that in order to be inspired. Their fiction-making efforts, or more accurately the fiction arising as a side-effect of their play, is just as genuine and complete. I feel like this is an important point of divergence between us. If I play in Dickensian London, I relinquish agency about some things in that setting, while retaining agency about everything I care about (my character's motives, choices, acts etc).  How is it that drawing on ideas like knights and orders is not surrendering agency, while drawing on say warforged would be? Is it that it is only agency if it comes out of the player's own knowledge and creativity, no matter what would be gained by furbishing them with other sources of inspiration?



I'm not sure what you mean by "doing fiction properly".

I'm also not sure how you are using "agency". Authorship involves the use of language. Language is an inherited resource. It limits, as well as empowers. In the context of writing stories, or fictions, language (and the cultural associations it carries) offers tropes, motifs, genre, etc. Writing is going to draw on those to some extent - in fairly subtle ways for serious authors of literature, but probably more crudely in most RPGing contexts. But it seems largely unhelpful to say that any exercise of authorial agency is in fact to limit one's agency (because dependent upon this inheritance of linguistic and narrative resources). It seems more helpful to say that the exercise of agency draws upon certain resources.

As the fiction unfolds, it will generate its own further constraints. To me, it also seems more helpful to see the development of a coherent and unified fiction as an exercise of agency - with later constraints being the manifestation of earlier exercises of agency - than to suggest that to write is to further and further limit one's agency.

Turning, then, to _Dickensian London_: this establishes some elements of trope and genre - evil landlords, cynical (or hopelessly utopic) industrialists, orphans, legacies, trustees, fog, unexpected personages with curious names, etc. As far as action declaration is concerned, these establish what HeroQuest revised calls "Credibility tests" - an action declaration "I jump across the Thames" is not acceptable, but an action declaration "I find a ferryman to carry me across the Thames under the cover of darkness" is. The Burning Wheel rulebook makes the same point when it says that a player can't hope to have his/her PC find beam weaponry in the duke's toilet. 4e draws upon the "tiers of play" to establish this sort of credibility constraint, as well as the itemised capabilities of feats and powers at various levels/tiers (sometimes these itemised capabilities can come into tension with the narrative description of the tiers of play, or a particular paragon path or epic destiny: that's a weakness in 4e, though how big a weakness it is I'll leave someone else - eg [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] - to judge).

Insofar as the players have chosen to play in Dickensian London, these credibility limits are better seen as an exercise of agency rather than a burden upon it. In particular social circumstances that might change - eg if a GM starts wielding credibility tests as a club to block action declarations that players regard as quite reasonable - but at that point the game would seem to be spiralling into collapse in any event.

However, suppose that the GM treats "Dickensian London" as an invitation to delve into archives, old maps and plans, newspaper records etc. And so when the player declares "I find a ferryman to carry me across the Thames under the cover of darkness" the GM replies "No, that's not possible. As per [archival source XYZ], on that evening such-and-such a vessel was floundering and all the London ferrymen were involved in the rescue and salvage effort." That would be an example of the GM relying not on genre credibility, but rather on unrevealed elements of setting established via detailed worldbuilding, to block a player action declaration. The player, now, to make successful action declarations, first has to establish all these unrevealed elements that might otherwise defeat his/her action declarations because treated by the GM as part of the fictional positioning, although the player doesn't know what they are.

That is the approach to worldbuilding by GMs that imposes significant limits on player authority over the content of the shared fiction (eg in this case, a ferryman available to carry the PC across the Thames under cover of darkness). My own opinion, based on a mixture of experience, reading and conjecture that build on those, is that it is relatively common in RPGing. (Also notice that this is not how Dickens himself writes. He is happy to make up fictional ferrymen, business emporiums, etc, as needed for his narrative purposes.)

Whether "Frank Herbet's Dune" is a way of establishing genre, or of establishing unrevealed elements of fictional positioning, would depend on what the play group was intending to do. I could easily imagine using Middle Earth as a way to establish genre and trope; but that's not how ICE treated it in their MERP products - they went for the _establish unrevealed elements of fictional positioning_ approach.



clearstream said:


> *Premise* - For player A to enjoy agency, player B must cede them agency over some aspects of the fiction, and vice versa. Sometimes ideas will come to both at the same time, but other times one will have a thing they want to express, explore, do or introduce, and the other will have to allow them to express, explore, do or introduce that thing. If B does not, for instance if B was always editing over A's contributions, then A can't really be said to have had agency.
> 
> *Example* - Bob and Alice have come to be (in their fiction) in a market. I won't worry about how they got there, but Alice narrates that she will buy a rosy ripe apple from the local orchards, free from the taint of disease or infestation, paying with one of the small copper bits common in these parts. I don't think Bob can at this point just get rid of those things, without eroding or destroying Alice's agency. Bob's agency over the fiction from there then, is to add to, transmute or expand on, but not deny or destroy, Alice's contributions.
> 
> That suggests to me that the question is one of who is doing how much of what, rather than whether or not there will be pre-existing contributions that some participants will concede a lack of agency over. Concretely, there will be such contributions, and for the authors of those contributions to enjoy agency, others must give up some agency, at least in respect of those parts.



I don't accept your premise.

Firstly, I don't think that agency is, in general, zero-sum in the way you seem to suggest. And second, I don't think agency in the specific case of authorship or establishing shared fiction need be zero-sum either. Bob letting Alice establish what is in the market isn't an exercise by Bob of agency in respect of that particular element of the shared fiction, but there are other elements that Bob can establish.

Now if we are talking about a modest market scene, and there were dozens of participants, I agree that the situation could become (at least for practical purposes) fully established and resolved without everyone getting a chance to have a turn. But I think the typical RPGing group is closer to half-a-dozen or so people. So I think the number of situations that will be exhausted by Alice's contribution before Bob gets to have a turn is fairly small.

Of course if Alice goes first, and Bob is obliged to respect Alice's contribution, then Alice's exercise of agency imposes some constraints on Bob's. That's part and parcel of collective authorship of a shared fiction. I have co-authored many (non-fictional) works, and ways of handling this have tended to emerge organically (and the number of authors has never been larger than three). In a _game_, there tend to be rules for managing these issues of who gets to go first.



clearstream said:


> *Another Premise* - After a time participants in a shared fiction come to naturally rely on elements that become canonical. Elements becoming canonical is a way that world-building happens. It's not all or nothing, and it can proceed organically. Tolkien worried about genealogies because they mattered to what he was focused on creating. Maybe Bob cares about such things, and Alice doesn't give a fig, but is happy to draw inspiration from Bob's contribution.
> 
> *Another Example* - Taking for this example a story-focused, freeform game that I created and played with others decades ago called Masters of Luck and Death (MOLAD), participants frequently made their own notes. My memory was good so I also kept track of a lot of things for the group. Additionally, I had the original creative idea, which other participants liked so much that they wanted to enter that world and create fictions within it themselves.
> 
> That suggests to me that creating fiction isn't and all or nothing thing, and it isn't impugned by being set within or using elements that come from somewhere else.



Yes. As I wrote above, this is going to be the case with any work of authorship (I'm putting dada-esque or Andy Warhol-esque approaches to one side; I think as a feature of RPGing practice these are an extreme minority, and I'm sure those who are doing it have already worked out their techniques to their satisfaction). Any work of authorship generates its own constraints of coherence, unity etc.

Those are best seen as expressions of the agency of those who (by way of their authorship) brought them into being.



clearstream said:


> Contemplating these sorts of ideas, it seems to me very clear what world-building can do for contemporary RPG. Whether that is principally the work of one of the participants or is the work of all, is a side-issue. It doesn't take away from its value.





clearstream said:


> A group can move away from GM authority, but for me that is moot. (At least in respect of one of your core concerns.)



I don't think you are using the term "worldbuilding" in the way it is used in the OP. You seem to be identifying the value of setting in RPGing.

To the extent that you are saying (and I'm not sure whether or not you are) that it _doesn't matter_ whether setting is established prior to play, or in the course of play, I don't agree. Experiencing the development of a setting that you help author is exercising and enjoying your agency. Experiencing someone else's relating to you a setting that has already been written is experiencing the exercise of someone else's agency. (The fact that you are happy to do this doesn't make it your agency, any more than the fact that Bob is happy for Alice to author the market as offering apples for sale means that Bob is the author of that element of the fiction.)



clearstream said:


> There is a separate line of argument that needs to be unpacked, which is that of resolution. What is different about acquiescing to Luke Crane's stipulated obstacle levels, from acquiescing to some other person's nominated obstacle level?



There is no difference, except that Luke Crane has playtested his obstacle levels and so (one trusts) is somewhat confident that they will produce tenable pacing outcomes. The Adventure Burner has a discussion of the role of obstacles in establishing setting.

But obstacles contribute to genre, and related elements of feel; but it is the actual action declarations, and their resolution, that establish the concrete elements of the shared fiction.

My own view is that, by default, Story Now works better with pacing-generated obstacles - as in 4e, Cortex+ Heroic or HeroQuest revised - than with "objective" obstacles, as in BW. But BW has a number of bells and whistles that ameliorate what could otherwise be the railroading effect of "objective" obstacles.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> There's no contradiction. [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] says that the agenda is fairly obvious _at the point where those things happen_, and the thing he mentioned in relation to Pippin was choosing between fealty to Denethor and love of Faramir. What he says we don't know is Pippin's dramatic need at the start of the story. That choice happens very close to its end.




Well, hey.  If that's your definition of an agenda for Story Now, then our styles are even closer than I thought.  My players also decide to do things and at the point they decide them, the agenda is also fairly obvious.  When traveling through the underdark and they come across an altar, if they decide to investigate it, it's now an agenda of theirs.  Nice!



> And here is the real contradiction: because your playstyle _can't_ easily "do it all". You can't have character growth without character dramatic needs, because it's in the nature of such growth to relate in some fashion to those needs.




There's no contradiction.  In my style hard character choices happen all the time, which results in character growth.  It's kind of silly to ask for play examples, though.  Do you really need play examples of combats in my game in order to believe that combats happen?  



> As AbdulAlhzared said, it's obvious to any reader of LotR that JRRT didn't just write down some random stuff. AbdulAlhzared's point, in referring to the two hobbits as "the least developed characters, besides Legolas", is that _even these least developed characters_ have significant dramatic arcs established for them by the author. (He is right to say that Legolas really doesn't. Nor does Butterburr.)




The Strawman is strong with you.  I didn't say it was random.  I said that things play out with character development in my game as well, so writing a story where such things happen is not proof of Story Now.  You have to assume Story Now agendas in order to call Tolkien Story Now, but you have to make no such assumptions to apply my style to it.  Either that or my style now has Story Now agendas in it.



> If you can't appreciate fairly obvious dramatic arcs in a fairly straightforward fantasy story, that does help explain why you're not interested in "story now" RPGing. Suffice it to say that most people don't regard it as "rationalising" to notice that Pippin and Merry have character-defining moments in the third volume of LotR. And the point of "story now" RPGing - as Eero Tuovinen tells us in the context of the "standard narrativistic model" - is to allow the player of a character to "let the other players know in certain terms what the character thinks and wants", which will be facilitated by the GM framing scenes that are "interesting situation(s) in relation to the premise of the setting or the character." These will include "complications" (eg the man to whom you swore fealty, because his sone died saving you from orcs is now threatening to burn alive his other son, whom you love) and thereby "provoke thematic moments (defined in narrativistic theory as moments of in-character action that carry weight as commentary on the game’s premise)" (eg you choose love over fealty, and so disobey a direct order from your commander).




If you can't understand how those same kinds of choices appear in our style of gaming, then it does help explain why you get our style wrong so frequently.



> Taking this idea to role-playing, the deluded notion is that Simulationist play will yield Story Now play without any specific attention on anyone's part to do so. The primary issue is to maintain the facade that "No one guides the planchette!" The participants must be devoted to the notion that stories don't need authors; they emerge from some ineffable confluence of Exploration per se. . . .




Taking that idea to my style of play is a False Equivalence.  The players do indeed very clearly guide their players through those hard choices and the growth of their characters.  And I've said from the beginning that in my style of play the story is authored by both the players and the DM through gameplay.  It's not some random or seemingly random result.



> You assert that you can achieve significant dramatic arcs by way of GM-driven RPGing that nevertheless relentlessly prioritises exploration of the setting by treating "the gameworld" as something "neutral" that constrains action resolution and creates its own demands (eg the table can't just go to where the action is). For the reasons that Edwards gives, I don't think this can be done. You yourself said that to achieve the Moria sequence in play you would have to edit out all the stuff that isn't relevant to the story.




Of course you can.  When the story starts moving in a character changing way, it doesn't suddenly stop.  The PC is going to continue making choices along those lines and I am going to be narrating in response and setting things up along those lines.  Authoring some things in advance along those lines doesn't mystically stop the arc from happening.  



> Now you are saying that you can't even _recognise_ the obvious story trajectory of the two non-ringbearing hobbits in LotR.



No no.  That's YOU saying that about me.  I never even implied that I couldn't see the arc of the hobbits.  I only said that it didn't have to be an agenda picked out in advance and that it could in fact happen through my style of game play, which it can.  That you are too blind to see how it can happen doesn't change that fact.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, you COULD do it with your playstyle, I already stated that I am not excluding that possibility, how does that change any of my points? I disagree that there are no goals or perhaps they should be labeled 'themes' in this specific context of LotR. I expostulated a deep theme, the nature of evil, that it takes the form of dominance, etc. This is a deep theme which the players can explore with their characters in a setting. Tolkien DOES explore it with his characters, albeit in a novel and not an RPG. I'm not 'rationalizing' any goals. In fact I dispute that Frodo's goal is to destroy the ring! He certainly takes on a quest to do so, and I think its reasonable to assume that for SOME part of the story he works towards it steadily. I don't think it is really the core of what he is about though. In fact, you could see the final chapter of his journey to Mt Doom as a rejection. In fact I think that part of the problem he has there is he's NOT really resolved to destroy the ring. In the end it overthrows his mind. Only Gollum's intervention, fate, spares the world from a new Age of Darkness.




Or, to go back to examples of Story Now that you and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] have given, he failed a roll at the end.  He was very committed the entire way through, and that commitment is what carried through in a lot of places. And even if he changed his mind at the end and gave up that goal, are players not allowed to change their character goals in Story Now?  Are character development and game play not allowed to have an impact on the player's goals for his PC?



> We're not inventing hypothetical agendas because we're not determining some agenda after the fact and trying to view an existing story through that lens. When we RPG we are creating a story, using an agenda or a theme. Thus you have no substance for objection here.




We aren't talking about your RPG, though.  We're discussing Tolkien's story and then trying to see which style of play best fits.  Since my style of play also has the kinds of story arcs described in Tolkien, created through the kinds of tough character choices that the members of the Fellowship make, you can't just declare those arcs as proof of Story Now.  I mean fine, if you really want to declare those arcs and decisions as proof positive of player agendas, then my style has those same agendas, which means that it's still not proof of Story Now happening.



> Yes, it amplified their powers, making it possible for them to DOMINATE OTHERS. Remember the words of Galadriel. "Instead of a *Dark Lord*, you would have a queen, not *dark*  but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Tempestuous as the sea, and  stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love me and  despair!"
> 
> The very spell of making of the One Ring is a spell of domination "One Ring to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them!" All of the lesser ring bearers, even mighty Isildur, descendant of higher beings though he is, falls immediately under its influence.
> 
> This is a mighty theme! A wonderful theme! Filled with all kinds of potential. Here is the whole reason for Boromir, with his "don't you see! The Ring is a gift..." and finally "It should be mine! It WILL be mine!" I don't know that such a lofty theme can be utilized successfully in an RPG, it would take a very specific sort of players to execute that kind of play, but that doesn't make thematic play invalid. It just means that GM's and players need to consider their aims carefully in order to have fun. I don't see how that is different from the idea that a GM such as yourself needs to construct interesting adventures.




I agree.  It's not really different from how my style can play out.  And I also agree that the ring was created for that purpose and has that affect on others, which is also easy to accomplish in my style of play.  How does the above show that Tolkien is engaging in Story Now and not my style of play when engaging in that theme?


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Here is where you are wrong: _declaring an action is not exercising backstory authority_.
> 
> A player who declares "I search for a secret door" is not exercising backstory authority. If that check succeeds, and thus - in the fiction - a secret door is found, that is not an exercise of backstory authority. It's an exercise of the authority to declare an action for one's PC. The backstory was established by the GM in framing the scene.



A character declaring he is searching for a secret door is exercising the authority to declare an action for one's PC.  A player creating a secret door via a roll is establishing backstory, as that secret door is now a part of the history of the scene.  It now has existed PRIOR to the search for it and is backstory.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> One implication here, in the reference to "players who aren't as fully invested", is that the job of the GM is a type of _parenting_ or troupe leader: to keep everyone together.
> 
> But now think about all the situations in which people get together in groups of around half-a-dozen or so and do things together _without_ needing a leader to coordinate them: going to lunch or dinner; going to the movies; meeting up for a picnic; etc.



Even then there's always someone who instigates the idea, and on getting agreement from the others that same person is also often the one who suggests a time and place, makes the reservation (if needed), and becomes for that event the default go-to person if someone wants to add a friend or if someone can't make it.

In an RPG situation that co-ordinating person is just about always the DM, which makes sense.



> Because we're talking about RPGing, some of these issues will be occurring _within the game_ - eg PC 1 wants to go to place A, while PC 2 wants to go to place B - and that means that sometimes the solution to player disagreement is a game mechanical one. In Burning Wheel, the two PCs might fight a duel of wits to see if one can persuade the other. In my Traveller game, a couple of times I've made the two sides in a protracted disagreement dice off, giving a bonus modifier to the side that has the PC with Leader skill, and a bonus to the side whose PC has the highest Social Standing. I once did a similar thing in my 4e game (using CHA as the relevant stat), when an argument about where to go next had been going on without resolution for more than a session, no resolution was in sight, and the game could not go on without a decision being made.



Me, I just let them debate and argue; and if it means they can't come to any agreement and end up splitting the party then so be it, as that's clearly what those characters would do in that situation.

I've at various times seen these sort of disagreements be settled by an in-party vote* or by random method (roll-off at the table, in-character flipping a coin) or by someone just saying "Screw it - I'm going that way" and hoping everyone (or anyone!) else follows.

* - and can remember one hilarious instance where they couldn't even agree on the dispute resolution method and so ended up voting on whether to settle the matter by vote...upon which there arose a further disagreement about the party-membership status of a new character, eventually resulting in a vote on whether this person could vote on whether to vote - by this point we were all rolling on the floor laughing at the sheer absurdity of it!



> Other sorts of differences or disagreements might be of the "I attack them!" "No, don't do that, I want to talk to them!" variety. I don't see that player-driven RPGing has to be any more prone to this than GM-driven, unless the GM's driving is so strong that it regulates and screens huge chunks of action declaration. (I know this does happen at some tables, but I would regard that sort of play as rather degenerate RPGing.)



There's some tables where these sort of disagreements are in fact banned - on the declaration of "I attack them!" everyone else's response has to start with something like "Yes and...", in support of the first declaration.  It's someone in these forums who does this but I can't remember who, though I know we argued about it sometime within the last year or so.



> Here is where you are wrong: _declaring an action is not exercising backstory authority_.



Correct.

It's an attempt to exercise story authority in general, success or failure of which will be determined by the die roll thus generated.  The declaration usually goes something like "I do x in an attempt to achieve y", where 'y' is a change or addition to either the backstory (e.g. in "I search for a secret door" x is a search and y adds a secret door) or the ongoing story (in "I search the crowd looking for my long-lost sister" x is a search and y is finding my sister).



> A player who declares "I search for a secret door" is not exercising backstory authority. If that check succeeds, and thus - in the fiction - a secret door is found, that is not an exercise of backstory authority.



To me on a success it is, as it's directly adding something to the backstory (in this case, the scene as framed) that wasn't put there by the GM. 







> The backstory was established by the GM in framing the scene.



But the GM didn't know there was a secret door there until the player/PC found it, so how could she have already framed it into the scene even in her mind?

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I'm also a big fan of actually following the rules of a game I'm playing!



As am I, if those rules make sense.  If they don't...if I'm the DM I beat them into submossion until they do, and if I'm a player I'll try to get the DM to see how they don't make sense and then leave it up to her to change them.



> In D&D I can't just decide to track my divine luck and hence decree that I _must_ make the next saving throw. There are rules that require dice to be rolled, which permits the result that the gods have abandoned my PC once again.



Which makes sense, as (except in the most unusual of cases) the average PC would have no in-game way of knowing how her divine luck was running at any given time.



> So likewise in Cortex+ Heroic you can't just track your ammunition and hence decree that you _must_ have enough left for your next shot. The rules of the game permit the GM to trigger your limit, and thereby shut down your Bow power.



Which  - and here I'm going to sound like you! - doesn't make sense from a player-agency perspective, never mind that of realism.



> But the GM can introduce whatever narration s/he likes that fits the established fiction: you miscounted when you filled your quiver (plausible enough for a mediaeval type person); on your last shot you in fact pulled two arrows out when you only wanted one, and you _thought_ the spare one dropped back inside the quiver but in fact it landed on the ground and you didn't notice that and so didn't pick it back up; etc, etc.



That could explain an error of one or two but not 12, which is over half a quiver's worth - any PC with intelligence higher than that of a shoe will notice that many bolts missing while gearing up for the morning's travels... "Gee, this quiver seems light...hey!  Who stole my bolts?!"



> At any time the GM can trigger a limit, by offering the player a plot point and - if they decline - then spending a die from the Doom Pool. A player can also trigger his/her limit at any time, earning a plot point.
> 
> This is part of the apparatus the GM enjoys, in this particular system, to manage pacing and introduce complications.



And these plot points can be used later as in the iron spikes example.  OK.

I can see how it works as a game system (gamist*) but find myself deal-breakingly disappointed in the realism (simulationist*) side of it.

* - words used in their common meaning as opposed to anything the Forge uses them for.



> Can't you see how arbitrary this is? You standard for the _acceptable_ amount of detail is nothing more than _how D&D does it_!
> 
> I mean, consider the following example. OGL Conan distinguishes dodging, which requires moving position, from parrying, which doesn't. RQ doesn't make the same distinction in that respect - dodging and parrying are both just % chances to avoid a blow. Now, suppose a RQ player says "Within reason, more detail is almost always fine with me. So I'd be happy with a system that distinguishes dodging from parrying as far as changing position is concerned. I just don't want to see less detail to the point where important things, like the difference between dodging or parrying a blow, and having armour absorb or deflect it, are getting handwaved."
> 
> What can you say to that criticism of D&D? All you have to offer is that you happen to like the way that D&D does it - but that's hardly a powerful rebuttal!



Perhaps.

My preference for detail doesn't entirely match that of early D&D - I never used weapon speed or weapon-vs.-armour type, I long ago kinda gave up on worrying about encumbrance except in egregious cases and-or at very low levels to set the tone; but I'm fussier about time-distance issues, long-term injuries and near-death situations.  Ideally I'd like a much higher level of detail but at some point comes the need to sacrifice detail in order to give a playable game at the table, and for me the pre-3e D&D level is on the whole a reasonable compromise most of the time.

It's interesting that you bring up AC and armour as your example, as that's one area likely to undergo major surgery - as in, a complete stem-to-stern rebuild - the next time (if ever!) I change campaigns or worlds: in some ways what we have is too fussy for what I'd like, in others - partly including your examples above - it's not fussy enough; and in either case it gets unwieldy at higher levels.



> (And not tracking ammunition is not "handwaving" it. I've described an actual alternative mechanic - from Cortex+ Heroic - and an imaginary alternative mechanic that I made up, in recent posts, including this one.)



Both the Cortex+ Heroic version and your version are to me different ways of saying "handwave it", and - more tellingly - both take it out of the player's control.

Lan-"fortunately I've probably still got a few years while my current campaign plays out before I have to think too much about major rules surgery"-efan


----------



## clearstream

pemerton said:


> It seems more helpful to say that the exercise of agency draws upon certain resources.



For me this seems to say we can end the thread here. All world-building is, is a resource. It can be done by none, one or several authors. How successful it is for any group depends on that group. Most of the roleplaying gaming that I experience and observe (including via Twitch or YouTube) is of the kind that it will be of value. Games like Burning went on to release three world-builds in the form of the setting books, one being inspired by Dune.



pemerton said:


> As the fiction unfolds, it will generate its own further constraints. To me, it also seems more helpful to see the development of a coherent and unified fiction as an exercise of agency - with later constraints being the manifestation of earlier exercises of agency - than to suggest that to write is to further and further limit one's agency.



Yes, exactly! The original and/or evolving world-build is a manifestation of earlier exercises of agency. It is essential in some form or other. Possibly I misunderstand, but your main "question" (and I feel it is perhaps less a question and more a manifesto) is about who does it, how, and at what scale. Those are all good questions and I would share any feeling you might have that various approaches have pluses and minuses. There can be good in the world-build being handled by a sole arbiter: that goes in one direction. And there can be good in the world-build being handled by all, as they go along. The kinds of problems to solve in implementation have commonalities and differences.



pemerton said:


> Insofar as the players have chosen to play in Dickensian London, these credibility limits are better seen as an exercise of agency rather than a burden upon it. In particular social circumstances that might change - eg if a GM starts wielding credibility tests as a club to block action declarations that players regard as quite reasonable - but at that point the game would seem to be spiralling into collapse in any event.



I'm not sure what you mean by "block action declarations" as you just gave examples of action declarations that should be blocked. If you mean that no one should do so egregiously, then I would agree with you. Generally, we don't want nonsensical declarations, or declarations that falsify what has gone before. The most potent declarations are those that address and move forward the current state of play.

If players want to feel entitled to declare anything, even things that make no sense or dismantle what everyone else is enjoying, I'm not for that. And if we've agreed on a system to work within, in order to create interest and challenge for ourselves, then I think their declarations are going to be most enjoyable if they work with that.



pemerton said:


> I don't accept your premise.



You go on to accept my premise, so I think we must have a miscommunication/misunderstanding here.



pemerton said:


> Firstly, I don't think that agency is, in general, zero-sum in the way you seem to suggest. And second, I don't think agency in the specific case of authorship or establishing shared fiction need be zero-sum either. Bob letting Alice establish what is in the market isn't an exercise by Bob of agency in respect of that particular element of the shared fiction, but there are other elements that Bob can establish.



Please note that I suggest the opposite to zero-sum. In order to not be zero-sum, gains must be made above the line. The "cost" of those gains is to let them stand. For me, zero-sum would be where for Bob's agency to stand, he must dismantle Alice's. I believe neither is arguing for that.



pemerton said:


> I don't think you are using the term "worldbuilding" in the way it is used in the OP. You seem to be identifying the value of setting in RPGing.



It seems possible that the OP has in mind "_egregious world-building shoved down people's throats, to stop them having fun_" so sure, I'm redefining it.

If the question is whether egregious, fun-killing, creativity dampening world-building has any value in contemporary RPG? Well, no. But then, it never did.

Edit - as a footnote


pemerton said:


> There is no difference, except that Luke Crane has playtested his obstacle levels and so (one trusts) is somewhat confident that they will produce tenable pacing outcomes. The Adventure Burner has a discussion of the role of obstacles in establishing setting.



A good DM will produce tenable pacing outcomes. Again, it seems here a possible strawman has been put up - the DM who has no idea of what will be a good obstacle level - and knocked down. I don't see any special reason to trust Luke Crane other than to say that it suits a given group's style of play. I don't think such groups can speak for all groups, though.


----------



## pemerton

clearstream said:


> For me this seems to say we can end the thread here. All world-building is, is a resource.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean by "block action declarations" as you just gave examples of action declarations that should be blocked.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> If the question is whether egregious, fun-killing, creativity dampening world-building has any value in contemporary RPG? Well, no. But then, it never did.



To me, your analysis doesn't seem to distinguish between shared storytelling and RPGing. (Or, at least, it seems not to be sensitive to some significant differences between them.)

I am not terribly experienced in cooperative storytelling games, but fairly recently I played a session of "A Penny for My Thoughts", and I posted about that in this thread.

Unlike RPGing, in this game there are no action declarations. Thus there is no fictional positioning, and no action resolution. There is just free narration, undertaken within the game's framework for allocating authority from moment to moment within the game. The sequence of narration is established by a mixture of mechanics and choices that (at various points) one particular player gets to make about who goes next. Much of what is said by prior players creates both constraint and resource as far as further contributions are concerned, although - at certain points in the game - one player has the authority to choose between alternatives put forward by two other players.

In contrast to this game, RPGing does involve action declarations. In RPGs that follow traditional/mainstream conventions, those action declarations are made by players in the context of situations that have been established/framed by a GM. There is, thus, already an assymetry of roles as far as introducing fictional content is concerned.

Furthermore, when action declarations in a RPG are resolved, fictional positioning is a factor. And again, in most mainsream RPGs, the GM has a special responsibility to keep track of, and articulate, and ultimately (if there are disagreements) to adjudicate the fictional positioning.

This is where the OP sees the significance of worldbuilding. In classic D&D play (ie dungeon exploration) it is _absolutely crucial_ that fictional positioning includes elements which (i) the GM has established in advance of the action declaration (typically by drawing and keying up a dungeon in advance of play), and (ii) the GM does not reveal to the players _until they delcare actions for their PCs which oblige the GM to narrate it to them_.

Examples of this which have been discussed at length in this thread include searching for a secret door, and searching for a map. In classic D&D, it is _crucial_ to the way the game works that the success or failure of such attempts depends (perhaps not solely) upon whether the place that is being searched is the place the GM has recorded as the place where the map is, or a place where a secret door exists. This unrevealed fictional positioning becomes a key element in action resolution.

The GM is therefore entitled, and indeed obliged, to declare an action a failure ("No, you don't find a secret door/the map you are looking for") although there is no violation of genre credibility, no invoking of out-of-line tropes (beam weaponry in the duke's toilet), and the fictional positioning that underpins the failure of the action is not something to which the player has access _except by inference from the fact that the action failed_.

The OP contends that this approach to worldbuiling, and its use as an element of fictional positioning used to resolve action declarations by way of "hidden" or "secret" GM-preauthored backstory/fictional elements, _makes sense_ in classic play because a big part of the point of classic play is to learn this stuff. It's a puzzle-solving, maze-solving exercise, where the principal reward for learning the stuff that begins as unrevealed is gp which translate into XP.

The OP also contends that most contemporary RPGing is not this sort of puzzle/maze-solving play; that it's more focused on "stories" about interesting characters doing narratively interesting stuff. (A further but to some extent secondary contention is that, once you start playing in non-dungeonesque "living, breathing worlds", the puzzle/maze-solving approach to play becomes rather impractical, as there are too many parameters potentially unknown to the players to prevent them drawing the sorts of inferences that classic play depends upon.)

The OP then asks, in this contemporary style of RPGing, what is the point of worldbuilding of the classic sort? - ie of the GM establishing fictional elements that serve as unrevealed fictional positionioning which therefore (i) constrain success in action declaration, and (ii) produce a dynamic of play where a significant amount of the play experience is declaring actions which will oblige the GM to reveal some of this hitherto-unrevealed stuff (many RPGers describe this using in-fiction rather than at-the-table language like "exploration", "gathering information", "scouting", etc).

This is not a question (rhetorical or otherwise) about "fun-killing" worldbuilding, because it seems pretty clear that a lot of RPGers find this fun. It's not a question which can be answered independent of who does the worldbuilding, because the allocation of roles in relation to framing, action declaration and adjudication is fundamental to the phenomenon being asked about.

It's also a question about something different from genre constrains, or even fictional positioning constraints, in general. These _don't_ rely upon being unrevealed to the players. When the player asks "Do I find any beam weapons in the duke's toilet?", the GM doesn't have to consult (or pretend to consult) notes and answer "No" in a sphinx-like manner: s/he can reply, "Of course not - we're playing D&D, not Star Frontiers!" When the player whose PC is on a flying ship declares "I attack the NPC on the ground beneath me", and the GM asks "Do you have any missile weapons on you?", and then a check of the PC sheet reveals the answer to be "no", the GM can reply "Well, you can't attack the NPC with a sword while you're up in the air, can you?" without having to rely on anything unrevealed. This is straightforward fictional positioning, which is common knowledge among everyone at the table.

It's a particular style of worldbuilding, based on "hidden" backstory that serves as unrevealed fictional positioning, and which was crucial to the play of classic D&D, that the OP is asking about.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> A character declaring he is searching for a secret door is exercising the authority to declare an action for one's PC.  A player creating a secret door via a roll is establishing backstory, as that secret door is now a part of the history of the scene.  It now has existed PRIOR to the search for it and is backstory.





Lanefan said:


> To me on a success it is, as it's directly adding something to the backstory (in this case, the scene as framed) that wasn't put there by the GM.



Obviously, you can use words however you want.

But I'm explaining why    [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] is making an error in reading Eero Tuovinen. When Eero Tuovinen refers to "backstory", he is not talking about the outcomes of action resolution.



Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The backstory was established by the GM in framing the scene.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> But the GM didn't know there was a secret door there until the player/PC found it, so how could she have already framed it into the scene even in her mind?
Click to expand...


The GM didn't frame the secret door. It's not part of the backstory. It's presence or absence is being established by way of action resolution.

_Backstory_ is not being used by Eero Tuovinen (or me) to denote _stuff that, in the fiction, existed_. It's being used to denote _stuff that, at the table, is already established as part of the shared fiction_. In the context of a check for a secret door, the backstory - which is part of the framing - might include that there is a stone wall in an ancient castle built by a people well-known for their cunning engineering.

This is another case of being misled by not distinguishing stuff that doesn't exist (imaginary walls, imaginary secret doors) from stuff that does exist (events of narration that refer to a PC being near a stone wall of the sort that might have a secret door in it).



Maxperson said:


> We're discussing Tolkien's story and then trying to see which style of play best fits.





Maxperson said:


> You have to assume Story Now agendas in order to call Tolkien Story Now, but you have to make no such assumptions to apply my style to it.



This doesn't make any sense. Tolkien was not a RPGer. LotR is a novel.

"Story now" is not an approach to literary composition. It's an approach to RPGing.

What I do claim is that "story now" RPGing can produce episodes of play that have the drama, pacing etc one might find in a literary composition _without_ this needing to be written in advance. The traditional way for GM-driven play to do the same thing is extremely heavy railroading (Dragonlance and Dead Gods would be classic examples of this in D&D modules). If the GM is not railroading in that fashion, but nevertheless is exercising strong control over the fiction of the sort that you advocate, then I contend that the prospects of achieving the pacing and drama typical of a literary composition are slight, because much of play will consist in the players making moves to learn what the fiction is (such as your example, upthread, of the players having to make moves so their PCs can find somewhere where an angel feather might be on sale). I took this to be confirmed by you in your remark that you might have to play for many hours to have things happen which - _if edited appropriately_ - might resemble JRRT's Moria sequence.


EDIT: I will elaborate on the above by reference to the following:



Maxperson said:


> In my style hard character choices happen all the time, which results in character growth.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I never even implied that I couldn't see the arc of the hobbits. I only said that it didn't have to be an agenda picked out in advance and that it could in fact happen through my style of game play, which it can.



For Pippin's arc to happen in a RPG, here are the necessary things that have to occur:

_After_ it is established (presumably via the mechanics), that Boromir, Pippin's protector, dies, it then has to be the case that (i) Pippin meets Denethor, Boromir's father, (ii) in circumstances where it makes sense to swear fealty to him, (iii) in circumstances where that fealty is called upon (eg a war), (iv) in circumstances which also lead Pippin to love the other son, Faramir (eg Faramir's leadership in said war), (v) with Denethor then going mad, such that (vi) fealty and love can come into conflict.

Every example that has been posted in this thread of "going where the action is" (to once again borrow Eero Tuovinen's phrase) has been criticised by you: the actual play example of starting things in the bazaar; the imagined example of eliding travel through the Underdark via quick narration and perhaps a brief skill challenge; etc.

But to make the Pippin arc happen, the GM repeatedly would have to go where the action is. If the GM never frames Pippin into a meeting with Denethor; does not then establish an attack upon Minas Tirith as an element of framing; has Pippin's presence when Denethor tries to burn Farimir depend upon the outcomes of random rolls (say, a roll to see which soldier Denethor asks to accompany him), then the arc doesn't happen.

If the GM does all this and Pippin's player is not interested, then we have a fairly hard railroad. So for the above to work, Pippin's player has to signal some sort of agenda - eg, following Boromir's death, formally (as might happen in Burning Wheel) or informally (as might happen in 4e) signalling that _I will repay the debt I owe to this man_. Which is the agenda you are denying needs to be enunciated in advance.

This is why I am asking for play examples: I want you to show me how you do this without either using "story now"-type methods, or else using heavy GM force.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Both the Cortex+ Heroic version and your version are to me different ways of saying "handwave it", and - more tellingly - both take it out of the player's control.



Tracking ammunition doesn't put ammunition under the player's control.

The GM can narrate an encounter with a fire lizard who breathes on the PC. The GM can declare that there are no arrows for sale at the town weapon shop. Or whatever.

A GM may choose not to do those things. Likewise a GM may choose not to activate a limit in Cortex+ Heroic.

You also seem to be ignoring that, in Cortex+ Heroic, if the limit is activated and the power shut down, the player can declare an action to restore the power (in the fiction, this means picking arrows up from the ground, or scavenging them from enemies, or whatever else might make sense in the imagined context). In the sort of D&D that you prefer, however, if the GM has decided that there are no arrows available in town there is no action that the player can declare which might produce a different fictional result.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Obviously, you can use words however you want.
> 
> But I'm explaining why  [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] is not making an error in reading Eero Tuovinen. When Eeor Tuovinen refers to "backstory", he is not talking about the outcomes of action resolution.




I'm not talking about action resolution, either.  Action resolution is different from backstory authority, but can result in changes to backstory as I demonstrated above.  The resolution to the action was only to find a secret door or not.  Nothing else.  The backstory authority comes from a secret door appearing where there was none in the backstory prior to the action resolution.

Below is the quote from Tuovinen on backstory.

"Backstory authority

Backstory is the part of a roleplaying game scenario that “has happened before the game began”. *The concept only makes sense when somebody has done preparatory work for the game or is using specific heuristics to simulate such preparation in real-time.* For example, if the GM has decided in advance that the butler did it, then that is part of the backstory – it happened before the player characters came to the scene, and the GM will do his job with the assumption that this is an unchanging part of the game, even if the players might not know about it. Similarly a player character’s personal history is part of the backstory in a game that requires such. Backstory is specifically separate from what might happen during play itself. We say that somebody has “backstory authority” if he is allowed to determine something about the backstory, simply enough."

When Eero Tuovinen talks about backstory, he's talking about anything that was authored prior to game play or simulates pre-authoring.  A Story Now game creates int the moment those things that would have been pre-authored in a more traditional game.  If you author a wall in the moment, that's a heuristic creation.  You have established something physical and long lasting in the moment, which qualifies as backstory since it is a real time creation of something that would have been pre-authored in a more traditional game. 

When one of you players resolves an action to find a secret door and succeeds, in addition to resolving the action, he is exercising heuristic backstory authority by adding in the secret door, which is also something that would have been established prior to game play in a more traditional game.  [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] is the one using Tuovinen correctly here.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> _After_ it is established (presumably via the mechanics), that Boromir, Pippin's protector, dies, it then has to be the case that (i) Pippin meets Denethor, Boromir's father, (ii) in circumstances where it makes sense to swear fealty to him, (iii) in circumstances where that fealty is called upon (eg a war), (iv) in circumstances which also lead Pippin to love the other son, Faramir (eg Faramir's leadership in said war), (v) with Denethor then going mad, such that (vi) fealty and love can come into conflict.




Agreed.  That sort of things happens all the time in games of my style.



> Every example that has been posted in this thread of "going where the action is" (to once again borrow Eero Tuovinen's phrase) has been criticised by you: the actual play example of starting things in the bazaar; the imagined example of eliding travel through the Underdark via quick narration and perhaps a brief skill challenge; etc.




If by "going where the action is", you mean "instantly(in real world time) appearing where the action is", you are correct.  If by "going where the action is", you mean "showing up where the action is", you are incorrect.  It's only the travel portion where we disagree.



> But to make the Pippin arc happen, the GM repeatedly would have to go where the action is. If the GM never frames Pippin into a meeting with Denethor; does not then establish an attack upon Minas Tirith as an element of framing; has Pippin's presence when Denethor tries to burn Farimir depend upon the outcomes of random rolls (say, a roll to see which soldier Denethor asks to accompany him), then the arc doesn't happen.



So what.  This is not dependent on Story Now.  In both your style and mine, the DM and players can establish through game play that Pippin meets Denthor, an attack upon Minis Tirith happens, etc.  The arc can both succeed and fail in both styles of play.  And I've already established my style also "goes where the action is", even thought it takes longer to get there than in your style.



> If the GM does all this and Pippin's player is not interested, then we have a fairly hard railroad. So for the above to work, Pippin's player has to signal some sort of agenda - eg, following Boromir's death, formally (as might happen in Burning Wheel) or informally (as might happen in 4e) signalling that _I will repay the debt I owe to this man_. Which is the agenda you are denying needs to be enunciated in advance.




This is incorrect.  No agenda has to be established formally.  All that is required are game choices to be made at each point in the process.  Pippin arrives at Minis Tirith.  Pippin through game play meets or does not meet Denethor.  When invited, if the player does not want Pippin to meet Denethor, he may feign sickness.  If he does, then he goes to meet Denethor.  The next decision point is whether to swear fealty to Denethor when offered.  When the pre-authored attack happens, Pippin's fealty is called upon.  And so on at each point in the process.  If the player makes certain decisions, it plays out as written in the books.  If the player makes other decisions, it does not.  At no point is any sort of agenda required for the result to be the same as it appears in the books.  At no point does my style involve a railroad to get there.



> This is why I am asking for play examples: I want you to show me how you do this without either using "story now"-type methods, or else using heavy GM force.



I just showed you very clearly above how it is done.  There was no force or story now method employed, and yet the same exact result can be accomplished with my playstyle.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> The OP contends that this approach to worldbuiling, and its use as an element of fictional positioning used to resolve action declarations by way of "hidden" or "secret" GM-preauthored backstory/fictional elements, _makes sense_ in classic play because a big part of the point of classic play is to learn this stuff. It's a puzzle-solving, maze-solving exercise, where the principal reward for learning the stuff that begins as unrevealed is gp which translate into XP.



Specific to 1e D&D this makes sense, though I take issue with describing it as reduced to no more than "a puzzle-solving, maze-solving exercise".  More broadly and less system-specific, the game is in part about exploring and learning about the setting through the eyes of your PC, whether that setting is provided by the DM or by something pre-published e.g. Greyhawk, Golarion, whatever.  This exploration largely assumes a setting that is more or less in place waiting to be explored.



> The OP also contends that most contemporary RPGing is not this sort of puzzle/maze-solving play; that it's more focused on "stories" about interesting characters doing narratively interesting stuff.



This is the contention with which I disagree: I don't at all think "most" contemporary play has moved far from its classic foundation at all, but has rather added the bits about interesting characters and story on to what was already there. 


> (A further but to some extent secondary contention is that, once you start playing in non-dungeonesque "living, breathing worlds", the puzzle/maze-solving approach to play becomes rather impractical, as there are too many parameters potentially unknown to the players to prevent them drawing the sorts of inferences that classic play depends upon.)



It puts some more work on to the DM, but it's not impractical in the least.  The players just have to realize that they're quite realistically almost never going to have all the information they need, and that now and then this lack of information (or flat-out inaccuracy of information) is going to mess them up.  On a broader scale, the players have to accept that the GM is going to be keeping secrets from them only on a bigger scale than simple dungeon-crawl play would expec, and that the GM is going to be informed by these secrets when determining the results of PC actions.

The PCs (and players at the table) won't always know why some action or other resolved the way it did...just like real life, that way...and this is not a problem unless the players at that table feel they have some sort of right or entitlement to know everything about anything that affects their PCs including things their PCs have no in-game way of knowing - at which point those players can find another table, 'cause they ain't playing at mine.



> The OP then asks, in this contemporary style of RPGing, what is the point of worldbuilding of the classic sort? - ie of the GM establishing fictional elements that serve as unrevealed fictional positionioning which therefore (i) constrain success in action declaration, and (ii) produce a dynamic of play where a significant amount of the play experience is declaring actions which will oblige the GM to reveal some of this hitherto-unrevealed stuff (many RPGers describe this using in-fiction rather than at-the-table language like "exploration", "gathering information", "scouting", etc).



Yes - exploration of the game-world or setting in which the PCs find themselves.  It's one of the three pillars of play that have always been there but weren't clearly defined as such until 5e D&D came along.

In effect, as this discussion has gone on, it's become evident that the OP is asking whether this pillar is worth keeping.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Obviously, you can use words however you want.
> 
> But I'm explaining why    [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] is making an error in reading Eero Tuovinen. When Eero Tuovinen refers to "backstory", he is not talking about the outcomes of action resolution.
> 
> The GM didn't frame the secret door. It's not part of the backstory. It's presence or absence is being established by way of action resolution.
> 
> _Backstory_ is not being used by Eero Tuovinen (or me) to denote _stuff that, in the fiction, existed_. It's being used to denote _stuff that, at the table, is already established as part of the shared fiction_. In the context of a check for a secret door, the backstory - which is part of the framing - might include that there is a stone wall in an ancient castle built by a people well-known for their cunning engineering.



Ah, so the word we're looking for isn't backstory by your definition, it's setting (or game-world).

An action declaration is an attempt to change or add to (or in rare cases subtract from) the setting, and on success does so.  The reason I and others call it backstory instead is that backstory includes the setting as part of itself (I don't care what Eero calls it).  One could say there's two parts to a setting - the "physical" part which is the actual buildings-cities-mountains-etc. and the "cultural" part which is the history-people-societal bits.  The "backstory" interweaves these two together to produce everything that's happened up until the PCs get involved and also everything that's happening concurrent to what the PCs are doing.

Adding something to what the GM has framed (e.g. successfully searching for a secret door or a container for blood) is in fact changing the physical-setting part of the backstory.  That this change comes about via a successful action declaration rather than by any other means is absolutely irrelevant to the fact that a change was made.

The same can be said for a player fleshing out a village in a pre-authored setting - that player is changing the backstory.



> I took this to be confirmed by you in your remark that you might have to play for many hours to have things happen which - _if edited appropriately_ - might resemble JRRT's Moria sequence.



Of course you'd have to play for many hours.  That's several sessions worth of exploration in there, along with a few combats and the whole Gollum-is-following-us distraction...why wouldn't it take many hours, and what's the problem if it does?


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Tracking ammunition doesn't put ammunition under the player's control.
> 
> The GM can narrate an encounter with a fire lizard who breathes on the PC. The GM can declare that there are no arrows for sale at the town weapon shop. Or whatever.
> 
> A GM may choose not to do those things. Likewise a GM may choose not to activate a limit in Cortex+ Heroic.
> 
> You also seem to be ignoring that, in Cortex+ Heroic, if the limit is activated and the power shut down, the player can declare an action to restore the power (in the fiction, this means picking arrows up from the ground, or scavenging them from enemies, or whatever else might make sense in the imagined context). In the sort of D&D that you prefer, however, if the GM has decided that there are no arrows available in town there is no action that the player can declare which might produce a different fictional result.



I can still try to steal some, or commission a fletcher to make me some..there's always another option.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> It puts some more work on to the DM, but it's not impractical in the least.  The players just have to realize that they're quite realistically almost never going to have all the information they need



This is the difference from classical play. In B2, it is expected that thie player eventually _can_ get the information they need to make reasoned choices. The artificially austere nature of the environment is one underpinning of this possibilityu.



Lanefan said:


> On a broader scale, the players have to accept that the GM is going to be keeping secrets from them only on a bigger scale than simple dungeon-crawl play would expec, and that the GM is going to be informed by these secrets when determining the results of PC actions.
> 
> The PCs (and players at the table) won't always know why some action or other resolved the way it did



This is why I call it GM-driven play. It seems obvious, from your description here, that it involves only modest player agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction. Even the fiction that the GM actually narrates at the table is going to be opaque to the players!



Lanefan said:


> Yes - exploration of the game-world or setting in which the PCs find themselves.  It's one of the three pillars of play that have always been there but weren't clearly defined as such until 5e D&D came along.
> 
> In effect, as this discussion has gone on, it's become evident that the OP is asking whether this pillar is worth keeping.



Not at all. There's no particular connection between exploration and worldbuilding. See, for instance, this actual play report.

_Exploring the gameworld_ is something that the PCs do. That doesn't have to mean that the players are learning stuff the GM already wrote down. (Or is making up uliaterally in the course of play.)


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> I can still try to steal some, or commission a fletcher to make me some..there's always another option.



In your preferred style, those things are also subject to GM adjudication and independently-established backstory.

What I mean is: in (say) Burning Wheel, it is the player's Scavenging check which will reveal whether or not there are any arrows available to be stolen; in your approach, the GM gets to decide that first, and if s/he decides there are none then the player's action declaration will fail.

This is why I say that tracking ammunition doesn't actually give the player agency at all in respect of the availability of ammunition.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The backstory authority comes from a secret door appearing where there was none in the backstory prior to the action resolution.



No. Resolving an action declaration is not authoring backstory. A secret door whose existence is discovered _in the course of play_, by way of action declaration, is not an element of backstory.



Maxperson said:


> Backstory is the part of a roleplaying game scenario that “has happened before the game began”.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> When Eero Tuovinen talks about backstory, he's talking about anything that was authored prior to game play or simulates pre-authoring.



Yes. Discovering a secret door by way of action resolution is not pre-authorship, nor a simulation of pre-authorship. It is _playing the game_.

I know that you think you know more about "story now" RPGing than me, even though you've never done it, and never played or even read the rules for any of the RPGs that Eero Tuovinen references (Sorcerer, DitV, Primetime Adventures, HeroWars/Quest). But that doesn't make you right - just oddly hubristic!



Lanefan said:


> An action declaration is an attempt to change or add to (or in rare cases subtract from) the setting, and on success does so.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Adding something to what the GM has framed (e.g. successfully searching for a secret door or a container for blood) is in fact changing the physical-setting part of the backstory.  That this change comes about via a successful action declaration rather than by any other means is absolutely irrelevant to the fact that a change was made.



A PC killing an orc is also changing, by addition, the situation the GM framed: it goes from having a live orc to a dead one.

Just as, if the declared search is successful, the situation now includes a discovered secret door.

That's generally the point of playing a RPG - to add to the scenes the GM declares. Otherwise the players needn't bother turning up!'

(Of course you can try and say there is something different about finding a door from killin an orc. But from the point of view of establishing elements of a ficiton, they're not any different. So whatever difference you're pointing to, it would have to be something else.)



Lanefan said:


> Of course you'd have to play for many hours.  That's several sessions worth of exploration in there, along with a few combats and the whole Gollum-is-following-us distraction...why wouldn't it take many hours, and what's the problem if it does?



Many hourse of play, with lots of searching for secret doors, worrying at intersections, etc, is not the Moria sequence. And is not story now.

Obiouvsly That isn't a problem if you're not wanting to play "story now".


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> That's because they're the people of England, for whom the myths are being written!



Well, they are certainly 'regular folks'. There ARE a few other brief points when Tolkien touches on the lives of normal people. He makes a few comments about them at Minas Tirith, describing a few of the more mundane aspects of the city for a couple of paragraphs at very point where Grond hammers down the city gate and then the Nazgul hear the dying cry of their king, and the Army of Sauron hesitates. There are a few more paragraphs in this vein later when Aragorn enters the city and heals some people, but its pretty thin. There are a few other minor points, a few mundane things happen at Helm's Deep, etc. I actually thought those were the high points of the story, in a literary sense. Tolkien contrasted them nicely with some of the epic action going on in the foreground, but it seemed like there should have been more. OTOH every such scene risks turning ME into a real living place and breaking the 'spell'.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> No. Resolving an action declaration is not authoring backstory. A secret door whose existence is discovered _in the course of play_, by way of action declaration, is not an element of backstory.




I find your contention that the secret door popped out of thin air and never existed prior to the player discovering it to be absurd. Finding that secret door caused it to always have existed in that scene, making it backstory.  

I also find your contention that action resolution is limited in effect to only the resolution of the action to also be absurd.  Actions can have effects beyond the simple resolution of the action.  All you have to do is look at combat to see that.  Declaring an attack is resolved with a hit or a miss. Damage is not a part of the action resolution.  It's a further effect of the declaration of the attack.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

clearstream said:


> It seems controversial to me because I really don't believe that creators need to create every part in order to be "doing fiction properly". If a group chooses to set their play in the universe of Frank Herbert's Dune, then there will be parts that they relinquish agency over. They do that in order to be inspired. Their fiction-making efforts, or more accurately the fiction arising as a side-effect of their play, is just as genuine and complete. I feel like this is an important point of divergence between us. If I play in Dickensian London, I relinquish agency about some things in that setting, while retaining agency about everything I care about (my character's motives, choices, acts etc).  How is it that drawing on ideas like knights and orders is not surrendering agency, while drawing on say warforged would be? Is it that it is only agency if it comes out of the player's own knowledge and creativity, no matter what would be gained by furbishing them with other sources of inspiration?
> 
> A group can move away from GM authority, but for me that is moot. (At least in respect of one of your core concerns.) MOLAD was intensively focused on character journey, and that is an important reason why the game was successful for our group. I ran that game in the 80s and 90s. But the question was never whether or not authority was equal at the table, but whether interest, time and tolerance was given for players to explore character concerns within their game, other than if they can spot a pit trap before stepping on it, etc!
> 
> There is a separate line of argument that needs to be unpacked, which is that of resolution. What is different about acquiescing to Luke Crane's stipulated obstacle levels, from acquiescing to some other person's nominated obstacle level?




Well, I think that your commentary here MIGHT be pretty relevant to the original question of the thread, but it isn't terribly relevant to the question that was at hand, which was about player agency over the fiction. The normal GM-centric D&D-type division of responsibilities puts ALL of that agency in the hands of the GM (minus whatever the players might have asserted before play actually started, or whatever the GM might yield to players informally as he wishes). This has been [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s point with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] (mostly, some other posters as well). If the GM gets to describe the fiction, and its basically not constrained by player agenda/interest/agreed theme or focus, then, regardless of how detailed or non-detailed it is, or if its Glorantha or Erithnoi (my own homebrew world) its the GM's show. 

I don't know how MOLAD worked, but IME the way you focus on 'character journey' (by which I assume you mean character development) is by having someone author interactions between the setting and its NPCs and the PC in question. Now, all of that COULD be dictated strictly by the GM, his terms, his choice of what questions to address and how, but that seems VERY peculiar to me! It is VERY natural that this responsibility lie on the player of the character in question. Almost to the point where it becomes hard to imagine another technique working.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> The normal GM-centric D&D-type division of responsibilities puts ALL of that agency in the hands of the GM (minus whatever the players might have asserted before play actually started, or whatever the GM might yield to players informally as he wishes). This has been @_*pemerton*_'s point with @_*Lanefan*_ and @_*Maxperson*_ (mostly, some other posters as well). If the GM gets to describe the fiction, and its basically not constrained by player agenda/interest/agreed theme or focus, then, regardless of how detailed or non-detailed it is, or if its Glorantha or Erithnoi (my own homebrew world) its the GM's show.




I have already proven this to be false.  The only way the above happens is if the DM is violating the social contract.  Otherwise, he is forced to go along with player agendas that are possible.  See my northern barbarians example.  A DM who violates the social contract this way and keeps all of the agency is no different from the Story Now DM who constantly blocks players.  It's simply not done by a DM running the style properly.

Players may have more agency(if you re-define agency like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has) in Story Now, but my style of play doesn't allow for the DM to have all of the agency.


----------



## clearstream

pemerton said:


> To me, your analysis doesn't seem to distinguish between shared storytelling and RPGing. (Or, at least, it seems not to be sensitive to some significant differences between them.)



I don't tackle shared storytelling because the OP says this...



pemerton said:


> n classic D&D, the dungeon was a type of puzzle. The players had to...
> 
> ...But most contemporary D&D isn't played in the spirit of classic D&D: But in most contemporary play, character motivations (and alignment etc) aren't treated purely instrumentally in that way as puzzle components and parameters. I'm expected to develop my character, and to care about his/her motivations, for their own sake. This is part of the standard picture of what it is to be a good RPGer.
> 
> So, given these difference between typical contemporary play and "classic" play, what is world building for?



*That is squarely pointed at RPGing.* It doesn't mention shared storytelling. Therefore I have been addressing the question of the value of world-building in terms of RPGing. If shared story-telling is your focus that is also fine, of course, but I should not be upbraided for addressing the question laid out in the OP.



pemerton said:


> Furthermore, when action declarations in a RPG are resolved, fictional positioning is a factor. And again, in most mainsream RPGs, the GM has a special responsibility to keep track of, and articulate, and ultimately (if there are disagreements) to adjudicate the fictional positioning.
> 
> This is where the OP sees the significance of worldbuilding. In classic D&D play (ie dungeon exploration) it is _absolutely crucial_ that fictional positioning includes elements which (i) the GM has established in advance of the action declaration (typically by drawing and keying up a dungeon in advance of play), and (ii) the GM does not reveal to the players _until they delcare actions for their PCs which oblige the GM to narrate it to them_.



I know what you mean by classic versus contemporary D&D, but for me play has for a long time blended across multiple dimensions of interest. Some sessions of some games lean more to tactics, some lean more to character portrayal, some lean more to plot development, and some lean more to world portrayal, etc. It is true that work has been done to reveal and explore all the dimensions, and there are now pick-up-and-play systems that break out and support some that weren't broken out or supported in commercial publications or the group-think previously.



pemerton said:


> The OP contends that this approach to worldbuiling, and its use as an element of fictional positioning used to resolve action declarations by way of "hidden" or "secret" GM-preauthored backstory/fictional elements, _makes sense_ in classic play because a big part of the point of classic play is to learn this stuff. It's a puzzle-solving, maze-solving exercise, where the principal reward for learning the stuff that begins as unrevealed is gp which translate into XP.
> 
> The OP also contends that most contemporary RPGing is not this sort of puzzle/maze-solving play; that it's more focused on "stories" about interesting characters doing narratively interesting stuff. (A further but to some extent secondary contention is that, once you start playing in non-dungeonesque "living, breathing worlds", the puzzle/maze-solving approach to play becomes rather impractical, as there are too many parameters potentially unknown to the players to prevent them drawing the sorts of inferences that classic play depends upon.)
> 
> The OP then asks, in this contemporary style of RPGing, what is the point of worldbuilding of the classic sort? - ie of the GM establishing fictional elements that serve as unrevealed fictional positionioning which therefore (i) constrain success in action declaration, and (ii) produce a dynamic of play where a significant amount of the play experience is declaring actions which will oblige the GM to reveal some of this hitherto-unrevealed stuff (many RPGers describe this using in-fiction rather than at-the-table language like "exploration", "gathering information", "scouting", etc).



The OP doesn't mention shared storytelling, and *most* contemporary RPG is not shared storytelling in any ideal sense. We have hours of video of D&D and other game sessions available to base that on, supplementing our own experiences and observations. Most contemporary RPG can benefit from world-building. If you want to argue that shared storytelling can't, we can tackle that; but shared story-telling doesn't hold a consensus position as representing contemporary RPG.



pemerton said:


> It's a particular style of worldbuilding, based on "hidden" backstory that serves as unrevealed fictional positioning, and which was crucial to the play of classic D&D, that the OP is asking about.



That narrows the question to the point of meaninglessness. It becomes - Is the sort of world-building that supports tactical play right for story-focused play? No, probably not. But world-building, like play, is more varied than that.


----------



## clearstream

AbdulAlhazred said:


> The normal GM-centric D&D-type division of responsibilities puts ALL of that agency in the hands of the GM (minus whatever the players might have asserted before play actually started, or whatever the GM might yield to players informally as he wishes).  If the GM gets to describe the fiction, and its basically not constrained by player agenda/interest/agreed theme or focus, then, regardless of how detailed or non-detailed it is, or if its Glorantha or Erithnoi (my own homebrew world) its the GM's show.



This takes a very narrow view of agency, and fiction. As I said, if characters live in say authentic ancient Rome, the world is set - ancient Italy - but they can still have complete agency over all the fiction that matters. A DM could have full agency over the world, leaving still such vast agency for the players that they will never run short of it.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I don't know how MOLAD worked, but IME the way you focus on 'character journey' (by which I assume you mean character development) is by having someone author interactions between the setting and its NPCs and the PC in question. Now, all of that COULD be dictated strictly by the GM, his terms, his choice of what questions to address and how, but that seems VERY peculiar to me! It is VERY natural that this responsibility lie on the player of the character in question. Almost to the point where it becomes hard to imagine another technique working.



I think it was more that the players focused on their character, their curiousity, their aspirations and fears. That led to the world unfolding in directions that were of interest to the characters. It flowed extremely naturally. In shared stories, consistent framings are valuable. As the new country is explored, elements fold back into the canonical, making for living world-building.

This idea of world-building being a static thing, done and dusted at the outset, is completely unnecessary. Contributions can be and usually are unequal, without harm to the living fiction.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, they are certainly 'regular folks'.



I was being literal in my post. The Hobbits _are_ the English, as JRRT idealises them.

The ordinary folk of Rohan and Gondor are barely realised at all. (And how could they be. In a world with no economy or society, what would one say about ordinary people?)


----------



## clearstream

Lanefan said:


> and this is not a problem unless the players at that table feel they have some sort of right or entitlement to know everything about anything that affects their PCs including things their PCs have no in-game way of knowing - at which point those players can find another table, 'cause they ain't playing at mine.



I generally agreed with your thoughts. Here I think we can nuance by adding that participants might simply desire to know such things, and find that enjoyable. So it's not always about rights or entitlements. It can be about choice.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I was being literal in my post. The Hobbits _are_ the English, as JRRT idealises them.
> 
> The ordinary folk of Rohan and Gondor are barely realised at all. (And how could they be. In a world with no economy or society, what would one say about ordinary people?)




Quite a bit is said.  There is more to Middle Earth than the Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion.

http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Rohan


----------



## Thomas Bowman

pemerton said:


> I was being literal in my post. The Hobbits _are_ the English, as JRRT idealises them.
> 
> The ordinary folk of Rohan and Gondor are barely realised at all. (And how could they be. In a world with no economy or society, what would one say about ordinary people?)




No Economy and society? Where did you get that? It does seem to be a bit underpopulated though, the numbers cited in the various armies seem small!

Can a population as small as that build something like this?





I've never seen castles like that anywhere in Europe, have you?


----------



## Maxperson

Thomas Bowman said:


> No Economy and society? Where did you get that? It does seem to be a bit underpopulated though, the numbers cited in the various armies seem small!
> 
> Can a population as small as that build something like this?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I've never seen castles like that anywhere in Europe, have you?




Just because they have a small standing army, doesn't mean that they have small populations.  Also, that city wasn't built by Gondor.  It was built by Numenoreans, who had superior technology and ability.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> And these plot points can be used later as in the iron spikes example.  OK.
> 
> I can see how it works as a game system (gamist*) but find myself deal-breakingly disappointed in the realism (simulationist*) side of it.
> 
> * - words used in their common meaning as opposed to anything the Forge uses them for.




Now, see, I argue that 'Simulationism' isn't an agenda. All games are overwhelmingly gamist; they ARE games, and MUST practically bow to practical considerations. So any questions of what might be 'realistic' are largely moot. What is being served are 2 things, verisimilitude (which is a pure aesthetic agenda) and the ability of the players to reason about the narrative constraints which the current fictional positioning imposes on them (which is fundamentally a playability consideration, though it may be cast in aesthetic terms as well at times, in which case it is often confused with the previously mentioned verisimilitude).

In any case, I could even, ironically, make an argument for the 'realism' of the Cortex+ technique. On the whole players aren't that good at tracking their inventory of equipment. They are also quite likely to be biased in favor of having things when needed even at the expense of an accurate inventory. There is also a lot of gray area. Realistically what percentage of arrows would you be able to recover after a fight? How long would it take? How many times would they be usable before wearing out? I'm unaware of any RPG which has done the actual research which would be required to establish this (and I don't even think such research is feasible). Thus any values for inventory are effectively arbitrary gamist constructs to begin with. A lantern requires 1 pint of oil every 4 hours because Gary Gygax decided that was the right number to vex his players with a logistical challenge in 1974. I seriously question if this number is based in any sort of reality at all. I mean, it sounds plausible, but 1 hour and 12 hours also sound plausible! 

Given the dubiousness of all these numbers, who says that the procedure of using plot points (probably along with some general consideration of how often the resource has been used) isn't AT LEAST as accurate in actual terms as the fairly arbitrary tracking you're espousing? I mean, I can't even come close to proving it is or it isn't, but neither can you! Thus I would claim that this ENTIRELY an aesthetic 'verisimilitude' type of question. This is also why I discount the very existence of 'simulationism' as a thing in RPGs.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Now, see, I argue that 'Simulationism' isn't an agenda. All games are overwhelmingly gamist; they ARE games, and MUST practically bow to practical considerations. So any questions of what might be 'realistic' are largely moot. What is being served are 2 things, verisimilitude (which is a pure aesthetic agenda) and the ability of the players to reason about the narrative constraints which the current fictional positioning imposes on them (which is fundamentally a playability consideration, though it may be cast in aesthetic terms as well at times, in which case it is often confused with the previously mentioned verisimilitude).
> 
> In any case, I could even, ironically, make an argument for the 'realism' of the Cortex+ technique. On the whole players aren't that good at tracking their inventory of equipment. They are also quite likely to be biased in favor of having things when needed even at the expense of an accurate inventory. There is also a lot of gray area. Realistically what percentage of arrows would you be able to recover after a fight? How long would it take? How many times would they be usable before wearing out? I'm unaware of any RPG which has done the actual research which would be required to establish this (and I don't even think such research is feasible). Thus any values for inventory are effectively arbitrary gamist constructs to begin with. A lantern requires 1 pint of oil every 4 hours because Gary Gygax decided that was the right number to vex his players with a logistical challenge in 1974. I seriously question if this number is based in any sort of reality at all. I mean, it sounds plausible, but 1 hour and 12 hours also sound plausible!
> 
> Given the dubiousness of all these numbers, who says that the procedure of using plot points (probably along with some general consideration of how often the resource has been used) isn't AT LEAST as accurate in actual terms as the fairly arbitrary tracking you're espousing? I mean, I can't even come close to proving it is or it isn't, but neither can you! Thus I would claim that this ENTIRELY an aesthetic 'verisimilitude' type of question. This is also why I discount the very existence of 'simulationism' as a thing in RPGs.




This argument is flawed, as simulationist games are not about being realistic(mirroring reality).  Rather, they are about realism, which is a sliding scale with absolute chaos and no rules on one extreme, and absolute reality on the other end.  On that scale, simulationist games are further towards the reality end of things, but aren't there and never will be.  Story now is close to the chaos end of things.  Standard D&D is in-between both. 

 Even within all of those styles, Simulationist, Story Now, and Standard D&D, each person will have their own personal preference on where on the realism scale they like things to be.  It's best to find people with similar ranges of realism, so that things work smoothly.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> This is incorrect.  No agenda has to be established formally.  All that is required are game choices to be made at each point in the process.  Pippin arrives at Minis Tirith.  Pippin through game play meets or does not meet Denethor.  When invited, if the player does not want Pippin to meet Denethor, he may feign sickness.  If he does, then he goes to meet Denethor.  The next decision point is whether to swear fealty to Denethor when offered.  When the pre-authored attack happens, Pippin's fealty is called upon.  And so on at each point in the process.  If the player makes certain decisions, it plays out as written in the books.  If the player makes other decisions, it does not.  At no point is any sort of agenda required for the result to be the same as it appears in the books.  At no point does my style involve a railroad to get there.
> 
> I just showed you very clearly above how it is done.  There was no force or story now method employed, and yet the same exact result can be accomplished with my playstyle.




No, because you aren't describing an actual feasible course of play! How would the GM in your "no formal agenda" play KNOW to offer the PC the chance to meet Denethor? For there to be an opening to swear fealty to Denethor and join the Tower Guard? It is entirely implausible to imagine that the GM would JUST HAPPEN to establish the entire list of 5 necessary narrative links which must be made in order for this drama to play out. This kind of thing virtually NEVER happens in 'classic' D&D play, not unless the players deliberately consult with each other and the GM and essentially don't play classic D&D! Even then, the GM's existing pre-established backstory is unlikely to be a positive asset in this process. Again, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s reference to a 'hard railroad' is apropos. The GM would have to have invented this story arc ahead of time himself and established all these points, AND THEN moved the PC through the narrative, either hoping the player takes the bait at every step, OR simply disallowing any alternatives (the hard railroad). Again, without the player having initiated and explicitly signaled this agenda it is very unlikely the player is going to just happen to go along, unprompted, with all the narrative choices that would be required. 

So, in some totally theoretical sense it isn't IMPOSSIBLE that you could produce this narrative by your methods without an explicit agenda, it is just vanishingly unlikely. Now, you could argue that you will produce SOME SORT of narrative, and that whatever narrative it is, it is objectively unlikely apriori to have been predicted. It is equally unlikely to have been the one specifically chosen by the players, although they certainly may well reject many narrative possibilities they are UNINTERESTED in. Thus your method is sort of the 'negative-image' of what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s method is. His produces the narrative the players WANT, your's weeds out some narratives that they DON'T want.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> No, because you aren't describing an actual feasible course of play! How would the GM in your "no formal agenda" play KNOW to offer the PC the chance to meet Denethor?




You don't have to know to offer the PC the chance to meet Denethor.  It happens or doesn't.  Not a single even in the chain or Pippin's growth requires a formal agenda.



> For there to be an opening to swear fealty to Denethor and join the Tower Guard? It is entirely implausible to imagine that the GM would JUST HAPPEN to establish the entire list of 5 necessary narrative links which must be made in order for this drama to play out.




It's not any more implausible than any other chain of events that happens every single time I run a game.  Character growth WILL HAPPEN due to events in my game.  Those events will be a chain.  



> This kind of thing virtually NEVER happens in 'classic' D&D play, not unless the players deliberately consult with each other and the GM and essentially don't play classic D&D! Even then, the GM's existing pre-established backstory is unlikely to be a positive asset in this process.




That's just not true.  Character growth arcs like that happen in virtually every game of classic D&D play.  Unless you have a DM who is running the game like a minis combat game with no roleplaying involved.  I'm really not interested in playing in or running that sort of game.



> Again, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s reference to a 'hard railroad' is apropos.




No.  It's complete BS.  Not one single instance of railroad is needed to accomplish a chain such as Pippin went through.  If you believe this, you are completely out of touch with the standard playstyle and no longer really understand it.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Specific to 1e D&D this makes sense, though I take issue with describing it as reduced to no more than "a puzzle-solving, maze-solving exercise".  More broadly and less system-specific, the game is in part about exploring and learning about the setting through the eyes of your PC, whether that setting is provided by the DM or by something pre-published e.g. Greyhawk, Golarion, whatever.  This exploration largely assumes a setting that is more or less in place waiting to be explored.



'classic' D&D (by which I mean essentially TSR D&D) follows an arc of development. The earliest conception of the game is of a vast dungeon, filled with treasure and monsters, which the PCs explore systematically. It may, or may not in some cases, be associated with a 'town' where the PCs can recruit henchmen, heal, buy and sell things, etc. 

The next stage of evolution was to include a 'wilderness' which follows a similar formula (entirely generated by the GM and discovered by the players through action resolution, with its characteristics, the facts of the game world, acting as constrains). This wilderness exploration stage starts to break down the paradigm, because the dungeon puts hard constraints on things, you can only travel by the prescribed routes, etc. but the wilderness has far fewer such constraints. 

Finally high level play created even greater issues by further breaking down the constraints and thus making it hard for the GM to anticipate the course of action. It also involved things like 'freeholds' and such, which are MUCH more abstract and rely on highly subjective GM judgments.

As players demanded more dramatic elements in play the game evolved in conception ultimately to 2nd Edition AD&D where the game EXPLICITLY states that the objective is to create interesting stories involving the PC's heroic exploits. 

The point being: what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] describes is a pretty accurate summary of the essence of the Ur of D&D, its primordial mode of play. I can attest to the accuracy of this description since I both played and DMed in this period, the mid-70's.



> This is the contention with which I disagree: I don't at all think "most" contemporary play has moved far from its classic foundation at all, but has rather added the bits about interesting characters and story on to what was already there.



On the contrary, from the publication of the module A1, which was, IMHO, the first 'story based' adventure to be published (someone will probably find antecedents, but it isn't that important) the game left the original paradigm behind in the sense that the narrative was now ABOUT the characters and their dramatic needs and evolution. It was CERTAINLY far less constrained than previous play. Even the 'D' modules don't really have the degree of reliance on plot and character motive that A1 has. D3 is a pretty big 'sandbox', but its still really a pure exploratory exercise, just writ large.

So, I would say that A1 marks the 'death of the dungeon maze' as the principle paradigm. I can attest, again by having been there, that this was a conclusion drawn AT THE TIME by both players and reviewers of this module and its successors. 

While I agree that play methods have NOT in a lot of cases evolved too much, I will address how this is in tension with actual play practice below.



> It puts some more work on to the DM, but it's not impractical in the least.  The players just have to realize that they're quite realistically almost never going to have all the information they need, and that now and then this lack of information (or flat-out inaccuracy of information) is going to mess them up.  On a broader scale, the players have to accept that the GM is going to be keeping secrets from them only on a bigger scale than simple dungeon-crawl play would expec, and that the GM is going to be informed by these secrets when determining the results of PC actions.
> 
> The PCs (and players at the table) won't always know why some action or other resolved the way it did...just like real life, that way...and this is not a problem unless the players at that table feel they have some sort of right or entitlement to know everything about anything that affects their PCs including things their PCs have no in-game way of knowing - at which point those players can find another table, 'cause they ain't playing at mine.



Yes, and these factors are in tension with, and undermine, exactly what you contend is 'easy'. In fact it isn't easy at all! 2e D&D is so infamously incoherent in the alignment of its declared narrative agenda and its GM-centered and often procedural mechanics that it hardly even bears comment! The only way to achieve the sort of narrative story arcs imagined is Illusionism and GM force, and the stories themselves must largely stem from the GM's imagination. You can read my previous post responding to Maxperson on the impossibility of unsignalled agendas leading to the desires story arcs and how this makes his proposed method of play literally a negative-image of Story Now. 



> Yes - exploration of the game-world or setting in which the PCs find themselves.  It's one of the three pillars of play that have always been there but weren't clearly defined as such until 5e D&D came along.
> 
> In effect, as this discussion has gone on, it's become evident that the OP is asking whether this pillar is worth keeping.
> 
> Lanefan




Needless to say, I have little use for the maunderings of Mike Mearls. I think his idea of 'pillars of play' is unhelpful at the very least, and is at best an analysis of one facet of one specific technique of RPG play, which he seems to imagine is somehow all-encompassing. At the very least he seems to imagine that it is all he need ever address in terms of catering to his specific audience. This is part of the reason I have analyzed 5e as the 'tombstone' of D&D. It envisages no further horizon, and no ambition for any wider play experience, or any desire to explore beyond the boundaries of existing D&D lore, play techniques, rule formulations, etc. 

So, speaking for myself and not the OP, I don't even consider the whole question of 'pillars' to be interesting. I've reformulated by own flavor of 'D&D' upon an entirely different set of precepts. The idea of pillars and some sort of 'balance between them' is irrelevant within my conception. That doesn't make exploration an impossible agenda, it just puts it at the level of agenda, and not of a 'mechanical space' within the game's rules construct. Put it this way, I would say that if a player chooses to make character build choices and narrative choices which focus on abilities which relate to exploration, then Story Now concerns dictate that the GM in a HoML game would present exploratory challenges. 

I would say that, dramatically, exploration is generally more an element of framing than it is a direct response to character development. In other words a character, dramatically, is unlikely to have an agenda that is purely 'explore for the sake of exploration'. If I was presented with a character which the player had drawn up like this, the first thing I would do is challenge them to explore the MOTIVE for exploration, because exploration is an ACTIVITY, not a belief or end goal. 

Lets imagine, a player might respond that he is a worshipper of Ioun, and holds exploration to be an element of devotion to his patron. So now the character's core belief has been refined to a dedication to Ioun, and that probably has some motivational story attached to it. The exploration element isn't being denied, it is described as an interest and avocation of the character. It just isn't what we would generally leverage. A story would take place WHILE exploring. The story might test the character's devotion to Ioun, maybe by making exploration a costly activity in some way (IE loss of lives, wealth expended, necessity to make morally fraught choices, etc.). So I can frame a scene as "while exploring XYZ, your brother-in-law falls in a pit and perishes, what about that?" (I'm extrapolating the outcome of the action here, as well as the initial framing). How does the character break the news to his sister? Does he consider this price to be worth the service to Ioun which it represents? Just how far will he go? Will he sacrifice 10 lives to cross the mountains? 20? 100? How will the folks back home treat that? Will he be able to return and face them?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> I have already proven this to be false.  The only way the above happens is if the DM is violating the social contract.  Otherwise, he is forced to go along with player agendas that are possible.  See my northern barbarians example.  A DM who violates the social contract this way and keeps all of the agency is no different from the Story Now DM who constantly blocks players.  It's simply not done by a DM running the style properly.
> 
> Players may have more agency(if you re-define agency like @_*pemerton*_ has) in Story Now, but my style of play doesn't allow for the DM to have all of the agency.




But again, this is only allowing to pick between a menu of options the GM makes available. If the player chooses some OTHER course, then it will fail (presumably due to as-yet unrevealed backstory which makes the action impossible). As my earlier response to you (after you posted this) makes clear, the chances that the GM will 'get it right' in respect to a SPECIFIC agenda of a player is highly limited. Now, if the GM is willing to alter his backstory or generate it as essentially Story Now framing (IE to answer player agenda) then it might work. But this isn't 'proving me false', it is VINDICATING my point! To the extent that you abandon the classic approach and adopt Story Now techniques, and are willing to allow the player's statements of agenda to reshape any accidentally impeding backstory, you can start to achieve the kind of results I would get.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Just because they have a small standing army, doesn't mean that they have small populations.  Also, that city wasn't built by Gondor.  It was built by Numenoreans, who had superior technology and ability.




It was built by Elendil and other exiles, presumably, near the end of the Second Age. In LotR it is depicted, virtually unchanged, 3 THOUSAND years later, albeit for the last few 100 years a 'new dynasty' (the Stewards) has replaced the line of Elendil. Its the sheer static nature of things in ME, that in 3000 years of the Third Age Gondor hasn't built even one new city, has been ruled by basically one family, hasn't advanced technologically, socially, or in any other way that we can discern. 

The history depicted in the Appendices outlines a fair number of events which have happened in Gondor and Western ME in 3000 years, but none of them seem to have had much impact on how people live, what they believe, etc.

Now project this onto the real world, 3000 years ago in world history the Middle East was dominated by primitive hydraulic empires, Greece was a land of primitive Palace States, the rest of Europe was still in the stone or at best bronze age, iron had only recently been invented by the Hittites, and Egypt was still a world power. Rome didn't exist at all, nor even Athens. China was still a land of barely semi-historical kingdoms, mostly we really have no idea what was there. India was in the midst of some sort of large-scale de-urbanization which nobody can even figure out (we can't even read the script used in this time period, and probably never will). 

We can barely IMAGINE what the world of 3000 years ago was like. A Gondorian of year 100 of the Third Age would be perfectly at home in year 3000 Gondor! Heck, he could probably find his way around the streets of Minas Tirith (although he would call it Minas Anor).


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> This argument is flawed, as simulationist games are not about being realistic(mirroring reality).  Rather, they are about realism, which is a sliding scale with absolute chaos and no rules on one extreme, and absolute reality on the other end.  On that scale, simulationist games are further towards the reality end of things, but aren't there and never will be.  Story now is close to the chaos end of things.  Standard D&D is in-between both.
> 
> Even within all of those styles, Simulationist, Story Now, and Standard D&D, each person will have their own personal preference on where on the realism scale they like things to be.  It's best to find people with similar ranges of realism, so that things work smoothly.




I obviously don't agree. I think you are correct in stating that the ACTUALITY of 'simulation' is not able to achieve realistic results. This is almost a truism. So the point stands. In actuality players adopt a gamist stance, they play a practical game. Then they varnish on a few bits of 'simulation', but as I pointed out even these are largely just gamist considerations in simulationist paint.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> You don't have to know to offer the PC the chance to meet Denethor.  It happens or doesn't.  Not a single even in the chain or Pippin's growth requires a formal agenda.
> 
> 
> 
> It's not any more implausible than any other chain of events that happens every single time I run a game.  Character growth WILL HAPPEN due to events in my game.  Those events will be a chain.
> 
> 
> 
> That's just not true.  Character growth arcs like that happen in virtually every game of classic D&D play.  Unless you have a DM who is running the game like a minis combat game with no roleplaying involved.  I'm really not interested in playing in or running that sort of game.
> 
> 
> 
> No.  It's complete BS.  Not one single instance of railroad is needed to accomplish a chain such as Pippin went through.  If you believe this, you are completely out of touch with the standard playstyle and no longer really understand it.




Thank you for proving my point!

Yes, SOMETHING happens in these games. If it is 'character growth' that is entirely a random result!


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> But again, this is only allowing to pick between a menu of options the GM makes available.




Again, it's not.  You aren't correct now, you weren't correct the last time you said this, you won't be correct next time you say it.  Repeating a wrong thing over and over doesn't make it true.

I as the player get to decide if I want to see the king.  I as the player get to decide if I want to pledge loyalty.  If I pursue those things(without a formal agenda), the DM is forced to react to my agency and provide me with choices that take that into account.  I may not succeed, but I can force the DM to go that direction.  He doesn't force me.  Nor am I picking his options.



> If the player chooses some OTHER course, then it will fail (presumably due to as-yet unrevealed backstory which makes the action impossible).




Why would you presume something like that? Especially since you said that they were picking another course.



> As my earlier response to you (after you posted this) makes clear, the chances that the GM will 'get it right' in respect to a SPECIFIC agenda of a player is highly limited.




There is no "get it right".  Either it happens or it doesn't.  Either the character goes through that growth arc, or it goes through a different one.  I'm saying, and this is factually true, that the sequence of events can happen with my style with no formal agenda or railroading. 



> Now, if the GM is willing to alter his backstory or generate it as essentially Story Now framing (IE to answer player agenda) then it might work.




What backstory?  There's no backstory that says that Denethor won't accept that sort of thing.  You and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] don't get our style of play.  It's clear from your responses in this thread that you don't really understand it, and comments like those are the evidence of that.  The DM is forced through the social contract to consider these sorts of events and respond to them.



> But this isn't 'proving me false', it is VINDICATING my point! To the extent that you abandon the classic approach and adopt Story Now techniques, and are willing to allow the player's statements of agenda to reshape any accidentally impeding backstory, you can start to achieve the kind of results I would get.




You're inventing the existence that backstory that impedes, though.  It doesn't exist to the extent that you seem to think it exists.  The backstory is that Gondor exists with its history.  The Steward exists with his story and personality, and so on.  You don't write in things like, "The Steward will not accept pledges of fealty from Hobbits."  You set up small portions of the world(since nobody can write up more than a small portion), and then the PCs play the game within that loose framework, with the ability to alter things through their actions and desires.  That's classic play.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Thank you for proving my point!
> 
> Yes, SOMETHING happens in these games. If it is 'character growth' that is entirely a random result!




Not relevant, though. And not true.  It's not random, but neither is it pre-selected.  It can still easily play out like it did in the books with my playstyle.  No formal agenda or railroading is required to have the same result Pippin got.  

Let's say the player of Pippin was in my game and wanted to meet the Steward.  I would consider that Gandalf is with him and has tremendous influence and fame, as well as thinks highly of Hobbits.  That makes it highly likely that it will happen.  I might, depending on prior circumstances just allow it to happen with no roll.  I might give it a very low DC, perhaps only failing on a 1.  While there is some randomization involved, if the result is in doubt, the character still grows through those choices, not necessarily the results.  And since even in Story Now there are rolls, the same argument applies to your style as well.  Even with a formal agenda, it's still "random"(in quotes, because as I said above, I don't think it really is random) whether or not that growth will happen like it did in the books, or whether failure will happen.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> It was built by Elendil and other exiles, presumably, near the end of the Second Age. In LotR it is depicted, virtually unchanged, 3 THOUSAND years later, albeit for the last few 100 years a 'new dynasty' (the Stewards) has replaced the line of Elendil. Its the sheer static nature of things in ME, that in 3000 years of the Third Age Gondor hasn't built even one new city, has been ruled by basically one family, hasn't advanced technologically, socially, or in any other way that we can discern.




That's not true.  Isildur built a city during the third age, and things were far from static.  Actually, all or almost all were built in the third age, since the third age began shortly after the sinking of Numenor.

http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Gondor



> The history depicted in the Appendices outlines a fair number of events which have happened in Gondor and Western ME in 3000 years, but none of them seem to have had much impact on how people live, what they believe, etc.




That's hardly the entirety of the history of Gondor.  There are many other official sources.



> Now project this onto the real world, 3000 years ago in world history the Middle East was dominated by primitive hydraulic empires, Greece was a land of primitive Palace States, the rest of Europe was still in the stone or at best bronze age, iron had only recently been invented by the Hittites, and Egypt was still a world power. Rome didn't exist at all, nor even Athens. China was still a land of barely semi-historical kingdoms, mostly we really have no idea what was there. India was in the midst of some sort of large-scale de-urbanization which nobody can even figure out (we can't even read the script used in this time period, and probably never will).
> 
> We can barely IMAGINE what the world of 3000 years ago was like. A Gondorian of year 100 of the Third Age would be perfectly at home in year 3000 Gondor! Heck, he could probably find his way around the streets of Minas Tirith (although he would call it Minas Anor).




Gondor's influence waxed and waned as well.  It was far from static during those 3000 years.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Not relevant, though. And not true.  It's not random, but neither is it pre-selected.  It can still easily play out like it did in the books with my playstyle.  No formal agenda or railroading is required to have the same result Pippin got.
> 
> Let's say the player of Pippin was in my game and wanted to meet the Steward.  I would consider that Gandalf is with him and has tremendous influence and fame, as well as thinks highly of Hobbits.  That makes it highly likely that it will happen.  I might, depending on prior circumstances just allow it to happen with no roll.  I might give it a very low DC, perhaps only failing on a 1.  While there is some randomization involved, if the result is in doubt, the character still grows through those choices, not necessarily the results.  And since even in Story Now there are rolls, the same argument applies to your style as well.  Even with a formal agenda, it's still "random"(in quotes, because as I said above, I don't think it really is random) whether or not that growth will happen like it did in the books, or whether failure will happen.




OK, first I wouldn't consider "wants to meet the Steward" to be an agenda or element of characterization that would drive story in Story Now. It might be indicative of a certain type of personality. Imagine for instance in the real-world a guy that wants to meet President Trump. I'd still need to know his reasons to draw any conclusions about him. 

Now, when you say its still 'random', I agree that there is an element of chance (at least in the sorts of mechanics we've discussed in this thread). The point is that, even with failures, the player is addressing something dramatic, whatever it is, and its what he decided to address. Truthfully he MIGHT never meet Denethor, but he WILL be placed in a situation which addresses the issue at hand WRT character development. That is Pippin will find himself in some situation which tests his belief. I would say his belief here is likely something to do with his admiration of the Gondorians and a desire to serve/follow them (this seems a consistent motive in both his allegiance to Denethor and to Faramir). His desire to repay a debt to them for the service Boromir rendered may be at the root of it too. In any case there are myriad ways that could play out. I'd note that the GM is framing things, so it IS possible that certain story elements could come to pass regardless of checks. 

I would hypothesize that perhaps the whole question of what happened to Faramir is partly a result of Pippin, and maybe also Gandalf and Aragorn, failing some checks at some point. Gandalf in particular could have understood Denethor better and IIRC he even takes some of the blame for the situation himself. Had things gone somewhat differently then the same loyalty/duty question would likely have arisen in a slightly different context. Perhaps a power struggle between Denethor and Aragorn, with the added dimension of Faramir's loyalty (which would be a complex question for him too). One way or another this question WOULD be addressed, and the very nature of Denethor plus Pippin's debt to Boromir's family makes it practically inevitable that it will come to a head. 

The point is, it isn't 'random' in Story Now. The EXACT details are contingent on mechanics, but the trajectory is quite easily within reach, and we would consider the GM to have been well-served in his drawing of Denethor's personality, which drives the whole thing (and obviously this was a good piece of work by Tolkien as well to drive his story).


----------



## Lanefan

clearstream said:


> I generally agreed with your thoughts. Here I think we can nuance by adding that participants might simply desire to know such things, and find that enjoyable. So it's not always about rights or entitlements. It can be about choice.



Point taken; and agreed.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Now, see, I argue that 'Simulationism' isn't an agenda. All games are overwhelmingly gamist; they ARE games, and MUST practically bow to practical considerations.



Agreed to a point.  One can, however, try to mitigate or lessen the bowing to practical considerations where there is a clear choice, and take the realistic route.  A good example is fireball: is it a sphere (as in "ball", as in 1e) or a cubist construct (as 3e has it) or a cube (as 4e has it)?  It's a clear choice: the 3e and 4e models are gamist, the 1e model is more realistic - so go with the 1e model.

There's about a gajillion little choice points like this within the game.  Some game systems want to make some of these choices for you (e.g. 4e firecubes or C+-H ammo tracking) and there I just push back and say no, wrong choice, worse game.



> So any questions of what might be 'realistic' are largely moot. What is being served are 2 things, verisimilitude (which is a pure aesthetic agenda)



Which is far easier to achieve using a more realistic or simulationist foudation than a less-so one.



> and the ability of the players to reason about the narrative constraints which the current fictional positioning imposes on them (which is fundamentally a playability consideration, though it may be cast in aesthetic terms as well at times, in which case it is often confused with the previously mentioned verisimilitude).



Yes, these do kinda go hand in hand.



> In any case, I could even, ironically, make an argument for the 'realism' of the Cortex+ technique. On the whole players aren't that good at tracking their inventory of equipment.



That's where the DM has to put on the referee's uniform and enforce it. 


> They are also quite likely to be biased in favor of having things when needed even at the expense of an accurate inventory.



Ditto, as now we're into borderline cheating.



> There is also a lot of gray area. Realistically what percentage of arrows would you be able to recover after a fight? How long would it take?



Situationally dependent in all cases.  For example, far more likely to recover arrows that missed their mark if the fight's on an open grassy field than if the fight's in a confined area with hard rock walls; though the search of the open grassy field would also take somewhat longer than the search of a small room.  That's for the DM to work out...and as there's always going to be a random element anyway, dice are good for this. 



> How many times would they be usable before wearing out?



This I honestly don't know, though if one can sharpen a sword while camping at night one can, I suppose, hone one's blunted arrow tips.



> I'm unaware of any RPG which has done the actual research which would be required to establish this (and I don't even think such research is feasible). Thus any values for inventory are effectively arbitrary gamist constructs to begin with. A lantern requires 1 pint of oil every 4 hours because Gary Gygax decided that was the right number to vex his players with a logistical challenge in 1974. I seriously question if this number is based in any sort of reality at all. I mean, it sounds plausible, but 1 hour and 12 hours also sound plausible!



Yep, and a DM can even play with this a bit by having different-capacity lanterns available for sale. (though once a party gets access to _Continual Light_ it's rarely important)

I agree some of the valuations etc. are arbitrary...but the fact that there's valuations at all is already significantly more realistic than a system that has no valuations for minor gear like this.



> Given the dubiousness of all these numbers, who says that the procedure of using plot points (probably along with some general consideration of how often the resource has been used) isn't AT LEAST as accurate in actual terms as the fairly arbitrary tracking you're espousing? I mean, I can't even come close to proving it is or it isn't, but neither can you! Thus I would claim that this ENTIRELY an aesthetic 'verisimilitude' type of question. This is also why I discount the very existence of 'simulationism' as a thing in RPGs.



Well, we'll probably continue to disagree on a foundational basis, then; as while I don't see full-on absolute simulationism/realism as even remotely possible I still see it as a worthy goal which one can move toward via what one does with all those great many little choice points I mentioned above.

Lan-"nobody's perfect, but that never stops us from trying"-efan


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, first I wouldn't consider "wants to meet the Steward" to be an agenda or element of characterization that would drive story in Story Now. It might be indicative of a certain type of personality. Imagine for instance in the real-world a guy that wants to meet President Trump. I'd still need to know his reasons to draw any conclusions about him.




I think I understand.  In Story Now there would be some sort of goal to become the trusted guard of a king or the like and the play towards becoming a member of the Stewards guard would be guided by that agenda.  It still doesn't change what I'm saying, though.  You've already stated that the odds of it happening with my playstyle are slim.  I tend to disagree with your assessment of those odds, as players like to do cool things like attach themselves to kings, but that also doesn't matter for my point.

You stated that the things Pippin did REQUIRED agendas to be present.  They don't and you have now acknowledged that they don't.  Whether the odds are 1-2, 1-10, 1-100 or 1-1000000, there still is no requirement for an agenda to be present.  It can happen in my playstyle just as I claimed. 

I will certainly acknowledge, though, that it would be much easier to achieve if the player has a pre-set agenda and the DM is working to see that it has a chance of happening.  



> Now, when you say its still 'random', I agree that there is an element of chance (at least in the sorts of mechanics we've discussed in this thread). The point is that, even with failures, the player is addressing something dramatic, whatever it is, and its what he decided to address. Truthfully he MIGHT never meet Denethor, but he WILL be placed in a situation which addresses the issue at hand WRT character development. That is Pippin will find himself in some situation which tests his belief. I would say his belief here is likely something to do with his admiration of the Gondorians and a desire to serve/follow them (this seems a consistent motive in both his allegiance to Denethor and to Faramir). His desire to repay a debt to them for the service Boromir rendered may be at the root of it too. In any case there are myriad ways that could play out. I'd note that the GM is framing things, so it IS possible that certain story elements could come to pass regardless of checks.




I agree, which is why I said that with my playstyle the character growth would still happen.  All of the same elements are there with the exception of the pre-set agenda.  Boromir's sacrifice is very likely to cause my players to feel indebted in the same way, and that will play out in future choices.  Character and character growth are very, very important to my players, as well as myself.  Some of that will be established when they make their character, though they don't usually tell me about it.  Sometimes they do.  Often, though, something significant and unplanned will when put together with what they know of their character, cause completely unplanned and sometimes sideways character growth.  They head off growing in a completely different direction.  It's awesome to see.



> I would hypothesize that perhaps the whole question of what happened to Faramir is partly a result of Pippin, and maybe also Gandalf and Aragorn, failing some checks at some point. Gandalf in particular could have understood Denethor better and IIRC he even takes some of the blame for the situation himself. Had things gone somewhat differently then the same loyalty/duty question would likely have arisen in a slightly different context. Perhaps a power struggle between Denethor and Aragorn, with the added dimension of Faramir's loyalty (which would be a complex question for him too). One way or another this question WOULD be addressed, and the very nature of Denethor plus Pippin's debt to Boromir's family makes it practically inevitable that it will come to a head.




I agree, and it's these choices and/or successes and failures, that move the game.  Again, these same sorts of things occur in my game, but just aren't done with the same kind of collaboration and pre-planned agendas.  



> The point is, it isn't 'random' in Story Now. The EXACT details are contingent on mechanics, but the trajectory is quite easily within reach, and we would consider the GM to have been well-served in his drawing of Denethor's personality, which drives the whole thing (and obviously this was a good piece of work by Tolkien as well to drive his story).




Again, it's not random in my game, either.  It's just not pre-planned.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> 'classic' D&D (by which I mean essentially TSR D&D) follows an arc of development. The earliest conception of the game is of a vast dungeon, filled with treasure and monsters, which the PCs explore systematically. It may, or may not in some cases, be associated with a 'town' where the PCs can recruit henchmen, heal, buy and sell things, etc.
> 
> The next stage of evolution was to include a 'wilderness' which follows a similar formula (entirely generated by the GM and discovered by the players through action resolution, with its characteristics, the facts of the game world, acting as constrains). This wilderness exploration stage starts to break down the paradigm, because the dungeon puts hard constraints on things, you can only travel by the prescribed routes, etc. but the wilderness has far fewer such constraints.



I disagree that it breaks down the paradigm.  It just means the DM has to be better at either preparing her world-setting or making it up on the fly (or both at once).



> Finally high level play created even greater issues by further breaking down the constraints and thus making it hard for the GM to anticipate the course of action. It also involved things like 'freeholds' and such, which are MUCH more abstract and rely on highly subjective GM judgments.



Having it be hard for the GM to anticipate what happens next is just fine.  Again, it simply points to her having to be well-versed in her setting and - as I often put it - ready willing and able to hit the curveballs thrown her way by the players.



> As players demanded more dramatic elements in play the game evolved in conception ultimately to 2nd Edition AD&D where the game EXPLICITLY states that the objective is to create interesting stories involving the PC's heroic exploits.



Yeah, 2e swung this pendulum too far the other way; though I'm not entirely sure whether the impetus came from below (player demand) or above (designer preference).



> On the contrary, from the publication of the module A1, which was, IMHO, the first 'story based' adventure to be published (someone will probably find antecedents, but it isn't that important)



It was in many ways also the first hard-core railroad series (or proto-AP) to be published, and has been rightly condemned for that over time...though nowhere near as hard-core a railroad as DL, which came a few years later.


> the game left the original paradigm behind in the sense that the narrative was now ABOUT the characters and their dramatic needs and evolution. It was CERTAINLY far less constrained than previous play.



No...and no.  Sorry. 

Remember what the A-series was to begin with - a series of tournament modules.  Those modules weren't really intended to tell a character-arc story at all, just for one to lead to the next enough that as players advanced to the next level of the tournament they could keep the same characters and with a minimum of exposition pick up the story as they'd already played through it.  And if anything the A-series in campaign use is more constraining to play than less, as the players/PCs have to follow the trail...and have no choice whatsoever at the A3-A4 jump.

Dragonlance is the series that started the whole story-first business; and people IME either loved it or despised it.  This one was all about character development through a story arc...though unless you inserted your own characters into the books' story somehow you were developing pre-gen characters someone else had designed.  But, extremely constraining in play. 



> So, I would say that A1 marks the 'death of the dungeon maze' as the principle paradigm. I can attest, again by having been there, that this was a conclusion drawn AT THE TIME by both players and reviewers of this module and its successors.



Perhaps, but I don't think it was the death of the dungeon maze.  It offered - in a still-dungeon-mazy sort of way - an alternative; which DL fully fleshed out later.  Dungeon-based adventures still kept on coming, even into 3e.

A2 in fact is extremely linear in its design - particularly the upper level - when you look at it closely; it's designed to funnel the party into each encounter in a specific order no matter what they do, other than there's one branch they can take that dead-ends.  When I ran it I stuck some extra doors and connections in there to make it a bit less predictable for me as DM and provide a few more choice points for the players/PCs.



> While I agree that play methods have NOT in a lot of cases evolved too much, I will address how this is in tension with actual play practice below.
> 
> Yes, and these factors are in tension with, and undermine, exactly what you contend is 'easy'. In fact it isn't easy at all! 2e D&D is so infamously incoherent in the alignment of its declared narrative agenda and its GM-centered and often procedural mechanics that it hardly even bears comment! The only way to achieve the sort of narrative story arcs imagined is Illusionism and GM force, and the stories themselves must largely stem from the GM's imagination.



Exactly.

If you read 2e's "declared narrative agenda" to mean that it wants to give the DM a better avenue to in effect narrate her story and run the players/PCs through it (in other words, Dragonlance without the intervening novels breaking up the played-at-the-table story), then it suits itself very well.  If you want to read more things into the idea of a narrative agenda, such as player control over the fiction or play-to-find-out virtual-world-design sorts of things, then no; you won't find them, because they aren't there.

2e as launched pretty much invites the DM to run a railroad game.  Later came the pushback of players seeking more control, leading to the various splatbooks which - while still not getting them off the train - gave them much more by way of mechanical options for their PCs.

That's where 3e with its "Back to the dungeon" mantra really took root: it by extension meant "Get off the train"!



> ... a negative-image of Story Now.



Would that be Story Some Other Time? 



> Needless to say, I have little use for the maunderings of Mike Mearls. I think his idea of 'pillars of play' is unhelpful at the very least,



Where I think it's a rather brilliant boil-down of what's always been there: that there's other aspects to play than just combat, and here's what they are, explained.



> and is at best an analysis of one facet of one specific technique of RPG play, which he seems to imagine is somehow all-encompassing.



The only aspect of play it doesn't encompass well is downtime, which I would add as a fourth pillar.  Otherwise, what's it missing?



> At the very least he seems to imagine that it is all he need ever address in terms of catering to his specific audience. This is part of the reason I have analyzed 5e as the 'tombstone' of D&D. It envisages no further horizon, and no ambition for any wider play experience, or any desire to explore beyond the boundaries of existing D&D lore, play techniques, rule formulations, etc.



I think you're being a bit pessimistic here.  That said, sooner or later you'll inevitably get to ten and where do you go from there?  These amps don't go to 11.



> So, speaking for myself and not the OP, I don't even consider the whole question of 'pillars' to be interesting. I've reformulated by own flavor of 'D&D' upon an entirely different set of precepts. The idea of pillars and some sort of 'balance between them' is irrelevant within my conception. That doesn't make exploration an impossible agenda, it just puts it at the level of agenda, and not of a 'mechanical space' within the game's rules construct. Put it this way, I would say that if a player chooses to make character build choices and narrative choices which focus on abilities which relate to exploration, then Story Now concerns dictate that the GM in a HoML game would present exploratory challenges.



I don't see the pillars as mechanical constructs so much as I see them as focus points for play at the table.

Look at it this way: what is there that ever happens in play that isn't encompassed by one or more of:

Combat
Downtime
Exploration
Interaction (or Socializing, or whatever term goes towards the talky bits with other PCs and with NPCs)

The story grows out of the sum of what all these activities, repeated as necessary, lead to within the fiction.

But, note the sequence: activities first, story later - the story grows out of the activities; and even if the DM has a pre-authored story in mind these activities might send it in a totally different direction.

What you want to do is have the activities grow out of the story; the players set the story parameters via their beliefs and goals and then the activities become simply means to an end.



> I would say that, dramatically, exploration is generally more an element of framing than it is a direct response to character development. In other words a character, dramatically, is unlikely to have an agenda that is purely 'explore for the sake of exploration'. If I was presented with a character which the player had drawn up like this, the first thing I would do is challenge them to explore the MOTIVE for exploration, because exploration is an ACTIVITY, not a belief or end goal.



Combat is an activity.  Social interaction with others in the fiction is an activity.  Downtime, or what you do during it, is an activity.  None of these are beliefs or end goals, and that's the point: they're the things you do en route to achieving (or not) your end goals.  Because of this, the game has to provide opportunities - and time! - for all of these to occur.



> Lets imagine, a player might respond that he is a worshipper of Ioun, and holds exploration to be an element of devotion to his patron. So now the character's core belief has been refined to a dedication to Ioun, and that probably has some motivational story attached to it. The exploration element isn't being denied, it is described as an interest and avocation of the character. It just isn't what we would generally leverage. A story would take place WHILE exploring. The story might test the character's devotion to Ioun, maybe by making exploration a costly activity in some way (IE loss of lives, wealth expended, necessity to make morally fraught choices, etc.). So I can frame a scene as "while exploring XYZ, your brother-in-law falls in a pit and perishes, what about that?" (I'm extrapolating the outcome of the action here, as well as the initial framing). How does the character break the news to his sister? Does he consider this price to be worth the service to Ioun which it represents? Just how far will he go? Will he sacrifice 10 lives to cross the mountains? 20? 100? How will the folks back home treat that? Will he be able to return and face them?



You could frame that scene, but you'd be doing no justice to the actual activity of exploring...you know, the mappy searchy cautious tense stuff that takes time at the table.  Then at some point there might be a pit trap into which the brother-in-law, having failed various game-mechanics to avoid it, falls and dies.

Now the exploration probably turns to a) finding a safe way out with the corpse, and-or then b) finding someone who can revive it.  Failing that, the focus turns to the Interaction activity if he goes home and tells them the bad news...which might quickly lead to the Combat activity if they don't take it well! 

Lanefan


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> That's not true.  Isildur built a city during the third age, and things were far from static.  Actually, all or almost all were built in the third age, since the third age began shortly after the sinking of Numenor.
> 
> http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Gondor
> 
> 
> 
> That's hardly the entirety of the history of Gondor.  There are many other official sources.
> 
> 
> 
> Gondor's influence waxed and waned as well.  It was far from static during those 3000 years.




Dude, don't get into an argument with me on ME history etc. I think I read LotR in 1st grade (and probably 10 times since). Isildur was the Son of Elendil, he cut the One Ring from Sauron's hand with the shards of Narsil (the sword Aragorn carries 3000 years later, still broken!). The fall of Sauron was the event from which the Third Age is dated, and Gondor was founded by Elendil, so its date falls within 100 years give or take of the start of the Third Age (I'd have to look to see the EXACT dates, but I'm sure I'm VERY close). Gandalf states "It is a little known fact that Isildur spent some time in Minas Anor before going north to take up the crown of Arnor." This is his explanation for why a description of the ring, in Isildur's hand, was to be found lost in the Minas Tirith archives, 3000 years later. 

The sinking of Numenor did preceed the end of the Second Age, yes. Elendil lead the exiles to Middle Earth and founded Gondor and Arnor. Sauron, now in his 'lidless eye' form, quickly mustered war on them. 

As I recall, Minas Ithil, later Minas Morgul, was established right after the war to help guard the entrance into Mordor, but it wasn't Isildur who did that AFAIK, it would have been Valendil (Isildur's brother and King of Gondor after his father's death) or one of his successors. 

At some point, maybe later I'm not sure, Osgiliath was founded and was the main city of Gondor. Again this must have been SOON after, because the master Palantir was housed there and linked to all the other stones, which were at Minas Anor, Minas Ithil, Orthanc, Weathertop, the Havens of Cirdain, and one other location, which IIRC was in the south. None of the palantiri were ever repositioned thereafter, although I seem to remember that the Orthanc stone was originally somewhere else? I'm not sure. 

Anyway, 3000 years later no really new works exist in Gondor, the same 3 cities exist (1 is now an evil tower filled with Nazgul, and one is in ruins) and there are said to be some other towns and perhaps cities along the coast, but its clear that Minas Tirith is the most important. There are also 'the Havens of Pelargir' at the Mouths of Anduin, but we never get any information about what sort of a place it is, aside from it being a roadstead where Gondor's naval forces were based. Presumably these havens already existed as this is where Elendil first made landfall.

Even the Gates of Anduin, with Amon Hen and its partner on the east bank and the great guardian statues, are all stated by Aragorn to be 'mighty works of old' and he clearly indicates they are depictions of Elendil and Isildur. Perhaps they were built later, but it isn't likely it was MUCH later. 

So basically, AFAICT NOTHING was built in Gondor after the first couple of generations, the whole kingdom simply remained sort of frozen in amber with only some gradual decay. The appendices talk about a whole variety of wars, plagues, etc. which happened at various times, but in no case is there really any indication of any growth, substantial change, etc. 

Arnor is at least a BIT different, but not much. It exists for a good long while, well over 1000 years, and then eventually devolves into a number of petty states. Eventually they are all swallowed up by 'Angmar' and apparently virtually all life in the north is extinguished, as, outside of Bree and the Shire, there is NO population significant enough to produce any sort of political unit or state of any kind at all. It is stated clearly that both Bree and the Shire remember the Kings and 'await their return'. There's some statements about the existence of 'Dunlendings' further south, but its unclear if they have anything but some tribal organization.

No, the Third Age of ME is pretty much marked by NOTHING happening. The elves have pretty much blown off ME, except Cirdain, Galadriel, and Elrond, and a few of their immediate dependents. The dwarves build a few new mines in the Blue Mtns and at Erebor, but nothing else happens with them either for 3000 years. 'Lesser men' seem fairly busy, but they seem to mostly stay clear of the west, or live only in 'fringe' areas like Dunland, the edges of Mirkwood, or in the far north. Elrond stays holed up in Rivendell the whole time, Cirdain in the havens, and Galadriel in Loth Lorien. The ents keep to Fangorn, etc.

Edit: As for wikis... There's LOTS of material that was later generated by ICE for MERP etc. None of it is canonical. It is largely logical extrapolations of what was presented in LotR and related material, but TBH what most impressed me about it was how profound the difference was between Tolkien's ageless kingdoms and the RP-able mundane material of the ICE stuff. ME becomes a much less mythic and abstract place, because you really cannot RP in what Tolkien wrought, at least not much. Its just too barren of anything HAPPENING.


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> I find your contention that the secret door popped out of thin air and never existed prior to the player discovering it to be absurd. Finding that secret door caused it to always have existed in that scene, making it backstory.



Once again you seem unwilling to distinguish fantasy from reality.

In the fiction, of course the secret door was always there. But at the table, its existence was established as a result of the check. Therefore its existence is not part of the backstory, as Eero Tuovinen uses that term. You are free to use backstory to mean "elements of the fiction which predate the present in-fiction moment of play" if you want, but that's not how Eero is using it. He is using it to mean suuff that is literally pre-authored or is notinally pre-authored. (The latter is what is often called, on these boards, "winging it". Establishing the existence of a secret door as a result of a check is not "winging it".)



Maxperson said:


> I also find your contention that action resolution is limited in effect to only the resolution of the action to also be absurd.



I don't really understand this, becuse "only the resolution of the action" is not a termn whose meaning you have explained.

But in any event, action resolution changes the fiction. It thereby contribues to future framing and fictional positioning. Which in turn fees into future action declarations and resolutions. I wouldn't have though that this is contentious.

In some systems, action resolution also generates discrete mechanical consequences whose connection to the fiction may be more or less tight, depending on system and congtext (eg in AD&D a successful attack roll results in the mechanical consequence of a depletion of opponent hit points - what this correlats to in the fiction is, by the rules, rather uncertain and relatively unimportant to future action resolution).


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> If by "going where the action is", you mean "instantly(in real world time) appearing where the action is", you are correct. If by "going where the action is", you mean "showing up where the action is", you are incorrect. It's only the travel portion where we disagree.



The phrase "go where the action is" is one that I borrow from Eero Tuovinen. It is a metaphor or a slogan - it means _frame scenss that are thematically compelling, and force meaningful choices. Because we're talking about player (not just PC) choices that are meaningful, the compulsion has to result from something that is inherent to the pc as conceived and played by the player. (Hence the significance, in Tuovinen's account of the "standard narrativistic model", of player "advocacy" of and for the character.)

"Travel", in this context, is an illusion. Upthread, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] explained the swift narration of 15 to 20 miles of travel through Moria on the basis that there were no intersections, cracks in the path, etc. But this is to get the order of explanation backwards. Moria is not a real place; JRRT is making it up. Because he wants to go where the action is - ie set up the confrontation with the orcs and the balrog, which is foreshadowed by the discovery of the fate of Balin's colony - he narrates a swift journey through a largely featureless area.

Likewise the joureny from Rivendell to the Misty Mountains: one doesn't explain the brief narration in terms of the lack of interesting stuff that happened. That would be to suppose that an imaginary world exercised causal power upon JRRT's brain. The explanation is the opposite: because, narratively, JRRT sees nothing of interest in Eregion, he narrates a largely uneventful journey to the mountaints.

Exactly the same principles hold true in RPGing. If everyone agrees that the next interesting thing is going to involve the fire giants, then the trip there can be narrated as swift and largely uneventful. This is not "cheating", or "cheapening" anything. The gameworld isn't an independent reality that demands respect and attention. It's a fictional construction, and just as JRRT constructs his fiction to suit his narrative purposes, so a group of RPGers can do the same.



Maxperson said:



			In both your style and mine, the DM and players can establish through game play that Pippin meets Denthor, an attack upon Minis Tirith happens, etc. The arc can both succeed and fail in both styles of play. And I've already established my style also "goes where the action is", even thought it takes longer to get there than in your style.
		
Click to expand...


This is oxymoronic. To say that "it takes longer" is simply to say that you are not going where the action is; that you are framing the PCs (and thereby the players) into situations that are not thematically compelling, and do not provoke meaningful choices.

Furthermore, this was already clear from your earlier posts, in what you said about the scene with the bazaar and the feather. You said that you would not just frome the PC (and thereby the player) into a situation is thematically compelling and provokes a meaningful choice (ie  "Do I try and acquire this feather?") You said that you would start the scene at (say) the city gate, and the player would have to "work" for the opportunity to make that choice.

That is not "going where the action is". Choosing whether to look for a market, or a wizard's guild, or a curio shop, isn't - in the context of a PC whose player has written the Belief "I won't leave Hardby without a useful item for confronting my balrog-possessed brother", that is not a thematically compelling choice. (Contrast: if the Belief was "I will find someone who knows of the location of a useful item for confronting my Balrog-psossed brother", then it might be.)



Maxperson said:





			
				pemerton said:
			
		


			for the above to work, Pippin's player has to signal some sort of agenda - eg, following Boromir's death, formally (as might happen in Burning Wheel) or informally (as might happen in 4e) signalling that I will repay the debt I owe to this man.
		
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This is incorrect. No agenda has to be established formally. All that is required are game choices to be made at each point in the process.
		
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Notice that I didn't say that there has to be an agenda established formally. I said that the player has to signal some sort of agenda formally (as is the case in BW) or informally (as might happen in 4e). Informally in this context is a contrary of, not a synonym for, "formally".

As far as the claim that game play is enough without any signalling of agenca, whether formal or informal, let's look at what you say:



Maxperson said:



			Pippin arrives at Minis Tirith. Pippin through game play meets or does not meet Denethor. When invited, if the player does not want Pippin to meet Denethor, he may feign sickness. If he does, then he goes to meet Denethor. The next decision point is whether to swear fealty to Denethor when offered. When the pre-authored attack happens, Pippin's fealty is called upon. And so on at each point in the process.
		
Click to expand...


Denetheor didn't ask Pippin to swear fealty - this is Pippin's intiative.

In terms of play, what if the options the GM presents don't include the chance to meet Boromir's father? Pippin didn't seek this out, after all - from the point of view of the fiction, it is a chance thing. But if Pippin's player has signalled an agenda (formally or informally), then the GM knows to include Boromir's father as an element of a scene.

What if there is no pre-authored attack? No pre-authored presence of Farimir as the charismatic leader of the defence?

Your own account of this reveals why, in the absence of some sort of agenda signfalling which the GM then responds to in choosing what elements to incorproate into the framing of situations, there is no guarnatee that dramatic arcs will emerge in the course of play.



Maxperson said:



			If the player makes certain decisions, it plays out as written in the books. If the player makes other decisions, it does not.
		
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The GM decisions also matter - eg to have Denethor as a NPC present in the situations s/he has prepared; to have an attack upon Minas Tirith, etc.

Furthermore, the issue isn't about whether or not it plays out as in the book. The question is, if the player amkes other choices do we get a dramatic arc? Thematically compelling vhoices? What happens if Pippin offers fealty to Denethor and Denethor refuses to accept it? (In 4e, this could be the result of a failed Diplomacy check in a skill challenge. In BW, it could be the outcome of a duel of wits.) Now "the action" has changed - perhaps Pippin seeks out Farimir instead. But if you've already scripted that Farimir is in Osgiliath or Ithilien, and if you require that bit of travel to be pl1ayed out because otherwise the gameworld is not being "neutral", well now you don't have "story now" at all - you've got a standard wilderness crawl with a McGuffin at the end of it.



AbdulAlhazred said:



			in some totally theoretical sense it isn't IMPOSSIBLE that you could produce this narrative by your methods without an explicit agenda, it is just vanishingly unlikely.
		
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This is what Ron Edwards calls "the monkeys-might-fly-out-my-butt principle"!



AbdulAlhazred said:



			But again, this is only allowing to pick between a menu of options the GM makes available. If the player chooses some OTHER course, then it will fail (presumably due to as-yet unrevealed backstory which makes the action impossible). As my earlier response to you (after you posted this) makes clear, the chances that the GM will 'get it right' in respect to a SPECIFIC agenda of a player is highly limited. Now, if the GM is willing to alter his backstory or generate it as essentially Story Now framing (IE to answer player agenda) then it might work. But this isn't 'proving me false', it is VINDICATING my point! To the extent that you abandon the classic approach and adopt Story Now techniques, and are willing to allow the player's statements of agenda to reshape any accidentally impeding backstory, you can start to achieve the kind of results I would get.
		
Click to expand...


Right. And the "picking from the GM's menu" is what I have referred to, upthread, as a railroad.

And as you say, a GM who starts adopting player-responsive techniques can of course generate "story now"-type play! Who would be surprised by that - that if you adopt "story now" methods you'll get "story now" resuts?​_


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## pemerton

clearstream said:


> I don't tackle shared storytelling



My point is that your discussion of worldbuilding doesn't identify or focus on those aspects of RPGing - framing of situations by a GM and then resolution actions declared by players for their PCs - which are distinctive of RPGing and distinguish it, as an activity, from shared storytelling.



clearstream said:


> That narrows the question to the point of meaninglessness. It becomes - Is the sort of world-building that supports tactical play right for story-focused play? No, probably not. But world-building, like play, is more varied than that.



I assert tha the bulk of conemporary D&D play uses exactly the same sort of worldbuilding: dungeon maps on grids; hex maps of overland regions; random encounter tabls; GM placementof NPCs, treasures, etc in particular keyed locations on these maps; thoes NPCs having pre-authored personalities, like "won't accept bribes"; etc.

In this thread,  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] seems very clearly to espouse these techniques (eg look at his emphasis on the importance of narrating intersections when the PCs walk with their hosts through the citadel of Mal Arundak).  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] also seems to have something similar in mind with his reference to the gameworld being "neutral".


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## Guest 6801328

This debate seems to have an analogue in two different version of a character's backstory.

I gather from the comments some (e.g. [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]) have made in the past that players should put a lot of time into their character's backstory, before the campaign starts, with the more detail the better, and that if at some point in the game the player wants to justify their character's knowledge of something based on backstory, it should be in that document they wrote to prepare for the game.

I take the opposite approach: a loosely defined concept is plenty to get started, and then as the game progresses the player "discovers" more about their character's backstory.  This might manifest as improvisations to explain things in the present, or just flashes of creative inspiration.  But just as we learn more and more about a character as we read a novel, the table (including the character's player) learn more about the character as they play the game.

Just two different ways to go about playing the game.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> In the fiction, of course the secret door was always there. But at the table, its existence was established as a result of the check. Therefore its existence is not part of the backstory, as Eero Tuovinen uses that term. You are free to use backstory to mean "elements of the fiction which predate the present in-fiction moment of play" if you want, but that's not how Eero is using it. He is using it to mean suuff that is literally pre-authored or is notinally pre-authored. (The latter is what is often called, on these boards, "winging it". Establishing the existence of a secret door as a result of a check is not "winging it".)




First, backstory is entirely within the fiction.  It exists nowhere else.  The DMs notes are meaningless until they hit the fiction where they become backstory, your comment on reality and fiction is not really relevant. 
 Second, the existence of the door due to a check is irrelevant.  The creation of the door is "winging it", because it is being added in the moment.  That there is an action declaration and roll just means that the attempt to wing a secret door into the backstory can fail.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Agreed to a point.  One can, however, try to mitigate or lessen the bowing to practical considerations where there is a clear choice, and take the realistic route.  A good example is fireball: is it a sphere (as in "ball", as in 1e) or a cubist construct (as 3e has it) or a cube (as 4e has it)?  It's a clear choice: the 3e and 4e models are gamist, the 1e model is more realistic - so go with the 1e model.



How good an example is it? a 4e Fireball is an area burst 2, meaning it is a full 25' across. This is a SLIGHT exaggeration of the 'canonical' 20' diameter fireball. the upshot is, if you actually draw the 'canonical' fireball inside the 25' 5x5 square 4e footprint they are identical, assuming you used the rule 'any square partially in the AoE is affected'. Thus the 4e fireball compromises in no respect on the 'classic' fireball, aside from exactly regularizing the target points in 5' increments, which IMHO isn't a really big deal. However the procedure for resolution is about an order of magnitude simpler to handle. 

In fact however, the canonical fireball is supposed to fill a 'volume' of (IIRC 22,000 cubic feet, or 22 10x10x10 cubes, expanding in all directions). Exactly how this is resolved is left to the GM. So you can't, always at least, even say exactly WHAT is within the area of the canonical fireball of classic D&D. In practice few GM's take into account the height of ceilings and other such factors when resolving them. So really I'm not convinced that 4e's approach IS actually 'less realistic' in any meaningful sense.



> There's about a gajillion little choice points like this within the game.  Some game systems want to make some of these choices for you (e.g. 4e firecubes or C+-H ammo tracking) and there I just push back and say no, wrong choice, worse game.



This is an aesthetic choice for you, which it seems to me is mostly made in the direction of "this is traditional" and not necessarily a really objective evaluation of any kind of realism. So I'm not exactly impressed with the degree to which this OBJECTIVELY amounts to simulationism. 



> Which is far easier to achieve using a more realistic or simulationist foudation than a less-so one.



As I pointed out in my ammunition discussion in a previous post, I remain unconvinced that the most basically 'realistic' procedure is actually more accurate, even in a simulation sense. In a verisimilitude sense (which again I consider a somewhat separate and purely aesthetic concept) there's nothing that MUST make what you say true either.



> Yes, these do kinda go hand in hand.



Eh, don't overstate things. It is EASIEST OF ALL to reason about purely gamist constructs, as these are highly structured and easily understood and implemented at the table without questions of interpretation. Having played 4e for 10 years I can say that this is HUGE. Nobody can argue in a 4e battle about exactly what the fireball did. Its clear. Its quite easy to reason about it!



> That's where the DM has to put on the referee's uniform and enforce it.
> Ditto, as now we're into borderline cheating.



Good grief! Game Masters are now cops, and players are cheating if they don't manage to accurately record every arrow they use? Play as you wish, I have NO desire to get near that!



> Situationally dependent in all cases.  For example, far more likely to recover arrows that missed their mark if the fight's on an open grassy field than if the fight's in a confined area with hard rock walls; though the search of the open grassy field would also take somewhat longer than the search of a small room.  That's for the DM to work out...and as there's always going to be a random element anyway, dice are good for this.



Exactly! And there is no way anyone can say what is actually realistic. The type of arrows, the humidity, the amount of light, etc etc etc are all going to factor into if they break or split, how far away they are, how hard to see, etc. There are actually quite a few factors. To the point where, as I said before, you're totally 'winging it' to make a ruling. This is one of those places where the GM is tempted to either favor the PCs, or something else. Frankly I don't recommend this sort of thing, I'd rather use the Cortex+ Heroic method!



> This I honestly don't know, though if one can sharpen a sword while camping at night one can, I suppose, hone one's blunted arrow tips.



Sure, but what of the fletching, the nock of the arrow, etc? Its going to depend on how it was made, the exact materials, workmanship, etc. Eventually (and in my limited experience as a very amateur archer not super long) any given arrow will degrade. Again, simulating this realistically is probably not feasible, the best you will get is some largely gamist "it works 3 times" or something like that. Congrats you now have to track EACH ARROW and how many times it has been used? Nobody is going to do that. You could reduce the fraction that are recovered to produce 



> Yep, and a DM can even play with this a bit by having different-capacity lanterns available for sale. (though once a party gets access to _Continual Light_ it's rarely important)
> 
> I agree some of the valuations etc. are arbitrary...but the fact that there's valuations at all is already significantly more realistic than a system that has no valuations for minor gear like this.



I'm certainly not faulting classic D&D for just inventing some usable GAMIST valuations and numbers. Gygax didn't go research this stuff because he didn't have to. His numbers are within common sense and thus don't invalidate player common sense, and they work for what he wants. Also they're in the PHB, so the players should KNOW them (in 1e anyway). 

All I'm proposing is that the consideration in 1e was gamist, not simulationist, and that in games like Cortex+ (or HoML) that the primarily story-centered approach taken is not really LESS realistic than Gygax's. It is less 'numerical model', that's all.



> Well, we'll probably continue to disagree on a foundational basis, then; as while I don't see full-on absolute simulationism/realism as even remotely possible I still see it as a worthy goal which one can move toward via what one does with all those great many little choice points I mentioned above.
> 
> Lan-"nobody's perfect, but that never stops us from trying"-efan




I just don't see all that as having such a high value, when I seem to be able to be equally realistic using a simpler process. As I said before, this is a verisimilitude question, pure aesthetics, and not one of any agenda at all (in the GNS sense of the word agenda).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> I disagree that it breaks down the paradigm.  It just means the DM has to be better at either preparing her world-setting or making it up on the fly (or both at once).



Well, the dungeon is special in a few ways. Its a HIGHLY constrained environment, and most of the common likely situations have pre-existing rules structure (dealing with traps, climbing, ropes, secret doors, slopes, supplies, time, doors, surprise, tracking, etc.). There are genre tropes (deeper = more dangerous) etc. which also factor in. It is, of course, possible for a situation in a dungeon to be entirely up to the GM to decide what would happen, but USUALLY (certainly at low levels) the possibilities are close to a closed set. 

In the wilderness none of this is so true. There are rules and conventions, but the possible options for the players, the things they can attempt to do, the situations which can be generated, is MUCH larger, and much more likely to produce these situations where the GM is forced to make up something 'rule like' (a ruling). This can lead to a breakdown in player agency WRT what the characters can do. 



> Having it be hard for the GM to anticipate what happens next is just fine.  Again, it simply points to her having to be well-versed in her setting and - as I often put it - ready willing and able to hit the curveballs thrown her way by the players.



The point I'm making is this is far afield from the initial paradigm. The GM is not just running a game, and using existing rules. The game is now basically a creature of the GM. Most GMs express this as a great difficulty in being able to place significant challenges in front of the PCs which the players cannot simply find an end run around. I know how this is, being VERY good at torpedoing GM plans and defeating the most crazy threats with unanticipateable means at high levels.



> Yeah, 2e swung this pendulum too far the other way; though I'm not entirely sure whether the impetus came from below (player demand) or above (designer preference).
> 
> It was in many ways also the first hard-core railroad series (or proto-AP) to be published, and has been rightly condemned for that over time...though nowhere near as hard-core a railroad as DL, which came a few years later.



Yeah, it is, which is in fact part of the illustration of what happened with classic D&D when it tried to do 'story', and continues to happen when you do story with a system that isn't equipped for it. If you know the right techniques you can do story, but a largely linear flow AP-type setup won't cut it. TSR was out of its depth here.



> No...and no.  Sorry.
> 
> Remember what the A-series was to begin with - a series of tournament modules.  Those modules weren't really intended to tell a character-arc story at all, just for one to lead to the next enough that as players advanced to the next level of the tournament they could keep the same characters and with a minimum of exposition pick up the story as they'd already played through it.  And if anything the A-series in campaign use is more constraining to play than less, as the players/PCs have to follow the trail...and have no choice whatsoever at the A3-A4 jump.



Heh, yeah, I was at that tournement 

So, yes, the A series is quite linear, and TSR didn't understand how to make a story work in D&D (never did figure it out even 15 years later). They were still TRYING. The re-use of the tournament material was another issue, which didn't help.



> Dragonlance is the series that started the whole story-first business; and people IME either loved it or despised it.  This one was all about character development through a story arc...though unless you inserted your own characters into the books' story somehow you were developing pre-gen characters someone else had designed.  But, extremely constraining in play.



DL to me was pretty much uninteresting. I was doing a better job of it already by that point. Again, illustrates how classic D&D's structure fails to work as a story game.



> Perhaps, but I don't think it was the death of the dungeon maze.  It offered - in a still-dungeon-mazy sort of way - an alternative; which DL fully fleshed out later.  Dungeon-based adventures still kept on coming, even into 3e.



Sure, even 4e has them (Tomb of Annihilation for instance, but even H1 is mostly a dungeon). I mean it was the death of the dungeon maze in a paradigmatic sense. That was no longer the model for all adventures.



> A2 in fact is extremely linear in its design - particularly the upper level - when you look at it closely; it's designed to funnel the party into each encounter in a specific order no matter what they do, other than there's one branch they can take that dead-ends.  When I ran it I stuck some extra doors and connections in there to make it a bit less predictable for me as DM and provide a few more choice points for the players/PCs.



Right, because, if you are going to A) have a story, and B) use a module, which necessitates a fixed number of set encounter locations, then you're pretty much stuck doing this. Nobody has really made headway in this, the APs for PF are pretty linear too! Actually they're BETTER, but only to the extent that they do what you did, add more paths such that encounters can happen in different orders. It helps, but it doesn't really make it a story centered game.



> Exactly.
> 
> If you read 2e's "declared narrative agenda" to mean that it wants to give the DM a better avenue to in effect narrate her story and run the players/PCs through it (in other words, Dragonlance without the intervening novels breaking up the played-at-the-table story), then it suits itself very well.  If you want to read more things into the idea of a narrative agenda, such as player control over the fiction or play-to-find-out virtual-world-design sorts of things, then no; you won't find them, because they aren't there.
> 
> 2e as launched pretty much invites the DM to run a railroad game.  Later came the pushback of players seeking more control, leading to the various splatbooks which - while still not getting them off the train - gave them much more by way of mechanical options for their PCs.
> 
> That's where 3e with its "Back to the dungeon" mantra really took root: it by extension meant "Get off the train"!



3e said that, but it means it about as much as 2e means what it says. My interpretation of 'Back to the Dungeon!' is "story gaming doesn't work, we can't do it, so lets just do what works, dungeon crawls!". 

HOWEVER 3e in fact has much of what is needed to do story gaming. It has strong character build systems, which allow the player to express through classes, race, PrC, skill choices, and feats, what he wants his character to be 'about' (and character backstory is of course available to fill in). It has a workable, if clunky, skill system that can handle checks to 'see what happens'. All it really lacks is GM and player advice on doing Story Now, but even 4e doesn't quite have that...

So, 3e can be seen as an advance, but it was kind of stillborn. Also, because d20 is open, it was easy to create variants of 3.x that actually do story now. There's no reason to play with the core rules and do it. 



> Would that be Story Some Other Time?



hehe. 



> Where I think it's a rather brilliant boil-down of what's always been there: that there's other aspects to play than just combat, and here's what they are, explained.
> 
> The only aspect of play it doesn't encompass well is downtime, which I would add as a fourth pillar.  Otherwise, what's it missing?
> 
> I think you're being a bit pessimistic here.  That said, sooner or later you'll inevitably get to ten and where do you go from there?  These amps don't go to 11.



Well, I think that 'D&D' in a more abstract sense continues. For now 5e is alive and well, but since it basically reneged on all of 4e's cosmological and lore evolutions, that aspect is kind of 'dead', its really a statement of 'things should remain the same, GW is the last word.' In terms of styles of play and other similar evolutions, again, 5e squarely rejects 4e's Story Game orientation, so where can you go from there? 

5e will, IMHO slowly become irrelevant. Maybe in 10-15 years when its largely left behind WotC/Hasbro will simply go on, a new set of designers will come and some new experiment will happen. I don't think D&D will be a major RPG at that point, though some completely new version might 'rise again'. 

Meanwhile other 'D&Ds' will do the innovating. I guess this vindicates the vision that produced the OGL in the first place. New games will sprout from D&D's fertile soil to re-imagine it in the form of Story Game, of this that or the other thing we don't even have a name for today.



> I don't see the pillars as mechanical constructs so much as I see them as focus points for play at the table.
> 
> Look at it this way: what is there that ever happens in play that isn't encompassed by one or more of:
> 
> Combat
> Downtime
> Exploration
> Interaction (or Socializing, or whatever term goes towards the talky bits with other PCs and with NPCs)
> 
> The story grows out of the sum of what all these activities, repeated as necessary, lead to within the fiction.
> 
> But, note the sequence: activities first, story later - the story grows out of the activities; and even if the DM has a pre-authored story in mind these activities might send it in a totally different direction.
> 
> What you want to do is have the activities grow out of the story; the players set the story parameters via their beliefs and goals and then the activities become simply means to an end.



Yes, and in this Story Now kind of thing it isn't that useful to classify the activities. I don't need to have characters 'balanced' between activities or have some of each pillar in my game, or any other such things. I need to have activities reflect story considerations. Only the dramatic characteristics and actual narratives of the activities, and how that feeds back into driving the story matters. Notice how Story Games MOSTLY have a pretty generic type of mechanics too, even 4e is very much this way, because there's not really a value in distinguishing activities mechanically. Even 5e falls into this category pretty much.

I guess the only sense in which it might be worthwhile to think of classification of activities is in the sense of evaluating the mechanics of a game to see if all the envisaged character activities are covered adequately. So in HoML I'd think about if there's a 'boon' that produces 'guy who is good at tracking' (which a player who wants to track down someone might add to his character to express that).



> Combat is an activity.  Social interaction with others in the fiction is an activity.  Downtime, or what you do during it, is an activity.  None of these are beliefs or end goals, and that's the point: they're the things you do en route to achieving (or not) your end goals.  Because of this, the game has to provide opportunities - and time! - for all of these to occur.



Not really, maybe nobody is interested in anything that you would classify as 'social interaction', so why would I need to have that occur or make room for it? More to the point, these classes of activities are so broad and general that OF COURSE some of each is likely to happen in any game, and probably fairly often. I don't need to 'provide' those opportunities, they will arise if needed.



> You could frame that scene, but you'd be doing no justice to the actual activity of exploring...you know, the mappy searchy cautious tense stuff that takes time at the table.  Then at some point there might be a pit trap into which the brother-in-law, having failed various game-mechanics to avoid it, falls and dies.
> 
> Now the exploration probably turns to a) finding a safe way out with the corpse, and-or then b) finding someone who can revive it.  Failing that, the focus turns to the Interaction activity if he goes home and tells them the bad news...which might quickly lead to the Combat activity if they don't take it well!
> 
> Lanefan




hehe. Well, anyway, I think I'm doing exploration the justice it NEEDS, its an activity which provides framing for drama. I guess I would say that we can play it out in as much detail as we want. I think that the better way to think of a Story Now version of a dungeon exploration game would be to call the exploration the 'central theme' of that game. Thus 'crawling the dungeon' becomes the agenda, or at least the genre/milieu in which all else is cast. You would then be able to play out the drama I outlined above, and play through the details of exploration. How the characters handled the tension would then be a relevant thing. There might even be mechanics for that...


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> First, backstory is entirely within the fiction.  It exists nowhere else.  The DMs notes are meaningless until they hit the fiction where they become backstory, your comment on reality and fiction is not really relevant.



No, its INFINITELY relevant. You are committing a category error by confounding what happens in the game narrative, where the door has always existed, with what is happening in the GAME where the door just came into existence due to a check. The backstory is CLEARLY not a game narrative element, PCs don't discuss the backstory of the world they live in! (at least not unless you're playing some game which 'breaks the 4th wall' or something). The backstory is something which exists at the game table, in the game being played by the players, where the backstory is pre-existing, and the secret door is not! If you misinterpret Tuovinen's statements on backstory to mean something in the narrative, then you are misinterpreting him. He's not saying what you think he is, you have to think in terms of what is happening at the TABLE, which is actually the focus, the origin point for the considerations of Story Now, the game world and its narrative are secondary constructed elements which serve the agenda, they dictate nothing.


----------



## clearstream

pemerton said:


> My point is that your discussion of worldbuilding doesn't identify or focus on those aspects of RPGing - framing of situations by a GM and then resolution actions declared by players for their PCs - which are distinctive of RPGing and distinguish it, as an activity, from shared storytelling.



Reflecting on that point, I think it is because I see it as a continuum.



pemerton said:


> I assert tha the bulk of conemporary D&D play uses exactly the same sort of worldbuilding: dungeon maps on grids; hex maps of overland regions; random encounter tabls; GM placementof NPCs, treasures, etc in particular keyed locations on these maps; thoes NPCs having pre-authored personalities, like "won't accept bribes"; etc.



This assertion doesn't pan out for me because I can think of evidence to the contrary, both in form and intent. Contrast the world-building in *Griffin Mountain*, *X1 Isle of Dread*, *MOLAD*, *Burning Wheel: Jihad*, *Lionheart*, and *Chivalry and Sorcery*. 

The designers of *Griffin Mountain* open up a landscape for stories, whereas the designer of *Isle of Dread* presents specific problems. The world-build artifacts for *MOLAD* were two pages of notable characters and their ranks, and one  sketch of the core plane showing some of their domains. Players maintained notes on their characters and whatever else interested them: their canon. *Burning Wheel: Jihad* focuses on points of inspiration, but undeniably offers anchoring framing. Then look at the RPG sourcebook *Lionheart* - "_The philosophy of Lionheart is to provide an organized, accessible view of 1190 England_" which it does admirably - perfect for framing stories, and there are no pre-fab adventures in that book. Look at the world-build material in *Chivalry and Sorcery*, which guide players to create their own medieval world, rather than presenting one out of the box. Or look at *Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide* where I see maps, images and narration intended to help a group bring an imagined world to life. I hadn't paid attention before to the wide variety of ways world-building happens before this thread, and most especially find that it is diverse and ongoing. 

This thread opens with something like GNS' argument for the incoherence of creative agendas: claiming world-building to be an activity and artifact of gamism or simulationism, and irrelevant for narrativism. For me there are two obvious problems for that. 

*First *and most strongly, I find claims of incoherence between those creative agendas disingenuous or idiosyncratic, as they jar with my experience of play. We may lean into one agenda more than others, but our agendas do not repel each other as vigorously as the claimed incoherence envisions. The way we lean is also far from static. Rather those agendas (and perhaps others) define a multidimensional volume that we occupy and move around within. From time to time leaning more into one part than another.

*Secondly*, whatever we think about incoherence, the activities and artifacts of world-building are valuable and in fact _unavoidably_ part of narrativism. Even if the agendas are incoherent, world-building still has value for narrativism, only with an altered preferred focus and form. Which makes sense.

What I think the OP has been most successful in illuminating is that the way world-building will occur, and the forms it takes, when we are leaning into narrativism, is going to differ from the process and forms when leaning into other creative agendas.


----------



## pemerton

Here are some replies on stuff that [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has mostly covered, but where I thought I'd add my own take as well:



Maxperson said:


> First, backstory is entirely within the fiction.  It exists nowhere else.  The DMs notes are meaningless until they hit the fiction where they become backstory, your comment on reality and fiction is not really relevant.



You can define "backstory" however you like. But Eero Tuovinen is using it with a definite meaning: _stuff written in advance of acutal play_, or _stuff made up in the course of actual play that is a proxy for pre-written stuff_. To quote:

The concept [of backstory] only makes sense when somebody has done preparatory work for the game or is using specific heuristics to simulate such preparation in real-time. . . . Backstory is specifically separate from what might happen during play itself.​
He even gives a handy illustration: a GM "decid[ing] in advance that the butler did it". I don't think he give examples of the heuristics he mentions, but these are also fairly well known, and some have been discussed in this thread, like _rolling on a random generator_ or _extrapolating realistically from what has already been establishd_.

A secret door discovered in the course of play as the outcome of action resolution that establishes both (i) a secret door exists, and (ii) a character discovers said door, _is not backstory_ in Eero Tuovinen's sense. It was not pre-authored. It was not established by way of a specific heuristic to simulate preparation in real time. I don't see how that could be clearer.

(If you had any familiarity with the games he actually references, it would be even clearer.)



Lanefan said:


> That's for the DM to work out...and as there's always going to be a random element anyway, dice are good for this.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I agree some of the valuations etc. are arbitrary...but the fact that there's valuations at all is already significantly more realistic than a system that has no valuations for minor gear like this.



But an arbitrary number is "more realistic" only on the same principle that a stopped clock is right two times a day!

This is why [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] describes this a an _aesthetic_ preference. You prefer to have a number, however arbitrary, rather than leaving ti a matter of the fiction that no one needs to settle until some dramatic situation calls for it - and then settling it via some other mechanic than counting.



Lanefan said:


> if one can sharpen a sword while camping at night one can, I suppose, hone one's blunted arrow tips.



In D&D there is no rule for sharpening or blunting a sword. But the player of any weapon-wielding PC in Cortex+ Heroic can spend a plot point to add a Honed Blade resource. The Swordthane in my viking game even has a special ability, whereby the player can add a d6 to the Doom Pool in return for stepping up such a resource. (When that guy hones his blade, we know things are going to get ugly!)​
******************************************

And here is a further comment on GM-driven play and the generation of "story":



Maxperson said:


> In Story Now there would be some sort of goal to become the trusted guard of a king or the like and the play towards becoming a member of the Stewards guard would be guided by that agenda.



Neither I nor [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has suggested this as the best reading of the Pippin arc. I suggested something like "I will repay my debt to Boromir." AbdulAlhazred suggested "I will serve and follow the Gondorians, whom I admire greatly."

Either agenda - whether expressed formally (as some systems have it) or informally (as is the case eg in 4e) - is a hook to the GM. The GM will establish a situation (and then, following on from that, further situations which incorporate consequences and outcomes generated via play) which puts that agenda to the test. If one wants to imagine JRRT's Pippin story as the result of this sort of RPG process, then the first situation was the meeting with Denethor, and the element of that which put the agenda to the test was the fact that Denethor did not seem terribly likable.



Maxperson said:


> Boromir's sacrifice is very likely to cause my players to feel indebted in the same way, and that will play out in future choices.



But if the future choices are which intersection to take, or the other sorts of choicds that you and Lanefan have emphasised as important, then _how is it going to play out_?



Maxperson said:


> You've already stated that the odds of it happening with my playstyle are slim.  I tend to disagree with your assessment of those odds, as players like to do cool things like attach themselves to kings, but that also doesn't matter for my point.
> 
> You stated that the things Pippin did REQUIRED agendas to be present.  They don't and you have now acknowledged that they don't.  Whether the odds are 1-2, 1-10, 1-100 or 1-1000000, there still is no requirement for an agenda to be present.  It can happen in my playstyle just as I claimed.



This is back to the "monkeys might fly out my butt principle". I am not talking about techniques that have a slight chance of producing meaningful dramatic arcs in play. I am talking about techniques that do this reliably, day-in and day-out.



Maxperson said:


> it would be much easier to achieve if the player has a pre-set agenda and the DM is working to see that it has a chance of happening.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> these same sorts of things occur in my game, but just aren't done with the same kind of collaboration and pre-planned agendas.
> 
> Again, it's not random in my game, either.  It's just not pre-planned.



The best way to find out what Pippin's player is prepared to do to honour Pippin's commitment to Boromir and/or Gondor is to _frame a scene that puts that to the test_.

The best way to find out what the players of the PCs who promised to help the dwarves with the giants are prepared to do to honour that promise is to _frame a scene that puts that to the test_.

This is what is meant by "going to where the action is".

Pre-planning is not a very significant part of it. On the player side, what matters is _sending some signals_. On the GM side, what matters is _following the players' leads_. It's not all that esoteric. All it requires is a certain readiness to cut through some cruft. And obviously flexibility in narration helps with that. And a light touch approach to worldbuilding and initial establisment of setting helps with that flexibility.​


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> In terms of play, what if the options the GM presents don't include the chance to meet Boromir's father? Pippin didn't seek this out, after all - from the point of view of the fiction, it is a chance thing. But if Pippin's player has signalled an agenda (formally or informally), then the GM knows to include Boromir's father as an element of a scene.
> 
> What if there is no pre-authored attack? No pre-authored presence of Farimir as the charismatic leader of the defence?




Then some other character growth arc would have emerged.  ::shrug::



> Your own account of this reveals why, in the absence of some sort of agenda signfalling which the GM then responds to in choosing what elements to incorproate into the framing of situations, there is no guarnatee that dramatic arcs will emerge in the course of play.




Incorrect.  My own account reveals why, in the absence of some sort of agenda, there is no guarantee of the same arc Pippin encountered emerging over the course of play.  Character growth arcs will happen, regardless of absence of an agenda.

Furthermore, the issue isn't about whether or not it plays out as in the book. The question is, if the player amkes other choices do we get a dramatic arc? Thematically compelling vhoices? What happens if Pippin offers fealty to Denethor and Denethor refuses to accept it? (In 4e, this could be the result of a failed Diplomacy check in a skill challenge. In BW, it could be the outcome of a duel of wits.) Now "the action" has changed - perhaps Pippin seeks out Farimir instead.[/quote]

Yep.  Something else will happen.  Good call.



> But if you've already scripted that Farimir is in Osgiliath or Ithilien, and if you require that bit of travel to be pl1ayed out because otherwise the gameworld is not being "neutral", well now you don't have "story now" at all - you've got a standard wilderness crawl with a McGuffin at the end of it.




Who cares.  This isn't about my game being Story Now, it's about character growth arcs.  So perhaps Pippin seeks out Faramir in Osiliath and to offer his service.  Perhaps, feeling rejected, but still wanting to do something for Gondor due to his feelings for Boromir, he joins the Gondorian regular army.  Perhaps something else.  It doesn't matter whether the game is Story Now or not.  Character growth arcs are going to happen regardless.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> No, its INFINITELY relevant. You are committing a category error by confounding what happens in the game narrative, where the door has always existed, with what is happening in the GAME where the door just came into existence due to a check. The backstory is CLEARLY not a game narrative element, PCs don't discuss the backstory of the world they live in! (at least not unless you're playing some game which 'breaks the 4th wall' or something). The backstory is something which exists at the game table, in the game being played by the players, where the backstory is pre-existing, and the secret door is not! If you misinterpret Tuovinen's statements on backstory to mean something in the narrative, then you are misinterpreting him. He's not saying what you think he is, you have to think in terms of what is happening at the TABLE, which is actually the focus, the origin point for the considerations of Story Now, the game world and its narrative are secondary constructed elements which serve the agenda, they dictate nothing.




They do mean something that happens in the narrative.  He even gives specific examples which I will quote below.

"My brother Markku likes narration-sharing a lot, narrating stuff is one of his big loves in roleplaying. Now and then he gets proactive about introducing various methodologies into his gaming, which often ends up with him asking his D&D players what sort of monsters they would like to meet in the next encounter. Of course it’s fine if he likes this (no intent to call Markku out here specifically), *but to me it seems completely awry and awkward to break the GM backstory authority and allow the players to narrate whatever they want.* There’s no excitement and discovery in finding orcs in the next room if I decided myself that there would be orcs there. This fundamentally changes my relationship to my character."

The bolded is specifically about backstory as narration.  In this case, the DM is allowing the players to narrate the backstory, rather than having the DM do it.

"Somebody at Story Games suggested in relation to 3:16 (don’t remember who, it’s not really important) that *a great GM technique would be to leave the greater purpose and nature of the high command of the space army undefined so the players could make this decision when and if their characters find it out. So maybe they find out that the great space war is a hoax or whatever. *I find that this is completely ass-backwards for this sort of game: the players cannot be put into a position of advocacy for their characters if those same players are required to make the crucial backstory choices: am I supposed to myself decide that the space war is a cruel lie, and then in the next moment determine how my character is going to react to this knowledge? Doesn’t that look at all artificial?"

Again, he is speaking about the DM narrating the high command in such a way as to leave the army undefined so that the players can fill in that narration.

"In another thread a similar claim was made about Trail of Cthulhu – that is, *somebody described how he’d played the game with the players having the right to invent backstory by paying points for it.* I’m not that vehemently against this in this case, as I don’t know ToC that well. Still, I’m almost certain that this is not the intended reading of the game text, and it definitely deviates quite a bit from how the game works if you assume an objective, GM-controlled backstory. My first instinct would be that I wouldn’t be that interested in playing the game if there weren’t a carefully considered, atmospheric backstory to uncover; it’s an investigation game after all."

Here he mentions players being able to invent backstory on the spot by paying points for it.  This is no different than inventing backstory on the spot by rolling to see if it happens or not.  Secret door anyone?

As for PCs talking about backstory, they do it all the time.  If the DM decided that the kings son was assassinated prior to gameplay, when the PCs discuss that assassination, they are discussing backstory.  Backstory is only backstory if it makes it into the game.  It doesn't matter what the DMs notes say at the game table if they never make it into the game.  Those notes are not backstory until they hit the game world.

P.S. It's a shame that you ignored this post.  I was really looking forward to your response. http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...uilding*-for&p=7391365&viewfull=1#post7391365


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> "My brother Markku likes narration-sharing a lot, narrating stuff is one of his big loves in roleplaying. Now and then he gets proactive about introducing various methodologies into his gaming, which often ends up with him asking his D&D players what sort of monsters they would like to meet in the next encounter. Of course it’s fine if he likes this (no intent to call Markku out here specifically), *but to me it seems completely awry and awkward to break the GM backstory authority and allow the players to narrate whatever they want.* There’s no excitement and discovery in finding orcs in the next room if I decided myself that there would be orcs there. This fundamentally changes my relationship to my character."
> 
> The bolded is specifically about backstory as narration.  In this case, the DM is allowing the players to narrate the backstory, rather than having the DM do it.



Succeeding on a check to find a secret door is not _deciding myself that there are orcs there_. It is declaring an action. There is the prospect of success. There are consequences for failure. (I think you and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] tend to have a rather weaksauce conception of failure - hence Lanefan's suggestion that there are unlimited retries to find desired things. Most "story now" games have a more robust notion of consequence.)



Maxperson said:


> "Somebody at Story Games suggested in relation to 3:16 (don’t remember who, it’s not really important) that *a great GM technique would be to leave the greater purpose and nature of the high command of the space army undefined so the players could make this decision when and if their characters find it out. So maybe they find out that the great space war is a hoax or whatever. *I find that this is completely ass-backwards for this sort of game: the players cannot be put into a position of advocacy for their characters if those same players are required to make the crucial backstory choices: am I supposed to myself decide that the space war is a cruel lie, and then in the next moment determine how my character is going to react to this knowledge? Doesn’t that look at all artificial?"
> 
> Again, he is speaking about the DM narrating the high command in such a way as to leave the army undefined so that the players can fill in that narration.



Again, you seem not to appreciate the difference betwen _deciding_ and _declaring an action_. THey're not the same thing.



Maxperson said:


> "In another thread a similar claim was made about Trail of Cthulhu – that is, *somebody described how he’d played the game with the players having the right to invent backstory by paying points for it.* I’m not that vehemently against this in this case, as I don’t know ToC that well. Still, I’m almost certain that this is not the intended reading of the game text, and it definitely deviates quite a bit from how the game works if you assume an objective, GM-controlled backstory. My first instinct would be that I wouldn’t be that interested in playing the game if there weren’t a carefully considered, atmospheric backstory to uncover; it’s an investigation game after all."
> 
> Here he mentions players being able to invent backstory on the spot by paying points for it.  This is no different than inventing backstory on the spot by rolling to see if it happens or not.  Secret door anyone?



It's absolutely different. There is a significant difference between delcaring an action, which may fail and hence has the risk of consequences, and spending points.

This is why, in Cortex+ Heroic, a character can only spend points to establish resources in a transition scene (ie before they know exactly what they will be confronting), or if the GM rolls a 1 during an action scene (ie when something is at stake between the PCs and some opposition). Otherwise they are confined to generating assets, which are always contest checks which thus pose the possibility of adverse consequences if they fail.

Are you familiar with any of the RPGs that Eero mentions in his blog, other than D&D?


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> perhaps Pippin seeks out Faramir in Osiliath and to offer his service.  Perhaps, feeling rejected, but still wanting to do something for Gondor due to his feelings for Boromir, he joins the Gondorian regular army.



The first looks like ye olde "standard wilderness crawl with a McGuffin at the end of it". With the second, where is the character arc going to come from? Where is Pippin's resolve going to be put to the test?

How are the thematically compelling moments going to be produced if the GM doesn't do it on purpose?


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> In the fiction, of course the secret door was always there.



Exactly!

And now that we've agreed on this, let's go one step further:

If the presence of that secret door had been known about all along by the DM, what would have been done differently in play/occurred differently in the fiction than what in fact transpired?  Then run the same question past every single instance of something being introduced out of the blue by a successful action declaration...

I ask this because if the answer *at any time* is anything - anything - other than "nothing at all" then as far as I'm concerned the whole game is invalidated.  As soon as something is introduced later that would reasonably have had effects earlier had its presence been known about earlier then either a) that thing being introduced is invalid (less-worse option) or b) any and all previous play that would have been affected is invalid (utterly unacceptable).

The best option is to never allow this to happen in the first place...and to achieve this requires solid pre-authorship of the setting by someone, and that someone is almost without exception going to be the DM.



> But at the table, its existence was established as a result of the check. Therefore its existence is not part of the backstory, as Eero Tuovinen uses that term. You are free to use backstory to mean "elements of the fiction which predate the present in-fiction moment of play" if you want, but that's not how Eero is using it. He is using it to mean suuff that is literally pre-authored or is notinally pre-authored. (The latter is what is often called, on these boards, "winging it". Establishing the existence of a secret door as a result of a check is not "winging it".)



Sure it is, it's just that the flapping is being done by someone other than the DM: in this case, a player aided by her dice.



> But in any event, action resolution changes the fiction. It thereby contribues to future framing and fictional positioning. Which in turn fees into future action declarations and resolutions. I wouldn't have though that this is contentious.



It's contentious not because of what it does to the future but because of what it will inevitably at some point end up doing to the past, and how that change to the past should affect the present but cannot.



> In some systems, action resolution also generates discrete mechanical consequences whose connection to the fiction may be more or less tight, depending on system and congtext (eg in AD&D a successful attack roll results in the mechanical consequence of a depletion of opponent hit points - what this correlats to in the fiction is, by the rules, rather uncertain and relatively unimportant to future action resolution).



This kind of action resolution isn't relevant to the discussion.  Physical-setting-affecting action resolution is.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

Elfcrusher said:


> I take the opposite approach: a loosely defined concept is plenty to get started, and then as the game progresses the player "discovers" more about their character's backstory.  This might manifest as improvisations to explain things in the present, or just flashes of creative inspiration.  But just as we learn more and more about a character as we read a novel, the table (including the character's player) learn more about the character as they play the game.



My preference also.

It also means if the character perma-dies within its first few sessions (a common occurrence particularly at low levels) you don't lose all the time and effort spent on its history etc., as that was never done.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> How good an example is it? a 4e Fireball is an area burst 2, meaning it is a full 25' across. This is a SLIGHT exaggeration of the 'canonical' 20' diameter fireball. the upshot is, if you actually draw the 'canonical' fireball inside the 25' 5x5 square 4e footprint they are identical, assuming you used the rule 'any square partially in the AoE is affected'. Thus the 4e fireball compromises in no respect on the 'classic' fireball, aside from exactly regularizing the target points in 5' increments, which IMHO isn't a really big deal. However the procedure for resolution is about an order of magnitude simpler to handle.



It's rarely if ever a problem for me, and I use the 'canonical' type you refer to just below. 



> In fact however, the canonical fireball is supposed to fill a 'volume' of (IIRC 22,000 cubic feet, or 22 10x10x10 cubes, expanding in all directions).



It's very slightly under 33 10' cubes, actually - a bit less (I think) than 33000 cu ft.  I didn't do the math on this, mind you; my first DM did - and as his math skills are beyond exemplary I've always just taken his word for it. 



> Exactly how this is resolved is left to the GM. So you can't, always at least, even say exactly WHAT is within the area of the canonical fireball of classic D&D. In practice few GM's take into account the height of ceilings and other such factors when resolving them.



I've never met a DM who didn't consider these things, and at least in our games the players know it.  In fact around here it's a running joke that if a MU asks "How high is the ceiling?" it means some random part of the neighbourhood (usually but not always the part that has the enemies in it; spells like this do require a roll for aim) is about to get fried.



> So really I'm not convinced that 4e's approach IS actually 'less realistic' in any meaningful sense.



Yeah, one more where we'll have to agree to disagree. 



> This is an aesthetic choice for you, which it seems to me is mostly made in the direction of "this is traditional" and not necessarily a really objective evaluation of any kind of realism. So I'm not exactly impressed with the degree to which this OBJECTIVELY amounts to simulationism.



Every little bit helps.

Does game-world gravity work the same as real-world gravity?  Default is yes.  Ditto for a bunch of other things, unless specifically overridden by the DM as part of her - can you see this coming? - worldbuilding!



> As I pointed out in my ammunition discussion in a previous post, I remain unconvinced that the most basically 'realistic' procedure is actually more accurate, even in a simulation sense. In a verisimilitude sense (which again I consider a somewhat separate and purely aesthetic concept) there's nothing that MUST make what you say true either.



It's not always more accurate, but again - just because perfection is unachievable doesn't mean we should stop trying where and how we can. 



> Eh, don't overstate things. It is EASIEST OF ALL to reason about purely gamist constructs, as these are highly structured and easily understood and implemented at the table without questions of interpretation. Having played 4e for 10 years I can say that this is HUGE. Nobody can argue in a 4e battle about exactly what the fireball did. Its clear. Its quite easy to reason about it!



But in a rulings-not-rules (e.g. 5e) or rules-as-guidelines (e.g. 1e) system it's not as clear-cut, and one can push things in a certain direction if desired.



> Good grief! Game Masters are now cops, and players are cheating if they don't manage to accurately record every arrow they use? Play as you wish, I have NO desire to get near that!



Part of the DM's job since day 1 has been that of referee and rules enforcer, and that hasn't changed.  Ever.



> Exactly! And there is no way anyone can say what is actually realistic. The type of arrows, the humidity, the amount of light, etc etc etc are all going to factor into if they break or split, how far away they are, how hard to see, etc. There are actually quite a few factors. To the point where, as I said before, you're totally 'winging it' to make a ruling. This is one of those places where the GM is tempted to either favor the PCs, or something else.



Or let the dice decide, modified by situational factors.



> Sure, but what of the fletching, the nock of the arrow, etc? Its going to depend on how it was made, the exact materials, workmanship, etc. Eventually (and in my limited experience as a very amateur archer not super long) any given arrow will degrade. Again, simulating this realistically is probably not feasible, the best you will get is some largely gamist "it works 3 times" or something like that. Congrats you now have to track EACH ARROW and how many times it has been used? Nobody is going to do that.



Here you have the advantage, as I've no real-world experience with archery at all and so I kind of have to do what the game tells me.

But in those areas where I do have some experience (e.g. boating) I'll let that experience guide my DMing, overriding the game rules if needed.



> I'm certainly not faulting classic D&D for just inventing some usable GAMIST valuations and numbers. Gygax didn't go research this stuff because he didn't have to. His numbers are within common sense and thus don't invalidate player common sense, and they work for what he wants. Also they're in the PHB, so the players should KNOW them (in 1e anyway).



The research has been done since, however, and it's possible to come up with quite accurate price lists for (in game terms) mundane gear based on different eras and (European) places.



> All I'm proposing is that the consideration in 1e was gamist, not simulationist, and that in games like Cortex+ (or HoML) that the primarily story-centered approach taken is not really LESS realistic than Gygax's. It is less 'numerical model', that's all.



1e was gamist as written...but it's possible to steer it away from that via tweaks and approach, using the many little choice points I referred to earlier.

Lanefan


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Then some other character growth arc would have emerged.  ::shrug::



Exactly. This is non-controversial, we all agree that in your game SOMETHING will happen. The question is, "how will that thing address Pippin's player's agenda?" If its simply a question of chance as to whether the GM happens to frame a scene with Denethor, often simply due to it being pre-authored or not pre-authored, then there is simply some random chance that the player will be confronted with a situation where his agenda is addressed and his character's desire/belief is put to the test. It may or may not happen. The point we made way back when this particular exchange started was that it is MUCH more likely you will achieve a 'LotR-like' story-arc by playing directly to it in a 'go to the action' type of style. There are NO paths in Story Now where something analogous to the experience of Pippin in Minas Tirith will not happen. There are MANY such paths in other styles of play.



> Incorrect.  My own account reveals why, in the absence of some sort of agenda, there is no guarantee of the same arc Pippin encountered emerging over the course of play.  Character growth arcs will happen, regardless of absence of an agenda.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Furthermore, the issue isn't about whether or not it plays out as in the book. The question is, if the player amkes other choices do we get a dramatic arc? Thematically compelling vhoices? What happens if Pippin offers fealty to Denethor and Denethor refuses to accept it? (In 4e, this could be the result of a failed Diplomacy check in a skill challenge. In BW, it could be the outcome of a duel of wits.) Now "the action" has changed - perhaps Pippin seeks out Farimir instead.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yep.  Something else will happen.  Good call.
Click to expand...


Exactly, again, same as above. The point still stands, in the absence of 'going to the action' of intentionally speaking to the dramatic elements nominated by the player, there's no sure way to achieve a dramatic story arc. Pippin's time in Minas Tirith is JUST as likely to be largely uneventful or to involve action that is unrelated to the character's central question. Loyalty vs Admiration may never come up at all! Pippin may never 'pay his debt' or it may simply be discharged in a relatively uneventful way which never brings into question just what it means to swear an oath to a man whose family member died for you. Pippin may well not grow at all.



> Who cares.  This isn't about my game being Story Now, it's about character growth arcs.  So perhaps Pippin seeks out Faramir in Osiliath and to offer his service.  Perhaps, feeling rejected, but still wanting to do something for Gondor due to his feelings for Boromir, he joins the Gondorian regular army.  Perhaps something else.  It doesn't matter whether the game is Story Now or not.  Character growth arcs are going to happen regardless.




But again, he could join the regular army, and be posted to some boring guard duty, or he could fail some checks or simply not have the requisite information needed to find Faramir, or it could even be IMPOSSIBLE to find Faramir due to his location having been pre-established as someplace inaccessible to Pippin. Truthfully, this is what you would EXPECT. Certainly if this was [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s style of play, as I understand it, this is exactly what would most likely happen. The world doesn't exist for you, PCs are nothing special, you rarely have any incredible opportunities because that's just not realistic. What does Pippin most likely learn? The taste of wormy army biscuits sounds like the most probable thing! lol.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> They do mean something that happens in the narrative.  He even gives specific examples which I will quote below.
> 
> "My brother Markku likes narration-sharing a lot, narrating stuff is one of his big loves in roleplaying. Now and then he gets proactive about introducing various methodologies into his gaming, which often ends up with him asking his D&D players what sort of monsters they would like to meet in the next encounter. Of course it’s fine if he likes this (no intent to call Markku out here specifically), *but to me it seems completely awry and awkward to break the GM backstory authority and allow the players to narrate whatever they want.* There’s no excitement and discovery in finding orcs in the next room if I decided myself that there would be orcs there. This fundamentally changes my relationship to my character."
> 
> The bolded is specifically about backstory as narration.  In this case, the DM is allowing the players to narrate the backstory, rather than having the DM do it.



But, this, as I interpret the text, is clearly an example of something that is *not* Story Now, or at least violates certain principles which Eero Tuovinen is expounding. I would say its not Story Now, its 'free narrative', the players invent things to add to the fiction whole cloth. I see no indication that the thing added was relevant to an agenda, had dramatic consequence, or was in some way mediated by some mechanic which was intended to produce such. It was just "narration-sharing", which Tuovinen also denigrates (in an unstructured form) as 'conch-passing'. 



> "Somebody at Story Games suggested in relation to 3:16 (don’t remember who, it’s not really important) that *a great GM technique would be to leave the greater purpose and nature of the high command of the space army undefined so the players could make this decision when and if their characters find it out. So maybe they find out that the great space war is a hoax or whatever. *I find that this is completely ass-backwards for this sort of game: the players cannot be put into a position of advocacy for their characters if those same players are required to make the crucial backstory choices: am I supposed to myself decide that the space war is a cruel lie, and then in the next moment determine how my character is going to react to this knowledge? Doesn’t that look at all artificial?"
> 
> Again, he is speaking about the DM narrating the high command in such a way as to leave the army undefined so that the players can fill in that narration.



I'm completely mystified by the significance of this. It has no relation to Tuovinen's definition of Story Now, nor anything [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] nor I have discussed. I mean, I remember reading it, someone quoted it up thread before. I don't consider it to be a very coherent idea either. It certainly has nothing to with player agenda. I might put it a different way and say that _it should be up to the GM to choose the purpose and nature of army high command. _The GM is in a position to make this choice speak to the dramatic themes of the specific game. However, I think 3:16 is a game where the agenda is largely inherent, there's a question to be examined, but it is, at its core, built into the game and its single assumed setting. This is common with this type of game.



> "In another thread a similar claim was made about Trail of Cthulhu – that is, *somebody described how he’d played the game with the players having the right to invent backstory by paying points for it.* I’m not that vehemently against this in this case, as I don’t know ToC that well. Still, I’m almost certain that this is not the intended reading of the game text, and it definitely deviates quite a bit from how the game works if you assume an objective, GM-controlled backstory. My first instinct would be that I wouldn’t be that interested in playing the game if there weren’t a carefully considered, atmospheric backstory to uncover; it’s an investigation game after all."



Yes, this was another quote from upthread IIRC. I think you need fairly savvy players for this one, but it can be done. If they're really into the whole Cthulhu Mythos concept then its not actually THAT hard to build a story that is consistent with the tropes involved. I mean, there's going to be some sort of cosmic horror, its somehow related to some weird happenings, strange location, potentially world-destroying events, etc. In that kind of a situation a GM who frames scenes with some adroitness can emplace these elements in a suggestive enough way to allow for a thematic solution to a mystery to evolve. In terms of players using 'points' to invent backstory, as long as its in keeping with the mythos tropes and not a deliberate attempt to unravel the story, it PROBABLY will work out. I wouldn't just try this with some random group, and I think there are ways I trust more to get this right, but its not inherently terrible, and it could be 'Story Now' and seems like a 'No Myth' (kind of odd to use that term WRT to C.M. but....) kind of thing.



> Here he mentions players being able to invent backstory on the spot by paying points for it.  This is no different than inventing backstory on the spot by rolling to see if it happens or not.  Secret door anyone?



I think there is a substantive difference. If I 'pay' then I get what I pay for, right? If I have to pass a check to get what I want (and even then its what the GM is willing to consider story appropriate, no laser weapons in the Duke's Bathroom) I could get nothing, and not having paid for something, I am not necessarily ENTITLED to anything. When I pay, then its a lot like getting ripped off if you don't get exactly what you thought you bought. Harder for the GM to regulate, though Cortex+ uses the Doom Pool concept in a similar way. Here the GM gets to push back harder if the player takes control of the narrative.



> As for PCs talking about backstory, they do it all the time.  If the DM decided that the kings son was assassinated prior to gameplay, when the PCs discuss that assassination, they are discussing backstory.  Backstory is only backstory if it makes it into the game.  It doesn't matter what the DMs notes say at the game table if they never make it into the game.  Those notes are not backstory until they hit the game world.
> 
> P.S. It's a shame that you ignored this post.  I was really looking forward to your response. http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...uilding*-for&p=7391365&viewfull=1#post7391365




Its STORY when it makes it into the story in an active way. Sure, PCs talk about what they know, but the backstory as a thing is not part of the in-game reality. Not in the way it is in OUR reality, where it is a piece of paper, some dice and charts, a wiki, etc.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> It's rarely if ever a problem for me, and I use the 'canonical' type you refer to just below.



I stand by my assertion, it is vastly easier to say "I target square X, and these other squares are in the AoE, I'm rolling 7 to-hit rolls, I hit targets 2, 3, and 7, they take 27 points of damage and the others take 13." In AD&D you have to (at best, assuming an accurate room layout with figures representing the real positions of all PCs) decide on an exact target location, draw a circle somehow (on top of all the figures, walls, etc, even a template of some sort will be awkward at times) and then argue about if the figure that just got knocked over was EXACTLY outside or inside the diameter, and whether the base of figures counts or only the 'pieces parts', if the figure is really a fair size to represent the PC, etc. etc. etc. ALL of these arguments have come up in play where I have GMed, many many times! As I said, I'm not even delving into the 'volume filling' process and its potential intricacies (exactly how tall is that arched ceiling anyway?). 



> It's very slightly under 33 10' cubes, actually - a bit less (I think) than 33000 cu ft.  I didn't do the math on this, mind you; my first DM did - and as his math skills are beyond exemplary I've always just taken his word for it.



I have a math degree, I won't argue it either. In fact though your trusting E. Gary Gygax, because it is right in the 1e DMG section on adjudicating various spells! I trust Gary's basic solid geometry. I just haven't GMed 2e in a long time, so I'd have to go back and reread this stuff to recall every stray number. Again, this attests to the added complexity of the 'AD&D way' of doing it...



> I've never met a DM who didn't consider these things, and at least in our games the players know it.  In fact around here it's a running joke that if a MU asks "How high is the ceiling?" it means some random part of the neighbourhood (usually but not always the part that has the enemies in it; spells like this do require a roll for aim) is about to get fried.



Well, you seem to play with a group of people who are basically incredibly focused on the minutia of D&D play, so I will just take your word for it. Trust me when I tell you, this is highly atypical, particularly in more recent times. If this was 1980, it wouldn't surprise me too much...



> Yeah, one more where we'll have to agree to disagree.



I actually assert its objectively determinable in this specific case. The original point stands, that agency of players is positively impacted by having well-defined and easily understood consequences to standard actions.



> Every little bit helps.
> 
> Does game-world gravity work the same as real-world gravity?  Default is yes.  Ditto for a bunch of other things, unless specifically overridden by the DM as part of her - can you see this coming? - worldbuilding!



Really, you studied that? lol. Honestly, given how D&D hit points work, classically, there's no way falling is at all realistic, and thus we must question the realism of gravity itself. I don't agree that every bit helps. I think that physical reality is holistic, and unrealistic is unrealistic. 



> It's not always more accurate, but again - just because perfection is unachievable doesn't mean we should stop trying where and how we can.
> 
> But in a rulings-not-rules (e.g. 5e) or rules-as-guidelines (e.g. 1e) system it's not as clear-cut, and one can push things in a certain direction if desired.
> 
> Part of the DM's job since day 1 has been that of referee and rules enforcer, and that hasn't changed.  Ever.



Well, I think you are 'playing like its 1981' basically. Out here, yeah, the GM's role has evolved, a LOT! 



> Or let the dice decide, modified by situational factors.



OK, but I'm just saying that isn't going to be very realistic either, my way may be MORE so.


> Here you have the advantage, as I've no real-world experience with archery at all and so I kind of have to do what the game tells me.
> 
> But in those areas where I do have some experience (e.g. boating) I'll let that experience guide my DMing, overriding the game rules if needed.
> 
> The research has been done since, however, and it's possible to come up with quite accurate price lists for (in game terms) mundane gear based on different eras and (European) places.



I did this exercise out of curiosity a couple years ago. Numbers are all over the place. Yes, there are some records, but there isn't any large body of price and wage records for one specific time period. If you are willing to take a spread of records that cover over 600 years of history, kind of squint a little, and interpolate based on some prices that overlap between sources here and there, you can make something CREDIBLE. However, AT BEST it represents a sort of averaging over time, space, and circumstance, and only applies to the region it is based on (IE usually late Medieval England). How that relates to a fantasy world is anyone's guess. 



> 1e was gamist as written...but it's possible to steer it away from that via tweaks and approach, using the many little choice points I referred to earlier.
> 
> Lanefan




I will just give you back your reply to me on that. I don't agree. I never will probably. The result of using D&D (no matter how tweaked) is utterly unrealistic and by necessity 99.9% gamist. You might make it 99.8% gamist, but is that really worth the effort? I gave it up years ago.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Succeeding on a check to find a secret door is not _deciding myself that there are orcs there_. It is declaring an action. There is the prospect of success.




No, it's not you deciding orcs are there.  It's you deciding yourself that a secret door should be there and making the attempt to author it into the backstory via your declared action.



> There are consequences for failure. (I think you and  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] tend to have a rather weaksauce conception of failure - hence Lanefan's suggestion that there are unlimited retries to find desired things. Most "story now" games have a more robust notion of consequence.)




Have I ever said that?  No.  Please don't lump me in with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] with all that he says.  While he and I play the same style, our game are not the same and we do disagree on some things.  My game falls somewhere in-between his and yours.



> Again, you seem not to appreciate the difference betwen _deciding_ and _declaring an action_. THey're not the same thing.




Yep.  Declaring an action is trying to look for a secret door that you have no control over and might or might not be there.  Deciding is when you have control over whether something is there, even if it requires a roll to succeed.  That's all your "action declaration" is.  An attempt to see if what you decided should be there, actually is there.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> The first looks like ye olde "standard wilderness crawl with a McGuffin at the end of it".




It's not.



> With the second, where is the character arc going to come from? Where is Pippin's resolve going to be put to the test?




Same place as in your game.  From the players and the DM interacting in the game world. 



> How are the thematically compelling moments going to be produced if the GM doesn't do it on purpose?



Um, the player originates them as in my examples, forcing the DM to respond.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Exactly. This is non-controversial, we all agree that in your game SOMETHING will happen. The question is, "how will that thing address Pippin's player's agenda?"




No, that's not the question at all.  We are discussing character arcs, not agendas.  The whole point of this is that agendas are not required for character arcs.



> If its simply a question of chance as to whether the GM happens to frame a scene with Denethor, often simply due to it being pre-authored or not pre-authored, then there is simply some random chance that the player will be confronted with a situation where his agenda is addressed and his character's desire/belief is put to the test. It may or may not happen.




Again, no agenda need be present.  The character in any game of D&D that abides by the social contract will have opportunities for character arcs/growth.  There is no chance that it won't happen, since the DM is obligated to make the game fun, which means of interest to the players.  That interest just doesn't need to be formalized the way it is in Story Now.  Instead it happens more organically through game play.



> The point we made way back when this particular exchange started was that it is MUCH more likely you will achieve a 'LotR-like' story-arc by playing directly to it in a 'go to the action' type of style. There are NO paths in Story Now where something analogous to the experience of Pippin in Minas Tirith will not happen. There are MANY such paths in other styles of play.




No.  The odds are the same in both styles.  Story Now just goes about getting there differently is all.  




> Exactly, again, same as above. The point still stands, in the absence of 'going to the action' of intentionally speaking to the dramatic elements nominated by the player, there's no sure way to achieve a dramatic story arc. Pippin's time in Minas Tirith is JUST as likely to be largely uneventful or to involve action that is unrelated to the character's central question. Loyalty vs Admiration may never come up at all! Pippin may never 'pay his debt' or it may simply be discharged in a relatively uneventful way which never brings into question just what it means to swear an oath to a man whose family member died for you. Pippin may well not grow at all.




Those arcs will happen every time in my game.  They just happen more organically, rather than being something that the DM and players are always addressing every moment of the game.



> But again, he could join the regular army, and be posted to some boring guard duty,




No, that's not possible.  The obligation placed on the DM to provide a fun game prevents that from happening.



> or he could fail some checks or simply not have the requisite information needed to find Faramir, or it could even be IMPOSSIBLE to find Faramir due to his location having been pre-established as someplace inaccessible to Pippin. Truthfully, this is what you would EXPECT. Certainly if this was  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s style of play, as I understand it, this is exactly what would most likely happen.




I don't think so.  I think it would just require more ingenuity on the part of the players.  PCs are constantly going where they aren't supposed to be in order to talk to people and find things.  That's part of the charm of RPGs.  It wouldn't be impossible, but would probably require more than just a successful check of some sort.



> The world doesn't exist for you, PCs are nothing special, you rarely have any incredible opportunities because that's just not realistic. What does Pippin most likely learn? The taste of wormy army biscuits sounds like the most probable thing! lol.



This also misstates [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s position I think.  While the world wouldn't owe the PCs anything, opportunities will knock all over the place as once again, the social contract requires the game to actually be enjoyable.  If [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] failed in that he would lose his players.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> But, this, as I interpret the text, is clearly an example of something that is *not* Story Now, or at least violates certain principles which Eero Tuovinen is expounding. I would say its not Story Now, its 'free narrative', the players invent things to add to the fiction whole cloth. I see no indication that the thing added was relevant to an agenda, had dramatic consequence, or was in some way mediated by some mechanic which was intended to produce such. It was just "narration-sharing", which Tuovinen also denigrates (in an unstructured form) as 'conch-passing'.




It seems to me that this is a form of establishing an agenda.  The players can in this case let the DM know what they would like to encounter, similar to declaring an action to go into the woods and try to find an ogre, then rolling some sort of skill check to see if they find one or not.  The difference is that they don't actually have to roll.



> I'm completely mystified by the significance of this. It has no relation to Tuovinen's definition of Story Now, nor anything [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] nor I have discussed. I mean, I remember reading it, someone quoted it up thread before. I don't consider it to be a very coherent idea either. It certainly has nothing to with player agenda. I might put it a different way and say that _it should be up to the GM to choose the purpose and nature of army high command. _The GM is in a position to make this choice speak to the dramatic themes of the specific game. However, I think 3:16 is a game where the agenda is largely inherent, there's a question to be examined, but it is, at its core, built into the game and its single assumed setting. This is common with this type of game.




In included it, because it seems to be some sort of "yes, and" type of game, at least from that passage, and that sort of game includes increased player authorship of the narrative like you two have been advocating for.



> I think there is a substantive difference. If I 'pay' then I get what I pay for, right? If I have to pass a check to get what I want (and even then its what the GM is willing to consider story appropriate, no laser weapons in the Duke's Bathroom) I could get nothing, and not having paid for something, I am not necessarily ENTITLED to anything. When I pay, then its a lot like getting ripped off if you don't get exactly what you thought you bought. Harder for the GM to regulate, though Cortex+ uses the Doom Pool concept in a similar way. Here the GM gets to push back harder if the player takes control of the narrative.




Sure, it's a matter of degree.  But it's still along the same lines.  Both involve authorship of the backstory, just through different means.  



> Its STORY when it makes it into the story in an active way. Sure, PCs talk about what they know, but the backstory as a thing is not part of the in-game reality. Not in the way it is in OUR reality, where it is a piece of paper, some dice and charts, a wiki, etc.




That's not how Tuovinen uses it, though.

"Backstory is the part of a roleplaying game scenario that “has happened before the game began”. The concept only makes sense when somebody has done preparatory work for the game or is using specific heuristics to simulate such preparation in real-time. For example, if the GM has decided in advance that the butler did it, then that is part of the backstory – it happened before the player characters came to the scene, and the GM will do his job with the assumption that this is an unchanging part of the game, even if the players might not know about it. Similarly a player character’s personal history is part of the backstory in a game that requires such. Backstory is specifically separate from what might happen during play itself. We say that somebody has “backstory authority” if he is allowed to determine something about the backstory, simply enough."

Here he decided that the butler did it as part of prep before the game begins.  He specifically says it happened before the players came to the scene, not that it happened outside of the game. So in game when the players find out about it, they are finding out backstory and the PCs can discuss it.  He also says "Backstory is specifically separate from what might happen during play itself."  Play itself takes place in the present of the game world, so even that passage doesn't talk about backstory being apart from the in-game reality.  He references it through the butler example and the three examples above as it being inside the game reality.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ou are free to use backstory to mean "elements of the fiction which predate the present in-fiction moment of play" if you want, but that's not how Eero is using it. He is using it to mean suuff that is literally pre-authored or is notinally pre-authored. (The latter is what is often called, on these boards, "winging it". Establishing the existence of a secret door as a result of a check is not "winging it".)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Sure it is, it's just that the flapping is being done by someone other than the DM: in this case, a player aided by her dice.
Click to expand...


This is like saying the PCs dying in a by-the-rules TPK is _just the same_ as "rocks fall, everybody dies" except the former involved some dice!

The fact that it's an action declaration that is resolved at the table is what makes it completely different, for present purposes, from "winging it". Upthread various posters, talking about "winging it", said that if it's done "properly" then the players can't even tell it wasn't in the notes. A player who declares an action and as a result has his/her PC find a secret door knows what is going on.



Lanefan said:


> If the presence of that secret door had been known about all along by the DM, what would have been done differently in play/occurred differently in the fiction than what in fact transpired?



This is like asking, "If the GM had known all along that the PC would miss the orc, what would have been done differently or occured differently in the fiction?"

The difference at the table would be: the player knows that s/he is rolling to find out what the GM already decided. If the player rolls a miss, s/he doesn't know whether that's because the GM had left it to the mechanics, or the GM had already decided the orc, at that moment, was not goingto be hit. But if the player rolls a hit, then s/he learns - when the GM declares a miss as the outcome - that the GM has decided the orc, at that moment, will not be hit.

Of course the ingame fiction might be identical, but what does that tell us? The GM telling a story all to herself can produce the same ingame fiction as a RPG session, but that doesn't mean there's no difference between turning up to a session and listening to the GM's story, and turning up to a session and actually playing the game!



Lanefan said:


> I ask this because if the answer *at any time* is anything - anything - other than "nothing at all" then as far as I'm concerned the whole game is invalidated.  As soon as something is introduced later that would reasonably have had effects earlier had its presence been known about earlier then either a) that thing being introduced is invalid (less-worse option) or b) any and all previous play that would have been affected is invalid (utterly unacceptable).
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It's contentious not because of what it does to the future but because of what it will inevitably at some point end up doing to the past, and how that change to the past should affect the present but cannot.



I don't really understand.

I mean, if the orcish shaman had known - via Augury, say - that the orc was going to die, maybe the shaman would have done something else (eg sent two orcs to fight the PC). From the fact that the shaman _didn't_ do something else, maybe we can infer that the shaman didn't cast Augury. Generalising the point: there are so many moving parts in any fiction of even the most modest complexity that - if it matters at all - something can be narrated to establish the necessary links.

You've already posted that, in your style of play, much of the time the players may not know what is going on in the GM's unrevealed backstory. Which is to say, from there point of view the ingame events are indeterminate or even apparently incoherent. What difference does it make if the GM doesn't know the truth either? I mean, I can see the _aesthetic_ difference - if the GM doesn't know then it's no longer the case that the players are being told a story by the GM. But I don't see how it can affect the _validity_ of the event of RPGing.



Lanefan said:


> The best option is to never allow this to happen in the first place...and to achieve this requires solid pre-authorship of the setting by someone, and that someone is almost without exception going to be the DM.



All the actual example of this you give involve minutiae of dungeon layouts and other geographic elements. These simply aren't a big deal in most "story now" play.

And in any event, as I said, there are so many moving parts that I think this is just a non-issue.



Lanefan said:


> It's very slightly under 33 10' cubes, actually - a bit less (I think) than 33000 cu ft.



The volume of a spher is 4*pi*radius_cubed/3. For a 20' radius fireball, that's 32000 cu ft * pi/3. Pi/3 is approx 1.047 (I'm rounding down a tad), so that makes approx 33,504 cu'.

So all these years your MUs have been getting away with unrealistically low-volume fireballs!



Lanefan said:


> in those areas where I do have some experience (e.g. boating) I'll let that experience guide my DMing, overriding the game rules if needed.



Most adventure fiction depends upon _contrivances_,in the sense of things happening that are either literally impossible, or are possible but extremely unlikely.

My understanding is that the way Batman, Daredevil and the like routinely catch themselves on swinglines, the edges of buildings, etc are literally impossible, in tha a human shoulder joint can't endure that much force without tearing/breaking. This is nevertheless acceptable in those stories, because there are cases in the neighbourhood - eg where the fall is one storey rather than twenty - that are possible for a strong and skilled person.

In adventure stories that involve boats, there will typically be interactions with rapids, waves, sharks etc whose literal possibility or impossibility I'm not able to judge, but which clearly - even to a person like me with no boating experience - I can tell would require signficant skill and also luck to get through with boat unscathed and hair unmessed.

Gygax's design of the D&D combat rules is intended to recognise this: the rules don't simulate sword-fighting, but rather establish a framework in which adventurous types can survive implausibly many (were it the real world) deadly fights without dying or being permanently maimed.

I want boating rules in an adventure RPG to similarly allows unrealistically many lucky escapes and maneouvres. Each one should fal within the bounds of genre plausibility. The sequence of them does not need to come anywhere near tracking a realistic distribution of successes vs washups.

If a RPG constrains the space for adventure-story, genre-style luck - as, for instance, RQ does in respect of combat - then the natural result will be that players cease to act adventurously in respect of the domain of activity governed by those rules. (Or else will drift to exceptions in the rules that make luck possible - eg magic-using builds.)

That may be something someone wants, or not. But it's not, per se, a mark of good RPG design. (RQ is a great RPG, but not because it is more "realistic" ie reduces the prospects of adventurous luck in comba



Lanefan said:


> Does game-world gravity work the same as real-world gravity?  Default is yes.



What does this mean? Obviously things fall, but gravity in the real world is more than this: it's universal gravitation between all masses. (Apologies to physicists reading this thread: my physics is high school Newtonian, not properly relativistic.)

We know that lift doesnt work the same in the gameworld as in the real world (due to things like dragons, pit fiends etc); we know that a whole lot of physiology and related biochemstry is different (eg giant insects can breathe); and there's no particular reason to think that the gameworld is a c 4.5 billion year old sphere in orbit about a star.

Gygax suggested in his DMG that it might be possible to ride a pegasus to the moon - that certainly means that physical phenomean don't work like they do in the real world.

So I suggest that there is good reason to think that gameworld gravity _doesn't_ work the same as real world gravity - things generally fall to the ground, but for some reason dragons, pit fiends and the moon don't, and that's about all we can say.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> where is the character arc going to come from? Where is Pippin's resolve going to be put to the test?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Same place as in your game.  From the players and the DM interacting in the game world.
Click to expand...


That's not a very precise description of my game.

I've already said that I run RPGs along the lines of Eero Tuovinen't "standard narrativistic model". That means that, as a GM, I establish situations (= frame scenes, if you prefer that terminology) which I intend to be thematically compelling in virtue of the demands and pressures they place on the PCs' evinced dramatic needs (= agendas, goals, or beliefs, if you prefer that terminology).

I've linked to many actual play reports showing how this is done, in a variety of different systems, which use a range of different methods for evincing PC dramatic needs (some formal, some informal), for constraining GM scene-framing, for managing the narration of consequences (especially the consequences of failure), etc.

_How do you do this_? I know it's not like me, because _every time I post an actual or imagined example of how I might do it_ you argue that I am doing it poorly - eg you object to the fire giant example because it "cheapens" travel through the Underdark; you object to the feather-in-the-bazaar example because the player doesn't have to "work" to find the opportunity to make a decision about acquisition of a potentially useful item; in general you object to "going where the action is" because it doesn't treat the (presumably pre-authored) gameworld "neutrally".

You don't get to tell me that _what I do is wrong_, and then assert that _you do exactly the same thing_. So what do you actually do? Give me an example of how you _actually_ achieve thematically compelling story arcs.



Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> How are the thematically compelling moments going to be produced if the GM doesn't do it on purpose?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> the player originates them as in my examples, forcing the DM to respond.
Click to expand...


Your examples where _Pippin seeks out Farimir in Osgiliath_ and _Pippin joins the army of Gondor_. Those aren't thematically compelling moments. What responses do you expect the GM to make? Clearly not the sort of response I would make as GM, because _you keep telling me that I do it wrong_. So how would you do it?

To pick up on [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s example, how do you decide if Pippin, in the army, is or isn't posted to sentry duty? If he is, how, then, do you provoke a thematically compelling choice? What would that look like? How do you do it without having regard to the player's evinced agenda for the PC? How do you do it while treating the gameworld "neutrally"? Post an actual example!



Maxperson said:


> We are discussing character arcs, not agendas.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> opportunities will knock all over the place as once again, the social contract requires the game to actually be enjoyable.  If  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] failed in that he would lose his players.



No one is disputing that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s players enjoy his game. But there is no evidence that characters in Lanefan's game undergo story arcs of the sort found in JRRT. Lanefan himself has said as much - eg his PC who hopes to be a senator (i) probably will not get to attempt that in play, and (ii) will become an NPC if it succeeds, because the party will be off on other non-Senatorial adventures.

You say "opportunities will knock". Who establishes them - player or GM? If player, how is that different from the idea of "agendas" which you are rejecting? If the GM, how is that different from what AbdulAlhazred and I have already described as _the player choosing from the GM's menu_?


****************************************

And on Eero Tuovinen on backstory:



Maxperson said:


> The players can in this case let the DM know what they would like to encounter, similar to declaring an action to go into the woods and try to find an ogre, then rolling some sort of skill check to see if they find one or not.  The difference is that they don't actually have to roll.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Both involve authorship of the backstory, just through different means.



And given that that difference is fundamental, I don't see why you keep eliding it.

You also seem to ignore the fact that checks can _fail_, with the consequences that ensue from that.

And to repeat, again - _making a check_ is not authoring backstory, as Eero Tuovinen uses that term. It is not preauthoring, and it is not a heuristic proxy for pre-authoring.



Maxperson said:


> "Backstory is the part of a roleplaying game scenario that “has happened before the game began”. The concept only makes sense when somebody has done preparatory work for the game or is using specific heuristics to simulate such preparation in real-time. For example, if the GM has decided in advance that the butler did it, then that is part of the backstory – it happened before the player characters came to the scene, and the GM will do his job with the assumption that this is an unchanging part of the game, even if the players might not know about it. Similarly a player character’s personal history is part of the backstory in a game that requires such. Backstory is specifically separate from what might happen during play itself. We say that somebody has “backstory authority” if he is allowed to determine something about the backstory, simply enough."
> 
> Here he decided that the butler did it as part of prep before the game begins.  He specifically says it happened before the players came to the scene, not that it happened outside of the game. So in game when the players find out about it, they are finding out backstory and the PCs can discuss it.  He also says "Backstory is specifically separate from what might happen during play itself."  Play itself takes place in the present of the game world, so even that passage doesn't talk about backstory being apart from the in-game reality.  He references it through the butler example and the three examples above as it being inside the game reality.



You have completely misunderstood [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s point.

AbdulAlhazred is not making the (absurd) claim that the _content_ that is backstory is not part of the gameworld. He is saying that what makes that content backstory is _af fact about when and/or how it is authored_. Backstory is stuff that is _authored outside of play_ or is_ generated during play using heruistics that are proxies for pre-play preparation_.

Stuff that is established by the players in the course of play is not backstory. And Eero Tuovinen doesn't call it backstory, either. He says "I think that mixing narration sharing uncritically with backstory-heavy games and advocacy-model narrativistic games sucks". The reason it sucks, in his view, is because having the player establish the fiction that constitutes framing, or consequences, is at odds with the dynamics of player character advocacy in a "standard narrativistic" game: "[the standard narrativistic model] works, but only as long as you do not require the player to take part in determining the backstory and moments of choice."

Eero gives a number of examples, some pertaining to framing (eg the ToC and "orcs in the next room" examples) and some pertaining to consequences (the 3:16 example looks like this, and likewise some aspects of the ToC example, if finding a clue is treated as consequence rather than framing). In discussing one framing example (ie the NPC declaration of parenthood of the PC) he says that it won't work for the "standard narrativistic model" because "a roleplaying game does not have teeth if you stop to ask the other players if it’s OK to actually challenge their characters."

Now I don't think all the games in Eero's examples are in fact "standard narrativistic model" games (eg ToC is not, and nor is default D&D), and nor does he - but that doesn't weaken the point, which is that _the sort of stuff taking place in those examples_ may not fit well with the standard narrativistic model.

In the previous sentence I used the words "may not." That is deliberate: Eero is not a fetishist. He is not fetishising GM authority over backstory - he even notes that he designed a game without it (Zombie Cinema). He has a _particular _concern expressed in _concrete _terms: _certain sorts of player authorship of framing and consequence are at odds with the "standard narrativistic model"_.

Now, quite a way upthread it seemed that some posters, including [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], took the view that _any player impact on the fiction_ is too much (and hence violates the "Czege principle"). But clearly this is not what Eero Tuovinen thinks. He says, in the "standard narrativistic model", that "The player . . . makes choices on the part of the character. This in turn leads to consequences as determined by the game’s rules". So action resolution is (unsurprisingly) something that he takes for granted. _Player choices can impact the fiction_, by leading to consequences.

Some consequences - "I killed this orc in front of me" - are consequences that, in the fiction, are aptly described as purely causal consequences of the PC's action in the game. (We could quibble with this: part of the reason the swordblow kills the orc is that the orc has a certain biology, and the PC didn't make that the case. But we can probably take this to have been implicitly or even explicitly established as part of the framing.)

Other consequences - "I found a secret door in the wall in front of me" - are not. They implicate gameworld elements that (i) were not already established _at the table_ (ie the players didn't know about them), and (ii) the existence of those gameworld elements is not a causal consequences of the PC's action in the game (ie the PC didn't build the secret door).

Are consequences of the second sort problematic narration sharing? That is, do they have the adverse effect upon the player's interaction with the GM's framed scene that Eero identifies?

It is obvious that there is not single answer to this question, because it depends on _what counts as thematically compelling with respect to the framing and consequences_. And hence on _what will count as anti-climax_ or as deflating the tension, vs _what will ensure that the game has teeth_.

Let's consider a concrete example. Suppose that the PCs have come to a city looking for information, and the GM establishes that there is a temple in the city that might be helpful to them. So the GM tells the players, "You've all heard of the Temple of the Moon. Do you want to go there to see if they have the information you're looking for?" That is an exercise of backstory authority. It doesn't matter whether the GM came up with this idea years ago, and has been waiting to use it; or whether the GM came up with it on the spot - it is presented as something that is to form part of the "arena" of play. It is not itself a product of play.

Now suppose one of the players responds, "I've heard rumours of these Moon cultists - it's said they sneak out of their temple on the night of the new moon, to kill the unwary who linger out of doors." That's not backstory. It wasn't preauthored. And the player isn't generating it using some proxy for preauthorship. Clearly, the player is making a move in the game.

Should the game permit this move?

We know, from this thread, that in [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game, that is not a permissible move by a player. At best, s/he can ask the GM "Do I know any rumours about the Moon cultists?" The main reason Lanefan gives for this is that inconsistencies will arise if players are allowed to make these sorts of moves. There also seems to be a strong aesthetic preference, that players are only allowed to declare moves whose consequences would be (in the fiction) entirely the causal outcome of the PC's actions. And this move (if successful) would not satisfy that constraint. But notice that Lanefan's constraints have _nothing to do_ with the "standard narrativistic model". So they don't tell us whether or not, if your goal is that sort of RPGing, you should allow this move.

Eero Tuovinen gives an argument that it is probably not a sound move to permit in an investigation-focused game, because it is the player making up his/her own clue. [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has disagreed, not far upthread. I don't have a strong view on who is right out of Eero and Abdul, because I don't run investigation-focused games. All I'll add on this point is that investigation-based games run on the basis of strong pre-authorship of clues are likely not to conform to the "standard narrativistic model" because a number of scenes and consequences are likely to be driven by a _concern with finding out_ rather than _thematically compelling, choice-provoking situations_.

It's clear that there is no general reason why this should be an impermissible move. It doesn't leech the excitement out of the game, or produce an anti-climactic result. And it is a permissible move in Burning Wheel, where it would be resolved as a Wises check (it could be made on Temples-wise or Cultists-wise or Moon Cult-wise, at the discretion of the player subject to the ultimate adjudication of the GM and probably with different obstacles depending on the skill used). If the check succeeds, then the rumour is true. If the check fails, then something else is the case, adverse to the PC's interests. Because my example hasn't provided much information about those interests (other than that the PCs want information), it's not easy to suggest a good narration for failure. But a Burning Wheel GM who finds him-/herself in that situation can easily "say 'yes'" to the action declaration, so that the scene of the action changes from the temple to its cultists who are abroad on the night of the new moon.

Suppose the player instead says "I've heard rumours of this Moon temple. There is always a secret way in and out, that is illuminated by the light of the first full moon following the Autumn Equinox." Should _that_ be a permissible move? Again, in Burning Wheel it would be - a Wises check, perhaps augmented by Astronomy and Architecture. (And on a failure, perhaps the PC recalls that the secret way in and out is not only in that particular position, but can be opened only on that particular night when the moon is high in the cloudless sky.)

In Cortex+ that could be a resource established by a character with Religion or Lore specialisation, by spending a plot point.

Does it tend to leech out excitement? Create anti-climax? No. There is nothing anti-climactic about breaking into the Moon Temple by way of a secret entrance.

Suppose that the player makes that declaration not when the GM first mentions the temple, but when the PCs are _in the temple_, with the main entrance cut off by angry Moon cultists. So the player is trying to establish an alternative way out. Is this anti-climactic? No - there is nothing anti-climactic about finding a secret way out and escaping that way. (Note that in Cortex+ Heroic this would be an action scene, and so the resource could only be established by spending the point when the GM rolls a 1, ie when there is already stuff going on and the GM is rolling dice for the opposition to the heroes. So the player can't do it "for free".)

*TL;DR*: Eero Tuovinen isn't just going on a rant about what is or isn't OK for action declarations. He's talking about _who should be in charge of framing and consequence narration_. A player declaring "I search for a secret door that will get us out of here!" isn't establishing his/her own framing, nor narrating the consequences of the situation. It's no different, in terms of its basic implications for the situation, from declaring "I kill them all so we can get out of here."


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> But again, he could join the regular army, and be posted to some boring guard duty, or he could fail some checks or simply not have the requisite information needed to find Faramir, or it could even be IMPOSSIBLE to find Faramir due to his location having been pre-established as someplace inaccessible to Pippin. Truthfully, this is what you would EXPECT. Certainly if this was [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s style of play, as I understand it, this is exactly what would most likely happen. The world doesn't exist for you, PCs are nothing special, you rarely have any incredible opportunities because that's just not realistic. What does Pippin most likely learn? The taste of wormy army biscuits sounds like the most probable thing! lol.



A PC joining an army isn't likely to provide the most interesting of adventuring or role-playing opportunities regardless of whether the game is story now or DM-driven or pretty much anything else. 

One thing common to pretty much all PCs in all RPGs is that they - or at least the parties they are in - are somewhat independent free-thinking entities operating (while adventuring) largely on their own initiative.  Even when they're sent on a mission for someone else (which frequently happens) it's almost universally done as "Here's what needs doing, it's up to you as to how it gets done"; and in non-mission situations it's still up to the PCs to determine how they achieve their goals/beliefs/etc.  Extremely rare that any of this will happen for a PC that sticks itself in an army and stays there.

Lan-"ye gods - I think I've had more 'mention' tags come from this one thread than from the entire rest of my EnWorld history put together"-efan


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I stand by my assertion, it is vastly easier to say "I target square X, and these other squares are in the AoE, I'm rolling 7 to-hit rolls, I hit targets 2, 3, and 7, they take 27 points of damage and the others take 13." In AD&D you have to (at best, assuming an accurate room layout with figures representing the real positions of all PCs) decide on an exact target location, draw a circle somehow (on top of all the figures, walls, etc, even a template of some sort will be awkward at times) and then argue about if the figure that just got knocked over was EXACTLY outside or inside the diameter, and whether the base of figures counts or only the 'pieces parts', if the figure is really a fair size to represent the PC, etc. etc. etc. ALL of these arguments have come up in play where I have GMed, many many times! As I said, I'm not even delving into the 'volume filling' process and its potential intricacies (exactly how tall is that arched ceiling anyway?).



I guess I've just been doing this for so long it's become second nature for me.  Once I know the "detonation" point I can usually pretty much eyeball the board (which is marked in 10' squares) and say right away who's in or out; and if there's one or more creatures close to the edge I'll get more finicky and if that doesn't help I'll leave it to the dice.

As for whether someone near the edge is in or out, I'll just give a big bonus on the saving throw and if the bonus gets you to 20+ then you were outside the area and take no damage.  Obviously the same goes for the opponents.  (your example reverses the mechanics, using the 4e method of attack for damage rather than defensive saving throws).

Never mind that the idea of only one human-sized bipedal creature being able to occupy a 5x5' space is itself kinda silly unless said person is waving a very large weapon around.



> I have a math degree, I won't argue it either. In fact though your trusting E. Gary Gygax, because it is right in the 1e DMG section on adjudicating various spells! I trust Gary's basic solid geometry. I just haven't GMed 2e in a long time, so I'd have to go back and reread this stuff to recall every stray number. Again, this attests to the added complexity of the 'AD&D way' of doing it...



A complexity I don't mind.

The trick is not to remember it all, but to remember where to look it up when needed.  And, over the years I've gone through and rewritten absolutely every spell in the game, and put them online so they're easy for us all to look up.



> Well, you seem to play with a group of people who are basically incredibly focused on the minutia of D&D play, so I will just take your word for it. Trust me when I tell you, this is highly atypical, particularly in more recent times. If this was 1980, it wouldn't surprise me too much...



Shrug - to me, that's just how the game is played.

And when the outcome is possibly the difference between life and death for your PC, wouldn't you want to dive into the minutae and make sure things were done right? 



> I actually assert its objectively determinable in this specific case. The original point stands, that agency of players is positively impacted by having well-defined and easily understood consequences to standard actions.



I don't deny it helps with agency.  On the contrary, I think it helps too much.

My point is simply that if the PCs aren't in a position to know all the consequences then the players shouldn't be either, and thus there'll sometimes be some agency they just have to do without.

Something basic like swinging a sword at a foe: yeah, the usual consequences are obvious - you're either going to hurt the foe, kill the foe, or do nothing to the foe.  There's also possible unusual consequences - you might fumble and do something you didn't want to do, or you might hit the foe so hard your swing follows through into something else (a.k.a. Cleave in 3e), or you might diasrm the foe, or trip it, etc., depending on system.

But something basic like going left instead of right at an intersection - assuming no pre-scouting or other foreknowledge - the PCs have no way of knowing what consequences will arise from that decision, and thus neither should the players.



> Really, you studied that? lol. Honestly, given how D&D hit points work, classically, there's no way falling is at all realistic, and thus we must question the realism of gravity itself. I don't agree that every bit helps. I think that physical reality is holistic, and unrealistic is unrealistic.



Yeah, don't get me started on falling damage; it's bugged me since day 1.

Ditto with whichever boneheaded edition it was that gave the spell _Reverse Gravity_ a duration of 10 minutes.  The idea, I'm sure, was that this would for 10 minutes just cause anyone entering the area (or the individual target, it's been done both ways) to crash to the ceiling.  But what happens if it's cast outdoors where there is no ceiling?  Think about it..... 

A 10-minute upward "fall" doesn't quite put you into space, but you'll have long since suffocated by the time you come back down...and for the time you're falling upward you would always keep accelerating a bit, as terminal velocity is caused by air resistance which steadily decreases as you go higher.  I really don't think they quite thought this one through...



> I did this exercise out of curiosity a couple years ago. Numbers are all over the place. Yes, there are some records, but there isn't any large body of price and wage records for one specific time period. If you are willing to take a spread of records that cover over 600 years of history, kind of squint a little, and interpolate based on some prices that overlap between sources here and there, you can make something CREDIBLE. However, AT BEST it represents a sort of averaging over time, space, and circumstance, and only applies to the region it is based on (IE usually late Medieval England). How that relates to a fantasy world is anyone's guess.



None of it is perfect, but if you take an average you'll at least have a guideline to start from - which is indisputably better than nothing.



> I will just give you back your reply to me on that. I don't agree. I never will probably. The result of using D&D (no matter how tweaked) is utterly unrealistic and by necessity 99.9% gamist. You might make it 99.8% gamist, but is that really worth the effort? I gave it up years ago.



Again, I think you're being a bit pessimistic.  I mean, I'm sure I've got it down at least past the 99.6% point... 

Lanefan


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> No one is disputing that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s players enjoy his game. But there is no evidence that characters in Lanefan's game undergo story arcs of the sort found in JRRT. Lanefan himself has said as much - eg his PC who hopes to be a senator (i) probably will not get to attempt that in play, and (ii) will become an NPC if it succeeds, because the party will be off on other non-Senatorial adventures.



Two quick notes on this:

1.  She wouldn't become an NPC by any means...she'd still be my character, only (I assume) a non-adventuring one.

2. This may all now be moot in any case, as she and her whole party might have just been wiped out - we all got hit by some effect, blacked out (no save), and collapsed: end of session.  Since then the DM has already told us via email to get our backup PCs ready; and we're not sure if he's joking (it would be par for the course if he is) or serious.



> You say "opportunities will knock". Who establishes them - player or GM? If player, how is that different from the idea of "agendas" which you are rejecting? If the GM, how is that different from what AbdulAlhazred and I have already described as _the player choosing from the GM's menu_?



There's a third, middle ground between these two - the DM provides hooks (a menu, to use your less-than-flattering term) and the players are free to either bite one or to do something else entirely.  It would only be a hard-coded menu if "other" or "none of the above" wasn't an available option; but it always is, which in effect makes the 'menu' limitless.

Opportunities will knock, but that doesn't mean the PCs will answer the door - they're probably too busy looting the house they're in to notice the knocking anyway!



> And on Eero Tuovinen on backstory: ...



You guys keep quoting different bits of Eero to back your points, like two scholars of religion quoting different bits of the Bible (which can, if the right bits are taken out of context, be used to prove just about anything imaginable).

I'm not convinced Eero is all that much more learned in any of this than most of the rest of us; the main difference between he and us being that he put his thoughts together and stuck them up on a webpage for all to read.

Lan-"knock knock - who's there - opportunity - sorry, I gave at the office"-efan


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> This is like saying the PCs dying in a by-the-rules TPK is _just the same_ as "rocks fall, everybody dies" except the former involved some dice!




Let's see, dead is dead.  Yep. The same result.  DM threw the encounter in on the fly, and caused the rocks to drop on the fly. Yep, winging it is winging it.  Both are the same, except perhaps the satisfaction level of the players.  



> The fact that it's an action declaration that is resolved at the table is what makes it completely different, for present purposes, from "winging it". Upthread various posters, talking about "winging it", said that if it's done "properly" then the players can't even tell it wasn't in the notes. A player who declares an action and as a result has his/her PC find a secret door knows what is going on.



Yes, if winging it is done properly then the players can't tell the difference between that and notes.  That doesn't change improperly done winging it to be anything other than winging it.


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## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> I'm not convinced Eero is all that much more learned in any of this than most of the rest of us; the main difference between he and us being that he put his thoughts together and stuck them up on a webpage for all to read.




I was just thinking about this last night.  Having read his blog entry, he seems like any of the rest of us here.  A guy who has played for a long time and has his opinions on what he likes and dislikes, and is telling people why.  He doesn't seem any more knowledgeable, really.  Personally, I give him about the same weight that I give you, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] or most of the other people here. 

I really don't get why it's so important to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] that he be right about Eero Tuovinen.  He could easily just say that Eero got it wrong like he says about the rest of us here.


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## Guest 6801328

Maxperson said:


> I was just thinking about this last night.  Having read his blog entry, he seems like any of the rest of us here.  A guy who has played for a long time and has his opinions on what he likes and dislikes, and is telling people why.  He doesn't seem any more knowledgeable, really.  Personally, I give him about the same weight that I give you,  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] or most of the other people here.
> 
> I really don't get why it's so important to  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] that he be right about Eero Tuovinen.  He could easily just say that Eero got it wrong like he says about the rest of us here.




Ha!  I don't often agree with you, Max, but here I think you are spot on.  He's just a dude with an opinion.  Too often dudes with opinions get cited as authorities.

However, I think  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is also using him not just as a source of wisdom but also simply as a source for definition of terms, so that everybody can at least be speaking the same language.


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## pemerton

Looking up something else, I found this old forum post which seemed relevant to the GM narrating that the PCs arrive at the cavern of the fire giants:

The fact is that if at least one character is not fictionally present in a fictional location, with the location's immediate features described to everyone, then play can't happen. . . .

Your question is knotted up in the idea that if anyone ever says, "You wake up in a locked box," or "All right, skipping ahead to next Tuesday," or even, "When you open a door, a hydra strikes at you," then it's railroading. That is, that any kind of scene-situation or even description would be railroading. That's absurd. Without such material being established as the fiction in action, play cannot proceed. The only alternative would be to have every character's actions be laboriously described minute to minute, every damn day of his or her life, in the hopes that somehow, through no actual human agency, their situation would evolve into something fun to play. . . .

In many ways, framing a scene sometimes requires presumptions about the characters' actions. If I am the GM and I say, "All right, skipping ahead to next Tuesday," or, "Later, while you're taking a shower," then I obviously tacitly played the characters between the last moments played and the moments I'm describing. You did not, after all, laboriously describe your character going into the bathroom, taking off his clothes, turning on the shower, and getting in. You may well not even have said, "I'm going to take a shower" at all.

So is that railroading? It's a matter of three things. First, did you genuinely have something in mind that you wanted your character to do instead, or related, did you genuinely want your character not to take a shower for some reason? (And the GM didn't even ask.) Second, does the GM typically extend this kind of 'takeover' later in the scenes over consequential decisions for your character, in which case this is sort of the thin end of the wedge? And third, if you object, does your voice at the table matter, or does the GM shut you down and say, "My way, you're in the shower, I said so." If some combination of those three things is going on, then yeah, it's probably railroading.

But that doesn't mean it had to be. If the GM's statement, "Later, when you're taking a shower" is understood by everyone at the table to be a provisional opening statement of what can become a dialogue about the next scene, then by definition, it cannot be railroading. The GM is perfectly politely saying he's ready to cut to a new situation, the old one's done. The players are perfectly capable of modifying the suggested situation ("I'm in the shower with him," or "I'd rather have gone to the neighborhood bar first," or "No way I'm taking a shower! I like the smell of the nasty slime," et cetera) without it being considered a challenge, because the original statement wasn't a decree in the first place.

That kind of provisionality is very useful, especially when my #2 above (the thin end of the wedge) is not ever present. In practice, I've found that it turns into a negotiated dialogue only very rarely because no one is uptight about that mild transfer of who says what the character did. . . .

You probably know the problem with not having that understanding . . . the players become paranoid and argumentative because they are tired of having their characters played for them, and they "turtle up," insisting that their characters do nothing and react to nothing all the time.​
This is a more elaborate articulation of what I had in mind when I said that players at my table don't need permission to speak.


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## Emerikol

pemerton said:


> Your (2), (3) and (4) all rest on the premise that the GM has already established the details of the setting, _or_ is the only one with authority to do that. You then come out and say as much in the last two paragraphs.
> 
> I don't think it can be controversial to say that, under those circumstances, _the players have at best modest authority over the content of the shared fiction_. And also that a significant component of play will involve _the GM telling the players about his/her world_. This is what "discovery" will involve.




And this is where we keep going back and forth.  The players have 100% control over what THEY do.  They have 0% of the authority on any other part of the world besides their own actions.  So to the degree their actions are creating events in the world they have a lot of control.  They don't though have control over things their characters if they existed in that world would not have control over.  Their ability to affect the world is limited to all the ways their character could affect the world if they existed in that world.

I would posit, and this is from my own personal experience of course, that a world that allows anything the players can dream up to become part of the "fiction" of the world is going to lack consistency and verisimilitude.  I'm not going to buy that this world feels real.  I've had DM's like that and my interest soon wained.  I want a world that is crafted specifically to provide connections and relationships amongst all it's residents.  Even the fact I know it's being determined purely by dice is off putting to me.  It is why for most of this kind of stuff I prefer the DM roll behind the screen and just state what I see.  I don't want it to seem as if the DM is a portal into a real world.  He provides the sensory data and I provide my characters actions.

What I don't understand is why you feel restrained because you can't force fit something into the world that doesn't make sense even if you don't know it doesn't make sense.  And now it comes full circle back around to Story Creation vs Classical Roleplaying.  In my games, my players always choose the easiest path to victory.  Why?  Because that is what their characters would do.   I bet in your games sometimes your characters choose the most cinematic choice even if it's not the best ultimately when it comes to accomplishing the mission.

Anyway.  It's obviously fun for you and other people so that is what matters for your group.  I admit I don't see the attraction and I don't believe my fellow roleplayers would either.


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> What does this mean? Obviously things fall, but gravity in the real world is more than this: it's universal gravitation between all masses. (Apologies to physicists reading this thread: my physics is high school Newtonian, not properly relativistic.)
> 
> We know that lift doesnt work the same in the gameworld as in the real world (due to things like dragons, pit fiends etc); we know that a whole lot of physiology and related biochemstry is different (eg giant insects can breathe); and there's no particular reason to think that the gameworld is a c 4.5 billion year old sphere in orbit about a star.
> 
> Gygax suggested in his DMG that it might be possible to ride a pegasus to the moon - that certainly means that physical phenomean don't work like they do in the real world.
> 
> So I suggest that there is good reason to think that gameworld gravity _doesn't_ work the same as real world gravity - things generally fall to the ground, but for some reason dragons, pit fiends and the moon don't, and that's about all we can say.




Right! I can go further. In my persistent D&D world EVERYTHING works by magical forces. Growth, life, death, decay, rain, sunshine, EVERYTHING is a magical process. This is actually, largely, how ancient people's (by which I mean virtually everyone who lived before c1600) saw the world, and a lot of people actually still do. But in Erithnoi it is literally how things ARE. When a disease strikes someone it is because of an evil influence, curse, or possibly a misdeed, maybe even simply a failure to perform proper magical rituals. 

The Erth is simply a flat surface, which somehow (it was never canonically established how) exists metaphysically 'above' the Chaos, a sphere of brute physical existence and energy, filled with unordered material. There are spheres metaphysically 'above' the Erth, and they CAN be climbed up to! Flying for instance could allow you to reach various moons and then potentially to enter the 'Astral' spaces. These are however increasingly nonphysical and abstract domains, so its a little unclear what 'travel' within them actually MEANS (maybe you don't really physically go there at all, much like classic D&D's Astral Projection). 

So, in this context what is gravity and how does it work? For convenience it works pretty much like real-world gravity at a local level, but it certainly isn't a universal force as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] describes (fairly accurately I would say). It would be wrong to draw conclusions about how it functions in the large from the small. For instance anything will fall back towards the Erth (IE down) but you can still alight on the surface of the Moon Palee and look up at the World!


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> A PC joining an army isn't likely to provide the most interesting of adventuring or role-playing opportunities regardless of whether the game is story now or DM-driven or pretty much anything else.



Certainly realistic, unless you consider peeling a large mountain of vegetables to be an adventure! 



> One thing common to pretty much all PCs in all RPGs is that they - or at least the parties they are in - are somewhat independent free-thinking entities operating (while adventuring) largely on their own initiative.  Even when they're sent on a mission for someone else (which frequently happens) it's almost universally done as "Here's what needs doing, it's up to you as to how it gets done"; and in non-mission situations it's still up to the PCs to determine how they achieve their goals/beliefs/etc.  Extremely rare that any of this will happen for a PC that sticks itself in an army and stays there.
> 
> Lan-"ye gods - I think I've had more 'mention' tags come from this one thread than from the entire rest of my EnWorld history put together"-efan




This is certainly true in most classic RPG structure. Taking the early RPGs...

In Boot Hill the PCs are free living cowboy/outlaw types, maybe lawmen in a land with no law, pretty much you do what you can get away with, and kill anyone who objects!

In Metamorphosis Alpha/GW 1e its pretty much the same. The PCs MIGHT belong to a 'secret society' but the implications of this are pretty much up to the GM and it is certainly a lawless world with little society.

Most D&D games consist of a 'party' which is a law unto itself essentially. They may sometimes have some 'hooks' that tie them to something, but classes and whatnot are carefully written to minimize the necessity of that (without making it impossible). Many groups are 'bands of murder hobos'.

Traveler likewise marginalizes the PCs. The chargen system severs them from whatever organizations they were tied to before play, and then usually provides the group with at least one ship, a way to move around and avoid being compelled to overt lawfulness. Most groups tend to operate as sort of 'grey area' 'free traders' who try to avoid being outrageously criminal (at least where anyone can see) and who often perform legitimate business deals. The characters are expected to be motivated by money, willing to engage in dubious acts, and always looking out for some sort of easy payday. Later expansions added mercenary forces, etc.

I think games have moved somewhat in the direction of more social PCs over time, but only to the extent that they have become more story-centered and less purely action centered or challenge centered (IE like dungeon crawls).


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I've already said that I run RPGs along the lines of Eero Tuovinen't "standard narrativistic model". That means that, as a GM, I establish situations (= frame scenes, if you prefer that terminology) which I intend to be thematically compelling in virtue of the demands and pressures they place on the PCs' evinced dramatic needs (= agendas, goals, or beliefs, if you prefer that terminology).
> 
> I've linked to many actual play reports showing how this is done, in a variety of different systems, which use a range of different methods for evincing PC dramatic needs (some formal, some informal), for constraining GM scene-framing, for managing the narration of consequences (especially the consequences of failure), etc.
> 
> _How do you do this_?




I don't need to do it.  Game play being fun, will result in things like the players meeting kings and such.  The players are the ones that do it.  They tell me their motivation for their actions or roleplay as they go about it so that I am aware at that time.  The hard choices will come naturally.  If Pippin has joined the army and is in formation during Sauron's attack, does he break formation, putting his comrades in jeopardy in order to help Eowyn and Merry against the Witch King, or does he keep the formation, putting the lives of his friends at risk?  That flows naturally and requires no set up from me, yet presents a character defining challenge to the PC.  It's not my job to railroad the players.   Your players may have willingly gotten aboard the train by telling you ahead of time where they want you to take them, but it's still a railroad, albeit one that isn't bad.  I refuse to engage in railroading.



> Your examples where _Pippin seeks out Farimir in Osgiliath_ and _Pippin joins the army of Gondor_. Those aren't thematically compelling moments.




Who died and made you the god of thematically compelling moments?  Depending on why and how it happens, both of those can easily be very thematically compelling moments.



> To pick up on [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s example, how do you decide if Pippin, in the army, is or isn't posted to sentry duty? If he is, how, then, do you provoke a thematically compelling choice? What would that look like? How do you do it without having regard to the player's evinced agenda for the PC? How do you do it while treating the gameworld "neutrally"? Post an actual example!




First off, I don't decide if Pippin is in the army.  He joins or doesn't  As to how I know if he's in the thick of things or on guard duty, I know because I don't break the social contract.  One of those choices is fun, the other costs me players.



> You say "opportunities will knock". Who establishes them - player or GM?




Both establish them.  The player establishes them by being proactive about what his PC wants and does.  See again my Northern Barbarians example.  The DM establishes them through creating encounters that he thinks will be fun and exciting for the players, and then letting the players engage those situations or not.  



> If player, how is that different from the idea of "agendas" which you are rejecting?




I never said that players in my game don't ever have agendas.  I said that agendas are not required to achieve the sorts of character arcs present in the LotR.



> If the GM, how is that different from what AbdulAlhazred and I have already described as _the player choosing from the GM's menu?_



_

 [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] already answered this quite well.  It can only be a DM menu if the players are forced to select from what the DM provides, which is never the case in my game. They are free to select from any, all or none of the relatively few options I provide, or select from the millions of possible items that they can come up with themselves.




			And given that that difference is fundamental, I don't see why you keep eliding it.

You also seem to ignore the fact that checks can fail, with the consequences that ensue from that.
		
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While the difference is significant, it doesn't keep both from being backstory authored by players.  And no, I'm not ignoring failures and the consequences of failure.  I'm saying success is authoring backstory since it is the player deciding that a secret door should be in the wall right over there.




			And to repeat, again - making a check is not authoring backstory, as Eero Tuovinen uses that term. It is not preauthoring, and it is not a heuristic proxy for pre-authoring.
		
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Obama kept repeating that we could keep our doctors, too.




			Stuff that is established by the players in the course of play is not backstory. And Eero Tuovinen doesn't call it backstory, either. He says "I think that mixing narration sharing uncritically with backstory-heavy games and advocacy-model narrativistic games sucks". The reason it sucks, in his view, is because having the player establish the fiction that constitutes framing, or consequences, is at odds with the dynamics of player character advocacy in a "standard narrativistic" game: "[the standard narrativistic model] works, but only as long as you do not require the player to take part in determining the backstory and moments of choice."
		
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He also gives those three examples as players authoring backstory, which included authoring backstory through mechanical means, which would include your search check.




			Eero gives a number of examples, some pertaining to framing (eg the ToC and "orcs in the next room" examples) and some pertaining to consequences (the 3:16 example looks like this, and likewise some aspects of the ToC example, if finding a clue is treated as consequence rather than framing). In discussing one framing example (ie the NPC declaration of parenthood of the PC) he says that it won't work for the "standard narrativistic model" because "a roleplaying game does not have teeth if you stop to ask the other players if it’s OK to actually challenge their characters."
		
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All of those examples were of players authoring backstory.  He says the following right after those exampled, "The problem we have here(in direct reference to the three examples), specifically, is that when you apply *narration sharing to backstory authority, you require the player to both establish and resolve a conflict,* which runs counter to the Czege principle."




			In the previous sentence I used the words "may not." That is deliberate: Eero is not a fetishist. He is not fetishising GM authority over backstory - he even notes that he designed a game without it (Zombie Cinema). He has a particular concern expressed in concrete terms: certain sorts of player authorship of framing and consequence are at odds with the "standard narrativistic model".
		
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He very strongly feels that the D&D method of splitting DM and player roles is the proper way to do things.  He says this in his blog.

"This is pretty much just my own opinion, call it an observation – I think that a logical division of tasks is important for a roleplaying game to such a degree that it actually prescribes and explains much of what we find interesting in the game in the first place. Specifically, I find that the riddle of roleplaying is answered thusly: it is more fun to play a roleplaying game than write a novel because the game by the virtue of its system allows you to take on a variety of roles that are inherently more entertaining than that of pure authorship. This is why many people find conch-passing games to pale next to a proper roleplaying game; the advocacy/referee/antagonism division of responsibilities is simply a more dynamic, interactive, emergent and fun way of crafting stories than undiluted and complete dramatic control for many of us. Authorship is work, advocacy is game."

He's very much describing the style that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and I run as being a "proper roleplaying game".





			Other consequences - "I found a secret door in the wall in front of me" - are not. They implicate gameworld elements that (i) were not already established at the table (ie the players didn't know about them), and (ii) the existence of those gameworld elements is not a causal consequences of the PC's action in the game (ie the PC didn't build the secret door).
		
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Correct.  That's why the PLAYER is authoring the secret door into the backstory, not the PC.  The player is just using the PC's mechanics to do so(assuming success).




			Are consequences of the second sort problematic narration sharing? That is, do they have the adverse effect upon the player's interaction with the GM's framed scene that Eero identifies?
		
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I don't consider it to be problematic in your playstyle, but it is narration sharing and does allow the authoring of backstory.




			Let's consider a concrete example. Suppose that the PCs have come to a city looking for information, and the GM establishes that there is a temple in the city that might be helpful to them. So the GM tells the players, "You've all heard of the Temple of the Moon. Do you want to go there to see if they have the information you're looking for?" That is an exercise of backstory authority. It doesn't matter whether the GM came up with this idea years ago, and has been waiting to use it; or whether the GM came up with it on the spot - it is presented as something that is to form part of the "arena" of play. It is not itself a product of play.

Now suppose one of the players responds, "I've heard rumours of these Moon cultists - it's said they sneak out of their temple on the night of the new moon, to kill the unwary who linger out of doors." That's not backstory. It wasn't preauthored. And the player isn't generating it using some proxy for preauthorship. Clearly, the player is making a move in the game.
		
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It's not pre-authored, but it is heuristically authored in the moment by the player and is a use of backstory authority.  It's literally no different than the DM coming up with the temple in the moment, except for who authored it.




			Should the game permit this move?
		
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Depends on the game.




			Eero Tuovinen gives an argument that it is probably not a sound move to permit in an investigation-focused game, because it is the player making up his/her own clue. [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has disagreed, not far upthread. I don't have a strong view on who is right out of Eero and Abdul, because I don't run investigation-focused games. All I'll add on this point is that investigation-based games run on the basis of strong pre-authorship of clues are likely not to conform to the "standard narrativistic model" because a number of scenes and consequences are likely to be driven by a concern with finding out rather than thematically compelling, choice-provoking situations.
		
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That has the same effect on other sort of games as well.  Let's say that instead of investigation, the player was looking for potions and said,  "I've heard rumors of these Moon cultists - it's said they brew powerful potions on the night of the new moon, to sell to those who are in need."  The player is still creating the solution to his need, even if that need isn't information._


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## Maxperson

Elfcrusher said:


> However, I think  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is also using him not just as a source of wisdom but also simply as a source for definition of terms, so that everybody can at least be speaking the same language.



It's  not working out all that well.  We don't agree on what the guy is trying to say.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> I guess I've just been doing this for so long it's become second nature for me.  Once I know the "detonation" point I can usually pretty much eyeball the board (which is marked in 10' squares) and say right away who's in or out; and if there's one or more creatures close to the edge I'll get more finicky and if that doesn't help I'll leave it to the dice.
> 
> As for whether someone near the edge is in or out, I'll just give a big bonus on the saving throw and if the bonus gets you to 20+ then you were outside the area and take no damage.  Obviously the same goes for the opponents.  (your example reverses the mechanics, using the 4e method of attack for damage rather than defensive saving throws).



OK, well, my feeling is that these things tend to become focal points for arguments, because of course its a big deal if I take 10d6 damage or not! GMs tend to fall into camps. There's the 'hard ass' who rules with a bloody hand, the 'soft heart' who usually rules so that the PC lives, and the 'mechanist' who adds some die rolls and modifiers and may take 5 minutes to deal with one fireball.



> Never mind that the idea of only one human-sized bipedal creature being able to occupy a 5x5' space is itself kinda silly unless said person is waving a very large weapon around.



Which is exactly when 4e says this, outside of combat there are no such rules. I'd note that many PCs can move THROUGH a square, and in some cases its possible to occupy the same space too, though its not common. I mean, sure, I can see a point that says "a halfling with a dagger and a wizard with a wand could probably stand back to back in a square". I've just seen so few, if any, situations where it MATTERED if it was one square or two that I find the whole thing academic. I'm highly into the 'what works in practice' camp. 



> A complexity I don't mind.
> 
> The trick is not to remember it all, but to remember where to look it up when needed.  And, over the years I've gone through and rewritten absolutely every spell in the game, and put them online so they're easy for us all to look up.



Meh, I don't terribly mind looking some things up, but AD&D is a PITA! I mean, with 4e I barely HAVE to look anything up, and WotC designed the presentation so it would fit nicely into an online database which I didn't have to write! Frankly, D&D has one nice feature that has pretty consistently been true, its an easy game to reference. 5e TBH I find a bit of an exception here, its rules are not well organized. 



> Shrug - to me, that's just how the game is played.
> 
> And when the outcome is possibly the difference between life and death for your PC, wouldn't you want to dive into the minutae and make sure things were done right?



No, actually. I mean, I want it done in a way that is consistent with the way the game is intended to work. I'm fairly gamist and I enjoy exercising the workings of the game. Do I want to have to enforce rules on exactly how many arrows the orc fired before I got pigstuck? Nope, not really. If I invent some tactic that leverages "he's going to run out of arrows eventually" of course I want that to be feasible, but it can work on a check that represents how good I am at making such a plan, for example.



> I don't deny it helps with agency.  On the contrary, I think it helps too much.
> 
> My point is simply that if the PCs aren't in a position to know all the consequences then the players shouldn't be either, and thus there'll sometimes be some agency they just have to do without.



Right, this is the 'player test of skill' aspect of the original classic dungeon crawl, which is a very necessary part of that type of play (and when I say 'dungeon crawl' it can also encompass other similar kinds of exploration/looting situations, like hex crawls, certain kinds of intrigue, etc.). I think when it is projected beyond that, then it becomes an impediment. This is part of what is problematic with 2e. 

Now, I don't mind surprising players, but I'm OK with them having knowledge that PCs don't. If they are playing to see what the PCs will do, then they're going to play in character, and it may be advantageous for them to know certain things in order to do that.



> Something basic like swinging a sword at a foe: yeah, the usual consequences are obvious - you're either going to hurt the foe, kill the foe, or do nothing to the foe.  There's also possible unusual consequences - you might fumble and do something you didn't want to do, or you might hit the foe so hard your swing follows through into something else (a.k.a. Cleave in 3e), or you might diasrm the foe, or trip it, etc., depending on system.
> 
> But something basic like going left instead of right at an intersection - assuming no pre-scouting or other foreknowledge - the PCs have no way of knowing what consequences will arise from that decision, and thus neither should the players.



I just don't see the value of a decision in which there's no real substance. I mean, again, this is an artifact of the 'explore the dungeon maze' paradigm, where the PCs may well choose left simply because it gives them a chance to fill in a part of the map and search for a suspected secret room or something. Anyway, at least there will be map consequences that may eventually matter down the road. In a narrative focus on characters its color.



> Yeah, don't get me started on falling damage; it's bugged me since day 1.
> 
> Ditto with whichever boneheaded edition it was that gave the spell _Reverse Gravity_ a duration of 10 minutes.  The idea, I'm sure, was that this would for 10 minutes just cause anyone entering the area (or the individual target, it's been done both ways) to crash to the ceiling.  But what happens if it's cast outdoors where there is no ceiling?  Think about it.....
> 
> A 10-minute upward "fall" doesn't quite put you into space, but you'll  have long since suffocated by the time you come back down...and for the  time you're falling upward you would always keep accelerating a bit, as  terminal velocity is caused by air resistance which steadily decreases  as you go higher.  I really don't think they quite thought this one  through...



LOL! Which edition did that? I think it lasts 1 segment in 1e, making it kind of a weak 7th level spell, actually. However, it has several interesting characteristics. The main one being it affects an AREA not a target, so there are no saves. Questioner of All Things used to memorize it as a fairly stock ploy to deal with nasty high level save problems. Usually you can get some advantage out of it. Overall a weak spell in that edition.



> None of it is perfect, but if you take an average you'll at least have a guideline to start from - which is indisputably better than nothing.
> 
> Again, I think you're being a bit pessimistic.  I mean, I'm sure I've got it down at least past the 99.6% point...
> 
> Lanefan




hehe, well, I could be a pessimist!  I mean, I did make a price chart. It was mostly just me fooling around though. I don't really intend to use it in a game, and its fairly arbitrary. However, it would work. Honestly the 1e chart is not terrible.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> So is that railroading? It's a matter of three things. First, did you genuinely have something in mind that you wanted your character to do instead, or related, did you genuinely want your character not to take a shower for some reason? (And the GM didn't even ask.) Second, does the GM typically extend this kind of 'takeover' later in the scenes over consequential decisions for your character, in which case this is sort of the thin end of the wedge? And third, if you object, does your voice at the table matter, or does the GM shut you down and say, "My way, you're in the shower, I said so." If some combination of those three things is going on, then yeah, it's probably railroading.




I don't think the first question is really appropriate.  If I had to list all of the things I didn't want my character to do so that you would avoid doing them for me, we'd be sitting for several entire sessions as I droned on with the entire list.  With regard to the giant scenario, the answer the second question is yes, as how they approach the giants is a very consequential decision for the PCs.  As for the third, I've already said that re-winding time isn't something that I personally find acceptable, and there wasn't enough time to interrupt the DM in-between arrival and being spotted.  Even if the DM didn't shut me down and re-wound time to allow for a stealthy approach, that encounter is already blown for me.  I fully realize that this last objection is totally personal and may not apply to your players.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> LOL! Which edition did that? I think it lasts 1 segment in 1e, making it kind of a weak 7th level spell, actually. However, it has several interesting characteristics. The main one being it affects an AREA not a target, so there are no saves. Questioner of All Things used to memorize it as a fairly stock ploy to deal with nasty high level save problems. Usually you can get some advantage out of it. Overall a weak spell in that edition.




In 2e it was 1 round per level.  Were rounds still 1 minute in 2e?  I can't remember.  3e had it also at 1 round per level, which means 2 minutes at 20th level.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> I was just thinking about this last night.  Having read his blog entry, he seems like any of the rest of us here.  A guy who has played for a long time and has his opinions on what he likes and dislikes, and is telling people why.  He doesn't seem any more knowledgeable, really.  Personally, I give him about the same weight that I give you, @_*pemerton*_ or most of the other people here.
> 
> I really don't get why it's so important to @_*pemerton*_ that he be right about Eero Tuovinen.  He could easily just say that Eero got it wrong like he says about the rest of us here.




Eh, I think Eero Tuovinen is offering a fairly studied concept that is based both in experience AND in theory, what Marx would have called a 'praxis'. I personally think that most real significant changes in various fields come when you have improvements in the theoretical framework you are working with. In games there's clearly no 'right' or 'wrong', so you can't really call changes in process or goals improvement in absolute terms, but I think he's offering an improvement in CLARITY at least, even if you would rather not follow his advice.

I don't think he's your average Enworld poster. I think he has a very solid understanding and vision of what he's doing. So did Gary Gygax!


----------



## Lanefan

Maxperson said:


> Who died and made you the god of thematically compelling moments?



And in related news, RPG designers the world over are reporting dismal failure in their collective attempts to rein in the number of hyper-specialized in-game deities.  Pictures at 11.


----------



## Lanefan

Maxperson said:


> In 2e it was 1 round per level.  Were rounds still 1 minute in 2e?  I can't remember.



I think so.  And it's area-effect in 2e (30x30') with no save; and the spell even calls out that it affects things already in the air if they pass through the area.  And as you need to be at least 14th level to cast it that'll put my 10-minute duration to shame. 



> 3e had it also at 1 round per level, which means 2 minutes at 20th level.



Even 2 minutes is enough time to fall a very long way.  About 6300 meters (or 4-ish miles) in fact, using a free-fall calculator that assumes one is falling down not up and thus meeting increasing instead of decreasing resistance.  And then the poor sods have to fall back down again...

Calculator is here...

https://keisan.casio.com/exec/system/1231475371

...if you want to play with it yourself.  It doesn't let you enter the time fallen, only the distance; so I just kept entering distances until I got to one that gave a time result close to 120 seconds.  6300 meters takes about 119.98, which is close enough for me.

A 14-minute fall (840 seconds)?  Now you're falling a little more than 45 km, or about 28 miles, by the calculator...it'd be more, of course, when you're falling up as after the first 5 miles or so there's much less air getting in your way.  You're almost beyond the stratosphere at your highest point; and well above the ozone layer - so if the suffocation doesn't get you the radiation will, provided of course you haven't frozen solid yet.  And then you still have to get back down and not burn to a crisp in the process...

In my own game I gave it a duration of 2 seconds: long enough to fall upward about 50'.  I also kept the idea of it extending into the air...but noticed no other edition had ever thought about whether its effects extend into the ground; but as it's noted as going into the air it only makes sense it go the other way as well.  And suddenly it's every bit worth being a 7th level spell.  

Imagine casting this on a castle - for 2 seconds a large chunk of the place wants to fall upwards!  Or on a ship at sea (preferably one you are not on!).  Yeah, the possibilities are endless...

Oh; this thread was about world-*building*?  Sorry, got confused - thought it was about world-destruction for a minute there...

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Lanefan said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> something basic like going left instead of right at an intersection - assuming no pre-scouting or other foreknowledge - the PCs have no way of knowing what consequences will arise from that decision, and thus neither should the players.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I just don't see the value of a decision in which there's no real substance. I mean, again, this is an artifact of the 'explore the dungeon maze' paradigm, where the PCs may well choose left simply because it gives them a chance to fill in a part of the map and search for a suspected secret room or something. Anyway, at least there will be map consequences that may eventually matter down the road. In a narrative focus on characters its color.
Click to expand...


This.

There's more to RPGing life than learning the layout of the GM's map!



Maxperson said:


> how they approach the giants is a very consequential decision for the PCs.



Why?

_Consequential decisions_ isn't a table-and-player-independent category. It is extremely relative. I'm not saying that the decision about how to approach the giants could _never_ be consequential. But clearly it wasn't in the example I provided, because the players didn't say anything about it!

And for fun, here's an extract from the Dogs in the Vineyard rulebook (p 89):

What's at stake: do you get murdered in your bed?
- The stage: your room at night. A possessed sinner creeps into your room without waking you.

- You roll only Acuity, because you’re asleep. I roll Body + Will.

- My first Raise will be to hit you in the head with my axe. I get my axe dice too! I’m rolling a lot more dice than you, so probably you have to Take the Blow. But check it out -  that means you take Fallout and get to say how, it doesn’t mean you’re dead. You aren’t dead unless the whole conflict goes my way.

- So let's say that you take the blow: "I hear him coming even in my sleep, but he gashes me bad..." Then it's your Raise, and you can escalate: "...I come awake already in motion, with blood in my eyes and my knife in my hand!" Away we go!

I should tell you, in an early playtest I startled one of my players bad with this very conflict. In most roleplaying games, saying "an enemy sneaks into your room in the middle of the night and hits you in the head with an axe" is cheating. I’ve hosed the character and the player with no warning and no way out. Not in Dogs, though: the resolution rules are built to handle it. I don't have to pull my punches!​
I'm not going to pretend that 4e is DitV. But it doesn't require pulling punches either. If the players want to stride forthrightly into the giants' cavern, and the GM tells them "You see some giants . . . and they see you!" then away we go!


----------



## Lanefan

And now back to our previously-scheduled programming...


AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, well, my feeling is that these things tend to become focal points for arguments, because of course its a big deal if I take 10d6 damage or not! GMs tend to fall into camps. There's the 'hard ass' who rules with a bloody hand, the 'soft heart' who usually rules so that the PC lives, and the 'mechanist' who adds some die rolls and modifiers and may take 5 minutes to deal with one fireball.



I'm more the mechanist type, I guess.

And dealing with one fireball can take way longer than 5 minutes, if any magic-laden PCs fail their saves... 



> Which is exactly when 4e says this, outside of combat there are no such rules. I'd note that many PCs can move THROUGH a square, and in some cases its possible to occupy the same space too, though its not common. I mean, sure, I can see a point that says "a halfling with a dagger and a wizard with a wand could probably stand back to back in a square". I've just seen so few, if any, situations where it MATTERED if it was one square or two that I find the whole thing academic. I'm highly into the 'what works in practice' camp.



My example is trying to hold the line in a 10'-wide passage.  The game assumes two normal-size people are all that's needed for this; but three is far more realistic (some SCA types I used to know played around with this once) as two leave far too big a gap.  Never mind the issue of little spindly Elves and little tiny Hobbits being part of the equation... 

That said, if the two people holding the line are both using greatswords that's a different matter.



> Meh, I don't terribly mind looking some things up, but AD&D is a PITA! I mean, with 4e I barely HAVE to look anything up, and WotC designed the presentation so it would fit nicely into an online database which I didn't have to write! Frankly, D&D has one nice feature that has pretty consistently been true, its an easy game to reference. 5e TBH I find a bit of an exception here, its rules are not well organized.



1e rules are famous for their disorganization, but seeing as I/we have pretty much rewritten them over the last 35+ years we've been able to work on that a bit. 

The trick is to have all the most commonly-referenced charts and tables nailed to (or printed directly on) the back of your DM screen.




> No, actually. I mean, I want it done in a way that is consistent with the way the game is intended to work. I'm fairly gamist and I enjoy exercising the workings of the game. Do I want to have to enforce rules on exactly how many arrows the orc fired before I got pigstuck? Nope, not really. If I invent some tactic that leverages "he's going to run out of arrows eventually" of course I want that to be feasible, but it can work on a check that represents how good I am at making such a plan, for example.



Easy enough for the DM to just secretly roll a die to see how many he started with, then count what he fires... 



> Right, this is the 'player test of skill' aspect of the original classic dungeon crawl, which is a very necessary part of that type of play (and when I say 'dungeon crawl' it can also encompass other similar kinds of exploration/looting situations, like hex crawls, certain kinds of intrigue, etc.). I think when it is projected beyond that, then it becomes an impediment. This is part of what is problematic with 2e.



I think I might have had this same argument with pemerton about 2 months and 1000 posts ago in this thread: lack of knowledge is not a test of player skill.



> Now, I don't mind surprising players, but I'm OK with them having knowledge that PCs don't.



I'm generally not, as I've yet to meet a player who won't sooner or later use that knowledge when or where they shouldn't, even if unintentionally.  Ideally PC knowledge directly equals player knowledge at all times; in practicality this is nigh-impossible but I prefer to keep it as close as I can.

Hence for example if the Thief goes ahead scouting everything is done by note or in another room such that only the Thief's player knows what happens, and can then role-play reporting back to the party should he survive that long.



> If they are playing to see what the PCs will do, then they're going to play in character, and it may be advantageous for them to know certain things in order to do that.



Conversely: if they're playing to find out, what's the point if they already know?



> I just don't see the value of a decision in which there's no real substance. I mean, again, this is an artifact of the 'explore the dungeon maze' paradigm, where the PCs may well choose left simply because it gives them a chance to fill in a part of the map and search for a suspected secret room or something. Anyway, at least there will be map consequences that may eventually matter down the road. In a narrative focus on characters its color.



The substance (or lack of) of any decision isn't always known until after the fact; sometimes well after the fact.

Left or right could have massive substance: left means you shortcut around most of the dangers and right means you plow straight into them.  But you won't know this until you've done it, or done some divinations if you're really suspicious.

Or conversely, there might be no substance to it at all: the passages rejoin after 50 linear feet of curving hallway.  Again, though, you don't know until you explore it and make some decisions.



> hehe, well, I could be a pessimist!  I mean, I did make a price chart. It was mostly just me fooling around though. I don't really intend to use it in a game, and its fairly arbitrary. However, it would work. Honestly the 1e chart is not terrible.



The 1e chart has a few glaring oopses but yeah, on the whole it's more than adequate and the big mistakes are easy enough to fix.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> This.
> 
> There's more to RPGing life than learning the layout of the GM's map!



That's because you've reduced it in your own mind to only what's going on at the table, instead of thinking of it as your PC would and seeing it (in your mind) as your PC does as she explores through the castle or creeps through the woods or sneaks along the city rooftops.

The best sessions are those where I can forget I'm sitting at a table at all.  Doesn't happen often - too many distractions and game mechanics - but it's a worthy goal.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> I'm not convinced Eero is all that much more learned in any of this than most of the rest of us; the main difference between he and us being that he put his thoughts together and stuck them up on a webpage for all to read.





Maxperson said:


> I was just thinking about this last night.  Having read his blog entry, he seems like any of the rest of us here.  A guy who has played for a long time and has his opinions on what he likes and dislikes, and is telling people why.  He doesn't seem any more knowledgeable, really. .





AbdulAlhazred said:


> Eh, I think Eero Tuovinen is offering a fairly studied concept that is based both in experience AND in theory, what Marx would have called a 'praxis'. I personally think that most real significant changes in various fields come when you have improvements in the theoretical framework you are working with. In games there's clearly no 'right' or 'wrong', so you can't really call changes in process or goals improvement in absolute terms, but I think he's offering an improvement in CLARITY at least, even if you would rather not follow his advice.
> 
> I don't think he's your average Enworld poster. I think he has a very solid understanding and vision of what he's doing. So did Gary Gygax!



As well as what AbdulAlhazred said, I'm pretty confident that Eero Tuovinen is a hell of a lot more learned about Sorcerer, DitV, HeroWars/Quest and the other "standard narrativistic model" games he mentions than posters who have never even read the rules for them!

And even consider some of the non-narrativistic games he mentions - Lanefan and Maxperson, have you ever played Trail of Cthulhu? Do you know how the GUMSHOE system works? If not, how do you know whether Eero is right or wrong to say that "narration sharing" would or wouldn't be a good fit for that system?



Elfcrusher said:


> I think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is also using him not just as a source of wisdom but also simply as a source for definition of terms, so that everybody can at least be speaking the same language.



There's an actual thing that actually happens in the world: RPGing in accordance with what Eero Tuovinen calls the "standard narrativistic model". There are certain games that are designed to support this sort of play: Eero mentions some, and there are others too (Burning Wheel; a certain approach to Cortex+ Heroic; a certain approach to Fate; a certain approach to 4e). You can do it with AD&D (I know, because I have) and also therefore I would guess 5e, but in both cases there will be elements of the system that you bump into in the attempt (eg rather weak non-combat conflict resolution).

Eero gives a nice account of it. Clearer and more focused than Ron Edwards' attempt in an earlier essay, though less wide-ranging.

What is slightly odd about this particular sub-tangent of the thread is to have people who have _never read the rules for most of these systems_ try and explain that _allowing a player to declare an action which results in discovery of a secret door whose existence, in the setting, wasn't already noted in the GM's notes or wasn't determined by some other GM-side proxy for notes, like a random roll for secret door existence_ contradicts Eero's account of backstory authority. When, in fact, some of the games that he points to as fitting with his account of backstory authority _permit that very thing_, or things like it.

It's doubly odd because it's really quite easy to see what Eero's concern is: namely, that narration sharing that collides with GM backstory authority defuses tension and produces anti-climax. He literally tells us as much, and provides illustrations that reinforce the point. And it's then equally easy to see that the sort of action declaration I've just described _typically will not have such an effect_, and hence he has no reason to object to it. And obviously doesn't, given that he praises games _some of which permit it_!



Maxperson said:


> Let's see, dead is dead.  Yep. The same result.  DM threw the encounter in on the fly, and caused the rocks to drop on the fly. Yep, winging it is winging it.  Both are the same, except perhaps the satisfaction level of the players.
> 
> Yes, if winging it is done properly then the players can't tell the difference between that and notes.  That doesn't change improperly done winging it to be anything other than winging it.



Do you really believe this?

Just to be clear: you assert that, as _roleplaying experiences_, there is no difference between a TPK resulting from playing through a situation using the combat rules, and the Gm just declaring "rocks fall, everybody dies".

And you likewise assert that the _only _difference between "winging it" (ie the GM making up stuff but pretending it was in his/her notes) and a _player_ declaring an action which, if successful, establishes some new element of the fiction like a secret door, is that the latter is _improper_ winging it because the player knows how the element was authored?

Or do you have some other point you're trying to make?


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> There's a third, middle ground between these two - the DM provides hooks (a menu, to use your less-than-flattering term) and the players are free to either bite one or to do something else entirely.  It would only be a hard-coded menu if "other" or "none of the above" wasn't an available option; but it always is, which in effect makes the 'menu' limitless.
> 
> Opportunities will knock, but that doesn't mean the PCs will answer the door - they're probably too busy looting the house they're in to notice the knocking anyway!



I'm not the one who said "opportunities will knock" - that was  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s phrase. I asked him where they come from - player (in which case it's the _agendas_ he claims to reject) or GM (in which case it's the _menu_ he claims to reject). The fact that the player might ignore any given opportunity doesn't actually answer my question.



Maxperson said:


> The players are the ones that do it.  They tell me their motivation for their actions or roleplay as they go about it so that I am aware at that time.



How is that _not_ "informally signalling an agenda"? What do you think "informally signalling an agenda" looks like, if not the sort of thing you describe here?


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> That's because you've reduced it in your own mind to only what's going on at the table, instead of thinking of it as your PC would and seeing it (in your mind) as your PC does as she explores through the castle or creeps through the woods or sneaks along the city rooftops.



No. When I'm playing my PC leading his horse along the river while looking out for signs of fellow members of my order, my worry that I might not find anyone _is not a worry about what the GM has written_. It's a worry about _the fate of my character, which will be determined by how I play the game_. (In this particular case, by the details of my Circles check.)

After all, if your way was _really_ the only way to immersion, then you'd use it in combat too! (Ie find out what "the fates" - aka the GM - had in store for you in your skirmish with the orc.) But you don't.


----------



## Aldarc

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Eh, I think Eero Tuovinen is offering a fairly studied concept that is based both in experience AND in theory, what Marx would have called a 'praxis'. I personally think that most real significant changes in various fields come when you have improvements in the theoretical framework you are working with. In games there's clearly no 'right' or 'wrong', so you can't really call changes in process or goals improvement in absolute terms, but I think he's offering an improvement in CLARITY at least, even if you would rather not follow his advice.
> 
> I don't think he's your average Enworld poster. I think he has a very solid understanding and vision of what he's doing. So did Gary Gygax!



Reading backwards to get a sense for this conversation, I am now intrigued by what Eero Tuovinen wrote in this context, but I am doing a terrible job finding the article that others are referencing. Do you or [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] have the link available?


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> And in related news, RPG designers the world over are reporting dismal failure in their collective attempts to rein in the number of hyper-specialized in-game deities.  Pictures at 11.




I'm pretty sure they came from Discworld.


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> A 14-minute fall (840 seconds)?  Now you're falling a little more than 45 km, or about 28 miles, by the calculator...it'd be more, of course, when you're falling up as after the first 5 miles or so there's much less air getting in your way.  You're almost beyond the stratosphere at your highest point; and well above the ozone layer - so if the suffocation doesn't get you the radiation will, provided of course you haven't frozen solid yet.  And then you still have to get back down and not burn to a crisp in the process...




There's one flaw in this................................................Spelljammer!!  You take your oxygen with you, don't freeze, and no radiation.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> It's doubly odd because it's really quite easy to see what Eero's concern is: namely, that narration sharing that collides with GM backstory authority defuses tension and produces anti-climax. He literally tells us as much, and provides illustrations that reinforce the point. And it's then equally easy to see that the sort of action declaration I've just described _typically will not have such an effect_, and hence he has no reason to object to it. And obviously doesn't, given that he praises games _some of which permit it_!




That's not true, though.  There is tension in not knowing how you are going to get into a place, or how you are going to escape.  Being able to pop a convenient secret door into place right next to you diffuses that tension quite effectively and makes the escape very anti-climactic.  



> Just to be clear: you assert that, as _roleplaying experiences_, there is no difference between a TPK resulting from playing through a situation using the combat rules, and the Gm just declaring "rocks fall, everybody dies".




I didn't say that there was no difference.  I said that both result in being dead and both are the result of winging it.  The satisfaction comment I made would be in reference to the difference between mechanical resolution and the DM just declaring them dead.



> And you likewise assert that the _only _difference between "winging it" (ie the GM making up stuff but pretending it was in his/her notes) and a _player_ declaring an action which, if successful, establishes some new element of the fiction like a secret door, is that the latter is _improper_ winging it because the player knows how the element was authored?
> 
> Or do you have some other point you're trying to make?




There is no such thing as proper and improper winging it when it comes to the players.  Either they wing it or they don't.  Players are not the same as a DM.  So if it's allowed in the game for the players to wing it, it was done "properly."  My point is that the players are winging it with the creation of the secret door, and that the creation(if successful) is backstory authority as demonstrated by Eero's examples.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I'm not the one who said "opportunities will knock" - that was  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s phrase. I asked him where they come from - player (in which case it's the _agendas_ he claims to reject) or GM (in which case it's the _menu_ he claims to reject). The fact that the player might ignore any given opportunity doesn't actually answer my question.




Maybe you missed my recent post where I stated that I never actually rejected agendas, but simply said they aren't necessary to have a character arc.


----------



## pemerton

Aldarc said:


> Reading backwards to get a sense for this conversation, I am now intrigued by what Eero Tuovinen wrote in this context, but I am doing a terrible job finding the article that others are referencing. Do you or [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] have the link available?



It's a blog arguing that "narration sharing" - ie allowing players to introduce key elements into the fiction at moments of crunch - undermines play in the "standard narrativistic model".

This main argument is introduced by some more general comments about how narration sharing can conflict with the reasons for having GM authority over backstory even in non-"standard narrativistic model" games (such as D&D and Trail of Cthulhu).

My own view is that, moreso than the argument against narration sharing, the blog is interesting for its very clear explanation of the "standard narrativistic model". As I already posted, I think it's much clearer than Ron Edwards, although Edwards has a wider range of interesting things to say. (It's worth adding: Eero's blog takes for granted that the reader has some familiarity with Edwards' ideas, especially about the basic nature of "narrativistic" or "story now" RPGing.)


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> the blog is interesting for its very clear explanation of the "standard narrativistic model".



 I wish self-proclaimed RPG Theorists would pick labels for their theories that remotely make sense.  "wargame accidentally turned into an RPG model" or  "failed simulation model" or "consequences of coping with hopelessly broken mechanics model" or "justifying traditional stereotypes model"  ...


----------



## Lanefan

Tony Vargas said:


> I wish self-proclaimed RPG Theorists would pick labels for their theories that remotely make sense.  "wargame accidentally turned into an RPG model" or  "failed simulation model" or "consequences of coping with hopelessly broken mechanics model" or "justifying traditional stereotypes model"  ...



Is there a "pass the beer and let's all relax model" in there anywhere?  If yes, sign me up.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> Is there a "pass the beer and let's all relax model" in there anywhere?  If yes, sign me up.



 I've heard "Beer and Pretzels Roleplaying" before - often in reference to one of my favorite games, Gamma World.  

But if that term had come out of the Forge as an RPG Theory it'd probably involve neither beer nor pretzels.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Emerikol said:


> And this is where we keep going back and forth.  The players have 100% control over what THEY do.  They have 0% of the authority on any other part of the world besides their own actions.  So to the degree their actions are creating events in the world they have a lot of control.  They don't though have control over things their characters if they existed in that world would not have control over.  Their ability to affect the world is limited to all the ways their character could affect the world if they existed in that world.
> 
> I would posit, and this is from my own personal experience of course, that a world that allows anything the players can dream up to become part of the "fiction" of the world is going to lack consistency and verisimilitude.  I'm not going to buy that this world feels real.  I've had DM's like that and my interest soon wained.  I want a world that is crafted specifically to provide connections and relationships amongst all it's residents.  Even the fact I know it's being determined purely by dice is off putting to me.  It is why for most of this kind of stuff I prefer the DM roll behind the screen and just state what I see.  I don't want it to seem as if the DM is a portal into a real world.  He provides the sensory data and I provide my characters actions.
> 
> What I don't understand is why you feel restrained because you can't force fit something into the world that doesn't make sense even if you don't know it doesn't make sense.  And now it comes full circle back around to Story Creation vs Classical Roleplaying.  In my games, my players always choose the easiest path to victory.  Why?  Because that is what their characters would do.   I bet in your games sometimes your characters choose the most cinematic choice even if it's not the best ultimately when it comes to accomplishing the mission.
> 
> Anyway.  It's obviously fun for you and other people so that is what matters for your group.  I admit I don't see the attraction and I don't believe my fellow roleplayers would either.




Yeah, and there are times when I can't understand why you think that things would be inconsistent and 'force fit'. I can't speak to what other people experience as verisimilitude, but in the games I've played and GMed which were, to a greater or lesser extent, Story Now that sense did not seem to be lacking. 

As for characters choosing the 'easiest path', I'd say most players play their characters as if they're trying to survive and succeed. Its not really the case that Story Now 'waters down' or does away with challenges (as some have asserted) nor that it particularly leads to behavior which is overly melodramatic or out of character. I mean, if the players WANT melodrama, who's to argue with them really? Still, most players don't play that much differently in terms of what they end up doing, than they would have in 'classic D&D' or whatever. The plots and plans and quests and the things that are under threat from orcs, and demons, and whatnot, are just the things they picked! The GM is still picking obstacles in the framing, and the players are creatively finding ways to narrate overcoming them, or failing to do so. Cleverness and astute play are still virtues. 

I mean, as a GM I could help create a story in which Johnny Dumbass wins by doing stupid things, sure. Its not the most natural story to tell, and not the USUAL sort of character most players are into. In a mild form it can even be a decent change. I mean, heck, we all remember that 3 INT guy (ahem @Galladian!) who bumbled through! That was fun, but a typical Story Game is going to be a little more grounded than that. Mule Go Bang! hahahahaha!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> That has the same effect on other sort of games as well.  Let's say that instead of investigation, the player was looking for potions and said,  "I've heard rumors of these Moon cultists - it's said they brew powerful potions on the night of the new moon, to sell to those who are in need."  The player is still creating the solution to his need, even if that need isn't information.




But is that allowed? It might be in SOME games, but there are many possibilities:

In 4e it isn't specifically allowed, and depending on how you approach the rules, may be completely disallowed. If you play 4e ala [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] then a player could make something, a Religion check maybe, or undertake an SC, to find out if the Moon Cultists make potions as stated or not. Failure will have consequences, success will probably establish this as lore.

In HoML you MIGHT be able to use Inspiration to create a plot element like "A Moon Cultist approaches me with a potion of Shadow Walking to sell" BUT the character would have to have some attribute which could be leveraged to explain narratively WHY this came to pass (and the player would still have to come up with that explanation). The player could also undertake an SC to try to find such a potion, but its not established that they will dictate the narrative terms, or that Moon Cultists will result.

In Dungeon World you could utilize the move Spout Lore. You would have to use it in a very specific way however to significantly constrain the GM into producing Moon Cultist lore. Other moves might be required in order to actually achieve said potion. 'Complications' and 'Costs' are likely to be involved, which are going to lead to the GM making some (probably soft) moves. These might include some unsavory features of said Moon Cultists, lead to finding the ENEMIES of the Moon Cultists, etc. 

I'm not sure how this might play out in games [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is more familiar with, I'm sure he could explain how BW and Cortex+ would likely handle it. I'd think in both games that potions of whatever sort are wanted would need to be plausibly tied to at least one PC's beliefs or milestones. 

Now, in PACE, you could pretty much do it, but again it would probably hinge on a success of some sort. Like you'd have to figure out where to go, which might involve overcoming some sort of obstacle. Assuming a PC has a relevant attribute rated they can probably do so at some cost.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> In 2e it was 1 round per level.  Were rounds still 1 minute in 2e?  I can't remember.  3e had it also at 1 round per level, which means 2 minutes at 20th level.




That's quite possible. I'm not going to get out my 2e stuff to find out  This is one of the reasons I love 4e, it never does this kind of thing! Powers have quite specific ranges of allowable effect, and there are none which can bork entire game worlds just because they're used outdoors. Rituals could run into these sorts of problems, but they are intended to be much more supporting/bolstering/informational or maybe strategic (the transport type ones) but never have any overt combat effect.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> And now back to our previously-scheduled programming...
> I'm more the mechanist type, I guess.
> 
> And dealing with one fireball can take way longer than 5 minutes, if any magic-laden PCs fail their saves...



Yeah, I ran in horror from that part of the rules. Even in my most rules-loving youth THAT was a step too far! I mean, I can see how it creates an extreme high risk game to go with the extreme high reward you might generate out of 100% random rolls on the treasure tables. We did use the saves, but only when something 'catastrophic' happened to someone, like they got crushed, burned completely up, or frozen into a block of ice or something. 



> My example is trying to hold the line in a 10'-wide passage.  The game assumes two normal-size people are all that's needed for this; but three is far more realistic (some SCA types I used to know played around with this once) as two leave far too big a gap.  Never mind the issue of little spindly Elves and little tiny Hobbits being part of the equation...
> 
> That said, if the two people holding the line are both using greatswords that's a different matter.



Well, this may be true. I think my feeling is what you're saying makes sense. You could of course go with 1 square = 1 yard (or meter). Then hallways would be 3 squares wide typically, etc. It wouldn't really break 4e's rules, though you might have to assume a round was 4 seconds vs 6 in order for the movement rates to make sense, and let people jump a little further, etc. 



> 1e rules are famous for their disorganization, but seeing as I/we have pretty much rewritten them over the last 35+ years we've been able to work on that a bit.
> 
> The trick is to have all the most commonly-referenced charts and tables nailed to (or printed directly on) the back of your DM screen.



Well, I just started playing at an early enough age that I could memorize the books in a week, lol. And yes, I had (still have) the standard 1e DM screen. Eventually I pasted copies of extra tables all over the illustrations and then pasted 2e stuff over that! its ugly, but its a good 2e reference, and I left a lot of the old 1e DMG tables on there that 2e 'lost'. It was well enough organized for the time period, and not as haphazard as 5e by a long shot. 



> I think I might have had this same argument with pemerton about 2 months and 1000 posts ago in this thread: lack of knowledge is not a test of player skill.



I think the test part was partly the idea that smart players would FIGURE IT OUT. Dumb ones would just miss all the good treasure.



> Conversely: if they're playing to find out, what's the point if they already know?



Depends on what it is they are playing to find out! If its 'play to find out what the map looks like' that's obviously not possible if you already know. If its 'play to find out if the wizard's crazy plan to go 10 miles in 1 hour works' then maybe knowing the map wouldn't matter one way or the other.



> The substance (or lack of) of any decision isn't always known until after the fact; sometimes well after the fact.
> 
> Left or right could have massive substance: left means you shortcut around most of the dangers and right means you plow straight into them.  But you won't know this until you've done it, or done some divinations if you're really suspicious.
> 
> Or conversely, there might be no substance to it at all: the passages rejoin after 50 linear feet of curving hallway.  Again, though, you don't know until you explore it and make some decisions.



The point is, there's no drama to it. From the standpoint of a story about characters, what would normally be CALLED a story, it isn't really relevant. Its either a coin toss, or else you're playing in a game/situation where the players know enough to make fraught choices, ones that speak to their character's core CHARACTER. The former is just a waste of column inches in print, and some unknown amount of time at the table.


----------



## gamerprinter

Okay, I have not read this entire thread, or any of it really except the first post. To me players mapping the dungeon or the adventure is NOT what worldbuilding is about - having nothing to do with the subject at all. To me world building is the exercise done primarily by the game master or the creator of a setting (in case the creator is not the GM, but is a writer or publisher of a world publication). World building is what the name implies you're building the entire planet where adventures designed to use it takes place. Some do a top down design, creating the planet or other defined maximum area, dividing it into continents, nation states, wilderness regions, then designing the nations specifically, their capitals, major cities, eventually working your way down to villages, and individual dungeon locations. Then there is bottom up design, which starts at the village the party was born into, or find themselves at the start of given campaign of adventures. You design from their upwards, to the local shire, the local barony, working your way up to the nation state the village belongs. Then designing the neighboring states that may affect the village's nation state - then at some point fully (as full are reasonably possible) fill your world. I kind of mix the two starting at nation states and working both down and up from starting villages and getting as much nuance as possible - including origin myths, history, laws, culture, religion, economy, ecology, those concepts that help define the world, as well as maps of each level up to a world map.

That is my definition of World Building. The party mapper created during game-play is just that - the party mapper, having absolutely nothing to do with "world building".


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I'm not the one who said "opportunities will knock" - that was  @_*Maxperson*_'s phrase. I asked him where they come from - player (in which case it's the _agendas_ he claims to reject) or GM (in which case it's the _menu_ he claims to reject). The fact that the player might ignore any given opportunity doesn't actually answer my question.
> 
> How is that _not_ "informally signalling an agenda"? What do you think "informally signalling an agenda" looks like, if not the sort of thing you describe here?




I've come to the conclusion that what [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] really needs is to play in a No Myth Story Now mode for a month as a player and see for himself. Complete with GM explication of the reasoning behind framing specific scenes, etc. I think he's going to see that he's already trying to do it, and his issue is really just one of not having been really exposed to the technique in a way that is conducive to his understanding it. He seems to WANT not to understand, and yet at the same time to DO what he claims he doesn't do and doesn't want to do! 

I really need to make good on my offer to [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] to do some kind of a demo game.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, I ran in horror from that part of the rules. Even in my most rules-loving youth THAT was a step too far! I mean, I can see how it creates an extreme high risk game to go with the extreme high reward you might generate out of 100% random rolls on the treasure tables. We did use the saves, but only when something 'catastrophic' happened to someone, like they got crushed, burned completely up, or frozen into a block of ice or something.



I much prefer the high risk high reward model.  Without it I'd really have to tone down the amount of magic items the PCs can find, and where's the fun in that? 



> Well, this may be true. I think my feeling is what you're saying makes sense. You could of course go with 1 square = 1 yard (or meter). Then hallways would be 3 squares wide typically, etc. It wouldn't really break 4e's rules, though you might have to assume a round was 4 seconds vs 6 in order for the movement rates to make sense, and let people jump a little further, etc.



I do everything in feet - none of this squares business - and so movement rates are independent of square size.  If I was ever to run 4e (perish the thought!) I'd still convert everything to feet - it's just easier to work with.

One thing about 3e-forward going to 5' squares - counting those squares on a map of a large room can be a [female dog].  And they never put the room size in the write-up!



> Well, I just started playing at an early enough age that I could memorize the books in a week, lol. And yes, I had (still have) the standard 1e DM screen. Eventually I pasted copies of extra tables all over the illustrations ...



Ditto, particularly as I've supplanted all the original 1e tables with my own.  Never did 2e, though I have (or had) the books.



> I think the test part was partly the idea that smart players would FIGURE IT OUT. Dumb ones would just miss all the good treasure.



I prefer modules that are set up such that even the smart ones will probably miss some of the treasure...and you know it's really been done well if what's missed is different each time on repeated run-throughs.



> Depends on what it is they are playing to find out! If its 'play to find out what the map looks like' that's obviously not possible if you already know. If its 'play to find out if the wizard's crazy plan to go 10 miles in 1 hour works' then maybe knowing the map wouldn't matter one way or the other.



Situationally dependent; and if the PCs have reason to know the map already (e.g. it's an outdoor setting and they've the ability to pre-scout from the air) then no problem.

Other than cases like that, I'm always playing to find out what the map looks like - that's the exploration side of the game. 



> The point is, there's no drama to it. From the standpoint of a story about characters, what would normally be CALLED a story, it isn't really relevant. Its either a coin toss, or else you're playing in a game/situation where the players know enough to make fraught choices, ones that speak to their character's core CHARACTER. The former is just a waste of column inches in print, and some unknown amount of time at the table.



I don't at all believe that every choice has to be fraught, or dramatic, or that it has to speak to something important about a character.  But I do believe that the unfraught and undramatic ones still need the opportunity to be made rather than ignored, and that even when there is drama and fraughtness* it doesn't have to be apparent right then; it can always come to light later.

* - there's yer new word for the day, you're welcome. 

Lanefan


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> That's not true, though.  There is tension in not knowing how you are going to get into a place, or how you are going to escape.  Being able to pop a convenient secret door into place right next to you diffuses that tension quite effectively and makes the escape very anti-climactic.



Lets analyze what's happening here. First of all I'll pass on the question of whether or not what you're suggesting is actually a good idea in terms of acceptable player agency. Lets just say it comes to pass through SOME means, but remember, failure was an option, and that would be hard on the character's chances.

Now, by creating a secret door the player is signaling a desire to move beyond the current situation. That is it isn't, in its existing framing, where he wants the character to be. This is a perfectly legitimate position for a player to take! 

Next, consider what was ongoing, some attempt by the player to achieve something that was important to her. Creating the secret door is either abandoning that attempt (which is consequential and probably will have some blowback) or it could be an attempt to 'get away with the goods'. In EITHER case the GM is free to frame the next scene. What has she escaped from by passing through the secret door? The frying pan? Is she now in the fire? Lets play to find out! I'm missing where the tension was lost here...

This is also a reason why I'm a bit less concerned with the players having some real control. Its not like the GM gave up the right to frame scenes. Some GMs might squirm at the thought of the character escaping through the secret door with the crown jewels, I'm just wondering who's waiting at the other end of the secret passage to relieve her of them!


----------



## Lanefan

gamerprinter said:


> I kind of mix the two starting at nation states and working both down and up from starting villages and getting as much nuance as possible - including origin myths, history, laws, culture, religion, economy, ecology, those concepts that help define the world, as well as maps of each level up to a world map.



On reading this I realized this is how I've always done it too kind of without being aware of it - I start at about the nation-state level then work both outwards to the region/continent (though I don't usually bother much about the whole world) and inwards to the province/city/village level.

Next time I do one, whenever that is, I'll have to think about mixing it up - start either from a very local level or from the world-as-a-whole level, and see what comes of it.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Lets analyze what's happening here. First of all I'll pass on the question of whether or not what you're suggesting is actually a good idea in terms of acceptable player agency. Lets just say it comes to pass through SOME means, but remember, failure was an option, and that would be hard on the character's chances.



By my definition, failure here means there's no door; with the obvious ensuing complication being that now our erstwhile Thief has to face whatever she was trying to avoid.

However, let's assume a secret door is successfully found, and proceed.



> Now, by creating a secret door the player is signaling a desire to move beyond the current situation. That is it isn't, in its existing framing, where he wants the character to be. This is a perfectly legitimate position for a player to take!



And for a bunch of different reasons.  My example earlier was the player/PC was trying to escape from a losing combat.  But the same desire could arise from the player/PC trying to get into somewhere, and a secret door would nicely avoid all those nasty guards and their dogs.  Or that the passage has come to what looks to be a dead end and the player/PC is testing whether it really is.  And so on...



> Next, consider what was ongoing, some attempt by the player to achieve something that was important to her. Creating the secret door is either abandoning that attempt (which is consequential and probably will have some blowback) or it could be an attempt to 'get away with the goods'.



Or it could still be part of an attempt to achieve that important something.  







> In EITHER case the GM is free to frame the next scene. What has she escaped from by passing through the secret door? The frying pan? Is she now in the fire? Lets play to find out! I'm missing where the tension was lost here...
> 
> This is also a reason why I'm a bit less concerned with the players having some real control. Its not like the GM gave up the right to frame scenes. Some GMs might squirm at the thought of the character escaping through the secret door with the crown jewels, I'm just wondering who's waiting at the other end of the secret passage to relieve her of them!



I think that has to depend on how much leeway is given in narrating what a success means and how far forward it can carry the fiction.

Finding a secret door (success) doesn't give the DM the right to frame someone waiting at the other end of the passage (a complication), does it?  I mean, if it does there might be hope for this stuff yet!   But the impressions I've been given is that the DM isn't allowed to mitigate successes, only add complications to failures.

But if the DM knows ahead of time a) whether there's a secret door there, b) where and what it leads to, and c) what if anything awaits beyond it, then there's no need to think about how much leeway a successful action provides as the answers are already in place.

Lan-"this hypothetical castle we've built must have so many secret doors in it by now that its structural integrity is in serious question"-efan


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> But is that allowed? It might be in SOME games, but there are many possibilities:
> 
> In 4e it isn't specifically allowed, and depending on how you approach the rules, may be completely disallowed. If you play 4e ala  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] then a player could make something, a Religion check maybe, or undertake an SC, to find out if the Moon Cultists make potions as stated or not. Failure will have consequences, success will probably establish this as lore.




That's what I was saying.  I had [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] in mind when I wrote that.


----------



## Yaztromo

I'm quite fond of _classic D&D puzzles_, so I can see your point about dungeons, but I suggest you to have a proper look at the really classic D&D dungeons that became the prototype of them all: have a proper look at Castle Blackmoor (First Fantasy Campaign), or at the Temple of the Frog (DA2), or, if you want to leave Dave Arneson on a side, you could take the super-classic Caverns of Thracia, by the Judges Guild.

They are puzzles to be solved, sure, but behind their configuration (choice of monsters, traps, levels, staircases, bypasses, etc.) there is a HUGE amount of world building! Quite a lot of that is explained openly in the gaming modules (just check how long backstories can be), but even more is not, but it becomes obvious studying the adventure.
They are NOT random constructions made by a mechanical mastermind, as if they were chess problems proposed by an enigmistic journal, but all (yeah, almost all...) has a sense in that crazy puzzles in the shape of dungeons!
That's *worldbuilding* too!

I know I answered just to half your question with this, but I think these points are sometimes forgotten by the lovers of _classic D&D_ (like me too).


----------



## gamerprinter

World building is half my fun in being a GM.

Well those of you who know me, know I created the Kaidan setting of Japanese Horror (PFRPG) so you know at least region down is how I built Kaidan (almost never creating entire 
worlds), aside from being a pro freelance cartographer, but now that I'm also my own small publishing company mostly creating stuff for Starfinder compatible these days. Just released a book on optional starship and space station rules. Edward Moyer, a SF designer, wrote the book with a huge number of my deck plans (174 pages).

My next big project, I'll be the author, with Ed as primary designer, but since Kaidan is my IP, I'm doing a Kaidan 2.0 (or Kaidan 2000 years later) as Kaidan the Interstellar Empire of Japanese Horror, so feudal Japan as dark space opera. With some cyberpunk aspects, MegaCorps as great samurai houses, conquered planets of kappa, kitsune, koropokuru, hengeyokai, tengu, and adding a few new player races (oni, same-bito, etc.) on their own planets or moons. That's going to be fun, though.

So I'm going to be world-building 7 planets across several star system and an oort cloud with all the nuance required. I look forward to that project and product!


----------



## pemerton

Emerikol said:


> The players have 100% control over what THEY do.  They have 0% of the authority on any other part of the world besides their own actions.



Well, this is true only for certain values of _what they do_.

The players in your game, for instance, have 100% control over whether or not their PCs _search for a secret door_. They don't have 100% control over whether or not their PCs _discover a secret door_.



Emerikol said:


> What I don't understand is why you feel restrained because you can't force fit something into the world that doesn't make sense even if you don't know it doesn't make sense.



Well, I'm not sure what "force fit" means here, and nor what you mean by "doesn't make sense". I mean, if there is a stone wall in an elaborate architectural construction like a dungeon or a castle, why would a secret door not make sense? How is discovering one "force fitting" anything?

Of course if the GM has already written a story about a castle with no secret doors, then it would contradict that story to find a secret door. But that's why I don't like that sort of pre-authorship, which prioritises the GM's story over actually playing the fiction at the table.



Emerikol said:


> I would posit, and this is from my own personal experience of course, that a world that allows anything the players can dream up to become part of the "fiction" of the world is going to lack consistency and verisimilitude.



Well,_ anything the players can dream up_ seems slightly exaggerated language - but, putting that to one side, this is not my experience at all. In my experience players want to play the game and play the fiction. Not break it or make it silly.



Emerikol said:


> In my games, my players always choose the easiest path to victory.  Why?  Because that is what their characters would do.   I bet in your games sometimes your characters choose the most cinematic choice even if it's not the best ultimately when it comes to accomplishing the mission.



"Cinematic" is not a big part of how my games play. But the players don't always choose the easiest path to victory - there can be all sorts of reasons (eg promises made, other sorts of obligations and moral constraint, etc) that comes into play.

My own PC is a knight of a holy order. He - which is to say _I_, when I'm playing him - am bound by obligations of chivalry, of justice, of faith. Only a weak or evil person would always choose the most expedient path!

In my 4e game, the player who is best at mechanical optimisation plays a drow sorcerer. From the first time this PC entered the game (at 3rd level), it has been established (by the player) that he is a member of a drow secret society, the Order of the Bat, whose members worship Corellon and have the goal of overthrowing Lolth and ending the sundering of the elves. At 28th level he finally had the chance to realise - the PCs killed Lolth. This particular player then sealed the Abyss at the 66th level (ie the Demonwebs), even though doing so cost him one of his four daily powers permanently (unless he wants to _unseal_ it again), and also required him to change his paragon path (which was a power downgrade, given that his original paragon path - Demonskin Adept - is one of the most powerful in the game).

Whether or not that counts as cinematic (others can judge that), I don't think it counts as taking the easiest path.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> the players are winging it with the creation of the secret door



No more than they are "winging it" when they attack an orc! It's just action declaration and resolution.



Maxperson said:


> There is tension in not knowing how you are going to get into a place, or how you are going to escape.  Being able to pop a convenient secret door into place right next to you diffuses that tension quite effectively and makes the escape very anti-climactic.



Why is trying to find a secret door less exciting than trying to fight your way out?



Maxperson said:


> Let's say that instead of investigation, the player was looking for potions and said,  "I've heard rumors of these Moon cultists - it's said they brew powerful potions on the night of the new moon, to sell to those who are in need."  The player is still creating the solution to his need, even if that need isn't information.



This was discussed a long way upthread.

Does the player automatically have the power to buy these potions from the Moon cultists? Does this action declaration actually let the player right down in his/her PC sheet "10 Moon Cult potions"? If not, then the player hasn't authored any solution at all.

In my BW game, a player introduced Jabal of the Cabal as a NPC with whom he might make contact to find work. This didn't guarantee work, however - the resultant Circles check failed and Jabal send a thug to beat up the PCs and kick them out of town.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> But is that allowed? It might be in SOME games, but there are many possibilities:
> 
> In 4e it isn't specifically allowed, and depending on how you approach the rules, may be completely disallowed. If you play 4e ala [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] then a player could make something, a Religion check maybe, or undertake an SC, to find out if the Moon Cultists make potions as stated or not. Failure will have consequences, success will probably establish this as lore.



In 4e I may well just say "yes". Given the baseline assumption in 4e about the capacity of the players to have PCs spend gold for items, simply establishing an intriguing source of shadow walking (or whatever) potions probably doesn't do anything but add a bit of fun flavour to the game.

Whether the PCs can actually buy the potions is a different matter. By default gold in 4e can be spent freely, but I think it's fair game to require a skill challenge in the appropriate circumstances (eg buying unusual potions from a mysterious cult).


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> He's very much describing the style that [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and I run as being a "proper roleplaying game".



And?

Why wouldn't he?

But its certainly not an instance of the "standard narrativistic model". He's not saying that the way you play is the _only_ form of proper RPG. (I mean, he actually _instances_ a number of games, including Sorcerer, DitV and HeroWars/Quest, which do not work like what you and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] do.)


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> By my definition, failure here means there's no door



That's what I called "weaksauce" upthread.

If you have failures like that, then of course checking for doors can be anti-climactic, as there's no cost to the check failing.

But that's not how systems that allow a full suite of action declarations work. They are generally "fail forward" systems. Upthread I described this aspect of the BW Circles rules: if a Circles check fails, the GM is entitled to introduce a hostile NPC (the one sought, or a different one) in lieu of the desired contact. This is what happened when the PCs tried to make contact with Jabal of the Cabal.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Lets analyze what's happening here. First of all I'll pass on the question of whether or not what you're suggesting is actually a good idea in terms of acceptable player agency. Lets just say it comes to pass through SOME means, but remember, failure was an option, and that would be hard on the character's chances.
> 
> Now, by creating a secret door the player is signaling a desire to move beyond the current situation. That is it isn't, in its existing framing, where he wants the character to be. This is a perfectly legitimate position for a player to take!
> 
> Next, consider what was ongoing, some attempt by the player to achieve something that was important to her. Creating the secret door is either abandoning that attempt (which is consequential and probably will have some blowback) or it could be an attempt to 'get away with the goods'. In EITHER case the GM is free to frame the next scene. What has she escaped from by passing through the secret door? The frying pan? Is she now in the fire? Lets play to find out! I'm missing where the tension was lost here...
> 
> This is also a reason why I'm a bit less concerned with the players having some real control. Its not like the GM gave up the right to frame scenes. Some GMs might squirm at the thought of the character escaping through the secret door with the crown jewels, I'm just wondering who's waiting at the other end of the secret passage to relieve her of them!




Right.  Believe it or not, I understand what it is the player is trying to achieve by creating the secret door.  My point with that statement is that if you need to get out of a place, there is tension in that.  Am I going to get out?  Am I going to get out in time? Am I going to live? How that ends is a climax.  The creation of the secret door diffuses that tension and is fairly anti-climactic.  Even if failure could result in ratcheted up tension, the player through ingenuity can keep attempting to create ways out.  The tension is lost because the player knows he will eventually roll successfully.

To your last point.  Yes, adding something else at the end of the passage to relieve the PC of the jewels can definitely add or replace the tension that was lost by the creation of the door.  I say can and not will, because depending on what is there, your mileage may vary.     My question to you about that sort of response to a successful roll is this.  How is that not a form of blocking the player?  The player made his intent known and succeeded.  Taking the jewels away, or even trying to take them away on that success seems like blocking to me, at least as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and/or [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] have described it to me in the past.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> No more than they are "winging it" when they attack an orc! It's just action declaration and resolution.




Correct.  If the know the orcs are in the next room and plan out the attack, they are not winging it by attacking the orcs.  If the orcs jump them and they just swing in response, they are winging it with the attack.  An attack can be winging it or not, even if it's an action.

The definition of winging it.  "To wing it is an idiom that means to improvise,* to do something without proper preparation or time to rehearse*."   I see no reason that actions cannot meet that definition.



> Why is trying to find a secret door less exciting than trying to fight your way out?



  Not trying to find a secret door.  Creating a secret door.  



> Does the player automatically have the power to buy these potions from the Moon cultists? Does this action declaration actually let the player right down in his/her PC sheet "10 Moon Cult potions"? If not, then the player hasn't authored any solution at all.



I think that if the player did not have the power to buy potions, he probably wouldn't have created that ability in the cultists, although knowing where to buy potions in the future is helpful.  Second, authoring a solution isn't relevant to what I'm claiming.  Solution or not, it's still a heuristic authoring of backstory.


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Not trying to find a secret door.  Creating a secret door.



No. An action declaration to create a secret door would be "I build a secret door". It would be tested on Stonemason or Engineering or some comparable skill, or perhaps - if being done magically (as per the D&D spell Phase Door or something similar) by testing a sorcerous ability.

As opposed to "I look for a secret door", which is tested on some sort of Perception or Search ability.



Maxperson said:


> Solution or not, it's still a heuristic authoring of backstory.



It's not a pre-authoring of anything, nor is it using a specific heuristic to simulate such preparation in real-time. It's action declaration. Resolving an action declaration isn't simulating preparation that took place in advance of play. _It's actually playing the game_!

Whether it's a form of problematic "narration sharing" is a further question. I addressed this at some length in a post upthread, considering different approaches to play and what may or may not be anticlimactic and tension-draining in those contexts.



Maxperson said:


> My point with that statement is that if you need to get out of a place, there is tension in that.  Am I going to get out?  Am I going to get out in time? Am I going to live? How that ends is a climax.  The creation of the secret door diffuses that tension and is fairly anti-climactic.  Even if failure could result in ratcheted up tension, the player through ingenuity can keep attempting to create ways out.  The tension is lost because the player knows he will eventually roll successfully.



(1) If failure means capture (for instance), then the player can't keep trying.

(2) If the player is not allowed to declare actions to try and escape, then how do you envisage the situation actually resolving?


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## Imaro

pemerton said:


> No. An action declaration to create a secret door would be "I build a secret door". It would be tested on Stonemason or Engineering or some comparable skill, or perhaps - if being done magically (as per the D&D spell Phase Door or something similar) by testing a sorcerous ability.
> 
> As opposed to "I look for a secret door", which is tested on some sort of Perception or Search ability.?




Yes but the effect is that a secret door is created... since it doesn't already exist.


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## tomBitonti

Maxperson said:


> Right.  Believe it or not, I understand what it is the player is trying to achieve by creating the secret door.  My point with that statement is that if you need to get out of a place, there is tension in that.  Am I going to get out?  Am I going to get out in time? Am I going to live? How that ends is a climax.  The creation of the secret door diffuses that tension and is fairly anti-climactic.  Even if failure could result in ratcheted up tension, the player through ingenuity can keep attempting to create ways out.  The tension is lost because the player knows he will eventually roll successfully.
> 
> To your last point.  Yes, adding something else at the end of the passage to relieve the PC of the jewels can definitely add or replace the tension that was lost by the creation of the door.  I say can and not will, because depending on what is there, your mileage may vary.     My question to you about that sort of response to a successful roll is this.  How is that not a form of blocking the player?  The player made his intent known and succeeded.  Taking the jewels away, or even trying to take them away on that success seems like blocking to me, at least as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and/or [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] have described it to me in the past.




I'm still working my way through this example.

Let's say the player received a prophecy earlier that they would find a boon in an unexpected place, which was provided to the character as an option to add to the story in the future to avoid an obstacle, and the player chose to use that boon to create the secret door.

Or, the sense of it could be more that the player can declare that there is a secret door, but the GM still has a determination of how usable the door is: There could be locks, or a guardian, or fallen rocks to clear.

Then, the player is really declaring that they are interested in escaping a foe (rather than negotiating with them, or fighting them), with the means being a secret escape of some sort, and the GM adjusts the tension by considering how the player manages to overcome challenges introduced along with the secret escape route.

Thx!
TomB


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## Emerikol

pemerton said:


> Well, this is true only for certain values of _what they do_.
> 
> The players in your game, for instance, have 100% control over whether or not their PCs _search for a secret door_. They don't have 100% control over whether or not their PCs _discover a secret door_.
> 
> Well, I'm not sure what "force fit" means here, and nor what you mean by "doesn't make sense". I mean, if there is a stone wall in an elaborate architectural construction like a dungeon or a castle, why would a secret door not make sense? How is discovering one "force fitting" anything?
> 
> Of course if the GM has already written a story about a castle with no secret doors, then it would contradict that story to find a secret door. But that's why I don't like that sort of pre-authorship, which prioritises the GM's story over actually playing the fiction at the table.



It prioritizes a consistent world.  I mean if as DM I have to make up what's behind a secret door on the fly all the time that world is going to lack verisimilitude.   I've yet to meet an ad libber who ever offered a world with the level of verisimilitude I would accept.  Maybe that is the difference.  How high we prioritize a consistent world with lots of verisimilitude.



pemerton said:


> Well,_ anything the players can dream up_ seems slightly exaggerated language - but, putting that to one side, this is not my experience at all. In my experience players want to play the game and play the fiction. Not break it or make it silly.



I think the distinction can be summed up this way...
In my style the world exists and the players play characters in that world.
In your style the world comes into existence or takes form as the players play their characters.

I also wonder if your style even needs a DM.  Why not just state what you see when it's your turn and the party can react to established fiction or create more of their own?  Surely the group can determine reasonable actions for the monsters without need of a DM.

So for my style of play world building is a pillar of roleplaying.  It's as essential as any other DM skill if not the most essential.  

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my original post.  The players choose the easiest path to their CHARACTER's objectives.  That may be a hard choice if you are staying at the Alamo to face the Mexican army.  Staying in character is perhaps the crux here.  A lot of metagaming seems to go on in your style of play.




pemerton said:


> In my 4e game, the player who is best at mechanical optimisation plays a drow sorcerer. From the first time this PC entered the game (at 3rd level), it has been established (by the player) that he is a member of a drow secret society, the Order of the Bat, whose members worship Corellon and have the goal of overthrowing Lolth and ending the sundering of the elves. At 28th level he finally had the chance to realise - the PCs killed Lolth. This particular player then sealed the Abyss at the 66th level (ie the Demonwebs), even though doing so cost him one of his four daily powers permanently (unless he wants to _unseal_ it again), and also required him to change his paragon path (which was a power downgrade, given that his original paragon path - Demonskin Adept - is one of the most powerful in the game).
> 
> Whether or not that counts as cinematic (others can judge that), I don't think it counts as taking the easiest path.



If it is truly a character motivation, I'm fine with it.


----------



## Emerikol

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I've come to the conclusion that what [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] really needs is to play in a No Myth Story Now mode for a month as a player and see for himself. Complete with GM explication of the reasoning behind framing specific scenes, etc. I think he's going to see that he's already trying to do it, and his issue is really just one of not having been really exposed to the technique in a way that is conducive to his understanding it. He seems to WANT not to understand, and yet at the same time to DO what he claims he doesn't do and doesn't want to do!
> 
> I really need to make good on my offer to [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] to do some kind of a demo game.




I agree 100%.  This is a style and I'm glad it has a name.  I personally don't enjoy it but it really is what pemerton should be seeking based on his discussion.

I jokingly called it the Iserith method because Iserith over on the D&D boards long ago was the greatest champion of that style of play.  

I would like to interject here though that unless you are up front about it most people are not thinking No Myth when they think "roleplaying".   

I've tended to use classical roleplaying for my style only because it seems it was Gygax's style early on.  Even if not I think it was the dominant early style.

Perhaps I can come up with a list of game styles...
1.  No Myth Story Now - Nothing is known that isn't stated in game.  Crafting an epic story is a side effect of play and intentional.
2.  Classical - Deep pre-designed world, DM is ultimate authority, Adventures as a contest of skill, Death happens sometimes because of bad luck.  Very little metagaming.  Character only focus.  Sandboxes.
3.  Modern - Make death harder, Fail forward, Metagame mechanics, Adventure paths.

Maybe I'm being a bit hard on modern gaming.   Perhaps you can elaborate.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> By my definition, failure here means there's no door; with the obvious ensuing complication being that now our erstwhile Thief has to face whatever she was trying to avoid.



Yeah, we have the same fictional meaning, and we both understand that in terms of 'process of play' its different, but there is an equivalence.



> And for a bunch of different reasons.  My example earlier was the player/PC was trying to escape from a losing combat.  But the same desire could arise from the player/PC trying to get into somewhere, and a secret door would nicely avoid all those nasty guards and their dogs.  Or that the passage has come to what looks to be a dead end and the player/PC is testing whether it really is.  And so on...
> 
> Or it could still be part of an attempt to achieve that important something.  I think that has to depend on how much leeway is given in narrating what a success means and how far forward it can carry the fiction.



Right, by either your way or my way the player is going to make decisions and the character is going to succeed or fail based on the resulting fictional positioning and the outcome of checks. This is fundamentally why in HoML there are ONLY 'Challenges' and not single throw-away checks. You can face the challenge of making your way via the secret route, or the combat involved in overcoming the guards. One or the other may be easier, either inherently or due to some planning, etc. but if that wasn't the case then the game would be pretty dull. So, once I've decided that the level of difficulty of the task, the cleverness and luck needed to carry it out, as well as possibly specific character traits, then I'm good.



> Finding a secret door (success) doesn't give the DM the right to frame someone waiting at the other end of the passage (a complication), does it?  I mean, if it does there might be hope for this stuff yet!   But the impressions I've been given is that the DM isn't allowed to mitigate successes, only add complications to failures.



I won't speak for anyone else. IMHO what that means is you don't literally reverse things that PCs have accomplished. However, they might not turn out to be, in the long run, the best outcomes. I think its perfectly OK to have a guard at the end of the secret passage. It seems to me that the most likely reasonable way for things to be is that finding the secret passage and sneaking up on the guard, etc. should provide the same tension and sense of danger and accomplishment as taking out the two guards in the foyer that you just bypassed. That makes sense from a dramatic standpoint, as its taking up the same part of the story arc and there's probably thus the same pattern of rising and falling tension.

Now, this hasn't touched on how one pathway might challenge a character's beliefs or put his agenda at stake. There could be moral considerations, for instance. Or maybe the character just thinks he's a bad ass and doesn't shrink from fights, or etc. 



> But if the DM knows ahead of time a) whether there's a secret door there, b) where and what it leads to, and c) what if anything awaits beyond it, then there's no need to think about how much leeway a successful action provides as the answers are already in place.
> 
> Lan-"this hypothetical castle we've built must have so many secret doors in it by now that its structural integrity is in serious question"-efan




Sure, the answers are in place, but then there's only one set of choices, and they weren't designed to speak to any particular interest or need of the story. 

But honestly, once you're playing in a more Story Now kind of way there's a lot less of this tactical futzing around in a passageway kind of stuff. I mean, I noted there could be story implications to using a secret passage vs going in the front door, but truthfully a lot of that sort of tactical detail isn't all that exciting in a dramatic sense. It would be much better to say "I'm sneaky, can I find a way to sneak in?" and clever sneaky guy probably manages that. The secret passage is then simply framing.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> In 4e I may well just say "yes". Given the baseline assumption in 4e about the capacity of the players to have PCs spend gold for items, simply establishing an intriguing source of shadow walking (or whatever) potions probably doesn't do anything but add a bit of fun flavour to the game.
> 
> Whether the PCs can actually buy the potions is a different matter. By default gold in 4e can be spent freely, but I think it's fair game to require a skill challenge in the appropriate circumstances (eg buying unusual potions from a mysterious cult).




Yeah, you have quite a few options: you could say yes and just treat the Moon Cultists like the "buyer's and sellers" that 1e PHB's equipment section describes. They sell at 10-40% over baseline cost, and they buy at 20% of baseline cost. A lot of people never understood this particular element in 4e, as it was just sort of generically described as sort of 'the market', but in a fantasy world? The market is all sorts of crazy! In this case a single check to enable the transaction is pretty sensible.

Another option would be to make it an SC, in which case the party is due a TREASURE PARCEL at the end of the SC! This treasure parcel could obviously be a potion, or it could be discount on potions (IE you get them at base cost instead of the inflated cost you'd otherwise pay). Exactly what the details are probably depends on the fiction and the PCs.

Other options would include buying a potion formula (not really specifically a 'thing' in 4e, but PCs can only make 'common' potions by default, so getting around that restriction would be worth paying for). Or again as a reward after a successful SC, which could encompass a wide range of fictional possibilities.

Obviously there's also the old "kill 'em and take the loot" option as well! 

This is what I REALLY like about 4e, structurally things are very interchangeable. You can slot in an SC, a combat, 'buying things' or even 'getting a boon' (a different sort of treasure technically) etc. My own game just takes this to its final logical conclusion. EVERYTHING is 'treasure'.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Right.  Believe it or not, I understand what it is the player is trying to achieve by creating the secret door.  My point with that statement is that if you need to get out of a place, there is tension in that.  Am I going to get out?  Am I going to get out in time? Am I going to live? How that ends is a climax.  The creation of the secret door diffuses that tension and is fairly anti-climactic.  Even if failure could result in ratcheted up tension, the player through ingenuity can keep attempting to create ways out.  The tension is lost because the player knows he will eventually roll successfully.



I believe this is all still thinking subtly in 'classic' RPG methodology terms. What if the player fails the check? Then, as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] says, just saying "eh, no door here!" is 'weaksauce'. No, the GM is going to introduce another problem. Heck, maybe there IS still a secret door, you really want to open it???!!! Even on a success I could easily narrate "Ok, the narrow door opens onto a cramped passageway which appears to slope steeply downward into darkness. A foul musty odor wafts past you, and the angles of the ceiling are tufted with cobwebs and spiders..."



> To your last point.  Yes, adding something else at the end of the passage to relieve the PC of the jewels can definitely add or replace the tension that was lost by the creation of the door.  I say can and not will, because depending on what is there, your mileage may vary.     My question to you about that sort of response to a successful roll is this.  How is that not a form of blocking the player?  The player made his intent known and succeeded.  Taking the jewels away, or even trying to take them away on that success seems like blocking to me, at least as @_*pemerton*_ and/or @_*iserith*_ have described it to me in the past.




As our previous discussion of this point elucidated, there has to be something more than a single shake of a die which leads to utter unfettered success of the character for the whole rest of the narrative. Clearly that's just not how these things work. When you have a success you move somewhat closer to your goal. Now you have one guard to surprise instead of 2 guards to defeat in a frontal battle. You're still better off. Just as you would be better off if you took out your bow and slew one of those two guards with a successful attack (you see, attack roll and perception check are now equivalently balanced forward advances).

As I pointed out just before this in another post, there's really no likelihood that one path is just as hard as another. Difficulty isn't even the REAL focus here, but if everything was equally hard/easy then there would be no point in choosing, at least from a perspective of 'winning'.


----------



## pemerton

Emerikol said:


> In my style the world exists and the players play characters in that world.
> In your style the world comes into existence or takes form as the players play their characters.



I personally wouldn't use your descriptions here, because they elide the difference between reality and fantasy. I would say that in your style, much of the fiction is authored in advance. (And if the GM does have to make stuff up on the fly, s/he does her best to make it _as if_ it had been authored in advance - so it should be "objective", neutral etc - rolls on tables are one popular way of doing this.)

Whereas in my style, more of the fiction is authored in the course of, and as part of, playing the game. (Of course, from the point of view of the PCs the world exists just the same as in your style.)



Emerikol said:


> A lot of metagaming seems to go on in your style of play.



What have you got in mind?

The GM isn't "neutral" in coming up with content - that's metagaming. But the players are engaging the fiction from an in-character perspective - that's not metagaming. This came upon the other worldbuilding thread: another poster on that thread advocated for player "input" into the worldbuilding at the metagame level - talking to the GM about what they want. Whereas my approach emphasises action declaration and playing the game - "story _now_" - rather than negotiating the fiction at the meta-level in advance.



Emerikol said:


> I also wonder if your style even needs a DM. Why not just state what you see when it's your turn and the party can react to established fiction or create more of their own?



As to whether a GM is needed, I would have hoped that it's obvious what the GM's job is: frame scenes that put pressure on the players via their PCs, and hence force them to make choices.

I woud hope that the difference between cooperative storytelling and action declaration and resolution is obvious. If not, the Eero Tuovinen blog that has been talked about a bit has a good discussion of it.



Emerikol said:


> It prioritizes a consistent world. I mean if as DM I have to make up what's behind a secret door on the fly all the time that world is going to lack verisimilitude.



I've got no evidence to provide here but testimony. For what it's worth, I think you're overly worried about this. There are a range of techniques that get used to manage content-introduction, the most important two of which are "say 'yes'" and "go where the action is".

Remember, if the game is going well, then the player already has some goal or agenda in mind in declaring that his/her PC searches for a secret door. (And if the game isn't going well and has collapsed into random action declaration, than verisimilitude issues resulting from secret doors are the least of your worries - because you've already lost the core verisimilitude of genuine characters with genuine motivations.)

So that goal/agenda is the anchor and guidepost (to mix metaphors) for whatever gets narratied next. If the player succeeds, then they get what the want - which they alreayd think is verisimilitudinous, because they asked for it! If they fail, then you turn their agenda back on them - and, again, by drawing on the material the player has already made part of the situation, you are assuring it is material the player will engage with rather than reject on verisimilitude grounds. (More on this below - because it's really about "fail forward".)



Emerikol said:


> Modern - Make death harder, Fail forward, Metagame mechanics, Adventure paths.
> 
> Maybe I'm being a bit hard on modern gaming. Perhaps you can elaborate.



"Fail forward" is used in two different ways.

One is its original meaning, as used by designers like Ron Edwardsm Vincent Baker and Luke Crane both in discussion and in their games. In this usage, the _forward_ refers to pacing and narratie trajectory. It's an anti-railroading device. I'll explain how: in a traditional Call of Cthulhu or Dragonlance module, if the PCs (and thereby the players) don't find the clue, or the secret door, or whatever is the "ticket" to the next situation, then the game grinds to a halt.This gives the GM an incentive to railroad the players into the situation where they'll find the clue ("Are you _sure_ you don't want to check what's in the desk drawers?"), and/or an incentive to fudge Search checks. "Fail forward", as an indie-designer response to this, is: don't frame the PCs (and thereby the players) into situations where there has to be a definite outcome for the game to progress. Instead, just "say 'yes'" to the players' action declarations (they get where they want to go, they find the secret doors they want to find, etc) _until_ you come to a crunch point that actually speaks to the dramatic context of play. (Given the way these designers frame and present their games, that shouldn't take too long!) _At the crunch point_, you call for a check. If it succeeds, the player gets what s/he wants (so it's like saying "yes"). If the check fails, the GM narrates some adverse consequence which means the player and PC _don't_ get what they wanted; but the adverse consequence drives the narrative on, by engaging with the dramatic context of play (whatever that happens to be in a particular game) and hence provokes more action declarations. Rinse and repeat.

The "fail forward" technique I just described is pretty fundamental to no myth play, or any other player-driven RPGing where the focus is on story and dramatic arcs.

However, the terms "fail forward" has now been co-opted by the very railroading designers it was meant to be an antidote to! So now "fail forward" gets used to mean something like the following: instead of fudging the Search check, even if they fail narrate a success but through in a tweak or a complication! And instead of railroading the players to have their PCs search the desk drawers, if they don't then have the clue arrive by carrier pigeon instead (or whatever other means takes the designer's fancy). I don't read that many contemporary modules, but the ones I've read seem to have quite a bit of this sort of thing. Perhaps the most common one is thta if the PCs kill the "big bad" early, then everything goes on just the same under the direction of a lieutenant.

Some RPGers, including some posters in this thread, say that this is not railroading, because the players are free to delcare whatever actions they like for their PCs, and the GM doesn't actually fudge any rolls. My own view is that it absolutely is railroading, because it means that nothing the players choose to do actually matters to hwo the fiction unfolds.

I find it amusing, but also a bit frustrating, that a temr that was coined to describe an anti-railroading technique is now most often identified with ultra-railroady AP RPGing.

(If it's not obvious already: AP-type RPGing is at the bottom of my list of preferences. Next is dungeon-crawling - and there I prefer "fun" stuff like White Plume Mountain or Castle Amber over something like Tom b Of Horros. Next is "sandboxing" with a sympathetic and usefully responsive GM - with a doctrinaire GM this is as railroad-y as an AP. At the top, obviously, is some form of "story now"."no myth".)


----------



## pemerton

Imaro said:


> Yes but the effect is that a secret door is created... since it doesn't already exist.



I don't know about you, but in my game when the PCs find a secret door nothing gets _created_ except some new sound waves - as one person tells a story to another person.

In other words: at the table, a story about a secret door is authored. In the fiction, a secret door is discovered. No secret door is _created._


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Emerikol said:


> I agree 100%.  This is a style and I'm glad it has a name.  I personally don't enjoy it but it really is what pemerton should be seeking based on his discussion.
> 
> I jokingly called it the Iserith method because Iserith over on the D&D boards long ago was the greatest champion of that style of play.
> 
> I would like to interject here though that unless you are up front about it most people are not thinking No Myth when they think "roleplaying".
> 
> I've tended to use classical roleplaying for my style only because it seems it was Gygax's style early on.  Even if not I think it was the dominant early style.
> 
> Perhaps I can come up with a list of game styles...
> 1.  No Myth Story Now - Nothing is known that isn't stated in game.  Crafting an epic story is a side effect of play and intentional.
> 2.  Classical - Deep pre-designed world, DM is ultimate authority, Adventures as a contest of skill, Death happens sometimes because of bad luck.  Very little metagaming.  Character only focus.  Sandboxes.
> 3.  Modern - Make death harder, Fail forward, Metagame mechanics, Adventure paths.
> 
> Maybe I'm being a bit hard on modern gaming.   Perhaps you can elaborate.




I have little to add, actually  Never met Iserith, but I only took to the D&D boards when 4e was released. Wreccan and actually I think one at least of the posters in this thread were common participants there at the time, along with many others whom I mostly don't recall the names of, since its been now almost 5 years since I bowed out of that scene.


----------



## Emerikol

pemerton said:


> ...snip...




I just wanted to be clear I was replying to your post.

I think at the root of things is the fact that my games are more gamist.  

Here are some examples of things true for my style of games
1.  Preparation is important.  The right spells, the right equipment, the right plan.
2.  Caution is often in order.  Sometimes only boldness will save you.  No one will put their finger on the scale.
3.  Like real life, sometimes you die.  It doesn't have to be your fault even.  Your job is to play the game well and try to avoid dying.  If you play really well you will win a lot more than you lose.  You will still occasionally lose and sometimes you'll get lucky.  When you get lucky, it's a story that is told many times over the years.
4.  There will be in game frustrations.  Obviously as DM, I try to limit how often I put those sorts of things in an adventure, but they will happen on occasion.  The sweet reward is ultimate triumph over that vexing villain that tormented the party for so long.  I mean the classic adventure is save the princess right?  So you have to find the princess and that can be a task on occasion.  That is okay for us.  
5.  The players as their characters will try to impact and change the world which already exists.  They will acquire power and wealth by adventuring.  They will also often involve themselves in things outside of adventuring.  Building businesses, ruling kingdoms, building a temple to their faith.  Accomplishing these things in game will be hard.  They players will have to strive hard to achieve these goals.  Obviously acting as their characters but the players will have to think hard or they will lose.
6.  So it's party vs the world.  Doesn't have to always be a unified party but I tend to prefer those types of groups personally.  

So for me roleplaying is not at all like a novel.  In a novel, you never want the reader to be bored or frustrated by some repetitive obstacle.  You are making your game adhere to the needs of a novel and that makes sense given your style.  For me, without the chance of genuinely losing, winning has no sweetness.  You know ultimately your party will do interesting things, survive or at least die in some notable way the player chose.  You have your finger on the scale to make sure of it.  Because what you enjoy is "being cool" which is fine.  That is a lot of fun for many people.  I prefer doing something genuinely hard and succeeding when I do it well and the luck of the dice (or favor of the Gods) are with me.  

So I am not trying to convince you to switch to my style nor am I interested that much in your style.  I think if for some reason it was a very limited low commitment campaign for me I might enjoy a few hours of your style in the right unusual genre but never as a long running campaign.  I think I understand why you like it.  To be honest I don't think even if we are using the exact same rules set that we are playing the same game.  We are playing radically different games.  I could see people enjoying both styles.  Personally I'm far enough on my end of the scale to not like yours as much.


----------



## Emerikol

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I have little to add, actually  Never met Iserith, but I only took to the D&D boards when 4e was released. Wreccan and actually I think one at least of the posters in this thread were common participants there at the time, along with many others whom I mostly don't recall the names of, since its been now almost 5 years since I bowed out of that scene.




I remember Wreccan.  I also think LaneFan was on.  I came along about when 5e was announced but still proceeding into playtest.  I think everyone was trying to influence the game their way.  It got hot on occasion.


----------



## Emerikol

Maybe another helpful analogy.  Imagine a cooperative military game where everyone picks up weapons, supplies, etc.. and then go together as a group into a combat zone.  And then imagine they take it seriously .   That is how my adventures tend to run.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> No. An action declaration to create a secret door would be "I build a secret door". It would be tested on Stonemason or Engineering or some comparable skill, or perhaps - if being done magically (as per the D&D spell Phase Door or something similar) by testing a sorcerous ability.
> 
> As opposed to "I look for a secret door", which is tested on some sort of Perception or Search ability.




The secret door did not exist until the action was taken.  It created the secret door, even if the PC didn't create it in the fiction.  We're talking about backstory authorship, so pretending that I'm talking about the PC building the secret door is some bad faith arguing.



> Whether it's a form of problematic "narration sharing" is a further question. I addressed this at some length in a post upthread, considering different approaches to play and what may or may not be anticlimactic and tension-draining in those contexts.
> 
> (1) If failure means capture (for instance), then the player can't keep trying.




I'm not talking about retries.  What prevents a pick locks attempt from freeing him, or a diplomacy check to persuade, or checking trickery(or whatever) to bluff his way out, or a strength check to work the bars loose, or...  There are lots of ways to eventually roll successfully.



> (2) If the player is not allowed to declare actions to try and escape, then how do you envisage the situation actually resolving?



Who said anything about not being able to declare actions?


----------



## Maxperson

tomBitonti said:


> I'm still working my way through this example.
> 
> Let's say the player received a prophecy earlier that they would find a boon in an unexpected place, which was provided to the character as an option to add to the story in the future to avoid an obstacle, and the player chose to use that boon to create the secret door.




If there is an in fiction reason for the secret door to come into being, such as a divine power creating it to fulfill prophecy, then my argument goes away.  Some divine(hopefully anyway) being is creating that door on behalf of the PC to fulfill a prophecy.



> Or, the sense of it could be more that the player can declare that there is a secret door, but the GM still has a determination of how usable the door is: There could be locks, or a guardian, or fallen rocks to clear.
> 
> Then, the player is really declaring that they are interested in escaping a foe (rather than negotiating with them, or fighting them), with the means being a secret escape of some sort, and the GM adjusts the tension by considering how the player manages to overcome challenges introduced along with the secret escape route.






AbdulAlhazred said:


> As our previous discussion of this point elucidated, there has to be something more than a single shake of a die which leads to utter unfettered success of the character for the whole rest of the narrative. Clearly that's just not how these things work. When you have a success you move somewhat closer to your goal. Now you have one guard to surprise instead of 2 guards to defeat in a frontal battle. You're still better off. Just as you would be better off if you took out your bow and slew one of those two guards with a successful attack (you see, attack roll and perception check are now equivalently balanced forward advances).




Earlier in the thread when I was discussing making off with jewels as a scenario, and I suggested that the lord might send guards searching the town, or hire an assassin or some other response to the jewels getting out, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] poo poo'd the idea as negating player success.  Now you're telling me that it's an okay thing to do because multiple successes are needed to succeed.  How many are needed? 2, 3, 6, X?



> As I pointed out just before this in another post, there's really no likelihood that one path is just as hard as another. Difficulty isn't even the REAL focus here, but if everything was equally hard/easy then there would be no point in choosing, at least from a perspective of 'winning'.




I agree that difficulties will vary.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I have little to add, actually  Never met Iserith, but I only took to the D&D boards when 4e was released. Wreccan and actually I think one at least of the posters in this thread were common participants there at the time, along with many others whom I mostly don't recall the names of, since its been now almost 5 years since I bowed out of that scene.




 [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] is here as well and I think much more active closer to when the D&D boards imploded.  In fact, he posted here in this thread once or twice when I mentioned him.  And the reason I've mentioned him is that as [MENTION=6698278]Emerikol[/MENTION] said, he was a big champion of this style and I think it fair to mention him when I reference something I remember him saying, so he can agree or disagree with my memory if he chooses.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Earlier in the thread when I was discussing making off with jewels as a scenario, and I suggested that the lord might send guards searching the town, or hire an assassin or some other response to the jewels getting out, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] poo poo'd the idea as negating player success.  Now you're telling me that it's an okay thing to do because multiple successes are needed to succeed.  How many are needed? 2, 3, 6, X?





AbdulAlhazred said:


> I won't speak for anyone else. IMHO what that means is you don't literally reverse things that PCs have accomplished. However, they might not turn out to be, in the long run, the best outcomes. I think its perfectly OK to have a guard at the end of the secret passage. It seems to me that the most likely reasonable way for things to be is that finding the secret passage and sneaking up on the guard, etc. should provide the same tension and sense of danger and accomplishment as taking out the two guards in the foyer that you just bypassed.



AbdulAlhazred is speaking for himself, just as I'm speaking for myself.

He's also envisaging a skill challenge-type structure, where getting to the ultimate goal (whatever that is) requires X successes before 3 failures. In the structure of a skill challenge, getting a success by way of finding a secret door might change the narrative trajectory, and might change the difficulty (by allowing a player to exploit stronger capabilities), but doesn't obviate the need to generate successes.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The secret door did not exist until the action was taken.



The secret door doesn't exist after the action is resolved either. It's imaginary.



Maxperson said:


> We're talking about backstory authorship



No. We're talking about establishing fiction. But not all fiction is backstory. Not all fictional elements which, in the story, precede the present moment of action declaration, are backstory - at least in the sense that Eero Tuovinen uses that term.



Maxperson said:


> What prevents a pick locks attempt from freeing him, or a diplomacy check to persuade, or checking trickery(or whatever) to bluff his way out, or a strength check to work the bars loose, or...  There are lots of ways to eventually roll successfully.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Who said anything about not being able to declare actions?



The two sides of the snippage sit in some sort of tension.

If the PCs search for a secret door, and fail to find one, and hence get captured, and then escape capture by picking locks or breaking bars or charming or tricking their captors, what are you saying is the problem? How is that _remotely_ anti-climactic?

You seem to be saying that action declarations are allowed, and that it's not a railroad - except that all _that_ stuff is off-limits.


----------



## Aenghus

#firstworldbuildingproblems


I regret nothing.


----------



## Lanefan

Emerikol said:


> I remember Wreccan.  I also think LaneFan was on.



Not guilty, y'r honour. 

The only other RPG board I've ever really had anything to do with - and not much, at that - is Dragonsfoot.



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> The secret door doesn't exist after the action is resolved either. It's imaginary.



Will you PLEASE get off this!

After the search action is resolved as a success the secret door exists in the fiction, which *for the purposes of these discussions means it now exists as an element of the game being played* and - even though it's not sitting there on your game table - is still going to have influence on what happens going forward in the game. (and if you must keep it real-world, it'll probably cause players to say different words than they otherwise would have)

To say otherwise is nothing more than obfuscation.  We're all completely aware that none of the imaginary stuff exists in the real world, but what exists in the real world is utterly irrelevant when the point of the conversation is what exists in the fictional world and by whose authorship and-or what means it comes to be there.

Lanefan


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> We're all completely aware that none of the imaginary stuff exists in the real world, but what exists in the real world is utterly irrelevant when the point of the conversation is what exists in the fictional world and by whose authorship and-or what means it comes to be there.



 It doesn't exist in the fictional world until it's been established, either.  So there's no reason to favor one authorship or timing of that establishment over another, innately.


----------



## Nagol

Tony Vargas said:


> It doesn't exist in the fictional world until it's been established, either.  So there's no reason to favor one authorship or timing of that establishment over another, innately.




Completely agree.  Innately, player-facing and DM-facing designs are different tools that serve similar yet different purposes like a cake pan vs. a spring-form pan.  Innately, one is not better than the other, but if one bakes a cheesecake, one will preferentially use a spring-form pan.

Pick the tool that best fits the experience desired.

If DM-facing, once the secret door is established it can begin to pressure the other fictional elements even if the players are unaware of its existence.  If player-facing, it won't.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> AbdulAlhazred is speaking for himself, just as I'm speaking for myself.




Yep, and you two are telling me two different things about your playstyle.



> He's also envisaging a skill challenge-type structure, where getting to the ultimate goal (whatever that is) requires X successes before 3 failures. In the structure of a skill challenge, getting a success by way of finding a secret door might change the narrative trajectory, and might change the difficulty (by allowing a player to exploit stronger capabilities), but doesn't obviate the need to generate successes.




Hmm.  I've never been fond of skill challenges.  They pull the game away from the character and the game world and make it about game mechanics and trying to get successes.  I'd much rather just have the players roleplay the situation, letting me know what their PCs want to do, and then letting me decide if a roll is necessary, one roll is necessary, or perhaps multiple rolls over time, depending on how things play out.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> The secret door doesn't exist after the action is resolved either. It's imaginary.




Just what is it that you hope by making comments like this?  It's not as if you didn't know what I meant.



> If the PCs search for a secret door, and fail to find one, and hence get captured, and then escape capture by picking locks or breaking bars or charming or tricking their captors, what are you saying is the problem? How is that _remotely_ anti-climactic?




I don't know, because that isn't my argument.  I'm talking about successfully creating the secret door being anti-climactic.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Maxperson said:


> I've never been fond of skill challenges.



 They were pretty awful, out the gate, mechanically borked, and they were a new thing, so even once they were working right, hard to get used to.  But, they did open up balanced mechanical resolution to a broad array of challenges that, in the past, had to be hand-waved, given short shrift with anti-climactic single checks, and didn't earn meaningful exp...



> They pull the game away from the character and the game world and make it about game mechanics and trying to get successes.



  Until you get used to it, any new mechanic can seem to pull you out of the world, but, because they model the characters' actual abilities in succeeding or failing at the tasks needed to overcome the challenge, once you do accept them, they actually bring play closer to the characters & their story. (Though, like many things in 4e, they do tend to make the 'world' revolve around the PCs, since it is their story.  For instance, if the party try to successfully complete a ritual before enemies can disrupt it, the ritual is their skill challenge, while if the party are trying to disrupt a ritual before it completes, 'foiling the ritual' is /their/ skill challenge.)



> I'd much rather just have the players roleplay the situation



 The downside to that is that it's a test of the players' ability to sell you on their ideas, rather than a test of their character's abilities... 







> , letting me know what their PCs want to do, and then letting me decide if a roll is necessary, one roll is necessary, or perhaps multiple rolls over time, depending on how things play out.



...but at least there's a chance the characters might come into it.  Though, it is also possible to run a skill challenge that way, 'covertly,' where the players not only have to accumulate so many successes before 3 failures, but need to figure out what the skill challenge is as they feel their way through it.  It's just using it as a tool for determining/achieving difficulty & setting exp awards, at that point.


----------



## Imaro

Nagol said:


> Completely agree.  Innately, player-facing and DM-facing designs are different tools that serve similar yet different purposes like a cake pan vs. a spring-form pan.  Innately, one is not better than the other, but if one bakes a cheesecake, one will preferentially use a spring-form pan.
> 
> Pick the tool that best fits the experience desired.
> 
> If DM-facing, once the secret door is established it can begin to pressure the other fictional elements even if the players are unaware of its existence.  If player-facing, it won't.




I think I agree with your last sentence though not with the post you quoted... Pre-authored the secret door is there for PC's and NPC's to discover or stumble across even before it is "established" (At least in the way established has been used in this thread)...as an example that jumps readily to mind, in some games elves, whether PC's or NPC's would have a chance to detect said secret door just by passing near it,  I'm not sure how an ability like this would work in a game where a secret door is never pre-authored it would either mean the ability is virtually useless and never discovers a secret door or it is rolled for every time they enter a room leading to a strange overabundance of secret doors in the world, often in illogical or strange places.  Abilities like this definitely seem like a reason to favor one over the other.


----------



## Maxperson

Tony Vargas said:


> They were pretty awful, out the gate, mechanically borked, and they were a new thing, so even once they were working right, hard to get used to.  But, they did open up balanced mechanical resolution to a broad array of challenges that, in the past, had to be hand-waved, given short shrift with anti-climactic single checks, and didn't earn meaningful exp...




I give out exp for roleplaying and non-combat challenges.  A night of great roleplaying and character development will get the PCs as much exp as a night in a long and difficult fight.  Years ago I stopped encouraging players to just run around trying to kill things as the method of leveling.  It's still fun to get into combat, but it's far from the only means of advancement in my game.



> Until you get used to it, any new mechanic can seem to pull you out of the world, but, because they model the characters' actual abilities in succeeding or failing at the tasks needed to overcome the challenge, once you do accept them, they actually bring play closer to the characters & their story. (Though, like many things in 4e, they do tend to make the 'world' revolve around the PCs, since it is their story.  For instance, if the party try to successfully complete a ritual before enemies can disrupt it, the ritual is their skill challenge, while if the party are trying to disrupt a ritual before it completes, 'foiling the ritual' is /their/ skill challenge.)
> 
> The downside to that is that it's a test of the players' ability to sell you on their ideas, rather than a test of their character's abilities... ...but at least there's a chance the characters might come into it.  Though, it is also possible to run a skill challenge that way, 'covertly,' where the players not only have to accumulate so many successes before 3 failures, but need to figure out what the skill challenge is as they feel their way through it.  It's just using it as a tool for determining/achieving difficulty & setting exp awards, at that point.




It sounds a lot like what I already do, but more formalized.  If the players were trying to disrupt a ritual, they would start telling me their actions on how to do it, and there would be rolls, or no roll depending on if the outcome was in doubt.  There might be multiple rolls depending on their idea and the circumstances around the ritual, and even though I don't do the 4e "Justify the skill used" thing, players are encouraged to use ingenuity to come up with ways that don't necessarily conform to skills or character abilities, so there is some measure of "selling me on an idea" out there.  I'm pretty liberal with ideas, though, so it's not really much of a sell.  It just has to make sense.


----------



## Nagol

Imaro said:


> I think I agree with your last sentence though not with the post you quoted... Pre-authored the secret door is there for PC's and NPC's to discover or stumble across even before it is "established" (At least in the way established has been used in this thread)...as an example that jumps readily to mind, in some games elves, whether PC's or NPC's would have a chance to detect said secret door just by passing near it,  I'm not sure how an ability like this would work in a game where a secret door is never pre-authored it would either mean the ability is virtually useless and never discovers a secret door or it is rolled for every time they enter a room leading to a strange overabundance of secret doors in the world, often in illogical or strange places.  Abilities like this definitely seem like a reason to favor one over the other.




In player-facing games, abilities like the elven extra secret door detection either don't exist or exist to reinforce a particular shtick; the elf finds secret doors to escape/infiltrate because that's what elves _do_ and the ability comes up successfully as frequently as any other shtick ability will.  You typically won't have (much of) a secret map since locales are driven by play.  So you can't (reasonably) determine where a secret door would be nonsensical in the current place.  Appropriateness is more determined by the game flow and player gambit than by standards of realism.  

In a DM-facing game, the secret door can offer pressure on the NPC inhabitants (who decide they need to guard an area inexplicably or are trapped behind a wall, or whatever), act as a exploratory reward, act as a trap for the unwary (use the secret door to get behind their line!), offer a potential escape route for an antagonist, provide an explanation for how X manages to be both _over there_ and _here_ so quickly, and a host of other values.

Now some of those uses can be derived in a player-facing game as post-hoc rationales of ability use/dice results.  The primary difference goes back to exploratory play though.  The players can't notice oddities and respond to them -- they can force oddities if they have the abilities or can "write them in" if they feel they are appropriate.

That's why they are similar but different tools.  They do things that a casual onlooker would think are the same, but participation feels different for those involved.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Emerikol said:


> I remember Wreccan.  I also think LaneFan was on.  I came along about when 5e was announced but still proceeding into playtest.  I think everyone was trying to influence the game their way.  It got hot on occasion.




Yeah, those were the end days. 2008-2010 were the real salad days of the 4e period. The Q&A thread was hot with questions and controversy, the GD thread was at least interesting, albeit often a swamp of 3.x fan 'H4TERS', and there were some good threads on GMing techniques and whatnot. It was never as sophisticated as Enworld though. I mean, we have different POVs here and even knock each other around a little bit, but the dialog is at least modestly constructive. The WotC forums OTOH were kind of like, there was this great thing, then there was all this smelly junk... lol.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Emerikol said:


> Maybe another helpful analogy.  Imagine a cooperative military game where everyone picks up weapons, supplies, etc.. and then go together as a group into a combat zone.  And then imagine they take it seriously .   That is how my adventures tend to run.




See, I'm perfectly willing to tell a tale of failure! In fact I once ran a Traveler short that was all about it. The players create all these characters, and they end up on this interesting space station (orbiting starport basically) and then disaster strikes, and they rush to fix it all and do this and that, in the usual player assumption that things will get better, right! Except they don't. Now, you MIGHT call this 'railroading', but the scenario was designed to be sort of the ultimate test, you couldn't survive. In the end everyone was doomed. NOTHING you could do was going to lead to survival. That turned out to be a very memorable game because the players were darn well set on their characters surviving and they just had to come to terms with that ultimate lesson, nothing lasts. 

Failure is a fine fine thing. 

Of course, I don't normally run that sort of thing, in the sense that everyone is DOOMED to fail, it was very much a one off. Still, if you want to overthrow the King and you think you're just going to succeed or that it isn't JUST as dramatic and interesting when you get caught and find out that you're going to get your head chopped off in the AM. Never had a problem with it, and never had a problem making a situation a test of skill. That is not mutually exclusive with Story Now, at all. You do have to willing to be hard though. Saying "oh, its written that way" is a crutch, I don't get that crutch!


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> After the search action is resolved as a success the secret door exists in the fiction, which *for the purposes of these discussions means it now exists as an element of the game being played* and - even though it's not sitting there on your game table - is still going to have influence on what happens going forward in the game. (and if you must keep it real-world, it'll probably cause players to say different words than they otherwise would have)
> 
> To say otherwise is nothing more than obfuscation.  We're all completely aware that none of the imaginary stuff exists in the real world, but what exists in the real world is utterly irrelevant when the point of the conversation is what exists in the fictional world and by whose authorship and-or what means it comes to be there.



In the Sherlock Holmes stories, Holmes from time to time meets charaters who, up until then, have not been written about. From the point of view of the reader, they are _new characters_.  But no one asserts that Sherlock Holmes's meeting of them _created _them.

The same is true of the secret door. The PCs' discovery of it didn't create it. The engineer and stone masons who constructed it created it. It has existed, in the fiction, from the moment of that creation. Although no _audience_ or _author_ of the fiction knew that. Just like Conan Doyle didn't know about Sherlock Holmes until he wrote about him. But Holmes himself was born, had a childhood, etc.Denying _that_ is what is obfuscatory.



Tony Vargas said:


> It doesn't exist in the fictional world until it's been established, either.  So there's no reason to favor one authorship or timing of that establishment over another, innately.



RPGing has always involved a degree of flexibiilty in the timing of narration. Even back in the high-water mark period for dungeoncrawling, stuff got made up (eg "What colour is the roof of this room?" "It's brown-grey stone.") No one said that the roof had no colour unitl it was described by the GM!

The secret door is the same. Descbring it, and making it up, are things that happen in the real world. In the fiction, it was always there, and it's just a misdescription to say that the PCs, by looking for it, brought it into existence - anymore than the PCs, by looking up, made the ceiling be brown-grey.



Maxperson said:


> Just what is it that you hope by making comments like this?  It's not as if you didn't know what I meant.



I'm hoping to get you and  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and  [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] to agree that discovering the door isn't the same as creating the door. And that there's nothing remarkable about a new element being introduced into a fiction although, at the time the audience first learns of the protagonist's encounter with it, it already existed within the fiction (eg an adult met by Holmes for the first time).



Nagol said:


> If DM-facing, once the secret door is established it can begin to pressure the other fictional elements even if the players are unaware of its existence.  If player-facing, it won't.



This is true.

One technique in "no myth"-type GMing is to keep introduced elements somewhat flexibile - or, at least, no more fully narrated than the situation needs. This then allows scope for integrating newly-established elements into already established elements of the fiction. Eg if, when the secret door is discovered by the PCs, a mysterious NPC had already been in the scene, and the method whereby that NPC entered the place hadn't yet been established - well, maybe s/he came through the secret door!

Keeping track of these elements of the fiction, and interweaving them to provide continuity while keeping the focus on "the action", is part of the job of a "no myth" GM.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Earlier in the thread when I was discussing making off with jewels as a scenario, and I suggested that the lord might send guards searching the town, or hire an assassin or some other response to the jewels getting out, @_*pemerton*_ poo poo'd the idea as negating player success.  Now you're telling me that it's an okay thing to do because multiple successes are needed to succeed.  How many are needed? 2, 3, 6, X?




Well, there's a difference between 'ongoing difficulties' and 'everything you just did is completely obviated even though you made no move to put it at further risk.' If a player wins a tower in a duel of wits with a wizard, sets up some measures to prevent it being easily taken back, sets it up as a retreat for himself, and then goes off to do something else, only a dick GM is going to immediately say "Oh, yeah, the wizard sneaks in 2 days after you left and takes it all back, haha!" THAT would be negating player success! 

Now, making overall success contingent on advancing past a number of perilous situations which test the character? Of course that's cool. 4e even has a name for it, Skill Challenge! This is why I love SCs because they exactly answer your perfectly legitimate question! This is a problem with earlier (and later) forms of D&D, there's no answer except "when the GM's whim has been satisfied then the narrative progresses to something else." 4e's approach is also quite good in a Story Now sense of providing an easy way to generate a bunch of action off of a thematically related set of scenes that form an overall sequence, with a mechanical basis underneath it all.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> I'm talking about successfully creating the secret door being anti-climactic.



What I'm asking is, why would discovering a secret door be anti-climactic?

As I posted, _searching_ for a secret door doesn't defuse tension - _if we don't find the door, we'll be captured!_

Being captured isn't anti-climactic. Nor is escaping via a newly-discovered secret door.

This is also why I raise the railroading issue. The only mindset from which I can see that escaping via a secret door might be anti-climactic is if _someone_ - the GM - had already prepared some other resolution for the situation.


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Yep, and you two are telling me two different things about your playstyle.



Well, we're not clones!

Maybe [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s standards for "respecting success" are more liberal than mine. And it also turned out I was right in my skill challenge conjecture!



Maxperson said:


> I've never been fond of skill challenges.  They pull the game away from the character and the game world and make it about game mechanics and trying to get successes.



The way you get successes in a skill challenge is by playing your character and engaging the fiction! (If your RPG's mechanics pull away from the fiction, then you've got bad mechanics - and yes, I'm looking at 3E and PF as exhibit A here.)



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, there's a difference between 'ongoing difficulties' and 'everything you just did is completely obviated even though you made no move to put it at further risk.' If a player wins a tower in a duel of wits with a wizard, sets up some measures to prevent it being easily taken back, sets it up as a retreat for himself, and then goes off to do something else, only a dick GM is going to immediately say "Oh, yeah, the wizard sneaks in 2 days after you left and takes it all back, haha!" THAT would be negating player success!
> 
> Now, making overall success contingent on advancing past a number of perilous situations which test the character? Of course that's cool. 4e even has a name for it, Skill Challenge! This is why I love SCs because they exactly answer your perfectly legitimate question! This is a problem with earlier (and later) forms of D&D, there's no answer except "when the GM's whim has been satisfied then the narrative progresses to something else."



That last sentence describes another mode of railroading.


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## pemerton

Imaro said:


> Pre-authored the secret door is there for PC's and NPC's to discover or stumble across even before it is "established" (At least in the way established has been used in this thread)...as an example that jumps readily to mind, in some games elves, whether PC's or NPC's would have a chance to detect said secret door just by passing near it,  I'm not sure how an ability like this would work in a game where a secret door is never pre-authored it would either mean the ability is virtually useless and never discovers a secret door or it is rolled for every time they enter a room leading to a strange overabundance of secret doors in the world, often in illogical or strange places.  Abilities like this definitely seem like a reason to favor one over the other.



 [MENTION=23935]Nagol[/MENTION] has already said some stuff in reply to this; I'll say a bit more.

The PCs "stumbling across" a secret door really means that, at certain points, the GM tell the players that their PCs notice a secret door. These _moments of telling_ can be regulated via a complex interaction of pre-authored and pre-mapped architecture, movement rules that require tracking the PC movement on the map, and rules for determining whether or not a PC notices a door when within 10'. That's how AD&D does it.

But there are other ways to generate _moments of telling_. One of the PCs in my Burning Wheel game has the Dreamer ability: as a GM, I'm obliged from time to time to narrate portentous dreams that this PC has had. In effect, the player has paid a modest amount of PC building resources to impose this obligation on the GM. An elven ability to notice secret doors could be handled somewhat similarlly.

As far as NPCs stumbling across a secret door - I'm not 100% sure what you have in mind, but that seems more like an element of framing, or perhaps resolution of some sort of contest between PCs and NPCs. (Eg can the NPCs escape the PCs? - if one of them has a heightened ability to spot secret doors, that could count as an augment to their escape chance.)


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## Maxperson

pemerton;7395611I'm hoping to get you and  [MENTION=29398 said:
			
		

> Lanefan[/MENTION] and  [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] to agree that discovering the door isn't the same as creating the door. And that there's nothing remarkable about a new element being introduced into a fiction although, at the time the audience first learns of the protagonist's encounter with it, it already existed within the fiction (eg an adult met by Holmes for the first time).




You can stop then, because pretending you don't understand what we are talking about isn't accomplishing anything of the sort.

As for discovering the secret door, you can't discover something that wasn't there in the fiction until the act of searching.  You can only create it and add it to the backstory.  The act of searching creates the secret door, even if the PC didn't create it himself in the fiction.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, there's a difference between 'ongoing difficulties' and 'everything you just did is completely obviated even though you made no move to put it at further risk.' If a player wins a tower in a duel of wits with a wizard, sets up some measures to prevent it being easily taken back, sets it up as a retreat for himself, and then goes off to do something else, only a dick GM is going to immediately say "Oh, yeah, the wizard sneaks in 2 days after you left and takes it all back, haha!" THAT would be negating player success!
> 
> Now, making overall success contingent on advancing past a number of perilous situations which test the character? Of course that's cool. 4e even has a name for it, Skill Challenge! This is why I love SCs because they exactly answer your perfectly legitimate question! This is a problem with earlier (and later) forms of D&D, there's no answer except "when the GM's whim has been satisfied then the narrative progresses to something else." 4e's approach is also quite good in a Story Now sense of providing an easy way to generate a bunch of action off of a thematically related set of scenes that form an overall sequence, with a mechanical basis underneath it all.




What's the time limit on that?  I mean, going back to my discussion with [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] about the jewels, he said that the lord sending guards around to search the city for the jewels would be negating the players' success.  However, the lord's reach is the entire city and of course he would search for the jewels, so the players getting to the city doesn't make them safely away with the jewels.  They haven't succeeded yet.

Yes, in my kind of game the DM decides when players have succeeded to the point where the lord would stop looking.  That doesn't make it whim, though.  The DM is obligated to use reason to make that decision, and he is going to examine what the players are doing to avoid detection and hide the jewels, as well as what resources the lord has available and how much desire he has to find the jewels.  Whim is nowhere to be found.  It's a pet peeve of mine when someone tries to discount what the other side is doing by labeling it a whim.  A whim is when I am in line at the grocery store and without rhyme or reason, I glance at the candy section and grab a candy bar on impulse.  The skill challenge system is a different way to resolve the situation, but it's not inherently a better one.


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## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> What I'm asking is, why would discovering a secret door be anti-climactic?
> 
> As I posted, _searching_ for a secret door doesn't defuse tension - _if we don't find the door, we'll be captured!_
> 
> Being captured isn't anti-climactic. Nor is escaping via a newly-discovered secret door.




There's a big difference between trying to discover a way out(climactic), and being able to poof escapes into existence by coming up with a myriad of reasons to make rolls that allow escape(anti-climactic).  



> This is also why I raise the railroading issue. The only mindset from which I can see that escaping via a secret door might be anti-climactic is if _someone_ - the GM - had already prepared some other resolution for the situation.




Or it could be because the tension goes away if I know that I can just creatively keep rolling(not retries) until I escape.  

My style: Searching the enemy base for, and eventually finding the bosses escape route = exciting and climactic, with tension all around.  Your style: Poofing that passage into existence right next to you and finding it all in the same roll = anti-climactic.  Finding the secret door right next to you with a roll cuts the tension away like a knife through hot butter.  Sure, you can add guards or something at the end of the tunnel, but they can be there in my game as well.



> Well, we're not clones!



Then why do you persist in treating myself, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], and [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] like we are clones?



> The way you get successes in a skill challenge is by playing your character and engaging the fiction! (If your RPG's mechanics pull away from the fiction, then you've got bad mechanics - and yes, I'm looking at 3E and PF as exhibit A here.)




And the entire time the focus of the players is on concentrating about how to use their skills to get three successes before they fail.  I said their focus is pulled away from the fiction, not that they ignore the fiction entirely.  I guess that makes 4e skill challenges mechanically bad as well. 



> That last sentence describes another mode of railroading.




That last sentence doesn't exist in our playstyle.  What we do is the opposite of whim.


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## Guest 6801328

This is a bit of a tangent, but this dispute...and a number of other, similar disputes (c.f. the player agency thread)...seem to be the result of different underlying assumptions about gaming.

I've always thought it would be interesting to derive the minimal set of core beliefs/assumptions which in turn accurately predict a given player's stance on any of these questions.  For example, my beliefs about who decides the thoughts/feelings of the character in turn affect (but maybe don't solely determine) my opinions about metagaming and warlords.  

If I had the time I would love to create a kind of Myers-Briggs of gaming, posing all sorts of questions about RPGing, then iteratively figure out which questions have high correlations to each other, and reduce it down to the minimal set of questions that would in turn predict one's answers to all the other questions.

I'm guessing that it could be done in 4 or fewer fundamental questions.  The "axioms" of gaming, as it were.


----------



## Maxperson

Elfcrusher said:


> This is a bit of a tangent, but this dispute...and a number of other, similar disputes (c.f. the player agency thread)...seem to be the result of different underlying assumptions about gaming.
> 
> I've always thought it would be interesting to derive the minimal set of core beliefs/assumptions which in turn accurately predict a given player's stance on any of these questions.  For example, my beliefs about who decides the thoughts/feelings of the character in turn affect (but maybe don't solely determine) my opinions about metagaming and warlords.
> 
> If I had the time I would love to create a kind of Myers-Briggs of gaming, posing all sorts of questions about RPGing, then iteratively figure out which questions have high correlations to each other, and reduce it down to the minimal set of questions that would in turn predict one's answers to all the other questions.
> 
> I'm guessing that it could be done in 4 or fewer fundamental questions.  The "axioms" of gaming, as it were.




I think it would take more than 4 questions, but it would definitely be interesting to see this done.


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## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm hoping to get you and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] and @Imaro to agree that discovering the door isn't the same as creating the door. And that there's nothing remarkable about a new element being introduced into a fiction although, at the time the audience first learns of the protagonist's encounter with it, it already existed within the fiction (eg an adult met by Holmes for the first time).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> you can't discover something that wasn't there in the fiction until the act of searching.  You can only create it and add it to the backstory.  The act of searching creates the secret door, even if the PC didn't create it himself in the fiction.
Click to expand...


This is why I keep saying that you are not distinguishing reality from fiction.

I am going to restate these sentences, but with the reference (to real world, or fiction) made clear:

_1 (pemerton)_: (A PC) discovering the door isn't the same as (the PC) creating the door or (the player) creating the door.

_2a (Maxperson)_: You (the PC?) can't discover something that wasn't there in the fiction until the act of searching.

_2b (Maxperson)_: You (the player?) can't discover something that wasn't there in the fiction (ie authored) until the act of searching (is declared).

_3a (Maxperson)_: The act of searching (by the PC?) creates the secret door (in the real world?), even if the PC didn't create it himself in the fiction.

_3b (Maxperson)_: The act of searching (by the player?) creates the secret door (in the real world?), even if the PC didn't create it himself in the fiction.​
1 is true. A PC discovering the door isn't the same thing as a PC creating the door. (Hence use of Perception skill rather than Building skill.) And a PC discovering the door isn't the same thing as the player creating the door. One is an (imaginary) event that happens only in an imagined world. Whereas anything a player does happens in the real world.

It is true that, for something to occur in the imagined world, someone in the real world has to make it up. That act of authorship (creation? I think authorship is clearer, to be frank) has to happen at some point. One function of RPG rules is to manage and mediate these moments of authorship - who gets to do them, and what they are allowed to do when they do it.

2a is true. Trivially so. No one denies it.

2b is true. A player can't discover what was authored by someone if it wasn't authored prior to declaring an action.  But so what? I've already mentioned several times in this thread that, for me, _learning what story someone else has written_ is not an important goal in my RPGing.

The truth of 2b doesn't mean that a PC can't discover a door by searching for one.

3a is confused. Imaginary events have no causal power in the real world, so no act performed by a PC makes any difference to the real world. Least of all can imaginary characters cause real people to author them or things about them!

3b is also confused. The player doesn't search for anything. The player declares an action - and the result of resolving that declared action can of course be that some element is established as part of the fiction. But the player didn't _search_. The player _declared that his/her PC searches_.

The fact that resolution of action declaratoins introduces new elements into the fiction I would have thought is uncontroversial. _That's what action declaration is for_. In a game whose main orientation is around the shared creation and enjoyment of a fiction, _making a move in the game_ means _changing the fiction in some fashion_!

*TL;DR* - the above analysis shows that it is false to claim that _searching_ created a secret door. _Action declaration_ may (if successful) result in establishing a secret door as an element in the fiction. But action declaration is not (in general, nor need it be in this particular case) _searching_ or _trying to discover_. It is, at its heart _trying to change the fiction_.

I know that some RPGers like a significant amount of action declaration to be _triggering the GM to tell the players stuff that s/he has already written, or is making up but presenting as if s/he had already written it._ But that is not inherent to RPGing, and the action declaration "I search for a secret door" is not inherently closer to that sort of thing than is the action declaration "I attack the orc with my sword."



Maxperson said:


> And the entire time the focus of the players is on concentrating about how to use their skills to get three successes before they fail.  I said their focus is pulled away from the fiction, not that they ignore the fiction entirely.



This is strang. _Using your skills_ means _engaging the fiction and ascertaining what your PC might do to improve his/her situation_. That is not having focus pulled away from the fiction. It's what engaging the fiction, and playing a RPG, looks like!



Maxperson said:


> There's a big difference between trying to discover a way out(climactic), and being able to poof escapes into existence by coming up with a myriad of reasons to make rolls that allow escape(anti-climactic).



This is also strange, for the same reason as you remarks about skill challenges. Declaring actions like "I search for a secret door" isn't _different_ from attempting (as one's character) to discover a way out. It _is_ attempting (as one's character) to discover a way out.

I'm aware that there is an alternative approach to resolving that action declaration, different from my preferred approach. According to this alternative approach - which I believe [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] prefers - the action declaration is (at the table) a trigger for the following two steps: (1) the GM consults what s/he has already written in his/her notes; (2) the GM determines (perhaps on the basis of a die roll, or perhaps on a basis of the described method of searching: in his DMG, Gygax canvasses both as possible options for the AD&D referee) what (if anyting) to reveal to the player about the outpout of (1).

I am also aware that there is a variant on that approach, which I believe (from your posts) that you sometimes used, which substitues the following for stpe (1) in the event that the GM's notes are silent on the matter: the GM determines (on the basis of a die roll - Gygax's DMG suggests some odds for this, in Appendix A on random dungeon generation - or perhaps by "objective" extrapolation from what is in the notes) whether or not a secret door is present in the particular circumstances. Step (2) then proceeds as described above.

It would be fair to say that the approach that I am discussing does away with step (1), and uses step (2) only, with success on the check meaning _discovery of an existent secret door_. (Obviously the AD&D method of resolving step (2) is probably no longer suitable; I am thinking of systems like 4e, BW and MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic.)

Now, what someone finds anti-climactic is ultimately a matter of taste, for which - as they say - there is no accounting. That said, it's not obvious to me why the insertion of step (1) introduces tension. Making a check and hoping for success is exciting; the cost of failure (eg, as we've already canvassed in relation to this example, being captured) introduces tension. _Knowing that success or failure turns on the GM having written something, or now deciding something that is outside my control_, doesn't - to my mind - increase the excitement or tension. (It changes its nature - instead of the suspense of a die roll, I have the suspense as to whether or not I've correctly predicted the GM's own authorship.)



Maxperson said:


> Or it could be because the tension goes away if I know that I can just creatively keep rolling(not retries) until I escape.



This makes no sense to me. _Keeping rolling until I escape_ equals _playing the game_. Playing the game, by declaring actions and seeing how they turn out, isn't anti-climactic. It's what I turn up to do!

The only alternative that I can see is _finding out what story the GM has written_, or - if the GM is using the variant I described above because s/he has not notes - _finding out what story the GM is writing as s/he goes along_. To me, that isn't much fun. I know that others quite enjoy it. But I can't see how the fact that someone enjoys it gives any cause for saying that playing the game my way isn't exciting.

After all, most people agree that D&D combat, at it's best, can be exciting. And D&D combat is resolved the same way I resolve the attempt to find a secret door. It's not resolved by finding out whether or not the GM has decided that this orc dies here, now.



Maxperson said:


> Searching the enemy base for, and eventually finding the bosses escape route = exciting and climactic, with tension all around.  Your style: Poofing that passage into existence right next to you and finding it all in the same roll = anti-climactic.  Finding the secret door right next to you with a roll cuts the tension away like a knife through hot butter.



This, on the other hand, is all just conjecture based in ignorance. Tell me - how does the search for a secret door resolve in Burning Wheel? How long does it take at the table? How is the framing handled? How many dice are rolled?

What about in Cortex+ Heroic? HeroWars/Quest?

Or tell me, how would a skill challenge to _escapet the enemy base_ be framed and resolved in 4e? How many checks would it require? What would be involved in framing and resolving each of those checks? How long would it take at the table?

You don't know the answer to any of these questions, so can't possibly know what effect it has on the drama of the situation.

And that's before we even consider the circumstances of pacing, other established elements of the situation, etc in any given context of play, which neither you nor I know in the absence of some concrete example of play.

The last time this particular issue came up in play, was in my Cortex+ Fantasy game. One of the PCs had been on his own in a necromantically cursed room with many burial niches in its walls, out of which zombies had come. The PC, a skin changer, was in wolf form, with his wolf companions, crawling through an empty zombie niche looking for a way out. The player of that PC was successful in an attempt to create a "Secret Exit" asset. What is your _possible_ basis for asserting that that was anti-climactic?

The player could, of course, have attempted to kill the zombies. Mechanically, in that system, there is no fundamental difference between the two actions. I assume that you have no problem with killing zombies being possible without regard to whether or not the GM has decided that they are to be killed. Why would killing them be more dramatic than escaping them?

I also want to say something about your reference to _searching the enemy base_. Given that your are objecting to the possiblity of simply resolving that search by the normal rules for action declaration, and instead are insisting on the sort of two-step process I have described above, what you are saying creates drama is _the players declaring a series of actions which trigge the GM to tell them stuff s/he has made up about the enemy base_. You might find that exciting. I don't. It's what I call a railroad.


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## darkbard

Maxperson said:


> Yes, in my kind of game the DM decides when players have succeeded to the point where the lord would stop looking.  That doesn't make it whim, though.  The DM is obligated to use reason to make that decision, and he is going to examine what the players are doing to avoid detection and hide the jewels, as well as what resources the lord has available and how much desire he has to find the jewels.  Whim is nowhere to be found.  It's a pet peeve of mine when someone tries to discount what the other side is doing by labeling it a whim.  A whim is when I am in line at the grocery store and without rhyme or reason, I glance at the candy section and grab a candy bar on impulse.




Perhaps this is part of the underlying difference of opinions on these topics: yours, as expressed above, is a decidedly premodern notion of causality and human cognition. Philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists since Freud and James have elucidated that, no matter how much we humans may experience our "decision making" as exercises in free will as opposed to your "whim" above, the reality is that the causation of our actions are largely irrational, hardly the "use [of] reason" that you claim.

Removing such decision making from GM fiat (what you call "DM ... reason to make that decision") and putting it into the outcome of game mechanics moves further away from the kind of (largely unconscious) motivations that shape GM decision making.


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> The secret door doesn't exist after the action is resolved either. It's imaginary.
> 
> No. We're talking about establishing fiction. But not all fiction is backstory. Not all fictional elements which, in the story, precede the present moment of action declaration, are backstory - at least in the sense that Eero Tuovinen uses that term.
> 
> The two sides of the snippage sit in some sort of tension.
> 
> If the PCs search for a secret door, and fail to find one, and hence get captured, and then escape capture by picking locks or breaking bars or charming or tricking their captors, what are you saying is the problem? How is that _remotely_ anti-climactic?
> 
> You seem to be saying that action declarations are allowed, and that it's not a railroad - except that all _that_ stuff is off-limits.




Right! Where am I supposed to get story from? I'm not supposed to keep challenging the players, all I'm supposed to be allowed to do is what? 
 [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], think about this. How do we generate story in Story Now? We do it, that should be inarguable. So how do we do it if the process we follow works in a way that you're trying to construe? I mean, if Eero Tuovinen means by backstory everything that could ever exist fictionally in the game which extends into the past, then nothing can be created, its all backstory, the orc is backstory, the gold pieces are backstory, its not a useful definition and he can't possibly mean that. 

Beyond that, you're (Max) MUCH too hung up on the player's role in creating fiction. I have a player in numerous games. This player makes up great character backstory and uses it well, but utterly avoids things like finding a secret door that wasn't written into the scenario by the GM (of course she can't always tell when this happens, so it does, but she doesn't play on the basis of that). We still do Story Now. Its not dependent on that kind of authorship. What it is dependent on is the GM going to the action, creating situations of dramatic tension in scene framing. It then requires the players to, in good faith, play their characters, engaging their beliefs and agendas to shape their interaction with the fiction. It requires that the GM have the freedom to keep framing scenes in this way. The whole issue here with backstory isn't about "are the players world building?" Its about "does the GM have the freedom to frame scenes according to need?"


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Yep, and you two are telling me two different things about your playstyle.



Well, since Pemerton is, AFAIK fairly close to being on the opposite side of the Earth from me, we haven't actually played a game together. So I don't know for sure that we ARE advocating the same style exactly. I think there's things he's more into and vice-versa; so we may sometimes contradict each other. Its just diversity of opinion.



> Hmm.  I've never been fond of skill challenges.  They pull the game away from the character and the game world and make it about game mechanics and trying to get successes.  I'd much rather just have the players roleplay the situation, letting me know what their PCs want to do, and then letting me decide if a roll is necessary, one roll is necessary, or perhaps multiple rolls over time, depending on how things play out.




I use them to inform my thinking on how to structure things. So, for instance, I COULD structure Pemerton's 'go to the bazaar and look for a thing to fight the demon' scenario into an SC. Now I would probably frame it such that actually arriving at the bazaar wouldn't be the very first step (for various reasons, but basically because too narrow a focus to an SC usually doesn't work). TBH I might even consider whether or not resolving that whole chapter of things might not be a single SC, but probably there isn't a good definable endpoint, whereas 'did I get a thing to meet my goal?' is pretty 'clean' in that respect. 

The point is, now I need a measure of how much 'fiction' is 'enough' to represent a final decision on this question and thus disposition (at least for the time being) of the question of whether or not the character achieved that goal. The SC could thus resolve down to either having a useful potent 'feather' or not, basically the same as Pemerton's scenario. I might however start my scenario with something like letting the character find a place to look for something, maybe its just one Streetwise check at the start of the challenge, and "go to the bazaar" is a potential result. Now I'd have to consider possibly OTHER results, presumably ones less favorable to the character's chances of success. Maybe questions are asked in the wrong place and the party ends up in the hands of a shill. Anyway, it can go from there. 

I will admit, this technique might be seen to drag things out in some sense, but it could also force some drama out of the mechanics, with players really working the game aspect of things to try to get to success on top of two failures, etc. It works (not surprisingly) a lot like 4e combat where the party sometimes has to 'dig deep' to overcome some purely dice mediated hardship.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Tony Vargas said:


> They were pretty awful, out the gate, mechanically borked, and they were a new thing, so even once they were working right, hard to get used to.



Amusingly enough there was a guy who posted over on RPG.NET and ran a pbm game there (maybe it still continues, I'm not sure) using 4e who came to the opposite conclusion, that the original SC system, as written, captured a certain logic that was lost in the revisions and that it wasn't borked at all! Now, I didn't happen to be totally convinced, but FOR HIM at least it worked quite well! Some of the players in that game have posted on Enworld. Trying to remember which posters that was, but my brain is old... 



> The downside to that is that it's a test of the players' ability to sell you on their ideas, rather than a test of their character's abilities... ...but at least there's a chance the characters might come into it.  Though, it is also possible to run a skill challenge that way, 'covertly,' where the players not only have to accumulate so many successes before 3 failures, but need to figure out what the skill challenge is as they feel their way through it.  It's just using it as a tool for determining/achieving difficulty & setting exp awards, at that point.




It doesn't need to be 'covert' at all. Consider the SC mechanic in the context of Story Now. Players are invoking their character's abilities to do things which create successes and failures, driving the fiction to new scene frames which continue the process. The SC literally becomes the flow of play. In HoML there are NO instances of non-SC dice-mediated play (except combats, which are of course very similar in essence). Its literally against the rules NOT to be running an SC! Your only alternative is 'interlude' which never includes conflict (although it can certainly include exploration in the sense of 'lets inject color into this narrative by describing how we navigate to the next scene frame').


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## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> I think I agree with your last sentence though not with the post you quoted... Pre-authored the secret door is there for PC's and NPC's to discover or stumble across even before it is "established" (At least in the way established has been used in this thread)...as an example that jumps readily to mind, in some games elves, whether PC's or NPC's would have a chance to detect said secret door just by passing near it,  I'm not sure how an ability like this would work in a game where a secret door is never pre-authored it would either mean the ability is virtually useless and never discovers a secret door or it is rolled for every time they enter a room leading to a strange overabundance of secret doors in the world, often in illogical or strange places.  Abilities like this definitely seem like a reason to favor one over the other.




As a Story Now GM I was never aware that I was forbidden to frame scenes in which secret doors are an established element  Now, this means that the elf in question will probably only find secret doors when either I or the elf's player have decided that there is a DRAMATIC NEED for a secret door, but then again other random secret doors for which no real story significance can be attached seem like trivia at best.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> It sounds a lot like what I already do, but more formalized.  If the players were trying to disrupt a ritual, they would start telling me their actions on how to do it, and there would be rolls, or no roll depending on if the outcome was in doubt.  There might be multiple rolls depending on their idea and the circumstances around the ritual, and even though I don't do the 4e "Justify the skill used" thing, players are encouraged to use ingenuity to come up with ways that don't necessarily conform to skills or character abilities, so there is some measure of "selling me on an idea" out there.  I'm pretty liberal with ideas, though, so it's not really much of a sell.  It just has to make sense.




How do you know when the PCs have done 'enough' to succeed? What I found was that classic D&D has only ONE measure of success, which is defeating something in combat. So most things tended to become cast in terms of fights or something close to fights.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> This is why I keep saying that you are not distinguishing reality from fiction.
> 
> I am going to restate these sentences, but with the reference (to real world, or fiction) made clear:




Since I never once argued any of those things, the only thing you made clear with that is...

4 (Pemerton) Deliberately misstates arguments to evade responding to what I'm really saying.......................again.



> *TL;DR* - the above analysis shows that it is false to claim that _searching_ created a secret door. _Action declaration_ may (if successful) result in establishing a secret door as an element in the fiction. But action declaration is not (in general, nor need it be in this particular case) _searching_ or _trying to discover_. It is, at its heart _trying to change the fiction_




The above analysis has more fiction in it than most D&D games.  I mean, good grief man!  You've completely fabricated some insanity where I've argued that the secret door is created in real life.



> This is strang. _Using your skills_ means _engaging the fiction and ascertaining what your PC might do to improve his/her situation_. That is not having focus pulled away from the fiction. It's what engaging the fiction, and playing a RPG, looks like!




This is about the method used and you know it.  The PCs finding what's already there vs. the player creating those things in the game through PC actions.



> This is also strange, for the same reason as you remarks about skill challenges. Declaring actions like "I search for a secret door" isn't _different_ from attempting (as one's character) to discover a way out. It _is_ attempting (as one's character) to discover a way out.




Declaring actions like "I search for a secret door" is the character trying to find a way out, yes.  That's not the issue, though.  The player creating that secret door in the game with a successful search is the issue.  Not the declaration, but again, you knew that before you typed that sentence.



> I am also aware that there is a variant on that approach, which I believe (from your posts) that you sometimes used, which substitues the following for stpe (1) in the event that the GM's notes are silent on the matter: the GM determines (on the basis of a die roll - Gygax's DMG suggests some odds for this, in Appendix A on random dungeon generation - or perhaps by "objective" extrapolation from what is in the notes) whether or not a secret door is present in the particular circumstances. Step (2) then proceeds as described above.




Close.  I don't always require a die roll.  If the PCs go into the kitchen of the inn and tell me that they are looking for bread, I'm just going to tell them that they find some.  There's going to be bread there, and it's not going to be hard enough to find to put the issue into doubt.  



> It would be fair to say that the approach that I am discussing does away with step (1), and uses step (2) only, with success on the check meaning _discovery of an existent secret door_. (Obviously the AD&D method of resolving step (2) is probably no longer suitable; I am thinking of systems like 4e, BW and MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic.)




I understand the method used to create the secret door.  Every wall basically has schrodinger's secret door in it.  It both has and doesn't have a secret door in it until a PC succeeds or fails at a roll to find a secret door there, then the existence of the secret door in that wall is decided.


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## Maxperson

darkbard said:


> Perhaps this is part of the underlying difference of opinions on these topics: yours, as expressed above, is a decidedly premodern notion of causality and human cognition. Philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists since Freud and James have elucidated that, no matter how much we humans may experience our "decision making" as exercises in free will as opposed to your "whim" above, the reality is that the causation of our actions are largely irrational, hardly the "use [of] reason" that you claim.




The reality is that we still don't know enough about the brain and psychology to say that, "he reality is that the causation of our actions are largely irrational, hardly the "use [of] reason" that you claim."



> Removing such decision making from GM fiat (what you call "DM ... reason to make that decision") and putting it into the outcome of game mechanics moves further away from the kind of (largely unconscious) motivations that shape GM decision making.



And makes the game worse.  DM fiat is the most amazing tool in the RPG toolbox.  Sure, it can easily be abused, but when not abused by a bad DM it's fantastic.


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> What I'm asking is, why would discovering a secret door be anti-climactic?
> 
> As I posted, _searching_ for a secret door doesn't defuse tension - _if we don't find the door, we'll be captured!_
> 
> Being captured isn't anti-climactic. Nor is escaping via a newly-discovered secret door.
> 
> This is also why I raise the railroading issue. The only mindset from which I can see that escaping via a secret door might be anti-climactic is if _someone_ - the GM - had already prepared some other resolution for the situation.




Right, this is one of the things that clues me that when [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] (in particular) comments on things being 'anti-climactic', or questions the players motives, then instantly springs into my mind that scene from "Wrath of Khan" where Spock says "two dimensional thinking" and Kirk looks over at him and immediately grasps the meaning. His opponent has no experience in space combat, his tactical paradigm is limited to warfare on a flat surface. The GM paradigm which has a problem with the secret door and calls it 'anti-climactic' and imagines the nature of the drama in terms of a designed adventure path with built-in dramatic pacing is like Khan, trapped in an inappropriate paradigm.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], think about this. How do we generate story in Story Now? We do it, that should be inarguable. So how do we do it if the process we follow works in a way that you're trying to construe? I mean, if Eero Tuovinen means by backstory everything that could ever exist fictionally in the game which extends into the past, then nothing can be created, its all backstory, the orc is backstory, the gold pieces are backstory, its not a useful definition and he can't possibly mean that.




No, I'm not going to argue that you don't generate story in Story Now, but your statement above isn't accurate.  If I as the DM place an orc at a spot before the game, that's backstory.  The PCs arrival at that spot it happening in the game and is not backstory.  The roleplaying they do with the orc, as well as the ensuing fight generates story, but does so also without backstory creation.  Something that was created in backstory can still be used in the present to create story.

Tuovinen's backstory is anything created before the game OR created during the game that simulates backstory.  Not all creations during a game are like that.  I as a player can create a potion during the game and it won't be a backstory creation.  Or, I as a player can make an alchemy roll to find a potion that I created back in time and is in the box over there.  Success and the potion is created, but since it was created at a time that simulates creation before the present game(already brewed and in the box), it's backstory creation.


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Well, we're not clones!
> 
> Maybe @_*AbdulAlhazred*_'s standards for "respecting success" are more liberal than mine. And it also turned out I was right in my skill challenge conjecture!
> 
> The way you get successes in a skill challenge is by playing your character and engaging the fiction! (If your RPG's mechanics pull away from the fiction, then you've got bad mechanics - and yes, I'm looking at 3E and PF as exhibit A here.)
> 
> That last sentence describes another mode of railroading.




Right, by accepting the 'restriction' of building challenges using a system like the 4e one (and maybe there are better ones, though I've gotten used to this one) is that I'm in less danger of interjecting some sort of 'force' into play. I only have a limited repertoire of responses to the player's fictional proposition and action resolutions, which must lead in a fairly neutral way to a resolution of the question at hand. I can't really punt it off. I can't easily derail things without obviously foiling the mechanic (which is quite possible, but it becomes painfully obvious at the table, so it doesn't happen). 

Likewise the players KNOW that they won't progress forward and 'on to the next thing' without finishing off this thing here and now (again, they COULD completely disengage from the action, now and then that even makes sense) but the game is telling you that you're not playing it when you do that. Combat always had this character to it, you fight until you win, lose, or MAYBE now and then beat a retreat. You know you're doing it wrong if you constantly have to retreat. Combat also has the fun characteristic of an intrinsic penalty for that, often characters are lost in the process!


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## darkbard

Maxperson said:


> The reality is that we still don't know enough about the brain and psychology to say that, "he reality is that the causation of our actions are largely irrational, hardly the "use [of] reason" that you claim."




Look, I'm hardly an expert in the field of psychology, but one of the aspects of my professional research has been theory of mind and neuroscience with regard to issues of free will and identity. I readily agree we don't know nearly enough about how the brain functions. I disagree, speaking not only through opinion but with the authority of science, that we don't know enough to say cognition is far more complicated, involving many, diverse factors, than simply an exercise of reason.



> And makes the game worse.  DM fiat is the most amazing tool in the RPG toolbox.  Sure, it can easily be abused, but when not abused by a bad DM it's fantastic.




As has been articulated throughout this thread (and several others, recent and resurrected), this is purely a matter of aesthetics. And absolute claims about making the game worse are merely your opinion, and, quite frankly, out of place for the purposes of _analysis_. You like a game where the GM is free to exercise authority when desirable (specifically, for the purposes of this discussion, to disallow PC actions that run counter to what the GM has preauthored for a certain situation--there can't be a secret door there unless I've already determined that there is one!); that's clear. 

I, and some others, prefer games wherein GM authority is minimized in certain capacities in comparison to game mechanics as a determinant of outcomes.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> What's the time limit on that?  I mean, going back to my discussion with @_*pemerton*_ about the jewels, he said that the lord sending guards around to search the city for the jewels would be negating the players' success.  However, the lord's reach is the entire city and of course he would search for the jewels, so the players getting to the city doesn't make them safely away with the jewels.  They haven't succeeded yet.
> 
> Yes, in my kind of game the DM decides when players have succeeded to the point where the lord would stop looking.  That doesn't make it whim, though.  The DM is obligated to use reason to make that decision, and he is going to examine what the players are doing to avoid detection and hide the jewels, as well as what resources the lord has available and how much desire he has to find the jewels.  Whim is nowhere to be found.  It's a pet peeve of mine when someone tries to discount what the other side is doing by labeling it a whim.  A whim is when I am in line at the grocery store and without rhyme or reason, I glance at the candy section and grab a candy bar on impulse.  The skill challenge system is a different way to resolve the situation, but it's not inherently a better one.




Again though, it DOES answer this question. The PCs have done enough when they've fulfilled the requirements of winning the 'steal the jewels' SC. Now, there's judgment as to what the fictional positioning of said victory is. Does it mean the PCs have completely left the city behind? OK, that should be explicated in the fictional trajectory of the SC as it unfolds; "guards are patrolling the streets everywhere. You're holed up in the basement for now, but they appear to be organizing a house-to-house search." Maybe the PCs execute a final Streetwise to find the alley or culvert through which they can slip beyond the edge of town, they've achieved victory, and now the GM has essentially framed them into another scene "exiled from town" where they're going to have to deal with the consequences of being cut off and relegated to the countryside (which may itself become problematic once the 1000gp reward is posted). 

Now, there's no exact formula for any of this. Its all a matter of judgment and balance. If the PCs now sneak back into town a week later, well they're obviously risking their necks and their old success at escaping justice is no longer sacrosanct! Even if they just lurk in a nearby village and remain within possible reach of their enemy then the consequences of some other action might be framed as "a bounty hunter after the 1000gp reward has found you!" and potentially they could end up imprisoned over stealing the jewels, although in some mechanical sense that might be more a consequence of some OTHER failure. In this sense narrative details can often be as much color as anything else.


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> *TL;DR* - the above analysis shows that it is false to claim that _searching_ created a secret door. _Action declaration_ may (if successful) result in establishing a secret door as an element in the fiction. But action declaration is not (in general, nor need it be in this particular case) _searching_ or _trying to discover_. It is, at its heart _trying to change the fiction_.




I think this can be taken as the nut of the 'backstory controversy'. [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] focuses on the fiction and claims something is 'authoring backstory' if it establishes some fact that would precede the fictional timeframe of the scene. You define backstory as something that happens in the real world previous to the playing out of the scene. 

This is part and parcel of a dislike on Max's part (and I think some other posters who take a 'classical' stance may fit this too) of examining the PROCESS of play at the table as opposed to examining the fiction which it produces. As we discussed FAR upthread it seems like you cannot really perform an analysis of RPG techniques by focusing strictly on the resultant fiction. 

I believe that this is the sense in which Max's analysis of Eero Tuovinen's essay WRT backstory is flawed, because Tuovinen isn't actually that interested in what fiction results, at least in terms of technique, he's only interested in it AS results. In fact he has no terms for or discussion of what PCs do in-game. It isn't coherent to interpret his statements about backstory to apply to PC actions authored inside the game by the players. The sequence of events he describes is ONLY a sequence of events during (or preceding) play at the table. Backstory is thus 'what is authored preceding play' and all else is framing or responses to framing. If you don't accept this reading then the rest of the text is incoherent!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> No, I'm not going to argue that you don't generate story in Story Now, but your statement above isn't accurate.  If I as the DM place an orc at a spot before the game, that's backstory.  The PCs arrival at that spot it happening in the game and is not backstory.  The roleplaying they do with the orc, as well as the ensuing fight generates story, but does so also without backstory creation.  Something that was created in backstory can still be used in the present to create story.
> 
> Tuovinen's backstory is anything created before the game OR created during the game that simulates backstory.  Not all creations during a game are like that.  I as a player can create a potion during the game and it won't be a backstory creation.  Or, I as a player can make an alchemy roll to find a potion that I created back in time and is in the box over there.  Success and the potion is created, but since it was created at a time that simulates creation before the present game(already brewed and in the box), it's backstory creation.




Yeah, but what I'm saying is that the caveat "or created during the game in a heuristic manner" was meant not to cover action resolution (I find a secret door) but to cover 'winging it' (IE the GM making a roll to see if maybe a secret door existed here because he just created the scene and doing so with regard only to the independent likelihood of it existing and not based on dramatic considerations or character actions). Thus 'created during play' doesn't EXTEND the backstory authority of the participants in the game beyond what they had BEFORE play started! Players have backstory authority over (at most) their characters, usually. The GM has backstory authority over everything else, although in No Myth there is a rule that it can ONLY be exercised at the table to frame scenes in accordance with Eero's definition of the 'standard narrative technique'. 

Now, this means that a player CAN exercise backstory authority on the fly. He can say "oh, yeah, my character traveled to this town before and he knows this guy..." and that's acceptable (at least its potentially an acceptable mode that could work in Story Now). Again though, when the player says "my character searches for a secret door" this is not a heuristic technique (because it is done in respect of the needs of the fiction, not neutrally and not using a purely mechanical heuristic technique that disregards fiction, like rolling on a table). It is not backstory generation in any other sense either, because its OUTSIDE the player's backstory authority (and Eero makes clear that standard narrative technique doesn't include general backstory authority for players). 

Some games may provide mechanical support for backstory resolved by players outside that of their PCs, maybe by expending some resource, etc. This mechanism of regulation must then take on the work of preventing the defusing of dramatic tension which Eero warns about which would take place when players are in charge of both resolving and constructing challenges (which is the matter of the Czege Principle). He specifically criticizes 'conch passing' techniques as not doing this. 

So, again, why is 'classic' DM-centered technique NOT 'standard narrative technique'? It really isn't so much because of backstory questions, it is because the GM simply isn't 'going to the story'. Its not dramatic because it could take 10 hours of play to negotiate the lightless and unbranching underground dwarf highway in Moria (or particularly one that has various uninteresting branches, cracks, etc.). In principle a game could even eschew ANY ability of players to resolve checks in favor of new fiction or even to have the GM 'say yes' to them, but that would put an enormous burden on the GM to always perfectly anticipate the needs of play and what the players WANT, and to always give them the chance to make the wagers that will provide their dramatic trajectory choices. Its too much to put on the GM! This is AT BEST all you can get from 'classic' play, and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] called it the "when pig's fly" technique (to paraphrase).


----------



## Tony Vargas

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Amusingly enough there was a guy who posted over on RPG.NET and ran a pbm game there (maybe it still continues, I'm not sure) using 4e who came to the opposite conclusion, that the original SC system, as written, captured a certain logic that was lost in the revisions and that it wasn't borked at all!



 I don't see any way of getting around the bug of challenges becoming statistically more likely to succeed the more 'complex' (and higher exp value) they happened to be.  



> It doesn't need to be 'covert' at all.



 It didn't /need/ to be, of couse, and IMHO, worked best entirely 'above board,' but it /could/ be used that way if the DM wanted to have players feeling their way through challenges one action declaration at a time rather than approaching it as an engaging 'mini-game.'



> Consider the SC mechanic in the context of Story Now. Players are invoking their character's abilities to do things which create successes and failures, driving the fiction to new scene frames which continue the process. The SC literally becomes the flow of play. In HoML there are NO instances of non-SC dice-mediated play (except combats, which are of course very similar in essence). Its literally against the rules NOT to be running an SC! Your only alternative is 'interlude' which never includes conflict (although it can certainly include exploration in the sense of 'lets inject color into this narrative by describing how we navigate to the next scene frame').



 Sounds a bit brilliant, actually.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Tony Vargas said:


> I don't see any way of getting around the bug of challenges becoming statistically more likely to succeed the more 'complex' (and higher exp value) they happened to be.
> 
> It didn't /need/ to be, of couse, and IMHO, worked best entirely 'above board,' but it /could/ be used that way if the DM wanted to have players feeling their way through challenges one action declaration at a time rather than approaching it as an engaging 'mini-game.'
> 
> Sounds a bit brilliant, actually.




I don't claim to be brilliant of course, but here's the nutshell of what I did:

I streamlined 4e mechanics somewhat, so combat is still tactical and 'fun' but individual combats can respond a bit more to planning and various tactics are more significant (like surprise is a bit nastier, being on higher ground actually helps you, etc.). Powers are little bit more potent as well in the sense that deploying a daily power gets you a little more straightforward decisive results vs maybe in 4e its usually a bit more incremental. This is all just basically moving things a bit quicker in effect. The concepts of synergy and pacing of fights remains intact, as do MOST of the actual mechanical details.

I gave players an explicit 'plot coupon' mechanic that very clearly lets them trade a resource for a chance to interject some sort of narrative element, but it has to leverage an attribute of the character. For this purpose players can specify a few loosely defined 'personal attributes', as well as 4e-like background.

As stated before, all action is part of either a combat or a challenge, so there's always scene-framing explicitly active and a definition in place of goal and forward progress. Players can still define 'quests', but there are no XP in this system, so it actually becomes the equivalent of the 4e 'wish list' concept, a player will define a quest as a mini-goal, like they want to find a magical sword or rescue someone, etc. A boon is normally associated with accomplishing this.

Inversion of advancement. D&D has advancement by 'accumulate treasure and battle experience to gain levels' (4e moves treasure to being a measure of advancement and a resource, but the same paradigm holds). HoML has 'treasure' DEFINE advancement. When you achieve a 'major boon', like say a magical sword, you advance a level. Thus advancement is an effect of setting goals and playing your character. This creates a more natural form of advancement that generally lacks the 'character optimization' element as a major thrust. (IE in 4e you advance, and then you ask "what no gewgaw can I add to my character at this level?" and the natural answer is whatever adds to her numerical and procedural power in the game mechanics. In HoML you find some sort of 'thing' and you become advanced). Players get 4e-like agency here from the previously mentioned quest mechanism, which the GM SHOULD honor (this is Story Now after all).

There are interludes as a 3rd form of play aside from challenge and combat, which allows for simple transitions and non-conflict-related activities to fit into the game. It can also provide for simple information transfer kinds of actions (IE you have a dream, you research some topic, you compose a song, whatever). The GM will (normally SOON) frame a new scene that generates conflict, which will then become the initiation of a new challenge. Interludes are really there to allow the players to 'reset', pick a new quest, and realign their fiction to reflect any changed priorities and relationships. This should put the ball back into the GM's court, and its on to the next scene! 

Other specific tweaks to 4e include there is a very different take on rituals and other similar 'procedures'. These are now simply fictional explainers for utilizing different skills to perform checks during challenges and allow for alternate changes to the fictional positioning (or sometimes just color, whether you pick a lock or use Knock produces the same results). Thus ALL 'skill tasks' are either simply straightforward application of a skill, or use of a procedure/ritual. There are powers which have a kind of 'skill association' as well, but they're just powers that require a skill check as their resolution mechanism. Facilitating this I fixed the issues with 4e's numerical engine, so all checks are on equal footing (hitting it with a sword or frightening it with a scary illusion work the same, one uses sword proficiency, one uses Intimidation).


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think this can be taken as the nut of the 'backstory controversy'. [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] focuses on the fiction and claims something is 'authoring backstory' if it establishes some fact that would precede the fictional timeframe of the scene. You define backstory as something that happens in the real world previous to the playing out of the scene.



Well put.

I only care about backstory within the fiction, for these purposes; and how (and by who) it got there or gets there.



> This is part and parcel of a dislike on Max's part (and I think some other posters who take a 'classical' stance may fit this too) of examining the PROCESS of play at the table as opposed to examining the fiction which it produces. As we discussed FAR upthread it seems like you cannot really perform an analysis of RPG techniques by focusing strictly on the resultant fiction.



I not only think that you can, but that you must; as the fiction that results (and how it becomes what it is) is a direct result of the RPG techniques applied; with those techniques in some cases being forced by the particular game system in use.

My disagreement with story-now and its ilk is primarily with a) the means by which the fiction becomes what it is, and b) the unavoidable (and unacceptable) inconsistencies that will inevitably result from 'a' which will then ruin further play at the table.



> I believe that this is the sense in which Max's analysis of Eero Tuovinen's essay WRT backstory is flawed, because Tuovinen isn't actually that interested in what fiction results, at least in terms of technique, he's only interested in it AS results. In fact he has no terms for or discussion of what PCs do in-game. It isn't coherent to interpret his statements about backstory to apply to PC actions authored inside the game by the players. The sequence of events he describes is ONLY a sequence of events during (or preceding) play at the table. Backstory is thus 'what is authored preceding play' and all else is framing or responses to framing. If you don't accept this reading then the rest of the text is incoherent!



So what you're saying is that Eero doesn't use the term 'backstory' the same as any reasonable person familiar with RPGs would use it; i.e. to mean *the backstory internal to the game-world that got the fiction to the state it's in at the time the PCs interact with it*?

That would explain some of the confusion, to be sure.

If so, the blame's on him for said confusion as he's the one changing definitions, not on us for simply reading and analyzing what he wrote.

Lan-"never mind searching for a secret door, I'm searching for Schroedinger; and if I find him he can bloody well roll for initiative!"-efan


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Tuovinen's backstory is anything created before the game OR created during the game that simulates backstory.



The point is that discovering a secret door _in play_, by way of resolving a declared action, _doesn't simulate the authorship of something before the game_. Here are two (related) ways in which this is so: (1) it is not presented as input into the fictional situation being resolved - rather, it is an outpute; (2) no one at the table knows whether or not the desired secret door will be part of the shared fiction until the declared action is resolved.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I believe that this is the sense in which Max's analysis of Eero Tuovinen's essay WRT backstory is flawed, because Tuovinen isn't actually that interested in what fiction results, at least in terms of technique, he's only interested in it AS results. In fact he has no terms for or discussion of what PCs do in-game. It isn't coherent to interpret his statements about backstory to apply to PC actions authored inside the game by the players. The sequence of events he describes is ONLY a sequence of events during (or preceding) play at the table. Backstory is thus 'what is authored preceding play' and all else is framing or responses to framing. If you don't accept this reading then the rest of the text is incoherent!



Right.   [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] is assuming that, _because the secret door, if it is found, must have existed before that particular moment of discovery_ - which is a "fact" about in-fiction timelines - it must therefore count as backstory - ie something authored in advance of play.

But Eero Tuovinen says nothing about correlation between in-fiction timelines and the timeline of actual play. And as you say, if you take him to be _implicitly_ accepting such a correlation then the rest of his blog makes no sense. For instance, there would be no need to distinguish between backstory and framing!

EDIT:



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, but what I'm saying is that the caveat "or created during the game in a heuristic manner" was meant not to cover action resolution (I find a secret door) but to cover 'winging it' (IE the GM making a roll to see if maybe a secret door existed here because he just created the scene and doing so with regard only to the independent likelihood of it existing and not based on dramatic considerations or character actions).
> 
> <snip>
> 
> when the player says "my character searches for a secret door" this is not a heuristic technique (because it is done in respect of the needs of the fiction, not neutrally and not using a purely mechanical heuristic technique that disregards fiction, like rolling on a table). It is not backstory generation in any other sense either, because its OUTSIDE the player's backstory authority (and Eero makes clear that standard narrative technique doesn't include general backstory authority for players).



This too! (And how many times have I already posted thus upthread?!)


FURTHER EDIT:



Lanefan said:


> So what you're saying is that Eero doesn't use the term 'backstory' the same as any reasonable person familiar with RPGs would use it; i.e. to mean *the backstory internal to the game-world that got the fiction to the state it's in at the time the PCs interact with it*?



He is using it _as he tells us he is using it_:

Backstory is the part of a roleplaying game scenario that “has happened before the game began”. The concept only makes sense when somebody has done preparatory work for the game or is using specific heuristics to simulate such preparation in real-time.​
That will overlap with what you have said _if_ we assume that action resolution will never reveal new information about past states of the gameworld. This is mostly going to be true in classic D&D play (although even Gygax was aware of other possibilities - eg he puts forward a different approach in the Appendix A advice on solo play, which allows a roll _now_ to determine if a secret door was built in the wall _then_).

But if players are free to declare actions like "I search for a secret door" or "I search for the map", with the outcome turning just on the standard resolution methods without also being mediated through the GM's opinion as to the "true" existence of a secret door or a map, then we have an example of _an element of the fiction that is in the state it's in at the time the PCs interact with it_ but is not backstory, because no one wrote it or new it in advance, nor developed it via a proxy heuristic for pre-authorship.

If you don't draw the distinction between in-fiction timelines and at-the-table timelines then you simply _can't describe_ a whole lot of RPGing techniques.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> If the players were trying to disrupt a ritual, they would start telling me their actions on how to do it, and there would be rolls, or no roll depending on if the outcome was in doubt.  There might be multiple rolls depending on their idea and the circumstances around the ritual, and even though I don't do the 4e "Justify the skill used" thing, players are encouraged to use ingenuity to come up with ways that don't necessarily conform to skills or character abilities





AbdulAlhazred said:


> How do you know when the PCs have done 'enough' to succeed? What I found was that classic D&D has only ONE measure of success, which is defeating something in combat. So most things tended to become cast in terms of fights or something close to fights.



Besides AbdulAlhazrad's point - how much is enough? - there is also the point - how does the GM decide whether or not the outcome is in doubt?

This replicates all the same issues as finding the secret door - are the players expected to find out what the GM thinks is a useful way to disrupt the ritual? Or are they allowed to posit modes of disruption, with a check being used to ascertain their effectiveness?

Again, this is why I see railroading as a recurrent (sub-)theme in this discussion.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> You've completely fabricated some insanity where I've argued that the secret door is created in real life.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Every wall basically has schrodinger's secret door in it.  It both has and doesn't have a secret door in it until a PC succeeds or fails at a roll to find a secret door there, then the existence of the secret door in that wall is decided.



I don't think you think a secret door is created in real life.

But I do think that you think that, in real life, the player is _searching_ for a secret door. Where is the search taking place, under ths analysis? S/he's searching the GM's notes - of, if the GM has no relevant notes, then s/he's searching for the GM's response generated through some appropriate heuristic - the one I described above, which you seemed to accept as fairly described, is _roll dice, or "objectively" extrapolation from what is in the notes_.

My point is that the PC can search without the player searching. That is to say, the action at the table need not be the same as the action in the fiction. How do I know? Because it happens all the time in my RPGing! (We already know this for killing: the player isn't trying to kill anything when s/he declares an attack for his/her PC. She's just trying to change the state of the fiction. Searching can be the same.)

And the remark about "Schroedinger's secret door" again shows this inability to distinguish the action at the table from the action in the fiction.

It's a long time since I've read A Study in Scarlet. I'm pretty sure, though, that it doesn't tell us whether or not John Watson had any nieces or nephews. Does this mean that Watson is, throughout the story, "Schroedinger's uncle?" No - either he has nieces and/or nephews, or he doesn't - it's just that no one has written it down yet, and so no one in the real world - not even Arthur Conan Doyle - knows whether or not Watson is an uncle.

Now, suppose that one day Doyle is dictating a new Sherlock Holmes story, and he dictates a sequence in Watson tells Holmes that he has to go and see his nephew sing in a choir. In the real world, this is a creative act - Doyle has introduced a new element into the fictional world of Sherlock Holmes. But of course, in the fiction, no nephew has been created! That happened long before, when Watson's sibling had a child.

The secret door is no different. In the real world, if the check is a success then we all learn a new thing about the fiction. But there is no "Schroedinger's door", any more than your PC is "Schroedinger's orphan" because you never bothered to write down any backstory about his/her parents!


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> AbdulAlhazred said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> you cannot really perform an analysis of RPG techniques by focusing strictly on the resultant fiction.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I not only think that you can, but that you must; as the fiction that results (and how it becomes what it is) is a direct result of the RPG techniques applied
Click to expand...


If you include, within your focus, _how the fiction becomes what it is_ then your are not focusing strictly on the resultant fiction - ie your analysis has the character that [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] says it must have.

If you don't include that within your focus, then you have not _analysis _at all. Concrete example, from the session that I GMed today: the PCs, travelling north along a ridge above a glacier, came to a frozen lake where a great ash tree was growing, ravens perched in its branches and three (NPC) women trying to light a fire in its lee. The NPCs declared that Yggdrasil was dying, the earth around its root frozen. The trol PC used his power over the earth and stone to open a rift allowing first a hot spring, and then hot air from a subterranean geothermal source, to come up to the surface and thaw the root. This saved Yggdrasil from dying.

From that recount, what can you tell about the session? What actions did the players declare for their PCs? What bits of fiction were the result of those action declarations? What bits were part of the framing, and who framed them? What actions, if any, did I as GM declare for the NPCs? What consequences did I establish in response to failed checks? Who decided that Yggdrawil was in danger of dying, and that subterranean warmth could save it?

You can't answer any of these questions just by reading the recount of the fictional events that I wrote out above.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, but what I'm saying is that the caveat "or created during the game in a heuristic manner" was meant not to cover action resolution (I find a secret door) but to cover 'winging it' (IE the GM making a roll to see if maybe a secret door existed here because he just created the scene and doing so with regard only to the independent likelihood of it existing and not based on dramatic considerations or character actions). Thus 'created during play' doesn't EXTEND the backstory authority of the participants in the game beyond what they had BEFORE play started! Players have backstory authority over (at most) their characters, usually. The GM has backstory authority over everything else, although in No Myth there is a rule that it can ONLY be exercised at the table to frame scenes in accordance with Eero's definition of the 'standard narrative technique'.
> 
> Now, this means that a player CAN exercise backstory authority on the fly. He can say "oh, yeah, my character traveled to this town before and he knows this guy..." and that's acceptable (at least its potentially an acceptable mode that could work in Story Now). Again though, when the player says "my character searches for a secret door" this is not a heuristic technique (because it is done in respect of the needs of the fiction, not neutrally and not using a purely mechanical heuristic technique that disregards fiction, like rolling on a table). It is not backstory generation in any other sense either, because its OUTSIDE the player's backstory authority (and Eero makes clear that standard narrative technique doesn't include general backstory authority for players).
> 
> Some games may provide mechanical support for backstory resolved by players outside that of their PCs, maybe by expending some resource, etc. This mechanism of regulation must then take on the work of preventing the defusing of dramatic tension which Eero warns about which would take place when players are in charge of both resolving and constructing challenges (which is the matter of the Czege Principle). He specifically criticizes 'conch passing' techniques as not doing this.
> 
> So, again, why is 'classic' DM-centered technique NOT 'standard narrative technique'? It really isn't so much because of backstory questions, it is because the GM simply isn't 'going to the story'. Its not dramatic because it could take 10 hours of play to negotiate the lightless and unbranching underground dwarf highway in Moria (or particularly one that has various uninteresting branches, cracks, etc.). In principle a game could even eschew ANY ability of players to resolve checks in favor of new fiction or even to have the GM 'say yes' to them, but that would put an enormous burden on the GM to always perfectly anticipate the needs of play and what the players WANT, and to always give them the chance to make the wagers that will provide their dramatic trajectory choices. Its too much to put on the GM! This is AT BEST all you can get from 'classic' play, and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] called it the "when pig's fly" technique (to paraphrase).




You've, like just about everyone else, misrepresented Eero's piece in mostly the same way.  This is frustrating because he's so damn clear about what his piece is about:  the *uncritical* addition of narration sharing to games that have either strong backstory authority or strong character advocacy.  He doesn't say that players can't have backstory privileges as part of the game, but that adding those to games where backstory is supposed to be strongly held or where the players are also expected to have strong character advocacy as a focus of play may cause things to go wobbly, sometimes to detrimental effect.

So, the argument that Eero really means that a game where the player has designed backstory privileges to add a secret door or cultist lore through a game move IS NOT what he's discussing -- those are games that have critically considered the effect and understand how it shapes/holds the game.  This is very clear in his piece that he's more than fine with as he directly cites his own game that has both backstory authority sharing and has play that switches focus on character advocacy to focus on what's best for the story because he's considered the impact critically and designed to accommodate them.  

This twisting of Eero's general advice to be careful about willy-nilly adding in narration sharing -- specifically to take a moment to understand the game you're playing and what impacts the addition may have that undermine the premise/mechanics/gestalt of that _game _-- is NEVER a general pronouncement that player action declarations cannot involve backstory creation.  This is counter-indicated by his explicit examples of action declarations that involve backstory.

Adding to the backstory through player action declarations is JUST FINE.  Arguing that Eero either says that you shouldn't or that action declarations are special cases are both so wide of his rather mild point of understanding what game you're playing before making changes that can affect it.  Eero focuses on Narrativist games here because that's where this particular issue of a community encouraging narration sharing is crossing over into games where, while Narrativist, will likely be made poorer for uncritical additions of narration sharing.  That's it.  There's no deep analysis or truth about playstyles here, it's just a well written opinion on a niche topic withing RPGs.  That people have spent so much time imaging it as either a validation of their playstyle (when it doesn't really speak to that at all, just cautions against uncritical changes) or that it contains the one idea that will prove that another playstyle fails (when it just talks about specific possible failure modes when changing the game system conceits) is effin ridiculous.  It's a good piece, it makes a good point about how you should consider the impacts of changes to your game, but it's not a treatise on how to do it right in all cases and it certainly doesn't warrant the hair-splitting of "well, clearly, since I believe this article is validation of my play, I must assume the author REALLY meant that action declarations cannot cause backstory to be authored and I cannot rely on this piece as a strong defense of my playstyle choices otherwise!"  Climb down, people, Eero wasn't defining your playstyle or your game, and he's perfectly happy that you can author backstory secret doors and cultist lore in your games because that ability wasn't an uncritical addition to your game and is, in fact, both intentional and functional to the intent of play for that game.

Gah.    [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], you drug me back into this.  I shan't forgive you.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Well put.
> 
> I only care about backstory within the fiction, for these purposes; and how (and by who) it got there or gets there.
> 
> I not only think that you can, but that you must; as the fiction that results (and how it becomes what it is) is a direct result of the RPG techniques applied; with those techniques in some cases being forced by the particular game system in use.



I think you must have forgotten how that part of the thread went, we're not going to re-litigate it here, but your position on this was reduced to utter ridiculousness. Of course you have to care about the process, otherwise you could care less what the player's experience of the game is AT ALL??!!! Don't lets even contemplate going back to this sad chapter! 



> My disagreement with story-now and its ilk is primarily with a) the means by which the fiction becomes what it is,



OK, and now you just totally contradicted your last statement! I'm confused...


> and b) the unavoidable (and unacceptable) inconsistencies that will inevitably result from 'a' which will then ruin further play at the table.



Except of course they are not unavoidable, nor inevitable. I actually contend, and have contended all thread, that any illusion of consistency based on world building or other pre-authored content is totally illusory.



> So what you're saying is that Eero doesn't use the term 'backstory' the same as any reasonable person familiar with RPGs would use it; i.e. to mean *the backstory internal to the game-world that got the fiction to the state it's in at the time the PCs interact with it*?
> 
> That would explain some of the confusion, to be sure.
> 
> If so, the blame's on him for said confusion as he's the one changing definitions, not on us for simply reading and analyzing what he wrote.




I disagree that he's got some bizarre definition. I explained it quite clearly, and if you do a careful reading of the essay we're talking about you find that, in fact, that's the only consistent reading. Backstory is what was done previous to play, 'in the background'. If something is invented DURING play, yes, it may have some sort of "game world historic" implication (IE the secret door was always there, someone must have built it 100 years ago) but the players are not engaging in a process of writing stories about what happened 100 years ago. They are engaging in a process of resolving a story that is happening RIGHT NOW. So labeling what they're doing when they search for the secret door "writing backstory" is silly. Can you see my point? [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] is being simply incredibly obtuse by insisting on this reading, it doesn't even make sense in the context of the rest of the essay. I can only conclude that his reading of it is either strange, or superficial.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> He is using it _as he tells us he is using it_:
> Backstory is the part of a roleplaying game scenario that “has happened before the game began”. The concept only makes sense when somebody has done preparatory work for the game or is using specific heuristics to simulate such preparation in real-time.​




Right, but obviously the phrase you quote "has happened before the game began." BY ITSELF could be construed in the timeline of the in-game fictional world. This is what Max did. The problem is he seems to have scanned the essay for statements which support his view, but not actually considered it as an integrated whole. As you said in the part of this I didn't quote, there would be no difference between backstory and framing otherwise!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Besides AbdulAlhazrad's point - how much is enough? - there is also the point - how does the GM decide whether or not the outcome is in doubt?
> 
> This replicates all the same issues as finding the secret door - are the players expected to find out what the GM thinks is a useful way to disrupt the ritual? Or are they allowed to posit modes of disruption, with a check being used to ascertain their effectiveness?
> 
> Again, this is why I see railroading as a recurrent (sub-)theme in this discussion.




I would make this observation. The pre-authorship of individual encounters, assuming that the GM has got the scene framed properly (which is harder before the fact, but not impossible) is not as problematic as some other aspects of 'back story/world building'. An encounter is tactical. The PCs have arrived at the point where the ritual is to be disrupted, the GM can probably anticipate the most likely approaches. Even things he cannot anticipate are going to be limited in focus and present no more or less issue than with dynamically framed and generated encounters. Depending on the scope of the encounter, the larger the more this is true, the players might try to use action resolution in ways that bypass or skirt the main issue at hand. So the GM might need additional framing in a large complex situation. The more tactical, the less problematic it is. I mean nobody is really doubting that I can put 3 orcs in an empty room and how that's going to go down.

I think world building is also less problematical at a large 'world scale' where it blends into genre and more general milieu construction. A world map, or a general designation that 'orcs exist somewhere in the west' is not super problematic most of the time. Particularly if there's plenty of room for some enclave of orcs in the east that some player wants to invoke to set up some sort of goal or whatever. This is largely how Dungeon World works. You can have 'swiss cheese' and the holes get filled in by moves made by the GM and sometimes the players. 

Its the creamy middle filling part where things get ugly. When you have maps that are solidly filled in and places where an enormous amount of detail about NPCs, towns, whatever exists then you start to have problems just tossing stuff in where it seems to be needed at the moment. It also becomes a lot harder with 300 pages of setting material to maintain complete consistency. I'm not a huge adherent to the need for perfect consistency, particularly with events that happened in games long past, but inconsistency seems to obviate the point of world building for sure!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> You've, like just about everyone else, misrepresented Eero's piece in mostly the same way.  This is frustrating because he's so damn clear about what his piece is about:  the *uncritical* addition of narration sharing to games that have either strong backstory authority or strong character advocacy.  He doesn't say that players can't have backstory privileges as part of the game, but that adding those to games where backstory is supposed to be strongly held or where the players are also expected to have strong character advocacy as a focus of play may cause things to go wobbly, sometimes to detrimental effect.
> 
> So, the argument that Eero really means that a game where the player has designed backstory privileges to add a secret door or cultist lore through a game move IS NOT what he's discussing -- those are games that have critically considered the effect and understand how it shapes/holds the game.  This is very clear in his piece that he's more than fine with as he directly cites his own game that has both backstory authority sharing and has play that switches focus on character advocacy to focus on what's best for the story because he's considered the impact critically and designed to accommodate them.
> 
> This twisting of Eero's general advice to be careful about willy-nilly adding in narration sharing -- specifically to take a moment to understand the game you're playing and what impacts the addition may have that undermine the premise/mechanics/gestalt of that _game _-- is NEVER a general pronouncement that player action declarations cannot involve backstory creation.  This is counter-indicated by his explicit examples of action declarations that involve backstory.
> 
> Adding to the backstory through player action declarations is JUST FINE.  Arguing that Eero either says that you shouldn't or that action declarations are special cases are both so wide of his rather mild point of understanding what game you're playing before making changes that can affect it.  Eero focuses on Narrativist games here because that's where this particular issue of a community encouraging narration sharing is crossing over into games where, while Narrativist, will likely be made poorer for uncritical additions of narration sharing.  That's it.  There's no deep analysis or truth about playstyles here, it's just a well written opinion on a niche topic withing RPGs.  That people have spent so much time imaging it as either a validation of their playstyle (when it doesn't really speak to that at all, just cautions against uncritical changes) or that it contains the one idea that will prove that another playstyle fails (when it just talks about specific possible failure modes when changing the game system conceits) is effin ridiculous.  It's a good piece, it makes a good point about how you should consider the impacts of changes to your game, but it's not a treatise on how to do it right in all cases and it certainly doesn't warrant the hair-splitting of "well, clearly, since I believe this article is validation of my play, I must assume the author REALLY meant that action declarations cannot cause backstory to be authored and I cannot rely on this piece as a strong defense of my playstyle choices otherwise!"  Climb down, people, Eero wasn't defining your playstyle or your game, and he's perfectly happy that you can author backstory secret doors and cultist lore in your games because that ability wasn't an uncritical addition to your game and is, in fact, both intentional and functional to the intent of play for that game.
> 
> Gah.    @_*Maxperson*_, you drug me back into this.  I shan't forgive you.




Well, mostly I agree with you. Its NOT an essay which intends to explicate the whole 'standard narrative model' of gaming. It IS an essay ABOUT games of this kind and how different narration mechanisms can work or be problematic within them. Thus, while it explicitly eschews defining the model, it is actually a fairly coherent explication of key points OF that model. I don't think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is 'twisting' it. He may be immersed in that conceptual space to an extent where his contextual understanding of the thing gives it weight and meaning to him which other people would need to get by going back to some of the more general Ron Edwards et al material to get. 

Honestly, the definition of 'backstory' is not that critical TO THE ESSAY, it was just important in the context of this thread! Now, maybe there's better things that could be quoted. I would perhaps do that, except I wasn't a Forge-ista and I really honestly am not all that firsthand familiar with the writings of Edwards, and others. Honestly I found a lot of it fairly tedious, doctrinaire, and (Edwards in particular) unsympathetic of contrary viewpoints. This may be one of the reasons that The Forge shut down (although I really don't know anything about that either). It became an echo chamber and also a focus for criticism. I know just saying 'Forge' or 'GNS' or whatever on many boards would start a fight! I guess that's faded somewhat, but I think there's still echoes of it in some of the more extreme 'OSR' reactionary nonsense and whatever. 

Anyway, not TOO much should be read into the Tuovinen essay, but it does make points relevant to the questions of world building that started this thread, and certainly addresses questions to ask about who has the responsibility/authority to author details about the world beyond character actions.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, mostly I agree with you. Its NOT an essay which intends to explicate the whole 'standard narrative model' of gaming. It IS an essay ABOUT games of this kind and how different narration mechanisms can work or be problematic within them. Thus, while it explicitly eschews defining the model, it is actually a fairly coherent explication of key points OF that model. I don't think [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is 'twisting' it. He may be immersed in that conceptual space to an extent where his contextual understanding of the thing gives it weight and meaning to him which other people would need to get by going back to some of the more general Ron Edwards et al material to get.
> 
> Honestly, the definition of 'backstory' is not that critical TO THE ESSAY, it was just important in the context of this thread! Now, maybe there's better things that could be quoted. I would perhaps do that, except I wasn't a Forge-ista and I really honestly am not all that firsthand familiar with the writings of Edwards, and others. Honestly I found a lot of it fairly tedious, doctrinaire, and (Edwards in particular) unsympathetic of contrary viewpoints. This may be one of the reasons that The Forge shut down (although I really don't know anything about that either). It became an echo chamber and also a focus for criticism. I know just saying 'Forge' or 'GNS' or whatever on many boards would start a fight! I guess that's faded somewhat, but I think there's still echoes of it in some of the more extreme 'OSR' reactionary nonsense and whatever.
> 
> Anyway, not TOO much should be read into the Tuovinen essay, but it does make points relevant to the questions of world building that started this thread, and certainly addresses questions to ask about who has the responsibility/authority to author details about the world beyond character actions.




That was a way fast flip from saying that backstory cannot be part of action declaration or the article is incoherent to saying that the actual definition of backstory isn't important to the article, just this thread.

You have been reading that article with the same kinds of justification lenses that [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] has been using -- scanning and interpreting so that it supports your arguments.  Honestly, I blame this on the need to look to this article as some kind of authority statement, thereby pushing people to interpret a lazily written (Eero's description, by the way) blog post on a niche aspect of how some mechanics are universally applicable to all games.  So what's been happening is an increasing calcification of definitions and spins so that what is said both supports the views expressed and can still be made to match the cited authority.  It's ridiculous.

The example of searching for a secret door and a success meaning that there is a secret door there is an exercise of backstory creation.  THIS IS FINE!

The example of spouting lore about moon cultists is an example of backstory creation.  THIS IS FINE!

Nothing about either of these examples introducing new backstory invalidates or weakens the games they can occur in.  It doesn't make them poorer or richer, itjust  makes them them.  Those games are built with this kind of thing at the foundation, and are well conceived to allow that kind of move at the table.  This doesn't conflict at all with Eero's blog post, and everyone needs to step back and recognize it doesn't.  Everyone needs to stop trying to justify why their mode of play is better for anyone other than them -- that Story Now and/or traditional D&D play are both valid, acceptable, and useful ways to play that cannot be directly compared.  I brought up chess and checkers so many time but everyone just seems intent on figuring out how the other game is lesser because it doesn't allow for the moves in their favorite games.  To this we've had messed up definitions of backstory, agency, advocacy, world building, you name it, all in an attempt to pin down a rhetoric point that show that, in this case, with these assumptions, my way is better.  Not better for me, but just better.  I have more of this word, as defined this way.  

This is counterproductive and, frankly, assinine.  There's only an occasional attempt, often by a new participant, to engage in understanding, but the usual suspects just drive those post right back into the definitional wars on which style can eek out a win in this esoteric column.  "I have more agency over the fiction!"  "Sure, but you do that by sharing some narration."  "NO, I don't, because action declarations cannot be shared narration or have any backstory because... blah blah blah."  Guess what, action declarations can have plenty to do with sharing narration and backstory, and THAT'S FINE!  On the other side, it's "But you just put players into situations where they might have wanted to doing something else and that's RAILROADING!"  Guess what?  It's not, because the players signed up for that kind of play.  They aren't playing to be cautious explorers of the intersections and sneakers-up on giants.  They players are getting EXACTLY the game they want.  If they want to be sneaky, then they have every opportunity to declare this as part of their interests, and then call the GM out if he screws it up.  And not in the 4 second interruption window, but as a function of what they've established as important to them.

And the Pippin thing?  Good grief.  "My way can cause that outcome better than your way!"  Seriously?  You're trying to figure out what system can cause that specific outcome and arguing over that?!  Both will create a story with regards to the situation in Gondor and the player's goals if played with integrity.  Can you really say that you, as a GM, would be so likely to frame the exact situations that allow the Pippen player to declare actions that will resolve properly to gain that result and also say that a traditional DM could not do so?  That's hubristic and believing far too much in the superiority of your playstyle -- a playstyle that specifically avoid assumptions about outcomes, yet here we are, arguing which playstyle can best replicate the specific outcome of a novel.  Ridiculous doesn't even get close to it.

For what it's worth, I have a a few more sessions of BitD under the belt, it's going swimmingly and everyone's having a complete blast being scoundrels.  We have a character building a mechanical hull for the ghost of his childhood dog, the crew getting even more wrapped up in weirdness from their now allies the witches Dimmer, and a brewing war between the group and a neighborhood that was roughly treated by them.  And the streets are getting even more dangerous as the background gang war heats up and the Lampblacks are becoming desperate.  On the other hand, I just ran a modified version of Sunless Citadel for my regular 5e group, which includes all of my Blades players, and we had another blast as attempts to bluff through guard posts failed and now the kobolds are in fighting retreat back to more defensible positions and setting up ambushes on the fly in a long, combat time play (we've passed a minute and a half of combat time now, and the fight's still on, yay kobolds!).  It doesn't matter what you're playing, neither is the better style -- the better style is the one you're having fun playing.  Everyone needs to step back and figure out if you're trying to help others see how much fun you have and why or if you're just trying to defend your method as superior in the face of someone with a different set of ideas.


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## billd91

That seems a perfectly good point in the thread to stick a fork in it and call it done.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> [...]




lol! That's a lot of commentary to digest, but let me just respond that it DOES matter what are the interpretations of some of these questions, and Tuovinen's essay DOES have some relevance! I mean, look, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s interpretation of Story Now (of standard narrative model) becomes ridiculous when he flat out states that you can have NO agenda or signaling between players and GMs and somehow magically you have a narrative model game or magically you just achieve the same ends. I mean, regardless of how we explicate it (and I'm OK with your "this discussion of backstory is getting ridiculous") Max and Pemerton cannot both be correct!! I know from experience of play in this technique that some of the things Max asserts are simply not tenable. I know it. I don't need Eero Tuovinen to justify that, its simply outright demonstrable in my experience, because I've tried to do what Max claims 'just happens'. It never works! 

Now, I'm not saying his game "doesn't work" or he's fooling on anyone. I just think that what he does and what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] does, and what I do, and what [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] does, etc. are not the same thing. I think if you understand the Tuovinen essay in the light of Pemerton's definition of backstory then you see how things make sense. It DOES cast a light on this distinction. Perhaps the guy wasn't being particularly precise when he wrote it and it isn't perfectly clear and doesn't touch on all the relevant points. Perhaps its even not perfectly consistent. I'd say he's not talking about a specific game, and thus the concepts are covering a lot of different possible game designs. That makes it easy to draw inconsistent conclusions from it, but a careful reading does provide insight!

Anyway, I've done more than skim it for statements that support my PoV, and I've got plenty of experience that seems to indicate certain truths about how RPGs work. I don't know what else to say. I don't care about superior or inferior but when I read monkeyshine I generally respond in a way that is intended to explicate where the shine is and where the monkey is.


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## AbdulAlhazred

billd91 said:


> That seems a perfectly good point in the thread to stick a fork in it and call it done.




heh, I think its beyond 'well done' at this point and more on the level of 'burnt to a crisp'.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> lol! That's a lot of commentary to digest, but let me just respond that it DOES matter what are the interpretations of some of these questions, and Tuovinen's essay DOES have some relevance! I mean, look, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s interpretation of Story Now (of standard narrative model) becomes ridiculous when he flat out states that you can have NO agenda or signaling between players and GMs and somehow magically you have a narrative model game or magically you just achieve the same ends. I mean, regardless of how we explicate it (and I'm OK with your "this discussion of backstory is getting ridiculous") Max and Pemerton cannot both be correct!! I know from experience of play in this technique that some of the things Max asserts are simply not tenable. I know it. I don't need Eero Tuovinen to justify that, its simply outright demonstrable in my experience, because I've tried to do what Max claims 'just happens'. It never works!
> 
> Now, I'm not saying his game "doesn't work" or he's fooling on anyone. I just think that what he does and what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] does, and what I do, and what [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] does, etc. are not the same thing. I think if you understand the Tuovinen essay in the light of Pemerton's definition of backstory then you see how things make sense. It DOES cast a light on this distinction. Perhaps the guy wasn't being particularly precise when he wrote it and it isn't perfectly clear and doesn't touch on all the relevant points. Perhaps its even not perfectly consistent. I'd say he's not talking about a specific game, and thus the concepts are covering a lot of different possible game designs. That makes it easy to draw inconsistent conclusions from it, but a careful reading does provide insight!
> 
> Anyway, I've done more than skim it for statements that support my PoV, and I've got plenty of experience that seems to indicate certain truths about how RPGs work. I don't know what else to say. I don't care about superior or inferior but when I read monkeyshine I generally respond in a way that is intended to explicate where the shine is and where the monkey is.




Yeah, man, step  back and listen to yourself.  It's critically important that you make sure Max understands how he's wrong about it works because otherwise he might believe he can have as good a result as you do.

Why do you care?  Let's pretend Max does get just as awesome a game from his style, with all the stories and Pippen being in the honor guard and flowers on Mother's day!  So what?  How does that ever affect your game or how awesome your game is?  You're all pretty, stop fighting over who's prettiest.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think world building is also less problematical at a large 'world scale' where it blends into genre and more general milieu construction. A world map, or a general designation that 'orcs exist somewhere in the west' is not super problematic most of the time.



Generally I agree, and think I've said as much in this thread (eg in the context of my use of GH). The difference between _generic, trope-laden swords & sorcery city_ and _Hardby]/i] is that the latter gives us a proper name to refer to the former. Large-scale maps, history etc play basically the same role.

System is also a relevant consideration here. If overland travel is handled in a classic D&D hexcrawl style, then "the orcs exist somewhere in the west" has the potential to be a bigger burden on play than a system in which travel is handled more abstractly or flexibly, and so the action can shift to the west (and the orcs) with a bit of deft narration and a handful of dice rolls.



AbdulAlhazred said:



			The pre-authorship of individual encounters, assuming that the GM has got the scene framed properly (which is harder before the fact, but not impossible) is not as problematic as some other aspects of 'back story/world building'. An encounter is tactical. The PCs have arrived at the point where the ritual is to be disrupted, the GM can probably anticipate the most likely approaches. Even things he cannot anticipate are going to be limited in focus and present no more or less issue than with dynamically framed and generated encounters.
		
Click to expand...


I take your point, but I think this is also realted to system.

In 4e, disrputing the ritual is probably a skill challenge. A virtue of this is that the GM doesn't have to decide, in advance, how the ritual might be disrupted. Of course if there are some obvious possibilities (eg break the magic circle) then it would make sense to sketch out how those might work; but there is no reason not to follow the players' leads if thiey come up with alternative approaches the GM didn't anticipate. One strength of the skill challenge structure is to easily accomodate this.

In my Cortex+ game yesterday, the PCs ended up saving Yggdrasil from dying (its root suffering in the frozen soil of the fell winter). This was done by the troll earth-shaper, who first opened up a cleft in the ground to allow warm spring water to percolate up; and then extended the cleft to allow hot gases from an undergroudn geothermal pocket to rise up, both thawing the ground and kindling the fire the Norns had been trying to light in the lee of the tree.

This is a version of "stop the ritual". I was able to write up the encounter without even knowing which of the PCs would be present (this is only the second time in a year or more that the troll player has played in this particular campaign), and without knowing what they would do to save Yggdrasil, or even whether they would do it (the Loki devotee hemmed and hawed a bit before coming in on the Norns' side; the berserker was trying to kill the Norns up until the end, ostensibly because he thought they were witches killing the tree and had been worked into a rage; also because the player was wanting to earn XP for exercising wanton violence and being rebuked by his fellows for doing so - which he did!).

Cortex+ Heroic takes for granted that the players will declare actions that engage the fiction in a pretty free-flowing manner, and will establish relevant backstory elements (like underground springs and geothermal pockets) as they become salient to those action declarations.I don't really know how [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] would handle this sort of thing, but in so far as he interposes a step between declaration and resolution, where the GM decides if the idea is feasible, or if the outcome is in doubt, and - presumably - decides whether or not there are underground phenomena present, well that's where I think considerations of railroading become relevenat._


----------



## pemerton

The reason I referreed to Eero Tuovinen's essay, a long way upthread, is because it gives a very clear statement of the "standard narrativistic model", which is one method of "story now" RPGing. PbtA is another way, which emphasises scene-framing less and extrapolation from the fiction more. (PbtA is, in that way at least, closer to OSR.)

In my experience there are some posters on ENworld who think the question "If there's no worldbuilding, how would the game even be set in motion?" is a purely rhetorical quetion, and a sufficient explanation of what worldbuilding is for. Hence the utility of a succinct description of an approach to play - the standard narrativistic model - which uses other methods to set the game in motion.

Examples of searching for a map, or a secret door, were introduced into the discussion by _me _- not Eero Tuovinen - to illustrate the contrast between resolution with or without GM secet backstory. The only connection they have to Eero's essay is indirect, in the following way: (i) the absence of secret-backtory is more typical in standard narrativistic RPGing, because (ii) the use of secret backstory makes it harder to "go where the action is" if the action involves discovery (as opposed to, say, killing) and makes it more likely that the game will involve a significant degree of the players declaring actions that trigger the GM to reveal hitherto-unrevealed backstory so that the players then know what the necessary fictional positioning is for their PCs to make the desired discoveries.

I guess a third connection between the topic of the previous paragraph, and Eero's essay, is that his essay is moslty a criticism of conch-passing (or, as he calls it, narration sharing), and resolving an action declaration in a RPG is obviously not conch-passing.

Subsequently, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] asserted that resolving action declaration _is_, in fact, a form of conch-passing, and hence _is_ the sort of thing that Eero is cautioning against. I think this is obviously not what Eero had in mind, for the reasons that both [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and I have given: _whatever we think about action resolution_, it is clearly not preparing something in advance of playing the game, nor a proxy for it.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> The reason I referreed to Eero Tuovinen's essay, a long way upthread, is because it gives a very clear statement of the "standard narrativistic model", which is one method of "story now" RPGing. PbtA is another way, which emphasises scene-framing less and extrapolation from the fiction more. (PbtA is, in that way at least, closer to OSR.)
> 
> In my experience there are some posters on ENworld who think the question "If there's no worldbuilding, how would the game even be set in motion?" is a purely rhetorical quetion, and a sufficient explanation of what worldbuilding is for. Hence the utility of a succinct description of an approach to play - the standard narrativistic model - which uses other methods to set the game in motion.
> 
> Examples of searching for a map, or a secret door, were introduced into the discussion by _me _- not Eero Tuovinen - to illustrate the contrast between resolution with or without GM secet backstory. The only connection they have to Eero's essay is indirect, in the following way: (i) the absence of secret-backtory is more typical in standard narrativistic RPGing, because (ii) the use of secret backstory makes it harder to "go where the action is" if the action involves discovery (as opposed to, say, killing) and makes it more likely that the game will involve a significant degree of the players declaring actions that trigger the GM to reveal hitherto-unrevealed backstory so that the players then know what the necessary fictional positioning is for their PCs to make the desired discoveries.
> 
> I guess a third connection between the topic of the previous paragraph, and Eero's essay, is that his essay is moslty a criticism of conch-passing (or, as he calls it, narration sharing), and resolving an action declaration in a RPG is obviously not conch-passing.
> 
> Subsequently, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] asserted that resolving action declaration _is_, in fact, a form of conch-passing, and hence _is_ the sort of thing that Eero is cautioning against. I think this is obviously not what Eero had in mind, for the reasons that both [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and I have given: _whatever we think about action resolution_, it is clearly not preparing something in advance of playing the game, nor a proxy for it.




I think that the only thing that is clear is that Eero's post isn't as clear as you think it is.

We all seem to be pretty sure that what he writes in that post is directly relevant to our perspective. 

The very problem he points out as the basis of his post is:

_"The problem When we bring the above terminology together, I can finally express my issue: *I think that mixing narration sharing uncritically with backstory-heavy games and advocacy-model narrativistic games sucks ass.* Examples:

My brother Markku likes narration-sharing a lot, narrating stuff is one of his big loves in roleplaying. Now and then he gets proactive about introducing various methodologies into his gaming, which often ends up with him asking his D&D players what sort of monsters they would like to meet in the next encounter. Of course it’s fine if he likes this (no intent to call Markku out here specifically), but to me it seems completely awry and awkward to break the GM backstory authority and allow the players to narrate whatever they want. *There’s no excitement and discovery in finding orcs in the next room if I decided myself that there would be orcs there. This fundamentally changes my relationship to my character.*
Somebody at Story Games suggested in relation to 3:16 (don’t remember who, it’s not really important) that a great GM technique would be to leave the greater purpose and nature of the high command of the space army undefined so the players could make this decision when and if their characters find it out. So maybe they find out that the great space war is a hoax or whatever. I find that this is completely ass-backwards for this sort of game: *the players cannot be put into a position of advocacy for their characters if those same players are required to make the crucial backstory choices: am I supposed to myself decide that the space war is a cruel lie, and then in the next moment determine how my character is going to react to this knowledge? Doesn’t that look at all artificial?*
In another thread a similar claim was made about Trail of Cthulhu – that is, somebody described how he’d played the game with the players having the right to invent backstory by paying points for it. I’m not that vehemently against this in this case, as I don’t know ToC that well. Still, I’m almost certain that this is not the intended reading of the game text, and it definitely deviates quite a bit from how the game works if you assume an objective, GM-controlled backstory. My first instinct would be that I wouldn’t be that interested in playing the game if there weren’t a carefully considered, atmospheric backstory to uncover; it’s an investigation game after all."_

And it's clear (to me anyway), that in the rest of the post he's not arguing about secret backstory. He is arguing against sharing the narrative in a way that allows the players to add to the backstory during the course of play. That you can't have an "I am your father" moment if the players themselves are contributing to the backstory. The parts I bolded only speak to the GM having the authority to write the backstory. It says absolutely _nothing_ about when that backstory is written.

His conclusion also speaks specifically to this:

"_Conclusion
I hope I’ve outlined my argument in sufficient detail. What I’m getting to here is that I don’t find it convincing how lightly many GMs seem to give away their backstory authority even when playing games that absolutely rely on the GM’s ability to drive home hard choices by using these same powers. There are other types of game that have similar problems (D&D for instance has nothing to do with the standard narrativist model, but it still sucks for slightly different reasons if you make playing the setting a matter of group consensus), but that issue with narrativist games seems exceptionally clear to me on account of how very clearly these games are written and how well-known the theory of their function is – the only reason to introduce extra dashes of shared narration in these games is well-intentioned foolishness, it seems to me._"

There is absolutely nothing about the "Pitfalls of secret backstory" or "pitfalls of worldbuilding" or "pitfalls of pre-authoring materials." 

I'm not sure how you'd come to the conclusion that I think action resolution is conch-passing, because that's definitely not what I think at all. It is a form of contribution to the story, yes, but very, very different from conch-passing. To me, conch-passing is what I see in the YouTube demo of Dungeon World. "OK, Bob, you're playing the dwarven cleric, tell us about the dwarves of this world. And tell us about the gods and religion in this world." That is, essentially handing over full control of the setting, backstory, and the fiction as a whole in a round-robin sort of way. I see most RPG's action resolution as a structured process, where the GM and players have more defined roles in the context of how they contribute to the fiction, but it's not a fixed process. That is, at times the players have more control, and other times the GM has more control. However, this control is centered around the roles they agree each of them will have, and it's a mutual decision during the course of play that allows this to be flexible. Can the GM in such a game ask a player to define the way religion works in the world? Of course, if that's how they'd like to play the game, that's fine.

Going back to Eero's post, the only thing he's advising against is to allow the players to have full control over the backstory. That is, there will be secret backstory (whether written or otherwise) that they players are not empowered to write. That portions of the backstory are reserved for the GM to write. If the GM decided at the beginning of the entire campaign that one PCs father is, in fact, the leader of the empire they fight, then he can choose when that is best revealed in the course of the game. It could be years later that it comes to light. On the other hand, if in the course of play, the PC and the evil leader of the empire are locked in a fight to the death, and it suddenly occurs to him that this evil man is the PCs father, and declares it to be, the result remains the same. The player now has to determine how his character will react. The fact that the backstory was secret is part of what gives it impact. Whether it's pre-written or not is immaterial. 

I get that to you, it's not immaterial. That it makes a difference somehow. I don't doubt that it makes a difference to you. But I also don't doubt that it doesn't to me.

--

The other thing that recently occurred to me is that we have a fundamentally different belief/feeling about pre-authored material/worldbuilding. You see such activities as limiting your options or agency. I see that very same activity as enabling them, as making it easier to participate in a meaningful way. 

I see it as a framework, where the limitations it imposes provides the opportunity for a different type of creativity. If you want to call it agency, whatever. When you sit down at a gaming table and are told that the game is taking place in Europe, 1943, and you can be a French, UK, or US soldier, it doesn't inhibit your agency. It shapes it. It provides context. Such context is helpful in determining what might matter to the character. For example, if the setting indicates you are Roman slaves in 500 BC, your goals and motivations will be different than a setting that pits you in a race against your rival to be the first to climb the world's tallest mountain.

Likewise, a GM determining ahead of time that a secret door does or does not exist has no bearing on your agency. You are still free to search for a secret door. It does have a bearing on the potential success of that action. To try to narrow agency down to one aspect of RPGs, that it is relevant only to "the narrative" or "the fiction" is not considering the game as a whole. In addition, it's making a lot of assumptions about what constitutes a narrative.

You also seem to consistently insist that pre-authoring means that the GM cannot bring that material to bear in a way that speaks to the "needs of the fiction." While I'm sure that there are GMs that author material and believe it to be immutable, I've made it clear that I don't consider that the case at all. That whatever might have been "pre-authored" is in fact not actually authored until it comes into play, and can be changed at any point before that. Does that mean I never use what I (or somebody else) might have written as is? Of course not. A lot of times I do, because there's no compelling reason for it not to be that way. If I have a map of a keep, and there's no secret door in the wall, and I can't see any compelling reason for one to be there. Then it isn't there. My approach is more about whether it makes sense for it to exist, rather than whether it's compelling for the PCs at that point in time, but that's also because I don't consider any single event or series of events to be that important in the big picture. The PCs are compelled to enter the keep and kidnap the king. The fact that there is or isn't a secret door doesn't change that, nor does it matter when that decision is made. They will succeed at some things, and fail at others. If the failure to find a secret door here is enough to stop the quest, then it wasn't very important to begin with.

Part of what a lot of people seem to enjoy in RPGs is overcoming obstacles, and succeeding in the adventure, not a single use of a skill. This time it's the wizard that figures out how to get them in, next time it's the rogue. Not everybody wants every moment to be connected directly to one's motivations. Sometimes it's just part of getting there. To me, eliminating those parts (the parts between the action) are more about what makes the story interesting. They can have a material impact on what happens when you get to the action. But more importantly, it helps shape the narrative. The action is somehow more exciting when there are periods of non-action. Although more decisions, character development, and narrative somehow seems to occur in the in-between scenes in our campaigns.   

--

As I've been running the last few sessions, I've been considering the different approaches to play. I don't think the way I run my game is really that different than a lot of games. It's the same basic approach as I learned from Holmes Basic, B2, and the AD&D PHB and DMG. Certainly more refined, and my skills have improved (I hope), but the process is how I think the game is generally designed. And I find that there are times that I exert more control than I might think I do, and other times where the players have a greater control and contribution to the setting, backstory, and other elements outside of their character's actions. I think this is really a natural thing in RPGs, although some games are designed in an effort to steer more towards one sort of playstyle or another.

As I've considered the many other RPGs I've tried, and really even other games, like the more complex board games, video games, whatever, I think the main reason I keep coming back to D&D is because it doesn't favor one specific style to an extreme amount. That the game flows (at least for us) naturally to whatever playstyle is appropriate. Over the years, different editions drifted to favor one playstyle over another. And we'd ignore those parts that seemed to drift too far in one direction or the other. 

Perhaps I'm not that objective. Maybe my style or D&D favors a particular playstyle more than I think. I definitely think individual games can heavily favor one style over another. So maybe we do favor a particular style. The thing is, when I read or play other games, or essays about how D&D or another RPG works, I find that a lot of what is said applies directly to our game. I guess I've had very few power gamers, min/maxers, etc., although on the other hand, most of the ones that I have had seem to blend in fine with our campaign, while still being able to enjoy their "game within a game" of mechanical optimization.


----------



## pemerton

Ilbranteloth said:


> in the rest of the post he's not arguing about secret backstory.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> There is absolutely nothing about the "Pitfalls of secret backstory"



No one has said that he is. To repost part of my post to which you replied, with some additional bolding:



			
				pemerton said:
			
		

> Examples of searching for a map, or a secret door, were introduced into the discussion by me - *not Eero Tuovinen* - to illustrate the contrast between resolution with or without GM secet backstory. The only connection they have to Eero's essay is indirect, in the following way: (i) the absence of secret-backtory is more typical in standard narrativistic RPGing, because (ii) the use of secret backstory makes it harder to "go where the action is" if the action involves discovery (as opposed to, say, killing) and makes it more likely that the game will involve a significant degree of the players declaring actions that trigger the GM to reveal hitherto-unrevealed backstory so that the players then know what the necessary fictional positioning is for their PCs to make the desired discoveries.
> 
> I guess a third connection between the topic of the previous paragraph, and Eero's essay, is that his essay is moslty a criticism of conch-passing (or, as he calls it, narration sharing), and resolving an action declaration in a RPG is obviously not conch-passing.



A point that _I_ - pemerton, not Eero Tuovinen - made is that if you are playing along the lines of the standard narrativistic model (which Eero outlines, nicely, but did not himself invent) then you have reason not to rely too much on secret backstory. I've just quoted my explanation of those reasons, and so won't repeat them again.



Ilbranteloth said:


> He is arguing against sharing the narrative in a way that allows the players to add to the backstory during the course of play. That you can't have an "I am your father" moment if the players themselves are contributing to the backstory.



The first sentence is largely correct (although, given that he refers to games like DitV as illustrating his point, and DitV _does_ allow the player to add to certain parts of backstory during play, it does need to be qualified in some fashion).

The second sentence is not correct. He says you can't have an "I am your father moment" if the GM _asks the player_ if that would be cool. That is, as he says, "The correct heuristic is to throw out the claim of fatherhood if it seems like a challenging revelation for the character, not ask the player whether he’s OK with it," ie, to present the NPC as making the claim. This is GM authority over framing. 



Ilbranteloth said:


> it suddenly occurs to him that this evil man is the PCs father, and declares it to be



Eero doesn't talk about _this_ at all. Eero says nothing about how the _truth_ of the claim about parenthood might be resolved.

Nor does his discussion of the "I am your father" example have any direct bearing on the examples of finding a map, or a secret door: neither of these is the GM asking the player if it would be cool to find the map or find the secret door; both are the player declaring the search as an action. That is, the GM _has already thrown out the challenge_ - "can you find the map", "can you escape your pursuers" - and the player is now declaring an action whereby  his/her PC hopes to respond to the challenge.



Ilbranteloth said:


> I'm not sure how you'd come to the conclusion that I think action resolution is conch-passing, because that's definitely not what I think at all.



Because that's the only basis on which one could think that Eero Tuovinen's objection to conch-passing shared narration could _also_ be an objection to resolving a search for a map or a secret door by way of straightforward action declaraton without regard to shared storytelling.



Ilbranteloth said:


> Going back to Eero's post, the only thing he's advising against is to allow the players to have full control over the backstory. That is, there will be secret backstory (whether written or otherwise) that they players are not empowered to write.



No. Eero neither endorses nor rejects secret backstory. But some of the games he refers to, as illustrating his preferred approach, do. For instance, there is the following from DitV, under the heading "Actively Reveal the Town in Play" (pp 137-38 ):

The town you’ve made has secrets. It has, quite likely, terrible secrets — blood and sex and murder and damnation.

But you the GM, you don’t have secrets a’tall. Instead, you have cool things - bloody, sexy, murderous, damned cool things - that you can’t wait to share. . . .

The PCs arrive in town. I have someone meet them. They ask how things are going. The person says that, well, things are going okay, mostly. The PCs say, “mostly?”

And I’m like “uh oh. They’re going to figure out what’s wrong in the town! Better stonewall. Poker face: on!” And then I’m like “wait a sec. I want them to figure out what’s wrong in the town. In fact, I want to _show_ them what’s wrong! Otherwise they’ll wander around waiting for me to drop them a clue, I’ll have my dumb poker face on, and we’ll be bored stupid the whole evening.”

So instead of having the NPC say “oh no, I meant that things are going just fine, and I shut up now,” I have the NPC launch into his or her tirade. “Things are awful! This person’s sleeping with this other person not with me, they murdered the schoolteacher, blood pours down the meeting house walls every night!”

...Or sometimes, the NPC wants to lie, instead. That’s okay! I have the NPC lie. You’ve watched movies. You always can tell when you’re watching a movie who’s lying and who’s telling the truth. And wouldn’t you know it, most the time the players are looking at me with skeptical looks, and I give them a little sly nod that yep, she’s lying. . . .

Then the game _goes_ somewhere.​
You, [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION], are assuming that _GM authority over backstory_ equals _secret backstory_. But it doesn't. Because, as Vincent Baker shows us in the passage I just quoted, the GM can author the backstory but _reveal it to the players_. This is how the "standard narrativistic model" works - the GM frames the PCs into situations. The elements of framing are _backstory_, but - just as DitV illustrates - they're not secret.

It's an important part of PbtA also - the GM establishes the fiction by performing narrations in response to player moves (both failed moves - 6 or down - and half-way successful moves - 7 to 9 - and in some cases even fully successful moves where the player's result is 10+).



Ilbranteloth said:


> When you sit down at a gaming table and are told that the game is taking place in Europe, 1943, and you can be a French, UK, or US soldier, it doesn't inhibit your agency. It shapes it.



That is not secret backstory. It is revealed backstory. It is genre, feeding into framing.



Ilbranteloth said:


> If the GM decided at the beginning of the entire campaign that one PCs father is, in fact, the leader of the empire they fight, then he can choose when that is best revealed in the course of the game.



This may well be true, if you like that sort of RPGing. But it is completely orthogonal to Eero's discussion of why narration-sharing sucks in standard narrativistic model games. Because what you're describing here is not "standard narrativistic model" RPGing!

And just as you have assumed that GM control over backstory = secret backstory, so now you are assuming that the NPC "throwing out the claim of fatherhood" = the NPC _is_ the father, and the GM already knows this. The first assumption reveals a blind spot for framing, the second a blinspot for "playing to find out", and seeing what fiction is established as players delcare actions in response to the challenges framed by the GM.

Those blindspots obviously don't matter if your goal is to run a game of the sort that you and your players enjoy. I'm not pointing them out to be critical of you as a GM. What I'm saying is that, because of those blindspots, you are failing to understand (i) how "standard narrativistic model" RPGing actually works (which is what Eero Tuovinen talks about), and (ii) why "secret backstory" doesn't sit easily with that sort of RPGing (which is what I have been talking about for a good part of this thread).


----------



## pemerton

Ilbranteloth said:


> a GM determining ahead of time that a secret door does or does not exist has no bearing on your agency. You are still free to search for a secret door. It does have a bearing on the potential success of that action.



It bears on agency in the following way: if I, playing my PC, would like to discover a secret door here and now, _the GM has already decided whether or not that is possible_. Hence my agency, as a player, over the fiction concerning my character, is constrained by and mediated through the GM's unrevealed decision.

You may be indifferent to that particular burden on this particular way of a player manifesting agency, but it's there.



Ilbranteloth said:


> Part of what a lot of people seem to enjoy in RPGs is overcoming obstacles, and succeeding in the adventure, not a single use of a skill.



Well, to requote something from Ron Edwards, "[t]here cannot be any '_the_ story' during Narrativist play". That is, there is no "the adventure". To quote again from Eero, 

Story is an outcome of the process as choices lead to consequences which lead to further choices, until all outstanding issues have been resolved and the story naturally reaches an end.​
In "story now" RPGing, especially pursuant to the standard narrativitic model, the action is not oriented around "the adventure" or "the story", but is driven by the dramatic needs of the PCs: framing > action declarations > consequences > new framing > further action declarations > further consequences, until the issues have been resolved ie the final consequences don't compel new choices because the PCs (and hence players) are content with how things have ended up.

As far as your contrast of "overcoming obstacles" with "a single use of a skill", I don't understand the contrast. In RPGing, the main way that obstacles are overcome by players is by declaring actions for their PCs. Whether this involves a "skill" depends on the system (it often does in 4e and BW; it never does in HeroWars/Quest or DitV; it sometimes does in Cortex+ Heroic). Whether it involves a single check depends on the system (in 4e or HW/Q it might, depending on whether the GM uses simple or extended resolution; in BW it nearly always will if a search is involved, because BW has extended resolution for fighting, talking and running but not searching; in DitV it never will because all resolution in DitV is "extended").



Ilbranteloth said:


> To try to narrow agency down to one aspect of RPGs, that it is relevant only to "the narrative" or "the fiction" is not considering the game as a whole.



Again, I'm not sure what you mean by "the game as a whole", and how you are contrasting it with "the fiction". But of course RPGing doesn't consist just in "the fiction" - [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and I made just this point to [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] not far upthread. Central to RPGing is the method whereby the participants in the game _generate_ the fiction.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> But you the GM, you don’t have secrets a’tall. Instead, you have cool things - bloody, sexy, murderous, damned cool things - that you can’t wait to share. . . .




Aaaaaand there we go. You've answered your own question and the thread can be closed!

*The purpose of world building is so the GM can have more cool things they can't wait to share*.

That covers absolutely everything I wanted to say. Because I'm not writing stuff for the players to determine what's in my notes. I'm writing stuff to help me figure out what cool things are going on, and determining when and where I can share them. But it's not all about me. So sometimes my cool stuff lays dormant for years, and gets shared with a different group. Or maybe it's just not cool. Either way, it's just as often as not that we go with the player's cool stuff in one way or another. 

The mechanics (both game mechanics and DM reveal mechanics) may vary, but you've hit the nail on the head. Thanks!


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## pemerton

Ilbranteloth said:


> Aaaaaand there we go. You've answered your own question and the thread can be closed!
> 
> *The purpose of world building is so the GM can have more cool things they can't wait to share*.
> 
> That covers absolutely everything I wanted to say. Because I'm not writing stuff for the players to determine what's in my notes. I'm writing stuff to help me figure out what cool things are going on, and determining when and where I can share them.



The words you quote aren't mine, they're Vincent Baker's.

And of course he's putting them forward in explaining why he thinks the game is better if the GM avoids using "secret backstory".


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> It's an important part of PbtA also - the GM establishes the fiction by performing narrations in response to player moves (both failed moves - 6 or down - and half-way successful moves - 7 to 9 - and in some cases even fully successful moves where the player's result is 10+).




PbtA (at least DW, which is the only one I've really played/run) is interesting in that it has COMPELLED backstory. The players have 2 moves, (sometimes others, but everyone has at least these 2) Spout Lore and Discern Realities, which literally COMPEL the GM to construct backstory on the spot. There is also, importantly NO move which allows a player to spontaneously generate backstory (although there are some moves which create 'invitations' to do so, Spout Lore for instance allows the GM to demand backstory explaining how the PC knows the facts the GM just produced!). 

Players can make moves which introduce new facts into the fiction however. Its a bit of an open question with DW if you could for instance state "I swing down to the ground on a rope." (inventing the rope in the process) but most detailed discussions I've had with PbtA GMs indicate that there are reasons to assume this is the case, at least in some situations (Defy Danger is the usual example).


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## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Players can make moves which introduce new facts into the fiction however. Its a bit of an open question with DW if you could for instance state "I swing down to the ground on a rope." (inventing the rope in the process) but most detailed discussions I've had with PbtA GMs indicate that there are reasons to assume this is the case, at least in some situations (Defy Danger is the usual example).



I haven't played enough DW to know how important equipment lists are in that game, but my default assumption would be "not super-important".

In Cortex+ Heroic, for equipment to be worth noting on the sheet it has to be either:

(i) a power or power set (so Captain America has his Vibranium Alloy Shield power set; the berserker in my Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy game has his Melee Weapon power; the swordthane in my game has the Superhuman Durability power which reflects his drake-hide armour; all have the Gear limitation); or,

(ii) a Specialty-based resource created by spending a plot point (eg this is how The Punisher, as statted up for the game, gets to use his Battlevan - its a Vehicle Expertise-based resource; and this is how the swordthane in my game gets to have a horse - it's a Riding Expertise-based resource); or,

(iii) an Asset, resulting either from successful action resolution or granted as a "gift" by the GM for succeeding in a scene (eg the scout in my game, who ended the first "act" of the adventure by escaping the dungeon with the gold of the dark-elven kingdom, enjoyed a persistent d8 Bag of Gold asset for the whole of the second "act").​
So if a player wants his/her PC to get a bonus/augment from using a rope to escape a situation, that would have to be established either as an Asset (which relies on the currently existing fiction) or a Resource (which can include "while back at base camp, I made sure to pack some rope). The details of the generation method would determine the rating of the rope.

But if a player just wants his/her PC to climb to the top of a cliff (say, to establish an Overview of the Terrain asset), and is using Outdoor Expertise to help with that, and in the course of narration includes a rope as part of it, that is fine and just part of the colour.

There is a very marked contrast here with Burning Wheel, which is super-obsessed with the equipment list (at least as much as AD&D I would say; maybe more, because losing or breaking equipment is a legitimate narration of a failure, which happens quite a bit, so there isn't necessarily the AD&D phenomenon of "growing out" of the need to maintain an accurate list once your reach 4th level or so).

4e is a bit confused in this respect because it _should be_ more like Cortex+ Heroic, but it _presents itself_ as more like Burning Wheel.


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I haven't played enough DW to know how important equipment lists are in that game, but my default assumption would be "not super-important".



Right. Basically the conceit of DW is you are THE character of a class. Class is not a categorization OF characters, its a specific rule set which applies to YOU uniquely in the world. So if you play a fighter, you are THE fighter. Thus you start with the fighter's equipment list, which has a couple choices on it, but is generally fairly cut-and-dried. Things also tend to be 'kits', so you get the standard kit, plus armor and a weapon, and maybe a choice between a shield and something else (I could go look it up, but you get the idea). You get some 'coins' too, with which you can make certain types of moves, like buying more stuff. There is an encumbrance system, its very simple and clearly meant to just provide a reasonable indication of what would be a feasible load. It certainly isn't intended to be a detailed logistical game, although I guess you COULD play it that way.



> In Cortex+ Heroic, for equipment to be worth noting on the sheet it has to be either:
> (i) a power or power set (so Captain America has his Vibranium Alloy Shield power set; the berserker in my Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy game has his Melee Weapon power; the swordthane in my game has the Superhuman Durability power which reflects his drake-hide armour; all have the Gear limitation); or,
> 
> (ii) a Specialty-based resource created by spending a plot point (eg this is how The Punisher, as statted up for the game, gets to use his Battlevan - its a Vehicle Expertise-based resource; and this is how the swordthane in my game gets to have a horse - it's a Riding Expertise-based resource); or,
> 
> (iii) an Asset, resulting either from successful action resolution or granted as a "gift" by the GM for succeeding in a scene (eg the scout in my game, who ended the first "act" of the adventure by escaping the dungeon with the gold of the dark-elven kingdom, enjoyed a persistent d8 Bag of Gold asset for the whole of the second "act").​



Right. DW has a fairly straightforward setup that way. Certain items have 'tags' which grant them properties that benefit the character in specific situations. Its pretty much like 4e keywords. Actual magic items are a little bit more interesting, such as:



> *Cloak of  Silent Stars* 1 weight
> A cape of rich black velvet outside and sparkling with tiny points of
> light within, this cloak bends fate, time and reality around it to protect
> the wearer, who may defy danger with whatever stat they like. To do
> this, the wearer invokes the cloak’s magic and their player describes
> how the cloak helps “break the rules.” They can deflect a fireball with
> CHA by convincing it they deserve to live or elude a fall by applying
> the mighty logic of their INT to prove the fall won’t hurt. The cloak
> makes it so. It can be used once for each stat before losing its magic.



(this is, in my estimate, a quite powerful item, many of them are fairly trivial). It is a good illustration of the sorts of ways that DW can work. It grants the user quite a bit of narrative power actually!



> So if a player wants his/her PC to get a bonus/augment from using a rope to escape a situation, that would have to be established either as an Asset (which relies on the currently existing fiction) or a Resource (which can include "while back at base camp, I made sure to pack some rope). The details of the generation method would determine the rating of the rope.
> 
> But if a player just wants his/her PC to climb to the top of a cliff (say, to establish an Overview of the Terrain asset), and is using Outdoor Expertise to help with that, and in the course of narration includes a rope as part of it, that is fine and just part of the colour.
> 
> There is a very marked contrast here with Burning Wheel, which is super-obsessed with the equipment list (at least as much as AD&D I would say; maybe more, because losing or breaking equipment is a legitimate narration of a failure, which happens quite a bit, so there isn't necessarily the AD&D phenomenon of "growing out" of the need to maintain an accurate list once your reach 4th level or so).
> 
> 4e is a bit confused in this respect because it _should be_ more like Cortex+ Heroic, but it _presents itself_ as more like Burning Wheel.




Yeah, 4e has a bit of an incoherent approach to basic equipment. Its all carefully laid out and priced, and then it hardly ever matters. I guess you could impose a narrative need to have the specific equipment you need in order to, say, use a skill in an SC in a certain way, so it would be fictional positioning. I preferred to generally treat it like a part of the challenge, so players failures could be narrated as missing equipment, or a success could be narrated as having been prepared and thus provided with exactly the right thing. 

I think it would be reasonable to also do something like make a check to see if you had something appropriate and hold that resource in reserve for the proper moment, sort of like Cortex+ Heroic.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Right. Basically the conceit of DW is you are THE character of a class. Class is not a categorization OF characters, its a specific rule set which applies to YOU uniquely in the world. So if you play a fighter, you are THE fighter.



That must get messy if more than one player wants to play a Fighter...though the comedy-routine arguments could go on for days when the party first meets:

"I'm the Fighter."
"Sorry, I'm the Fighter."
"You?  You're not the Fighter."
"Why not?"
"Because I'm the Fighter."
"That's impossible.  I'm the Fighter."
"Hey, what about me?  I'm the Fighter too."
"No, you'd be the Fighter three."
"I'm the Fighter too."
"No, you're three."
"And I'm two?  No, sorry.  I'm the Fighter."
"Yes; you would be the Fighter two if you were a Fighter, but you're not.  Either of you."
"Why not?"
<stereo> "Because I'm the Fighter!"   (etc.)

Lan-"the saving grace is that, once this inevitably escalated into battle, there would in the end only be one"-efan


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## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> That must get messy if more than one player wants to play a Fighter



From the Dungeon World rulebook (p 49):

Look over the character classes and choose one that interests you. To start with everyone chooses a different class; there aren’t two wizards. If two people want the same class, talk it over like adults and compromise. . . .

Later on, if you’re making a replacement character, you can choose a class someone else is already playing.​

And with respect to NPCs, there is this (p 178):

_Are there other wizards?_ Not really. There are other workers of arcane magic, and the common folk may call them wizards, but they’re not like you. They don’t have the same abilities, though they may be similar. Later on there may be another player character with the same class but no GM character will ever really be a wizard (or any other class).​
So the issue you raise isn't generally going to come up!


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## Doug McCrae

I like that. Every PC is a special snowflake and the rules are 100% explicit about it. The game I'm working on atm, 13th Age, is the same in that every PC has One Unique Thing.


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## pemerton

Doug McCrae said:


> I like that. Every PC is a special snowflake and the rules are 100% explicit about it. The game I'm working on atm, 13th Age, is the same in that every PC has One Unique Thing.



The first system I know of that has a "one unique thing" element to PC building is Over the Edge (also Jonathan Tweet, about 20 years before 13th Age!).

But there may be earlier versions of the idea. (I'm not counting points-buy or lifepath games, which allow any given PC to be unique but get there via a universal process.)


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## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> The words you quote aren't mine, they're Vincent Baker's.
> 
> And of course he's putting them forward in explaining why he thinks the game is better if the GM avoids using "secret backstory".




I know, and I'm happy that you brought them to my attention. And I understand that's what he was using them for, which is why I'm using them to point out that they also apply quite well for the exact opposite.

Because pre-authored material and secret backstory can still be fluid and flexible, not only rigid and unchangeable.

He has his preferences, I have mine. I (and my players) are having a blast with the game we run, the way we run it. I hope he does too. That's not to say I can't learn anything from him, you or others. But I have yet to see a valid reason that applies to all RPGs, much less my own game, that proves all secret backstory is bad. 

I don't care if my brain came up with an idea 10 years ago or 10 minutes ago. If it adds cool stuff to the game, fits the moment, and the narrative, then I'm a happy DM. It's exciting from the DM side to know something they don't know (I am not left handed), and it's just as much fun when the tables are turned, and the PCs do something I don't expect (pretty much every time). 

As I've noted, I'm finding that I do give the players a lot more input into the fiction as it's happening than I thought, and that the framework we have in place to divide different aspects of the narrative is also working very well. To me, these are all just tools available to help me run the best game I can for my players. To a large degree, it has to do with avoiding extremes. I don't want the players having control over the secret backstory (written or not), and I don't want to make any ideas I put together too rigid and inflexible. The fact is, though, at times the players have had a greater degree of control over the secret backstory of the game too. 

Just like the players often find their characters develop in unexpected directions, my ideas about a villain, an organization, a scheme, or whatever morphs well beyond what I ever though of on my own.

What I'm really coming around to is that my main complaints about Story Now games is that they seem to want to take away many of the tools that I find work well for us. I'm looking for new tools, or to refine the way I use the tools I've got. In most cases I'm not looking to throw out those tools. 

But his quote really gets to the heart of the matter. That regardless of whatever tools we use, whatever game mechanics, pre-published information, whatever it might be, it's all in the quest to share cool stuff with the players.

If you are the sort where pre-authored material inhibits your ability as a GM to provide that experience, then don't use it. But to rebut another thread - that doesn't make world-building bad (I might as well come back to the actual thread...). If you don't feel you need it, and your players agree. Then don't. But we love the idea that there's a greater world out there to explore, and that as players and characters we can experience it. As players, they can read the books, the blogs, the wikis, and come to the table with something that others know too. That there's a consistency to the world and its lore, and yet it's flexible too. That not everything that's written is 100% true. Some parts may be 100% false. That I can pull out a map and they can see what lies along that road, or that river, and they can consult Faeroogle to get answers anytime they want. 

So it absolutely says it all, "My job as the DM is to share cool stuff with the players."


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## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> From the Dungeon World rulebook (p 49):
> 
> Look over the character classes and choose one that interests you. To start with everyone chooses a different class; there aren’t two wizards. If two people want the same class, talk it over like adults and compromise. . . .
> 
> Later on, if you’re making a replacement character, you can choose a class someone else is already playing.​
> 
> And with respect to NPCs, there is this (p 178):
> 
> _Are there other wizards?_ Not really. There are other workers of arcane magic, and the common folk may call them wizards, but they’re not like you. They don’t have the same abilities, though they may be similar. Later on there may be another player character with the same class but no GM character will ever really be a wizard (or any other class).​
> So the issue you raise isn't generally going to come up!



Clearly, then, an example of the game system trying to (for better or worse, could be either) enforce some metagame conceits in campaign play: that there will be relatively few PCs (at most, one per class) and thus no very-large parties or numbers of players at the table, that PC turnover will be very low to zero (because otherwise you'll run out of classes to play), that there will be a wide range of classes within any party (all-rogue or all-fighter parties, for example, are in effect banned), and so on.

Curious...


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## Lanefan

Doug McCrae said:


> I like that. Every PC is a special snowflake and the rules are 100% explicit about it. The game I'm working on atm, 13th Age, is the same in that every PC has One Unique Thing.



This is cool provided every levelled NPC is also a special snowflake to the same degree...but are they?


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## Doug McCrae

Lanefan said:


> This is cool provided every levelled NPC is also a special snowflake to the same degree...but are they?



In 13th Age only PCs get One Unique Thing but the GM is certainly free to make NPCs equally unique if they like. To an extent I think this is a good idea - NPCs should certainly be interesting - but not so interesting that they step on the PCs' toes. 13th Age very much takes the view that the PCs are The Heroes, analogous to the protagonists in fiction.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> This is cool provided every levelled NPC is also a special snowflake to the same degree...but are they?



 Why would a character with no player need to be a special snowflake?  It's just there to be a challenge or a help or a source of exposition or whatever, the DM plays it for a bit, then the next one...


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## Lanefan

Doug McCrae said:


> In 13th Age only PCs get One Unique Thing but the GM is certainly free to make NPCs equally unique if they like. To an extent I think this is a good idea - NPCs should certainly be interesting - but not so interesting that they step on the PCs' toes. 13th Age very much takes the view that the PCs are The Heroes, analogous to the protagonists in fiction.



Ah.  So kind of the opposite, then, of the small-fish-in-a-big-pond type of PC I prefer.  Fair enough. 



			
				Tony Vargas said:
			
		

> Why would a character with no player need to be a special snowflake? It's just there to be a challenge or a help or a source of exposition or whatever, the DM plays it for a bit, then the next one...



Because the same rules that apply to PCs need to apply to NPCs, if the game world is to maintain any believability or verisimal...whatever that word is.  The special-snowflake bits of any given NPC might never become relevant during its interaction with the PCs, but that doesn't mean those bits shouldn't exist.

Lanefan


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## happyhermit

"Worldbuilding" is for creating that feeling that so many people love. The feeling that they have access to this other but "real" world to experience, explore, and most importantly (as opposed to stories) interact with. The type of feeling that is different from one where they can modify that world externally. Whatever you want to call that feeling; "immersion", some kind of "stance", whatever, but it's a real thing and something that a lot of people like (it's one of the main reasons I play TTRPGs). There are many other things "worldbuilding" can do of course, but that's the one that it is uniquely suited for.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> Because the same rules that apply to PCs need to apply to NPCs, if the game world is to maintain any believability or verisimal...whatever that word is.



  Meh.  Verisimilitude is a subjective experience, it needn't be founded on objective 'fairness.'  PCs /are/ different, they're the players' characters, if they're not the focus of the story, they're the focus of the experiencing of the story by the players.



> The special-snowflake bits of any given NPC might never become relevant during its interaction with the PCs, but that doesn't mean those bits shouldn't exist.



On the contrary, if something doesn't come up in the play of the game, it doesn't exist.  You're thinking of simulations. 

13A is decidedly less a simulation than D&D, which wasn't ever much of a simulation.  Besides, even at its most simulationist - 3e - D&D had different rules (NPC classes, for instance) for NPCs.


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## Arilyn

Lanefan said:


> Ah.  So kind of the opposite, then, of the small-fish-in-a-big-pond type of PC I prefer.  Fair enough.
> 
> Because the same rules that apply to PCs need to apply to NPCs, if the game world is to maintain any believability or verisimal...whatever that word is.  The special-snowflake bits of any given NPC might never become relevant during its interaction with the PCs, but that doesn't mean those bits shouldn't exist.
> 
> Lanefan




In 13th Age, your one unique thing does not actually have a game mechanic. You can't take  "world's greatest swordsman," and get a bonus in combat. Your one unique thing is a hook to make you, well unique. There is no reason for an NPC to have this, as they are not the protagonists.

And you can take a grand one unique, like "destined to be the cause of the end of the 13th Age," or something really frivolous like "my hair changes colour everyday." If a NPC has some sort of destiny, or a unique trait, this just comes up in play, it's not a feature that should be formally written down in a stat block. One Unique Thing is what makes you the player unique. It's not a "physics of the world" kind of thing.

But you are right that 13th Age characters are not small fish. Their actions impact the world, and they will be noticed, for good or ill.


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## Doug McCrae

I haven't read thru the thread but I think I can say something interesting about worldbuilding based on my experience playing in Paul Mackintosh's 'Dream Game campaign' in the late 90s and early 00s. It was an intense game, the most involved and detailed in which I've ever participated. I have on my bookshelf 3 volumes, each 60 pages+, of players' information notes concerning what happened in each session, theoretical works about the nature of dreams, and so forth. My understanding is that the GM's notes were far more extensive.

It was a game primarily of hidden knowledge. We played ourselves - students and former students of Glasgow University - who, under the tutelage of a man known as The Professor, an academic at the university, were able to enter the dreams of others. The Professor had used his techniques to provide psychiatric care. In the course of this he became aware of the existence of Externals within dreams - entities of an unknown nature that seemed to be causing harm to his patients. The Dream Game campaign detailed our adventures both within dreams and without as we encountered what appeared to be a linked group of Externals and humans they had influenced.

Until now it hadn't occurred to me but the game bore many resemblances to early D&D:
1) A game of hidden knowledge where the GM has a secret map, and even secret rules, and the players are trying to uncover them. The game rules were not hidden but the workings of the universe very much were. We believed Externals may come from a 'third world', a spiritual plane, with our own world and the world of dreams being to some degree known and the third a complete unknown. We had pretty good evidence that some Externals were the spirits of the dead, and believed that some were non-human. We knew that Externals interacted with one another and probably had a hierarchy. We knew that Externals could use dreams to control humans but we never learned to what ultimate end. This is all my interpretation and some of the other players may disagree with me even about these seeming basics.
2) Dreams were much like dungeons. We even operated in a similar way to Gygax's advice in the 1e PHB, attempting to identify objectives (often with limited success) and avoiding distractions.
3) It was a sandbox game. Paul always did a large amount of prep for each session, knowing there were a number of dreams we might enter. Towards the end of the game we were noticeably running out of patients as they fell under the sway of Externals and we were forced to enter our team-mates' dreams as we ourselves became infected by Externals. It was darker than D&D in that while we were to some extent gaining knowledge, things in general seemed to be getting worse. The in-game version of Paul died and attempts were made on our lives in the 'real' ie non-dream world.
4) We played ourselves so there wasn't much roleplaying in the sense of Actor Stance. This is in fact the same as Dave Arneson's original Blackmoor game.

A traditional game by today's standards, this was very much "world-centric" rather than "player-centric", and imo very successful. The attached excerpt I think gives a flavour of our frenetic misadventures in dreams and our attempts to make sense of them.


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> From the Dungeon World rulebook (p 49):Look over the character classes and choose one that interests you. To start with everyone chooses a different class; there aren’t two wizards. If two people want the same class, talk it over like adults and compromise. . . .
> 
> Later on, if you’re making a replacement character, you can choose a class someone else is already playing.​
> 
> And with respect to NPCs, there is this (p 178):_Are there other wizards?_ Not really. There are other workers of arcane magic, and the common folk may call them wizards, but they’re not like you. They don’t have the same abilities, though they may be similar. Later on there may be another player character with the same class but no GM character will ever really be a wizard (or any other class).​
> So the issue you raise isn't generally going to come up!




In our experience it is fairly uncommon for two PCs to be built as the same class anyway, though it is certainly possible. It could even be desirable in some situations (a 'thief campaign' or something). In any case, one PC could be a different race, which can make a decent difference in powers. You can also 'MC' in DW (at least some classes can, its sort of a case-by-case thing). In that case it could be pretty easy to differentiate. 

Some classes though are pretty straightforward. You will surely be somewhat different, moreso than 2 OD&D fighter, but it could get a bit redundant. Some classes wouldn't work well at all as multiples. The Barbarian for instance. You CAN make distinctive ones (a dwarf with heavy armor and a giant axe vs a Conan-type) but the barbarian has some very distinctive moves that would seem odd coming up on more than one PC!

I think 2 wizards wouldn't be much of a problem though, there are a good number of spells to pick from for differentiation.

As for an 'NPC Wizard', this isn't even a coherent idea in DW. NPCs don't really play in anything like the way PCs do. For instance they generally don't make 'attacks' (IE Hack and Slash or Volley) as PCs do. Most monsters have 'moves' but they are really just options for a GM move when the monster is part of the fiction (IE a dragon can breath a fiery breath, but this would be done when the GM has a 'hard move' available, and it would simply do damage, though PCs could try to Defy Danger and avoid some/all of the damage). 

The point is an 'NPC Wizard' using the PC Wizard rules simply wouldn't work. The GM doesn't trade moves with the PCs or even with the whole party, moves happen in a sequence dictated strictly by narrative framing. Nor do most PC moves make sense in the GM context. In the case of spells, some of them could be turned into GM moves, but then you'd have a 'wizard-like monster' which is exactly how DW does it.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> The first system I know of that has a "one unique thing" element to PC building is Over the Edge (also Jonathan Tweet, about 20 years before 13th Age!).
> 
> But there may be earlier versions of the idea. (I'm not counting points-buy or lifepath games, which allow any given PC to be unique but get there via a universal process.)




Well, Metamorphosis Alpha (and thus 1e GW), has the mutation charts. You get some random number of random mutations. You can pick to be a non-mutated human, a mutant human, or a mutant animal, but the actual mutations are all luck. There is a WIDE variety. This means it is possible you might get the same one now and then (some are more common than others) but you'd have to roll a LOT of characters to get 2 that weren't pretty unique, except PSHs of course break that idea, but the idea with them is they're the ones that can really use tech, so they become the equipment hangers. In any case radiation is all over the place and causes, you guessed it, more mutations! So its actually a sort of random 'unique snowflake' kind of a setup. I always really liked 1e GW, even if it does have a few serious flaws, mechanically. Classic early TSR, great ideas, a few really nice creative mechanics, and a lot of really poorly executed stuff around that.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Clearly, then, an example of the game system trying to (for better or worse, could be either) enforce some metagame conceits in campaign play: that there will be relatively few PCs (at most, one per class) and thus no very-large parties or numbers of players at the table, that PC turnover will be very low to zero (because otherwise you'll run out of classes to play), that there will be a wide range of classes within any party (all-rogue or all-fighter parties, for example, are in effect banned), and so on.
> 
> Curious...



DW tends to have a lot of classes. There are 8 in the core book (at least the edition I have, I'm not sure what newer versions have). There are also a number of official expansion classes and rewrites of existing classes. I have a couple PDFs that contain several more classes. There are easily around 15 or 20 fairly commonly used ones out there. Not as many as 4e, but quite a few.

PCs are indeed not just regular, or even just slightly unusual, people. They're the movers and shakers of the world. DW also has a kind of weird 'power curve', getting more powerful is not really the big aim of DW. For example you really don't gain hit points as you go up in levels. You can definitely get more powerful by having some better moves, magic, etc. but you don't actually get 'better at stuff' per-se. There isn't any sort of 'level bonus' or anything like that. Defenses aren't a thing either, armor provides DR and PCs avoid being hit by rolling 10+ on their attacks, or else making a Defy Danger roll and succeeding. While monsters definitely can be weaker or tougher, they don't have 'levels' either. A tough orc chieftain might be slayable by a level 1 party, but it might still be a viable foe to tangle with a 7th level party (and DW only has 10 levels). 

The point is, while level 1 is a 'starting adventurer' its not EXACTLY 'zero to hero' and the focus is more on building up a story and surrounding milieu for the PCs to interact with. While DW has a lot of the terminology and a certain deliberate amount of a kind of deliberate focus on the OSR sort of dungeon adventure experience, it is an utterly different game from D&D, they share very little beyond flavor.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> While DW has a lot of the terminology and a certain deliberate amount of a kind of deliberate focus on the OSR sort of dungeon adventure experience, it is an utterly different game from D&D, they share very little beyond flavor.



Part of that OSR-esque aspect of DW, I think, is the focus on the primacy of the fiction. But the way that is actually _worked through_ in play is (I think) utterly different.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Doug McCrae said:


> I haven't read thru the thread but I think I can say something interesting about worldbuilding based on my experience playing in Paul Mackintosh's 'Dream Game campaign' in the late 90s and early 00s. It was an intense game, the most involved and detailed in which I've ever participated. I have on my bookshelf 3 volumes, each 60 pages+, of players' information notes concerning what happened in each session, theoretical works about the nature of dreams, and so forth. My understanding is that the GM's notes were far more extensive.
> 
> It was a game primarily of hidden knowledge. We played ourselves - students and former students of Glasgow University - who, under the tutelage of a man known as The Professor, an academic at the university, were able to enter the dreams of others. The Professor had used his techniques to provide psychiatric care. In the course of this he became aware of the existence of Externals within dreams - entities of an unknown nature that seemed to be causing harm to his patients. The Dream Game campaign detailed our adventures both within dreams and without as we encountered what appeared to be a linked group of Externals and humans they had influenced.
> 
> Until now it hadn't occurred to me but the game bore many resemblances to early D&D:
> 1) A game of hidden knowledge where the GM has a secret map, and even secret rules, and the players are trying to uncover them. The game rules were not hidden but the workings of the universe very much were. We believed Externals may come from a 'third world', a spiritual plane, with our own world and the world of dreams being to some degree known and the third a complete unknown. We had pretty good evidence that some Externals were the spirits of the dead, and believed that some were non-human. We knew that Externals interacted with one another and probably had a hierarchy. We knew that Externals could use dreams to control humans but we never learned to what ultimate end. This is all my interpretation and some of the other players may disagree with me even about these seeming basics.
> 2) Dreams were much like dungeons. We even operated in a similar way to Gygax's advice in the 1e PHB, attempting to identify objectives (often with limited success) and avoiding distractions.
> 3) It was a sandbox game. Paul always did a large amount of prep for each session, knowing there were a number of dreams we might enter. Towards the end of the game we were noticeably running out of patients as they fell under the sway of Externals and we were forced to enter our team-mates' dreams as we ourselves became infected by Externals. It was darker than D&D in that while we were to some extent gaining knowledge, things in general seemed to be getting worse. The in-game version of Paul died and attempts were made on our lives in the 'real' ie non-dream world.
> 4) We played ourselves so there wasn't much roleplaying in the sense of Actor Stance. This is in fact the same as Dave Arneson's original Blackmoor game.
> 
> A traditional game by today's standards, this was very much "world-centric" rather than "player-centric", and imo very successful. The attached excerpt I think gives a flavour of our frenetic misadventures in dreams and our attempts to make sense of them.
> 
> View attachment 96588




Heh, interesting. It does sound much like the early pre-D&D RPing setups, Braunstein's and such. These were developed primarily by Dave Wesley and of course Dave Arneson! Much more so than something like modern D&D or other RPGs which are using characters and structured rules. Other game systems which have some of the same character, and were current in the same time frame of the late 60's/early 70s, include things like Diplomacy (which is technically a board game, but its actual character is a free-form game of strategy and betrayal in which players take the role of a country and attempt to navigate a web of power plays and deceit which naturally evolves between them due to the structure of the formal rules).


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## pemerton

Doug McCrae said:


> I haven't read thru the thread but I think I can say something interesting about worldbuilding based on my experience playing in Paul Mackintosh's 'Dream Game campaign' in the late 90s and early 00s.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> It was a game primarily of hidden knowledge.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> The game rules were not hidden but the workings of the universe very much were.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Dreams were much like dungeons. We even operated in a similar way to Gygax's advice in the 1e PHB, attempting to identify objectives (often with limited success) and avoiding distractions.



What method was used by the referee to keep the dreams you were exploring "stable" enough for you to try and form/verify coherent conjectures about their natures?


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## pemerton

happyhermit said:


> "Worldbuilding" is for creating that feeling that so many people love. The feeling that they have access to this other but "real" world to experience, explore, and most importantly (as opposed to stories) interact with. The type of feeling that is different from one where they can modify that world externally.



The idea of "external modification" has come up quite a bit in this thread, but to some extent it's a red herring.

The action declaration _I search for a secret door_ is not a statement of external modification, nor an attempt at external modification. It is an in-character action declaration.

But depending on how setting is established in a particular RPG - eg by prior GM worldbuilding, contrasted with (say) as one possible output of action resolution - then the adjudication of that action declaration may proceed quite differently. In the former case the GM's worldbuilding doesn't just create a "real" world to interact with, but also determines (in advance) some of the outcomes of those interactions.


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## happyhermit

pemerton said:


> The idea of "external modification" has come up quite a bit in this thread, but to some extent it's a red herring.




Nah, it isn't a distraction it is rather central to that feeling I was referring to, for a lot of players. For a lot of players if the world feels too amorphous that feeling is gone, the more it seems like the world is fully formed in a person's mind/notes, etc. the less likely it is to be disrupted. 



pemerton said:


> The action declaration _I search for a secret door_ is not a statement of external modification, nor an attempt at external modification. It is an in-character action declaration.




Yep, that's an action declaration. If it seems like action declarations are impacting the world in any sense other than what a PC attempting those actions would, then it can get in the way of that feeling, if it doesn't then it won't. 



pemerton said:


> But depending on how setting is established in a particular RPG - eg by prior GM worldbuilding, contrasted with (say) as one possible output of action resolution - then the adjudication of that action declaration may proceed quite differently. In the former case the GM's worldbuilding doesn't just create a "real" world to interact with, but also determines (in advance) some of the outcomes of those interactions.




Ideally (for that feeling), it does, yeah. That feeling relies on some sort of consistency and understanding of the other world. Just as the written rules of the game can work to provide that sort of framework, so too can the GM or the table, they can even override or add to the system rules to facilitate it.


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## Sadras

Doug McCrae said:


> I haven't read thru the thread but I think I can say something interesting about worldbuilding based on my experience playing in Paul Mackintosh's 'Dream Game campaign' in the late 90s and early 00s. It was an intense game, the most involved and detailed in which I've ever participated.




How did the campaign end? As it sounds that there were many questions left unanswered.


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## Lanefan

Tony Vargas said:


> On the contrary, if something doesn't come up in the play of the game, it doesn't exist.



Sure it does, at least in the mind (or in the notes) of whoever thought it up.

The secret door shown on the DM's map that connects rooms 23 and 27 exists in the DM's notes and mind even if the PCs don't find it and thus it never comes up in play.

The set of loaded dice my PC carries around in her backpack exist in my notes (i.e. written on the character sheet) and mind even if I never bring them into play or make anyone else aware I have them.



> 13A is decidedly less a simulation than D&D, which wasn't ever much of a simulation.  Besides, even at its most simulationist - 3e - D&D had different rules (NPC classes, for instance) for NPCs.



3e's NPC classes were a not-great but still appreciated attempt to solve a very real believability headache that's been around forever: that of how non-adventuring NPCs can mechanically acquire some skills and hit points and luck during their lives.


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## Doug McCrae

pemerton said:


> What method was used by the referee to keep the dreams you were exploring "stable" enough for you to try and form/verify coherent conjectures about their natures?




That's a good question. Dreams in the Dream Game seem to be more stable than real world dreams, which I think according to the Dream Game's 'pseudoscience' is due to the presence of outsiders such as Externals and oneironauts. The dream must now conform to the perceptions of multiple individuals. The group of Externals we investigated in the campaign appeared to have developed an unusual technique for manipulating dreams and making them more stable by maintaining a persistent and hard to detect intrusion that, within the dreams, appeared to us as a ghostly figure.

In the world of the Dream Game, dreams are also more long-lasting than they are in our world, seeming to have an existence even when they're not being dreamed. When we entered a dream, we'd be entering one of several that that person possesses and, during an intrusion, could move from one to another. Often we would be seeking out the dreamer in order to investigate the way in which they were being manipulated by Externals, or prevent it. I think there was some difference of emphasis and interest between team members on this, my focus was more on investigation.

That said though, learning what was really going on in the Dream Game campaign was extremely challenging to say the least. It was difficult to distinguish between random dream nonsense and External manipulation. The Externals themselves and their human victims and/or allies were incredibly cagey and secretive. And we only ever had access to part of the picture via dreams. But for me that process of discovery was a big part of the game's appeal. The sheer volume of occult knowledge and its weirdness. It was the 90s and that kind of thing was particularly popular back then.



Sadras said:


> How did the campaign end? As it sounds that there were many questions left unanswered.




They're still unanswered! The Dream Game campaign is technically on hiatus I believe (I dropped out). I'll probably never know what was really going on, and I quite like that idea.


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## Doug McCrae

Further regarding the Dream Game campaign, another player in the game, Mark, had this to say about it.



> I don't have a huge amount to add, really, save some reminiscing about how good the game was and some griping that the player's timidity (realistic though it may have been) cost us dearly in terms of the game and in terms of uncovering the truth. I do think it's also worth mentioning that we did make headway and uncover some truths: real world magic, some insight into the external factions, police interference dealt with... I felt the timidity was very unnecessary because to me roleplaying "psychic powers are real and souls probably exist" would dispel much mortal fear. So finding those things out and their natures was vastly more important.




He seems to agree with me that the uncovering of hidden knowledge was a big part of the game, but disagrees as to what our approach ought to have been.


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## darkbard

[MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION]: complete aside, but based on your descriptions here, you may find the American TV show Legion of interest.


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## Doug McCrae

pemerton said:


> What method was used by the referee to keep the dreams you were exploring "stable" enough for you to try and form/verify coherent conjectures about their natures?



I've been reading through the campaign journals and just found a bit which is very relevant to your question.

Mark: Back to mission objectives - I would like to try to determine if there is a source of this sphere cluster's weirdness and deal with it.
Baz: And I want to see everything that's there. It's my turf.
Jaimie: I'd like to map it carefully.
Prof: I don't know if it'll stay 'solid' and real-worldly enough to the extent that it could be mapped, but certainly you could create a map of sorts which indicates all the constituent sphere environments.​
We had very D&D-y concerns sometimes! However in some respects the Dream Game was very unlike D&D. It was solidly rooted in real world occult and mystical belief, as opposed to D&D's Appendix N, which coupled with the ridiculous amounts of prep Paul was doing helped to give it much more of a 'real' feeling. The game was very amenable to What's Really Going On theories created by the players, moreso than any other rpg I've ever participated in.


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## Ovinomancer

darkbard said:


> [MENTION=21169]Doug McCrae[/MENTION]: complete aside, but based on your descriptions here, you may find the American TV show Legion of interest.




Woof.  I love Legion, but it's so damn _weird_ that I have serious reservations recommending it to anyone.  The layers of unreliable narration are so deep that it's like actively accepting that the entertainment is in finding out how much you've been lied to all along. Or not finding out and just wondering.  Personally, I like that, and it's done well so far in making the lies meaningful rather than arbitrary, but there's such a huge risk that the endgame will be banal and disappointing I can't, in good conscience, recommend it until I can vouch it goes somewhere worthwhile.  

Don't mistake me, I love that FX has the balls to keep running with such a edgy property (and I _loved_ the risks they took with Fargo).  And, if it comes up, I'll tell others that I love it while also providing strong cautions that it's very, _very_ weird.  I think that it's maybe too make-believe about make-believe, though; that it requires not just suspension of disbelief, but suspension of belief at the same time to be enjoyable.  It's like having tea and no tea at the same time and liking that feeling.


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## AbdulAlhazred

happyhermit said:


> Nah, it isn't a distraction it is rather central to that feeling I was referring to, for a lot of players. For a lot of players if the world feels too amorphous that feeling is gone, the more it seems like the world is fully formed in a person's mind/notes, etc. the less likely it is to be disrupted.
> 
> 
> 
> Yep, that's an action declaration. If it seems like action declarations are impacting the world in any sense other than what a PC attempting those actions would, then it can get in the way of that feeling, if it doesn't then it won't.
> 
> 
> 
> Ideally (for that feeling), it does, yeah. That feeling relies on some sort of consistency and understanding of the other world. Just as the written rules of the game can work to provide that sort of framework, so too can the GM or the table, they can even override or add to the system rules to facilitate it.




Logically, what makes one believe that one process would be 'logically more consistent' than another? How would you even know what is or is not logically consistent? What about a specific technique makes it particularly suited to creating this 'feeling', and what really is the feeling and what are its parameters? 

Why can't adding to the GAME WORLD as well as to the rules provide ADDED consistency? Aren't there other values to the narrative that also produce these sorts of feelings? 

I would argue that this is another example of the 'two dimensional thinking' problem (referring to Khan Noonian Singh of Wrath of Khan and his habit of thinking in 2 dimensions as an analogy for 'classic DMs' and their habit of thinking about Story Now in terms of classic play). 

That is to say, when the players are thoroughly engaged in a plot which engages their agenda directly, then the need for a lot of this 'feeling' disappears rapidly. It is replaced by a feeling of engagement and participation in the construction of a the narrative. IME this activity proves to be more interesting to most players. Nor is it an either/or proposition WRT some kind of narrative consistency.


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## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> Gah.    [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], you drug me back into this.  I shan't forgive you.



You may call me Threadfather.  ::queues up the violin music::


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## happyhermit

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Logically, what makes one believe that one process would be 'logically more consistent' than another? How would you even know what is or is not logically consistent? What about a specific technique makes it particularly suited to creating this 'feeling', and what really is the feeling and what are its parameters?




It looks like you are quoting me with 'logically more consistent' but I don't actually see where I said that in the post you quoted 



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Why can't adding to the GAME WORLD as well as to the rules provide ADDED consistency? Aren't there other values to the narrative that also produce these sorts of feelings?




Uhm, I didn't say it can't and I never said there aren't. You don't seem to be addressing what I actually wrote.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I would argue that this is another example of the 'two dimensional thinking' problem (referring to Khan Noonian Singh of Wrath of Khan and his habit of thinking in 2 dimensions as an analogy for 'classic DMs' and their habit of thinking about Story Now in terms of classic play).




Then I would argue your entire premise seems based on some biased assumptions.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> That is to say, when the players are thoroughly engaged in a plot which engages their agenda directly, then the need for a lot of this 'feeling' disappears rapidly. It is replaced by a feeling of engagement and participation in the construction of a the narrative. IME this activity proves to be more interesting to most players. Nor is it an either/or proposition WRT some kind of narrative consistency.




That's like saying "When the driver is fully engaged with driving ie; on the racetrack or trying to avoid a collision, then the need for viewing the scenery disappears rapidly." Can certain games or playstyles encourage or discourage some aspects of the experience? Of course they can, but that is anything but inherently positive or negative. My experience is that for many players, regardless of how engaged in a plot they are, they still want that feeling.


----------



## pemerton

happyhermit said:


> For a lot of players if the world feels too amorphous that feeling is gone, the more it seems like the world is fully formed in a person's mind/notes, etc. the less likely it is to be disrupted.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> If it seems like action declarations are impacting the world in any sense other than what a PC attempting those actions would, then it can get in the way of that feeling, if it doesn't then it won't.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> That feeling relies on some sort of consistency and understanding of the other world.



There is nothing "amorphous" or "inconsistent" about a setting established in the course of play, including action resolution. And a world of that sort need not be particularly hard to understand.

The "feeling" you refer to seems to involve, at its core, having someone else tell you a story about a place they made up.


----------



## pemerton

pemerton said:


> Eero neither endorses nor rejects secret backstory. But some of the games he refers to, as illustrating his preferred approach, do. For instance, there is the following from DitV, under the heading "Actively Reveal the Town in Play" (pp 137-38 ):
> 
> The town you’ve made has secrets. It has, quite likely, terrible secrets — blood and sex and murder and damnation.
> 
> But you the GM, you don’t have secrets a’tall. Instead, you have cool things - bloody, sexy, murderous, damned cool things - that you can’t wait to share. . . .​





Ilbranteloth said:


> I understand that's what he was using them for, which is why I'm using them to point out that they also apply quite well for the exact opposite.



I'm not really sure how deciding that there is no secret door in place X, and then not telling the players that until they (i) declare moves that get their PC to place X, and (ii) decide to search for a secret door there, counts as _having cool things that ou can't wait to share_!

I'm happy to allow that, for some people, the absence of a secret door is a cool thing. But how is this an instance of _being unable to wait to share it_?



Ilbranteloth said:


> sometimes my cool stuff lays dormant for years



So it seems like you _can_ wait to share it.

I'm really puzzled how you think what Vincent Baker says is apropos to your approach to GMing. It seems that he is putting forward something quite different from what you enjoy.


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## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> I'm not really sure how deciding that there is no secret door in place X, and then not telling the players that until they (i) declare moves that get their PC to place X, and (ii) decide to search for a secret door there, counts as _having cool things that ou can't wait to share_!
> 
> I'm happy to allow that, for some people, the absence of a secret door is a cool thing. But how is this an instance of _being unable to wait to share it_?
> 
> So it seems like you _can_ wait to share it.
> 
> I'm really puzzled how you think what Vincent Baker says is apropos to your approach to GMing. It seems that he is putting forward something quite different from what you enjoy.




Perhaps because “cool” depends on context? Just because I think of something that I think might be cool doesn’t make it so until the context makes it so. At which point I share it.

Nor am I saying that every tiny event or aspect is cool. It’s the collection of events, created and/or compiled at the table that is important.

Part of what’s cool is exploration, discovering things, reacting to challenges (or really, what the reaction to the challenge is). Part of what we find cool is a believable, immersive world. Worldbuilding helps do that. 

I’m more interested in the experience at the table. And as a DM I take the responsibility of fostering that experience seriously. My players are also interested in the experience. I have a couple that enjoy the theory of RPG games, as well as designing mechanics and we discuss and work on these things quite a bit. The rest don’t care about the mechanics, the techniques, etc. it’s all about the experience to them.

So I’ll use any approach and technique that will help me best do that. Part of that is communicating with the players to understand better what they like. What their expectations are, and working to meet those expectations. 

Drawing a map of a keep that includes secret doors, and identifies where they are and aren’t is simply a tool. They might never search for a secret door, in which case it’s irrelevant. Or they do, and they find there isn’t one. That’s a point in the overall evening that together shares something cool (hopefully). Last week, I had perhaps 15% input into the night’s session. The majority of the time I was a spectator, and an occasional reference when they had a question. Every once in a while I’d jump in with a clarification or correction regarding something about the world. Otherwise, it was almost entirely the PCs discussing things, sharing information, debating their options, and making plans. 

A good part of what I provided was prior to the session, to help a player integrate a new character into the world. As this character is from a part of the world that we had not previously discussed, I provided a combination of general things that were fixed, and possibilities based on those and what I knew of their character and relationships to the existing campaign. This was one way that I shared material that had been secret. Some of it was published, some I prepared, and much that we made up in the spot. And much of that morphed when it actually entered the game at the session.

The bottom line is that it’s not about every little think I think of. If that were the case I’d just write a book. For me it’s about working the cool ideas I have into the flow of the game with the cool ideas they have. We have different frameworks (world vs. character/family for example) but those are soft, moveable lines. Notes, maps, identifying things like where secret doors are help me do that better. It gives me time to think things through, and then during the session if I decide to add (or remove) a secret door, that’s fine. 

The purpose is the same - to share cool things. We just go about it differently.

Baseball, basketball, and football all provide entertainment, fantasy games, and an exciting “product” to their fans. The details of how they do it are all different. That you (or he) might have a different process for sharing cool things doesn’t alter the fact that it’s what we are both trying to do. His goal and mine are the same, we just use a different approach to achieve it.


----------



## happyhermit

pemerton said:


> There is nothing "amorphous" or "inconsistent" about a setting established in the course of play, including action resolution. And a world of that sort need not be particularly hard to understand.




Hopefully by accident, you took that line out of it's context and missed the entire point. It was referring to external modification.



pemerton said:


> The "feeling" you refer to seems to involve, at its core, having someone else tell you a story about a place they made up.




Are you sure you aren't trying to get this wrong because you don't like it? Either way you are totally off base. It's not about telling a story, it's about a world. Describing a forest at a particular moment in time isn't telling a story, right? You aren't using some definition of the word I haven't heard of? If the PCs decide to cut down a bunch of trees and build a cabin, that could be a story, right? 

Could the GM "tell a story" sure, maybe through an NPC recollecting something they saw or an old parchment recalling some great battle or betrayal, is this not possible in a "no myth" game? Either way it is by no means central to the feeling I was describing.


----------



## Tony Vargas

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Logically, what makes one believe that one process would be 'logically more consistent' than another? How would you even know what is or is not logically consistent? What about a specific technique makes it particularly suited to creating this 'feeling', and what really is the feeling and what are its parameters?



 That's the thing about feelings, they can be pretty subjective & contextual.  If you've gamed a lot using one technique, defended it against undue criticisms a lot, and become invested in it and proprietary about it, you can turn around and be just as unduly critical of any alternative.  And, part of that will be the unique, irreproducible, 'feel' you get from it.  (What?  Try something else?  Blasphemy!)  



> Why can't adding to the GAME WORLD as well as to the rules provide ADDED consistency? Aren't there other values to the narrative that also produce these sorts of feelings?



 As long as something, once added, isn't just forgotten or contradicted, sure - and as long as the addition isn't too suspect nor redolent of implausible retro-active continuity, of course.



> when the players are thoroughly engaged in a plot which engages their agenda directly, then the need for a lot of this 'feeling' disappears rapidly. It is replaced by a feeling of engagement and participation in the construction of a the narrative. IME this activity proves to be more interesting to most players. Nor is it an either/or proposition WRT some kind of narrative consistency.



 IDK about /more/ interesting... it depends on the players.  Some can be sucked into the engagement of participating in that way, others like to feel like they're exploring and uncovering something that's "already there" in some (albeit, ultimately illusory) sense.



pemerton said:


> The "feeling" you refer to seems to involve, at its core, having someone else tell you a story about a place they made up.



 That sort of 'setting tourism' would be the arguably-dysfunctional extreme of a focus on world-building.  But you can delve pretty deeply into building a world and running a game within it, without taking it that far.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Logically, what makes one believe that one process would be 'logically more consistent' than another? How would you even know what is or is not logically consistent? What about a specific technique makes it particularly suited to creating this 'feeling', and what really is the feeling and what are its parameters?
> 
> Why can't adding to the GAME WORLD as well as to the rules provide ADDED consistency? Aren't there other values to the narrative that also produce these sorts of feelings?
> 
> I would argue that this is another example of the 'two dimensional thinking' problem (referring to Khan Noonian Singh of Wrath of Khan and his habit of thinking in 2 dimensions as an analogy for 'classic DMs' and their habit of thinking about Story Now in terms of classic play).
> 
> That is to say, when the players are thoroughly engaged in a plot which engages their agenda directly, then the need for a lot of this 'feeling' disappears rapidly. It is replaced by a feeling of engagement and participation in the construction of a the narrative. IME this activity proves to be more interesting to most players. Nor is it an either/or proposition WRT some kind of narrative consistency.




You're backsliding into claims of superiority rather than advocacy.  Just a note, if you care, that saying things like 'proves to be more interesting to most players, ' even if caveated by an IME, is a claim of style superiority, and one not backed by anything other than your opinion.  So, too, is calling the other viewpoint 'two dimensional thinking' and implying that you're engaged in three dimensional, and therefore better, thinking.

To the larger point, narrativist style games require a large conceptual hurdle to be overcome, at which point it clicks and you understand that most of the traditionalist arguments against really don't apply.  The problem, at that point, is being able to vault back over the hurdle and see that many of the narrativist criticism of traditional player also don't really apply.  It's apples and oranges, chess and checkers.  The concepts and points of play are arranged differently and given different weights, so trying to judge the other style using your style weighting is going to end up being incorrect, and it's not a matter of 2-D vs 3-D thinking -- one isn't a dimension superior.  Rather, it's more like X-axis vs Y-axis thinking, different, one has trouble understanding the other, but one isn't superior to the other.  Actually, I like this, as most arguments in this thread really seem to boil down to 'but you only have 1 value! No, I don't, you do!' which is appropriate because a horizontal line has only 1 value on the Y axis, and vice versa.

Regardless of my own opinions of my cleverness, it occurs that the argument about no-myth vs myth games is that there are things missing in the analysis.  Most myth in games is there to set up theme and conflicts, yes?  Well, as [MENTION=43157]caliburn[/MENTION] notes, this role is taken over by the player backstory and goals in no-myth play, meaning that the role of establishing themes and conflict exists in both systems, it's just a matter of who has authority in which parts.  Traditional play has the GM authority in establishing this and narrativist allows player authority.  After that, the DM still has authority to set scenes and the players still have action authority in both.  But, the role of myth in the game is the same between the two, it's just who gets to introduce it.  That can have huge difference in play, sure, but it's a bit premature to claim that no-myth play really is no-myth; it uses a different arrangement of authority to generate the myth that the game operates by.  All games are, then, at best, low myth, because players establish myth for the game before play starts through their backstories and goals/traits/flaws.

Hopefully, discussing the relative benefits as each sees them of these two models without yelling back and forth over which has myth and which doesn't might prove more fruitful.


----------



## Maxperson

happyhermit said:


> Hopefully by accident, you took that line out of it's context and missed the entire point. It was referring to external modification.
> 
> Are you sure you aren't trying to get this wrong because you don't like it? Either way you are totally off base. It's not about telling a story, it's about a world. Describing a forest at a particular moment in time isn't telling a story, right? You aren't using some definition of the word I haven't heard of? If the PCs decide to cut down a bunch of trees and build a cabin, that could be a story, right?
> 
> Could the GM "tell a story" sure, maybe through an NPC recollecting something they saw or an old parchment recalling some great battle or betrayal, is this not possible in a "no myth" game? Either way it is by no means central to the feeling I was describing.




At this point I'm convinced that it's not an accident.  He seems to have a strong need to misportray our playstyle.  Has he told you that how you run your game is like a choose your own adventure book yet?


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The "feeling" you refer to seems to involve, at its core, having someone else tell you a story about a place they made up.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> That sort of 'setting tourism' would be the arguably-dysfunctional extreme of a focus on world-building.  But you can delve pretty deeply into building a world and running a game within it, without taking it that far.
Click to expand...


What I describe isn't particularly about "setting tourism."

Every time a player talks about "scouting out" some location, or "gathering information", or similar episodes of "exploration", in the context of a GM-worldbuilding RPG, they are talking about having the GM tell them a story about the place s/he made up.

Take the simplest example of dungeon play:

Player: "I poke in front of me with a 10' pole as I walk down the 30' long passage."

<GM consults dungeon map and key>

GM: "OK, after 10' of walking you feel that the floor in front of you - half way down the passage - gives under your pole. It seems to be a trapdoor of some sort."​
What is happening, at the table, in this episode of play? The player makes a move by declaring an action for his/her PC. The purpose of that move is to _get the GM to relate some of the content of a fiction that s/he has made up_.

In a traditional dungeon there is also a boardgame/wargame element - because the dungeon map is a physical artefact on which the movement of the PCs is tracked - but that tends to be absent from much contemporary RPGing.

Eg:

<GM describes PCs passing through the city gates.>

Player: "We look around. We want to find the quarter of the city which is likely to have curio shops, sages, astrologers, that sort of thing - so that we might be able to get some item or clue to help us fight that demon."

GM: "OK, well, you can see three roads leading away from the gate. The widest is directly in front of you, and seems to lead up a hill where you can see the spires of a temple at the top. To the left a road leads around the base of the hill. The buildings look ill-kept, and the people coming from that direction look poorly dressed and the shoes are muddy. To the right, a road follows the wall up the ridge. There are stone buildings. You see a small group of well-dressed young people coming towards you, and you can hear they're speaking a foreign language."

Player: "OK, we take the right road. It seems most likely to have the scholars or travellers we're looking for."​
This doesn't depend on maps and keys - it's just as likely the GM is reading from or paraphrasing or relying on a passage of description that s/he wrote earlier, or that was published in a commercial setting book. So it doesn't have the boardgame/wargame aspect of classic dungeoneering.

But it is still about the players declaring moves that trigger the GM to tell them things that the GM (or other author) made up about the setting.

My impression - from reading rulebooks, from reading blogs, from reading these boards - is that this sort of thing is pretty common in RPGing, especially contemporary D&D play.



happyhermit said:


> It's not about telling a story, it's about a world. Describing a forest at a particular moment in time isn't telling a story, right?



Well, "story" is less technical than "fiction"  - which some posters don't like. I'm just trying to use a fairly generic word.

When I Google "story meaing" I get "an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment." That's what I'm talking about. Earlier parts of this post illustrate what I have i mind.


----------



## happyhermit

pemerton said:


> ...
> Well, "story" is less technical than "fiction"  - which some posters don't like. I'm just trying to use a fairly generic word.
> 
> When I Google "story meaing" I get "an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment." That's what I'm talking about. Earlier parts of this post illustrate what I have i mind.




Ok, by that definition "worldbuilding" can occur without the GM telling a story ie; Describing a forest. Also by that definition, GMs in "no myth" games frequently tell stories to the players ie; The NPC walks across the room and attacks you.

What does this have to do with the purpose of worldbuilding again?


----------



## pemerton

happyhermit said:


> Ok, by that definition "worldbuilding" can occur without the GM telling a story ie; Describing a forest. Also by that definition, GMs in "no myth" games frequently tell stories to the players ie; The NPC walks across the room and attacks you.
> 
> What does this have to do with the purpose of worldbuilding again?



There are a number of differences. Here are some:

* If the "no myth" game uses "kickers" or some similar technique then the initial situation may not be narrated by the GM at all.

* If the "no myth" GM is framing a scene that doesn't follow directly from a prior episode of resolution, the content of the scene is established by reference to player cues, not the GM's conception of "the world".

* More often, the "no myth" GM is framing a scene incorporating consequences from prior episodes of action resolution.​
It can't be true both that _worldbuilding yields some experience/feeling that "no myth" doesn't_ and that _there is no difference between the two_. I'm trying to identify one of the differences, namely, that a GM-worldbuilding game contains an element that "no myth" does not. That element is _telling the players stuff that tthe GM already made up_, typically as a response to player declarations of actions for their PCs that trigger such telling - I gave two illustrations of those sorts of actions just upthread.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> What I describe isn't particularly about "setting tourism."
> 
> Every time a player talks about "scouting out" some location, or "gathering information", or similar episodes of "exploration", in the context of a GM-worldbuilding RPG, they are talking about having the GM tell them a story about the place s/he made up.
> 
> Take the simplest example of dungeon play:
> Player: "I poke in front of me with a 10' pole as I walk down the 30' long passage."
> 
> <GM consults dungeon map and key>
> 
> GM: "OK, after 10' of walking you feel that the floor in front of you - half way down the passage - gives under your pole. It seems to be a trapdoor of some sort."​
> What is happening, at the table, in this episode of play? The player makes a move by declaring an action for his/her PC. The purpose of that move is to _get the GM to relate some of the content of a fiction that s/he has made up_.




As opposed to...

Player: "I poke in front of me with a 10' pole as I walk down the 30' long passage."

DM:  (after a failed roll):"Okay, after 10' of walking you feel that the floor in front of you - half way down the passage - gives under your pole.  It seems to be a trapdoor of some sort."

While that may not be the exact dialogue used in Story Now, the goal is the same.  The player is still declaring actions for the PC for the purpose of getting the DM to relate some content of fiction that the DM makes up.  The difference is that you improvise the content.


----------



## happyhermit

pemerton said:


> There are a number of differences. Here are some:
> 
> * If the "no myth" game uses "kickers" or some similar technique then the initial situation may not be narrated by the GM at all.​




A "no myth" game _can_ use them, so can a game with worldbuilding, okay. The initial situation is only one example of the GM telling a story according to the definition you provided though, it happens all the time.



pemerton said:


> * If the "no myth" GM is framing a scene that doesn't follow directly from a prior episode of resolution, the content of the scene is established by reference to player cues, not the GM's conception of "the world".




Okay, so the GM is telling a story, but it's different because it's based on player cues and is unaffected by the GM's conception of the world? So the GM doesn't consider what has already been established during the game ie; NPCs, Factions, PC backstory, etc. not to mention unspoken assumptions ie; gravity, when setting that scene? If they do then it is actually; The GM is framing a scene based on player cues and the GM's conception of the world (albeit the GM's conception of the world is subject to limitations). Which is also what happens in most games, without the limitations on the GM's conception of the world obviously, or at least those specific limitations.



pemerton said:


> * More often, the "no myth" GM is framing a scene incorporating consequences from prior episodes of action resolution.



Saying this is not unique to no-myth games might be the understatement of the year.



pemerton said:


> It can't be true both that _worldbuilding yields some experience/feeling that "no myth" doesn't_ and that _there is no difference between the two_. I'm trying to identify one of the differences, namely, that a GM-worldbuilding game contains an element that "no myth" does not. That element is _telling the players stuff that tthe GM already made up_, typically as a response to player declarations of actions for their PCs that trigger such telling - I gave two illustrations of those sorts of actions just upthread.




Well, why didn't you say so? Instead you said a bunch of stuff that isn't really true and presented a bunch of false dichotomies. When playing in a world that is pre-defined to some extent (published, group created, GM created, established through previous play, etc.) then when the GM is describing the world it will include those pre-defined details, or be influenced by them. If the difference you are pointing out is that in a game where the GM at least in part created the world then the description will include elements they created, then that makes perfect sense. 

It's not about the GM "telling stories" or not, it isn't about the whether some actions are impossible or not, not even about whether or not those stories or actions are affected by previously determined aspects of "the world", it's just about where they come from. For some players that is important. Like I mentioned earlier for some seeking "that feeling" (that they have access to a "real" world) it helps if it seems like the world is fully fleshed out somewhere and reacting to their PCs accordingly, and it hinders that feeling if they think it isn't, or it seems like things are being plopped down in front of them, or things are being determined randomly, or other players (not through their PCs) are effecting the world. It would seem that for some other mixes are ideal, some might prefer a highly detailed published setting, because they can read it for themselves. Some might prefer a lack of GM created stuff in the world, or rather, limitations imposed on it because what counts as GM created could just as easily be seen as "whatever the GM chooses" because after all even just picking things to match what the PCs are interested in is the GM "creating" something.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> As opposed to...
> 
> Player: "I poke in front of me with a 10' pole as I walk down the 30' long passage."
> 
> DM:  (after a failed roll):"Okay, after 10' of walking you feel that the floor in front of you - half way down the passage - gives under your pole.  It seems to be a trapdoor of some sort."
> 
> While that may not be the exact dialogue used in Story Now



It's not an example of "story now" play at all. There's no stakes in the action declaration, for a start.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> It's not an example of "story now" play at all. There's no stakes in the action declaration, for a start.




So through in stakes and it still changes nothing.  He's still getting you to say stuff by performing an action.


----------



## pemerton

happyhermit said:


> A "no myth" game _can_ use them, so can a game with worldbuilding



Can you give me an example of a GM-worldbuilding game that uses "kickers" to start the action? I've never come across one.


----------



## pemerton

pemerton said:
			
		

> What is happening, at the table, in this episode of play? The player makes a move by declaring an action for his/her PC. The purpose of that move is to get the GM to relate some of the content of a fiction that s/he has made up.





			
				Maxperson said:
			
		

> While that may not be the exact dialogue used in Story Now, the goal is the same. The player is still declaring actions for the PC for the purpose of getting the DM to relate some content of fiction that the DM makes up. The difference is that you improvise the content.





Maxperson said:


> So through in stakes and it still changes nothing.  He's still getting you to say stuff by performing an action.



Once there are stakes to the action declaration, it's _not_ the case that the purpose of the move is to get the GM to relate some of the content of a fiction that s/he has made up.

The player will have established some goal for his/her action - similar to the example of Aura Reading the feather. So the goal of the action declaration is to establish that _whatever this is_ obtains.

That's the point of "story now" RPGing.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Once there are stakes to the action declaration, it's _not_ the case that the purpose of the move is to get the GM to relate some of the content of a fiction that s/he has made up.
> 
> The player will have established some goal for his/her action - similar to the example of Aura Reading the feather. So the goal of the action declaration is to establish that _whatever this is_ obtains.
> 
> That's the point of "story now" RPGing.




It absolute is the case that they are getting you to make up stuff.  They are just getting you to make up stuff related to their goal.  You're still making up stuff.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> It absolute is the case that they are getting you to make up stuff.  They are just getting you to make up stuff related to their goal.  You're still making up stuff.



I'm not sure how else to put this. _If the check succeeds, the players goal for his/her PC is realised_. If the aura-reading succeeds, _the feather has a trait that is suitable for dealing with a balrog_ (from memory, I think the PC was looking for Resistant to Fire). If the scavenging check in the tower succeeds, _the PC finds the mace he is searching for_. If the Circles check succeeds, _the PC meets up with a NPC of the nature s/he was looking for_.

The difference from asking the GM "Do I have any friends/contacts? Who are they?" or "What's around the corner?" or "Are there any interesting trinkets for sale?" is obvious.


----------



## happyhermit

pemerton said:


> Can you give me an example of a GM-worldbuilding game that uses "kickers" to start the action? I've never come across one.




Strange question, didn't you say you used them in D&D, a game that assumes GM-worldbuilding to some degree? I have seen them used in many games, mostly D&D, though obviously not by name. If you mean a game that assumes some degree of GM-worldbuilding by default and includes "kickers" by default then the game that introduced the formalized concept, "Sorcerer" seems a good enough example.

Does this mean you can agree with the rest of the post? Because you mentioned kickers as a way to differentiate between stories the GM tells in a game with or without GM worldbuilding, it doesn't really do this because they can be used in either, but it still only addresses the singular example I used. By the definition you provided there are lots of other examples of GMs telling stories in a no-myth game.


----------



## Lanefan

happyhermit said:


> ... includes "kickers" ...



Kickers?  What's these?


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I'm not sure how else to put this. _If the check succeeds, the players goal for his/her PC is realised_. If the aura-reading succeeds, _the feather has a trait that is suitable for dealing with a balrog_ (from memory, I think the PC was looking for Resistant to Fire). If the scavenging check in the tower succeeds, _the PC finds the mace he is searching for_. If the Circles check succeeds, _the PC meets up with a NPC of the nature s/he was looking for_.



So to beat it down to the basics: the player makes stuff up as the goal of the action declaration which if successful becomes part of the fiction, while on a failure the DM gets to make stuff up to explain said failure.  'Bout right?



> The difference from asking the GM "Do I have any friends/contacts? Who are they?" or "What's around the corner?" or "Are there any interesting trinkets for sale?" is obvious.



Yes, it is.

But the ask-the-GM approach avoids any risk of the player potentially - dice willing - authoring the solution* to the problem she herself presented in her goals/beliefs/backstory.

* - or a step directly toward said solution.


----------



## happyhermit

Lanefan said:


> Kickers?  What's these?




Like a lot of RPG terms, the definition is rather vague. It's a bit of player authored stuff (often a sort of backstory) that the GM uses to help "drive the narrative", shape the world, tailor it to PCs, etc. AFAIK the term comes from Ron Edwards "Sorcerer", but as he says something similar has existed for ages.

ETA; http://www.indie-rpgs.com/archive/index.php?topic=1359


> A Kicker is a term used in Sorcerer for the "event or realization that your character has experienced just before play begins."
> 
> For  the player, the Kicker is what propels the character into the game, as  well as the thing that hooks the player and makes him or her say, "Damn!  I can't wait to play this character!"
> 
> It's also the thing that  the player hopes to resolve at the end of the game. At the start of the  next game with the same character, the resolution of the Kicker alters  the character in some way, allowing the player to re-write the character  to reflect changes. Something that (IMHO) is a much better form of  "experience points" than just a mathematical increase in ability.  Word  up, G!





> Hiya,
> 
> The Kicker is part of the Sorcerer rules for character  creation and it feeds directly into play. I invented the term, and to my  knowledge, the concept as well at least in terms of a formal game  element.
> 
> Jared has it just about right ... the Kicker is a  sentence or two written by a player regarding his or her character. Its  requirement is that _something_ about the character's life has just  changed, in such a way that they must take action. Ideally, the Kicker  should not be a no-brainer but pose a bit of a conundrum or even an  ethical dilemma. There's a fair permissible range, though - some players  like to throw themselves and the GM a curve ball by introducing tres  freaky ; others like to introduce a very solid ethical choice. The  only bad Kicker is a boring one.
> 
> From the GM's point of view, all  the player-characters are now in motion. For instance, I tend to run  very prep-heavy games, but if the player-characters have Kickers, I  don't have to drag them into anything - they are blazing into action of  some kind. (Some people have expressed concern that this will  "interfere" with the planned run. In practice, everyone who's tried it  has done a 180 regarding this concern.)
> 
> Anyway (sigh, I hate this  part), it's a copyrighted term, it's part of the Sorcerer rules, and I  am perfectly happy for anyone to include it in their game design if they  give me credit.
> 
> Best,
> Ron


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Kickers?  What's these?



Here's a sblocked self-quote:

[sblock]

pemerton said:


> As the final part of PC building, and trying to channel a bit of indie spirit, I asked the players to come up with "kickers" for their PCs.
> 
> From The Forge, here is one person's definition of a kicker:
> 
> A Kicker is a term used in Sorcerer for the "event or realization that your character has experienced just before play begins."
> 
> For the player, the Kicker is what propels the character into the game, as well as the thing that hooks the player and makes him or her say, "Damn! I can't wait to play this character!"
> 
> It's also the thing that the player hopes to resolve at the end of the game. At the start of the next game with the same character, the resolution of the Kicker alters the character in some way, allowing the player to re-write the character to reflect changes.​
> In my case, I was mostly focused on the first of those things: an event or realisation that the character has experienced just before play begins, which thereby propels the character into the game. The main constraint I imposed was: your kicker somehow has to locate you within Tyr in the context of the Sorcerer-King having been overthrown. The reason for this constraint was (i) I want to be able to use the 4e campaign books, and (ii) D&D relies pretty heavily on group play, and so I didn't want the PCs to be too separated spatially or temporally.
> 
> The player of the barbarian came up with something first. Paraphrasing slightly, it went like this:
> 
> I was about to cut his head of in the arena, to the adulation of the crowd, when the announcement came that the Sorcerer-King was dead, and they all looked away.​
> So that answered the question that another player had asked, namely, how long since the Sorcerer-King's overthrow: it's just happened.
> 
> The other gladiator - whose name is "Twenty-nine", that being his number on the inventory of slaves owned by his master - had been mulling over (no pun intended) something about his master having been killed, and so we settled on the following:
> 
> I came back from the slave's privies, ready to receive my master's admonition to do a good job before I went out into the arena. But when I got back to the pen my master was dead. So I took the purse with 14 gp from his belt.​
> (The 14 gp was the character's change after spending his starting money on gear.)
> 
> Discussion of PC backgrounds and the like had already established that the eladrin was an envoy from The Lands Within The Wind, aiming to link up with the Veiled Alliance and thereby to take steps to save his homeland from the consequences of defiling. So his kicker was
> 
> My veiled alliance contact is killed in front of me as we are about to meet.​
> (A lot of death accompanying the revolution!)
> 
> With all that in place, we started the session proper.


[/sblock]



happyhermit said:


> didn't you say you used them in D&D, a game that assumes GM-worldbuilding to some degree? I have seen them used in many games, mostly D&D, though obviously not by name. If you mean a game that assumes some degree of GM-worldbuilding by default and includes "kickers" by default then the game that introduced the formalized concept, "Sorcerer" seems a good enough example.



Sorcerer is clearly not a game that involves GM worldbuilding of the sort described in the OP of this thread.

Sblocked, fFrom Ron Edwards (designer of Sorcerer), "Setting and emergent stories":

[sblock]This essay is really about setting but I found that I had to explain the story part first. . . .

_n the interest of the whole essay’s point, I’m specifying here that we’re talking about a game text which includes a detailed setting, in which the various locations, problems, and NPCs . . . are easily identifiable or can easily be created once you’ve studied it in some detail. Enjoyment of the setting’s content as such is one of the intended joys and significant features of play. . . .

Story Now play does not merely inject a dose of flexibility or improvisation into Story Before play. It’s a different animal entirely. For example, the classic “play my character vs. play for the story” dichotomy is literally impossible. There simply isn’t any “the” story. The only way to get a story is through people playing their characters.

It relies heavily on situational crisis within the fiction, and not only the knowledge among the players that their characters are significantly embedded in it, but their enjoyment of that because the characters’ allegiances and priorities are free to unfold and change during play. . . .

nitial preparation doesn’t start with setting but rather with an evocation of setting, providing the necessary environment in which to visualize a character, and no more. Therefore setting information is deliberately kept sketchy at the outset, without any points of interest except for how it provides adversity toward the characters, if indeed that occurs at all. And when it does, the setting remains strictly facilitative of the primary conflicts embedded in the characters themselves.

Other games which rely on this model include Dust Devils, Lacuna, Primetime Adventures, shock:, Sign in Stranger, Poison’d, and Dogs in the Vineyard . . .

Story Now design has typically favored the character-centric approach probably due to the influence of Sorcerer . . ._​_[/sblock]

In that essay, Edwards goes on to discuss how worldbuilding can be adapted to Story Now play, by departing from the Sorcerer approach (emphasis added by me):

[sblock]Character-centric Story Now play is consistent with epic literature and myth, classical drama, and adventure fiction of all kinds. . . .

I went into this much detail about this way to play because historically, it was developed first as an explicit alternative to the Story Before methods described earlier. Therefore in early Forge discussions, a perceived dichotomy formed which contrasted Setting with Story Now (Narrativism).  Here, I’m firmly calling this dichotomy false and showing that Story Now play can function very well using a setting-centric approach. . . .

[T]he game I first really applied this model with [was] called Hero Wars . . .

Enjoying the setting isn’t an end-stage outcome, it’s a starting and prevailing commitment. *Nor is a single person expected to be the docent for the textual setting; rather, it belongs to everyone for inspiration and use.* Play deepens it and provides nuances, and most importantly, changes it. . . .

One concern that crops up a lot for playing this way is how expert people have to be even to get started. Although not everyone must be expert, certainly no one can be ignorant either. . . .

In my experience, the solution begins with a single person choosing the location, at least when the group is playing the game for the first time. He or she should provide a brief but inspirational handout which summarizes the entire setting, focusing on colorful and thematic points; if the opening text of the game book provides this, a quick photocopy will do. . . .

I want to focus on several game texts that present explicitly powerful settings which as I see it simply scream out to be utilized as I’ve described above, but which are also saddled with play-advice that undercuts the potential. . . .

The origins of this problem are obvious: simply aping the models provided by D&D2 (especially Dragonlance) . . . Among many others, one consistent problem with such texts is being forced to reconcile the deeply community-oriented problems of a given location for play with the inappropriate assumption that player-characters are a team of outsiders who’ve just arrived from very far away. Since these can’t be reconciled, each text repeats a whole circular and unsuccessful mantra about it without managing to deliver meaningful or even engaging instructions. . . .

[F]or setting-centric Story Now play [t]he idea is to embrace the setting as a genuine, central source of the colorful thematic dilemmas explicit in the games’ introductory text, and to resist the retraction and retreat to comparatively tame Story Before which are explicit in the later GM-advice and scenario-preparation text.​[/sblock]

In the context of this thread, the most striking element of Edwards's description of setting-heavy "story now" RPGing is that it is the group, not the GM, that "owns" the setting. And Edwards is certainly not talking about the sort of establishment of setting that we're seeing discussed at this stage of this thread (eg that a secret door does or does not exist in a certain wall; that a bribe is or is not willing to be bribed; etc).

My use of the default 4e cosmology in my main 4e game, and of Dark Sun in my 4e Dark Sun game, is something like what Edwards describes here, although both settings are "light" and stereotypical enough that play also bleeds into the character-centric approach._


----------



## pemerton

happyhermit said:


> It's a bit of player authored stuff (often a sort of backstory) that the GM uses to help "drive the narrative", shape the world, tailor it to PCs, etc.





			
				The Forge said:
			
		

> For the player, the Kicker is what propels the character into the game, as well as the thing that hooks the player and makes him or her say, "Damn! I can't wait to play this character!"
> 
> It's also the thing that the player hopes to resolve at the end of the game.





			
				Ron Edwards said:
			
		

> he Kicker is a sentence or two written by a player regarding his or her character. Its requirement is that something about the character's life has just changed, in such a way that they must take action.



Thining of the kicker as "backstory", or as something that the GM uses to help drive the narrative, is (I think) missing some of the point.

The kicker is something that _propels the character into the game_ by _requiring that they take action_. It is a thematically/dramatically compelling situation _authored by the player_.

Here is another description of it by Ron Edwards:

_Sorcerer _presented the Kicker Technique, which is to say, a player-authored Bang* included in character creation, giving the GM responsibility to make it central to play. It may be considered the precise opposite of the "character hook" concept presented in many adventure scenarios and role-playing games.​
[size=-2]* An in-fiction event which make a thematically-significant or at least evocative choice necessary for a player[/size]​
Upthread, or maybe on the other thread,  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] posted that _the setting has to be neutral_ and that _the players can't write their own adventures_. The "kicker" technique is in complete opposition to those principles.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> So to beat it down to the basics: the player makes stuff up as the goal of the action declaration which if successful becomes part of the fiction, while on a failure the DM gets to make stuff up to explain said failure.  'Bout right?



Yes. The most classic example in the history of RPGing would be "I try and kill the orc."



Lanefan said:


> But the ask-the-GM approach avoids any risk of the player potentially - dice willing - authoring the solution* to the problem she herself presented in her goals/beliefs/backstory.



There is also a classic term to describe a game in which the players have to work out the GM-authored solution: it's called a railroad!


----------



## Sunseeker

pemerton said:


> There is also a classic term to describe a game in which the players have to work out the GM-authored solution: it's called a railroad!




That's terribly inaccurate and dishonest, and you know it.

Reasonably speaking certain problems have certain solutions.  If you need to burn something you cannot freeze it.  If you need to de-ice something you cannot make a move silently check.  

If you want to try to kill the orc, you cannot do so with a heal check.

Railroads _may_ exist where there is one, or few solutions to a problem.  Railroads do not automatically exist simply because a player cannot declare _anything_ to attempt resolution.  

Making this kind of black-and-white statement makes this whole discussion pointless.


----------



## pemerton

shidaku said:


> That's terribly inaccurate and dishonest, and you know it.



I don't know it to be dishonest - I'm sincerely asserting it.



shidaku said:


> Reasonably speaking certain problems have certain solutions.  If you need to burn something you cannot freeze it.  If you need to de-ice something you cannot make a move silently check.



This is all true, but has no bearing on my remark to  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION].



shidaku said:


> If you want to try to kill the orc, you cannot do so with a heal check.



Equally true. And if you want to find a secret door you can't do it wihout a Search (or other appropriate) check. But again, that has no bearing on my remark to Lanefan.

The discussion between Lanefan and me is not about whether or not a Perception check is necessary to find a secret door. It's about whether or not there should be an additional, mediating step in action resolution, namely, the GM secretly deciding (by way of pre-authorship, or rolling a die, or whatever) whether or not a secret door "exists" to be found. _That is what I am calling a railroad_.

If the GM's preauthorship was about whether or not an orc will be killed in a combat, I think that nearly every ENworld poster would recognise it as a railroad (and the debate would turn into one about whether or not railroading, by way of fudging to keep NPCs alive, is a good or bad thing). I am asserting the same thing about searching for a secret door.

I recognise that not everyone agrees that the secret door case is a railroad. That's fine - it wouldn't be the only time people have had different aesthetic judgements. But the fact that others have different preferences doesn't change mine!


----------



## billd91

pemerton said:


> I don't know it to be dishonest - I'm sincerely asserting it.
> 
> This is all true, but has no bearing on my remark to  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION].
> 
> Equally true. And if you want to find a secret door you can't do it wihout a Search (or other appropriate) check. But again, that has no bearing on my remark to Lanefan.
> 
> The discussion between Lanefan and me is not about whether or not a Perception check is necessary to find a secret door. It's about whether or not there should be an additional, mediating step in action resolution, namely, the GM secretly deciding (by way of pre-authorship, or rolling a die, or whatever) whether or not a secret door "exists" to be found. _That is what I am calling a railroad_.
> 
> If the GM's preauthorship was about whether or not an orc will be killed in a combat, I think that nearly every ENworld poster would recognise it as a railroad (and the debate would turn into one about whether or not railroading, by way of fudging to keep NPCs alive, is a good or bad thing). I am asserting the same thing about searching for a secret door.
> 
> I recognise that not everyone agrees that the secret door case is a railroad. That's fine - it wouldn't be the only time people have had different aesthetic judgements. But the fact that others have different preferences doesn't change mine!




It does indicate that you have a highly idiosyncratic definition of railroad. If your definition of a railroad includes the fact that there's an element in the setting that exists independent of the players having their PCs actually interact with it, I'm not sure I can trust your ability to communicate this and other concepts in a manner where there's any form of mutual understanding.


----------



## Sunseeker

pemerton said:


> I don't know it to be dishonest - I'm sincerely asserting it.
> 
> This is all true, but has no bearing on my remark to  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION].
> 
> Equally true. And if you want to find a secret door you can't do it wihout a Search (or other appropriate) check. But again, that has no bearing on my remark to Lanefan.
> 
> The discussion between Lanefan and me is not about whether or not a Perception check is necessary to find a secret door. It's about whether or not there should be an additional, mediating step in action resolution, namely, the GM secretly deciding (by way of pre-authorship, or rolling a die, or whatever) whether or not a secret door "exists" to be found. _That is what I am calling a railroad_.
> 
> If the GM's preauthorship was about whether or not an orc will be killed in a combat, I think that nearly every ENworld poster would recognise it as a railroad (and the debate would turn into one about whether or not railroading, by way of fudging to keep NPCs alive, is a good or bad thing). I am asserting the same thing about searching for a secret door.
> 
> I recognise that not everyone agrees that the secret door case is a railroad. That's fine - it wouldn't be the only time people have had different aesthetic judgements. But the fact that others have different *preferences* doesn't change mine!




A statement about what a railroad _is_ is not a preference.  

And we are all very well versed that you are rather fixated on your own idea of how a game _should_ be run that it is detrimental because, as you just demonstrated, you cannot differentiate between a personal preference and an absolute statement on what makes a game.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I'm not sure how else to put this. _If the check succeeds, the players goal for his/her PC is realised_. If the aura-reading succeeds, _the feather has a trait that is suitable for dealing with a balrog_ (from memory, I think the PC was looking for Resistant to Fire). If the scavenging check in the tower succeeds, _the PC finds the mace he is searching for_. If the Circles check succeeds, _the PC meets up with a NPC of the nature s/he was looking for_.
> 
> The difference from asking the GM "Do I have any friends/contacts? Who are they?" or "What's around the corner?" or "Are there any interesting trinkets for sale?" is obvious.




I'm not sure how else to put this.  If the check succeeds, you make up stuff related to the goal.  If the players are making up details for the results of their own rolls, you are not needed as DM.  If they are not, they are declaring actions in order to get you to make up stuff.


----------



## pemerton

shidaku said:


> A statement about what a railroad _is_ is not a preference.



It's not _solely_ preference, in the sense that _railroad_ isn't a synonym for _bad game_ or _game I didn't enjoy_.

But preferences feed into judgements about railroading.



billd91 said:


> It does indicate that you have a highly idiosyncratic definition of railroad. If your definition of a railroad includes the fact that *there's an element in the setting that exists independent of the players having their PCs actually interact with it*, I'm not sure I can trust your ability to communicate this and other concepts in a manner where there's any form of mutual understanding.



I've bolded your central claim. It's not accurate. I didn't refer to such elements. These are a common part of framing.

I referred to the GM using secretly-established setting elements to determine the outcome of a declared action. This is not wildly idiosyncratic, either - after all, a whole school of RPG designers (Vincent Baker, Paul Czege, Ron Edwards, Christopher Kubasik, etc) desgined their games to avoid railroading in more-or-less the sense that I am using the notion.

And I don't think that the usage is that hard to understand: just consider how the GM goes about resolving the action declaration. If it involves setting a DC and the player making a roll (as per combat) - or whatever the equivalent is in some other system - then it is not what I am calling railroading. If it is the GM looking up some unrevealed aspect of the fictional situation that s/he established in advance - like a dungeon key that records whether or not a secret door is present; or a city description that tells us whether or not guards take bribes - then it is what I'm objecting to.

There are marginal cases - an invisible foe on the battlefield; the example skill challenge in the 4e DMG, where the duke doesn't take kindly to attempts at intimidation - and I posted about where I think the boundaries lie a long way upthread.


----------



## pemerton

shidaku said:


> you are rather fixated on your own idea of how a game _should_ be run



Only in response to a series of posters keep asserting that either (i) it is impossible or (ii) it is no different from a GM-worldbulding-heavy approach. (Some even assert both, which seems oddly contradictory.)


----------



## happyhermit

Oh hey, you're still here and dissecting my posts, did you miss this?;



happyhermit said:


> Strange question, didn't you say you used them in D&D, a game that assumes GM-worldbuilding to some degree? I have seen them used in many games, mostly D&D, though obviously not by name. If you mean a game that assumes some degree of GM-worldbuilding by default and includes "kickers" by default then the game that introduced the formalized concept, "Sorcerer" seems a good enough example.
> 
> Does this mean you can agree with the rest of the post? Because you mentioned kickers as a way to differentiate between stories the GM tells in a game with or without GM worldbuilding, it doesn't really do this because they can be used in either, but it still only addresses the singular example I used. By the definition you provided there are lots of other examples of GMs telling stories in a no-myth game.




Are you actually arguing that using kickers in a game with some degree of GM-worldbuilding is impossible? It isn't clear. 



pemerton said:


> Sorcerer is clearly not a game that involves GM worldbuilding of the sort described in the OP of this thread.




I don't see any sort of definition of GM-worldbuilding in the OP, but I remember now that you are using some very atypical and specific definitions. IIRC by "Gm-worldbuilding", you aren't referring to all Gm-worldbuilding or even all pre-game Gm-worldbuilding, but a specific subset of that. Sorcerer probably still meets that highly customized definition (which is essentially reverse engineered so that games like it don't fit the bill, which is fine but it really would be better to use a different term than try to co-opt an existing one), but I was referring to the original game and how it was run, not how it's viewed 10-20 years later. The designer and community have a different perspective on it now, games like it have led to some different understandings.



pemerton said:


> Thining of the kicker as "backstory", or as something that the GM uses to help drive the narrative, is (I think) missing some of the point.
> ...




Sure, that's why I didn't say "It's just backstory", I said "(often a sort of backstory)". Because that's often what it is, a very specific form of "backstory". Then I posted a quote and thread by the guy who coined the term where he is specifically trying to explain what it is. It's either funny or sad that I make about as neutral as possible of a post on an aspect of your favoured playstyle and you say "You are missing the point" and yet you seem to continually make terribly unrepresentative posts about other playstyles and don't think you are "missing the point" at all.


----------



## eayres33

Manbearcat said:


> @_*Ovinomancer*_
> 
> I don’t have the spare time to look up those 7 points (and the 8, 9 caveat extension), but here is what I’ve seen in terms of advocacy in the last few pages.
> 
> 1) It’s an activity from which some derive enjoyment as a stand-alone craft.
> 
> 2) It aids the cause of granular interaction with the gamestate so of-kind decision-points can be navigated for a certain player archetype.
> 
> 3) It aids extrapolation/inference for GMs whose games hew to a process-sim, hexcrawl ethos (who typically hack the rules a bit to aid this); related to 2. Also includes adjudication by way of secret (perhaps unknowable) backstory.
> 
> 4) It aids the passive setting/metaplot consumption/wonderment experience for certain player archetypes.
> 
> 5) It aids extrapolation/inference for GMs whose games hew to a hybrid of storyteller: process-sim ethos.
> 
> 6) Related to 4 and 5 above, it (along with resolution mechanics that are opaque and/or require heavy GM mediation) allows a GM to more easily exert covert Force (Illusionism) for players of persuasion (4); including adjudication by secret, unknowable backstory which may or may not exist (eg classic GM blocks against classic PC power plays).
> 
> 7) It ensures GMs will be interested in any content that is a fundamental part of play (“the GM is supposed to have fun too”).
> 
> 8) It fascilitates GMs in constraining the pace of play toward a granularly-intensive, more methodical (therefore slower) bent.
> 
> I think that covers it.




I'm still reading this thread but will call this out, you don't have the time to read through the points that you created, really, if they were good enough for us to all read and remember and comment on, maybe you should have taken the time to remember them. That is just lazy and for the many people that have  commented on your points or quoted them you owe them more than that. I think you and the OP are wrong on most of your points and hope to comment further when I get up to speed, but that is a lazy low blow you are trying to get away wit.


----------



## Sadras

pemerton said:


> And if you want to find a secret door you can't do it without a Search (or other appropriate) check.
> 
> The discussion between Lanefan and me is not about whether or not a Perception check is necessary to find a secret door. *It's about whether or not there should be an additional, mediating step in action resolution, namely, the GM secretly deciding* (by way of pre-authorship, or rolling a die, or whatever) *whether or not a secret door "exists" to be found.* _That is what I am calling a railroad_.
> 
> If the GM's preauthorship was about whether or not an orc will be killed in a combat, I think that nearly every ENworld poster would recognise it as a railroad (and the debate would turn into one about whether or not railroading, by way of fudging to keep NPCs alive, is a good or bad thing). I am asserting the same thing about searching for a secret door.




and



pemerton said:


> Yes. The most classic example in the history of RPGing would be "I try and kill the orc."
> 
> There is also a classic term to describe a game in which the players have to work out the GM-authored solution: it's called a railroad!




You seemed to have missed a massive step. 
You talk about the characters searching for a secret door. You NEVER refer to the character searching for an orc. The objects in both those situations are door and orc respectively. Your example jumps straight into the combat with the orc i.e. How we engage with the object once it is present. Why would you purposefully use such a disingenuous comparative example?

Are ALL your combat encounters introduced only on a failed roll?
Based on your play-examples, the answer would be a resounding no. So given your definition of a railroad (based on your above posts) - I guess we all railroad. 

In conclusion - No Myth Story Now and Worldbuilding Games are both railroads according to your definition. 

 @_*Lanefan*_, @_*shidaku*_ and @_*happyhermit*_ I wouldn't take offense.


----------



## billd91

pemerton said:


> It's not _solely_ preference, in the sense that _railroad_ isn't a synonym for _bad game_ or _game I didn't enjoy_.
> 
> But preferences feed into judgements about railroading.
> 
> I've bolded your central claim. It's not accurate. I didn't refer to such elements. These are a common part of framing.
> 
> I referred to the GM using secretly-established setting elements to determine the outcome of a declared action. This is not wildly idiosyncratic, either - after all, a whole school of RPG designers (Vincent Baker, Paul Czege, Ron Edwards, Christopher Kubasik, etc) desgined their games to avoid railroading in more-or-less the sense that I am using the notion.
> 
> And I don't think that the usage is that hard to understand: just consider how the GM goes about resolving the action declaration. If it involves setting a DC and the player making a roll (as per combat) - or whatever the equivalent is in some other system - then it is not what I am calling railroading. If it is the GM looking up some unrevealed aspect of the fictional situation that s/he established in advance - like a dungeon key that records whether or not a secret door is present; or a city description that tells us whether or not guards take bribes - then it is what I'm objecting to.




You may object to it as a style of play, but there's no connection between that and the definition of railroad. If the presence (or absence) of the secret door is recorded and independent of either the GM's or the player's desires for it to be there at the time and the GM isn't goading the players one way or the other, how can its presence (or absence) possibly limit the choices of the players? They can elect to search for it or not as absolutely freely as the players in your preferred style of game. The fact that they don't get to "author" that one is present by declaring a search attempt and successfully rolling whatever DC you as GM set for it is no indication that they've been railroaded by anybody (or anything as in the case of an adventure text).

Lack of opportunity to author particular details is not a railroad.


----------



## Simon T. Vesper

pemerton said:


> ...
> 
> But most contemporary D&D isn't played in the spirit of classic D&D: the players aren't trying to map a maze; when it comes to searching, perception and the like there is often an emphasis on PC skills (perception checks) rather than player game moves; there is no clear win condition like there used to be (ie getting the gold and thereby accruing XP).
> 
> In the classic game, alignment (and related aspects of character motivation) become components in, and establish the parameters of, the puzzle: if I find a prisoner in the dungeon, should I be rescuing her/him (after all, my PC is lawful and so I might suffer a GM-imposed penalty if I leave a helpless person behind)? Or is s/he really a succubus or medusa in disguise, trying to take advantage of my lawful foibles? ...
> 
> 
> ... in most contemporary play, character motivations (and alignment etc) aren't treated purely instrumentally in that waym as puzzle components and parameters. I'm expected to develop my character, and to care about his/her motivations, for their own sake. This is part of the standard picture of what it is to be a good RPGer.
> 
> So, given these difference between typical contemporary play and "classic" play, what is world building for?
> 
> ...




This may have already been addressed ~ there being 2,048 posts in the past three months ~ and if it has, my apologies for adding to the noise.

My take is a bit different.

The contemporary take on the game is... well, I don't want to say 'misguided,' but I'm struggling to find a less controversial way to put it.

Yes, players aren't necessarily playing _for the sole purpose_ of exploring a dungeon. No, there isn't a clear win condition like there used to be. I agree with these things because they are self-evident in nearly all versions of the game. Where I diverge is the view that players are "expected to develop" their characters, in terms of motivation, personality, likes/dislikes, etc.

In other words, I understand the contemporary view to be that we're playing a story-telling game and the players are expected to perform as actors, adopting the role of their character's personality, as though on a stage or something.

I don't think this is the purpose of the game. The purpose is to adopt a role ~ typically one that can be summed up in a few words, like "elven wizard," or "deposed dwarven noble" ~ to identify goals for one's self and one's adventuring party, and then to try and achieve those goals in the context of the game's setting (with the DM serving as both arbiter and adversary). Role-playing in the sense of acting, character development and identification with your character are things that happen naturally as a byproduct of being human; and they are a compelling draw to the game because of how that identification makes us feel when we take risks and either succeed or fail; but the _purpose_ of the game is to challenge ourselves and take those risks in the first place.

In that context, world-building provides the DM with a pool of resources to draw upon in order to present an engaging and challenging environment to the players.


----------



## Maxperson

Sadras said:


> and
> 
> 
> 
> You seemed to have missed a massive step.
> You talk about the characters searching for a secret door. You NEVER refer to the character searching for an orc. The objects in both those situations are door and orc respectively. Your example jumps straight into the combat with the orc i.e. How we engage with the object once it is present. Why would you purposefully use such a disingenuous comparative example?
> 
> Are ALL your combat encounters introduced only on a failed roll?
> Based on your play-examples, the answer would be a resounding no. So given your definition of a railroad (based on your above posts) - I guess we all railroad.
> 
> In conclusion - No Myth Story Now and Worldbuilding Games are both railroads according to your definition.
> 
> @_*Lanefan*_, @_*shidaku*_ and @_*happyhermit*_ I wouldn't take offense.




 @_*pemerton*_'s entire style is a railroad, which might explain why he doesn't recognize that.  The Story Now style involves the players setting goals(rails) and the DM doing everything in hos power to keeping the PCs on those rails by making everything in some way important to those goals.  Since his style involves the players wanting to be on the rails, the railroading is a good thing in this instance.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Oh, goodie, we're back to yelling railroad at each other using highly dubious and entirely idiosyncratic definitions.


----------



## Ovinomancer

happyhermit said:


> Oh hey, you're still here and dissecting my posts, did you miss this?;
> 
> 
> 
> Are you actually arguing that using kickers in a game with some degree of GM-worldbuilding is impossible? It isn't clear.
> 
> 
> 
> I don't see any sort of definition of GM-worldbuilding in the OP, but I remember now that you are using some very atypical and specific definitions. IIRC by "Gm-worldbuilding", you aren't referring to all Gm-worldbuilding or even all pre-game Gm-worldbuilding, but a specific subset of that. Sorcerer probably still meets that highly customized definition (which is essentially reverse engineered so that games like it don't fit the bill, which is fine but it really would be better to use a different term than try to co-opt an existing one), but I was referring to the original game and how it was run, not how it's viewed 10-20 years later. The designer and community have a different perspective on it now, games like it have led to some different understandings.
> 
> 
> 
> Sure, that's why I didn't say "It's just backstory", I said "(often a sort of backstory)". Because that's often what it is, a very specific form of "backstory". Then I posted a quote and thread by the guy who coined the term where he is specifically trying to explain what it is. It's either funny or sad that I make about as neutral as possible of a post on an aspect of your favoured playstyle and you say "You are missing the point" and yet you seem to continually make terribly unrepresentative posts about other playstyles and don't think you are "missing the point" at all.



Welcome to discussion with pemerton.  The goal of the discussion is to figure out how he's defined the words he's using to mean.  Generally, assuming he's trying to use any negative term (railroading, etc) it will be to describe other play styles than his.  If it's a positive word, then it's will be defined to only sorry his plausible and not others.

Examples:

Worldbuilding:  anything that exists that is used to say no to player action declarations except those things pemerton uses to say no.

Agency:  the ability to declare an action that the GM cannot say no to.

Railroading:  any time the GM says no to an action declaration, unless it's a thing pemerton says no to.


----------



## happyhermit

Ovinomancer said:


> Oh, goodie, we're back to yelling railroad at each other using highly dubious and entirely idiosyncratic definitions.




Stop railroading this discussion!

I can't really help but feel this whole thread was a bit of a bait and switch though, honestly. I entered it thinking it was about discussing an important aspect of ttrpgs, the OT and OP asked some reasonable questions. The OP didn't actually want hear any answers though, the questions were all rhetorical and merely there to be answered with "Wrong, it's actually just for the GM to tell stories." and when exceptions or other ways of looking at it come up the OP says "No I didn't mean that kinda thing". Sounds a lot like a GM railroad with a bit of bait and switch thrown in for good measure. 

Sure I said we were going to play a game of The One Ring, but that's not actually any fun, let me explain why. What I actually meant was that I would read the Hobbit to you, because it doesn't have all that boring interaction between us and I don't have to actually consider anything you say.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ilbranteloth said:


> The purpose is the same - to share cool things. We just go about it differently.




I think the difference OTOH is how we determine what is 'cool'. You seem to create a long list of things and situations, in the hope that some subset of them are going to be cool to the players. I just ask them! They tell me what is cool and I deliver coolness. FOR ME this seems a lot more efficient


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Tony Vargas said:


> That's the thing about feelings, they can be pretty subjective & contextual.  If you've gamed a lot using one technique, defended it against undue criticisms a lot, and become invested in it and proprietary about it, you can turn around and be just as unduly critical of any alternative.  And, part of that will be the unique, irreproducible, 'feel' you get from it.  (What?  Try something else?  Blasphemy!)



Interesting, but then I think it is pretty fair for me to claim to have more experience with all sorts of techniques of play, genre, games, players, etc. than almost anyone else here  I mean, I am not saying this to brag and try to claim that my opinion is better than other people's opinions, all I'm trying to say is I don't approach this from any kind of position of ignorance, about most anything that is core to RPGs. 

In fact, the techniques I'm espousing almost certainly represent a MINORITY of the experience I've had as both a GM and a player, by a pretty fair margin. Its hard to draw lines exactly and say with surety which game qualifies as what, but I feel like my opinion is founded in an appreciation of technique which arises out of an *evolution* of technique. In other words I experienced (indeed to some extent helped establish) patterns of play and then experienced their limitations, and iteratively modified those techniques in different directions until I systematically arrived at what worked best. 

I'm not trying to push it on anyone or be 'biased'. I just see statements made in a lot of cases that grossly contradict extensive experience. Its hard not to point that out! At a certain point, particularly when discussing things with players who appear to have dug themselves irrevocably into a fixed pattern of play, I have to conclude that some of the things they say are based on a narrow viewpoint and don't reflect experience with other techniques, and perhaps a base of experience with a limited set of self-selecting people who share their experiences. 

Again, this isn't meant to be dismissive of anyone, just when something comes up, like [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] stating that players want to have all sorts of elaborate information about their starting location before they do anything, I am at a loss. After 42 years of GMing this never came up, not in probably 30 campaigns and dozens of groups. How can it be nearly universal? I just don't understand!.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think the difference OTOH is how we determine what is 'cool'. You seem to create a long list of things and situations, in the hope that some subset of them are going to be cool to the players. I just ask them! They tell me what is cool and I deliver coolness. FOR ME this seems a lot more efficient




And so do I. Like I’ve said multiple times, much of my notes are to help me when the plays say, “I do x” and nothing immediately comes to mind. In addition, when you have time to consider things you’ll often come up with better ideas than just in the moment. 

I find that the quality of cool increases significantly for me when I am able to provide additional inputs to my improv and reactions to what the players/characters say and do. 

And no, making a list has nothing to do with what I or others consider cool. Lists and such are a process, a tool to help produce the content. 

The only way to determine whether the content is cool is in your interactions and communication with the players, along with your own assessment of what’s cool to you.


----------



## pemerton

billd91 said:


> If the presence (or absence) of the secret door is recorded and independent of either the GM's or the player's desires for it to be there at the time and the GM isn't goading the players one way or the other, how can its presence (or absence) possibly limit the choices of the players?



I'm not sure if you intend this as a rhetorical question or not. I will treat it as non-rhetorical, and answer it. To the extent that you intended it rhetorically, you'll probably think my answer inadequate - sometimes that happens in discussions among human beings!

Here's the sort of thing I have in mind - it's a bit underdescribed but hopefully clear enough to get us on the same page in respect of it:

<the prior events of play, together with GM narration, establish (i) that the PCs are in a stone building facing some bare walls, (ii) thay the PCs are being pursued through the building, and (iii) leave it open what might be behind the walls in question>

Player: "There might be a secret door that we could escape through in one of those bare walls - I seach for signs of one."

GM: "Make a [Perception, Search, Architecture, as appropriate to system] check."

<player makes check>

<GM consults notes, notes that the notes describe these walls as nothing more than plain walls with no secret doors in them>

GM: "You don't find any signs of secret doors."​
Here's why I characterise this as a railroad.

We don't know exactly how it has come about that the PCs are being pursued through the buiilding - most typically, I think, that would be a consequence resulting from some recent bit of past play. But in any event, that pursuit is now the salient pressure on the PCs (and hence the players) in the game. In response to that pressue, this particular player has expressed an interest in the fiction developing in a certain direction - namely, that his/her PC finds signs of a secret door in the bare wall, so that the PCs might escape though it.

Now, because we're playing a game with "moves" and dice and stuff, rather than just round-robin storytelling, the player's desire about the fiction doesn't happen automatically. Rather, the player declares an action for his/her PC that folows from that desire. Success in that action declaration will meant that the player gets want s/he wants vis-a-vis the fiction (ie the PC finds signs of a secret door); failure means s/he won't.

(Note that this action declaration satisfies other typical constraints on player-side moves in a FRPG. For instnace, it is declared from the first-person perspective of the PC. And it's a well-establshed trope of fantasy gaming that bare stone walls can in fact have secret doors in them.)

In the example I've given, the player's action declaration does not succeed, but not because s/he rolled too low on the dice. (This contrasts with a failed attack roll.) It fails because the GM has _already decicded_ that it can't succeed.

That is the limit on the players' choice - his/her choice to have escape occur by way of secret door has been vetoed by the GM, by application of the prior worldbuilding/setting authorship. That is why I call it a railroad.

For completeness, I've written a further comment; because it's tangential, I've sblocked it.

[sblock]There is a completley different style of play, which is not about _salient pressure on the PCs_ but is about _puzzling out the maze designed by the GM, so as to extract loot from it_. The OP distinguished the two styles of play; the latter is associated with classic D&D dungeoncrawling,. I don't think the notion of _railroading_ has any work at all to do in describing that sort of RPGing, because the game isn't about developing a ficiton at all; that's just a side effect of the players declaring moves that allow them to map out the dungeon and locate and recover the treasures. In this style of play there can be well- and poorly-desigend dungeons (eg too linear, or too many pit traps, or too little treasure relative to difficulty); and fair and unfair refereeing (eg rules that the monsters always find the PCs while resting, no matter what precautions the players take to reduce the risk of being found). But no railroading [/sblock]



Maxperson said:


> If the check succeeds, you make up stuff related to the goal. If the players are making up details for the results of their own rolls, you are not needed as DM. If they are not, they are declaring actions in order to get you to make up stuff.



You seem to have missed the way that "say 'yes' or roll the dice" actually works.

If the GM calls for a check and the check succeeds, then the player's intent is realised, and so the only work the GM did was to contribute to the framing, to call for a check in response to the action declaration, and to set the DC. It is _the player_'s desire for the fiction that comes to pass (just the same as in combat: a successful disarm roll, for instance, isn't just a cue to the GM to make something up: it establishes a definite outcome in the fiction, namely, that the foe is disarmed).

If the check fails, the player's intent is not realised, and rather the GM narrates some consequence which, ideally (ie from the pont of view of a satisfactory aesthetic experience), was implicit in the framing of the situation In this latter case, the GM does all the work done for a successful check, plus has to establish and narrate the consequence of failure.

The role of the GM is therefore pretty clear, I think.



Maxperson said:


> The Story Now style involves the players setting goals(rails) and the DM doing everything in hos power to keeping the PCs on those rails by making everything in some way important to those goals.



You are, I think, the only person I've ever met who thinks that saying "yes" to someone's request is railroading them!

But in any event, what you say is not accurate, because it ignores the narration of consequences for failure. These obviously should have thematic/dramatic significance, but will constitute _obstacles_ to the PCs realising their goals. Likewise the framing of situations that don't follow from failure, but have the goal of provoking dramatic/thematic choices by the players for their PCs: these will be _obstacles_ to the PCs' goals.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> What I describe isn't particularly about "setting tourism."



 It seemed like you were aluding to the extremes of world-building techniques where it could become dysfunctional.



pemerton said:


> But it is still about the players declaring moves that trigger the GM to tell them things that the GM (or other author) made up about the setting.
> 
> My impression - from reading rulebooks, from reading blogs, from reading these boards - is that this sort of thing is pretty common in RPGing, especially contemporary D&D play..



 Sure, but so what? It's not like _anyone's _telling a story in that mode. A story might come out of it in retrospect....


----------



## Tony Vargas

AbdulAlhazred said:


> At a certain point, particularly when discussing things with players who appear to have dug themselves irrevocably into a fixed pattern of play, I have to conclude that some of the things they say are based on a narrow viewpoint and don't reflect experience with other techniques, and perhaps a base of experience with a limited set of self-selecting people who share their experiences.



 Nod.  I was making a similar observation, from another angle.  Discussions like this go back to Role v Roll and three-fold theory,  and the general animus against D&D at that time, and indeed to criticisms of before and since.  
The defensiveness is understandable.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> You seem to have missed the way that "say 'yes' or roll the dice" actually works.
> 
> If the GM calls for a check and the check succeeds, then the player's intent is realised, and so the only work the GM did was to contribute to the framing, to call for a check in response to the action declaration, and to set the DC. It is _the player_'s desire for the fiction that comes to pass (just the same as in combat: a successful disarm roll, for instance, isn't just a cue to the GM to make something up: it establishes a definite outcome in the fiction, namely, that the foe is disarmed).




No, I didn't miss that you have complete discretion on HOW that intent is realized.  You can pick any way you choose that meets his intent, and there will usually be many ways.  Your player is declaring an action in order to get you to say stuff.  Either you say stuff dealing with a failed roll, or you say stuff that meets his intent.  He still has to wait on you to say stuff and declare actions to hear what you have to say.


----------



## billd91

pemerton said:


> I'm not sure if you intend this as a rhetorical question or not. I will treat it as non-rhetorical, and answer it. To the extent that you intended it rhetorically, you'll probably think my answer inadequate - sometimes that happens in discussions among human beings!
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Here's why I characterise this as a railroad.
> 
> We don't know exactly how it has come about that the PCs are being pursued through the buiilding - most typically, I think, that would be a consequence resulting from some recent bit of past play. But in any event, that pursuit is now the salient pressure on the PCs (and hence the players) in the game. In response to that pressue, this particular player has expressed an interest in the fiction developing in a certain direction - namely, that his/her PC finds signs of a secret door in the bare wall, so that the PCs might escape though it.
> 
> Now, because we're playing a game with "moves" and dice and stuff, rather than just round-robin storytelling, the player's desire about the fiction doesn't happen automatically. Rather, the player declares an action for his/her PC that folows from that desire. Success in that action declaration will meant that the player gets want s/he wants vis-a-vis the fiction (ie the PC finds signs of a secret door); failure means s/he won't.
> 
> (Note that this action declaration satisfies other typical constraints on player-side moves in a FRPG. For instnace, it is declared from the first-person perspective of the PC. And it's a well-establshed trope of fantasy gaming that bare stone walls can in fact have secret doors in them.)
> 
> In the example I've given, the player's action declaration does not succeed, but not because s/he rolled too low on the dice. (This contrasts with a failed attack roll.) It fails because the GM has _already decicded_ that it can't succeed.
> 
> That is the limit on the players' choice - his/her choice to have escape occur by way of secret door has been vetoed by the GM, by application of the prior worldbuilding/setting authorship. That is why I call it a railroad.




Telling a player that something is impossible or doesn't work without a check isn't a railroad. That you personally prefer to have outcomes determined by dice doesn't mean that outcomes that aren't determined by dice are railroads or that you should use that pejorative term for them. That's just you being a dick. 

Is it a railroad if the PCs hear something coming down the dungeon hall at them, they lob a fireball or other incendiary at it, only to find it's a fire elemental and it was immune to fire? Certainly both of those events - an unidentified creature coming down the hall, and PCs lobbing some kind of fiery attack at them - are within the typical constraints of moves in a FRPG.


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> it is still about the players declaring moves that trigger the GM to tell them things that the GM (or other author) made up about the setting.
> 
> My impression - from reading rulebooks, from reading blogs, from reading these boards - is that this sort of thing is pretty common in RPGing, especially contemporary D&D play..
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Sure, but so what? It's not like _anyone's _telling a story in that mode.
Click to expand...


Well, someone _is_ describing a series of imaginary places and events to entertain their friends. That seems like a form of storytelling.

And if that's an important part of the point of GM-worldbuilding - ie it's to provide fiction that will be entertaining - then that's worth noting. Some posters much earlier in the thread, made this point; but others seemed committed to denying that worldbuilding is about narrating a fiction at all! It's that latter claim that makes no real sense to me.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If the GM calls for a check and the check succeeds, then the player's intent is realised
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No, I didn't miss that you have complete discretion on HOW that intent is realized.  You can pick any way you choose that meets his intent, and there will usually be many ways.
Click to expand...


You are just making this up.

From BW Gold (pp 24-25, 30):

Let’s start with the core of the Burning Wheel system. We call it “Intent and Task.” . . .

What do you want do and why do you want your character to do it? . . .

When a player states “I kill him!” we know his intent. By describing how his character will undertake this intent, he defines the task. Clearly stating and linking the task and intent allows player and GM to determine what ability needs to be tested. . . .

A task is a measurable, finite and quantifiable act performed by a character: attacking someone with a sword, studying a scroll or resting in an abbey. A task describes how you accomplish your intent. . . .

[W]hat happens after the dice have come to rest and the successes are counted? If the successes equal or exceed the obstacle, the character has succeeded in his goal - he achieved his intent and completed the task. . . .

A successful roll is sacrosanct in Burning Wheel and neither GM nor other players can change the fact that the act was successful. The GM may only embellish or reinforce a successful ability test.​
In other words, it is the _player_ who establishes what happens in the fiction as the reasult of a successful check.

From the MHRP rulebook (pp OM46, OM50):

As a player, when it’s time for your *action*, you need to make your intent as clear as possible to the Watcher and other players before you even pick up the dice. If you’ve said what you want to do, make sure you’re suggesting what you want out of the action. . . . Knowing what you want if you succeed and what you think will happen if you don’t is key to the next step. . . .

Once you have the two totals (action and reaction) you can compare them to each other. You’re looking to see if your opponent’s reaction total is greater than your action total. If this is the case, your action fails. . . .

*If the reaction total is equal to or lower than your action total, your action succeeds.* You can use your effect die to create an *effect*: stress, an asset, or a complication.​
Again, it is the _player_ who establishes the consequences (in the ficiton, and their mechanical expression) if a check is successful.

From the DitV rulebook (p 54):

To launch a conflict, we begin by establishing what’s at stake, setting the stage, and figuring out who’s participating. Every participating player [which may include the GM if its not PC vs PC] takes up dice to match the circumstances and throws them down all at once. From there on, the conflict plays out kind of like the betting in poker. One player “raises” by having a character act and putting forward two dice to back it up, and all of the other players whose characters are affected by the act have to put forward dice of their own to “see.” When you use dice to Raise and See they’re gone: put them back in the bowl and don’t use them again in this conflict. . . .

Anyone who has too few dice to See when they have to — and can’t or won’t escalate — is out of the conflict. Whoever’s left at the end gets to decide the fate of what’s at stake.​
If the player of a PC wins the conflict, that player gets to decide the fate of what's at stake. The GM has no discretion here.

As I said, your assertion that the GM has discretion to narrate the outcome of a success is just made up. That may be true in some RPGs (eg I'm sure that the 2nd ed AD&D rulebooks say something like this). It may be accepted at some tables. It is not consistent with "say 'yes' or roll the dice".


----------



## pemerton

billd91 said:


> Telling a player that something is impossible or doesn't work without a check isn't a railroad.



Nor did I say that it is. I added additional qualifiers. I didn't make the qualifiers up arbitrarily. They follow from a whole line of RPG design and play.



billd91 said:


> Is it a railroad if the PCs hear something coming down the dungeon hall at them, they lob a fireball or other incendiary at it, only to find it's a fire elemental and it was immune to fire? Certainly both of those events - an unidentified creature coming down the hall, and PCs lobbing some kind of fiery attack at them - are within the typical constraints of moves in a FRPG.



I'm not that interested in what is "typical", given that "typical" constraints of moves in a RPG include the GM having permission to declare the search for a secret door a failure on the basis that the GM's notes do not record the presence of any such wall in the door.

As to whether or not the example you give is a railroad, it depends very heavily on context. As I said not far upthread, there are marginal cases, and much earlier in this thread I indicated my views about where the boundaries lie.

Here's my question to you: _why_ do you think it's OK for the GM to declare the search for a secret door a failure indpendently of the check, but not think it's OK for the GM to declare the attack against the orc a failure independelty of the check (eg maybe the GM's notes record that _this orc won't die the first time it is met, but will always evade and escape_ - I have come across modules with that sort of thing in them).

Now, if the answer is you think that the same approach to the Orc _is_ OK, well fine - the world is populated by different people with different tastes - but are you really surprised that someone else might think that's a railroad?

But if you (as I think is more common among ENworld RPGers) would regard that treatment of an attack on the orc as a railroad, why are you so incensed by the same thing being suggested of a like treatment of the search for a secret door as an escape route?


----------



## happyhermit

pemerton said:


> You are just making this up.
> 
> From BW Gold (pp 24-25, 30):
> 
> Let’s start with the core of the Burning Wheel system. We call it “Intent and Task.” . . .
> ...
> In other words, it is the _player_ who establishes what happens in the fiction as the reasult of a successful check.
> ...
> As I said, your assertion that the GM has discretion to narrate the outcome of a success is just made up. That may be true in some RPGs (eg I'm sure that the 2nd ed AD&D rulebooks say something like this). It may be accepted at some tables. It is not consistent with "say 'yes' or roll the dice".​





Only going to address BW specifically because I have the same book in front of me ATM, but there is a fair amount of GM discretion in narrating the outcome of success (more-so with failures). The example given under success for instance; 



> "Your insults are heard flung across the room. Some eyebrows are raised. He stops walking away from you and turns, red in the face. It seems you have a moment in which you are the center of attention."
> ...
> The GM imbellishes on the result with the successful test. The target is humiliated and *the GM tells the player how.*




It's probably also worth mentioning (since I blew the dust off this thing) that in BW, the player's ability to make the test in the first place is ultimately at the GM's discretion. ie; 



> Sometimes a player will wish to have his character roll dice for something at an inappropriate juncture in play. It is the GM's role to pace events and keep play flowing evenly. Therefore, he can have a player hold off on making a test until the appropriated time or have him stay his hand entirely




You know actually, upon re-reading I am not even seeing anything in the rules to indicate that the players should rolling a test to find a secret door that wasn't already established to exist. The examples given involve interacting with things already established. If the GM doesn't think there's a door to be found it would be a DoF roll which comes with caveats;



> The dispute must surround something reasonable and feasible within the game context. A player cannot make a stand for beam weaponry in the Duke's toilet and hope to get a DoF roll.




So if the GM determines it's reasonable the player gets a 1/6 chance of it happening.​


----------



## pemerton

happyhermit said:


> You know actually, upon re-reading I am not even seeing anything in the rules to indicate that the players should rolling a test to find a secret door that wasn't already established to exist. The examples given involve interacting with things already established.



This is the province of Wises and similar skills. (In the Adventure Burner, I think it is Architecture skill that is referenced in the context of trying to learn of a secret entrance into a fortress.)



happyhermit said:


> Only going to address BW specifically because I have the same book in front of me ATM, but there is a fair amount of GM discretion in narrating the outcome of success (more-so with failures). The example given under success for instance



Here's the full example (BW Gold, p 31):

The most important criteria for passing a test is that play moves in the direction of the success, even if only momentarily.

“I want to humiliate him. They can’ t ignore me!” shouts Andy, enraged.

“How?” inquires the GM.

“I raise my voice and insult him in front of the entire party. I use my Conspicuous skill.”

“Roll. Your obstacle is 3 to gain the attention of the crowd and be heard. Extra successes will go toward incensing them with the spectacle.”

“Four successes.” 

“Your insults are heard flung across the room. Some eyebrows are raised. He stops walking away from you and turns, red in the face. It seems you have a moment in which you are the center of attention.”​
In this example, the player states his intent and task straight away: humiliate his opponent using shouts and insults while testing his Conspicuous skill. The GM embellishes on the result with the successful test. The target is humiliated and the GM tells the player how.​
Here's further commentary (most recently published in The Codex, pp 114, 119):

Success in Buring Wheel is rather straightforward, almost rigid. You get what you ask for. Neither the GM nor the other players can impede or negate that result. . . .

The player's intent is made manifets and he descirbes his character's actions. . . . Wheny they complete their inevitably entertaining descriptions, I try to embellish a little. I try to add in reactions or other details. Adding a small detail can really help. It maes great success even more vivid and memorable. There's something special about collaborating to describe a brilliant victory.

If I'm unsure of where a player is going with his description of success, I'll back off and ask a few quick questions . . . Rather than stepping on his victorious toes, I try to create room for him to make a statement. . . .

The player accomplishes his intent. Describe the result. Honor it with an engaging illumination. Make it special.​
The GM is subservient to the player in embellishing. S/he does not enjoy the sort of discretion that [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] has suggested.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> You are just making this up.
> 
> From BW Gold (pp 24-25, 30):
> 
> Let’s start with the core of the Burning Wheel system. We call it “Intent and Task.” . . .
> 
> What do you want do and why do you want your character to do it? . . .
> 
> When a player states “I kill him!” we know his intent. By describing how his character will undertake this intent, he defines the task. Clearly stating and linking the task and intent allows player and GM to determine what ability needs to be tested. . . .
> 
> A task is a measurable, finite and quantifiable act performed by a character: attacking someone with a sword, studying a scroll or resting in an abbey. A task describes how you accomplish your intent. . . .
> 
> [W]hat happens after the dice have come to rest and the successes are counted? If the successes equal or exceed the obstacle, the character has succeeded in his goal - he achieved his intent and completed the task. . . .
> 
> A successful roll is sacrosanct in Burning Wheel and neither GM nor other players can change the fact that the act was successful. *The GM may only embellish or reinforce a successful ability test*.​
> In other words, it is the _player_ who establishes what happens in the fiction as the reasult of a successful check.




You do realize that you just backed me up, not you, right?  I said that there will "usually be many ways", and there usually will.  Something extremely simple like swinging a sword or reading a scroll falls outside of the "usually" provision.  Something like a use arcana to check the feather to see if it is useful falls into the bolded portion of the rules you just quoted.  His intent is to see if it's useful.  YOU get to make it useful in any way you feel like as that accomplishes his intent.  The player awaits your decision on HOW it's useful.  I

In other words, he has declared an action in order to get you to say stuff.



> From the MHRP rulebook (pp OM46, OM50):
> 
> As a player, when it’s time for your *action*, you need to make your intent as clear as possible to the Watcher and other players before you even pick up the dice. If you’ve said what you want to do, make sure you’re suggesting what you want out of the action. . . . Knowing what you want if you succeed and what you think will happen if you don’t is key to the next step. . . .
> 
> Once you have the two totals (action and reaction) you can compare them to each other. You’re looking to see if your opponent’s reaction total is greater than your action total. If this is the case, your action fails. . . .
> 
> *If the reaction total is equal to or lower than your action total, your action succeeds.* You can use your effect die to create an *effect*: stress, an asset, or a complication.​
> Again, it is the _player_ who establishes the consequences (in the ficiton, and their mechanical expression) if a check is successful.




This is little different from the first one above.  The clear intent was to see if the feather was useful.  The consequences were useful feather.  The DM gets to say HOW it's useful.  At least as far as the quote above reads anyway.  If that's not the case and the player is describing both success and failure for every action towards every goal, then the game doesn't need a DM.  Just have another player roll the dice and make decisions for opponents that are created by players.  



> From the DitV rulebook (p 54):
> 
> To launch a conflict, we begin by establishing what’s at stake, setting the stage, and figuring out who’s participating. Every participating player [which may include the GM if its not PC vs PC] takes up dice to match the circumstances and throws them down all at once. From there on, the conflict plays out kind of like the betting in poker. One player “raises” by having a character act and putting forward two dice to back it up, and all of the other players whose characters are affected by the act have to put forward dice of their own to “see.” When you use dice to Raise and See they’re gone: put them back in the bowl and don’t use them again in this conflict. . . .
> 
> Anyone who has too few dice to See when they have to — and can’t or won’t escalate — is out of the conflict. Whoever’s left at the end gets to decide the fate of what’s at stake.​
> If the player of a PC wins the conflict, that player gets to decide the fate of what's at stake. The GM has no discretion here.
> 
> As I said, your assertion that the GM has discretion to narrate the outcome of a success is just made up. That may be true in some RPGs (eg I'm sure that the 2nd ed AD&D rulebooks say something like this). It may be accepted at some tables. It is not consistent with "say 'yes' or roll the dice".




You seem to have found a game where the DM is useless and the players make everything up.  Yay?  First, one game out of four(I'm including D&D since that's the primary focus of this conversation) doesn't really change what I said.  If the players are making up all of the details of both successes and failures for their actions, you aren't needed for that game.  There's no real point to having a DM.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> You seem to have found a game where the DM is useless



This is (ostensibly) a reply to a post which actually set out (part of) the role of the GM in DitV.

I think it's very telling that once the role of the GM is not to manage secret backstory, but rather to establish situation and play the opposition within that situation, you describe the GM as "useless".

What you call the "useless" GM is what I call the _non-railroading_ GM.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Yup....useless or railroading, the only two types of GMs that there may be. So sad that there can't be some middle ground and that instead, everyone's game stinks because it's one extreme or the other.


----------



## billd91

pemerton said:


> Nor did I say that it is. I added additional qualifiers. I didn't make the qualifiers up arbitrarily. They follow from a whole line of RPG design and play.




And yet, there you were, saying that it would be a railroad because, when faced with a PC searching for secret doors, the GM referred to the map of the room and told him that no secret door had been found because it relied on the pre-established map (aka "backstory") rather than the player's rolled check. The fact that there is such a thing as secret doors and they are reasonably appropriate to the fantasy RPG setting doesn't make adhering to the pre-established room design a railroad no matter how hard the player wants there to be one. This is not a case of the GM forcing the PCs down the GM's preferred path. In fact, many GMs prefer to use such pre-established facts, set long before the PCs got into the situation of fleeing pursuit, to *avoid* railroading the PCs (either in or against their favor) - using the pre-established facts as the authority control so that they can be more impartial rather than succumb to the temptation to go soft on them or stick it to them.




pemerton said:


> I'm not that interested in what is "typical", given that "typical" constraints of moves in a RPG include the GM having permission to declare the search for a secret door a failure on the basis that the GM's notes do not record the presence of any such wall in the door.
> 
> As to whether or not the example you give is a railroad, it depends very heavily on context. As I said not far upthread, there are marginal cases, and much earlier in this thread I indicated my views about where the boundaries lie.
> 
> Here's my question to you: _why_ do you think it's OK for the GM to declare the search for a secret door a failure indpendently of the check, but not think it's OK for the GM to declare the attack against the orc a failure independelty of the check (eg maybe the GM's notes record that _this orc won't die the first time it is met, but will always evade and escape_ - I have come across modules with that sort of thing in them).
> 
> Now, if the answer is you think that the same approach to the Orc _is_ OK, well fine - the world is populated by different people with different tastes - but are you really surprised that someone else might think that's a railroad?
> 
> But if you (as I think is more common among ENworld RPGers) would regard that treatment of an attack on the orc as a railroad, why are you so incensed by the same thing being suggested of a like treatment of the search for a secret door as an escape route?




The reason I accept that GM declaring a search attempt a failure because of the pre-established map isn't a railroad is because when I'm playing, I expect that my PC will be able to affect the world around him primarily though *his* actions. If my PC would like a secret door to be there when there isn't already, I expect that I'll need to either get out the tools and *make* one or get out the purse and pay someone more skilled than my PC to do so (or, potentially, use magic or some other power). I expect that the presence of secret doors is based on the internal logic of the location - its "backstory" if you will - not my needs at the time my PC encounters the room. If my PC is being pursued and I run into a dead end, then I run into a dead end. My choices, entered into the campaign via my PC, have put me there. The internal logic and structure of the situation may hinder the choices available to me at any one time, but I can accept that because, though secret doors are a thing in FRPGs, they aren't a thing on every wall or in ever chamber in a FRPG. They're there based on the needs of the location builder/owner, not my PC's needs as he evades pursuit.

Some of us work pretty hard at coming up with situations and locations that have a certain internal logic to them that works, that makes sense, that clever and observant players can figure out or explore to the point it makes sense to them. We also work pretty hard at being impartial toward the players and their PCs - not taking it personally when they thwart the plans of our BBEGs, boss monsters, and even their rank and file mooks and not forcing them into a story we're pre-written - but rather allowing them to decide what they want to do and exploring how the chips fall from there given the other gears working in the background. And then you come along with a *loaded term* like railroad to describe something as minor as using the map key to determine if a search check can succeed. And you wonder why people get incensed?


----------



## Arilyn

The term railroading has in recent years come off the rails (heh heh). It has become an insult players fling at each other, when in disagreement over playstyles. Railroading is usually a rookie mistake, and I doubt many posters actually engage in it.
Railroading is:

GM: That dwarf in the corner is insulting elves. You fling your ale mug at him.
Player: What? I'm not going to start a fight.
GM: You hit him in the head, and then his half-orc buddy leaps right at you.
Player: My mug is still in my hand...

GM: You open the door, and there's your ex-husband!
Player: What ex-husband?
GM: You kicked him out 5 years ago for being verbally abusive and a cheat.
Player: But, I don't know anything about this...

Player: Wait, what? He can't be the killer. We know for a fact, he was in Austria at the time.
GM: He snuck back to Canada.
Player: In 15 minutes?
GM: So, now he's threatening your ex-husband!

Railroading is not pre-written adventures. Railroading is not world building. Railroading is not "going where the action is."  Railroading is simply the GM deciding actions for the players, or forcing a preconceived result no matter what the players do, or whether it makes sense anymore. Nobody in this thread is guilty of railroading. 

I'm enjoying the debate, but could do without the trains.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Carl Olson said:


> In other words, I understand the contemporary view to be that we're playing a story-telling game and the players are expected to perform as actors, adopting the role of their character's personality, as though on a stage or something.



 I'd say that's closer to the 90s view.



> I don't think this is the purpose of the game.



 The purpose of the game was small-scale fantasy wargaming.  ;P

The current purpose of the game is to rehabilitate a brand tarnished by fan tantrums, by treading that always-difficult tightrope between appealing to (or at least not actively repulsing) potential new fans, and appeasing old ones.  Every property that started out selling mainly to a 'cult following' has that problem at some point.  



pemerton said:


> Well, someone _is_ describing a series of imaginary places and events to entertain their friends. That seems like a form of storytelling.



 In context (which I believe was traditional D&D), at best arguably /part/ of a form of 'storytelling' - in the 90s RPGs-should-actually-be-collective-storytelling-exercises wolfie sense.  The DM does describe imaginary nouns, and maybe even an imaginary situation they're in, the player then interact with that, said interaction being handled by an inconsistent mix of DM fiat and dysfunctional mechanical resolution.

In some rare instances, the result might, in retrospect, be recounted (perhaps with the aid of some rose-colored corrective lenses) as a reasonably entertaining story.  Though, more often, it's just annoying to listen to someone recounting their D&D character's exploits.  The process is not a story, it's more like a rather complicated and picturesque shell game.



> And if that's an important part of the point of GM-worldbuilding - ie it's to provide fiction that will be entertaining - then that's worth noting. Some posters much earlier in the thread, made this point; but others seemed committed to denying that worldbuilding is about narrating a fiction at all! It's that latter claim that makes no real sense to me.



Worldbuilding strikes me as like creating a 'bible' that writers working on a series use as a reference, to help them avoid screwing up continuity & contradicting established canon.

That, or like writing the Silmarilion, but only quoting from it, yourself, never letting anyone else actually read it.


----------



## Ovinomancer

billd91 said:


> And yet, there you were, saying that it would be a railroad because, when faced with a PC searching for secret doors, the GM referred to the map of the room and told him that no secret door had been found because it relied on the pre-established map (aka "backstory") rather than the player's rolled check. The fact that there is such a thing as secret doors and they are reasonably appropriate to the fantasy RPG setting doesn't make adhering to the pre-established room design a railroad no matter how hard the player wants there to be one. This is not a case of the GM forcing the PCs down the GM's preferred path. In fact, many GMs prefer to use such pre-established facts, set long before the PCs got into the situation of fleeing pursuit, to *avoid* railroading the PCs (either in or against their favor) - using the pre-established facts as the authority control so that they can be more impartial rather than succumb to the temptation to go soft on them or stick it to them.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The reason I accept that GM declaring a search attempt a failure because of the pre-established map isn't a railroad is because when I'm playing, I expect that my PC will be able to affect the world around him primarily though *his* actions. If my PC would like a secret door to be there when there isn't already, I expect that I'll need to either get out the tools and *make* one or get out the purse and pay someone more skilled than my PC to do so (or, potentially, use magic or some other power). I expect that the presence of secret doors is based on the internal logic of the location - its "backstory" if you will - not my needs at the time my PC encounters the room. If my PC is being pursued and I run into a dead end, then I run into a dead end. My choices, entered into the campaign via my PC, have put me there. The internal logic and structure of the situation may hinder the choices available to me at any one time, but I can accept that because, though secret doors are a thing in FRPGs, they aren't a thing on every wall or in ever chamber in a FRPG. They're there based on the needs of the location builder/owner, not my PC's needs as he evades pursuit.
> 
> Some of us work pretty hard at coming up with situations and locations that have a certain internal logic to them that works, that makes sense, that clever and observant players can figure out or explore to the point it makes sense to them. We also work pretty hard at being impartial toward the players and their PCs - not taking it personally when they thwart the plans of our BBEGs, boss monsters, and even their rank and file mooks and not forcing them into a story we're pre-written - but rather allowing them to decide what they want to do and exploring how the chips fall from there given the other gears working in the background. And then you come along with a *loaded term* like railroad to describe something as minor as using the map key to determine if a search check can succeed. And you wonder why people get incensed?



It's time for me to say chess and checkers again.

Pemerton is relaying the setup from his game and then swapping to a resolution for a different game and trying to say this makes a point, but it's actually incoherent.  In pem's playstyle there never is a map for the GM to consult.  The blank walls don't exist until they're framed in due to a previous action declaration (likely as a consequence for a previous failure by upping the stakes: trapped in a dead-end with enemies on your heels!).  This means that there's zero knowledge on the GM's part as to the state of this area, so that game uses action resolution to help create the backstory needed to advance the story.  If a player searches, then a secret door may exist and it will then have been part of the backstory all along.

However, when he swaps to the GM checking notes, he's switched to an entirely different game that doesn't have the same underlying premises.  In this game, backstory is more fixed and the players have been navigating the game with that understood.  The switch is a shell game, he's not just looking at the resolution mechanic, he's eliding the entire prefatory structure to make a simplistic claim, and he's hoping you don't notice.  In his game, the GM saying no is railroading, because every action is critical to the players and is to be resolved as such -- the search for the secret door directly speaks to a charter trait or goal and negating that is negating the focus of play.

It's not so in the more traditional playstyle, and even in some games in the Story Now mode that makes use of more GM defined backstory that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s preference.  However, pemerton is more than fine moving the pea in the shell game so that he can label what isn't railroading (and is, as you note, often a tool used to prevent railroading) in one playstyle with what could be considered railroading in another.

This is exactly what I brought up before about judging checkers by the rules and assumptions of chess and therefore complaining that jumping is unnecessary to the act of taking a piece because pawns.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Here's the sort of thing I have in mind - it's a bit underdescribed but hopefully clear enough to get us on the same page in respect of it:
> 
> <the prior events of play, together with GM narration, establish (i) that the PCs are in a stone building facing some bare walls, (ii) thay the PCs are being pursued through the building, and (iii) leave it open what might be behind the walls in question>
> 
> Player: "There might be a secret door that we could escape through in one of those bare walls - I seach for signs of one."
> 
> GM: "Make a [Perception, Search, Architecture, as appropriate to system] check."
> 
> <player makes check>
> 
> <GM consults notes, notes that the notes describe these walls as nothing more than plain walls with no secret doors in them>
> 
> GM: "You don't find any signs of secret doors."​
> Here's why I characterise this as a railroad.
> 
> We don't know exactly how it has come about that the PCs are being pursued through the buiilding - most typically, I think, that would be a consequence resulting from some recent bit of past play. But in any event, that pursuit is now the salient pressure on the PCs (and hence the players) in the game. In response to that pressue, this particular player has expressed an interest in the fiction developing in a certain direction - namely, that his/her PC finds signs of a secret door in the bare wall, so that the PCs might escape though it.
> 
> Now, because we're playing a game with "moves" and dice and stuff, rather than just round-robin storytelling, the player's desire about the fiction doesn't happen automatically. Rather, the player declares an action for his/her PC that folows from that desire. Success in that action declaration will meant that the player gets want s/he wants vis-a-vis the fiction (ie the PC finds signs of a secret door); failure means s/he won't.
> 
> (Note that this action declaration satisfies other typical constraints on player-side moves in a FRPG. For instnace, it is declared from the first-person perspective of the PC. And it's a well-establshed trope of fantasy gaming that bare stone walls can in fact have secret doors in them.)
> 
> In the example I've given, the player's action declaration does not succeed, but not because s/he rolled too low on the dice. (This contrasts with a failed attack roll.) It fails because the GM has _already decicded_ that it can't succeed.



And here's where I find a story-based problem with your system's way of resolving this: on a failure the player (and thus the PC) gain too much information.

In the fiction, there are three possible independent outcomes on a secret door search:

1. A door is found.
2. A door is not found because while a door is present the search was for whatever reason unsuccessful.
3. A door is not found because there is no door there to find. (no matter how good your search is, i.e. no matter what the die says)

In the fiction, the PC should have no way of knowing whether a failure is due to 2 or 3 above; and thus neither should the player at the table.

Now in your system you'll probably say 3 can't happen, and that on a high roll they'll always find a door.  This just doesn't seem right to me somehow...can't quite put my finger on it.  Too easy an escape clause for the PCs perhaps?  Too much likelihood of finding secret doors in every wall even where they don't make sense?



> That is the limit on the players' choice - his/her choice to have escape occur by way of secret door has been vetoed by the GM, by application of the prior worldbuilding/setting authorship. That is why I call it a railroad.



By that definition the real world is a railroad.  Is that really what you mean to say?



> You seem to have missed the way that "say 'yes' or roll the dice" actually works.
> 
> If the GM calls for a check and the check succeeds, then the player's intent is realised, and so the only work the GM did was to contribute to the framing, to call for a check in response to the action declaration, and to set the DC. It is _the player_'s desire for the fiction that comes to pass (just the same as in combat: a successful disarm roll, for instance, isn't just a cue to the GM to make something up: it establishes a definite outcome in the fiction, namely, that the foe is disarmed).
> 
> If the check fails, the player's intent is not realised, and rather the GM narrates some consequence which, ideally (ie from the pont of view of a satisfactory aesthetic experience), was implicit in the framing of the situation In this latter case, the GM does all the work done for a successful check, plus has to establish and narrate the consequence of failure.
> 
> The role of the GM is therefore pretty clear, I think.
> 
> You are, I think, the only person I've ever met who thinks that saying "yes" to someone's request is railroading them!



Other way around.  The players, sometimes via their dice and other times not, are forcing the DM's narration into saying what they want it to say.  In other words, the players are railroading the DM until and unless a roll fails; at which point the DM can have some input.

Lanefan


----------



## Ovinomancer

Lanefan said:


> And here's where I find a story-based problem with your system's way of resolving this: on a failure the player (and thus the PC) gain too much information.
> 
> In the fiction, there are three possible independent outcomes on a secret door search:
> 
> 1. A door is found.
> 2. A door is not found because while a door is present the search was for whatever reason unsuccessful.
> 3. A door is not found because there is no door there to find. (no matter how good your search is, i.e. no matter what the die says)
> 
> In the fiction, the PC should have no way of knowing whether a failure is due to 2 or 3 above; and thus neither should the player at the table.
> 
> Now in your system you'll probably say 3 can't happen, and that on a high roll they'll always find a door.  This just doesn't seem right to me somehow...can't quite put my finger on it.  Too easy an escape clause for the PCs perhaps?  Too much likelihood of finding secret doors in every wall even where they don't make sense?
> 
> By that definition the real world is a railroad.  Is that really what you mean to say?
> 
> Other way around.  The players, sometimes via their dice and other times not, are forcing the DM's narration into saying what they want it to say.  In other words, the players are railroading the DM until and unless a roll fails; at which point the DM can have some input.
> 
> Lanefan



And this is the other side, with a checkers player complaining that rooks just can't move like that.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> Now in your system you'll probably say 3 can't happen, and that on a high roll they'll always find a door.  This just doesn't seem right to me somehow...can't quite put my finger on it.  Too easy an escape clause for the PCs perhaps?  Too much likelihood of finding secret doors in every wall even where they don't make sense?



 It is a little tricky.  

It's not too easy an escape clause unless the roll is too easy, so it depends on balancing the resolution mechanic.  In contrast, if a DM is faced with a PC who's 'too good' at finding secret doors, he just stops placing secret doors - they're just doors at that point, anyway.  

There's no likelihood of finding lots of secret doors in every wall, because there's no impetus to search every wall for a secret door.  It's not like traditional play, where the player has to guess right at where a secret door may be (for instance, by completing a map of the dungeon and noting 'holes' where a room might be), before the character's skill at finding secret doors can come into play.

What doesn't seem right is that it's a Schrodinger's Secret Door - it both exists and does not exist until it's found (or conclusively established not to exist, somehow, I suppose).  



> By that definition the real world is a railroad.



 It sure feels that way, sometimes.  ;P


----------



## happyhermit

pemerton said:


> This is the province of Wises and similar skills. (In the Adventure Burner, I think it is Architecture skill that is referenced in the context of trying to learn of a secret entrance into a fortress.)
> 
> "Architecture" doesn't actually indicate anything of the kind though. It is used to (in game); Draw plans for a proposed structure, attempt to draw structural plans for an existing building, or use existing plans to navigate. Seems an awful big stretch given how extremely specific skills are in BW.
> 
> 
> 
> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> The target is humiliated and the GM tells the player how.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is an important part.
Click to expand...


----------



## Nagol

Lanefan said:


> And here's where I find a story-based problem with your system's way of resolving this: on a failure the player (and thus the PC) gain too much information.
> 
> In the fiction, there are three possible independent outcomes on a secret door search:
> 
> 1. A door is found.
> 2. A door is not found because while a door is present the search was for whatever reason unsuccessful.
> 3. A door is not found because there is no door there to find. (no matter how good your search is, i.e. no matter what the die says)
> 
> In the fiction, the PC should have no way of knowing whether a failure is due to 2 or 3 above; and thus neither should the player at the table.
> 
> Now in your system you'll probably say 3 can't happen, and that on a high roll they'll always find a door.  This just doesn't seem right to me somehow...can't quite put my finger on it.  Too easy an escape clause for the PCs perhaps?  Too much likelihood of finding secret doors in every wall even where they don't make sense?
> 
> <snip>




In a player-facing game, no one (including the GM) will know whether the result is a #2 or 3.  If the players fail to find a door, a later result can generate one anyway to fulfil a new consequence in a plausible way.


----------



## Simon T. Vesper

So there's a lot going on in this thread and I'm working my way through it because... we'll, it's interesting and I'm nosy... but I'm wondering if anyone can clear something up for me:

Is the OP advocating a form of gaming where players are able to force a specific reality on the game by simply stating an intent and using dice rolls to determine if that intent comes true?

If he is, is this a thing in 5th Edition? Because it's certainly not in any other version of the game...


----------



## darkbard

Lanefan said:


> <snip>
> 3. A door is not found because there is no door there to find. (no matter how good your search is, i.e. no matter what the die says
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Now in your system you'll probably say 3 can't happen, and that on a high roll they'll always find a door.  This just doesn't seem right to me somehow.




You continue to misunderstand how Story Now, player-facing games work. Of course, if the PC fails the roll the GM dictates the conditions of the failure, including the very real possibility that the PC fails the roll because there is no secret door to find! Now, some "fail forward" iterations of the game might consider that a weak judgment by the GM,  but it's absolutely in play as one possibility.


----------



## Arilyn

Carl Olson said:


> So there's a lot going on in this thread and I'm working my way through it because... we'll, it's interesting and I'm nosy... but I'm wondering if anyone can clear something up for me:
> 
> Is the OP advocating a form of gaming where players are able to force a specific reality on the game by simply stating an intent and using dice rolls to determine if that intent comes true?
> 
> If he is, is this a thing in 5th Edition? Because it's certainly not in any other version of the game...




The OP is talking about world building not being needed in a game where reality is shaped during play. GM frames a scene, players make moves, ie, searching for a secret door, and then dice are used to determine what happens. These games are driven by character motivations. In this kind of game there is no reason to prebuild a world, as it forms around the narrative at the table. This doesn't mean players just get what they want, and their declarations have to make sense. No machine guns in a medieval theme, for example.

DnD is not the focus of the discussion, exactly, as its a rare technique in DnD games. It keeps coming up as an example cause everyone is familiar with it.


----------



## darkbard

Carl Olson said:


> If he is, is this a thing in 5th Edition? Because it's certainly not in any other version of the game...




Also, it should be noted that while D&D is not explicitly framed in terms of such play, 4E does make overtures towards this mode in several ways, at the very least allowing Story Now principles to work in play. The basic rules set of 5E, as you note, backs away from this approach towards what most are calling "traditional" play hereabouts.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Carl Olson said:


> Is the OP advocating a form of gaming where players are able to force a specific reality on the game by simply stating an intent and using dice rolls to determine if that intent comes true?
> If he is, is this a thing in 5th Edition? Because it's certainly not in any other version of the game...



IDK about 'force,' contribute might be a better way of putting it.  But, no, it is not a 5e thang, 5e is non-committal about stylistic choices like that, a DM could run that way if he felt like it, with or without informing players.  
If you are empowering the players to knowingly do things like that, for instance by giving them resources to accomplish such things, it's more indie.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> Yup....useless or railroading, the only two types of GMs that there may be. So sad that there can't be some middle ground and that instead, everyone's game stinks because it's one extreme or the other.



Does every movie "stink" because there's someone who didn't like it (or wouldn't like it if they watched it)? I don't think it's an imperative, in creative or hobby endeavours, that they appeal to everyone.

I know nothing of [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s game except from what I can infer from his posts on these boards. Given his criticism of the way I adjudicated the bazaar-feather scene in my BW game, and his hints at how he might run a somewhat similar episode in his game, I infer that I wouldn't particularly enjoy playing in his game. That's not any sort of tragedy - after all, I'm not, and as far as I know he doesn't paticularly want me to.

It similarly seems that Maxperson would not enjoy GMing a game where the GM is what he calls "useless" - ie has the job of framing, embellishing success, and adjudicating consequences for failure, but does not have the sort of authority over outcomes that he seems to favour. But, again, that doesn't seem to be a problem as he is not being forced or even (as far as I know) asked by anyone to GM such a game.


----------



## pemerton

Arilyn said:


> The term railroading has in recent years come off the rails (heh heh). It has become an insult players fling at each other, when in disagreement over playstyles.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Railroading is not pre-written adventures. Railroading is not world building. Railroading is not "going where the action is."  Railroading is simply the GM deciding actions for the players, or forcing a preconceived result no matter what the players do, or whether it makes sense anymore. Nobody in this thread is guilty of railroading.



I haven't said that anyone is "guilty" of railroading. I've described a particular approach to play, and why I regard it as railroading. If others don't so regard it, that's their prerogative. In the context of RPGing, as in life more generally, "railroading" has a normative/evaluative element and so judgements in respect of it are likely to differ.

Here's one suggested meaning of railroading:

Control of a player-character's decisions, or opportunities for decisions, by another person (not the player of the character) in any way which breaks the Social Contract for that group, in the eyes of the character's player.​
That's fairly abstract. But it can clearly encompass more than simply a GM declaring an action for a PC (which is itself permissible in some systems in some contexts, eg in D&D if a dominate or similar effect is in play).


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> The DM does describe imaginary nouns, and maybe even an imaginary situation they're in, the player then interact with that, said interaction being handled by an inconsistent mix of DM fiat and dysfunctional mechanical resolution.



_Interaction_ is a misnomer here, or at best a metaphor.

The participants at the table interact with one another. But the players don't "interact" with the gameworld. They describe things that their PCs are doing, and the GM describes things that happen to, or about, their PCs.



Tony Vargas said:


> What doesn't seem right is that it's a Schrodinger's Secret Door - it both exists and does not exist until it's found (or conclusively established not to exist, somehow, I suppose).



This is an illusion created by thinking of the gameworld as objectively and independently existing.

How many belt loops are on the trousers that Watson is wearing when he first meets Holmes (in A Study in Scarlet, I think)? To the best of my recollection, Doyle doesn't tell us. But that doesn't mean Watson's trousers have "Schroedinger's belt loops". It just means that _no one has established that element of the fiction yet_. This is the case in all fictions, given that no one can give a total description of anything.

What colour is the ceiling of the tavern in the Keep (of B2 fame)? I'm pretty sure Gygax doesn't mention it - but that doesn't mean it's "Schroedinger's ceiling". It just means that, if any participant in the game wants to know what colour the ceiling is, someone is going to have to make that up.

There are all sorts of ways of making things up in a RPG. The resolution of declared action is one such way.


----------



## pemerton

Carl Olson said:


> So there's a lot going on in this thread



Agreed!



Carl Olson said:


> Is the OP advocating a form of gaming where players are able to force a specific reality on the game by simply stating an intent and using dice rolls to determine if that intent comes true?
> 
> If he is, is this a thing in 5th Edition? Because it's certainly not in any other version of the game...



This is a thread in General RPGs, not 5e or other D&D editions - so it's not particularly about D&D.

That said, I don't think I'm the only 4e GM to have used action resolution as a device for establishing elements of the fiction. For instance (I've quoted enough to give some context, and have bolded the relevant part):



pemerton said:


> they entered Mal Arundak by making it past the demon hordes via a mixture of sneakiness (Seeming and flying Phantom Steeds), and then combat (fighting a couple of demon horde swarms (elite 24th level brutes) while the invoker/wizard opened the doors to Mal Arundak). On the other side of the gates the bastion's self-deluded corrupted-angel guardians were waiting to welcome these heroic figures sent by Pelor to relieve the siege. The PCs had already learned that the siege was ages old, and upon inspecting it close-up and then talking to the guardians it seemed even clearer that its principal purpose was not to actual break into and sack Mal Arundak. They speculated as to why this might be, and concluded that its purposes was, perhaps, to corrupt the guardians.
> 
> It also became clear to them that there were chaotic forces within Mal Arundak as well as outside it - connected, they assumed, to the Ebon Flame, which they knew to be locked up inside the bastion and believed to contain the essence of the Elder Elemental Eye.
> 
> The "angels" showed the weary travellers to a room where they could rest and freshen up. The invoker/wizard used Purify Water to remove the corrupting sludge from the fountain in the room, and they took a long rest (they also may have done some divination, but the details escape me).
> 
> Reinvigorated, they went back out to speak to the angels, and presented as their principal concern the need to check the bastion's defences, and reinvigorate them if necessary. The paranoid "angels" began to suspect them, however, of wanting to be shown the way to the Flame so they could steal it. Matters came to something of a head when the invoker/wizard, as part of "reinforcing the magic wards", raised a Magic Circle vs Demons at the entrance to the reliquary where the Flame was stored - the angels could sense that they couldn't cross it, and accused him of treachery, but he (and his fellows) retorted that the angels has been corrupted by their long labours on the Abyss, and insisted that they join in a ritual of purification and reinvigoration in the spirit of Pelor. (This had been resolved a social skill challenge, in which the PCs were successful so far.)
> 
> *The invoker/wizard then used his Memory of a Thousand Lifetimes to recall a teleport sigil from Pelor's hold in Hestavar, and opened a Planar Portal directly to that point (successful Arcana check)*, allowing Pelor's divine power to wash over the PCs and the angels. A successful Religion check purged them of their corruption, and they duly thanked the PCs for purifying them, and allowed them to enter the reliquary to learn where the chaos was coming from.



I wouldn't call this "forcing a specific reality on the game" - it is about establishing some element of the shared fiction by way of action declaration. That is very common in combat - "I attack the orc <rolls dice, reports results>" "OK, it's dead."

In the bolded example, the action declaration is along the lines of "I recall a teleport sigil that I saw once in Hestavar, many lifetimes ago, through which Pelor's holy raidance will flow if I open a portal to it!"


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> . But the players don't "interact" with the gameworld. ...
> 
> This is an illusion created by thinking of the gameworld as objectively and independently existing.



 Exactly, that's why it seems off in some way if you've been thinking like that for 30 years.

But, you're still not being told, or telling, even cooperatively, a Story.  A story worth hearing may or may not result, and finally be told, when you recount what 'happened.'


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> By that definition the real world is a railroad.  Is that really what you mean to say?



Putting theological conundrums to one side, the real world is not a game, and the causal forces in the real world are _actual_ causal forces, not imagined proxies for someone's authorial decisions.

Being captured by pursuers because one reached a dead end is something that sometimes happens in the real world, due to the way the world is.

Being captured by pursuers because one reached a dead end might also be something that happens in a RPG. But that is not because of "objective" causal forces. It's because someone, via some process, established that there is no secret door in the blank stone wall. We're discussing different forms that process might take.



Lanefan said:


> In the fiction, there are three possible independent outcomes on a secret door search:
> 
> 1. A door is found.
> 2. A door is not found because while a door is present the search was for whatever reason unsuccessful.
> 3. A door is not found because there is no door there to find. (no matter how good your search is, i.e. no matter what the die says)
> 
> In the fiction, the PC should have no way of knowing whether a failure is due to 2 or 3 above; and thus neither should the player at the table.
> 
> Now in your system you'll probably say 3 can't happen



3 can happen.

Possible failure narrations could include, in no particular order, any of the following (depending on what the GM thinks up and how it seems to fit the unfolding situation):

(A) You start to search for a door - but then it finds you before you find it! A secret door opens and a squad of guards comes through it. It's the pursuers on one side and this squad on the other! - what do you do?

(B) You search for a door, but there seems to be nothing there. Or, at least, nothing you find before you hear the sounds of closing pursuers. What do you do?

(C) As you search desperately for a door, your pursuers catch up to you. The one in the lead mocks you: "If you'd done your homework, you'd know there are no secret ways in or out of this fortress!" What do you do?​
(B) and (C) are both consistent with your (3) as well as your (2), and (C) makes (3) more likely than (2), assuming the lead pursuer is a reliable source of information about the fortress.



Lanefan said:


> Too much likelihood of finding secret doors in every wall even where they don't make sense?



Why wouldn't it make sense that a bare stone wall in a D&D-type building has a secret door in it. They're pretty standard architectural features!

As for too many - I just don't think it's going to come up that often. Unless you're playing Gosford Park - the RPG, and then secret doors/passages/priest holes/maid creeps _should_ be pretty common, shouldn't they?



Lanefan said:


> The players, sometimes via their dice and other times not, are forcing the DM's narration into saying what they want it to say.  In other words, the players are railroading the DM until and unless a roll fails; at which point the DM can have some input.



This is the first time I've heard _player success in action resolution_ described as "railroading the GM". So when the players kill all the orcs you put into your dungeon, they're railroading you? Because you have to accept the outcome of the combat mechanics?


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> I haven't said that anyone is "guilty" of railroading. I've described a particular approach to play, and why I regard it as railroading.




Oh, for goodness sake, have the courage of your convictions.  This is painfully dishonest.


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> Exactly, that's why it seems off in some way if you've been thinking like that for 30 years.
> 
> But, you're still not being told, or telling, even cooperatively, a Story.  A story worth hearing may or may not result, and finally be told, when you recount what 'happened.'



Story has two uses. One is "a series of events with a theme/premise, rising action towards a climax, the climax itself, and ensuing resolution."

It also just means "a fiction that someone tells to someone else".

Tokien's narration of the Old Forest in Book 1 of LotR is a story in the second sense but not the first. Likwise, the typical case of a GM narrating of the gameworld as the players describe their PCs moving around through it.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> This is (ostensibly) a reply to a post which actually set out (part of) the role of the GM in DitV.
> 
> I think it's very telling that once the role of the GM is not to manage secret backstory, but rather to establish situation and play the opposition within that situation, you describe the GM as "useless".
> 
> What you call the "useless" GM is what I call the _non-railroading_ GM.




What's really telling is that you felt the need to twist what I said......again.  It's indicative of not having a valid counter argument.  Not only did I not mention backstory at all with that post, backstory wasn't even backstory for it.

If the player is going to describe exactly how a success plays out, and exactly how failures play out, the DM doesn't need to be part of that game.  The player through his actions and intent is going to dictate where in the world everything he needs is going to be and where his PC is, and not only IF there are enemies, but who those enemies are.  The DM can literally choose nothing according to the rules you posted there.  For when the player dictates that an NPC is present, the player on the right can make decisions for the NPCs and roll the dice.  The DM has no necessary role in this game.  He might as well not be there.

If what I just said is not correct an the DM can choose things other than what the player dictates, then the player is declaring actions to get the DM to say stuff.


----------



## Maxperson

Tony Vargas said:


> In contrast, if a DM is faced with a PC who's 'too good' at finding secret doors, he just stops placing secret doors - they're just doors at that point, anyway.




This is the only thing I don't agree with in this post.  I don't place secret doors for the PCs or as a challenge to the PCs/players.  I place a secret door because it makes sense to put one at that location.  It makes no difference to me if they find every secret door, no secret door, or a combination of the above, or if it's reaaaaaaaly easy or hard.  I'd never stop placing secret doors if a PC was "too good" at finding them.  Good for him, really.  Players like to see their investments pay off.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Maxperson said:


> .  I'd never stop placing secret doors if a PC was "too good" at finding them.  Good for him, really.  Players like to see their investments pay off.



 You can put a S on the map, but if he can't miss it, it's just a door as long as he's in the campaign.


----------



## Maxperson

darkbard said:


> You continue to misunderstand how Story Now, player-facing games work. Of course, if the PC fails the roll the GM dictates the conditions of the failure, including the very real possibility that the PC fails the roll because there is no secret door to find! Now, some "fail forward" iterations of the game might consider that a weak judgment by the GM,  but it's absolutely in play as one possibility.




Not according to [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION].  See, doing what you just described is getting the DM to tell you stuff in response to your action.  In an effort to avoid being the victim of his own propaganda, he insisted this morning that the DM makes no choices like that and the player determines everything.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> It similarly seems that Maxperson would not enjoy GMing a game where the GM is what he calls "useless" - ie has the job of framing, embellishing success, and adjudicating consequences for failure, but does not have the sort of authority over outcomes that he seems to favour. But, again, that doesn't seem to be a problem as he is not being forced or even (as far as I know) asked by anyone to GM such a game.



No.  What I think is that you paint yourself into corners with misleading statements like "It's choose your own adventure" and "The player is just declaring actions to get the DM to say stuff" and "It's a railroad."  After you say something like that, I point out to you how your style does essentially many of the same things, and then watch you twist and turn and stretch credulity with your responses so that they don't apply to you.  

The thing is, these things aren't even bad for the most part.  Your style does them.  My style does them.  They just do them in slightly to majorly different ways, and with different goals in mind.  If you took a step back, you'd realize that these things aren't bad for either playstyle, and then you could focus on the important things like the different methods and goals our styles use.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> Oh, for goodness sake, have the courage of your convictions. This is painfully dishonest.



Three intial things.

First, it's neither my job nor my place to draw inferences from general propositions to individual posters' games. Even if I could (and few posters in this thread have posted many actual play examples), that's really up to them.

Second, _railroading_ is a relational property - of a game to its participants. If I was to play in [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s game, I suspect I would find it railroad-y. But I don't. Presumably his players emjoy it, and don't find it railroad-y.

I even posted a definition to this effect upthread of your post. Did you read it, do you disagree with it, or are you just "dishonestly" ignoring it?!

Third, there is the use of _guilty_. Running games I wouldn't emjoy is not a crime.

Now to pull back a bit - Lanefan and Maxperson clearly think I run a game that is degenerate in some sense. That's fine - it's their prerogative to dislimke someone else's creative endeavour. My response is to respond to their posts and further explain whatever techniques I thinik they are misunderstanding or misdescribing.

It's clear that those two posters, and probably some others, think that a game in which a player is free to declare "I search for a secret door" is not a railroad, _even if the GM has already decided there is no secret door to be found_, because the player got to choose what action to declare. My view is that it is a railroad, because the outcome of the choice has already been determined by the GM, and - assuming (as I am) that there is something actually at stake in the situation (such as avoiding capture by pursuers) - the range of options available to the players in responding to the situatoin has been narrowed by an _unrvealed_ element of the GM's framing.

(If the game was a puzzle-solving game, where the whole idea is to guess the GM's unrevealed secrets, then things would be different. Railroading doesn't really have application in that context, I don't think. As best I can tell, this puzzle-solving element is a bigger thing in [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game than [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]s's.)

This is not a disagreement over the definition of railroad. It's a disagreement over what should be the meaningful dimensions of player choice in RPGing. But "should" here is obviously not a universal moral judgement. We're discussing hobby gaming, not the fate of humanity. It's a type of aesthetic _should_. but also connected to the enjoyment of RPGing. I take that to be sufficient to show that it is relational in the way I described above.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Now to pull back a bit - Lanefan and Maxperson clearly think I run a game that is degenerate in some sense. That's fine - it's their prerogative to dislimke someone else's creative endeavour. My response is to respond to their posts and further explain whatever techniques I thinik they are misunderstanding or misdescribing.




Speaking for myself, I don't think that at all.  I just think that your game is different than mine.  Where we clash is in your portrayals of my playstyle in degenerate terms.  Railroady, choose your own adventure, declaring actions in order to get the DM to say stuff, etc.  Not only are you way off base with these mischaracterizations, but they can also be applied to your game if I really try.



> It's clear that those two posters, and probably some others, think that a game in which a player is free to declare "I search for a secret door" is not a railroad, _even if the GM has already decided there is no secret door to be found_, because the player got to choose what action to declare. My view is that it is a railroad, because the outcome of the choice has already been determined by the GM, and - assuming (as I am) that there is something actually at stake in the situation (such as avoiding capture by pursuers) - the range of options available to the players in responding to the situatoin has been narrowed by an _unrvealed_ element of the GM's framing.




The outcome of a choice does not a railroad make.  I have to be forcing you or your character to do something for it to be a railroad.


----------



## Sunseeker

Tony Vargas said:


> You can put a S on the map, but if he can't miss it, it's just a door as long as he's in the campaign.




Well, he doesn't have to tell _anyone else_ about it.


----------



## Lanefan

Nagol said:


> In a player-facing game, no one (including the GM) will know whether the result is a #2 or 3.  If the players fail to find a door, a later result can generate one anyway to fulfil a new consequence in a plausible way.



Well, yes they will know; as in theory you can't fail on a high roll even though you should be able to if there isn't a door there to find.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> As opposed to...
> 
> Player: "I poke in front of me with a 10' pole as I walk down the 30' long passage."
> 
> DM:  (after a failed roll):"Okay, after 10' of walking you feel that the floor in front of you - half way down the passage - gives under your pole.  It seems to be a trapdoor of some sort."
> 
> While that may not be the exact dialogue used in Story Now, the goal is the same.  The player is still declaring actions for the PC for the purpose of getting the DM to relate some content of fiction that the DM makes up.  The difference is that you improvise the content.




There is one big difference. That is what the rules of composition for the narrated fiction are. In a pre-authored adventure or as part of 'world building' (however that argument comes out) the fiction is part of a whole scenario which has, as its ends, something the GM thought of. In fact we can't really even say for sure, but its an 'agenda' set by the GM. Maybe, often, its calculated to appeal to the players. OTOH the fiction composed by the Story Now GM is DEFINITELY composed in respect of, and only in respect of, the elements of characterization and thematic interest generated by the players. 

This is a profound difference. It is the ONLY true and universal difference. I still argue that other things stem from that, but we've already had those discussions.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

happyhermit said:


> Okay, so the GM is telling a story, but it's different because it's based on player cues and is unaffected by the GM's conception of the world? So the GM doesn't consider what has already been established during the game ie; NPCs, Factions, PC backstory, etc. not to mention unspoken assumptions ie; gravity, when setting that scene? If they do then it is actually; The GM is framing a scene based on player cues and the GM's conception of the world (albeit the GM's conception of the world is subject to limitations). Which is also what happens in most games, without the limitations on the GM's conception of the world obviously, or at least those specific limitations.



OK, but remember, ALL THAT CAME BEFORE, thus all the 'NPCs, Factions, PC backstory, etc' was all invented in service to the story that the players want to engage in! So the GM is perfectly free to operate within the realm of 'story logic' and that doesn't constrain his ability to give the players what they want. In fact it is NECESSARY to giving them what they want, which is the type of entertainment they have asked for. 

Now, the GM is going to have conceptions and ideas and whatnot, and that's going to play a strong part too. Obviously [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] are going to frame different scenes, even if they somehow found themselves GMing the same situation.



> It's not about the GM "telling stories" or not, it isn't about the whether some actions are impossible or not, not even about whether or not those stories or actions are affected by previously determined aspects of "the world", it's just about where they come from. For some players that is important. Like I mentioned earlier for some seeking "that feeling" (that they have access to a "real" world) it helps if it seems like the world is fully fleshed out somewhere and reacting to their PCs accordingly, and it hinders that feeling if they think it isn't, or it seems like things are being plopped down in front of them, or things are being determined randomly, or other players (not through their PCs) are effecting the world. It would seem that for some other mixes are ideal, some might prefer a highly detailed published setting, because they can read it for themselves. Some might prefer a lack of GM created stuff in the world, or rather, limitations imposed on it because what counts as GM created could just as easily be seen as "whatever the GM chooses" because after all even just picking things to match what the PCs are interested in is the GM "creating" something.




Sure, I think its not even controversial to say that the input of the GM is PRIMARY. He's framing every scene and deciding when to say yes and when to ask for a check (there could be other things, I'm using a Story Now rendition of 4e as an example). I don't think Story Now or No Myth is intended to remove or even reduce the influence of the GM. It is ONLY about who's story it is, and what the main content of it relates to.


----------



## happyhermit

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, but remember, ALL THAT CAME BEFORE, thus all the 'NPCs, Factions, PC backstory, etc' was all invented in service to the story that the players want to engage in! So the GM is perfectly free to operate within the realm of 'story logic' and that doesn't constrain his ability to give the players what they want. In fact it is NECESSARY to giving them what they want, which is the type of entertainment they have asked for.
> 
> Now, the GM is going to have conceptions and ideas and whatnot, and that's going to play a strong part too. Obviously @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ and @_*pemerton*_ are going to frame different scenes, even if they somehow found themselves GMing the same situation.




I could quibble with some details here but we pretty much agree. The main point is that "stories" as pemerton put it, are being told by the GM in either case, not only in the GM-worldbuilding situation. The stories can be different (they don't need to be) but the real difference is the limitations on the way they are generated, not whether one game has GM's telling them or not.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Sure, I think its not even controversial to say that the input of the GM is PRIMARY. He's framing every scene and deciding when to say yes and when to ask for a check (there could be other things, I'm using a Story Now rendition of 4e as an example). I don't think Story Now or No Myth is intended to remove or even reduce the influence of the GM. It is ONLY about who's story it is, and what the main content of it relates to.




I would think not, but pemerton has written things that indicates they are at odds with this and the idea that the GM is telling stories mediated by several factors in both types of games. Then again, it isn't always clear what they are arguing. It seemed like they were arguing that using "kickers" in a game with any GM worldbuilding was impossible for instance, at one point, still not sure.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I even posted a definition to this effect upthread of your post. Did you read it, do you disagree with it, or are you just "dishonestly" ignoring it?!



You mean your definition of what constitutes a railroad?  Yep, I read it; and I disagree with it.



> Now to pull back a bit - Lanefan and Maxperson clearly think I run a game that is degenerate in some sense. That's fine - it's their prerogative to dislimke someone else's creative endeavour. My response is to respond to their posts and further explain whatever techniques I thinik they are misunderstanding or misdescribing.



And to your credit, you have, at great length.

I don't agree with a lot of what you post but I commend you for the effort you put in to posting it.



> It's clear that those two posters, and probably some others, think that a game in which a player is free to declare "I search for a secret door" is not a railroad, _even if the GM has already decided there is no secret door to be found_, because the player got to choose what action to declare. My view is that it is a railroad, because the outcome of the choice has already been determined by the GM, and - assuming (as I am) that there is something actually at stake in the situation (such as avoiding capture by pursuers) - the range of options available to the players in responding to the situatoin has been narrowed by an _unrvealed_ element of the GM's framing.



And this is where your definition of "railroad" differs from the usual norm, I think.



> (If the game was a puzzle-solving game, where the whole idea is to guess the GM's unrevealed secrets, then things would be different. Railroading doesn't really have application in that context, I don't think.



Oh yes it does, believe me; but in the more usual lead-'em-by-the-nose sense rather than your particular definition. 



> As best I can tell, this puzzle-solving element is a bigger thing in [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game than [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]s's.)



If by "puzzle-solving" you mean mysteries and unrevealed plots the individual bits of which can take a long time to piece together, then yes; those are a big feature in my games on those occasions when I can pull them off.  But even then my plots can't hold a candle to that chart from your OA game you posted a few days ago.



> This is not a disagreement over the definition of railroad.



Well, it has kind of become just this disagreement. 


> It's a disagreement over what should be the meaningful dimensions of player choice in RPGing.



And it's this too.  Railroading really wouldn't enter much into the topic at all were it not for your redefinition of the word to include pre-authored setting content influencing action resolution.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> ... OTOH the fiction composed by the Story Now GM is DEFINITELY composed in respect of, and only in respect of, the elements of characterization and thematic interest generated by the players.



The problem is, when you put it this starkly it reads as if the DM is not allowed to insert anything of thematic interest to herself, and has to bury or deny any interests she might have.

But then you say this in the next post:


> Now, the GM is going to have conceptions and ideas and whatnot, and that's going to play a strong part too. ...
> 
> Sure, I think its not even controversial to say that the input of the GM is PRIMARY. He's framing every scene and deciding when to say yes and when to ask for a check (there could be other things, I'm using a Story Now rendition of 4e as an example). I don't think Story Now or No Myth is intended to remove or even reduce the influence of the GM. It is ONLY about who's story it is, and what the main content of it relates to.



So the DM can have influence on the players' stories but not insert any story of her own?  Hardly what I'd call recruitment-poster material for attracting new DMs. 

Lanefan


----------



## Nagol

Lanefan said:


> Well, yes they will know; as in theory you can't fail on a high roll even though you should be able to if there isn't a door there to find.




A simple way to think about player-facing games is reverse causation.  Rather than the GM extrapolating plausible consequence for player action, the GM adjusts the starting circumstance to support the determined outcome and uses that combination to drop the players into a new soup.

If a player is looking for a secret door and rolls well enough, they will find one and thus establish that such a door exists and change the circumstances so they are using it.  If they don't roll well enough, they may* not find one and thus have to deal with their current circumstance without such an asset.  Neither the players nor the GM know the future path for the group and it is still possible** that the group's situation will remain in this locale long enough that another pressure point will develop and a new player declaration (either success or failure) will lead to the discovery of a secret door.




* The player could still find a secret door at the GM's whim with a low roll, but the value of the door in the current situation will be negative.
** Possible, but somewhat unlikely.  It tends to signal a dearth of creativity on the part of the GM and/or group.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> Three intial things.
> 
> First, it's neither my job nor my place to draw inferences from general propositions to individual posters' games. Even if I could (and few posters in this thread have posted many actual play examples), that's really up to them.
> 
> Second, _railroading_ is a relational property - of a game to its participants. If I was to play in [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s game, I suspect I would find it railroad-y. But I don't. Presumably his players emjoy it, and don't find it railroad-y.
> 
> I even posted a definition to this effect upthread of your post. Did you read it, do you disagree with it, or are you just "dishonestly" ignoring it?!
> 
> Third, there is the use of _guilty_. Running games I wouldn't emjoy is not a crime.
> 
> Now to pull back a bit - Lanefan and Maxperson clearly think I run a game that is degenerate in some sense. That's fine - it's their prerogative to dislimke someone else's creative endeavour. My response is to respond to their posts and further explain whatever techniques I thinik they are misunderstanding or misdescribing.
> 
> It's clear that those two posters, and probably some others, think that a game in which a player is free to declare "I search for a secret door" is not a railroad, _even if the GM has already decided there is no secret door to be found_, because the player got to choose what action to declare. My view is that it is a railroad, because the outcome of the choice has already been determined by the GM, and - assuming (as I am) that there is something actually at stake in the situation (such as avoiding capture by pursuers) - the range of options available to the players in responding to the situatoin has been narrowed by an _unrvealed_ element of the GM's framing.
> 
> (If the game was a puzzle-solving game, where the whole idea is to guess the GM's unrevealed secrets, then things would be different. Railroading doesn't really have application in that context, I don't think. As best I can tell, this puzzle-solving element is a bigger thing in [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION]'s game than [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]s's.)
> 
> This is not a disagreement over the definition of railroad. It's a disagreement over what should be the meaningful dimensions of player choice in RPGing. But "should" here is obviously not a universal moral judgement. We're discussing hobby gaming, not the fate of humanity. It's a type of aesthetic _should_. but also connected to the enjoyment of RPGing. I take that to be sufficient to show that it is relational in the way I described above.



What a profound defense of the use of stereotypes because it's taking about generalities and not specific people.


----------



## cmad1977

Yeah. When someone uses the term ‘railroad’ I’m confident they don’t really understand what they’re talking about.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> (If the game was a puzzle-solving game, where the whole idea is to guess the GM's unrevealed secrets, then things would be different. Railroading doesn't really have application in that context, I don't think. As best I can tell, this puzzle-solving element is a bigger thing in Lanefan's game than Maxpersons's.)



 D&D may have been originally conceived as a wargame, but it seems like 'puzzle-solving game' was the overt primary thrust as early as the Greyhawk supplement, and stayed that way, 2e protestations of storytelling and setting-first notwithstanding, throughout TSRs reign.  That's become fixed in a lotta mind-sets.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> Does every movie "stink" because there's someone who didn't like it (or wouldn't like it if they watched it)? I don't think it's an imperative, in creative or hobby endeavours, that they appeal to everyone.
> 
> I know nothing of [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s game except from what I can infer from his posts on these boards. Given his criticism of the way I adjudicated the bazaar-feather scene in my BW game, and his hints at how he might run a somewhat similar episode in his game, I infer that I wouldn't particularly enjoy playing in his game. That's not any sort of tragedy - after all, I'm not, and as far as I know he doesn't paticularly want me to.
> 
> It similarly seems that Maxperson would not enjoy GMing a game where the GM is what he calls "useless" - ie has the job of framing, embellishing success, and adjudicating consequences for failure, but does not have the sort of authority over outcomes that he seems to favour. But, again, that doesn't seem to be a problem as he is not being forced or even (as far as I know) asked by anyone to GM such a game.




Sure, but I was joking. I was taking the extreme, incomplete view that each of you has of the other's game and treating those like they are the only two options.

But in reality, I don't really think the crappy worldbuilding game that you're describing really exists, or at least is not typical of games that include what you call worldbuilding. Not any more than the awful player driven game that Max is describing where everything is made up on the fly and nothing makes sense and the GM is just there to abdicate dice rolls actually exists. 

Both of you seem so intent on showing how horrible the other style is that you don't seem willing to listen to any of the positives about that style.


----------



## Lanefan

cmad1977 said:


> Yeah. When someone uses the term ‘railroad’ I’m confident they don’t really understand what they’re talking about.



OK, then: how would you define 'railroad' in an RPG context?


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> OK, then: how would you define 'railroad' in an RPG context?



 Depends on the RPG.  Boot Hill?  The Railroad could be the villain trying to steal the townsfolk's land, for instance...



hawkeyefan said:


> Both of you seem so intent on showing how horrible the other style ....



 I suppose they could both be right.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> If the player is going to describe exactly how a success plays out, and exactly how failures play out, the DM doesn't need to be part of that game.



And who has ever said that players get to establish the consequences of failure?

Not me. Not Eero Tuovinen. Not any quote I've posted from a rulebook (for DitV, BW, MHRP, maybe others I'm forgetting).

In fact, in replies to both you and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], I have reitereated, again and again, that the GM narrates failures and this is a principal source of story dynamics.

Did you now read those posts?


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> What a profound defense of the use of stereotypes because it's taking about generalities and not specific people.



I'll ask again: do you disagree that _railroading_ is a relational property? Did you miss my post about that, or are you just dishonestly ignoring it?


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> I was taking the extreme, incomplete view that each of you has of the other's game and treating those like they are the only two options.
> 
> But in reality, I don't really think the crappy worldbuilding game that you're describing really exists, or at least is not typical of games that include what you call worldbuilding.



I appreciate the sentiment behind your post - genuinely - but my issue with GM-heavy worldbuilding is not that it's done badly.

It's that I don't like it.

I won't reiterate why, as I feel I've probably done that enough in this thread. But I'm not saying that I just don't like it when it's badly done.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ilbranteloth said:


> And so do I. Like I’ve said multiple times, much of my notes are to help me when the plays say, “I do x” and nothing immediately comes to mind. In addition, when you have time to consider things you’ll often come up with better ideas than just in the moment.
> 
> I find that the quality of cool increases significantly for me when I am able to provide additional inputs to my improv and reactions to what the players/characters say and do.
> 
> And no, making a list has nothing to do with what I or others consider cool. Lists and such are a process, a tool to help produce the content.
> 
> The only way to determine whether the content is cool is in your interactions and communication with the players, along with your own assessment of what’s cool to you.




OK, I guess I'm trying to still understand what these notes and lists and maps and such DO. I think we've actually got that however, it was way back around post 1200 IIRC, so I suspect now we're talking about something 'else'. 

So, here's a small example:

A player states the desire of his character to collect all of the Seven Swords of the Greatest Heroes. After some number of travails he finds himself in a situation, which I have framed, in which he can gain one of these swords, or he can save someone's life (lets assume they're innocent and worthy of saving, that's how I could frame it). Its up to the player. His beliefs are now being put to the test! Every element of play leading up to this was directed in some fashion to this point. It might have included many setbacks and other equally trying situations, but here he is now, and he's got to choose. 

I think that's pretty much the boiled down essence of the standard narrative mode of play. You don't HAVE to dispose of all background or 'myth', but you DO have to focus on the dramatic conflict, which is posited, INHERENTLY and can truly only come from, the player of the character.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> And who has ever said that players get to establish the consequences of failure?
> 
> Not me. Not Eero Tuovinen. Not any quote I've posted from a rulebook (for DitV, BW, MHRP, maybe others I'm forgetting).
> 
> In fact, in replies to both you and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], I have reitereated, again and again, that the GM narrates failures and this is a principal source of story dynamics.



Indeed.

But is the DM allowed to here introduce her own thematic elements or story ideas, or is she still bound to narrating failure only within the bounds of the PCs' stories and how they are affected?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Tony Vargas said:


> Nod.  I was making a similar observation, from another angle.  Discussions like this go back to Role v Roll and three-fold theory,  and the general animus against D&D at that time, and indeed to criticisms of before and since.
> The defensiveness is understandable.




Yeah, well, I think it gets a bit extreme. I mean, here we are on page 207, but if you go back to page 1 I think post 2, maybe it was post 3, was already launching an attack on the OP...


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, I guess I'm trying to still understand what these notes and lists and maps and such DO. I think we've actually got that however, it was way back around post 1200 IIRC, so I suspect now we're talking about something 'else'.
> 
> So, here's a small example:
> 
> A player states the desire of his character to collect all of the Seven Swords of the Greatest Heroes. After some number of travails he finds himself in a situation, which I have framed, in which he can gain one of these swords, or he can save someone's life (lets assume they're innocent and worthy of saving, that's how I could frame it). Its up to the player. His beliefs are now being put to the test! Every element of play leading up to this was directed in some fashion to this point. It might have included many setbacks and other equally trying situations, but here he is now, and he's got to choose.



This is cool.

But wouldn't it be easier for you if you, on hearing the player's goal is to collect the 7 Swords, then came up with ideas on where each of those swords might be placed and what might be guarding them - and made notes on such - so as to save yourself having to make it all up on the fly later?

I think that's pretty much the boiled down essence of the standard narrative mode of play. You don't HAVE to dispose of all background or 'myth', but you DO have to focus on the dramatic conflict, which is posited, INHERENTLY and can truly only come from, the player of the character.[/QUOTE]


----------



## Nagol

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, well, I think it gets a bit extreme. I mean, here we are on page 207, but if you go back to page 1 I think post 2, maybe it was post 3, was already launching an attack on the OP...




As the poster of post #3, I strongly disagree with your characterisation.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> is the DM allowed to here introduce her own thematic elements or story ideas, or is she still bound to narrating failure only within the bounds of the PCs' stories and how they are affected?



The GM is expected to establish consequences that are dramatically/thematically compelling. The theme will come from the players authorship and play of their PCs. The GM is expected to be imaginative in thinking of ways to put on pressure. But it shouldn't be a complete non-sequitur.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Tony Vargas said:


> There's no likelihood of finding lots of secret doors in every wall, because there's no impetus to search every wall for a secret door.  It's not like traditional play, where the player has to guess right at where a secret door may be (for instance, by completing a map of the dungeon and noting 'holes' where a room might be), before the character's skill at finding secret doors can come into play.



And this is exactly the nut of the whole thing, and where the 'traditionalist' analysis sinks into the swamp, falls over, and burns (before being rebuilt for the 2078th time). The idea that the players "will just find secret doors everywhere" or that things will be 'too easy', or that the players will [violate the Czege Principle], etc. is all based on a fundamentally oppositional model of play. One in which the GM has hidden the 'goodies' in the 'maze' and its the player's job to guide their characters to it. 

Once the goal became to have fun playing the game and making up cool stories about the characters, etc. then all that went basically out the window. It is still possible to engage in it as a specific facet of a greater whole, but its not THE GAME anymore.

Now, some will contend that they're playing to 'explore', but the model is the same here, the GM has the 'gold' and the players are tasked with navigating the 'maze' to uncover it. The walls and traps of the dungeon maze may be replaced with other stuff, but they still remain. 

Finally, you can claim to have gone entirely beyond that by saying "well, the players just come to me and tell me what their PC wants to do (in or out of character) and we work on that", but then we come back to the OP of the thread, what's the world building/details FOR? 

I think the ONLY actual solid answer to that which ever came in this thread (and honestly, maybe it was the other thread, forgive me, was the one where [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] quoted one of the Story Now guys stating that you CAN have a 'built world', and it has utility in fixing genre and providing some footing for the players to leverage their character's traits into concrete action. 



> What doesn't seem right is that it's a Schrodinger's Secret Door - it both exists and does not exist until it's found (or conclusively established not to exist, somehow, I suppose).




There's no Schrodinger's Door if there's no concept of an ESTABLISHED fictional reality outside of what has been presented to the characters. This is something I maintain as a principle of play in games of the type I run, ONLY what has been presented in play exists, all else is vapor until you meet it. That wall didn't exist until we laid eyes on it, so who's to say it didn't 'always have a secret door in it'???


----------



## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> I'm not sure if you intend this as a rhetorical question or not. I will treat it as non-rhetorical, and answer it. To the extent that you intended it rhetorically, you'll probably think my answer inadequate - sometimes that happens in discussions among human beings!
> 
> Here's the sort of thing I have in mind - it's a bit underdescribed but hopefully clear enough to get us on the same page in respect of it:
> 
> <the prior events of play, together with GM narration, establish (i) that the PCs are in a stone building facing some bare walls, (ii) thay the PCs are being pursued through the building, and (iii) leave it open what might be behind the walls in question>
> 
> Player: "There might be a secret door that we could escape through in one of those bare walls - I seach for signs of one."
> 
> GM: "Make a [Perception, Search, Architecture, as appropriate to system] check."
> 
> <player makes check>
> 
> <GM consults notes, notes that the notes describe these walls as nothing more than plain walls with no secret doors in them>
> 
> GM: "You don't find any signs of secret doors."​
> Here's why I characterise this as a railroad.
> 
> We don't know exactly how it has come about that the PCs are being pursued through the buiilding - most typically, I think, that would be a consequence resulting from some recent bit of past play. But in any event, that pursuit is now the salient pressure on the PCs (and hence the players) in the game. In response to that pressue, this particular player has expressed an interest in the fiction developing in a certain direction - namely, that his/her PC finds signs of a secret door in the bare wall, so that the PCs might escape though it.
> 
> Now, because we're playing a game with "moves" and dice and stuff, rather than just round-robin storytelling, the player's desire about the fiction doesn't happen automatically. Rather, the player declares an action for his/her PC that folows from that desire. Success in that action declaration will meant that the player gets want s/he wants vis-a-vis the fiction (ie the PC finds signs of a secret door); failure means s/he won't.
> 
> (Note that this action declaration satisfies other typical constraints on player-side moves in a FRPG. For instnace, it is declared from the first-person perspective of the PC. And it's a well-establshed trope of fantasy gaming that bare stone walls can in fact have secret doors in them.)
> 
> In the example I've given, the player's action declaration does not succeed, but not because s/he rolled too low on the dice. (This contrasts with a failed attack roll.) It fails because the GM has _already decicded_ that it can't succeed.
> 
> That is the limit on the players' choice - his/her choice to have escape occur by way of secret door has been vetoed by the GM, by application of the prior worldbuilding/setting authorship. That is why I call it a railroad.
> 
> For completeness, I've written a further comment; because it's tangential, I've sblocked it.
> 
> [sblock]There is a completley different style of play, which is not about _salient pressure on the PCs_ but is about _puzzling out the maze designed by the GM, so as to extract loot from it_. The OP distinguished the two styles of play; the latter is associated with classic D&D dungeoncrawling,. I don't think the notion of _railroading_ has any work at all to do in describing that sort of RPGing, because the game isn't about developing a ficiton at all; that's just a side effect of the players declaring moves that allow them to map out the dungeon and locate and recover the treasures. In this style of play there can be well- and poorly-desigend dungeons (eg too linear, or too many pit traps, or too little treasure relative to difficulty); and fair and unfair refereeing (eg rules that the monsters always find the PCs while resting, no matter what precautions the players take to reduce the risk of being found). But no railroading [/sblock]
> 
> You seem to have missed the way that "say 'yes' or roll the dice" actually works.
> 
> If the GM calls for a check and the check succeeds, then the player's intent is realised, and so the only work the GM did was to contribute to the framing, to call for a check in response to the action declaration, and to set the DC. It is _the player_'s desire for the fiction that comes to pass (just the same as in combat: a successful disarm roll, for instance, isn't just a cue to the GM to make something up: it establishes a definite outcome in the fiction, namely, that the foe is disarmed).
> 
> If the check fails, the player's intent is not realised, and rather the GM narrates some consequence which, ideally (ie from the pont of view of a satisfactory aesthetic experience), was implicit in the framing of the situation In this latter case, the GM does all the work done for a successful check, plus has to establish and narrate the consequence of failure.
> 
> The role of the GM is therefore pretty clear, I think.
> 
> You are, I think, the only person I've ever met who thinks that saying "yes" to someone's request is railroading them!
> 
> But in any event, what you say is not accurate, because it ignores the narration of consequences for failure. These obviously should have thematic/dramatic significance, but will constitute _obstacles_ to the PCs realising their goals. Likewise the framing of situations that don't follow from failure, but have the goal of provoking dramatic/thematic choices by the players for their PCs: these will be _obstacles_ to the PCs' goals.




So I see the discussion on railroad/not has continued, but this post in particular had two points I wanted to make:

First, in terms of the Story Now approach of searching for a secret door, that the check itself is (at least partially) responsible for determining whether a secret door is found - what consideration is made, and how, that a secret door may not belong there?

While we explored this a bit with more absurd examples (the paladin declaring they find a holy sword at the market), why should the secret door be there? What if it shouldn't (logically speaking)?

A related thing is the continued (seeming) insistence that with a prepared map or notes that it is impossible for the DM to make changes. This is simply not true. There's no reason why, if a player decided to search for a secret door, that I can't decide that one might be present, and even in that moment make the decision that the dice will decide and allow them to make a check. However, if the circumstance (whether pre-designed like the map I was using, or in the moment) leads me to decide that a secret door just doesn't belong here, then so be it.

For example, one group of characters decided, for some odd reason, to leap into a shaft filled with water, the surface of which was some 40' down. The shaft was close-fitted stone blocks covered in plaster. It was in a tomb, and was designed to lead to a false tomb, which had been plundered. The water was present because of a small stream that had since compromised the tomb.

The players jumped down without any rope, or any other obvious means of getting back out of the shaft. So why, would a check of any nature, suddenly make a secret door appear to allow them to escape their stupidity? The tomb wasn't designed for an easy way to escape (although this portion wasn't necessarily designed as a trap, although the shaft did have poisoned spikes at the bottom of it).

In many cases, the secret door just doesn't make sense.

I will also point out, that I've seen a great many threads and articles suggesting that dead ends, and inescapable situations is poor design. I disagree. The world is not always a friendly place, and you can't expect that every circumstance will always have a way to succeed. To me (and us) it's in these seemingly impossible circumstances that some of the most interesting stories and adventures occur. Even if the party eventually succumbed to the elements, lack of resources, etc., and nobody outside of this group of characters ever learned their fate, the exploration of character, of the interactions of the characters, in other words, the role-play of a hopeless situation, was amazingly interesting and cool.

--

Now, connecting this to the ongoing railroad discussion. Can there be more than one type of railroad? Sure, why not? If you're a player that is as concerned (if not more) about the process of how the adventure is created by the GM, then a dungeon that's drawn ahead of time can be considered a type of railroad. And once again, that goes back to my point about what the design of the game is and agency. If the game is designed (even by consensus by those at the table) to encourage, if not require, the GM to generate the story in the moment, in reaction to the players choices and motivations, with input from the dice, then what is considered a railroad is going to be different. 

To me, a railroad has nothing to do with the setting or the dungeon. A railroad (or not) has to do with the story or plot. Do the players have control of their characters decisions and actions, or the DM? 

A dungeon, a map, or whatever, can be used to _facilitate _a railroad. But a linear map does not in and of itself make an adventure or a campaign a railroad. Just like who decides whether a secret door is present or not (and when they decide it), you can't determine what is cool, or what is a railroad by a single point in time. For example, not finding a secret door is just a thing. A point in time. Not finding a secret door when you are running from a dozen guards is different. 

A railroad also doesn't need to be preplanned. If the DM is determining the outcome of all of the decisions the characters can make, and the direction the plot heads, then it's a railroad, or at least headed that way.

Note that deciding a secret door is there or not (whether before the session or during) is not a railroad. Any more than deciding there are a half-dozen orcs in this room, or the placement of any other challenge, setback, etc. It sets the framework around which the PCs make their choices. 

"OK, I'm not surprised that there's not a secret door here, but it certainly would have been nice. What now?"

The group trapped at the bottom of the shaft were there because of their own decisions. Indeed, there were several fallen adventurers under the water, their corpses carrying many things that might be of value, including an old grappling hook. Unfortunately, after decades of being submerged, the rope had long since decayed. It never occurred to me that an entire party would choose to jump into a shaft without bringing a rope with them. And they were the ones that insisted that they had not, when I gave them the option to assume they had prepared better, and decided they needed to grab one of the ropes they had already used up to that point and left in place.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Carl Olson said:


> So there's a lot going on in this thread and I'm working my way through it because... we'll, it's interesting and I'm nosy... but I'm wondering if anyone can clear something up for me:
> 
> Is the OP advocating a form of gaming where players are able to force a specific reality on the game by simply stating an intent and using dice rolls to determine if that intent comes true?
> 
> If he is, is this a thing in 5th Edition? Because it's certainly not in any other version of the game...




Its a contentious topic here apparently...

There IS IN FACT a school of RPG technique (and games designed specifically to support it) which are often called 'Story Now' and/or 'No Myth' games. 

You'll find good descriptions along the way, but the general concept is that only the most basic of facts are established at the start of play. USUALLY the players construct back stories for their characters in some fashion. This often also includes what they believe, want, what pushed them into the condition of being a character in the story, etc. 

The GM then 'frames a scene' (describes where the characters are and what they see) which puts pressure on their beliefs, threatens their goals, gives them an opportunity they want, etc. The players then, in character, act on their goals/beliefs/whatever and declare actions for their PCs. The action declaration includes what they want to accomplish (what success looks like) and, possibly depending on the game system, what failure would look like. 

Next the GM makes a choice:

1) The action succeeds - This is usually the case if the action doesn't really change the situation or address anything dramatically meaningful. It could also be the case where failure would not be interesting (IE if you need to pass through the secret door to find the hidden temple and that's the whole point of being where you are, then you simply find it). 

2) The action requires a check - The GM can let the dice decide. In this case if the check fails, then the failure happens, otherwise the character succeeds. Some resources may be expended either way, etc. again depending on the details of the system being used.

Finally the GM will describe what happens next. This probably means further projecting the course of the fiction in light of failure/success, and advancing the fiction, either within the current scene or on to an entirely new scene if the old one has played out.

This process simply repeats. The GM might frame a whole new scene after describing how the last one finished up, or there might be some sort of 'interlude' where the players can do less dramatic things like travel to a new place, gather resources, etc. 

In terms of 5e...

5e isn't described in terms of playing in this way. It is certainly possible, but the game proposes a 'classical' concept of play where the DM makes a 'dungeon' and the players make choices for their PCs, but don't have any input into the consequences of their actions, beyond informal character advocacy (I note that the 'Inspiration' rule in 5e is an exception to this, if you use it). 

4e was closer to being Story Now in its architecture. 'Say yes or roll the dice' was pretty close to being a rule, 'go to the action' was a constant theme, and a lot of the mechanical structure lent itself easily to Story Now techniques.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> What's really telling is that you felt the need to twist what I said......again.  It's indicative of not having a valid counter argument.  Not only did I not mention backstory at all with that post, backstory wasn't even backstory for it.
> 
> If the player is going to describe exactly how a success plays out, and exactly how failures play out, the DM doesn't need to be part of that game.  The player through his actions and intent is going to dictate where in the world everything he needs is going to be and where his PC is, and not only IF there are enemies, but who those enemies are.  The DM can literally choose nothing according to the rules you posted there.  For when the player dictates that an NPC is present, the player on the right can make decisions for the NPCs and roll the dice.  The DM has no necessary role in this game.  He might as well not be there.
> 
> If what I just said is not correct an the DM can choose things other than what the player dictates, then the player is declaring actions to get the DM to say stuff.




So, no other activities exist in the game except checks with success or failure as the outcome!

Nobody frames scenes (everything happens in some sort of blank white haze perhaps?).

Nobody decides whether a check is required or not (I guess they just always are, can you walk down the street in this game of yours, or do you need to make a walking check?)

Nobody establishes how the fiction advances or what the wider consequences of any action are (I guess no new scenes ever appear, the players maybe just use checks to find 'stuff' at random?)

I have no idea what this game is @_*Maxperson*_, but it is nothing like what we're talking about. I mean, if you can't see your own straw man when its burning before your eyes....

The player is describing what his character does and wants to do in response to the events framed by the GM and WRT his goals/agenda/beliefs. That is what the player is doing. He's not trying to elicit fiction from the GM, except as that is incidental to and a necessity of, the play of the game. The OBJECT of the game for the player is to see what happens when he takes on the character persona and engages in situations which engage with the salient aspects of the character, which the player has designated before/during play.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> I'll ask again: do you disagree that _railroading_ is a relational property? Did you miss my post about that, or are you just dishonestly ignoring it?




 Irony, thy name is [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION].  Sorry, should I <snip> your post to make the irony clear?

As for your question, I find that to be a banality and so I ignored it.  However, since you seem to insist:

I can see the tortuous logic you're using.  You're literally claiming the right to continue to call the example railroading, and use that in future arguments, because you claim it's railroading _to you_.  You've defined railroading as something that is unique to each individual; an aesthetic; a preference.  But, right at that moment, it ceases to have any use as a diagnostic for analysis.  You literally just told everyone in this thread that when you say something is railroading, it's equivalent to saying you think it's pretty.  Railroading is now, thanks to your definition, utterly useless for you to use as a criticism of another playstyle that has any more weight than 'I don't like it.'

Which would normally be fine, if self-defeating to your larger stated purposes of analyzing playstyle differences (what's the use of an aesthetic for analysis?) if, and this is key, railroading wasn't already a pejorative term.  So, you can't just declare that railroading is only an aesthetic consideration and thereby remove the pejorative aspects of the term, which is exactly what you're doing.   You're providing the defense that others shouldn't take offense to you saying something is a railroad because you think the term should only be used as an aesthetic description and so you lack the authority to make others see something as a railroad.  So, then, as long as they don't see what their doing as railroading, you should be free to use the term because it only describes your opinion of the thing and that can't be seen as you saying it's a railroad in fact.  

But, railroad still a pejorative and has a general meaning that most people accept and use.  Redefining a pejorative doesn't work.  As Ken White of popehat fame often says, if you ironically screw a goat, you're still a goat-screwer.  Since I think you're a reasonably smart person I have a hard time allowing that you've concocted this elaborate defense and yet don't recognize that you're using a pejorative term in a way guaranteed to evoke it usually understood pejorative meaning.  And then claiming that it's other people's fault for taking offense because you really define that term (that you used in it's usual meaning, mind) in as a relational property.  That doesn't work, man.  

Sadly, there was an easy out to this, one I pointed out earlier, and that is, under Story Now, the example would be a railroad because it's the GM overriding the play procedures to abridge player agency (as allowed by the system) and enforce the GM's preferred outcome.  Had you struck this argument, instead of the ones you chose instead, then you'd be standing on strong ground.  However, this would require admitting that the playstyles differ enough in core assumptions that maybe you cannot use the same metrics to analyze them both, and that's a point you've not conceded and seem strongly adverse to conceding.  So, instead, we get this, which halfway makes the point, but fails to frame it in terms of the actual, concrete differences between the playstyles and, instead, attempts an end-run around logic to arrive at the conclusion that you can continue to call it railroading but others should not take that to mean that they railroad because the impression of railroading is deeply personal and cannot be transferred, like the idea of beauty.  It's exhausting, really.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

happyhermit said:


> I could quibble with some details here but we pretty much agree. The main point is that "stories" as pemerton put it, are being told by the GM in either case, not only in the GM-worldbuilding situation. The stories can be different (they don't need to be) but the real difference is the limitations on the way they are generated, not whether one game has GM's telling them or not.



Well, I said that I think GMs are pretty important in games, so clearly I don't really disagree with you TOO much, but I think that Story Now games have a lot more 'player telling the story' in general than 'classical' games do. In any case, the primary point is that the player is ordering up the story. 

Its sort of like going into a pizza joint. You can buy a slice of what's at the counter, or you can order up your own pizza, with the deep crust or the thin crust, or whatever. Either way its pizza, but when you choose the style and toppings it is certainly more fair to say that you had some hand in 'making it'. 



> I would think not, but pemerton has written things that indicates they are at odds with this and the idea that the GM is telling stories mediated by several factors in both types of games. Then again, it isn't always clear what they are arguing. It seemed like they were arguing that using "kickers" in a game with any GM worldbuilding was impossible for instance, at one point, still not sure.




Eh, I ignore some of what people say here, its just noise  

I think, I suspect, that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has really active players who 'take charge' and run with their part of the game strongly as a rule. Some games may be more the handiwork of the GM, even if they are story now.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> And this is exactly the nut of the whole thing, and where the 'traditionalist' analysis sinks into the swamp, falls over, and burns (before being rebuilt for the 2078th time). The idea that the players "will just find secret doors everywhere" or that things will be 'too easy', or that the players will [violate the Czege Principle], etc. is all based on a fundamentally oppositional model of play. One in which the GM has hidden the 'goodies' in the 'maze' and its the player's job to guide their characters to it.
> 
> Once the goal became to have fun playing the game and making up cool stories about the characters, etc. then all that went basically out the window. It is still possible to engage in it as a specific facet of a greater whole, but its not THE GAME anymore.




Pretty sure I said this exact thing upthread about 30 posts.  This is spot on.  The playstyles are different, and cannot be judged sidebyside using the same criteria. 

But, it should be noted that a lot of the animosity in this thread is from Story Now based analysis of traditional play.  If the point of play isn't aligned to the Story Now principles, the resultant analysis will be badly mistaken.  The OP question makes this mistake.  Prep is of varying use in Story Now, and shouldn't be used/created to decide the outcome of play in any case, but that's not how traditional play works -- in traditional play, prep is done primarily to so that the GM can use it to be a neutral arbiter of outcomes by making many decisions about the fiction ahead of time.  That fiction is then related to the player who use it to inform their action declarations.  The point here isn't to get to the action and make that action about the character goals, but to find the character goals as an emergent property of the game.  If you analyze this from the viewpoint that every action declaration is inherently about resolving a crisis for the character, then, yeah, being told there's no secret door because notes is going to be very offputting.  But, in traditional play, the action to search for a secret door isn't about a crisis for the character, it often isn't made in a moment of stress at all, but as a thorough exploring of the area.  Crisis will come as play progresses due to the expenditure of resources and the challenges faced.  The GM doesn't frame in the crisis, it's occurs somewhere that the GM can't anticipate because it will be dictated by the play of the players.



> Now, some will contend that they're playing to 'explore', but the model is the same here, the GM has the 'gold' and the players are tasked with navigating the 'maze' to uncover it. The walls and traps of the dungeon maze may be replaced with other stuff, but they still remain.
> 
> Finally, you can claim to have gone entirely beyond that by saying "well, the players just come to me and tell me what their PC wants to do (in or out of character) and we work on that", but then we come back to the OP of the thread, what's the world building/details FOR?
> 
> I think the ONLY actual solid answer to that which ever came in this thread (and honestly, maybe it was the other thread, forgive me, was the one where [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] quoted one of the Story Now guys stating that you CAN have a 'built world', and it has utility in fixing genre and providing some footing for the players to leverage their character's traits into concrete action.




That was the other thread.  I'm curious how that resolves when a detail of the built world comes up against an action declaration.  Like, seriously, I'm curious as that seems like a case where the GM would negate the action declaration due to the previously established fiction.  Or, is it a case where the previously established fiction's truth value is being questioned and the resolution will show if it was true or what the character now claims is the real truth?  Depending on the specific action declaration and the specific detail, I can see either playing out.




> There's no Schrodinger's Door if there's no concept of an ESTABLISHED fictional reality outside of what has been presented to the characters. This is something I maintain as a principle of play in games of the type I run, ONLY what has been presented in play exists, all else is vapor until you meet it. That wall didn't exist until we laid eyes on it, so who's to say it didn't 'always have a secret door in it'???




Nah, it's still Schrodinger's door.  Once it's observed (resolved), then it's in the state it's in, period.  What it was a moment before you resolved the probability function doesn't matter and you can't answer that anyway.  The cat's dead, man, the cat's just dead.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> The problem is, when you put it this starkly it reads as if the DM is not allowed to insert anything of thematic interest to herself, and has to bury or deny any interests she might have.
> 
> But then you say this in the next post:
> So the DM can have influence on the players' stories but not insert any story of her own?  Hardly what I'd call recruitment-poster material for attracting new DMs.
> 
> Lanefan




Several years ago myself and some other people I play with often decided we wanted to create a story game about Arthurian Knights (except we didn't actually set it in England, we made up a fantasy sort of pseudo France). Anyway, we all agreed on the genre, some plot elements which could be used, selected a mechanics to use, and characters were created with back stories appropriate to the genre and referencing some of the pre-generated 'stuff'. 

Now, I ended up GMing this, so I added a bunch of added 'things' in the course of scene framing. These included a child, a tower, a battle on a bridge with a black knight, a tournament, a plot to kill an important NPC, a giant, etc. A lot of stuff really. 

The players also invented a lot of stuff related to their characters. They invented followers, a way to dispatch the giant, a way in and out of the tower, etc. Honestly I'm not as systematic as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] in terms of remembering who did what, but we all had a good amount of input. 

I would call this typical for MY games. GM is important, but the whole game is an outgrowth of what all the participants were interested in doing.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, I guess I'm trying to still understand what these notes and lists and maps and such DO. I think we've actually got that however, it was way back around post 1200 IIRC, so I suspect now we're talking about something 'else'.
> 
> So, here's a small example:
> 
> A player states the desire of his character to collect all of the Seven Swords of the Greatest Heroes. After some number of travails he finds himself in a situation, which I have framed, in which he can gain one of these swords, or he can save someone's life (lets assume they're innocent and worthy of saving, that's how I could frame it). Its up to the player. His beliefs are now being put to the test! Every element of play leading up to this was directed in some fashion to this point. It might have included many setbacks and other equally trying situations, but here he is now, and he's got to choose.
> 
> I think that's pretty much the boiled down essence of the standard narrative mode of play. You don't HAVE to dispose of all background or 'myth', but you DO have to focus on the dramatic conflict, which is posited, INHERENTLY and can truly only come from, the player of the character.




So to answer the first part of your question:

Notes can serve as many different things. The most basic is something like a "typical orc patrol" with stats, etc. that are ready to drop in whenever needed. This could be something like a map of a tomb, perhaps with some traps and areas of interests detailed, and even could include some history regarding the interred. In the moment, a tomb is needed, pull out one or another, and use as is if it works, or modify on the fly for whatever's appropriate. Others can be NPCs with a few notes about their personality and motivations, etc. Really, just about any bit of content can be recorded as thought about.

For example, a brief set of notes about what I didn't like about the published descriptions of cloakers, and some ideas of what I thought would make sense. I might have scribbled those down a decade ago, when reading through a book, and said, "this is stupid." If/when I used cloakers, it gives me a starting point for developing something I would like. Later on, when coming across the note, I might flesh it out a bit with more ideas. How about this? OK, more ideas. Years later I find it again, with different inspiration, and knowledge of where the current campaign is heading, and how I can utilize them in this current circumstance. I don't know for a fact that it will actually come into play, but it gives me a lot more to work with should that happen. How they might be encounted, how the cloakers will act/react, the nature of what other local denizens know/think, etc. 

I don't do this sort of thing just to prep for the game. It's sort of a hobby in itself. Read a book, find something you like, and you don't want to forget it. I do the same thing when writing music - record what I've got so I don't forget it. When I come back to it later (many years sometimes) it goes in a different direction. If I bring it out in a jam, the interaction with other musicians takes it in a different direction. A few years later, I might do something entirely different again.

During the course of play, the players might make a decision to go down a chute or shaft deep into the Underdark that leads to...what? If I've had a long week, not enough sleep, or a tough day, I might not have a good answer. The notes can be used to spark ideas, or in their entirety if needed.

--

As far as the standard narrative mode, we're not playing a game with that general style. I think that as I examine our games, we certainly use a lot of those techniques. But to start with, we don't start with such declarations or motivations such as "I'm going to collect the seven swords of the seven heroes." Most of the characters are just people. We have farmers, coopers, a bouncer, lots of normal people. As part of their responsibility in the town, everybody serves in the town guard a certain number of weeks of the year. So things might happen. In addition, they live in a secluded village, which leads to more possibilities due to dangers in the wilderness. There's a political situation going on, regarding a larger town that is over a week's ride away, (re)establishing a trade route through the village. Wealthy individuals like to come to the village during the summer to hunt monsters, and are looking to hire local guides.

Sometimes the people choose to do something adventurous, other times characters have "opportunities" thrust upon them. They do have goals and motivations, but they tend to be the mundane type, hoping to gain their own farm, raise a family, etc. It's a classic ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances type of campaign. 

We work hard to provide lots of depth to the characters, including their bigger motivations, but the general thrust of everything is exploration. Exploring the setting. Exploring the characters. Exploring the politics, the dangers, dungeons, and such. Learning what makes these characters tick. Dramatic conflict is a part of what we do, but only part of it. Not every moment, or every scene, or even every session, has to be a DRAMATIC moment. Many times they are smaller dramatic moments. A great many of the dramatic moments are between the characters. There are often major dramatic moments that can be "life-changing" moments for a character or characters. But it's the smaller moments that develop the character, help define them in a way that makes those more dramatic moments even more so. It's not just about the big moments, but of a great many of moments that help define the character. 

I don't see my job as being here to help set up the circumstances that allow the characters to accomplish their motivations. That's up to them. If one of the characters declares that they intend to become a famous dragonslayer, then they need to go do it. Not rely on me to set that up for them. They have to acquire the skills they think they'll need. Assemble the party that will help them do so, research the weaknesses, possible locations, etc. They'll track down spells or magic items that they think will help, and drive toward that goal. It might be years (real time) before they track down and make their first assault on an adult dragon, and it may initially end in failure. In the meantime, there will be many challenges, close calls, potential tough decisions, and sacrifices on the way. But they'll get there (assuming they do) through their actions and decisions, not because they said "I want to accomplish this" and I frame things in a way for them to reach that accomplishment.

This relates to the discussion regarding railroading as well. In my mind, the campaign is as far from a railroad as possible. There certainly may be things that I introduce that make their life more difficult. A rival group attempting to slay the dragon first, and using unsavory approaches, including sabotaging their attempts. Political interference, whatever. We do what we can do ground them in the world as much as possible (another aspect of worldbuilding), and those can interfere with their plans. Romantic entanglements, perhaps the loss of a loved one, etc. Success is often not just about the process of achieving it, but overcoming all of the unrelated aspects of life that often prevent people from reaching their goals. Perhaps they've discovered and retrieved _the_ dragonslayer. A legendary sword that can kill a dragon with a single blow. That is recovered by a rival just as they discover its resting place. Leaving them to decide if the sword is really needed or not, and if so, how to get it back. 

For us, it's about layers and layers of plots. Many of them directly tied to an individual's motivations, some speaking to several of them, others that apply to all of them (usually on a more temporary basis), and some that aren't directly related to any of these things, but are important or compelling at a given point in time for whatever reason. Such as serving guard duty for a week.

Despite loads of notes, the use of published materials, and all of the rest of that, it's about as far as a "choose your own adventure," "setting tourism," or "playing to learn what's in the GM's notes" as it can be. It's all about exploring the characters and their place in the world, and everything I do is to support that. I just choose not to discard many of the tools that Story Now games seem to eschew. I happily embrace many of the Story Now specific techniques and tools, often unconsciously. 

Part of the problem that I think I continue to have in discussing any of these tools and techniques is that they are not exclusive of each other. My use of all of them is very fluid, hopefully finding the best process and content for the moment, from moment to moment, so at the end of the night everybody goes home with the same assessment, "that was a great session." When we try to discuss them here, we have the tendency to idealize them, and discuss them in isolation. To me they aren't necessarily separate, nor does one approach preclude the use of another, even in the course of a few minutes.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

AbdulAlhazred said:


> There's no Schrodinger's Door if there's no concept of an ESTABLISHED fictional reality outside of what has been presented to the characters. This is something I maintain as a principle of play in games of the type I run, ONLY what has been presented in play exists, all else is vapor until you meet it. That wall didn't exist until we laid eyes on it, so who's to say it didn't 'always have a secret door in it'???




I agree with this, although ironically I also agree in the context of pre-authored content.

In other words, whether I've written it before the session or not, until it enters play it doesn't exist. And I've stated that several times in the past. I might write it down ahead of time, and keep it as written. I might write it down ahead of time and alter it. It could be written by somebody else. I might make it up on the fly.

In the end, the result remains the same, it doesn't exist until it does. And I reserve the right to change it until it does exist.

Of course, one way for it to exist, is for it to be published by somebody else, and the players read it outside of the session. But even in that case, it might not be true, and might be altered as it enters play. Again, until it has been presented in play, the "reality" doesn't exist yet.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> This is cool.
> 
> But wouldn't it be easier for you if you, on hearing the player's goal is to collect the 7 Swords, then came up with ideas on where each of those swords might be placed and what might be guarding them - and made notes on such - so as to save yourself having to make it all up on the fly later?




Yeah, I think that's a very interesting question. Honestly that seems to me to be the most natural response to the OP, though maybe we needed to go through some steps to get there, I'm not sure...

So, I'd say the process would then be that the players make up their characters and pick some high level 'campaign goal' somehow, and then the GM generates the settings and etc. needed to play that out. I think this might be a feasible approach for at least some subset of narrativist play. It might even be better if the GM and the players agreed ahead of time on this and then the players went off to make the PCs and the GM to do some world building/adventure design. This is not far from some things I've done, like the Arthurian Knights game we played that I described here a few posts ago. It does work. 

Now, I think there's something to be said for a more dynamic and less scripted game. There is less incentive to create a 'Wizard of Oz Game' out of it where there's basically one 'yellow brick road'. The focus tends to fall more towards the PLOT, (IE finding the seven swords) vs CHARACTER (IE testing the PCs reasons/dedication/moral compunctions about/etc finding the seven swords). 

I think each one delivers a slightly different product. I think they do form part of a continuum between 'classical' and 'standard narrative method' of the 'Pemertonian' type. I think that you can find a lot of games, including ones written/espoused by the forgite story now people, that fit all different points in this continuum. In this sense I am not opposed to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s proposition that such a continuum exists, though I think there are points he seems hazy on at times (and at other times not so much, threads are not the best way to communicate).


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> And who has ever said that players get to establish the consequences of failure?
> 
> Not me. Not Eero Tuovinen. Not any quote I've posted from a rulebook (for DitV, BW, MHRP, maybe others I'm forgetting).
> 
> In fact, in replies to both you and [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], I have reitereated, again and again, that the GM narrates failures and this is a principal source of story dynamics.
> 
> Did you now read those posts?




Every time you say that your players do not declare actions to get you to say stuff YOU are saying that they get to establish the consequences of their failure.  If you get to establish those consequences then they are declaring actions to get you to say stuff.  You don't get to have it both ways.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> So, no other activities exist in the game except checks with success or failure as the outcome!
> 
> Nobody frames scenes (everything happens in some sort of blank white haze perhaps?).
> 
> Nobody decides whether a check is required or not (I guess they just always are, can you walk down the street in this game of yours, or do you need to make a walking check?)
> 
> Nobody establishes how the fiction advances or what the wider consequences of any action are (I guess no new scenes ever appear, the players maybe just use checks to find 'stuff' at random?)




Of course they do, which is why [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s players declare actions in order to get him to say stuff.  Every time he argues that they don't declare actions to get him to say stuff, he's arguing that they control everything, including scene framing, when and what checks are required, and all consequences.  It's a ridiculous argument that he's making, followed by a ridiculous counter in order to keep from being the victim of his own propaganda about playstyles other than his own.  He can't fess up to his players declaring actions to get him to say stuff, because that's the negative characterization he's tossing at my playstyle.  If he does it, too, then his position falls out from under him.  That forces him make statements that can only be true if the players control everything



> The player is describing what his character does and wants to do in response to the events framed by the GM and WRT his goals/agenda/beliefs. That is what the player is doing. He's not trying to elicit fiction from the GM, *except as that is incidental to and a necessity of, the play of the game.* The OBJECT of the game for the player is to see what happens when he takes on the character persona and engages in situations which engage with the salient aspects of the character, which the player has designated before/during play.



The bolded portion = "in order to get the DM to say stuff."  I get that the motivations are different, but the result is still that the player declares an action and the DM says stuff in response.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ilbranteloth said:


> So I see the discussion on railroad/not has continued, but this post in particular had two points I wanted to make:
> 
> First, in terms of the Story Now approach of searching for a secret door, that the check itself is (at least partially) responsible for determining whether a secret door is found - what consideration is made, and how, that a secret door may not belong there?
> 
> While we explored this a bit with more absurd examples (the paladin  declaring they find a holy sword at the market), why should the secret  door be there? What if it shouldn't (logically speaking)?



I think there isn't ONE specific answer. First, different games might allocate specific responsibility for this. It could be a responsibility of the GM, which admittedly then becomes very much like "it isn't on the map". If the GM is really 'story now' though they will only nix possibilities that are really genre breaking or utterly ridiculous in a game-degrading way. 

Another answer is that the players should be reasonable, they after all have a big stake in the game. Sure, in a given game they might 'break the game' by 'inventing' some vast amount of secret doors, but the standard narrative model doesn't just implode! The GM is still framing challenges, and the players can only succeed on checks so much of the time, eventually they will be buried in consequences of failures. 

In a sense we're only arguing here about the DETAILS of the fiction, because EVERY narrative model game is going to have this character, the players declare actions to advance their agendas. Since it doesn't actually matter MECHANICALLY what those actions are (modulus which skill/power/whatever you get to use due to fictional reasons), the ONLY actual considerations are aesthetic! So it makes no sense for the players to declare dumb things, they are just as well off to declare cool things! You might as well ask why GMs in 'classic' D&D don't just make ridiculous and impossible adventures all the time.



> A related thing is the continued (seeming) insistence that with a prepared map or notes that it is impossible for the DM to make changes. This is simply not true. There's no reason why, if a player decided to search for a secret door, that I can't decide that one might be present, and even in that moment make the decision that the dice will decide and allow them to make a check. However, if the circumstance (whether pre-designed like the map I was using, or in the moment) leads me to decide that a secret door just doesn't belong here, then so be it.



This is reasonable. It isn't EXACTLY 'classical' world building and play, but its a plausible procedure for running a game. I think there are many sorts of possible RPGs. The OP simply contrasted two sorts of design. We can expand the discussion to many others.



> For example, one group of characters decided, for some odd reason, to leap into a shaft filled with water, the surface of which was some 40' down. The shaft was close-fitted stone blocks covered in plaster. It was in a tomb, and was designed to lead to a false tomb, which had been plundered. The water was present because of a small stream that had since compromised the tomb.
> 
> The players jumped down without any rope, or any other obvious means of getting back out of the shaft. So why, would a check of any nature, suddenly make a secret door appear to allow them to escape their stupidity? The tomb wasn't designed for an easy way to escape (although this portion wasn't necessarily designed as a trap, although the shaft did have poisoned spikes at the bottom of it).
> 
> In many cases, the secret door just doesn't make sense.



I think this is going back in the direction of mixing classical game logic with narrativist ideas and things aren't coherent. In classical play your observation is entirely cogent. In standard narrative model it doesn't make much sense. I mean, if the players jumped down, then they had SOME reason, right? I mean, why are they here to begin with? What do they WANT? I would make something happen that was related to the story and the characters. Maybe there's a way out, maybe someone can get back out. 

I mean, what did you do? "OK, TPK, everyone roll up a new character!"? I mean, that's warranted, in a Gygaxian sense, and perfectly OK. It just doesn't serve narrativist ends and wouldn't happen in that sort of game. Nobody would frame a scene with that element in it which would produce that result.



> I will also point out, that I've seen a great many threads and articles suggesting that dead ends, and inescapable situations is poor design. I disagree. The world is not always a friendly place, and you can't expect that every circumstance will always have a way to succeed. To me (and us) it's in these seemingly impossible circumstances that some of the most interesting stories and adventures occur. Even if the party eventually succumbed to the elements, lack of resources, etc., and nobody outside of this group of characters ever learned their fate, the exploration of character, of the interactions of the characters, in other words, the role-play of a hopeless situation, was amazingly interesting and cool.



I believe I described such a scenario which I invented years ago where NO SURVIVAL was possible, the entire party was doomed. This was pretty much a narrativist game, it was all about how the characters reacted. 

Anyway, I don't think its impossible to have ultimate failure in a narrativist game. It really isn't even that controversial. As you say, failure can be quite dramatic!



> To me, a railroad has nothing to do with the setting or the dungeon. A railroad (or not) has to do with the story or plot. Do the players have control of their characters decisions and actions, or the DM?
> 
> A dungeon, a map, or whatever, can be used to _facilitate _a railroad. But a linear map does not in and of itself make an adventure or a campaign a railroad. Just like who decides whether a secret door is present or not (and when they decide it), you can't determine what is cool, or what is a railroad by a single point in time. For example, not finding a secret door is just a thing. A point in time. Not finding a secret door when you are running from a dozen guards is different.
> 
> A railroad also doesn't need to be preplanned. If the DM is determining the outcome of all of the decisions the characters can make, and the direction the plot heads, then it's a railroad, or at least headed that way.



I agree, and even Pemerton seems to agree, calling it relational IIRC. I think I agree with you MORE than he states he does, but I think this is just one of these cases where nobody wants to listen much. 



> Note that deciding a secret door is there or not (whether before the session or during) is not a railroad. Any more than deciding there are a half-dozen orcs in this room, or the placement of any other challenge, setback, etc. It sets the framework around which the PCs make their choices.
> 
> "OK, I'm not surprised that there's not a secret door here, but it certainly would have been nice. What now?"
> 
> The group trapped at the bottom of the shaft were there because of their own decisions. Indeed, there were several fallen adventurers under the water, their corpses carrying many things that might be of value, including an old grappling hook. Unfortunately, after decades of being submerged, the rope had long since decayed. It never occurred to me that an entire party would choose to jump into a shaft without bringing a rope with them. And they were the ones that insisted that they had not, when I gave them the option to assume they had prepared better, and decided they needed to grab one of the ropes they had already used up to that point and left in place.




I think 'secret door' is more a code for situations where the players aren't allowed to advance the narrative because the GM sticks to specific fictional positioning. It could be LITERALLY the secret door that Pemerton talked about, but maybe its a lot more likely to be a sequence of things where the players try X, and then Y, and then Z, and somehow always get nowhere. Its pretty easy to start to suspect that this is intentional...


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> But, it should be noted that a lot of the animosity in this thread is from Story Now based analysis of traditional play.  If the point of play isn't aligned to the Story Now principles, the resultant analysis will be badly mistaken.  The OP question makes this mistake.  Prep is of varying use in Story Now, and shouldn't be used/created to decide the outcome of play in any case, but that's not how traditional play works...



Well, I think the OP just asked "in light of story now, what is the purpose of 'prep'"? I don't read it as a misreading of classical play, it is simply positing story now as the technique under discussion. Honestly, I think ALL of the discussion of classical play and the differences, etc. was thread derailment! It was NEVER RELEVANT AT ALL to what was supposedly to be discussed.



> That was the other thread.  I'm curious how that resolves when a detail of the built world comes up against an action declaration.  Like, seriously, I'm curious as that seems like a case where the GM would negate the action declaration due to the previously established fiction.  Or, is it a case where the previously established fiction's truth value is being questioned and the resolution will show if it was true or what the character now claims is the real truth?  Depending on the specific action declaration and the specific detail, I can see either playing out.



Yeah, I think its a matter of system and details of the situation. The GM would be perfectly justified, in some cases, to say "No, we already established that this is an airless moon, you can't breath here." I don't think anyone would argue with that unless it was a fantasy game where reality is subjective... or something. Another case would be the secret door, someone could come back later and find that there was indeed a secret door! This would of course require that the fiction never really ruled it out, so I guess its not quite a fair example.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think there isn't ONE specific answer. First, different games might allocate specific responsibility for this. It could be a responsibility of the GM, which admittedly then becomes very much like "it isn't on the map". If the GM is really 'story now' though they will only nix possibilities that are really genre breaking or utterly ridiculous in a game-degrading way.
> 
> Another answer is that the players should be reasonable, they after all have a big stake in the game. Sure, in a given game they might 'break the game' by 'inventing' some vast amount of secret doors, but the standard narrative model doesn't just implode! The GM is still framing challenges, and the players can only succeed on checks so much of the time, eventually they will be buried in consequences of failures.
> 
> In a sense we're only arguing here about the DETAILS of the fiction, because EVERY narrative model game is going to have this character, the players declare actions to advance their agendas. Since it doesn't actually matter MECHANICALLY what those actions are (modulus which skill/power/whatever you get to use due to fictional reasons), the ONLY actual considerations are aesthetic! So it makes no sense for the players to declare dumb things, they are just as well off to declare cool things! You might as well ask why GMs in 'classic' D&D don't just make ridiculous and impossible adventures all the time.
> 
> 
> This is reasonable. It isn't EXACTLY 'classical' world building and play, but its a plausible procedure for running a game. I think there are many sorts of possible RPGs. The OP simply contrasted two sorts of design. We can expand the discussion to many others.
> 
> 
> I think this is going back in the direction of mixing classical game logic with narrativist ideas and things aren't coherent. In classical play your observation is entirely cogent. In standard narrative model it doesn't make much sense. I mean, if the players jumped down, then they had SOME reason, right? I mean, why are they here to begin with? What do they WANT? I would make something happen that was related to the story and the characters. Maybe there's a way out, maybe someone can get back out.
> 
> I mean, what did you do? "OK, TPK, everyone roll up a new character!"? I mean, that's warranted, in a Gygaxian sense, and perfectly OK. It just doesn't serve narrativist ends and wouldn't happen in that sort of game. Nobody would frame a scene with that element in it which would produce that result.




So the scene started when they discovered the old tomb while they were guided for a couple of out of town nobles on a hunting expedition. To tie into one of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]’s favorite subjects, there were some secret ulterior motives. However, those had no bearing here.

Anyway, they opted to explore the tomb, pretty much because it was there. Of course, the prospect of treasure was a driving factor, and they had taken refuge in the entrance as a defensive position against an orc attack. They didn’t have to enter the tomb, and their position was very defensible, but they decided to move forward.

One of the characters, a 17 year old, decided to jump into the water. Another followed and located the passage that was now under water. To my surprise, the rest followed, without going to collect their rope.

They explored, found what they could, then realized they didn’t have a way out. I suggested that somebody would probably have gone back to get their rope, but they decided that they didn’t.

So we just kept playing it out. From that point on, I was needed very little. A few questions here or there, but mostly it was discussions among the characters. Part of what they did was provide clues for anybody that might come after them, and to record everything they felt was important in the hopes others could benefit, and particularly hoping that their friends would find them and continue what they thought was important.

Before the next session, somebody wanted to join the campaign. I knew that the noble was still outside, but hadn’t decided/diced to see if they had survived. So the new character combined with the noble, who had survived, became their way out.

The last part of your statement gives insight as to why some people consider Story Now games as more susceptible to railroading/taking away player agency. 

The tomb was designed with a false tomb to fool tomb robbers. Why would I, as the DM, restrict their decisions to not allow them to fall victim to the design of the tomb as many before them. Originally, the poison spikes were a deadly end for most, due to a seesaw passage trap that was, by this time, obvious because it was stuck in a partially tipped position. So the original trap was obvious, but no longer dangerous because the elements had rusted the mechanism in place, and the pit had not only filled with water, but the poison diluted and the wooden spikes rotted and crumbling.

The state of this part of the tomb made it clear that it had been plundered, that it was once very, very deadly, and that there might not be much to gain from the risks. Obviously, there are often other things to be gained aside from riches. Several other expeditions to the tomb did yield some riches. The last expedition threw me completely, though. There wasn’t any specific reason to return to it at that point, but they decided that despite the fact that they had retrieved the treasure that remained, and found the remains of the mummy that had been slain by drow, they wanted to go open the sarcophagus they had left.

That’s right, despite the fact that they were already involved in a half dozen other directions, and that all of the deadliest traps and monsters had slain every other person who attempted to plunder it over thousands of years, they wanted to go trigger what was potentially the deadliest trap/encounter in the place. 

The acid gas trap that remained was deadly, although fortunately for them only affected one of them. Since they had already found the remains of the mummy, they knew it was otherwise empty. This was months after their original exploration. 

The encounters in the tomb were a mix of predesigned and improvised, along with some random determination. The only dramatic “need” at the time was the PCs desire to explore and gain treasure. As it turned out, there was much more that they found that related more to their motivations and ties to the village, things I haven’t detailed here. The ramifications of the three trips to the tomb, along with the death of one of the PCs continues to have multiple impacts (and is driving a couple of characters more specifically). 

A quick summary: discovering the remains of a band that died a hundred years ago with ties (including a letter and a magic item) to a mysterious villager that they wanted to know more about.

The discovery of efforts by drow to plunder the tomb from below. They were already investigating drow activity on the area.

Confirmation of the evil/spy nature of a hireling of the nobles(which the nobles knew) and their suspected ties to a traitor within the party. This is related to the ongoing political activities in the campaign. This ties into significant motivations for several characters, and there are also significant disagreements among several of the characters on these matters.

Discovery of potential proof of the evil motivations of a Lord in relation to those political matters.

Information that may lead to the ancient dwarven ruins of Dekanter, a driving motivation for another character.

The acquisition of several items that have particular value to a cleric of Deneir that can help them with other matters.

The passing of the “test” by several of the characters who had inquired about joining forces with the Harpers, but had not found them (or didn’t know they had successfully made contact).

There’s more, but that should be enough for now. The point is, the exploration itself is one thing, but doesn’t exclude nor always include moments of great importance to each and every character. The three expeditions were undertaken by different groups of characters, but the later groups were acting on information as well as goals set with characters from the earlier expeditions. There were characters that were on two or all of them as well.


----------



## happyhermit

AbdulAlhazred said:


> ...
> Now, some will contend that they're playing to 'explore', but the model is the same here, the GM has the 'gold' and the players are tasked with navigating the 'maze' to uncover it. The walls and traps of the dungeon maze may be replaced with other stuff, but they still remain.
> ...
> I think the ONLY actual solid answer to that which ever came in this thread (and honestly, maybe it was the other thread, forgive me, was the one where [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] quoted one of the Story Now guys stating that you CAN have a 'built world', and it has utility in fixing genre and providing some footing for the players to leverage their character's traits into concrete action.




After years with the different styles and types of games, I have come up with a pretty solid view of what myself and many players I have observed get out of "worldbuilding" that we can't get anywhere else (as opposed to all of the things it can be used for that can also be achieved in other ways). The main thing I need worldbuilding for (as a player) is evoking "that feeling" I mentioned earlier, it doesn't have a name AFAIK but it entirely definable and I understand it about as well as any other feeling this point. A lot of people most likely don't care about it and no doubt many people that use worldbuilding extensively use it for other reasons, and many probably don't really consider whether they need to or not.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> In terms of 5e...
> 
> 5e isn't described in terms of playing in this way. It is certainly possible, but the game proposes a 'classical' concept of play where the DM makes a 'dungeon' and the players make choices for their PCs, but don't have any input into the consequences of their actions, beyond informal character advocacy (I note that the 'Inspiration' rule in 5e is an exception to this, if you use it).
> 
> 4e was closer to being Story Now in its architecture. 'Say yes or roll the dice' was pretty close to being a rule, 'go to the action' was a constant theme, and a lot of the mechanical structure lent itself easily to Story Now techniques.




5e includes "Plot points" which are straight up this style of game, it even cites the example of a PC stating they find a secret door, which has been much discussed here.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, I said that I think GMs are pretty important in games, so clearly I don't really disagree with you TOO much, but I think that Story Now games have a lot more 'player telling the story' in general than 'classical' games do. In any case, the primary point is that the player is ordering up the story.
> 
> Its sort of like going into a pizza joint. You can buy a slice of what's at the counter, or you can order up your own pizza, with the deep crust or the thin crust, or whatever. Either way its pizza, but when you choose the style and toppings it is certainly more fair to say that you had some hand in 'making it'.




I can see a mother telling her kid "we made this together", but the day I tell a chef I had a hand in making a pizza because I chose the toppings  This is my quibbling with your example though, I think I get your point and it doesn't seem far off from what I argued all along; the stories can be different in many respects (length, frequency, limits on generation) but by the definition pemerton was using the GM is telling stories. So are the players, if that wasn't clear.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> And this is exactly the nut of the whole thing, and where the 'traditionalist' analysis sinks into the swamp, falls over, and burns (before being rebuilt for the 2078th time). The idea that the players "will just find secret doors everywhere" or that things will be 'too easy', or that the players will [violate the Czege Principle], etc. is all based on a fundamentally oppositional model of play. One in which the GM has hidden the 'goodies' in the 'maze' and its the player's job to guide their characters to it.



Whether the story or drama or whatever is player-created or DM-created or a combination; in all these cases conflict and oppositon and challenges - the things that makes the game "fundamentally oppositional", to use your term - have to come from somewhere.

If the players author these themselves and then also author the means to overcome them you've just said hello to Czege; so that can't work.

Now it could, I suppose, turn out that players are authoring challenges and conflicts for other players; but given the general anti-PvP stance around here I somehow don't see this happening very often.

Which leaves the DM to author them.  She authors the challenges and conflicts (whether this is done by pre-authorship or by story-now action failure narration is for this point irrelevant) and the players try to author solutions through the actions of their PCs.  Thus, unless you're doing full-on shared storytelling (which none here are, from what I can see) the game is always going to be somewhat oppositional between the players and the DM. 

And on an even more meta scale, it's the DM's job to set and enforce limits via one or more of the game system rules, house rules, and spot rulings; all of which have in theory been agreed to by the players.  It's up to the players to test and push those limits, should they so desire; which not all do.  But for those that do, this testing and enforcing of limits - regardless of game system in use - adds another oppositional factor between players and DM.

The "it's too easy" objection comes from a sense that maybe the limits in some systems are a bit too lax and-or the DM's ability to set or enforce limits has been reduced or neutered; that it's up to the players to in effect police themselves.

The "they will just find secret doors everywhere" objection comes - at least in my case - from a far-too-often-proven-correct assumption that players will not police themselves: that wherever they think they need one they'll look for secret doors, and even if the dice-roll odds only give them success a third of the time that's still going to leave you with a world in which an awful lot of walls have secret doors in them.



> Once the goal became to have fun playing the game and making up cool stories about the characters, etc. then all that went basically out the window. It is still possible to engage in it as a specific facet of a greater whole, but its not THE GAME anymore.



Except "cool stories" need conflict.  See above for where that has to come from, and for why the oppositional model remains well inside the window.

And the goal of having fun playing the game has always been there; it didn't just magically spring to life with the story-now concept.



> I think the ONLY actual solid answer to that which ever came in this thread (and honestly, maybe it was the other thread, forgive me, was the one where [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] quoted one of the Story Now guys stating that you CAN have a 'built world', and it has utility in fixing genre and providing some footing for the players to leverage their character's traits into concrete action.



Was that a quote from one of the Story Now guys?  I ask because someone (Ilbranteloth, maybe?) posted a very similar theory in one of these threads, and I thought the words were his own.



> There's no Schrodinger's Door if there's no concept of an ESTABLISHED fictional reality outside of what has been presented to the characters. This is something I maintain as a principle of play in games of the type I run, ONLY what has been presented in play exists, all else is vapor until you meet it. That wall didn't exist until we laid eyes on it, so who's to say it didn't 'always have a secret door in it'???



So it's not just Schroedinger's Door, it's Schroedinger's Entire World.

And how on earth is it possible to foreshadow or even accurately describe a scene in a setting like this?  If the wall didn't exist until a PC saw it (or a DM framed it) what might have happened differently had its existence been previously known by the DM?  Would sounds have echoed differently in the previous scene?  Would temperature or airflow or lighting have been different?  Most importantly, would these clues have caused the PCs (or the opposition, for all that) to have done anything differently?  If yes - particularly to the last of those questions - then the validity of that previous scene is called into serious question; and if this sort of thing is common then the whole game is shot.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> You might as well ask why GMs in 'classic' D&D don't just make ridiculous and impossible adventures all the time.



They don't?

Now there's a memo I never got... 



> I think this is going back in the direction of mixing classical game logic with narrativist ideas and things aren't coherent. In classical play your observation is entirely cogent. In standard narrative model it doesn't make much sense. I mean, if the players jumped down, then they had SOME reason, right? I mean, why are they here to begin with? What do they WANT? I would make something happen that was related to the story and the characters. Maybe there's a way out, maybe someone can get back out.
> 
> I mean, what did you do? "OK, TPK, everyone roll up a new character!"? I mean, that's warranted, in a Gygaxian sense, and perfectly OK. It just doesn't serve narrativist ends and wouldn't happen in that sort of game. Nobody would frame a scene with that element in it which would produce that result.



So in narrativist play players/PCs are never given the chance to do something TPK-level stupid and-or TPK-level unlucky?  Sounds a bit dull... 

Who knows what reasons they might have had for jumping down.  At the time it might have made perfect sense...well, other than the forgetting-the-rope part...to escape from something or because it was the only obvious way to proceed or simply because they were all just really thirsty!  The fact is, down they went.  [later note: then saw [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] 's write-up a few posts down from the one I quoted, which explains the scenario]

Lanefan


----------



## Sadras

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Several years ago myself and some other people I play with often decided we wanted to create a story game about Arthurian Knights (except we didn't actually set it in England, we made up a fantasy sort of pseudo France). Anyway, we all agreed on the genre, some plot elements which could be used, selected a mechanics to use, and characters were created with back stories appropriate to the genre and referencing some of the pre-generated 'stuff'.
> 
> Now, I ended up GMing this, so I added a bunch of added 'things' in the course of scene framing. These included a child, a tower, a battle on a bridge with a black knight, a tournament, a plot to kill an important NPC, a giant, etc. A lot of stuff really.
> 
> The players also invented a lot of stuff related to their characters. They invented followers, a way to dispatch the giant, a way in and out of the tower, etc. Honestly I'm not as systematic as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] in terms of remembering who did what, but we all had a good amount of input.
> 
> I would call this typical for MY games. GM is important, but the whole game is an outgrowth of what all the participants were interested in doing.




I do not play Story Now/No Myth games but you have just described one of my games. That is why I think [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] is quite right when he says he plays a variation of both, sometimes switching between the two styles unconsciously and even within a period of just a few minutes. 

This below quote from [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] really concludes the railroad discussion for me.



> (snip)...under Story Now, the example would be a railroad because it's the GM overriding the play procedures to abridge player agency (as allowed by the system) and enforce the GM's preferred outcome... (snip)... the playstyles differ enough in core assumptions that maybe you cannot use the same metrics to analyze them both.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, I think the OP just asked "in light of story now, what is the purpose of 'prep'"? I don't read it as a misreading of classical play, it is simply positing story now as the technique under discussion. Honestly, I think ALL of the discussion of classical play and the differences, etc. was thread derailment! It was NEVER RELEVANT AT ALL to what was supposedly to be discussed.
> 
> 
> Yeah, I think its a matter of system and details of the situation. The GM would be perfectly justified, in some cases, to say "No, we already established that this is an airless moon, you can't breath here." I don't think anyone would argue with that unless it was a fantasy game where reality is subjective... or something. Another case would be the secret door, someone could come back later and find that there was indeed a secret door! This would of course require that the fiction never really ruled it out, so I guess its not quite a fair example.



Having recently reread the OP,ost I can affirmatively say that the question was not, in any way, limited to Story Now implicitly or explicitly.  And, the discussion, right from the start, involved the OPoster evaluating traditional play's use of worldbuilding using a Story Now lens.  The behavior was on _both_ sides.

And I've called out both sides repeatedly, so I'm not trying to hypocritically defend either.


----------



## Nagol

AbdulAlhazred said:


> And this is exactly the nut of the whole thing, and where the 'traditionalist' analysis sinks into the swamp, falls over, and burns (before being rebuilt for the 2078th time). The idea that the players "will just find secret doors everywhere" or that things will be 'too easy', or that the players will [violate the Czege Principle], etc. is all based on a fundamentally oppositional model of play. One in which the GM has hidden the 'goodies' in the 'maze' and its the player's job to guide their characters to it.
> 
> Once the goal became to have fun playing the game and making up cool stories about the characters, etc. then all that went basically out the window. It is still possible to engage in it as a specific facet of a greater whole, but its not THE GAME anymore.
> 
> Now, some will contend that they're playing to 'explore', but the model is the same here, the GM has the 'gold' and the players are tasked with navigating the 'maze' to uncover it. The walls and traps of the dungeon maze may be replaced with other stuff, but they still remain.
> 
> Finally, you can claim to have gone entirely beyond that by saying "well, the players just come to me and tell me what their PC wants to do (in or out of character) and we work on that", but then we come back to the OP of the thread, what's the world building/details FOR?
> 
> I think the ONLY actual solid answer to that which ever came in this thread (and honestly, maybe it was the other thread, forgive me, was the one where [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] quoted one of the Story Now guys stating that you CAN have a 'built world', and it has utility in fixing genre and providing some footing for the players to leverage their character's traits into concrete action.
> 
> There's no Schrodinger's Door if there's no concept of an ESTABLISHED fictional reality outside of what has been presented to the characters. This is something I maintain as a principle of play in games of the type I run, ONLY what has been presented in play exists, all else is vapor until you meet it. That wall didn't exist until we laid eyes on it, so who's to say it didn't 'always have a secret door in it'???




Those who have little use for worldbuilding seem to believe their opinions are reflective of others.  They're not.  No one's opinion is.

What's worldbuilding for?  Engaging me.  Without worldbuilding, I don't have anywhere near as much fun as a player because I can no longer engage in those activities I like doing.

I LIKE to plan; planning requires defining situations rigorously enough that one can discover them and create approaches, mitigations, and remedies.  I LIKE to explore to collect of the information and resource necessary for creating and executing the plan.  I LIKE coasting to victory -- it means I planned and executed well.  Given an opportunity, I probably wouldn't give a thought about violating the Czege Principle because it increases my chance of success.

In effect, I LIKE " the GM has the 'gold' and the players are tasked with navigating the 'maze' to uncover it." as a style of play.

Another issue I have with playing player-facing games is my definition of an appropriate cool story is usually strongly at odds with the majority.  I just 'think different' so I find having a single vision controlling genre and themes tends to make the whole far more consistent and increases my comfort level dramatically since I can more quickly learn how the world works.

Now as a GM, things are quite different.  I like running a mixture of DM-facing and player-facing games.  They really do different things and although the tales recounted away from the table may sound similar, the actual table experience is quite different for the participants.  I pick a DM-facing game when I want a DM-facing experience, especially if I want a heavy exploration focus or uncaring world themes (D&D, X-Files, asymmetrical warfare engagements, post-apocalyptic, i.e. hard-scrabble styles), and pick a player-facing game when I want a more solipsistic/constant pressure engagement (hero/superhero, film noir, i.e. "cinematic" styles).


----------



## pemerton

Ilbranteloth said:


> in terms of the Story Now approach of searching for a secret door, that the check itself is (at least partially) responsible for determining whether a secret door is found - what consideration is made, and how, that a secret door may not belong there?
> 
> While we explored this a bit with more absurd examples (the paladin declaring they find a holy sword at the market), why should the secret door be there? What if it shouldn't (logically speaking)?



GIven the places I've seen secret doors in published modules, I'm not sure what would count as a bare stone wall in a D&D-style dungeon or fortress where it would be _illogical_ for a secret door to appear!



AbdulAlhazred said:


> In a sense we're only arguing here about the DETAILS of the fiction, because EVERY narrative model game is going to have this character, the players declare actions to advance their agendas. Since it doesn't actually matter MECHANICALLY what those actions are (modulus which skill/power/whatever you get to use due to fictional reasons), the ONLY actual considerations are aesthetic! So it makes no sense for the players to declare dumb things, they are just as well off to declare cool things!



What you say here is (in my view) absolutely correct for Cortex+ Heroic, 4e, HeroQuest revised, or any other system in which DCs are "subjective" ie based on pacing and similar considerations.

In the context of an "objective" DC system (eg Burning Wheel, Classic Traveller, I think 5e by deffault), the players do have an incentive to identify an approach with a low DC. Relating this to [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION]'s question above, if a secret door seems unlikely in some place, that would increase the DC.



Ilbranteloth said:


> A related thing is the continued (seeming) insistence that with a prepared map or notes that it is impossible for the DM to make changes. This is simply not true. There's no reason why, if a player decided to search for a secret door, that I can't decide that one might be present, and even in that moment make the decision that the dice will decide and allow them to make a check.



I'm certainly not insisting on this. Many many posts (over 1000) upthread, this was discussed at some length.

From my point of view, it doesn't meaningfully change the distribution of agency over the content of the shared fiction for the chance of success to depend on the GM "allowing" the check to have a chance of success.



Ilbranteloth said:


> the general thrust of everything is exploration. Exploring the setting. Exploring the characters. Exploring the politics, the dangers, dungeons, and such. Learning what makes these characters tick. Dramatic conflict is a part of what we do, but only part of it.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I don't see my job as being here to help set up the circumstances that allow the characters to accomplish their motivations. That's up to them. If one of the characters declares that they intend to become a famous dragonslayer, then they need to go do it. Not rely on me to set that up for them. They have to acquire the skills they think they'll need. Assemble the party that will help them do so, research the weaknesses, possible locations, etc. They'll track down spells or magic items that they think will help, and drive toward that goal.



A lot of what you describe here seems to involve the players learning what the GM has decided (either in advance, or on the spot) exists in the gameworld.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> GIven the places I've seen secret doors in published modules, I'm not sure what would count as a bare stone wall in a D&D-style dungeon or fortress where it would be _illogical_ for a secret door to appear!
> 
> What you say here is (in my view) absolutely correct for Cortex+ Heroic, 4e, HeroQuest revised, or any other system in which DCs are "subjective" ie based on pacing and similar considerations.
> 
> In the context of an "objective" DC system (eg Burning Wheel, Classic Traveller, I think 5e by deffault), the players do have an incentive to identify an approach with a low DC. Relating this to [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION]'s question above, if a secret door seems unlikely in some place, that would increase the DC.
> 
> I'm certainly not insisting on this. Many many posts (over 1000) upthread, this was discussed at some length.
> 
> From my point of view, it doesn't meaningfully change the distribution of agency over the content of the shared fiction for the chance of success to depend on the GM "allowing" the check to have a chance of success.
> 
> A lot of what you describe here seems to involve the players learning what the GM has decided (either in advance, or on the spot) exists in the gameworld.




First, I don’t subscribe to the general approach that many adventure designers go about their business. I often disagree with their approach to placement of secret doors for the same logical reason I’m questioning the ability of a Story Now approach to take into account. Many adventures, etc. are designed from a “game” approach, where the nature of what the designer might be cool takes precedence over what might logically apply. As I’ve stated before, I prefer to approach it from a more objective, world-building approach asking why a secret door would be someplace. Who built it and why, basically, not just because I think it would fit, or I want to make the dungeon less linear, or that it would work well here for the story of the PCs rather than the story of whoever built the place.

I feel the same way about the design and placement of most traps, and definitely in regards to puzzles.

I say “seemingly” because you state that you don’t insist, but then immediately respond with two paragraphs that say exactly what I’m saying you seem to insist. 

I disagree with both statements. Because again, until the play occurs at the table, the placement of a secret door remains in question. The only real difference is that I’m leaning toward consistency and an internal logic within the setting vs. leaning towards something that might stretch the bounds of believability a bit (or a lot) for the sake of a dramatic moment. A sort of quality control that hopefully maintains an internal consistency. Not necessarily to inject my ideas, although that will happen as well. 

The reality is that I do both. Where I believe we differ is that I believe that both have value within the context of the game, and as the GM I start from a place of impartial observer and prefer to let the drama take care of itself, driven by the players and their characters and their interactions, which will include interactions with the world around them. Where you seem to eschew the less dramatic, more mundane things, the in-between things, with the focus of the GM on ensuring that more drama happens. That is, if drama isn’t happening, then it’s the job of the GM to find the drama and make it happen.

From my perspective, it’s once again a question of goals. While I’d like to think that any game system can support both, it continues to appear that a Story Now approach does not or at least discourages it. Perhaps strongly.

During the course of the game, I prefer to limit my dramatic input to the really big moments. Something that really dramatically alters the character’s situation. They might be predetermined secrets or something that occurs in the moment, a reaction to the PCs at that point in time. 

Outside of those moments, I like to allow the players and the game drive the dramatic moments. 

I’d equate it to many TV dramas where most episodes are typical adventures. For example, the Mentalist where an episode is usually exploring the day-to-day aspects of their lives, mostly in regards to their profession, where the drama is between the PCs and their reaction to the world and events within. These I would see as more player driven, with a GM hook to point things in a direction. Otherwise, the setting provides the framework where the action takes place (such as a dungeon), the current goals may be defined by a minor episode-specific villain, but just as often in the game, it’s the dungeon itself. The process of generating that setting/dungeon can vary. That is, it doesn’t have to be pre-authored, and there may be things that occur that do relate to the driving motivations of the characters, but most of the time they serve as interesting stories and fleshing out the setting along with establishing their place within the setting, and ideally developing the characters and their relationships to each other. The tomb was this sort of situation. They decided they wanted to explore it, so they did.

Then there are episodes where I interject something (Red John) that specifically plays to one of the character’s driving motivations. These are points where I can take a stronger role is writing the story, because through whatever conflicts or other manipulation I interject, I’m actually driving the plot, or at least a higher percentage of it. Most of the time it’s using a similar approach to such TV shows, where answers may raise more questions (and I don’t necessarily know where those questions will lead).

Again, pre-authored vs improv, the process is not really relevant. In both cases, I can alter pre-authored material or not, take a greater control of the current events in the story, reveal secrets (previously known or unknown to me), whatever. The control over the story is fluid, although there are still rough boundaries of the type of content the players can introduce vs the GM. (This seems similar to what you describe regarding the bowl in the room, in that instead of declaring there was a bowl in the room, they asked if there was one and relied on you, the GM, to make that decision, whether by pre-authored material, random determination, or adding it on the fly, with none of those being exclusive.

I prefer to take as little control of the plot as possible, working by throwing out hooks to see what they choose as important. I don’t assume I know what they think is important, even if they’ve told me. All too often what I think and they think is important differs for various reasons.

Then when they engage with something, I provide the counterpoint, from as objective and logical approach as possible. They discover a smuggling ring and decide to try to interfere with it. Does the ring find out? What would they find out? How would they react? If this is a large operation, then they’d have some enforcers that might target the PCs. As the interference by the PCs increases, the response will too. If it continues long enough, it might escalate to a Valentine’s Day Massacre. 

Boy, I would love to see that scenario play out with the PCs as the victims. Would they figure it out in time?

While that might seem like me driving the story (even a railroad), the reality is that under similar circumstances, things might escalate to that point naturally. In other words, the scenario at play is an assassination attempt against the party.

More importantly, while the scenario would be very difficult, I would only know the plan ahead of time, not the results. Most likely the PCs would foil the attempt before it even got that far. Regardless, they would have the opportunity to do so. 

The objection that I think some others are making is the idea that the GM should be driving the plot via activities like introducing conflict, getting to where the action is, etc. I think those are important aspects of GMing and do have their place, and I do use them. But I don’t think they should be the primary approach, nor do I want the expectation that it is my responsibility to drive the dramatic story arc. I think they are valuable tools to be used along with many other tools to provide the best experience I can. Just like preparing something in advance to be used as is. Another tool to aid in producing a better experience. 

Actually, producing is a term I like. In the music business you have some very hands-on producers, who actively shape the sound, and sometimes even the music of the band. In other cases, you have producers who view their job as simply to capture the sound and essence of what the band is doing. Not to be involved in the process of writing the music, 
But to capture that music in the best way possible.

Both are valid approaches, and what works for one band won’t work for another. The tools available to them remain the same. And the amount of creative input between the band and the producer is fluid. The ratio of control over the music fluctuates, often through the course 
Of a single song. Sometimes the ratio is more fixed.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Sadras said:


> I do not play Story Now/No Myth games but you have just described one of my games. That is why I think [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] is quite right when he says he plays a variation of both, sometimes switching between the two styles unconsciously and even within a period of just a few minutes.



 I have to agree with this, too.  Gaming Theory rightly wants to create classifications of techniques & agendas &c used in RPGs, whether by designers, GMs, or players.  Where it goes pear-shaped is when we start putting whole systems, or individual players or DMs or their campaigns in exactly one of those classifications like each is a box and mutually exclusive.  Then, to get it to go really, tragically, wrong, we start judging 'em for it.


----------



## Simon T. Vesper

Tony Vargas said:


> Then, to get it to go really, tragically, wrong, we start judging 'em for it.




There's a difference between a subjective judgement and an objective one. Where so many of these conversations go wrong is conflating the two. It's possible to make an objective claim about a certain play style; and that's what we should do, but in a manner where we support our claims with reasoned thought and evidence.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> GIven the places I've seen secret doors in published modules, I'm not sure what would count as a bare stone wall in a D&D-style dungeon or fortress where it would be _illogical_ for a secret door to appear!
> 
> What you say here is (in my view) absolutely correct for Cortex+ Heroic, 4e, HeroQuest revised, or any other system in which DCs are "subjective" ie based on pacing and similar considerations.
> 
> In the context of an "objective" DC system (eg Burning Wheel, Classic Traveller, I think 5e by deffault), the players do have an incentive to identify an approach with a low DC. Relating this to [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION]'s question above, if a secret door seems unlikely in some place, that would increase the DC.
> 
> I'm certainly not insisting on this. Many many posts (over 1000) upthread, this was discussed at some length.
> 
> From my point of view, it doesn't meaningfully change the distribution of agency over the content of the shared fiction for the chance of success to depend on the GM "allowing" the check to have a chance of success.
> 
> A lot of what you describe here seems to involve the players learning what the GM has decided (either in advance, or on the spot) exists in the gameworld.




First, I don’t subscribe to the general approach that many adventure designers go about their business. I often disagree with their approach to placement of secret doors for the same logical reason I’m questioning the ability of a Story Now approach to take into account. Many adventures, etc. are designed from a “game” approach, where the nature of what the designer might be cool takes precedence over what might logically apply. As I’ve stated before, I prefer to approach it from a more objective, world-building approach asking why a secret door would be someplace. Who built it and why, basically, not just because I think it would fit, or I want to make the dungeon less linear, or that it would work well here for the story of the PCs rather than the story of whoever built the place.

I feel the same way about the design and placement of most traps, and definitely in regards to puzzles.

I say “seemingly” because you state that you don’t insist, but then immediately respond with two paragraphs that say exactly what I’m saying you seem to insist. 

I disagree with both statements. Because again, until the play occurs at the table, the placement of a secret door remains in question. The only real difference is that I’m leaning toward consistency and an internal logic within the setting vs. leaning towards something that might stretch the bounds of believability a bit (or a lot) for the sake of a dramatic moment. A sort of quality control that hopefully maintains an internal consistency. Not necessarily to inject my ideas, although that will happen as well. 

The reality is that I do both. Where I believe we differ is that I believe that both have value within the context of the game, and as the GM I start from a place of impartial observer and prefer to let the drama take care of itself, driven by the players and their characters and their interactions, which will include interactions with the world around them. Where you seem to eschew the less dramatic, more mundane things, the in-between things, with the focus of the GM on ensuring that more drama happens. That is, if drama isn’t happening, then it’s the job of the GM to find the drama and make it happen.

From my perspective, it’s once again a question of goals. While I’d like to think that any game system can support both, it continues to appear that a Story Now approach does not or at least discourages it. Perhaps strongly.

During the course of the game, I prefer to limit my dramatic input to the really big moments. Something that really dramatically alters the character’s situation. They might be predetermined secrets or something that occurs in the moment, a reaction to the PCs at that point in time. 

Outside of those moments, I like to allow the players and the game drive the dramatic moments. 

I’d equate it to many TV dramas where most episodes are typical adventures. For example, the Mentalist where an episode is usually exploring the day-to-day aspects of their lives, mostly in regards to their profession, where the drama is between the PCs and their reaction to the world and events within. These I would see as more player driven, with a GM hook to point things in a direction. Otherwise, the setting provides the framework where the action takes place (such as a dungeon), the current goals may be defined by a minor episode-specific villain, but just as often in the game, it’s the dungeon itself. The process of generating that setting/dungeon can vary. That is, it doesn’t have to be pre-authored, and there may be things that occur that do relate to the driving motivations of the characters, but most of the time they serve as interesting stories and fleshing out the setting along with establishing their place within the setting, and ideally developing the characters and their relationships to each other. The tomb was this sort of situation. They decided they wanted to explore it, so they did.

Then there are episodes where I interject something (Red John) that specifically plays to one of the character’s driving motivations. These are points where I can take a stronger role is writing the story, because through whatever conflicts or other manipulation I interject, I’m actually driving the plot, or at least a higher percentage of it. Most of the time it’s using a similar approach to such TV shows, where answers may raise more questions (and I don’t necessarily know where those questions will lead).

Again, pre-authored vs improv, the process is not really relevant. In both cases, I can alter pre-authored material or not, take a greater control of the current events in the story, reveal secrets (previously known or unknown to me), whatever. The control over the story is fluid, although there are still rough boundaries of the type of content the players can introduce vs the GM. (This seems similar to what you describe regarding the bowl in the room, in that instead of declaring there was a bowl in the room, they asked if there was one and relied on you, the GM, to make that decision, whether by pre-authored material, random determination, or adding it on the fly, with none of those being exclusive.

I prefer to take as little control of the plot as possible, working by throwing out hooks to see what they choose as important. I don’t assume I know what they think is important, even if they’ve told me. All too often what I think and they think is important differs for various reasons.

Then when they engage with something, I provide the counterpoint, from as objective and logical approach as possible. They discover a smuggling ring and decide to try to interfere with it. Does the ring find out? What would they find out? How would they react? If this is a large operation, then they’d have some enforcers that might target the PCs. As the interference by the PCs increases, the response will too. If it continues long enough, it might escalate to a Valentine’s Day Massacre. 

Boy, I would love to see that scenario play out with the PCs as the victims. Would they figure it out in time?

While that might seem like me driving the story (even a railroad), the reality is that under similar circumstances, things might escalate to that point naturally. In other words, the scenario at play is an assassination attempt against the party.

More importantly, while the scenario would be very difficult, I would only know the plan ahead of time, not the results. Most likely the PCs would foil the attempt before it even got that far. Regardless, they would have the opportunity to do so. 

The objection that I think some others are making is the idea that the GM should be driving the plot via activities like introducing conflict, getting to where the action is, etc. I think those are important aspects of GMing and do have their place, and I do use them. But I don’t think they should be the primary approach, nor do I want the expectation that it is my responsibility to drive the dramatic story arc. I think they are valuable tools to be used along with many other tools to provide the best experience I can. Just like preparing something in advance to be used as is. Another tool to aid in producing a better experience. 

Actually, producing is a term I like. In the music business you have some very hands-on producers, who actively shape the sound, and sometimes even the music of the band. In other cases, you have producers who view their job as simply to capture the sound and essence of what the band is doing. Not to be involved in the process of writing the music, 
But to capture that music in the best way possible.

Both are valid approaches, and what works for one band won’t work for another. The tools available to them remain the same. And the amount of creative input between the band and the producer is fluid. The ratio of control over the music fluctuates, often through the course 
Of a single song. Sometimes the ratio is more fixed.


----------



## hawkeyefan

pemerton said:


> I appreciate the sentiment behind your post - genuinely - but my issue with GM-heavy worldbuilding is not that it's done badly.
> 
> It's that I don't like it.
> 
> I won't reiterate why, as I feel I've probably done that enough in this thread. But I'm not saying that I just don't like it when it's badly done.




No, I get that entirely. I understand your preference and why you have it. No need for you to explain further. 

I've not been critical of your preference, so much as I think some of the examples you've made to explain your preference have gone too far to try and prove your point, and they've become examples of "bad worldbuilding", and then many responses are really about that more so than about your preference.


----------



## Lanefan

Tony Vargas said:


> I have to agree with this, too.  Gaming Theory rightly wants to create classifications of techniques & agendas &c used in RPGs, whether by designers, GMs, or players.  Where it goes pear-shaped is when we start putting whole systems, or individual players or DMs or their campaigns in exactly one of those classifications like each is a box and mutually exclusive.



You mean like alignments; only for DMs and players instead of PCs?  

CG stands for Chaotic Gamist; LN = Lawful Narrativist; something like that? 



> Then, to get it to go really, tragically, wrong, we start judging 'em for it.



Every alignment must have its Paladins...

Lan-"chaotic as both player and DM"-efan


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> You mean like alignments; only for DMs and players instead of PCs?
> 
> CG stands for Chaotic Gamist; LN = Lawful Narrativist; something like that?
> 
> Every alignment must have its Paladins...
> 
> Lan-"chaotic as both player and DM"-efan



That deserves laugh, and XP and a cookie.


----------



## Emerikol

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Of course, I don't normally run that sort of thing, in the sense that everyone is DOOMED to fail, it was very much a one off. Still, if you want to overthrow the King and you think you're just going to succeed or that it isn't JUST as dramatic and interesting when you get caught and find out that you're going to get your head chopped off in the AM. Never had a problem with it, and never had a problem making a situation a test of skill. That is not mutually exclusive with Story Now, at all. You do have to willing to be hard though. Saying "oh, its written that way" is a crutch, I don't get that crutch!




The most I can liken my style to is a very focused limited character viewpoint.  Players "see" the world through their characters eyes only.  They "know" what their characters know.  The DM provides the sensory input.  Since it is a game in  our heads to some degree we of course ask questions about what we see etc...  The game would be perfect if the DM could just project his thoughts into the other players heads but we aren't there yet ;-).  The DM though is tasked with representing the constructed world and not whatever he feels like at any given moment.  He should know his world very well.


----------



## Emerikol

Maxperson said:


> [MENTION=97077]iserith[/MENTION] is here as well and I think much more active closer to when the D&D boards imploded.  In fact, he posted here in this thread once or twice when I mentioned him.  And the reason I've mentioned him is that as [MENTION=6698278]Emerikol[/MENTION] said, he was a big champion of this style and I think it fair to mention him when I reference something I remember him saying, so he can agree or disagree with my memory if he chooses.




Iserith and I have debated this subject for many years.  I've decided we are just enjoyers of two different games.  We thought we both were playing game A when instead we were playing two different games, game B and game C.

It's a game so if he likes his approach whose to argue.  I like mine so I play mine.


----------



## Bedrockgames

I think you might be overanalyzing things. World Building is for lots of different things. One of those things is exploration adventure but that isn't the only reason to world build. You can world build to create a strong sense of place. You can world build to create something that informs the groups and NPCs in a situational type campaign. You can world world build so that your dungeons simply fit into a larger context. 

I would suggest checking out stuff coming out of the OSR. Worldbuilding is pretty big in the OSR and different people will give you different reasons for why it is useful, as well as different approaches to world building. 

What I know is worldbuilding works. It is tried and true. When I don't invest in my world building, my games suffer. When I invest the time into world building, there is simply more for my players to interact with and explore. But I would be hesitant to give it some ultimate purpose I have to commit to. It seems to work for a variety of reasons. But I think overanalyzing these things can lead us to some strange conclusions are more a product of the language being used in the discussion than anything to do with world building itself.


----------



## pemerton

Ilbranteloth said:


> I don’t subscribe to the general approach that many adventure designers go about their business. I often disagree with their approach to placement of secret doors for the same logical reason I’m questioning the ability of a Story Now approach to take into account. Many adventures, etc. are designed from a “game” approach, where the nature of what the designer might be cool takes precedence over what might logically apply. As I’ve stated before, I prefer to approach it from a more objective, world-building approach asking why a secret door would be someplace. Who built it and why, basically, not just because I think it would fit, or I want to make the dungeon less linear, or that it would work well here for the story of the PCs rather than the story of whoever built the place.



My own view is that "logically" designed worlds tend to have less verisimiltude - and far more symmetry and order - than the real world. Just confining this point to architecture and urban design - I've seen cities (eg Fez) that are as "illogical" as antyhing that the play of an RPG is going to throw up; and there is a public building not far from where I live that has enough "staircases to nowhere" (as a result of renovation and refitting over the years) that I would't be surprised if one of them _did_ have a secret door at the top of it!



Ilbranteloth said:


> you state that you don’t insist, but then immediately respond with two paragraphs that say exactly what I’m saying you seem to insist.



You said that I insist that there can't be changes. But I don't insist that. I simply asssert that the GM having the power to rewrite his/her notes on the fly, or to make up new stuff which has the same status, for play purposes, as if it had been in his/her notes, doesn't change the distribution of agency that is my principal concern.



Ilbranteloth said:


> This seems similar to what you describe regarding the bowl in the room, in that instead of declaring there was a bowl in the room, they asked if there was one and relied on you, the GM, to make that decision, whether by pre-authored material, random determination, or adding it on the fly, with none of those being exclusive.



That is not how that particular episode of play was resolved. The player asked "Is there a bowl in the room." I could have said "yes", but didn't - because the stakes here were meaningful for the PC, and a basic principle of "say 'yes' or roll the dice" is that when the stakes are meaningful then a check is called for. So I asked the player, "Are you declaring as Assess action?" (the particular nature of the action declared has implicaitons for action economy in that system). He answered yes, and then when it came time for the action to be resolved he rolled a Perception check against the difficulty I had set (pretty low, on the grounds that a bowl or were would be a likely thing to be in a room where an badly injured person is recovering).

The player succeeded on the check, and hence saw a bowl. I, the GM, did not make the decision about that.



Ilbranteloth said:


> pre-authored vs improv, the process is not really relevant.



I take it that you mean it's not relevant to you. It's relevant to me, for mcuh the same reason that the difference between a conversation and a script is relevant.



Ilbranteloth said:


> as the GM I start from a place of impartial observer and prefer to let the drama take care of itself, driven by the players and their characters and their interactions, which will include interactions with the world around them. Where you seem to eschew the less dramatic, more mundane things, the in-between things, with the focus of the GM on ensuring that more drama happens. That is, if drama isn’t happening, then it’s the job of the GM to find the drama and make it happen.



I'm not sure what you mean by "drama: here.

A PC I am currently playing has Cooking skill and an Instinct to always keep a fire alight while camping. I would expect the GM to frame scenes that speak to those elements of the character. Such scenes may not be "dramatic" in the sense of "exciting" or "action filled". But they would still be "going where the action is" ie speaking to the dramatic needs of the PC, and engaging with the thematic framework I have put forward for my PC.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> My own view is that "logically" designed worlds tend to have less verisimiltude - and far more symmetry and order - than the real world. Just confining this point to architecture and urban design - I've seen cities (eg Fez) that are as "illogical" as antyhing that the play of an RPG is going to throw up; and there is a public building not far from where I live that has enough "staircases to nowhere" (as a result of renovation and refitting over the years) that I would't be surprised if one of them _did_ have a secret door at the top of it!




And I believe that to logically design a world, you have to account for such things. Regardless of how random many things seem, the staircases to nowhere were built for a reason. Logical doesn't mean ordered. But one of my pet peeves in books, movies, TV shows, etc. are the things that are done for convenience regardless of whether it makes sense at all. In some cases it's the entire premise, in other cases it's a lack of knowledge, or just not caring. 

I'm not going to pretend that my world is better designed than anybody else's. But it's a world that largely makes sense to me, which makes it easier to sell it to the group. More importantly, that consideration and time spent does help with consistency which is very helpful in a game where everything happens in our imaginations, with each person's imagination being different.



pemerton said:


> You said that I insist that there can't be changes. But I don't insist that. I simply asssert that the GM having the power to rewrite his/her notes on the fly, or to make up new stuff which has the same status, for play purposes, as if it had been in his/her notes, doesn't change the distribution of agency that is my principal concern.




No, I said it _seems_ like you are insisting. So you can say it seems like your asserting. Since they are, in fact, synonyms I'm happy to go with whichever you prefer.



pemerton said:


> That is not how that particular episode of play was resolved. The player asked "Is there a bowl in the room." I could have said "yes", but didn't - because the stakes here were meaningful for the PC, and a basic principle of "say 'yes' or roll the dice" is that when the stakes are meaningful then a check is called for. So I asked the player, "Are you declaring as Assess action?" (the particular nature of the action declared has implicaitons for action economy in that system). He answered yes, and then when it came time for the action to be resolved he rolled a Perception check against the difficulty I had set (pretty low, on the grounds that a bowl or were would be a likely thing to be in a room where an badly injured person is recovering).





Of course you did. You decided that the situation warranted the possibility, and set a DC for it. It's not a question of whether you said yes, no, or yes...but. You still made the decision that there was in fact a possibility, and what the probability was. You let the dice make the final decision, but without you giving the go ahead, it wouldn't have happened. And you could have set the DC much higher, but again it wouldn't have happened.


That's no different than what I'm talking about. If I had placed a bowl in the room ahead of time, I could just say yes. If I didn't think about placing one, I could do exactly what you did.

The player succeeded on the check, and hence saw a bowl. I, the GM, did not make the decision about that.



pemerton said:


> I take it that you mean it's not relevant to you. It's relevant to me, for mcuh the same reason that the difference between a conversation and a script is relevant.




Yes, but also that where it's most relevant - the experience of the players at the table - that the end result, the "product" is more important than the process to deliver that product. To you, the process seems to hold equal value. Which ultimately means that we'll have to agree to disagree here.



pemerton said:


> I'm not sure what you mean by "drama: here.
> 
> A PC I am currently playing has Cooking skill and an Instinct to always keep a fire alight while camping. I would expect the GM to frame scenes that speak to those elements of the character. Such scenes may not be "dramatic" in the sense of "exciting" or "action filled". But they would still be "going where the action is" ie speaking to the dramatic needs of the PC, and engaging with the thematic framework I have put forward for my PC.




Drama is the story. The sum of the decisions, actions, events, reactions, and things that happen to and around the characters.

You've mentioned your cooking and campfire story before. To me it seems like something that doesn't really need to be addressed in the structure of the rules of the game. In the content of the fiction, yes, but again, I would put a lot of the onus on the player here. For example, a character in our campaign who loves cooking is trying new recipes on many of the monsters they kill. Setting out to gather whatever local ingredients they can forage, etc. That doesn't require a lot of input from me. Where I tend to come in is when NPCs are engaged in activities related to that, and recognizing that there is an interest in that. If they have a fetish about keeping the fire going, they'd make sure that not only is it well tended when they are awake, but that the others have supplies and proper instructions to keep the fire going. Such things would be clear in the actions that the PC is taking, and at times it would work its way into the campaign organically.

So yes, I'd engage, but because I'm reacting to the actions of the PC, not because a piece of paper in front of them says so. If they have a thing for cooking and fires listed on their character sheet, but it never comes up in their actions and interaction within the setting, then it's not something I'm going to press or focus on. Clearly it's not as important to them as their note states. An exception would be for a new player, who we're teaching to engage with their character. But I'd expect a character with those particular likes to, well, act like it. And when they're in town, they'll be talking with people that either share that, or provide ingredients, etc. And the party would comment on how they'd rather stay in the wilderness because they eat better than the lousy inn they've stopped at. It's just part of the flow of the game, it doesn't need to be tied to the rules, nor does it need to provide instructions to me about how to address it.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ilbranteloth said:


> So to answer the first part of your question:
> 
> Notes can serve as many different things. The most basic is something like a "typical orc patrol" with stats, etc. that are ready to drop in whenever needed.



This I do. I suspect this is not really something avoided by people who espouse story now play in general. I mean, it could be or not be used. It doesn't necessarily imply any particular situation, etc. OTOH I don't generate these things way ahead of time, like before I get a game rolling. I might not even have anyone interested in running into orcs, nor a reason to threaten something with them, or whatever. Still, if I'm running something like 4e I probably already have dozens, maybe 100's, of these sorts of things available, so they are definitely there and useful.



> This could be something like a map of a tomb, perhaps with some traps and areas of interests detailed, and even could include some history regarding the interred. In the moment, a tomb is needed, pull out one or another, and use as is if it works, or modify on the fly for whatever's appropriate.



Yeah, maybe. I mean, with the advent of the Internet this stuff is now so ubiquitous its hard to say we don't ALL have a pretty extensive library of these, albeit they may need some tweaking for a specific game. Mostly though I try to stick to 'no myth' situations, or else have DW-esque "lots of holes in it" stuff. I find it clears my thinking. If I have a map, then I'm trying to wedge what the players want into some sort of route on that map instead of thinking about it dramatic terms. 



> Others can be NPCs with a few notes about their personality and motivations, etc. Really, just about any bit of content can be recorded as thought about.



More than any other single factor, the non-existence of a distinction between 'monster' and 'npc' in 4e sold me on that game. 



> As far as the standard narrative mode, we're not playing a game with that general style. I think that as I examine our games, we certainly use a lot of those techniques. But to start with, we don't start with such declarations or motivations such as "I'm going to collect the seven swords of the seven heroes." Most of the characters are just people. We have farmers, coopers, a bouncer, lots of normal people. As part of their responsibility in the town, everybody serves in the town guard a certain number of weeks of the year. So things might happen. In addition, they live in a secluded village, which leads to more possibilities due to dangers in the wilderness. There's a political situation going on, regarding a larger town that is over a week's ride away, (re)establishing a trade route through the village. Wealthy individuals like to come to the village during the summer to hunt monsters, and are looking to hire local guides.



Sure, I don't think the sorts of motives PCs have need to be, or maybe in most games even SHOULD be, big flashy specific things like 'Collect the Seven Swords', it was a bit of an extreme (but valid) example. MANY times a character may just say "I love my village and I will die for it" or just "I love my village" (and what will you do about that is the story). "Over the Wall" is, if I understand it correctly, an OSR-like game that has that focus. This brings another point, the focus doesn't HAVE to be brought individually by the players, DitV, or OTW, for example come with 'built in' agendas, though I'm sure characters and individual games can have variations and additional material.



> Sometimes the people choose to do something adventurous, other times characters have "opportunities" thrust upon them. They do have goals and motivations, but they tend to be the mundane type, hoping to gain their own farm, raise a family, etc. It's a classic ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances type of campaign.



Sure, and I think Story Now is also a good way to do those. It is less a perfect fit for true exploration/puzzle type games, some other things maybe where the players demand heavy back story and loads of different highly detailed scenes perhaps? Anyway, it is good for any story where motivations and beliefs are a big part, like 'hometown hero' type stories.



> We work hard to provide lots of depth to the characters, including their bigger motivations, but the general thrust of everything is exploration. Exploring the setting. Exploring the characters. Exploring the politics, the dangers, dungeons, and such. Learning what makes these characters tick. Dramatic conflict is a part of what we do, but only part of it. Not every moment, or every scene, or even every session, has to be a DRAMATIC moment. Many times they are smaller dramatic moments. A great many of the dramatic moments are between the characters. There are often major dramatic moments that can be "life-changing" moments for a character or characters. But it's the smaller moments that develop the character, help define them in a way that makes those more dramatic moments even more so. It's not just about the big moments, but of a great many of moments that help define the character.



Yeah, and I think in all the furor over how this or that can't be done this or that or the other way the point has been kinda lost here too. Just because a game is 'Story Now' doesn't mean its 'Climax Now!' It can be a long drawn-out process of playing through little things if you wish it. The little things that will get focus will just be the ones that DO elicit some level of characterization, as a rule. 

I also see a flip side to this. When you play through the vast bulk of every character's life, there's a sort of pressure to make things happen at a faster in-game pace. Sure, you are 'not hurrying', but STILL there's only so many game sessions, even in a LONG campaign! If I'm focusing more on specific 'weighty' moments (in character terms) then I can afford to pace things out in terms of the character's story. I can skip 5 years if that makes more sense. I mean, you could too, but it seems opposed to the general philosophy of 'get all the choices and make them all' that you guys seem to want (like skipping past all the boring side corridors in Moria). 



> I don't see my job as being here to help set up the circumstances that allow the characters to accomplish their motivations. That's up to them. If one of the characters declares that they intend to become a famous dragonslayer, then they need to go do it. Not rely on me to set that up for them. They have to acquire the skills they think they'll need. Assemble the party that will help them do so, research the weaknesses, possible locations, etc. They'll track down spells or magic items that they think will help, and drive toward that goal. It might be years (real time) before they track down and make their first assault on an adult dragon, and it may initially end in failure. In the meantime, there will be many challenges, close calls, potential tough decisions, and sacrifices on the way. But they'll get there (assuming they do) through their actions and decisions, not because they said "I want to accomplish this" and I frame things in a way for them to reach that accomplishment.
> 
> This relates to the discussion regarding railroading as well. In my mind, the campaign is as far from a railroad as possible. There certainly may be things that I introduce that make their life more difficult. A rival group attempting to slay the dragon first, and using unsavory approaches, including sabotaging their attempts. Political interference, whatever. We do what we can do ground them in the world as much as possible (another aspect of worldbuilding), and those can interfere with their plans. Romantic entanglements, perhaps the loss of a loved one, etc. Success is often not just about the process of achieving it, but overcoming all of the unrelated aspects of life that often prevent people from reaching their goals. Perhaps they've discovered and retrieved _the_ dragonslayer. A legendary sword that can kill a dragon with a single blow. That is recovered by a rival just as they discover its resting place. Leaving them to decide if the sword is really needed or not, and if so, how to get it back.



OK, I just don't feel like spending years of real life on that one project! Its a game, lets get on with it. There's nothing wrong with moving on to the key parts. I can still assemble parties and do this and that and the other to prepare before I slay dragons. I can play that out for 3 months, I think that's more than enough time. I think you might find a LOT of players secretly feel the same way. 



> For us, it's about layers and layers of plots. Many of them directly tied to an individual's motivations, some speaking to several of them, others that apply to all of them (usually on a more temporary basis), and some that aren't directly related to any of these things, but are important or compelling at a given point in time for whatever reason. Such as serving guard duty for a week.
> 
> Despite loads of notes, the use of published materials, and all of the rest of that, it's about as far as a "choose your own adventure," "setting tourism," or "playing to learn what's in the GM's notes" as it can be. It's all about exploring the characters and their place in the world, and everything I do is to support that. I just choose not to discard many of the tools that Story Now games seem to eschew. I happily embrace many of the Story Now specific techniques and tools, often unconsciously.
> 
> Part of the problem that I think I continue to have in discussing any of these tools and techniques is that they are not exclusive of each other. My use of all of them is very fluid, hopefully finding the best process and content for the moment, from moment to moment, so at the end of the night everybody goes home with the same assessment, "that was a great session." When we try to discuss them here, we have the tendency to idealize them, and discuss them in isolation. To me they aren't necessarily separate, nor does one approach preclude the use of another, even in the course of a few minutes.




I just feel like I'd be bored to death. I'm not that into RPing guard duty, and given that its a game, I'm not interested in the idea of "doing what needs to be done to get the reward". I want to play where I get to do cool fantastic stuff that isn't possible in real life. If I want guard duty I can join the army!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Of course they do, which is why @_*pemerton*_'s players declare actions in order to get him to say stuff.  Every time he argues that they don't declare actions to get him to say stuff, he's arguing that they control everything, including scene framing, when and what checks are required, and all consequences.  It's a ridiculous argument that he's making, followed by a ridiculous counter in order to keep from being the victim of his own propaganda about playstyles other than his own.  He can't fess up to his players declaring actions to get him to say stuff, because that's the negative characterization he's tossing at my playstyle.  If he does it, too, then his position falls out from under him.  That forces him make statements that can only be true if the players control everything
> 
> 
> The bolded portion = "in order to get the DM to say stuff."  I get that the motivations are different, but the result is still that the player declares an action and the DM says stuff in response.




I gotta say, Max, I think you're being more extreme than anyone else! There's a fundamental difference in the give and take in the two techniques of play. You may not LIKE the exact phraseology that Pemerton uses, but I don't think its because its 'wrong', I think its because you want to minimize the effective difference and claim he's doing basically what your doing! That certainly is how it comes across, rightly or wrongly.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Whether the story or drama or whatever is player-created or DM-created or a combination; in all these cases conflict and oppositon and challenges - the things that makes the game "fundamentally oppositional", to use your term - have to come from somewhere.



Yeah, but story type games, like Dungeon World, literally "just don't work that way" 



> *Be a fan of the characters*
> Think of the players’ characters as protagonists in a story you
> might see on TV. Cheer for their victories and lament their defeats.
> You’re not here to push them in any particular direction, merely to
> participate in fiction that features them and their action.




There's no 'us and them' in DW, and I don't have it that way in my games either (which are closer to Pemerton's model than DW is, note the last sentence in that quote, which he wouldn't agree with IMHO is part of his style of play).



> If the players author these themselves and then also author the means to overcome them you've just said hello to Czege; so that can't work.
> 
> Now it could, I suppose, turn out that players are authoring challenges and conflicts for other players; but given the general anti-PvP stance around here I somehow don't see this happening very often.
> 
> Which leaves the DM to author them.  She authors the challenges and conflicts (whether this is done by pre-authorship or by story-now action failure narration is for this point irrelevant) and the players try to author solutions through the actions of their PCs.  Thus, unless you're doing full-on shared storytelling (which none here are, from what I can see) the game is always going to be somewhat oppositional between the players and the DM.



Yeah, I don't agree about the 'oppositional' part of that statement. The GM can be a fan of the characters, it works quite well in DW! It works for me! Now, do I HAVE to be easy on them? No!



> And on an even more meta scale, it's the DM's job to set and enforce limits via one or more of the game system rules, house rules, and spot rulings; all of which have in theory been agreed to by the players.  It's up to the players to test and push those limits, should they so desire; which not all do.  But for those that do, this testing and enforcing of limits - regardless of game system in use - adds another oppositional factor between players and DM.
> 
> The "it's too easy" objection comes from a sense that maybe the limits in some systems are a bit too lax and-or the DM's ability to set or enforce limits has been reduced or neutered; that it's up to the players to in effect police themselves.
> 
> The "they will just find secret doors everywhere" objection comes - at least in my case - from a far-too-often-proven-correct assumption that players will not police themselves: that wherever they think they need one they'll look for secret doors, and even if the dice-roll odds only give them success a third of the time that's still going to leave you with a world in which an awful lot of walls have secret doors in them.



Yeah, I understand where it comes from, it still falls under my rubrik of (pardon the expression) '2 dimensional thinking'.

I think I touched on this in another post, maybe one that I made after you made this one.

No matter what the players do, they're going to face another scene and another challenge. Their choices may make the challenges more interesting to them, and give them a better chance of success (or not) but authoring a 'secret door' to 'get out of' a bad situation is not going to put you in a GOOD situation automatically! The next actual meaningful scene is going to put pressure on the PCs AGAIN. This is likely to be 'whatever is on the other side of that door'. The only thing they play for is to do COOL STUFF, and learn about their characters. They literally have NO reason to make moves which don't lead to that. Its utterly pointless. 

Is it possible a player is going to want to make a move which everyone else (and maybe even he) objectively believes isn't dramatically interesting or fun? Maybe simply because of an idle desire to accomplish some mechanical game reward (IE treasure perhaps). Maybe, but this kind of thing turns out to be pretty much self-extinguishing too. As I say, another challenge and another dramatic situation is going to rise up immediately to replace any that are tossed away by the players. VERY quickly they learn this and the focus of play changes from 'get the gold' to 'do something cool' or 'my character sticks to his guns even if it costs his life!' or 'I die defending the door!'. 

In fact, my story now 'D&D' games are the most deadly of all. Turns out players are perfectly willing to trade a boring character sheet for a noble death story! 



> Except "cool stories" need conflict.  See above for where that has to come from, and for why the oppositional model remains well inside the window.
> 
> And the goal of having fun playing the game has always been there; it didn't just magically spring to life with the story-now concept.



Sure, but the root of all conflict is in the beliefs and core values of the characters. That is the point of 'go to the story'. Grab the character by the metaphorical hair and toss him to the story wolves! It doesn't require conflict between the GM and the players, only between PCs and 'other stuff' (NPCs, their own beliefs, the world, fate, etc.). 



> Was that a quote from one of the Story Now guys?  I ask because someone (Ilbranteloth, maybe?) posted a very similar theory in one of these threads, and I thought the words were his own.



Well, I don't want to misappropriate anyone's words... I thought it was [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] quoting something that Ron Edwards said about the design of Sorcerer.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> Having recently reread the OP,ost I can affirmatively say that the question was not, in any way, limited to Story Now implicitly or explicitly.  And, the discussion, right from the start, involved the OPoster evaluating traditional play's use of worldbuilding using a Story Now lens.  The behavior was on _both_ sides.
> 
> And I've called out both sides repeatedly, so I'm not trying to hypocritically defend either.




Now, see, when I reread it yesterday, after answering you, I thought somewhat differently. It doesn't literally invoke 'story now' (except maybe in the this is a tangent sblock) BUT the play he describes certainly evokes the standard narrative model, or other similar techniques. I mean, he DID contrast two styles of play, whatever they were!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Tony Vargas said:


> That deserves laugh, and XP and a cookie.




2nd that, hehe.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I gotta say, Max, I think you're being more extreme than anyone else! There's a fundamental difference in the give and take in the two techniques of play. You may not LIKE the exact phraseology that Pemerton uses, but I don't think its because its 'wrong', I think its because you want to minimize the effective difference and claim he's doing basically what your doing! That certainly is how it comes across, rightly or wrongly.




Nah.  What [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is doing is not using phraseology that I don't like, he's redefining terms to suit his needs and I reject that.  Especially since he then uses those terms to be dismissive and/or attack the traditional playstyle.  When he does that, I turn it back on him.  I understand the differences between the styles, but when push comes to shove, his style also has players declare actions to get the DM to say stuff, and so I point it out to him.  That can SEEM like I'm trying to minimize differences, but I'm really not.

If he just talked about his style and what he liked and disliked about the differences, rather than trying to redefine terms so that he can attack the other playstyle, the conversation would be much different.  At no point in this thread did he ever need to say things like, "The traditional playstyle is choose your own adventure", or "It's railroady", or "The players just declare actions to get the DM to read notes/say stuff."  It's uncalled for and when he does it, I'm going to show how those things can also apply to his style.  If he doesn't like it, he should stop doing it in the first place.  If he learned the Golden Rule it would help him considerably in these conversations.


----------



## Sadras

Have to agree with [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], imagine the pushback if I said '4e is a WoW cardgame', 'Story Now railroads the DM'  or 'No Myth games are all about collaborative storytelling'


----------



## pemerton

Emerikol said:


> The most I can liken my style to is a very focused limited character viewpoint.  Players "see" the world through their characters eyes only.  They "know" what their characters know.



How do the players learn who their friends are, where the local swimming holes are, what the local customs are?

My experience of the sort of play you describe is that the answer to these sorts of questions if "The GM tells them." Which, for me, is fairly unimmersive - it's like having to ask someone else to remind me of what and who I am!

EDIT for clarity: I'm not talking about learning _new_ things here - eg the PC sees a new landscape or building, and the player has the GM describing it to him/her. I'm talking about all the things that are intuitive and second nature to a person, which it's therefore weird to experience as if they're being newly-learned from outside.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> How do the players learn who their friends are, where the local swimming holes are, what the local customs are?
> 
> My experience of the sort of play you describe is that the answer to these sorts of questions if "The GM tells them." Which, for me, is fairly unimmersive - it's like having to ask someone else to remind me of what and who I am!



Well, you in theory already know _who_ and _what_ your PC is; what you're asking the DM to tell you is _where_ it is and what's around it both physically (where's the swimming hole) and socially (local customs).

It's a slight difference, but a very significant one.  

You control who and what your PC is; the other players control who and what their PCs are; and the DM controls what's around all of you.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Well, you in theory already know _who_ and _what_ your PC is; what you're asking the DM to tell you is _where_ it is and what's around it both physically (where's the swimming hole) and socially (local customs).



What I'm saying is that, for me, that makes for unnaturally atomistic/alienated characters.

It's one thing for the GM to be my eyes; another for him/her to also be my memories and introspection and intuitive grasp of things.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, but story type games, like Dungeon World, literally "just don't work that way"
> 
> There's no 'us and them' in DW, and I don't have it that way in my games either (which are closer to Pemerton's model than DW is, note the last sentence in that quote, which he wouldn't agree with IMHO is part of his style of play).
> 
> Yeah, I don't agree about the 'oppositional' part of that statement. The GM can be a fan of the characters, it works quite well in DW! It works for me! Now, do I HAVE to be easy on them? No!



Whether or not you're cheering for the PCs you're still also providing the opposition most of the time, and - one assumes - playing that opposition to the best of its abilities.

It's interesting that the DW write-up actually in effect tells the GM to cheer for the PCs, in that it's by the same token putting said GM in a direct conflict of interest - if you-as-GM are earnestly cheering for the PCs that's going to discourage you from putting anything too deadly in their path, and encourage you to provide out-clauses and getaway cars when they do get in over their heads.  Put another way, it strongly encourages you to reduce* adventuring to sport rather than war.

* - and I use that term intentionally, as to me adventuring as sport is a lesser thing than adventuring as war.



> Yeah, I understand where it comes from, it still falls under my rubrik of (pardon the expression) '2 dimensional thinking'.
> 
> I think I touched on this in another post, maybe one that I made after you made this one.
> 
> No matter what the players do, they're going to face another scene and another challenge. Their choices may make the challenges more interesting to them, and give them a better chance of success (or not) but authoring a 'secret door' to 'get out of' a bad situation is not going to put you in a GOOD situation automatically! The next actual meaningful scene is going to put pressure on the PCs AGAIN. This is likely to be 'whatever is on the other side of that door'. The only thing they play for is to do COOL STUFF, and learn about their characters.



This seems to go against basic human nature, which always wants to find and take the path of least resistance.



> They literally have NO reason to make moves which don't lead to that. Its utterly pointless.



If I'm framed into a scene that looks like trouble I'm going to declare whatever actions I need to in order to reduce or evade that trouble, not enhance it! 



> Is it possible a player is going to want to make a move which everyone else (and maybe even he) objectively believes isn't dramatically interesting or fun? Maybe simply because of an idle desire to accomplish some mechanical game reward (IE treasure perhaps).



Far more likely because the dull move means survival while the cool move probably doesn't.



> Maybe, but this kind of thing turns out to be pretty much self-extinguishing too. As I say, another challenge and another dramatic situation is going to rise up immediately to replace any that are tossed away by the players. VERY quickly they learn this and the focus of play changes from 'get the gold' to 'do something cool' or 'my character sticks to his guns even if it costs his life!' or 'I die defending the door!'.
> 
> In fact, my story now 'D&D' games are the most deadly of all. Turns out players are perfectly willing to trade a boring character sheet for a noble death story!



I've killed off enough of my own characters over the years to know that dying can be every bit as undramatic as running away.  But then, we play adventuring as war; where the main drama is often sheer survival and death is a frequent visitor.



> Sure, but the root of all conflict is in the beliefs and core values of the characters. That is the point of 'go to the story'. Grab the character by the metaphorical hair and toss him to the story wolves! It doesn't require conflict between the GM and the players, only between PCs and 'other stuff' (NPCs, their own beliefs, the world, fate, etc.).



But who runs all that "other stuff" - the NPCs, the world, whatever clashes with their own beliefs, etc.?  That's right: the DM.

And yes of course the conflict should stay in character - I don't expect the players and DM to be coming to blows over this stuff - but it's still at its root adversarial.  Kind of like chess is adversarial - you could be playing against your best friend but within the game you're still going to try your best to checkmate him.

Lanefan


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Lanefan said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> AdbulAlhazred said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I think the ONLY actual solid answer to that which ever came in this thread (and honestly, maybe it was the other thread, forgive me, was the one where @pemerton quoted one of the Story Now guys stating that you CAN have a 'built world', and it has utility in fixing genre and providing some footing for the players to leverage their character's traits into concrete action.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I think the ONLY actual solid answer to that which ever came in this thread (and honestly, maybe it was the other thread, forgive me, was the one where @pemerton quoted one of the Story Now guys stating that you CAN have a 'built world', and it has utility in fixing genre and providing some footing for the players to leverage their character's traits into concrete action.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Well, I don't want to misappropriate anyone's words... I thought it was [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] quoting something that Ron Edwards said about the design of Sorcerer.
Click to expand...


I'm pretty sure that AbdulAlhazred was referring to a passage I quoted from Ron Edwards's essay about how to do setting-heavy "story now" - I think in the other thread. The key bits (sblocked for length):

[sblock]Story Now play does not merely inject a dose of flexibility or improvisation into Story Before play. It’s a different animal entirely. For example, the classic “play my character vs. play for the story” dichotomy is literally impossible. There simply isn’t any “the” story. The only way to _get _a story is through people playing their characters. . . .

It relies heavily on situational crisis within the fiction, and not only the knowledge among the players that their characters are significantly embedded in it, but their enjoyment of that because the characters’ allegiances and priorities are free to unfold and change during play . . .

Character-centric Story Now play is consistent with epic literature and myth, classical drama, and adventure fiction of all kinds. . . .

[H]istorically, it was developed first as an explicit alternative to the Story Before methods described earlier. Therefore in early Forge discussions, a perceived dichotomy formed which contrasted Setting with Story Now (Narrativism). Here, I’m firmly calling this dichotomy false and showing that Story Now play can function very well using a setting-centric approach. . . .

[T]the game I first really applied this model with . . . [was] Hero Wars. . . . [R]ight off the bat, making characters draws directly and consequentially upon the available cultures in the chosen location. In other words, the first thing you do to play is pick a spot on the world map, which provides the options for character creation in addition to the particular political and religious crises hitting flashpoint at that time – as opposed to having a character-type list spanning the whole setting to pick from. . . .

Enjoying the setting isn’t an end-stage outcome, it’s a starting and prevailing commitment. Nor is a single person expected to be the docent for the textual setting; rather, it belongs to everyone for inspiration and use. Play deepens it and provides nuances, and most importantly, changes it. . . .

One concern that crops up a lot for playing this way is how expert people have to be even to get started. Although not everyone must be expert, certainly no one can be ignorant either. . . .

In my experience, the solution begins with a single person choosing the location, at least when the group is playing the game for the first time. He or she should provide a brief but inspirational handout which summarizes the entire setting, focusing on colorful and thematic points; if the opening text of the game book provides this, a quick photocopy will do. . . .

Although the organizing person should provide more detailed handouts or photocopies as an ongoing feature of preparation, everyone else must definitely be oriented and enthusiastic concerning the prevailing thematic crises that are made concrete in setting terms. The good news is that full expertise isn’t necessary to achieve this, and in my experience, asking and answering questions about the options for the geographically-limited character creation usually generate sufficient knowledge for the first sessions of play. . . .

I want to focus on several game texts that present explicitly powerful settings which as I see it simply scream out to be utilized as I’ve described above, but which are also saddled with play-advice that undercuts the potential. . . .

[O]ne consistent problem with such texts is being forced to reconcile the deeply community-oriented problems of a given location for play with the inappropriate assumption that player-characters are a team of outsiders who’ve just arrived from very far away. Since these can’t be reconciled, each text repeats a whole circular and unsuccessful mantra about it without managing to deliver meaningful or even engaging instructions.

I will now provide a set of concepts and practices to bring out what seem to me to be these games’ best features for setting-centric Story Now play. The idea is to embrace the setting as a genuine, central source of the colorful thematic dilemmas explicit in the games’ introductory text, and to resist the retraction and retreat to comparatively tame Story Before which are explicit in the later GM-advice and scenario-preparation text.​
He then goes on to suggest a concrete set of steps for PC gen, prep, and play: ignore "adventurers" and "adventure", but rather create PCs who _belong_ in the particular chosen place, and have connections ("Each [PC] carries a few NPCs along, implied by various details, and those NPCs should be identified. It is helpful for at least one, preferably more of them to be small walking soap operas"); and establish scenes that put these characters (PCs and NPCs) under pressure (in terms of the relationships to one another, the community, the location) and see what happens.[/sblock]

Of well-known D&D settings, this would seem to be a way to do Dark Sun.


----------



## pemerton

Sadras said:


> Have to agree with [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], imagine the pushback if I said '4e is a WoW cardgame', 'Story Now railroads the DM'  or 'No Myth games are all about collaborative storytelling'



I have read, and read, those things all the time!

(Which maybe was your point - I wasn't sure if your post was ironic or literal!)


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> This seems to go against basic human nature, which always wants to find and take the path of least resistance.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Far more likely because the dull move means survival while the cool move probably doesn't.



There are many assumptions underpinning these claims.

Some simply are not true in relation to hobbies eg I bake cakes and cookies that, in terms of the cost of ingredients and time spent, would be cheaper to buy - and I'm not such a great baker that I can say what I make is better than what I could buy! But I do it because it's fun.

The same can be expected of at least some hobby-game players.

As far as dull vs cool moves are concerned, this seems to be a system thing. What you say is true for AD&D and 3E. It's not true for 4e or Cortex+ Heroic. (And BW is too complicated in this respect to make a simple evaluation.)



Lanefan said:


> It's interesting that the DW write-up actually in effect tells the GM to cheer for the PCs, in that it's by the same token putting said GM in a direct conflict of interest



Actually, it has all sorts of ways of managing that potential conflict of interest, eg by establishing when the GM is expected to make moves. Cortex+ does a similar thing with the Doom Pool.


EDIT: This also is relevant:



AbdulAlhazred said:


> No matter what the players do, they're going to face another scene and another challenge. Their choices may make the challenges more interesting to them, and give them a better chance of success (or not) but authoring a 'secret door' to 'get out of' a bad situation is not going to put you in a GOOD situation automatically!
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Is it possible a player is going to want to make a move which everyone else (and maybe even he) objectively believes isn't dramatically interesting or fun? Maybe simply because of an idle desire to accomplish some mechanical game reward (IE treasure perhaps). Maybe, but this kind of thing turns out to be pretty much self-extinguishing too. As I say, another challenge and another dramatic situation is going to rise up immediately to replace any that are tossed away by the players. VERY quickly they learn this and the focus of play changes from 'get the gold' to 'do something cool' or 'my character sticks to his guns even if it costs his life!' or 'I die defending the door!'



Right. At least in my experience, _provided the systems creates the mechanical space for it_, players aren't going to declare boring stuff or silly stuff when exciting and/or interesting stuff is also possible!

The proviso is one reason why I choose some systems over others.


----------



## pemerton

Ilbranteloth said:


> No, I said it _seems_ like you are insisting. So you can say it seems like your asserting. Since they are, in fact, synonyms I'm happy to go with whichever you prefer.



I don't care about the words _insisting _and _asserting_. I'm talking about what's on the right-hand side of them. You say that I insist that nothing be changed. I'm saying that I don't insist on that. I don't care whether the GM-authored setting is authored in advance or on the spot: either way, if it used in the typical way that GM-authored setting is used in RPGing then it generates a burden on player agency that I do not enjoy (as player or GM).



Ilbranteloth said:


> You've mentioned your cooking and campfire story before. To me it seems like something that doesn't really need to be addressed in the structure of the rules of the game. In the content of the fiction, yes, but again, I would put a lot of the onus on the player here. For example, a character in our campaign who loves cooking is trying new recipes on many of the monsters they kill. Setting out to gather whatever local ingredients they can forage, etc. That doesn't require a lot of input from me.



That's not the sort of thing that I have in mind when I say that I expect the GM to frame scenes that engage these elements of my PC.

I want to go further and say that that's _not at all_ the sort of thing that I have in mind, but your description is quite brief. But it seems like mere colour. I'm envisaging something along the lines of, say, a NPC joins us at our camp because of the fire, and then my cooking helps me befriend him/her; or maybe, given that I also have an instinct about interposing myself if an innocent is threatened, this person would be in need of help and my cooking might help soothe him/her.

It's not my job, as player, to set out the details of such a scene - that's on the GM. But my example hopefully illustrates the sort of thing I have in mind. You can see that it's not just colour. It would actually be a moment of importance in the game.



Ilbranteloth said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The player asked "Is there a bowl in the room." I could have said "yes", but didn't - because the stakes here were meaningful for the PC, and a basic principle of "say 'yes' or roll the dice" is that when the stakes are meaningful then a check is called for. So I asked the player, "Are you declaring as Assess action?" (the particular nature of the action declared has implicaitons for action economy in that system). He answered yes, and then when it came time for the action to be resolved he rolled a Perception check against the difficulty I had set (pretty low, on the grounds that a bowl or were would be a likely thing to be in a room where an badly injured person is recovering).
> 
> The player succeeded on the check, and hence saw a bowl. I, the GM, did not make the decision about that.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Of course you did. You decided that the situation warranted the possibility, and set a DC for it.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> You still made the decision that there was in fact a possibility, and what the probability was.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> without you giving the go ahead, it wouldn't have happened.
Click to expand...


You make this confident assertion . . .  but you weren't there, so you have no evidence other than what I've described. And if you read what I've written, you;ll see that it was _the player_ who decided that the situation warranted the possibility - "Is there a bowl in the room?"

I also didn't set the probability. I set a difficulty, based on the likelihood of a visible bowl being present. The probability, given that difficulty (I would think Ob 2), is dependent on the Perception stat on the character sheet, which I don't remember now off the top of my head and may or may not have been aware of at the time. (The PC is a shaman-type, so probably Perception 4D or 5D, so a chance of success probably around 70% to 80%.)



Ilbranteloth said:


> If I had placed a bowl in the room ahead of time, I could just say yes. If I didn't think about placing one, I could do exactly what you did.



I'm sure you _could_, but have you? When's the last time that, in your game, an Assess/Perception action was used by a player to establish an advantage of some sort in the fiction that wasn't prompted by the GM, or mediated via some GM decision independent of the actual process of action resolution?



Ilbranteloth said:


> where it's most relevant - the experience of the players at the table - that the end result, the "product" is more important than the process to deliver that product.



I think what you say here is obviously false.

Suppose the players just sat around the table while the GM narrated their PCs doing stuff, narrated consequences, etc. The "product" might be identical to what would have happened had the players actually played the game. But I can't believe that _any_ RPGer would say that the process - ie the way the fiction is established - makes no difference to the play experience.

In other words, the _experience of the players at the table_ is not _that they learn of a certain fiction_. What they experience is _the actual play of the game_ whereby that fiction is generated. And hence different ways of generating the fiction yield different RPGing experiences.


----------



## Nagol

Lanefan said:


> Whether or not you're cheering for the PCs you're still also providing the opposition most of the time, and - one assumes - playing that opposition to the best of its abilities.
> 
> It's interesting that the DW write-up actually in effect tells the GM to cheer for the PCs, in that it's by the same token putting said GM in a direct conflict of interest - if you-as-GM are earnestly cheering for the PCs that's going to discourage you from putting anything too deadly in their path, and encourage you to provide out-clauses and getaway cars when they do get in over their heads.  Put another way, it strongly encourages you to reduce* adventuring to sport rather than war.
> 
> * - and I use that term intentionally, as to me adventuring as sport is a lesser thing than adventuring as war.




You are correct and its is one of my relatively few issues with DW.  DW provides a lot of latitude to the DM with respect to how the world reacts to failure (not to get too far into the weeds there are hard moves that cause the PC to suffer losses of resources whilst changing the situation and soft moves that simply change the situation and the GM chooses what move and repercussions to inflict whenever a partial success or failure result occurs).  I counter my issue by assigning some simple guidelines to myself so that while I hope the players succeed, I run the game fairly and with consistency.  The primary guideline I use for myself is "failures deserve a hard move".

You are incorrect in that DW combat is neither war not sport, really.  It's more performance art.  What I am going to write next may seem pejorative.  It is not meant that way; I _*like*_ DW.  Adventuring in DW most resembles reading a choose-your-own-adventure book.  Open the book, read a page describing the initial situation, make a choice, and flip to a page telling you the resolution and asking for your next choice.  Instead of a book, insert DM narration.  Remove the list of predefined choices and replace it with DM reaction.  Add a die roll to indicate if the player's gambit was wholly successful, partially successful, or a failure.  The DM resolves the gambit and presents the new situation and asks for the next choice. There's DW in a nutshell. 



> This seems to go against basic human nature, which always wants to find and take the path of least resistance.
> 
> If I'm framed into a scene that looks like trouble I'm going to declare whatever actions I need to in order to reduce or evade that trouble, not enhance it!
> 
> Far more likely because the dull move means survival while the cool move probably doesn't.
> 
> I've killed off enough of my own characters over the years to know that dying can be every bit as undramatic as running away.  But then, we play adventuring as war; where the main drama is often sheer survival and death is a frequent visitor.
> 
> But who runs all that "other stuff" - the NPCs, the world, whatever clashes with their own beliefs, etc.?  That's right: the DM.
> 
> And yes of course the conflict should stay in character - I don't expect the players and DM to be coming to blows over this stuff - but it's still at its root adversarial.  Kind of like chess is adversarial - you could be playing against your best friend but within the game you're still going to try your best to checkmate him.
> 
> Lanefan




I don't think of the player-DM relationship as inherently adversarial.  I think you'll agree that a DM's role cannot support full competitive play during encounter design; the power disparity is too great.  I can imagine every session starting "Rocks fall.  You all die. I win again!"  at least until the session (likely the second) where the DM looks around the empty room and asks where his players went.  I think of the D&D DM as a neutral arbiter attempting to have situations play out according the nature of the non-PCs and die rolls.  Some of the non-PCs will almost certainly be adversarial and they should be played appropriately, but the players should never see the DM as the adversary, unlike chess.  Once the encounter begins, I'll play the non-PCs with as much capability as I can muster and is plausible for the actors to display. 

Part of the GM's job in DW and similar games is to keep the pressure on and momentum going.  A DW after-action report should sound like a Dresden novel (if you are familiar with Jim Butcher's modern fantasy series).  The protagonists careen from situation to situation always under pressure to act -- to save themselves, to save others, to prevent a calamity, to stop the BBEG.  If the PCs attempt to evade the scene, that's fine but there will be consequences as telegraphed in the situation.  

The game system is designed to support this type of action in ways D&D simply is not.  Every player gambit is expected to change the situation for better or worse.  Choices are typically less tactical.  The PCs will end up much more reactive than proactive.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I have read, and read, those things all the time!
> 
> (Which maybe was your point - I wasn't sure if your post was ironic or literal!)




Speaking for myself, I started pointing out the rails in your game after you repeatedly and incorrectly called my game a railroad, and after I explained 6 ways from Sunday how it wasn't a railroad.  I do unto others as they do unto me.  The same with your statement that players in my style of play declare actions to get the DM to say stuff.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I don't care about the words _insisting _and _asserting_. I'm talking about what's on the right-hand side of them. You say that I insist that nothing be changed. I'm saying that I don't insist on that. I don't care whether the GM-authored setting is authored in advance or on the spot: either way, if it used in the typical way that GM-authored setting is used in RPGing then it generates a burden on player agency that I do not enjoy (as player or GM).




Except that it doesn't.  Agency is another word that you are attempting to redefine for your personal needs in order to be dismissive of the traditional playstyle.  The fact is, agency doesn't mean what you say it means.  Agency is just the players being able to control the actions of their PCs, and without a true railroad(not your altered definition), agency is unfettered in both styles of play.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> I don't care about the words _insisting _and _asserting_. I'm talking about what's on the right-hand side of them. You say that I insist that nothing be changed. I'm saying that I don't insist on that. I don't care whether the GM-authored setting is authored in advance or on the spot: either way, if it used in the typical way that GM-authored setting is used in RPGing then it generates a burden on player agency that I do not enjoy (as player or GM).
> 
> That's not the sort of thing that I have in mind when I say that I expect the GM to frame scenes that engage these elements of my PC.
> 
> I want to go further and say that that's _not at all_ the sort of thing that I have in mind, but your description is quite brief. But it seems like mere colour. I'm envisaging something along the lines of, say, a NPC joins us at our camp because of the fire, and then my cooking helps me befriend him/her; or maybe, given that I also have an instinct about interposing myself if an innocent is threatened, this person would be in need of help and my cooking might help soothe him/her.
> 
> It's not my job, as player, to set out the details of such a scene - that's on the GM. But my example hopefully illustrates the sort of thing I have in mind. You can see that it's not just colour. It would actually be a moment of importance in the game.




See, this is where you keep losing me. My assertion is that it should be at the player's/character's behest and actions that the skill come into play and have an impact, and you're telling me that not only is it the GM's job, but my approach in giving you the control is a burden on your player agency.

It's absolutely to create a moment of importance in the game. Except that I think that moment should be driven by you.

A figure approaches in the night, probably drawn by the light of your fire. Now as a GM I can make the figure act in a hostile manner, or timid manner, or all sorts of things. I tend to start with an unknown state where possible. So if the circumstances allow you to see the figure before he acts, then you have a decision to make.

How you (and your companions, if awake) react to the figure immediately sets the stage. It's not my job to determine whether you act in a hostile manner, grabbing your sword and yelling to the figure to, "move on, there's nothing of value here," or to stand up, beckon over and say, "we have nothing of value here, save some fine wyvern stew. Let's share the fire and food for the night and whatever our normal inclinations are, we can share safety tonight and part tomorrow as friend or foe as you desire."

To me, all of that should be driven by you, not me. That's what I consider a traditional so-called "GM driven" game. Well, sort of. I find that all too often, GMs are focused on "combat encounters" and the figure would approach in a threatening manner, or simply ambush the PCs, rather than leaving it open for interpretation. Instead, I might start with, "you see a figure, running toward you, sword drawn." My players understand that what I'll describe is the first impression, and just the facts. In this case, only what they can see, as the figure is hundreds of yards away. If one of the character's perception is high, or they ask, I would probably elaborate a little more, saying his sword is held low, and your impression is that he's not necessarily being aggressive.

Where I, as the GM, would have influence here is in the world-building. Something I probably would have told you before, but would remind you specifically, that in this world of dangers, it is customary to set aside ones differences for the safety and comfort of the fire, and that it is a great insult to bring harm, or threaten to bring harm, to one's generosity, and that the law of the land allows one to defend themselves, to the death, when such an act occurs.

What I don't do is, "A figured approached in the night, sword drawn, but you determined that he was frightened, not hostile. So, according to the customs of your land, you invited him to share some stew and the safety of the fire for the night." Where's the player agency in that?

It's far from just color. And your skills would help improve your chances when rolling (including the use of passive skills), for reactions and interactions with others who share your wonderful food. It's a skill that can have many uses. As I said, it extends beyond just the cooking. In a town or city, I'd expect you might use your knowledge to strike up a conversation with a cook, a merchant, or a halfling, as an aid to interactions that might lead to other benefits, such as what's the Lord's favorite food, or what ale does the guard like best. In which case you can use that information when you approach the guard at his post, a mug in hand (and handcasks in the back of your wagon), and approach while having an obvious disagreement with your companion, "do you believe it, he insists that Arabel Ale is better than Berdusk Dark?" Eventually leading to getting him to sample several fine ales and stouts for his informed opinion, and access to the keep.

All of that would be the PC utilizing their skills, not me doing it for them. 

With my world-building approach, I'd know that the custom is to share the safety of one's camp, and to part in safety until out of sight (from published materials). That the man has a homestead nearby (invented on the spot, although I know there are homesteads in this region of the north). The man is frightened because his family is missing, and his barn has significant damage to one wall (made up, although I know that hill giants and ogres are common in these parts, because I noted that earlier). He will welcome your food, he has been running for over an hour. 

All of this "engages" your skills and instincts, but only if you act upon them. If you see the figure running up with sword drawn initially, and choose to believe he's hostile, and your companion shoots a warning shot with a bow and tells him to come no further until you know their purpose, then he might not view you as a potential friend, and won't tell you of his plight. Or maybe you turn it around with your demeanor ("oh, don't mind Oleg, he's been skittish ever since that third ogre today" as I offer him some stew, "what brings you out alone in such a dangerous place at night?")



pemerton said:


> You make this confident assertion . . .  but you weren't there, so you have no evidence other than what I've described. And if you read what I've written, you;ll see that it was _the player_ who decided that the situation warranted the possibility - "Is there a bowl in the room?"
> 
> I also didn't set the probability. I set a difficulty, based on the likelihood of a visible bowl being present. The probability, given that difficulty (I would think Ob 2), is dependent on the Perception stat on the character sheet, which I don't remember now off the top of my head and may or may not have been aware of at the time. (The PC is a shaman-type, so probably Perception 4D or 5D, so a chance of success probably around 70% to 80%.)
> 
> I'm sure you _could_, but have you? When's the last time that, in your game, an Assess/Perception action was used by a player to establish an advantage of some sort in the fiction that wasn't prompted by the GM, or mediated via some GM decision independent of the actual process of action resolution?




To answer the last question - all the time. I can't possibly describe everything the PCs see, and in many cases don't describe everything because a person doesn't "see" everything when they walk into a room. It is extremely common for me to respond directly to those types of questions. With a yes, no or maybe. In fact, one of the things I tell them outright at session 0, and remind them regularly, are things like:

I don't use miniatures (because I sold most of mine, and don't have time for another hobby) or battle mats. When using a map, it's a rough guideline, no squares, and we aren't counting squares. If you're fighting in the forest, then you can expect to find anything you'd find if you went out to the woods in the back yard - fallen trees, large trees, small trees, cover, rocks, uneven ground, etc. So during an encounter (such as a combat) you can tell me that you want to dive behind a fallen tree for cover, and attempt to stealthily circle around the orcs (using brush, rocks, trees, etc. for cover). "Oleg, see if you can run over to that tree and start shooting at then from behind the cover. I don't care if you hit them, I just want you to distract them."

If I tell them they are in a kitchen, I don't expect them to ask are their knives, bowls, plates, goblets, as well as foodstuffs, etc. They (and I) assume there are the usual implements and stuff you'd find in a kitchen. If there is something specific that they'd like to find and they are unsure, they'll ask.

"Is there a cleaver?"

"Sure, and a few 10" knives as well"

"What about some twine, or something similar?"

"Um, maybe, (I don't think cooking twine was much of a thing in the middle ages, but could be something, so maybe a DC 15 or 17 - something higher than their passive score, but not unreasonably high), go ahead and roll Perception. Failure.

"No, no twine or string that you can see."

"Hmm. OK, I'll grab the cleaver anyway, and there should be something like a stake to roast beasts over the fire, I'll grab one to use as a short spear."

That's what I've been saying all along. One of my jobs is to set the framework - it's a kitchen - and then serve as quality control. 

So yes, I am saying that in reaction to what you've posted:

The player _asked_. That is, your response as a GM had meaning. Your approval, denial, or decision that it's possible if their perception is high enough is what allowed them to find a bowl. Not their statement. They didn't say, "there must be a bowl in the room, so I'm grabbing it," they _asked_. If you had said no, then there would have been no bowl (although if it's like my table, they, or somebody else, might have suggested that in such a room they might have bowls for use in certain religious rituals, etc. and it might alter my decision). But in the end, you, as the GM, made a decision. 

Then you set the DC. That assigns a probability. Had you decided that yes, there's a bowl, and it's in the cabinet on the left, and they have to choose the cabinet on the left or the cabinet on the right, then you'd be setting the probability at 50%.



pemerton said:


> I think what you say here is obviously false.
> 
> Suppose the players just sat around the table while the GM narrated their PCs doing stuff, narrated consequences, etc. The "product" might be identical to what would have happened had the players actually played the game. But I can't believe that _any_ RPGer would say that the process - ie the way the fiction is established - makes no difference to the play experience.
> 
> *In other words, the experience of the players at the table is not that they learn of a certain fiction. What they experience is the actual play of the game whereby that fiction is generated. And hence different ways of generating the fiction yield different RPGing experiences*.




Yes, that's the product. What you describe is exactly correct in what I was asserting. That my part of the product (such as deciding yes, no or maybe to the bowl, or describing the approach of the figure, and the reaction of that figure to your actions) is the product. The product is not the completed fiction, the product _is the experience at the table of creating the fiction_. 

If the purpose was to create the fiction, we'd be working much harder to make the finished fiction the best it can be. It would be the process of writing a story together, brainstorming, writing, editing, etc. That's not to say we couldn't create an initial draft through a shared improvisation, with or without the rules of a game. But we'd be going 

If it was simply to "find out what the GM or author wrote down" then it would be a choose your own adventure, or a board game, or a video game, where the world and what's in it is set ahead of time, and can't be changed.

That's not an RPG (to me anyway). An RPG is a shared experience of creating the fiction. While I _can_ prepare a general story arc, such as the published APs, or purchase one, and work within that structure, they still allow more than just a "choose your own adventure" because the PCs are free to do what they'd like, and success, failure, or whatever other outcome might occur is free to happen. Can they be more restrictive? Absolutely. And many DMs make them that way. I've seen on more than one occasion a specific experience relating to _Out of the Abyss_ related by DMs running it. A common one I've seen is something like, "We've been playing OotA and the players loved the first part, and now they've survived. But they don't want to continue with the second part. How do I encourage/force them to do so?" My friend ran the campaign, and found the exact same thing, although in his case described it as such, "they loved the first part, and there were some interesting things. But they had no interest in the second part and went and did (this)."

They used the same tool, the AP, but as a DM used them quite differently. Personally, I don't particularly care for the direction adventures and APs have taken, where there's a big story arc to try to follow. I don't mind there being a story in a published adventure, but generally use published adventures for maps, and locations, NPCs and such. I just pull out and use what interests me. I've noted before that the general playstyle promoted by 5e is perfect for a more casual gamer, where it's essentially a self-contained game. Just not my personal preference, and while it does a great job of making it relatively easy for a new group to pick up the game and play, I feel they are also often missing the possibilities of such a game, getting stuck in the minutia of rules instead of the characters, setting, and story.

And I'm asserting that when it comes to me fulfilling my part (and you as a player), having things in mind, written or not, before the session, doesn't necessarily degrade the experience. For some, like me, it improves things. My brain doesn't always work fast enough to provide a level of quality that I'm happy with. And it's been noticeable in the past when I was unprepared and not 100% in the moment as well. The worldbuilding and notes and such are at their most useful during those sessions where I'm not at 100%. It often needs something to act as a catalyst, to spark some ideas. Also, the amount of time it takes during the course of the game is important. I gave a toast for my brother once, a funny guy, and told everybody that I'm really the funnier of the two. The problem is, I think of the perfect punchline 15 minutes later. My approach to GMing is specifically to address this. I don't want to think of the perfect reaction, event, etc. 15 minutes later.

Can such an approach be used as a hindrance? To limit the options, to impose a direction without considering the current circumstances within the game? Of course. How you use a tool is completely different than the tool itself, and it doesn't in and of itself validate or invalidate the usefulness of that tool. For folks that like all reasonable options on the table, that the players are in full control of the decisions and actions of their PCs, that they are presented with X, Y, and Z and they choose D, then I think that for a great many of us, these tools can be very helpful.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

AbdulAlhazred said:


> This I do. I suspect this is not really something avoided by people who espouse story now play in general. I mean, it could be or not be used. It doesn't necessarily imply any particular situation, etc. OTOH I don't generate these things way ahead of time, like before I get a game rolling. I might not even have anyone interested in running into orcs, nor a reason to threaten something with them, or whatever. Still, if I'm running something like 4e I probably already have dozens, maybe 100's, of these sorts of things available, so they are definitely there and useful.
> 
> 
> Yeah, maybe. I mean, with the advent of the Internet this stuff is now so ubiquitous its hard to say we don't ALL have a pretty extensive library of these, albeit they may need some tweaking for a specific game. Mostly though I try to stick to 'no myth' situations, or else have DW-esque "lots of holes in it" stuff. I find it clears my thinking. If I have a map, then I'm trying to wedge what the players want into some sort of route on that map instead of thinking about it dramatic terms.
> 
> 
> More than any other single factor, the non-existence of a distinction between 'monster' and 'npc' in 4e sold me on that game.
> 
> 
> Sure, I don't think the sorts of motives PCs have need to be, or maybe in most games even SHOULD be, big flashy specific things like 'Collect the Seven Swords', it was a bit of an extreme (but valid) example. MANY times a character may just say "I love my village and I will die for it" or just "I love my village" (and what will you do about that is the story). "Over the Wall" is, if I understand it correctly, an OSR-like game that has that focus. This brings another point, the focus doesn't HAVE to be brought individually by the players, DitV, or OTW, for example come with 'built in' agendas, though I'm sure characters and individual games can have variations and additional material.
> 
> 
> Sure, and I think Story Now is also a good way to do those. It is less a perfect fit for true exploration/puzzle type games, some other things maybe where the players demand heavy back story and loads of different highly detailed scenes perhaps? Anyway, it is good for any story where motivations and beliefs are a big part, like 'hometown hero' type stories.
> 
> Yeah, and I think in all the furor over how this or that can't be done this or that or the other way the point has been kinda lost here too. Just because a game is 'Story Now' doesn't mean its 'Climax Now!' It can be a long drawn-out process of playing through little things if you wish it. The little things that will get focus will just be the ones that DO elicit some level of characterization, as a rule.
> 
> I also see a flip side to this. When you play through the vast bulk of every character's life, there's a sort of pressure to make things happen at a faster in-game pace. Sure, you are 'not hurrying', but STILL there's only so many game sessions, even in a LONG campaign! If I'm focusing more on specific 'weighty' moments (in character terms) then I can afford to pace things out in terms of the character's story. I can skip 5 years if that makes more sense. I mean, you could too, but it seems opposed to the general philosophy of 'get all the choices and make them all' that you guys seem to want (like skipping past all the boring side corridors in Moria).
> 
> OK, I just don't feel like spending years of real life on that one project! Its a game, lets get on with it. There's nothing wrong with moving on to the key parts. I can still assemble parties and do this and that and the other to prepare before I slay dragons. I can play that out for 3 months, I think that's more than enough time. I think you might find a LOT of players secretly feel the same way.
> 
> I just feel like I'd be bored to death. I'm not that into RPing guard duty, and given that its a game, I'm not interested in the idea of "doing what needs to be done to get the reward". I want to play where I get to do cool fantastic stuff that isn't possible in real life. If I want guard duty I can join the army!




Well, we don't play every moment of every day. And in fact, we were just discussion how the passage of time is something that is often difficult to work into the game. _Adventures in Middle Earth_ sets it up in a way that you typically have one large adventure, and then when the winter comes, adventuring season is over, and you move forward a year.

Things like guard duty are typically near the beginning of a character's life, although not always, and is part of what ties them to the town and the setting. We don't run such a thing often, but every once and a while it's a good starting point that naturally brings together a group of PCs.

My campaign itself has been essentially one continuous one since 1987 when the original Forgotten Realms set came out. Over the years, players come and go, and lots of PCs have "retired" to become pseudo NPCs. The players really enjoy that they actually "know" people in the world, rather than just NPCs that I create, whether on the fly or whatever. Such retired PCs can often come back to an active adventuring life if they wish. In fact, one player came to me yesterday to say that he thinks that one of his characters has reached that point. She is currently stuck underground, and she hates everything about it. She hates the risks, she hates being underground, pretty much everything. She just wants to get back to her farm and be a farmer. She's gotten some treasure over the course of about two or three adventures, almost all of which has ended with her being underground again, and this particular character "has decided" that it's not the life for her. She's basically won the lottery, and wants to move on with her life.

The game itself is modeled after the old Gygax and Greenwood campaigns. Everybody has multiple characters, and there are many current plot threads in progress. Which one we pick up during a given session depends on who can make it that night. I'm also starting another night soon, and players can move between them, and they will continue to be interrelated. So from a worldbuilding perspective, the players are contributing a lot simply by having so many characters that are involved in the world. 

We jump ahead quite a bit, sometimes even a year or more, but that's all driven by what the players want to do. I often suggest it's a good place to jump ahead, but I've learned that what I think is a good place and what they think is one doesn't always coincide. The reality is, we kind of know as a group that this is a good place to move ahead. We also have no problem fast forwarding in the middle of a combat when it's clear what the outcome will be, even if it's going to take a bunch more rounds to slog through it. 

Also, while there may be considerable time spent in places like Moria, the purpose is almost never the dungeon. So they don't try to explore every passage, fight every monster, etc. In fact, in most cases they are trying to avoid as many of the dangers as possible, to get to whatever it is they are trying to accomplish. What they are interested in playing out is the process of accomplishing that. The MERP book for Moria is a great example of the sort of prep work that I find valuable. It details the sort of creature that you'll potentially find. It has sample common passages, residences, businesses, etc. But otherwise the maps are large scale, and it's up to you to place things as needed. So if the PCs are searching for a family heirloom they'll first search out a residential area, and hopefully have some sense as to how they'll identify they are in the right group of homes. The challenges and dangers of getting to that location would be played out, in addition to whatever they'll need to do to find the item, or determine this isn't the right set of homes, we need to go search someplace else. So it will fast forward, go back to normal, then fast forward, etc. It might still take several sessions to get to what they're looking for, but that passage of real time is part of what informs the play of the game itself, that it took us a lot of work and time to finally find this. In the meantime, the goal is for things to be interesting, exciting, challenging, etc. And some of that might speak to the character's motivations, and some may not. 

My point is that it's not really up to me alone, the DM, to decide what those weighty moments are. I guess I kind of think of it as living through the character's lives, and they tell me when it's time to stop fast-forwarding and experience this period, here. But the reward to us is usually the development of the character. Some of those characters might go slay a dragon, but others might just be involved in protecting the town. When we're in exploration mode, where time is moving at a certain slower pace, then I have to determine at what point enough exploring is enough. That's when I have more of an impact on the passage of time than them. But for most of the time, they are setting the pace.

The other aspect that we try to avoid is when everything the DM puts in front of you is important. "The characters wouldn't be here if there isn't something important here too." By framing scenes too tightly, and focusing only on things that are "important' it takes away some of the players/character's ability (agency) to decide what's important to them. 

As for how long it takes, we always have multiple plots in progress at any point. So a major, life-defining plot like becoming a dragon slayer might take a year or two. But there are many other stories and plots with those characters along the way. That spending 3 or 4 sessions on determining the location of the legendary sword, and then setting off for 2-3 sessions of attempting to retrieve it, followed by another 3-4 sessions of hunting down the NPC who stole it, already takes up 3 months of game time. And that's just to get the sword. It's not a glacial pace, but it also feels right to us. That it takes time to happen. The pace of a TV show vs a movie, which provides more opportunity for development of the characters and pretty much everything else in the game. Usually, for a major plot point, 1 or 2 sessions seems too short, like it's too easy. Note that things also overlap. So there are other plots occuring at the same time. What usually happens is that the focus narrows as we get further along the process.

Early in the life of a character, a considerable amount of time is taken as the player learns who this character is. That is, through their experiences, combined with their design. So time move slower, and it's more of a direct exploration mode. As the characters become defined, and the group goals narrowed, then the passage of time for those characters accelerates. We skip ahead more frequently because we have a better understanding of the characters. 

But overall, I think it's just the focus of our attention that's different. During the course of the adventures, the character might die. In which case his son picks up his cause. We're much more interested in the journey - how they got there, rather than the goal, and slaying the dragon. We also prefer a less heroic (or superheroic) approach than D&D often seems to promote. That is, a lesser reliance on abilities, and more on character and creativity. So you're right, there is nothing wrong with moving onto the key parts. But deciding what those key parts are, and how quickly to get to them, is what I think varies. Since many of the characters share similar group goals, the large goals will often come to a head, but after the passage of a considerable amount of time, and probably the deaths and/or retirements or heading off into other priorities by several of the characters.


----------



## Hriston

Maxperson said:


> Nah.  What [MENTION=42582]If he learned the Golden Rule it would help him considerably in these conversations.




Funny how you invoke the Golden Rule to defend doing unto others as you would NOT have them do unto you.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Nagol said:


> You are incorrect in that DW combat is neither war not sport, really.  It's more performance art.



Congratulations, you just filled in some of the excluded middle between 'CaW' and 'CaS'  -  'CaPA!'  



pemerton said:


> As far as dull vs cool moves are concerned, this seems to be a system thing. What you say is true for AD&D and 3E. It's not true for 4e or Cortex+ Heroic. (And BW is too complicated in this respect to make a simple evaluation.)



 But, I guess it'd be 'orthogonal' to world-building. 

(Edit: _I'm only feigning anti-intellectualism, here, I promise, but you do like dem two-dollah college words._)



> Right. At least in my experience, _provided the systems creates the mechanical space for it_, players aren't going to declare boring stuff or silly stuff when exciting and/or interesting stuff is also possible!
> The proviso is one reason why I choose some systems over others.



 Well, some players consider silly stuff exciting & interesting, but yeah, at least initially, players sit down to a game to have fun.  You have to train them to prioritize PC survival through meticulous planning, systematic/paranoid exploration, risk-avoidance, pragmatism, and solving the specific sorts of puzzles your twisted mind devises, before they start preferring boring moves (though the level of paranoia should at least keep them tense, if not exciting).


----------



## Lanefan

Nagol said:


> You are incorrect in that DW combat is neither war not sport, really.  It's more performance art.



Combat as performance art?  Now there's one I've never heard before. 

That said, I was taking the sport-war analogy and applying it more to the whole game rather than just combat.  Exploration-as-war means deadly traps, sometimes-harsh environmental conditions, real risk of dangerous resource depletion (e.g. no water in the desert), etc.  Social-interaction-as-war is a bit harder to define other than that NPCs will have their own sometimes-secret agendas which will inform if not outright direct their responses to the PCs.



> I don't think of the player-DM relationship as inherently adversarial.  I think you'll agree that a DM's role cannot support full competitive play during encounter design; the power disparity is too great.  I can imagine every session starting "Rocks fall.  You all die. I win again!"  at least until the session (likely the second) where the DM looks around the empty room and asks where his players went.



Agreed.  But within the scope of reasonable play the DM can't be expected to pull her punches: if the PCs get in over their heads (with or without advance warnings of danger) then so be it - characters will die.  Whole parties, however, very rarely die: they're incredibly resilient things.



> I think of the D&D DM as a neutral arbiter attempting to have situations play out according the nature of the non-PCs and die rolls.  Some of the non-PCs will almost certainly be adversarial and they should be played appropriately, but the players should never see the DM as the adversary, unlike chess.  Once the encounter begins, I'll play the non-PCs with as much capability as I can muster and is plausible for the actors to display.



I don't mind seeing the DM as adversary when she's playing an adversary (which is a lot of the time); nor do I mind seeing her as an ally when she's playing an ally.  When describing the game world etc. I see her as a neutral arbiter, ditto for when she puts her referee's hat on for rules and ruling questions.

And there's also a dual-layered question of trust.

At the table level I trust the DM to run a fair, interesting and engaging game for us - which means, for example, I'll accept a certain amount of hard railroading because I trust there'll be a payoff or reveal or whatever at the end that'll make it worthwhile.  Most of the time that trust bears out, and I can look back on a fun experience.

In the fiction level I-as-player don't trust much of what the DM says when she's playing any character - even the so-called allies - as I know from experience that the game world really is out to get us.   That lack of trust may or may not extend to my characters, depending on how paranoid or naive I've set them up to be.



> Part of the GM's job in DW and similar games is to keep the pressure on and momentum going.  A DW after-action report should sound like a Dresden novel (if you are familiar with Jim Butcher's modern fantasy series).  The protagonists careen from situation to situation always under pressure to act -- to save themselves, to save others, to prevent a calamity, to stop the BBEG.  If the PCs attempt to evade the scene, that's fine but there will be consequences as telegraphed in the situation.
> 
> The game system is designed to support this type of action in ways D&D simply is not.  Every player gambit is expected to change the situation for better or worse.  Choices are typically less tactical.  The PCs will end up much more reactive than proactive.



This sounds fine for the short term but after a while would get really grating.  Every now and then in the fiction it's nice for the PCs to be able to stand back, maybe take a few weeks off from adventuring, look around and proactively decide what we-as-a-party are going to do next.  The way you've written this, it sounds like such breaks never come to DW characters.

Lanefan


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Nah.  What @_*pemerton*_ is doing is not using phraseology that I don't like, he's redefining terms to suit his needs and I reject that.  Especially since he then uses those terms to be dismissive and/or attack the traditional playstyle.  When he does that, I turn it back on him.  I understand the differences between the styles, but when push comes to shove, his style also has players declare actions to get the DM to say stuff, and so I point it out to him.  That can SEEM like I'm trying to minimize differences, but I'm really not.





I think that you frequently exhibit a habit of claiming an understanding which you then undermine by your attempt to construct an argument which doesn't actually work, but which you then in 'Emperor's New Clothes' fashion insists does work. We have to conclude there's something you aren't grasping, or else that you're just REALLY stubborn and don't like to change your mind. I think you are a contrarian to be honest, that you simply enjoy refusing to ever accept an alternative once you've found an argument which seems to contravene them, even if it becomes untenable.

Honestly, I don't know what you are trying to DO, but the fact is, what the people are saying to each other in 'classic' play and in 'Story Now' play ARE DIFFERENT. They are different in content, different in game function, and different in intent. Of course there are some similarities, probably quite a lot of them, given that both techniques are part of a fairly limited type of activity, RPG playing. Its like basketball, a zone defense and a man-to-man defense are meaningfully different, but they're both part of the game which is played by the same rules either way. So they have a lot in common and sometimes it can be hard to say that a particular play belongs to one or the other technique. That doesn't make them the same! It isn't even particularly profound! 



> If he just talked about his style and what he liked and disliked about  the differences, rather than trying to redefine terms so that he can  attack the other playstyle, the conversation would be much different.   At no point in this thread did he ever need to say things like, "The  traditional playstyle is choose your own adventure", or "It's  railroady", or "The players just declare actions to get the DM to read  notes/say stuff."  It's uncalled for and when he does it, I'm going to  show how those things can also apply to his style.  If he doesn't like  it, he should stop doing it in the first place.  If he learned the  Golden Rule it would help him considerably in these  conversations.




Look, someone has to define terms, so this kind of thing is fairly silly. Nobody died and left you 'god of terminology in RPGs'. Nor would you have an easy time demonstrating that your preferred shades of meaning of terms which admit of a certain degree of ambiguity in practice are so canonical that using them in a slightly different way is unequivocally decreasing comprehension. 

The fact is, when someone advances a different theory of something, or even a different technique, often existing terminology is inadequate to explain it and can be ambiguous or even hold back the discussion. Thus when you encounter a set of ideas which are somewhat different from those you normally encounter it would be wise to consider how the terminology you are using is going to apply in that different paradigm. This is something that a number of people have consistently had trouble doing, and you're only one of them. 

I mean, when communicating, it is the responsibility of BOTH SIDES to attempt to be clear as well as true to their conceptual structure, the argument/position they are making/taking. 

Some of the things Pemerton says obviously make you uncomfortable, but its an open question whether he should not say them. Sometimes putting an idea in controversial terms is done to emphasize contrast, to focus attention on that idea, etc. In other words, when Pemerton says "declare actions to get the GM to say something" it clearly implies the resultant fiction which the GM says has specific characteristics and that is what is salient. Nor does it imply that ALL of the things that happen in the game consist only of this.


----------



## eayres33

pemerton said:


> How do the players learn who their friends are, where the local swimming holes are, what the local customs are?
> 
> My experience of the sort of play you describe is that the answer to these sorts of questions if "The GM tells them." Which, for me, is fairly unimmersive - it's like having to ask someone else to remind me of what and who I am!
> 
> EDIT for clarity: I'm not talking about learning _new_ things here - eg the PC sees a new landscape or building, and the player has the GM describing it to him/her. I'm talking about all the things that are intuitive and second nature to a person, which it's therefore weird to experience as if they're being newly-learned from outside.




Well wouldn't that be their back story? If they haven't bothered to write a backstory before the game, why should they expect free will to rewrite their backstory? Wouldn't they know the general idea of the world? Now for the swimming hole question I have yet to find the GM who has every city detailed to all the pools or projects. I like using a world overview, with major NPC's defined and major cities/ city buidlings defined but the rest is up to what I and the players create. 

I've seen this thread go on for thousands of posts of us versus them without the thought that you can have both, an outline of major players/cities and towns created by the GM with the details to be filled in by GM and player alike. Isn't that how most people play?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Whether or not you're cheering for the PCs you're still also providing the opposition most of the time, and - one assumes - playing that opposition to the best of its abilities.
> 
> It's interesting that the DW write-up actually in effect tells the GM to cheer for the PCs, in that it's by the same token putting said GM in a direct conflict of interest - if you-as-GM are earnestly cheering for the PCs that's going to discourage you from putting anything too deadly in their path, and encourage you to provide out-clauses and getaway cars when they do get in over their heads.  Put another way, it strongly encourages you to reduce* adventuring to sport rather than war.
> 
> * - and I use that term intentionally, as to me adventuring as sport is a lesser thing than adventuring as war.



I won't take the bait on the sport vs war thing, I have long held it to be a bogus dichotomy and not useful in analysis of games/gaming. 

That aside, I just don't see it as a problem. As a GM I'm a fan of the characters, but that doesn't mean I'm a fan of them WINNING ALL THE TIME. I should be an advocate for the possibility of them winning and of them being able to do cool and awesome things, but those can and should include 'fail awesomely'. I mean, I'm sure Jack Kirby was a 'fan' of all the superhero characters he wrote stories about over the decades, but he still wrote a lot of stories where they failed, sometimes even died. Usually they triumphed in the end, or someone got some justice for them, but not always. Failure was always an option in those stories, and fandom doesn't demand success.



> *Think dangerous*
> Everything in the world is a target. You’re thinking like an evil
> overlord: no single life is worth anything and there is nothing
> sacrosanct. Everything can be put in danger, everything can be
> destroyed. Nothing you create is ever protected. Whenever your eye
> falls on something you’ve created, think how it can be put in danger,
> fall apart or crumble. The world changes. Without the characters’
> intervention, it changes for the worse.




The above illustrates the sort of position of the GM, he's a fan of the characters, but he's not there to give them a cushy life, he's there to make them DO COOL STUFF! If they don't do cool stuff, the world 'gets worse'. 



> This seems to go against basic human nature, which always wants to find and take the path of least resistance.



Maybe you have a '2 dimensional' view of human nature!  Fact is, I have not found this to be the case. I mean, the players are definitely going to try to succeed, but in my games the OBJECT of the game, what is held up as the ideal and made to be the objective, is not character success, but good stories and fun play. Character success is often pretty cool, but we do a lot of other things in our games besides just toss that out there as many times as possible every session. 



> If I'm framed into a scene that looks like trouble I'm going to declare whatever actions I need to in order to reduce or evade that trouble, not enhance it!



Again, this behavior is a consequence of thinking of the game as oppositional and fundamentally as a 'maze full of gold that you can only get by skill and guile', which is the Ur of classical D&D. You've projected it out beyond the literal dungeon, but you've not updated any of your goals or expectations in the slightest. You can sit down with Gary and have a beer, eat a pretzel, and play a dungeon level  That's not bad, at all, but there are other WORKABLE ways to play! 



> Far more likely because the dull move means survival while the cool move probably doesn't.



I'm not saying that players should simply 'leap into the fire' with every move, that would be as equally silly as trying to declare some sort of 'I win button' with every move. Surviving isn't inherently 'dull' anyway. Remember, there are stakes in Story Now, its not just "do I run out of hit points?" When you make a move you're staking SOMETHING, there will be consequences! So there aren't any truly 'dull' moves. Some may be 'sensible' and even 'mundane', but there's nothing wrong with being the sensible guy who shakes his head and says "why the heck do they do this crazy stuff" and then jumps through the gate behind his buddies because the alternative is to leave the fate of the world to on the shoulders of other people and shirk his duty. Its like that.



> I've killed off enough of my own characters over the years to know that dying can be every bit as undramatic as running away.  But then, we play adventuring as war; where the main drama is often sheer survival and death is a frequent visitor.



Well, that's the thing, if death is just "oops, a bad die roll" or "oh crap they're trolls..." then sure. Even in your kind of game though there's a certain sense of accomplishment when you held off the ogres single-handed at the gate for 4 rounds while your buddies hoofed it before they smashed you flat. Besides, death is kinda cheap in that sort of game, it should at least be notable, which that kind is.



> But who runs all that "other stuff" - the NPCs, the world, whatever clashes with their own beliefs, etc.?  That's right: the DM.
> 
> And yes of course the conflict should stay in character - I don't expect the players and DM to be coming to blows over this stuff - but it's still at its root adversarial.  Kind of like chess is adversarial - you could be playing against your best friend but within the game you're still going to try your best to checkmate him.
> 
> Lanefan




Well, I'm not saying that GMs and players in any game become ENEMIES, of course not. I mean that they don't even have to be '2 different sides'. The GM is going to PLAY some things that are on the 'other side' from PCs at times, yes. His goal is not necessarily to 'checkmate them'. His goal is good story, and fun play. Even hard core OSR Gygax play isn't REALLY opposed play, not fundamentally. All the participants are operating under a set of rules of conduct and implicit behavior which is intended to make the game work. In fact its clear this is so, as VAST tracts of this board have been taken up with the discussions of what happens when that conduct and implicit contract fails!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I'm pretty sure that AbdulAlhazred was referring to a passage I quoted from Ron Edwards's essay about how to do setting-heavy "story now" - I think in the other thread. The key bits (sblocked for length):



I think so, yes.



> Of well-known D&D settings, this would seem to be a way to do Dark Sun.




DS is a very adventure-filled setting indeed. There are basically no 'normal people' in DS, stuff happens to EVERYONE, and thus you don't have to go looking for adventure, it comes to you! This is an easy sort of milieu in which to do Story Now, as you can put hard pressure on the PCs constantly. Even a hike to the next town is filled with lethal danger. 

PoL has a similar sort of implication, the world is a BAD place.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> As far as dull vs cool moves are concerned, this seems to be a system thing. What you say is true for AD&D and 3E. It's not true for 4e or Cortex+ Heroic. (And BW is too complicated in this respect to make a simple evaluation.)
> 
> Actually, it has all sorts of ways of managing that potential conflict of interest, eg by establishing when the GM is expected to make moves. Cortex+ does a similar thing with the Doom Pool.
> 
> ...
> 
> Right. At least in my experience, _provided the systems creates the mechanical space for it_, players aren't going to declare boring stuff or silly stuff when exciting and/or interesting stuff is also possible!
> 
> The proviso is one reason why I choose some systems over others.




Yeah, this is a whole other discussion that is tangent to world building, so I never focused on it, but it is very true. AD&D CREATES the sort of quotidian detail sort of logistical contest game and other sorts of not-explicitly-very-dramatic modes of play by its nature. 3e even more so, though it sort of goes crazy at high levels. 

4e GENERATES cool situations in play. You have to nurture it to get the very best, but the game sets out from the start to help you.

Not that any of them are locked into one mode, but rules and settings/genre go together to support different play techniques.


----------



## Maxperson

Hriston said:


> Funny how you invoke the Golden Rule to defend doing unto others as you would NOT have them do unto you.




Apparently you don't understand the Golden Rule.  It has two application.  Initial action which is you doing to others what you would have them do to you.  And the second application which is doing back others what they want you to do to them by doing it to you in the first place.  I'm engaging in the second application here.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think that you frequently exhibit a habit of claiming an understanding which you then undermine by your attempt to construct an argument which doesn't actually work, but which you then in 'Emperor's New Clothes' fashion insists does work. We have to conclude there's something you aren't grasping, or else that you're just REALLY stubborn and don't like to change your mind. I think you are a contrarian to be honest, that you simply enjoy refusing to ever accept an alternative once you've found an argument which seems to contravene them, even if it becomes untenable.
> 
> Honestly, I don't know what you are trying to DO, but the fact is, what the people are saying to each other in 'classic' play and in 'Story Now' play ARE DIFFERENT. They are different in content, different in game function, and different in intent. Of course there are some similarities, probably quite a lot of them, given that both techniques are part of a fairly limited type of activity, RPG playing. Its like basketball, a zone defense and a man-to-man defense are meaningfully different, but they're both part of the game which is played by the same rules either way. So they have a lot in common and sometimes it can be hard to say that a particular play belongs to one or the other technique. That doesn't make them the same! It isn't even particularly profound!




Or you can ditch your False Dichotomy and go with what I said it is.  Up to you.  I can lead you to the truth, but I can't make you drink it.



> Look, someone has to define terms, so this kind of thing is fairly silly. Nobody died and left you 'god of terminology in RPGs'. Nor would you have an easy time demonstrating that your preferred shades of meaning of terms which admit of a certain degree of ambiguity in practice are so canonical that using them in a slightly different way is unequivocally decreasing comprehension.




When [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] comes to me holding an apple and calls it an orange, I'm under no obligation to also call it an orange to increase dialogue.  I'm going to point out that he's holding an apple.



> The fact is, when someone advances a different theory of something, or even a different technique, often existing terminology is inadequate to explain it and can be ambiguous or even hold back the discussion. Thus when you encounter a set of ideas which are somewhat different from those you normally encounter it would be wise to consider how the terminology you are using is going to apply in that different paradigm. This is something that a number of people have consistently had trouble doing, and you're only one of them.
> 
> I mean, when communicating, it is the responsibility of BOTH SIDES to attempt to be clear as well as true to their conceptual structure, the argument/position they are making/taking.




The terms are adequate already.  Completely redefining the long standing definitions in order to use the new definitions to attack other playstyles isn't helpful.  Nor does it clear things up to call an apple an orange.


----------



## Lanefan

Maxperson said:


> When [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] comes to me holding an apple and calls it an orange ...



If someone came up to me holding what they thought was an apple and calling it an orange, I'd ask first what they've been smoking and second if I could please have some; as what they're holding is clearly a samsung....


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Sometimes putting an idea in controversial terms is done to emphasize contrast, to focus attention on that idea, etc. In other words, when Pemerton says "declare actions to get the GM to say something" it clearly implies the resultant fiction which the GM says has specific characteristics and that is what is salient. Nor does it imply that ALL of the things that happen in the game consist only of this.



This is nicely put.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The terms are adequate already.  Completely redefining the long standing definitions in order to use the new definitions to attack other playstyles isn't helpful.  Nor does it clear things up to call an apple an orange.



Which terms? What "long standing definitions"? Where are these found? What makes you think you've got better cognitive access to them than I do?

And following on from these questions . . . 



Maxperson said:


> Except that it doesn't.  Agency is another word that you are attempting to redefine for your personal needs in order to be dismissive of the traditional playstyle.  The fact is, agency doesn't mean what you say it means.  Agency is just the players being able to control the actions of their PCs, and without a true railroad(not your altered definition), agency is unfettered in both styles of play.



According to  [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION], the concept of "player agency" was invented at The Forge and means more-or-less what I use it to mean. I don't have my own independent recollection of the use of the term at The Forge - I'm more familiar with their notion of "protagonism", which has a similar (but maybe not identical) meaning.

I've just gone to check The Forge Provisional Glossary, and found that it generally uses the word "control" rather than "agency" - but it defines _force_ as

The Technique of control over characters' thematically-significant decisions by anyone who is not the character's player. When Force is applied in a manner which disrupts the Social Contract, the result is Railroading.​
No definition is offered of "thematically-significant decision", but "theme" is defined as

The point, message, or key emotional conclusion perceived by an audience member, about a fictional series of events.​
Now you insist that _Agency is just the players being able to control the actions of their PCs_. I don't disagree with your description _as a description_ - it entails that when there is _force_, players lack agency, and that seems right. (We could quibble over whether "decision" and "action" co-refer, but I'm not going to.) 

All the action consists in the following: _what does it mean_ for a player to control the actions of his/her PC? Or for another participant (such as the GM) to exercise control over those?

My own view - which is not an expression of a semantic opinion, but an expression of a preference for play - is that if a player's declared action cannot succeed, because of an unrevealed decision by the GM about the setting/backstory, then the player _does not have control over his/her PC's actions_. The GM has, on that occasion of play, exercised control.

The previous paragraph states a real view - that is, an opinion that I really have. You have a different view, reflecting different RPGing preferences - fine! But that doesn't stop me having, and stating, my view, using English words to express it.

I have some further views, too. If an action declaration doesn't pertain to anything of thematic/dramatic significance, and puts nothing at stake, then sometimes I think it is appropriate for the GM to say "no" and move things on. A paradigm of this, which  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] mentioned not far upthread and which I think I may have mentioned a long way upthread, is - in my 4e game - searching bodies or rooms for generic loot. That is the sort of no-stake irrelevance that I'm not interested in spending time on at the table, and the alternative to "You find 12 cp" is "No, there's nothing there, now can we get on with it?!"

And here's another one: if the GM is adjudicating action resolutions by reference to a prior conception of the details of the gameworld - whether in the notes, or made up on the spot - then ascertaining those details starts to become a focus of play. Which, per se, means that thematically-significant action declarations becomes less of a focus of play. That makes RPGing less enjoyable for me.

And for fun and completeness, here's one example of how "say 'yes' or roll the dice" can be applied in the context of _thematically significant_ action declarations in relation to loot:



pemerton said:


> the discussion then shifted to defeating Osterneth. The player of the sorcerer had been very keen on the possibility of a magical chariot among the grave goods, and so I decided that there was a gilt-and-bronze Chariot of Sustarre (fly speed 8, 1x/enc cl burst 3 fire attack). They persuaded the guardians to let them borrow it, as the necessary cost of preventing Osterneth coming in and defiling the body.


----------



## pemerton

Ilbranteloth said:


> By framing scenes too tightly, and focusing only on things that are "important' it takes away some of the players/character's ability (agency) to decide what's important to them.





			
				Ron Edwards said:
			
		

> If, for example, we are playing a game in which I, alone, have full situational [=scene framing] authority, and if everyone is confident that I will use that authority to get to stuff they want (for example, taking suggestions), then all is well.



The Edwards quote is from here. I think it puts forward one way of avoiding the issue suggested in the first quote.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think that you frequently exhibit a habit of claiming an understanding which you then undermine by your attempt to construct an argument which doesn't actually work, but which you then in 'Emperor's New Clothes' fashion insists does work. We have to conclude there's something you aren't grasping, or else that you're just REALLY stubborn and don't like to change your mind. I think you are a contrarian to be honest, that you simply enjoy refusing to ever accept an alternative once you've found an argument which seems to contravene them, even if it becomes untenable.
> 
> Honestly, I don't know what you are trying to DO, but the fact is, what the people are saying to each other in 'classic' play and in 'Story Now' play ARE DIFFERENT. They are different in content, different in game function, and different in intent. Of course there are some similarities, probably quite a lot of them, given that both techniques are part of a fairly limited type of activity, RPG playing. Its like basketball, a zone defense and a man-to-man defense are meaningfully different, but they're both part of the game which is played by the same rules either way. So they have a lot in common and sometimes it can be hard to say that a particular play belongs to one or the other technique. That doesn't make them the same! It isn't even particularly profound!
> 
> 
> 
> Look, someone has to define terms, so this kind of thing is fairly silly. Nobody died and left you 'god of terminology in RPGs'. Nor would you have an easy time demonstrating that your preferred shades of meaning of terms which admit of a certain degree of ambiguity in practice are so canonical that using them in a slightly different way is unequivocally decreasing comprehension.
> 
> The fact is, when someone advances a different theory of something, or even a different technique, often existing terminology is inadequate to explain it and can be ambiguous or even hold back the discussion. Thus when you encounter a set of ideas which are somewhat different from those you normally encounter it would be wise to consider how the terminology you are using is going to apply in that different paradigm. This is something that a number of people have consistently had trouble doing, and you're only one of them.



Do you have me confused with someone else?  You maybe fireball me banging really really hard on the chess vs checkers drink, or maybe that I'm currently running both a traditional 5e game and a Blades game?  Or that I've also argued against traditionalists when they've misrepresented narrativst play?  Yes?  No?



> I mean, when communicating, it is the responsibility of BOTH SIDES to attempt to be clear as well as true to their conceptual structure, the argument/position they are making/taking.
> 
> Some of the things Pemerton says obviously make you uncomfortable, but its an open question whether he should not say them. Sometimes putting an idea in controversial terms is done to emphasize contrast, to focus attention on that idea, etc. In other words, when Pemerton says "declare actions to get the GM to say something" it clearly implies the resultant fiction which the GM says has specific characteristics and that is what is salient. Nor does it imply that ALL of the things that happen in the game consist only of this.




I can't think of a single thing that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has ever said that makes me uncomfortable.  He's said things i disagree with, and, after a few rounds of back and forth I usually see where he's coming from, I find I often don't disagree with the core of his point but rather with the simplistic, broad-brush, highly negative way he  presented it.  The bit about reading to players things from the GM notes, for instance.  He's got a point - a lot of traditional play does have the GM answering questions about the fiction as results of action declarations.  But, the way he's defined "from notes" as anything made up by the DM as a response to action declarations ias so hopelessly vague that he's capturing gameplay from narrativist play as well and captures many moments of traditionalist play that are actually moving closer to narrativist play.  That's counter productive because it's calling out some near similarities that could be used to bridge understanding and instead lumping them in with things that are most opposed. I say this as someone who made that jump and saw those similarities and differences. So, yeah, there I can agree with some underlying issues but the overall statement I cannot.

Largely, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] comes across less as someone actually interested in advocating his playstyle and more like someone being aggressively defensive abbot their playstyle.  From his statements, he clearly feels like his playstyle had been attacked in the past and he did not like it.


----------



## darkbard

Ovinomancer said:


> Do you have me confused with someone else?




Uh, Ovi, I think it may be you who is confused: [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s post was in response to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]....


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Which terms? What "long standing definitions"? Where are these found? What makes you think you've got better cognitive access to them than I do?
> 
> And following on from these questions . . .
> 
> According to  @_*Tony Vargas*_, the concept of "player agency" was invented at The Forge and means more-or-less what I use it to mean. I don't have my own independent recollection of the use of the term at The Forge - I'm more familiar with their notion of "protagonism", which has a similar (but maybe not identical) meaning.
> 
> I've just gone to check The Forge Provisional Glossary, and found that it generally uses the word "control" rather than "agency" - but it defines _force_ as
> The Technique of control over characters' thematically-significant decisions by anyone who is not the character's player. When Force is applied in a manner which disrupts the Social Contract, the result is Railroading.​
> No definition is offered of "thematically-significant decision", but "theme" is defined as
> The point, message, or key emotional conclusion perceived by an audience member, about a fictional series of events.​
> Now you insist that _Agency is just the players being able to control the actions of their PCs_. I don't disagree with your description _as a description_ - it entails that when there is _force_, players lack agency, and that seems right. (We could quibble over whether "decision" and "action" co-refer, but I'm not going to.)
> 
> All the action consists in the following: _what does it mean_ for a player to control the actions of his/her PC? Or for another participant (such as the GM) to exercise control over those?
> 
> My own view - which is not an expression of a semantic opinion, but an expression of a preference for play - is that if a player's declared action cannot succeed, because of an unrevealed decision by the GM about the setting/backstory, then the player _does not have control over his/her PC's actions_. The GM has, on that occasion of play, exercised control.
> 
> The previous paragraph states a real view - that is, an opinion that I really have. You have a different view, reflecting different RPGing preferences - fine! But that doesn't stop me having, and stating, my view, using English words to express it.
> 
> I have some further views, too. If an action declaration doesn't pertain to anything of thematic/dramatic significance, and puts nothing at stake, then sometimes I think it is appropriate for the GM to say "no" and move things on. A paradigm of this, which  @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ mentioned not far upthread and which I think I may have mentioned a long way upthread, is - in my 4e game - searching bodies or rooms for generic loot. That is the sort of no-stake irrelevance that I'm not interested in spending time on at the table, and the alternative to "You find 12 cp" is "No, there's nothing there, now can we get on with it?!"
> 
> And here's another one: if the GM is adjudicating action resolutions by reference to a prior conception of the details of the gameworld - whether in the notes, or made up on the spot - then ascertaining those details starts to become a focus of play. Which, per se, means that thematically-significant action declarations becomes less of a focus of play. That makes RPGing less enjoyable for me.
> 
> And for fun and completeness, here's one example of how "say 'yes' or roll the dice" can be applied in the context of _thematically significant_ action declarations in relation to loot:




The Forge was started in 1999.  I found at least one reference to agency being used in a book called Hamlet on the Holodeck, which was published in 1997, so the The Forge didn't originate it.  Another person mentioned that agency is a philosophical term that got borrowed for use by RPG players. I googled that and got.

"This article is about the philosophical concept. For other uses of the term, see Agency (disambiguation). In sociology and philosophy, *agency is the capacity of an entity* (a person or other entity, human or any living being in general, or soul-consciousness in religion)* to act in any given environment*. ~ Agency (philosophy) - Basic Knowledge 101"

That completely fits the definition that I've been using and would predate even RPGs.


----------



## Hriston

Maxperson said:


> Apparently you don't understand the Golden Rule.  It has two application.  Initial action which is you doing to others what you would have them do to you.  And the second application which is doing back others what they want you to do to them by doing it to you in the first place.  I'm engaging in the second application here.




This seems to be yet another example of the sort of claim from you that [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] posted about up-thread.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think that you frequently exhibit a habit of claiming an understanding which you then undermine by your attempt to construct an argument which doesn't actually work, but which you then in 'Emperor's New Clothes' fashion insists does work.




The "second application" you cite above doesn't work, and is based on a lack of understanding of the Golden Rule itself. The Golden Rule doesn't say, "Do unto others as they do unto you." The words "as you would have them" are there for a reason. What you are engaging in is reciprocity, a social norm from which the Golden Rule differs.


----------



## Ovinomancer

darkbard said:


> Uh, Ovi, I think it may be you who is confused: [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]'s post was in response to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]....



Weird.  My name was in the quote -- checked twice because I was so confused.   Never read the quoted post, though, and I should have because tapatalk has done that before.

Let's all consider this as a regretted mistake, yeah?  My sincere apologies.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> According to  [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION], the concept of "player agency" was invented at The Forge and means more-or-less what I use it to mean. I don't have my own independent recollection of the use of the term at The Forge - I'm more familiar with their notion of "protagonism", which has a similar (but maybe not identical) meaning.



 I tend to just blame any double-talk more current than the Threefold Theory on them.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> All the action consists in the following: _what does it mean_ for a player to control the actions of his/her PC? Or for another participant (such as the GM) to exercise control over those?
> 
> My own view - which is not an expression of a semantic opinion, but an expression of a preference for play - is that if a player's declared action cannot succeed, because of an unrevealed decision by the GM about the setting/backstory, then the player _does not have control over his/her PC's actions_. The GM has, on that occasion of play, exercised control.



And though I understand this is your preference, there's one minor point within it that may be at the root of our differences:

The player does not have control over *the results of* his/her PC's actions.

This is true both in story-now and traditional.  The player always has control over what actions her PC attempts (and, thus, she declares at the table) - she can declare anything at any time even including searching for a laser gun in the Duke's toilet - but has no control over what may result from attempting said declared actions.  And we agree on the edge cases as well: clearly-out-of-genre declarations get a "no", very basic or obvious declarations (e.g. "we make camp for the night") get a "yes", and so forth.

The only difference between us lies in how the in-doubt results are determined.  You want the results to be always determined on the fly by die roll, where I don't care if they're pre-determined by a game world state as yet unknown to me or by die roll at the time as in theory I - looking through the eyes of my PC - shouldn't be able to tell the difference anyway.



> I have some further views, too. If an action declaration doesn't pertain to anything of thematic/dramatic significance, and puts nothing at stake, then sometimes I think it is appropriate for the GM to say "no" and move things on. A paradigm of this, which  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] mentioned not far upthread and which I think I may have mentioned a long way upthread, is - in my 4e game - searching bodies or rooms for generic loot. That is the sort of no-stake irrelevance that I'm not interested in spending time on at the table, and the alternative to "You find 12 cp" is "No, there's nothing there, now can we get on with it?!"



Yet if the players do want to spend time on it, what then?  Something has to give: either your enjoyment of running the game or their agency to declare what their PCs attempt in the fiction.

Lan-"treasure is never, ever, ever irrelevant; and every copper piece counts in the long run"-efan


----------



## darkbard

Lanefan said:


> Yet if the players do want to spend time on it, what then?  Something has to give: either your enjoyment of running the game or their agency to declare what their PCs attempt in the fiction.




I'm not pemerton (though I play him on TV), but my response would be to gently remind said players that by group consensus to this mode of Story Now gaming we had agreed not to spend time on nondramatic details like searching dead bodies (unless situationally salient), etc.



> Lan-"treasure is never, ever, ever irrelevant; and every copper piece counts in the long run"-efan




I get and enjoy the joke, but this simply need not be true of Story Now gaming.


----------



## Lanefan

darkbard said:


> I'm not pemerton (though I play him on TV), but my response would be to gently remind said players that by group consensus to this mode of Story Now gaming we had agreed not to spend time on nondramatic details like searching dead bodies (unless situationally salient), etc.



No need to remind me of said consensus as I'd never have agreed to it in the first place. 

There seems to be an assumption (or is it baked into the system?) that story-now always directly equates to story-fast...but other than simple player or DM impatience there's no reason for this to be the case.  If time needs to be spent on some non-dramatic but still useful-to-the-PCs aspect of the game e.g. looting bodies or "Greyhawking the dungeon" then spend the flippin' time.  I mean, realistically it's what the PCs would in many cases do...

That, and no matter what dramatic story arc I've put myself on in the fiction - be it saving my brother's soul from a balrog or preventing giants from overrunning my family's lands or whatever - why can't I and my companions try to get rich (or at least make a decent living) as a side effect of sorting these dramas out?



> I get and enjoy the joke, but this simply need not be true of Story Now gaming.



Eh...maybe; if the PCs are already independently wealthy or have taken vows of poverty or whatever.  But otherwise they a) need to eat, and b) would realistically think now and then of what the rest of their lives will look like after their current dramatic arc is finished, as in: "once I've rescued my brother from the balrog do I go back to my previous life as a baker, or do I scoop up some of this wealth I'm leaving behind and retire to a life of relative luxury...or use it to buy better adventuring gear (or magic!) and make this my career instead?"

Lan-"and one day maybe I'll build a stronghold"-efan


----------



## hawkeyefan

darkbard said:


> I'm not pemerton (though I play him on TV), but my response would be to gently remind said players that by group consensus to this mode of Story Now gaming we had agreed not to spend time on nondramatic details like searching dead bodies (unless situationally salient), etc.
> 
> I get and enjoy the joke, but this simply need not be true of Story Now gaming.




The accumulation of treasure need not be the goal of any game, really. My 5E game is not about that at all. One of the primary goals my players had was to set up a source of income beyond their gains feom adventuring.


----------



## Tony Vargas

hawkeyefan said:


> The accumulation of treasure need not be the goal of any game, really.



But it has been the primary goal of more than a few.  If you give out XP for treasure, or have a victory condition of acquiring so much treasure, for instance, it's prettymuch a goal.

One of the things I like about 5e is that advancement is almost entirely treasure-independent (heavy armor-dependent classes are a glitch, that way), so you can, in theory, run a campaign about hard-scrabble mercenaries eking out a living from 1-20, or one about naïve kids who blunder into a dragon's horde at 1st.


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> That, and no matter what dramatic story arc I've put myself on in the fiction - be it saving my brother's soul from a balrog or preventing giants from overrunning my family's lands or whatever - why can't I and my companions try to get rich (or at least make a decent living) as a side effect of sorting these dramas out?




It would kinda suck if that PC had found a feather at the bazaar that was actually useful in saving his brother from the Balrog, only to be unable to buy it because he never looted his dead enemies.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> The Forge was started in 1999.  I found at least one reference to agency being used in a book called Hamlet on the Holodeck, which was published in 1997, so the The Forge didn't originate it.  Another person mentioned that agency is a philosophical term that got borrowed for use by RPG players. I googled that and got.
> 
> "This article is about the philosophical concept. For other uses of the term, see Agency (disambiguation). In sociology and philosophy, *agency is the capacity of an entity* (a person or other entity, human or any living being in general, or soul-consciousness in religion)* to act in any given environment*. ~ Agency (philosophy) - Basic Knowledge 101"
> 
> That completely fits the definition that I've been using and would predate even RPGs.



Yes. I'm an academic philospher. I don't need Google to tell me what philosophers mean by agency.

This is all irrelevant to my point that _I am using the same word as you_. I am not "redefining" anything. Just like the argument between (say) Kantians and Humeans about what _agency_ consists in is not an argument about definitions. It's an argument about _actual real stuff_.

In the context of this thread, to repeat, I assert that if a player's declared action cannot succeed, because of an unrevealed decision by the GM about the setting/backstory, then the player does not have control over his/her PC's actions. The GM has, on that occasion of play, exercised control. You thing I'm wrong. Fine. But I'm not wrong about the meaning of any words.

I think the non-semantic subject matter of this discusssion comes through clearly in the following post . . .



Lanefan said:


> The player does not have control over the results of his/her PC's actions.
> 
> This is true both in story-now and traditional.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> has no control over what may result from attempting said declared actions



Yes, in a sense. If the check succeeds, then the player's goal is realised - so the player has a chance of having control. But the player - as a general rule - cannot guarantee the success of a check. (Some systems have exceptions to this. In 4e many rituals don't require checks, just like most spell casting in other D&D editions; but they are rationed in various ways.)



Lanefan said:


> The player always has control over what actions her PC attempts (and, thus, she declares at the table) - she can declare anything at any time even including searching for a laser gun in the Duke's toilet



I think we have a different view of that. I regard looking for beam weaponry in the Duke's toilet as an invalid action declation. It's in the same category as "I flap my arms and take off". (Which is _not _in the same category as "Being deluded, I flap my arms believing I might take off.")

The significance of the distinction, for me, is that the invalidity of the hunt for beam weapons in the duke's toilet is established via a metagame discussion. It doesn't get to the stage of actually activiating the action resolution procedure.



Lanefan said:


> The only difference between us lies in how the in-doubt results are determined. You want the results to be always determined on the fly by die roll, where I don't care if they're pre-determined by a game world state as yet unknown to me or by die roll at the time as in theory I - looking through the eyes of my PC - shouldn't be able to tell the difference anyway.



For me, the issue isn't whether or not my PC can (per impossible) tell how his/her story came to be established, but rather how, at the table, playing the game, some state of fictional affairs comes to be established.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Yet if the players do want to spend time on it, what then?



If a player thinks I've misconceived what's really at stake, they can tell me.

To me, this is in the same category as my reply to  [MENTION=6778044]Ilbranteloth[/MENTION] not far upthread - as Ron Edwards says, a GM can take suggestions.

And it is also in the same category as my response to you and  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] about the trip to the giants' cavern upthread - the players at my table don't need permission to speak, and so if they think something is heading in a weird direction, or think a call about framing seems wrong, they can say so.

Then we can talk about it.

EDIT: This is basically what [MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] said.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> In the context of this thread, to repeat, I assert that if a player's declared action cannot succeed, because of an unrevealed decision by the GM about the setting/backstory, then the player does not have control over his/her PC's actions. The GM has, on that occasion of play, exercised control. You thing I'm wrong. Fine. But I'm not wrong about the meaning of any words.




This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.  Let's say that I want to jump over a 3 foot ditch and I am unaware that there is a forcefield that is both invisible and inaudible in the way.  We will call the forcefield hidden backstory.  When I take a running leap and hit that forcefield, I have failed to succeed.  What has not happened, though, is anyone else, even the creator of that force field, controlling my actions.  I declared my action.  I engaged in that action.  I succeeded in the attempt.  Nobody controlled me, but me.  Failure when reasonable, even if due to causes unknown to the action declarer, cannot remove control from the player.

You are falsely equating hidden backstory(reasonable failure) with a DM saying, "You fail because I don't want you to succeed.", and that's a fallacy.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> You are falsely equating hidden backstory(reasonable failure) with a DM saying, "You fail because I don't want you to succeed.", and that's a fallacy.




But are those things different? 

If the presence of the force field is in no way hinted at, if the player has no idea it could possibly be there, then the character cannot succeed at the attempt. In which case, the decision of success and failure has already been made. So in that sense, there is a lack of agency in the sense that the chance for success does not originate with the PC.

I don’t agree with all of pemerton’s conclusions, but I do understand what he’s criticizing in this regard.


----------



## darkbard

Lanefan said:


> No need to remind me of said consensus as I'd never have agreed to it in the first place.
> 
> There seems to be an assumption (or is it baked into the system?) that story-now always directly equates to story-fast...but other than simple player or DM impatience there's no reason for this to be the case.  If time needs to be spent on some non-dramatic but still useful-to-the-PCs aspect of the game e.g. looting bodies or "Greyhawking the dungeon" then spend the flippin' time.  I mean, realistically it's what the PCs would in many cases do...
> 
> That, and no matter what dramatic story arc I've put myself on in the fiction - be it saving my brother's soul from a balrog or preventing giants from overrunning my family's lands or whatever - why can't I and my companions try to get rich (or at least make a decent living) as a side effect of sorting these dramas out?




I think it's not a matter of Story Fast but of avoiding Story Stalled (aka Tedium). I understand that this is not _your_ view of such play, that you seem to enjoy play that includes searching the corpses of fallen foes, meticulously tracking PC coppers and arrows, etc. But in a game approach whose primary directive is to "go where the action is," those situations rarely qualify, and so those who want a Story Now game would have agreed to such a mode and pacing. And, as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] says a little upthread, if the players change their mind and want to search the corpses, etc. they need only ask. It is just assumed that this will not be the focus of play, that they are not missing out on expected wealth or needed information, etc. by not taking such actions at every possible opportunity.



> Eh...maybe; if the PCs are already independently wealthy or have taken vows of poverty or whatever.  But otherwise they a) need to eat, and b) would realistically think now and then of what the rest of their lives will look like after their current dramatic arc is finished, as in: "once I've rescued my brother from the balrog do I go back to my previous life as a baker, or do I scoop up some of this wealth I'm leaving behind and retire to a life of relative luxury...or use it to buy better adventuring gear (or magic!) and make this my career instead?"
> 
> Lan-"and one day maybe I'll build a stronghold"-efan




I don't think anyone is adocating for the total removal of rewards (be they coin, magic items, whatever) as a requisite of Story Now gaming. But, let's be realistic: in D&D, for example, of any edition, after the first adventure or two, the assumed economics of the game make worries about buying food, basic equipment, etc. nonissues in the game except by agreed upon group consensus (we're playing in Dark Sun and want to make basic survival a focus of play, we want a "gritty" game, where fungible rewards are few and far between, etc.).



hawkeyefan said:


> The accumulation of treasure need not be the goal of any game, really. My 5E game is not about that at all. One of the primary goals my players had was to set up a source of income beyond their gains feom adventuring.




Indubitably, and I didn't mean to imply that this was the sole province of Story Now gaming. I did want to emphasize that Story Now gaming tends to run in this mode.


----------



## Arilyn

Maxperson said:


> This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.  Let's say that I want to jump over a 3 foot ditch and I am unaware that there is a forcefield that is both invisible and inaudible in the way.  We will call the forcefield hidden backstory.  When I take a running leap and hit that forcefield, I have failed to succeed.  What has not happened, though, is anyone else, even the creator of that force field, controlling my actions.  I declared my action.  I engaged in that action.  I succeeded in the attempt.  Nobody controlled me, but me.  Failure when reasonable, even if due to causes unknown to the action declarer, cannot remove control from the player.
> 
> You are falsely equating hidden backstory(reasonable failure) with a DM saying, "You fail because I don't want you to succeed.", and that's a fallacy.




In Story Now games, the GM would not place the force field ahead of play. Placing it ahead of time restricts the player because there is no way that jump will be successful. In a Story Now game, there could be a force field as a result of a very badly failed jump roll, but it wasn't automatically there. Now once it is declared to be there by the bad roll, it was of course always there in the world, but not in the GM's backstory.

The advocates of Story Now gaming don't enjoy making declarations, and having the GM tell them yes or no based on pre- written notes, or the GM's decision based on said notes. It differs from classical play, because the world unfolds based on the results of scenes, which are in turn, driven by character drives and dice rolls. The loss of player agency in classical games is not just the GM being tyrannical, or characters being forced in a single direction. It's, in my understanding, more the players feeling that they are simply tourists in the GM's world. This is where the loss of control is felt. In Story Now games, the characters' drives and motivations feed the drama and determine the direction of the story. They are not, for example, going to become key players in a war against hobgoblins because the GM thought it would be cool to do a hobgoblin war story. 

The example of your character having free will in a classical game is perfectly valid, but is irrelevant to Story Now gaming, because in Story Now, you as a player have lost agency if a lot of backstory exists.  Technically, pemerton is right in saying classical gaming is pretty much a Choose Your Own Adventure. It's also unfair, because a living GM can make it so complex that it doesn't really have much in common with those adventure books. The GM can also rewrite bits on the fly.

These are two different styles of rpging. Both work and are fun. It's interesting discussing the different approaches, but trying to prove the objective superiority of one over the other? This has no end, as this thread Is proving.


----------



## hawkeyefan

darkbard said:


> Indubitably, and I didn't mean to imply that this was the sole province of Story Now gaming. I did want to emphasize that Story Now gaming tends to run in this mode.




Absolutely...I didn’t mean to sound like I was disagreeing. Just mentioning it because I play a game that I think would be considered fairly traditional in that there is a “Main Story” and that as GM I’ve come up with many story elements, but I do incorporate lots of elements that seem more Story Nowish (for lack of a better term). 

So our traditional game is very much not about simply exploring and accumulating treasure.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Combat as performance art?  Now there's one I've never heard before.
> 
> That said, I was taking the sport-war analogy and applying it more to the whole game rather than just combat.  Exploration-as-war means deadly traps, sometimes-harsh environmental conditions, real risk of dangerous resource depletion (e.g. no water in the desert), etc.  Social-interaction-as-war is a bit harder to define other than that NPCs will have their own sometimes-secret agendas which will inform if not outright direct their responses to the PCs.



See, I object to this entire categorization because it implies that there is some sort of 'difficulty range' where certain games fall into some sort of elite 'hard mode' category and the rest are 'just sport' and have some lesser agenda. It just doesn't accurately reflect the range of elements in RPGs nor is it useful to try to rank them in some such way. It isn't even a useful division in terms of how games are DESIGNED, nor of techniques used in play.



> Agreed.  But within the scope of reasonable play the DM can't be expected to pull her punches: if the PCs get in over their heads (with or without advance warnings of danger) then so be it - characters will die.  Whole parties, however, very rarely die: they're incredibly resilient things.



There are no 'punches' in RPG play. RPGs are a cooperative exercise.



> I don't mind seeing the DM as adversary when she's playing an adversary (which is a lot of the time); nor do I mind seeing her as an ally when she's playing an ally.  When describing the game world etc. I see her as a neutral arbiter, ditto for when she puts her referee's hat on for rules and ruling questions.



But there is no 'neutrality', everyone has a goal, and it is essentially the same goal. An 'adversary' is simply a dramatic tool used to accomplish the goal.



> This sounds fine for the short term but after a while would get really grating.  Every now and then in the fiction it's nice for the PCs to be able to stand back, maybe take a few weeks off from adventuring, look around and proactively decide what we-as-a-party are going to do next.  The way you've written this, it sounds like such breaks never come to DW characters.
> 
> Lanefan




But again, this is your interpretation. Characters could spend YEARS between scenes. There's no need, or even any strong motive particularly, to set every scene framed 5 seconds after the last. In fact I'd call this urge another effect of 'Thinking Like Gygax'.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Now you insist that _Agency is just the players being able to control the actions of their PCs_. I don't disagree with your description _as a description_ - it entails that when there is _force_, players lack agency, and that seems right. (We could quibble over whether "decision" and "action" co-refer, but I'm not going to.)
> 
> All the action consists in the following: _what does it mean_ for a player to control the actions of his/her PC? Or for another participant (such as the GM) to exercise control over those?
> 
> My own view - which is not an expression of a semantic opinion, but an expression of a preference for play - is that if a player's declared action cannot succeed, because of an unrevealed decision by the GM about the setting/backstory, then the player _does not have control over his/her PC's actions_. The GM has, on that occasion of play, exercised control.




I think the sticking point here is simply that the two of you (you and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], I mourn the lack of nested quotes sometimes) are just drawing a line at slightly different points. The ultimate results of that line drawing difference are pretty significant, but in terminological terms (yay English) there's no need to fight about which one 'owns' the term 'agency'. Earlier you particularized it as 'agency with respect to the fiction' or some such words. I think that's perfectly adequate and Max needs to be reasonable and accept it. Using 'agency' is a perfectly reasonable expediency. We could as easily quibble with Max's use of the term and refusal to particularize HIS use (but I won't bother).

To be precise; Max considers the GM's 'framing power' to extend to all aspects of fictional positioning such that any restriction on the character (and thus player decision agency) falls under that framing power (GM Agency). You draw a slightly different line under which player decision making agency extends to any matter which decides how the character will engage with the thematic elements of the scene (resolve the conflict inherent in that scene). Thus your player agency definition extends to the effects of fictional positioning which are restrictive of engaging with those thematic elements.

In Max's technique of play players can only have agency to act within the GM's stated fictional positioning constraints. If a wall is without secret doors then the player has no recourse to one. In your technique a player has recourse to search said wall for a secret passage in order to move the narrative onto a path which engages with character traits, genre logic, thematic elements, etc. (the exact list, the procedures used, and the exact details depend on game system and other factors). 

One problem I note with the critical analysis of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s stated technique preferences is a lack of acknowledgment of the limits of player agency. Players DO NOT HAVE (in most systems, and certainly in the ones under discussion) limitless agency to obviate fictional positioning. They have a limited agency to change the effects of fictional positioning when it leads to certain types of results. Indeed, Eero Tuovinen seems to be advocating for a type of game where the GM retains sufficient agency to obviate any excesses attempted by players beyond what is prescribed. That is how I read it anyway.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> Do you have me confused with someone else?  You maybe fireball me banging really really hard on the chess vs checkers drink, or maybe that I'm currently running both a traditional 5e game and a Blades game?  Or that I've also argued against traditionalists when they've misrepresented narrativst play?  Yes?  No?
> 
> 
> 
> I can't think of a single thing that @_*pemerton*_ has ever said that makes me uncomfortable.  He's said things i disagree with, and, after a few rounds of back and forth I usually see where he's coming from, I find I often don't disagree with the core of his point but rather with the simplistic, broad-brush, highly negative way he  presented it.  The bit about reading to players things from the GM notes, for instance.  He's got a point - a lot of traditional play does have the GM answering questions about the fiction as results of action declarations.  But, the way he's defined "from notes" as anything made up by the DM as a response to action declarations ias so hopelessly vague that he's capturing gameplay from narrativist play as well and captures many moments of traditionalist play that are actually moving closer to narrativist play.  That's counter productive because it's calling out some near similarities that could be used to bridge understanding and instead lumping them in with things that are most opposed. I say this as someone who made that jump and saw those similarities and differences. So, yeah, there I can agree with some underlying issues but the overall statement I cannot.
> 
> Largely, @_*pemerton*_ comes across less as someone actually interested in advocating his playstyle and more like someone being aggressively defensive abbot their playstyle.  From his statements, he clearly feels like his playstyle had been attacked in the past and he did not like it.




I believe what you quoted was a reply to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], wasn't it?


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> There are no 'punches' in RPG play. RPGs are a cooperative exercise.




I can appreciate this isn't a feature of everyone's campaigns. But for me, and for most GM's I know, how hard you are punching definitely is a thing you consider. It doesn't necessarily make it adversarial (though it definitely can be), but I do view it as gears I am engaging in the game. To me the punching analogy is pretty solid. What percentage of force are you using? Sometimes the GM handles players with kid gloves, sometimes not. Knowing what mode you are in as a GM is pretty useful. 

As a player, I personally prefer the GM to take on a somewhat adversarial role when running monsters, traps, etc. Some of the most exciting sessions I've experienced are when the GM pulls no punches and a character or two end up dead. When you know the GM isn't pulling punches, it can add to the excitement. 

Not the way everyone is going to play the game, but it is definitely a style and definitely a way to think about play.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Yet if the players do want to spend time on it, what then?  Something has to give: either your enjoyment of running the game or their agency to declare what their PCs attempt in the fiction.




Seems like a 'table issue' to me. If the players are playing game X and the GM is running game Y then they need to get on the same page, or change tables.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> See, I object to this entire categorization because it implies that there is some sort of 'difficulty range' where certain games fall into some sort of elite 'hard mode' category and the rest are 'just sport' and have some lesser agenda. It just doesn't accurately reflect the range of elements in RPGs nor is it useful to try to rank them in some such way. It isn't even a useful division in terms of how games are DESIGNED, nor of techniques used in play.



Then how else are we to delineate the differences between - let's use some design-level examples:

 - a game system that by design is often deadly to its PCs and a game system that by design plot-protects the PCs such that they can only die if their players allow it
 - - (sub-category) a game system where simple survival is always a goal underlying any other goals and a game system where survival is not an issue
 - - (sub-category) a game system where the story of the party-as-a-whole is primary and a game system where the individual stories of the PCs are primary
 - a game system that by design has PCs be very little different from ordinary game-world people and a game system where the PCs are exceptional to the point of uniqueness
 - a game system that delves into details of resource and treasure acquisition/management and a game system that handwaves these things

Some of these are war-vs.-sport comparisons and some are gritty-vs.-(not gritty?).



> There are no 'punches' in RPG play. RPGs are a cooperative exercise.



Taken to its conclusion, that says that in the spirit of said co-operation the DM should always fudge her rolls or sub-optimally play her monsters such that the PCs in the end get what they want; be it a combat victory or a solution to the mystery or whatever.  I don't think this is what you were getting at - at least, I sure hope it wasn't! - and so you might want to try this one again. 



> But there is no 'neutrality', everyone has a goal, and it is essentially the same goal. An 'adversary' is simply a dramatic tool used to accomplish the goal.



The DM has the goal of running a fun, playable, engaging game.  The players have two "levels" of goal: one, to enjoy what happens at the table and be engaged/ing and entertained/ing; and two, their PCs have goals within the fiction - goals which, for a good story to unfold, must meet some opposition along the way.  This opposition comes from the DM.



> But again, this is your interpretation. Characters could spend YEARS between scenes. There's no need, or even any strong motive particularly, to set every scene framed 5 seconds after the last.



What I was responding to was an example of yours that was just this: out of the frying pan and immediately into the fire; and the way you put it made it seem like this was typical of story-now.  That said, in those years between scenes (which I assume are downtime) do the PCs get a chance to sit back and chart their own course for what they do next?



> In fact I'd call this urge another effect of 'Thinking Like Gygax'.



Er...huh?  Explain?

Lanefan


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.  Let's say that I want to jump over a 3 foot ditch and I am unaware that there is a forcefield that is both invisible and inaudible in the way.  We will call the forcefield hidden backstory.  When I take a running leap and hit that forcefield, I have failed to succeed.  What has not happened, though, is anyone else, even the creator of that force field, controlling my actions.  I declared my action.  I engaged in that action.  I succeeded in the attempt.  Nobody controlled me, but me.  Failure when reasonable, even if due to causes unknown to the action declarer, cannot remove control from the player.
> 
> You are falsely equating hidden backstory(reasonable failure) with a DM saying, "You fail because I don't want you to succeed.", and that's a fallacy.




This is, IMHO, a category error which stems from your fundamental resistance to understanding that the 'game world' is simply a form of consensual fiction. In a game where the GM asserts control over all fictional positioning it IS a constraint on player agency, ALWAYS. 

Note that even your example doesn't work. In the real world if I put walls around you (say by putting you in jail) I most certainly have constrained your agency. This is the essence of incarceration! The very notion of agency itself would fail to hold any meaning were it any other way. Or would you maintain that agency consists of people merely having the power to WANT to do something? Were that true then we could relegate the entirety of Western Society's movement to personal freedom as nothing at all!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Then how else are we to delineate the differences between - let's use some design-level examples:
> 
> - a game system that by design is often deadly to its PCs and a game system that by design plot-protects the PCs such that they can only die if their players allow it



I would categorize them by the ends and not by the means. Nor is it possible to categorize all game systems in this way, you must also consider the means and techniques used in play. Some game systems might unequivocally not contain the concept of character death, but for many systems this is a point of variance between games. 4e would be an example of this.



> - - (sub-category) a game system where simple survival is always a goal underlying any other goals and a game system where survival is not an issue



I would answer the same as above.


> - - (sub-category) a game system where the story of the party-as-a-whole is primary and a game system where the individual stories of the PCs are primary



I wouldn't consider this axis to be relevant to the topic. 


> - a game system that by design has PCs be very little different from ordinary game-world people and a game system where the PCs are exceptional to the point of uniqueness



I wouldn't consider this to be relevant.


> - a game system that delves into details of resource and treasure acquisition/management and a game system that handwaves these things



I think you are trying to imply that only in the former could the game be truly 'hard'. I think you confuse resource management for a wider category of games in which problem-solving is a factor. This is a much wider range than is encompassed by any 'CaW/CaS' axis.



> Some of these are war-vs.-sport comparisons and some are gritty-vs.-(not gritty?).



I think there are a variety of responses to different axes of variation in games and game designs. 


> Taken to its conclusion, that says that in the spirit of said co-operation the DM should always fudge her rolls or sub-optimally play her monsters such that the PCs in the end get what they want; be it a combat victory or a solution to the mystery or whatever.  I don't think this is what you were getting at - at least, I sure hope it wasn't! - and so you might want to try this one again.



Again, you are caught in oppositional thinking in which being an advocate for the PCs is the same thing as "letting them win" some sort of opposed game. This is a mistaken proposition in Story Now play. 



> The DM has the goal of running a fun, playable, engaging game.  The players have two "levels" of goal: one, to enjoy what happens at the table and be engaged/ing and entertained/ing; and two, their PCs have goals within the fiction - goals which, for a good story to unfold, must meet some opposition along the way.  This opposition comes from the DM.



I would say something different, which is that the goals within the fiction are simply tools used to fulfill the agendas of the players, who do so to enjoy the game. All goals are united in some sense. Opposition is a tool, admittedly a useful one! 



> What I was responding to was an example of yours that was just this: out of the frying pan and immediately into the fire; and the way you put it made it seem like this was typical of story-now.  That said, in those years between scenes (which I assume are downtime) do the PCs get a chance to sit back and chart their own course for what they do next?



Sometimes you can go from frying pan to fire, sure. Examples aren't exhaustive catalogs.

If a scene follows another scene with a fictional period of years between then presumably the previous scene established a trajectory leading to the framing of this next scene in which it made dramatic sense for time to intervene. If the player wishes to describe that intervening time, that's fine. In HoML I would call this an 'Interlude'. Within such an interlude there would be no dice tossed and no dramatic action. It could be that the extent of the time between scenes could be determined by the content of the interlude (IE it lasts until the player describes the character re-engaging with some fiction by taking up a conflict). It could also simply be a narrative device handled in the scene transition by the GM at more or less length. Presumably this would comply with the desires of the players. 



> Er...huh?  Explain?




Another way to describe the oppositional puzzle-game-based classical D&D thinking. I think 'Gygax Thinking' has a less controversial ring to it than '2-dimensional thinking' (but maybe a less explicit reference to the differences in thinking).


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> This is, IMHO, a category error which stems from your fundamental resistance to understanding that the 'game world' is simply a form of consensual fiction. In a game where the GM asserts control over all fictional positioning it IS a constraint on player agency, ALWAYS.
> 
> Note that even your example doesn't work. In the real world if I put walls around you (say by putting you in jail) I most certainly have constrained your agency. This is the essence of incarceration! The very notion of agency itself would fail to hold any meaning were it any other way. Or would you maintain that agency consists of people merely having the power to WANT to do something? Were that true then we could relegate the entirety of Western Society's movement to personal freedom as nothing at all!




This is a ludicrous argument. You are going from a real world obstruction to the act of putting someone in jail and equating them. I think what is going on here is there is a huge split in how people use the term player agency. It isn't a product of some fundamental misunderstanding on the other poster's part. It is simply a product of people playing an conceptualizing the game differently and through different metaphors. Some people by player agency seem to mean something like their freedom to create in the story and setting. Others seem to mean their freedom to have their character explore a setting freely. Either way, what it seems like is going on is the term itself is being used as a proxy to advance a play style preference. Clearly you guys have different preferences. Only an autocrat would assume that means either of you fundamentally misunderstand roleplaying or having fun, agency, etc. Basically one meaning is about the player, the other about the player character. Terms like this are hard to control and change when they get into general use. I'd say, the better thing to do is just ask someone what they mean when they use a word if there is disagreement over the meaning. Debates over gaming terminology like this, lead us to miss the forest from the trees and almost always seem to take us pretty far from real table considerations.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> Let's say that I want to jump over a 3 foot ditch and I am unaware that there is a forcefield that is both invisible and inaudible in the way.  We will call the forcefield hidden backstory.



I am taking it here that "I" refers not to the real person Maxperson, but to Maxperson's PC in a RPG. Otherwise the example makes no sense, because _being hidden backstory_ is a (relational) property of RPG fiction, not a property of things in the world.



Maxperson said:


> When I take a running leap and hit that forcefield, I have failed to succeed.  What has not happened, though, is anyone else, even the creator of that force field, controlling my actions.  I declared my action.  I engaged in that action.  I succeeded in the attempt.  Nobody controlled me, but me.



Continuing from above, the word "I" here must refer to the PC. Discussion of whether or not, in the fiction, a PC controls his/her choices is largely irrelevant to analysing the play of a RPG. The play of a RPG is not an imaginary thing that is undertaken by imaginary people (unless you're playing a RPG about RPGers) - it is a real activity undertaken by real people.



Maxperson said:


> Failure when reasonable, even if due to causes unknown to the action declarer, cannot remove control from the player.



Now, instead of talking about the PC, you are talking about the _player_. And you provide no argument.

If a player's action declaration for his/her PC fails because the GM adjudicates it by reference to some unrevealed element of framing, then it is the GM, not the player, who in that particular episode of play is exercising control over the content of the fiction. Eg the GM has determined that it shall consist of an invisible forcefield, and hence shall not include any jumpings over ditches.



Maxperson said:


> You are falsely equating hidden backstory(reasonable failure) with a DM saying, "You fail because I don't want you to succeed."



I've never said anything about what the GM does or doesn't _want_. I've talked about who is exercising control over the content of the fiction.

In your example, it is not the _player_ who decided that jumping the ditch could not succeed. Nor did the action resolution mechanics determine that. The GM determined that by way of an authorship process in which the player did not participate. Which is to say, the GM exercised control.



hawkeyefan said:


> If the presence of the force field is in no way hinted at, if the player has no idea it could possibly be there, then the character cannot succeed at the attempt. In which case, *the decision of success and failure has already been made*. So in that sense, there is a lack of agency in the sense that the chance for success does not originate with the PC.



I would say - the chance for success does not depend upon the player. And that is exactly for the reason that you give. (Which I've bolded.)

I also think that "desire" doesn't factor into it. A GM who is a stickler for never departing from his/her notes might regret that the forcefield is there, because it gets in the way of engaging play here and now. Nevertheless it would be the GM's decision that is controlling the outcome.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I am taking it here that "I" refers not to the real person Maxperson, but to Maxperson's PC in a RPG. Otherwise the example makes no sense, because _being hidden backstory_ is a (relational) property of RPG fiction, not a property of things in the world.




First off, he is obviously talking about his character. It would take a deliberately disingenuous reading to conclude otherwise. Second, your being overly strict with word usage to pin him to an argument and position he was not taking. Concealed backstories are a property of things in the real world. Except we usually call them other things. But you could easily have something like a hidden net trap or glass wall in the real world obstructing the ditch. You are using two-dollar words to make your argument sound more significant than it is.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Then how else are we to delineate the differences between - let's use some design-level examples:
> 
> - a game system that by design is often deadly to its PCs and a game system that by design plot-protects the PCs such that they can only die if their players allow it
> - - (sub-category) a game system where simple survival is always a goal underlying any other goals and a game system where survival is not an issue
> - - (sub-category) a game system where the story of the party-as-a-whole is primary and a game system where the individual stories of the PCs are primary
> - a game system that by design has PCs be very little different from ordinary game-world people and a game system where the PCs are exceptional to the point of uniqueness
> - a game system that delves into details of resource and treasure acquisition/management and a game system that handwaves these things



I might call your last category "gritty" or "logistical", depending on the details. Interestingly, HeroQuest revised (building on the earlier HeroWars rules) is "handwavy" vis-a-vis treasure for PCs, but has detailed rules for tracking community resources, which many other RPGs (including D&D) tend to handwave (eg D&D has no rules for tracking a village's fluctuating propserity).

As [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has said, there is no correlation between this sort of resource management and whether or not a game is hard or demanding.

The issue of typicality vs specialness of the PCs seems to have no bearing on anything else discussed in this thread. By definition, MHRP and Cortex+ Heroic PCs are heroes, not typical. 4e is similar, especially once the game moves out of Heroic tier.

Burning Wheel characters and Traveller characters, on the other hand, may be quite typical, or not, depending on how the lifepaths turn out (in BW this includes elements of decision; in Traveller it's about luck of the dice).

As far as survival and death being stakes, there is no particular correlation here to mechanical approach. BW is very gritty, but PC _death_ is quite unlikely. (PC maiming is more likely.) It woudl be easy enough to play Cortex+ Heroic with all Stress treated as Trauma, resulting in fairly frequent PC maiming and death, but that wouldn't turn it into a logistical game - it would just make it a game with high PC turnover.

Classic D&D could be fairly easily tweaked so that 0 hp means _unconscious_, or otherwise out of the action for the moment, but everything else left unchanged. Now we'd have a game in which instead of hauling bodies out of dungeons to get them resurrected, we'd have the hauling of unconscious companions out of dungeons so they can regain consciousness. And instead of TPKs there would be TPC - total party captures, being held for ransom by kobolds and having either to arrange payment, or escape.

The game would have a lower PC death rate (more comprable to 4e) but would still involve tracking ammunition and treasure.

Gygax already moves the game in this direction in AD&D (with the "unconscious if not dropped below -3 in a single blow" option; plus the option granted to the GM to declare a well-played PC unconscious rather than killed) and 2nd ed AD&D took things further in this direction.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> Concealed backstories are a property of things in the real world.



You mean things like spies?



Bedrockgames said:


> you could easily have something like a hidden net trap or glass wall in the real world obstructing the ditch.



The world is full of hidden things. But, putting to one side some deeper theological questions, they are not elements of backstory, because the world is not an authored fiction.

I have no objection to hidden things in the gameworld - most gameworld would not be very verisimilitudinous if they never contained secrets. I'm talking about particular techniques for establishing the existence of such things, and their role in the adjudication of action resolution.



Bedrockgames said:


> your being overly strict with word usage to pin him to an argument and position he was not taking.



If [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], and maybe you, aren't interested in contrasing what a PC (an imaginary person) does and experiences with what a player (a real person) does and experiences, that's your prerogative. But you are not going to be able to say very much about RPG play or design if you adopt that policy.


----------



## RedShirtNo5.1

I assert that if a player's declared action does not succeed, because of the results of a randomization mechanic, then the player does not have control over his/her PC's actions.


----------



## Darth Solo

Yeah, world-building has the distinct function of Player Entertainment. It's the "left-right" view and deeper knowledge of whoever makes the check.

World-building is also GM hobby: "this is my unique setting for you players to explore. A world of my own GM imagination."

Pure imagination meeting pure exploration. The very essence of storytelling. 

It's showing strangers a strange land, and it's FUN. It gives GMs a greater stake in campaigns because they know how all the pieces fit, because they designed it.

Plus, you can publish the setting for the world, like Greyhawk, Dark Sun, and Ravenloft. Imagine thousands of gamers adventuring in what you built ...


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I would categorize them by the ends and not by the means.



Except we've been dicussing nothing but means all the way along here - why change now? 



> Nor is it possible to categorize all game systems in this way, you must also consider the means and techniques used in play. Some game systems might unequivocally not contain the concept of character death, but for many systems this is a point of variance between games. 4e would be an example of this.



An example of what?  Characters can die in 4e, or so I gather - though it's harder to do so than in some earlier editions.



> I wouldn't consider this axis to be relevant to the topic.



I certainly would.  Traditional play has always been mostly about the story of the party - what does the party do as a whole - with the characters' achievements and stories a bit secondary, though not forgotten or overlooked.  The sense I get from the story-now types is that play there is all about the individual character stories, with the party-as-a-whole's achievements seen as secondary.  It's a big difference in style and focus: team first or individual first.



> I wouldn't consider this to be relevant.



A game system where the PCs start out as heroes (e.g. 4e) as opposed to nobodies (e.g. Basic or 1e) is going to foster a completely different approach to play right from square one.  The nobodies are far more likely going to worry about survival, and thus be in us-or-them "war" mode; where the pre-made heroes can treat the same hazards more like sport.



> I think you are trying to imply that only in the former could the game be truly 'hard'. I think you confuse resource management for a wider category of games in which problem-solving is a factor. This is a much wider range than is encompassed by any 'CaW/CaS' axis.



Again I repeat: I'm looking beyond just combat!  Game-as-war vs. game-as-sport.  Combat is just one element of it.



> I think there are a variety of responses to different axes of variation in games and game designs.



Oh, by no means have I hit all the axes. I was more looking at axes that played into whether a game would by design trend more towards war or more towards sport.



> Again, you are caught in oppositional thinking in which being an advocate for the PCs is the same thing as "letting them win" some sort of opposed game. This is a mistaken proposition in Story Now play.



It's impossible to be an advocate for the PCs at the same time you're trying to thwart them or kill them off (within the reasonable confines of the game system); and any who claim otherwise are not being legitimate with at least one side of that claim.

If you truly are an advocate for the PCs then your ability and desire to thwart or harm or kill them is compromised by default, and thus in a sense you are "letting them win".



> I would say something different, which is that the goals within the fiction are simply tools used to fulfill the agendas of the players, who do so to enjoy the game.



OK, but those goals are still different from those of the DM, who while also wanting to enjoy the game has to put herself in the position of having her goal be to more or less oppose the achievement of the players' in-game goals.



> Sometimes you can go from frying pan to fire, sure. Examples aren't exhaustive catalogs.
> 
> If a scene follows another scene with a fictional period of years between then presumably the previous scene established a trajectory leading to the framing of this next scene in which it made dramatic sense for time to intervene. If the player wishes to describe that intervening time, that's fine. In HoML I would call this an 'Interlude'. Within such an interlude there would be no dice tossed and no dramatic action. It could be that the extent of the time between scenes could be determined by the content of the interlude (IE it lasts until the player describes the character re-engaging with some fiction by taking up a conflict). It could also simply be a narrative device handled in the scene transition by the GM at more or less length. Presumably this would comply with the desires of the players.



Though you're using fancy words for it, I think we might now be on the same page: there's chances now and then for the in-character party to chart their own course and make their own decisions as per what they do next e.g. do we follow up on the balrog possession or do we try to save Dumystor's family farm...or do we just screw it all and head for the coast. 



> Another way to describe the oppositional puzzle-game-based classical D&D thinking. I think 'Gygax Thinking' has a less controversial ring to it than '2-dimensional thinking' (but maybe a less explicit reference to the differences in thinking).



Ah.

Lan-"off now to dive into some Gygaxian dungeoneering"-efan


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> This is a ludicrous argument. You are going from a real world obstruction to the act of putting someone in jail and equating them. I think what is going on here is there is a huge split in how people use the term player agency. It isn't a product of some fundamental misunderstanding on the other poster's part. It is simply a product of people playing an conceptualizing the game differently and through different metaphors. Some people by player agency seem to mean something like their freedom to create in the story and setting. Others seem to mean their freedom to have their character explore a setting freely. Either way, what it seems like is going on is the term itself is being used as a proxy to advance a play style preference. Clearly you guys have different preferences. Only an autocrat would assume that means either of you fundamentally misunderstand roleplaying or having fun, agency, etc. Basically one meaning is about the player, the other about the player character. Terms like this are hard to control and change when they get into general use. I'd say, the better thing to do is just ask someone what they mean when they use a word if there is disagreement over the meaning. Debates over gaming terminology like this, lead us to miss the forest from the trees and almost always seem to take us pretty far from real table considerations.




I don't think what you're saying is very much different from what I'm saying actually. The use of the terms is not all that different, and either meaning could be justified, with context and perhaps a dash of common sense differentiating, but [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] has refused to yield, HIS exact meaning is the ONLY acceptable one, and everyone else is supposed to get off his terminological lawn! 

Moreover, he then went from using a specific interpretation of terminology to (mis)interpreting myself and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] in some rather ludicrous ways. Maybe you weren't present at that point in the thread, I'm not sure how much of it you've read, as you were not posting during that phase of the discussion, IIRC. I refer to the point where Max insisted that our Story Now techniques were RAILROADING!!!!!! and removing players agency over their characters!!!??!! Pardon me if I am not prone to just letting Max define things willy nilly however he wants. He undermined my confidence that he 'gets it' a good solid 1500 posts ago! Honestly, I'm not even convinced that he debates in good faith at this point, some of his conclusions are so utterly wild and frankly just wrong.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> First off, he is obviously talking about his character. It would take a deliberately disingenuous reading to conclude otherwise. Second, your being overly strict with word usage to pin him to an argument and position he was not taking. Concealed backstories are a property of things in the real world. Except we usually call them other things. But you could easily have something like a hidden net trap or glass wall in the real world obstructing the ditch. You are using two-dollar words to make your argument sound more significant than it is.




Look, NORMALLY, I might agree with you! Seriously! However NOT WITH THIS POSTER. This guy doesn't play by the rules of interpreting things in the way they should be meant. He plays with and twists words and INSISTS on alternate and often nonsensical readings of things, not what is obviously meant. You HAVE to engage like this if you want to engage at all. Otherwise its pea soup and suddenly the whole conversation became absurd.

I'd VERY strongly advice, if you were to take an interest in that particular dialog, to go back and read the parts of the thread Max contributed. I think you'll VERY QUICKLY find that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is fully justified in his approach. I mean, honestly, don't bother, you can take it from me. It would be pretty tedious to do (though sometimes kinda amusing in a certain way).

Truthfully there are times when Max also says things that are illuminating, but I half think its by accident, I just don't know. Mostly I take him to be a hard case example of a contrarian, he's just GOT to 'win' any exchange of words.


----------



## Bedrockgames

I am not going to waste time combing through a thread. I can only speak to the posts I am seeing presently. Online I honestly dont have the time to delve into pre-existing disputes on 200+ page threads (I have a hard enough time keeping up with my own emails).


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Look, NORMALLY, I might agree with you! Seriously! However NOT WITH THIS POSTER. This guy doesn't play by the rules of interpreting things in the way they should be meant. He plays with and twists words and INSISTS on alternate and often nonsensical readings of things, not what is obviously meant. You HAVE to engage like this if you want to engage at all. Otherwise its pea soup and suddenly the whole conversation became absurd.
> 
> I'd VERY strongly advice, if you were to take an interest in that particular dialog, to go back and read the parts of the thread Max contributed. I think you'll VERY QUICKLY find that  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is fully justified in his approach. I mean, honestly, don't bother, you can take it from me. It would be pretty tedious to do (though sometimes kinda amusing in a certain way).
> 
> Truthfully there are times when Max also says things that are illuminating, but I half think its by accident, I just don't know. Mostly I take him to be a hard case example of a contrarian, he's just GOT to 'win' any exchange of words.




I'm pretty sure there's a contingent that thinks the same of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION].  

Attacking Max because another poster calls out pemerton in his response to Max doesn't address the issues called out, you know?  You just look like a jerk for throwing Max under the bus to divert from the criticism of pemerton's post.  Having been deeply misrepresented by pemerton and then told by pemerton that he can't be bothered to go back and see what I said to begin with, I'm somewhat sympathetic to [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION]' points, here.  Sure, Max doesn't behave well sometimes, and I don't agree with him quite often, but that's got nothing to do with what Bedrockgames said about pemerton's post above.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> But are those things different?




Very different.  One involves the DMs desires and the other doesn't.  If the DM is using his desire to just cause failure, that's a railroad.  If the game environment is causing failure, that isn't a railroad.  The DM set up the environment without knowing what the player was going to do or not do.  



> If the presence of the force field is in no way hinted at, if the player has no idea it could possibly be there, then the character cannot succeed at the attempt. In which case, the decision of success and failure has already been made. So in that sense, there is a lack of agency in the sense that the chance for success does not originate with the PC.




Success or failure is irrelevant to agency.  Only whether or not the player has full control over the PCs actions involves agency.


----------



## Maxperson

Arilyn said:


> In Story Now games, the GM would not place the force field ahead of play. Placing it ahead of time restricts the player because there is no way that jump will be successful. In a Story Now game, there could be a force field as a result of a very badly failed jump roll, but it wasn't automatically there. Now once it is declared to be there by the bad roll, it was of course always there in the world, but not in the GM's backstory.
> 
> The advocates of Story Now gaming don't enjoy making declarations, and having the GM tell them yes or no based on pre- written notes, or the GM's decision based on said notes. It differs from classical play, because the world unfolds based on the results of scenes, which are in turn, driven by character drives and dice rolls. The loss of player agency in classical games is not just the GM being tyrannical, or characters being forced in a single direction. It's, in my understanding, more the players feeling that they are simply tourists in the GM's world. This is where the loss of control is felt. In Story Now games, the characters' drives and motivations feed the drama and determine the direction of the story. They are not, for example, going to become key players in a war against hobgoblins because the GM thought it would be cool to do a hobgoblin war story.
> 
> The example of your character having free will in a classical game is perfectly valid, but is irrelevant to Story Now gaming, because in Story Now, you as a player have lost agency if a lot of backstory exists.  Technically, pemerton is right in saying classical gaming is pretty much a Choose Your Own Adventure. It's also unfair, because a living GM can make it so complex that it doesn't really have much in common with those adventure books. The GM can also rewrite bits on the fly.




I understand the difference, but this has no bearing on whether or not players have full agency in a game that isn't Story Now if secret backstory is present.  @_*pemerton*_ is incorrectly saying that players don't have agency in that situation.  I'm letting him know that they do.  



> These are two different styles of rpging. Both work and are fun. It's interesting discussing the different approaches, but trying to prove the objective superiority of one over the other? This has no end, as this thread Is proving.



 @_*pemerton*_ is the one who posts with superiority of style all over the place.  I simply refute the incorrect statements he makes, the incorrect definitions he uses, and defend against the tone of superiority he uses for his style, and tone of inferiority he uses when discussing other styles.  I agree with you that both work and are fun, and that it's interesting to discuss both.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> This is, IMHO, a category error which stems from your fundamental resistance to understanding that the 'game world' is simply a form of consensual fiction. In a game where the GM asserts control over all fictional positioning it IS a constraint on player agency, ALWAYS.
> 
> Note that even your example doesn't work. In the real world if I put walls around you (say by putting you in jail) I most certainly have constrained your agency. This is the essence of incarceration! The very notion of agency itself would fail to hold any meaning were it any other way.




Were you to put me in jail, I would still have agency over my actions.  I could make attempts to break out as often as I wanted, even if they were doomed to fail.  To remove my agency, you would have to tie me down so that I couldn't attempt to act(railroad me). Here's the rub, though.  Unless you are totally freeform roleplaying, there are going to be constraints on what the players and DM can do.  Constraint doesn't remove agency.  Only railroading can do that.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I am taking it here that "I" refers not to the real person Maxperson, but to Maxperson's PC in a RPG. Otherwise the example makes no sense, because _being hidden backstory_ is a (relational) property of RPG fiction, not a property of things in the world.
> 
> Continuing from above, the word "I" here must refer to the PC. Discussion of whether or not, in the fiction, a PC controls his/her choices is largely irrelevant to analysing the play of a RPG. The play of a RPG is not an imaginary thing that is undertaken by imaginary people (unless you're playing a RPG about RPGers) - it is a real activity undertaken by real people.




No, the I in that example was me in real life.  The unknown in real life equates to backstory in an RPG.  Both are unknown and can cause automatic failure.  Neither remove agency as I have full control over my actions in both instances.



> If a player's action declaration for his/her PC fails because the GM adjudicates it by reference to some unrevealed element of framing, then it is the GM, not the player, who in that particular episode of play is exercising control over the content of the fiction. Eg the GM has determined that it shall consist of an invisible forcefield, and hence shall not include any jumpings over ditches.




Success or failure is irrelevant to agency.  Agency is control over the actions of the PC.  Not whether the PC can succeed or not.  Only a direct railroad can stop agency, and the wall does not constitute railroading, despite your repeated statements that it does.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I'd VERY strongly advice, if you were to take an interest in that particular dialog, to go back and read the parts of the thread Max contributed. I think you'll VERY QUICKLY find that  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is fully justified in his approach. I mean, honestly, don't bother, you can take it from me. It would be pretty tedious to do (though sometimes kinda amusing in a certain way).




 [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION].  Should you go back and look, you will see me posting in good faith in the beginning, arguing against the bad faith misrepresentations of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION].  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] saw that as well.  After a long while, though, I got sick of all the misrepresentations(as it became apparent that he was just deliberately misportraying things) and started tossing them right back at [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION].  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] saw that as well.  Then later on I explained what I was doing to [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION].  Even after all of that, he chooses willful ignorance over truth and is portraying me the way he is posting here.



> Truthfully there are times when Max also says things that are illuminating, but I half think its by accident, I just don't know. Mostly I take him to be a hard case example of a contrarian, he's just GOT to 'win' any exchange of words.



No, nothing I've done here is by accident.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> Very different.  One involves the DMs desires and the other doesn't.  If the DM is using his desire to just cause failure, that's a railroad.  If the game environment is causing failure, that isn't a railroad.  The DM set up the environment without knowing what the player was going to do or not do.




Well if the DM puts a ditch somewhere and then puts something on the other side of it and then puts an invisible force field blocking anyone from jumping the ditch...I have to say I agree that such a situation is a bit whacky. What else is causing the inevitable outcome other than DM desire? 

I mean, why put the forcefield there in the first place other than to thwart a PC attempting the jump? What other reason could it possobly be there?

And why not simply remove it at the time of play? If I was DMing a published module and I came across this situation, I’d probably change it. It’s a “gotcha” moment and I don’t see the point of it. 



Maxperson said:


> Success or failure is irrelevant to agency.  Only whether or not the player has full control over the PCs actions involves agency.




I don’t know if I entirely agree with that. Agency is the ability to succeed or fail on one’s own. A character who has agency in a story is able to determine their own fate, for good or ill. Characters who don’t have agency have their fates decided by others.

So a character attempting to jump the ditch is destined to fail through no fault of his or her own. They are destined to fail because of the DM. 

Perhaps if there was some choice involved on the part of the character...or if there was some reasonable chance to somehow notice the forcefield....but without additional factors like that, it seems like a removal of agency.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> As far as survival and death being stakes, there is no particular correlation here to mechanical approach. BW is very gritty, but PC _death_ is quite unlikely. (PC maiming is more likely.) It woudl be easy enough to play Cortex+ Heroic with all Stress treated as Trauma, resulting in fairly frequent PC maiming and death, but that wouldn't turn it into a logistical game - it would just make it a game with high PC turnover.
> 
> Classic D&D could be fairly easily tweaked so that 0 hp means _unconscious_, or otherwise out of the action for the moment, but everything else left unchanged. Now we'd have a game in which instead of hauling bodies out of dungeons to get them resurrected, we'd have the hauling of unconscious companions out of dungeons so they can regain consciousness. And instead of TPKs there would be TPC - total party captures, being held for ransom by kobolds and having either to arrange payment, or escape.
> 
> The game would have a lower PC death rate (more comprable to 4e) but would still involve tracking ammunition and treasure.
> 
> Gygax already moves the game in this direction in AD&D (with the "unconscious if not dropped below -3 in a single blow" option; plus the option granted to the GM to declare a well-played PC unconscious rather than killed) and 2nd ed AD&D took things further in this direction.




To reinforce this (because believe me it requires ENDLESS reinforcement, folks who play 'OSR-like' games or highly 'classical' styles of D&D ASSUME they have some sort of monopoly on being able to kill PCs for some stupid reason) there's NO CORRELATION AT ALL in versions of D&D. 4e, as an example, has no specific level of deadliness. There isn't even one implied in the rules, beyond the recommendations for level variation of encounters, and a general advice that seems to envisage (but not dictate) low-lethality in SCs. 

Fourth Core's canonical adventure is in fact absurdly lethal. I noted in a read through that there were at least 8, maybe more, 'insta-gank' situations where even reasonable PC actions produce instant, irrevocable, and mechanically unavoidable character death. None of this 'breaks the rules' of 4e. Even those aside you have to manage at least FOUR, possibly quite a few more, level+4 encounters (and these are low heroic PCs) without any pause in order to get through. My understanding is that in tournament play no party EVER survived, or even made it halfway. Its probably POSSIBLE, I think they stated that at least someone did make it in playtest, but it would require perfect character optimization and ideal levels of tactical play, plus not losing anyone to the insta-ganks.

The point is, any of these games can really have pretty much any arbitrary level of lethality. Its all up to the tastes of the people playing the game. There are games where death really isn't a normal part of play, but in those cases the focus is probably on other, potentially difficult to achieve, goals.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> Well if the DM puts a ditch somewhere and then puts something on the other side of it and then puts an invisible force field blocking anyone from jumping the ditch...I have to say I agree that such a situation is a bit whacky. What else is causing the inevitable outcome other than DM desire?




1000 years ago a wildmage had an unusual wild surge at that location.  The locals all know about the force field.  The PCs, don't though.  The ditch is only 100 yards long, so it's not as if the PCs have to go past it.  I would have no way of knowing that one of the players might decide to jump the ditch, rather than just walk through it, or if they will even go to the ditch.  It's simply interesting backstory that they might encounter.

My desire has nothing to do with it, as I have no desire for either success or failure in this instance.



> And why not simply remove it at the time of play? If I was DMing a published module and I came across this situation, I’d probably change it. It’s a “gotcha” moment and I don’t see the point of it.




Are you really telling me that things that are unknown and found out about the hard way are all "gotcha" moments?  If you are, I totally disagree with that.  If you aren't, there's no reason to think this is a gotcha moment based on what I've said here.



> I don’t know if I entirely agree with that. Agency is the ability to succeed or fail on one’s own. A character who has agency in a story is able to determine their own fate, for good or ill. Characters who don’t have agency have their fates decided by others.




Agency is the ability to take whatever actions you wish for your PC(within the bounds of the rules) without those actions being railroaded.  Nobody forced the PC to jump the ditch.  That was purely the player's decision and absolutely nothing interfered with that decision, or the resulting attempt to jump the ditch.  The player had full agency over his character at that point.  The narration of failure due to hitting an invisible wall does not affect that.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> To reinforce this (because believe me it requires ENDLESS reinforcement, folks who play 'OSR-like' games or highly 'classical' styles of D&D ASSUME they have some sort of monopoly on being able to kill PCs for some stupid reason) there's NO CORRELATION AT ALL in versions of D&D. 4e, as an example, has no specific level of deadliness. There isn't even one implied in the rules, beyond the recommendations for level variation of encounters, and a general advice that seems to envisage (but not dictate) low-lethality in SCs.
> 
> Fourth Core's canonical adventure is in fact absurdly lethal. I noted in a read through that there were at least 8, maybe more, 'insta-gank' situations where even reasonable PC actions produce instant, irrevocable, and mechanically unavoidable character death. None of this 'breaks the rules' of 4e. Even those aside you have to manage at least FOUR, possibly quite a few more, level+4 encounters (and these are low heroic PCs) without any pause in order to get through. My understanding is that in tournament play no party EVER survived, or even made it halfway. Its probably POSSIBLE, I think they stated that at least someone did make it in playtest, but it would require perfect character optimization and ideal levels of tactical play, plus not losing anyone to the insta-ganks.



"Fourth Core" is, I presume, a 3rd-party publisher of 4e material? (never heard of them before now)

And what's that module called, in case I ever stumble across it?


----------



## Bedrockgames

hawkeyefan said:


> I don’t know if I entirely agree with that. Agency is the ability to succeed or fail on one’s own. A character who has agency in a story is able to determine their own fate, for good or ill. Characters who don’t have agency have their fates decided by others.
> 
> So a character attempting to jump the ditch is destined to fail through no fault of his or her own. They are destined to fail because of the DM.
> 
> Perhaps if there was some choice involved on the part of the character...or if there was some reasonable chance to somehow notice the forcefield....but without additional factors like that, it seems like a removal of agency.




Again, people clearly are using this word in two different ways. Rather than fight over the meaning of a single term (which you are both using differently), just realize one of you is talking about the freedom of the player to make choices about what their character attempts in the world and one is talking (I am assuming) more about the ability of the character to shape the world or shape the story. These are very different approaches to play that both invoke character agency in different ways for what they are trying to do, and the difference isn't a minor one.


----------



## Bedrockgames

hawkeyefan said:


> Well if the DM puts a ditch somewhere and then puts something on the other side of it and then puts an invisible force field blocking anyone from jumping the ditch...I have to say I agree that such a situation is a bit whacky. What else is causing the inevitable outcome other than DM desire?




Most examples like that are not so extreme. All he is talking about is the ability of the world to have hidden dangers and pitfalls (dangers and pitfalls you sometimes can detect if you are careful, smart or lucky). But it is not usually about the GM making playing "gotcha" or forcing an outcome. It is simply about making the world not always be fully predictable and maintaining a level of excitement.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Bedrockgames said:


> Again, people clearly are using this word in two different ways. Rather than fight over the meaning of a single term (which you are both using differently), just realize one of you is talking about the freedom of the player to make choices about what their character attempts in the world and one is talking (I am assuming) more about the ability of the character to shape the world or shape the story. These are very different approaches to play that both invoke character agency in different ways for what they are trying to do, and the difference isn't a minor one.



Good luck.  I've made this exact point and neither side even paid attention other than to say I was wrong and continue on.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Ovinomancer said:


> Good luck.  I've made this exact point and neither side even paid attention other than to say I was wrong and continue on.




Lol. Well, I've been in too many conversations that revolve around controlling language and terminology in order to advance a playstyle. I think a much more honest and genuine approach is to 1) use mainly descriptive definitions (and understand when there are different uses of a word, 2) always avoid equivocation (I see this a lot these discussion) and 3) try to understand what someone actually means when they use a word. 

Also, just a general observation, there is a lot of coined jargon being used in this discussion that I think obscures the points people are making and adds confusion rather than clarity (I am sure some posters find the terminology they are using but my guess is 90% of posters just find it makes peoples' points difficult to understand).


----------



## Bedrockgames

Maxperson said:


> [MENTION=85555]Bedrockgames[/MENTION].  Should you go back and look, you will see me posting in good faith in the beginning, arguing against the bad faith misrepresentations of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION].  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] saw that as well.  After a long while, though, I got sick of all the misrepresentations(as it became apparent that he was just deliberately misportraying things) and started tossing them right back at [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION].  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] saw that as well.  Then later on I explained what I was doing to [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION].  Even after all of that, he chooses willful ignorance over truth and is portraying me the way he is posting here.
> .




I honestly can't think of  worse use of my time than to spend it trying to figure out who made what point when on a long thread.


----------



## Maxperson

Bedrockgames said:


> Most examples like that are not so extreme. All he is talking about is the ability of the world to have hidden dangers and pitfalls (dangers and pitfalls you sometimes can detect if you are careful, smart or lucky). But it is not usually about the GM making playing "gotcha" or forcing an outcome. It is simply about making the world not always be fully predictable and maintaining a level of excitement.




Yeah.  A gotcha to me has to be pretty extreme.  Putting a medusa behind a door, with no way to find out in advance is a gotcha("Okay guys.  You open the door and let's see who turns to stone!").  Possibly bumping your nose at a ditch isn't a gotcha.


----------



## Maxperson

Bedrockgames said:


> Lol. Well, I've been in too many conversations that revolve around controlling language and terminology in order to advance a playstyle. I think a much more honest and genuine approach is to 1) use mainly descriptive definitions (and understand when there are different uses of a word, 2) always avoid equivocation (I see this a lot these discussion) and 3) try to understand what someone actually means when they use a word.




The only reason I've fought so hard over the definition here, is that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] have been redefining player agency in order to then say that their style gives players greater agency [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]) or is how players get agency, implying that my style removes agency altogether [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]).  If someone is going to redefine a term so in order to poo poo on how I do things, I'm going to fight back rather than try to understand them.  I'm perfectly willing to understand a discussion on how things are different.  I even tried multiple times to extend an olive branch by saying that the agency wasn't greater for either side, just different, but they wouldn't accept the branch and move on.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> If the DM is using his desire to just cause failure, that's a railroad.  If the game environment is causing failure, that isn't a railroad.  The DM set up the environment without knowing what the player was going to do or not do.



And? That doesn't change the fact that _the GM authored the fiction that is now dictating the outcome of the player's declared action for his/her PC_.



Maxperson said:


> The unknown in real life equates to backstory in an RPG.  Both are unknown and can cause automatic failure.  Neither remove agency as I have full control over my actions in both instances.



Upthread you got angry when I suggested that you don't distinguish between real life and fantasy. But here you are, again, not making the distinction.

_Real life is not a game._ The world I walk through in real life was not authored for game purposes.

RPGing is a game. Like other games, it involves participants who make moves. You are describing a game in which the GM makes moves - the authoring of unrevealed backstory - which lead to the result that other participants' moves automatically fail, for reasons that haven't been revealed to them.

_That has a bearing on their agency_. And it certainly has a bearing on _their agency in respect of the shared fiction_, which is the particular version of agency I'm talking about.



Maxperson said:


> Success or failure is irrelevant to agency.  Only whether or not the player has full control over the PCs actions involves agency.





Maxperson said:


> Success or failure is irrelevant to agency.  Agency is control over the actions of the PC.  Not whether the PC can succeed or not.



You can assert these things. That doesn't make them so. I am - clearly, unequivocally, and repeatedly - talking primarily about _player agency over the content of the shared fiction_. If the player has no capacity to change that by making a move, then s/he lacks agency in respect of it. You may not care about such agency. I do. It's the most important thing for me in playing RPGs. You're not going to change that fact about me by telling me that you don't like it!


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> there is a lot of coined jargon being used in this discussion that I think obscures the points people are making and adds confusion rather than clarity (I am sure some posters find the terminology they are using but my guess is 90% of posters just find it makes peoples' points difficult to understand).



It's a 2000+ post thread. You've just posted that you're not going to read it all. That's fair enough, but I think the flipside of that is that it might take some extra effort to get up to speed.



Bedrockgames said:


> Again, people clearly are using this word in two different ways. Rather than fight over the meaning of a single term (which you are both using differently), just realize one of you is talking about the freedom of the player to make choices about what their character attempts in the world and one is talking (I am assuming) more about the ability of the character to shape the world or shape the story. These are very different approaches to play that both invoke character agency in different ways



I am talking about _the capacity of a player to affect the content of the shared fiction_. That's it.

In a game in which the GM adjudicates action resolution by reference to unrevealed elements of framing ("hidden backstory") the player has less of that than otherwise.

It may well be true that other RPGers don't care about that particular form of player agency. Obviously that's their prerogative. But it's a real thing, and it's something I care about. And it's the reason I don't like the role of hidden backstory as it has frequently been used in RPGing (especially in the standard 2nd ed AD&D style). Telling me that in other games, players are satisfied with the ability to choose their PCs' action declarations isn't going to affect my preferences. All it does it make me wonder what the point of emphasising that sort of agency is - are their really people who "play" RPGs but _aren't_ allowed to declare actions for their PCs? What would the point of that be?


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> And? That doesn't change the fact that _the GM authored the fiction that is now dictating the outcome of the player's declared action for his/her PC_.




So what.  All that means is that it's not your style of play.  It doesn't make it a railroad, and it doesn't remove player agency.



> Upthread you got angry when I suggested that you don't distinguish between real life and fantasy. But here you are, again, not making the distinction.
> 
> _Real life is not a game._ The world I walk through in real life was not authored for game purposes.




The two instances directly equate.  If not knowing about something in real life doesn't negate my personal agency when acting, not knowing about something in a game doesn't remove my player agency when I have my PC take an action.  



> RPGing is a game. Like other games, it involves participants who make moves. You are describing a game in which the GM makes moves - the authoring of unrevealed backstory - which lead to the result that other participants' moves automatically fail, for reasons that haven't been revealed to them.




Again...

So what.  All that means is that it's not your style of play.  It doesn't make it a railroad, and it doesn't remove player agency.



> _That has a bearing on their agency_. And it certainly has a bearing on _their agency in respect of the shared fiction_, which is the particular version of agency I'm talking about.




No it doesn't.  Their player agency is completely unimpeded since their character is free to act however the player wishes.  It only impedes YOUR PLAYSTYLE and nothing more.



> You can assert these things. That doesn't make them so. I am - clearly, unequivocally, and repeatedly - talking primarily about _player agency over the content of the shared fiction_. If the player has no capacity to change that by making a move, then s/he lacks agency in respect of it. You may not care about such agency. I do. It's the most important thing for me in playing RPGs. You're not going to change that fact about me by telling me that you don't like it!




I completely get that you are talking about your redefinition(which really just redefines agency to mean "my playstyle").  So if I were to accept that there are two definitions, then player agency in my game is completely unimpeded since I am not using your definition.  If your definition is wrong, then player agency in my game is completely unimpeded.  Either way player agency in my game is completely unimpeded.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> It's a 2000+ post thread. You've just posted that you're not going to read it all. That's fair enough, but I think the flipside of that is that it might take some extra effort to get up to speed.
> 
> I am talking about _the capacity of a player to affect the content of the shared fiction_. That's it.
> 
> In a game in which the GM adjudicates action resolution by reference to unrevealed elements of framing ("hidden backstory") the player has less of that than otherwise.
> 
> It may well be true that other RPGers don't care about that particular form of player agency. Obviously that's their prerogative. But it's a real thing, and it's something I care about. And it's the reason I don't like the role of hidden backstory as it has frequently been used in RPGing (especially in the standard 2nd ed AD&D style). Telling me that in other games, players are satisfied with the ability to choose their PCs' action declarations isn't going to affect my preferences. All it does it make me wonder what the point of emphasising that sort of agency is - are their really people who "play" RPGs but _aren't_ allowed to declare actions for their PCs? What would the point of that be?




I am not suspicious of the way you enjoy play (if this is the kind of agency you like fine); why are you suspicious of other peoples' enjoyment of play? 

And again, I think this conversation would be a lot easier if you translated these concepts into plain English. Everything you say, I have to filter through multiple pieces of jargon that tend to be used very inconsistently across the internet. I am sure you find these terms useful for your own understanding. Personally I find they make understanding the precise meaning of your statements very foggy.

I honestly don't know why you find it hard to believe people would find enjoyment and a sense of freedom to be able to try doing whatever they want in a game (even if they have no control over the world itself). It seems like you are trying to undermine that style of play to advance your own. 

Personally I think the gaming world is much better off when people have an enormous table of choices to select from (rather than people trying to argue away styles that are not their own---and you are very good at arguing, but at the end of the day, actual table play, not rhetoric, is what persuades people).


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> All it does it make me wonder what the point of emphasising that sort of agency is - are their really people who "play" RPGs but _aren't_ allowed to declare actions for their PCs? What would the point of that be?




In most games I play in, PCs are always able to declare what they try to do. They are not usually allowed to do things like declare outcomes (if that is what you are describing). I have played in games where people can affect things like that. But in most groups, the outcomes of a declared attempt are usually handled by the dice and GM. This isn't anything shocking or difficult to understand. It is just how games typically get played. If you have another approach, that is totally cool. But again, I feel like your attitude towards people who play different is somewhat sneering and doesn't make people that curious about what you are advocating. I think few people take issue with your state play style preference, it is the little jabs you throw in that cast suspicion on traditional play styles that turns folks off (I have posted here in a while, but I remember you banging this drum from way back when).


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> 1000 years ago a wildmage had an unusual wild surge at that location.  The locals all know about the force field.  The PCs, don't though.  The ditch is only 100 yards long, so it's not as if the PCs have to go past it.  I would have no way of knowing that one of the players might decide to jump the ditch, rather than just walk through it, or if they will even go to the ditch.  It's simply interesting backstory that they might encounter.
> 
> My desire has nothing to do with it, as I have no desire for either success or failure in this instance.




Let’s not add details to the example. I can just as easily add details that would suit my purposes.

Instead, let’s just work with the original example. Based on that, do you not understand the criticism?



Maxperson said:


> Are you really telling me that things that are unknown and found out about the hard way are all "gotcha" moments?  If you are, I totally disagree with that.  If you aren't, there's no reason to think this is a gotcha moment based on what I've said here.




No, that’s not what I said. I said that the scenario as described seem to serve no other purpose than to be a gotcha moment. Perhaps it could serve some other purpose depending on other relevant details, like your bit above about the wild mage. 

I generally don’t like such “gotcha” moments. I think if you’re going to have something like that, then you need to give the players a chance to discover it or be aware that such bizarre effects might exist. 



Maxperson said:


> Agency is the ability to take whatever actions you wish for your PC(within the bounds of the rules) without those actions being railroaded.  Nobody forced the PC to jump the ditch.  That was purely the player's decision and absolutely nothing interfered with that decision, or the resulting attempt to jump the ditch.  The player had full agency over his character at that point.  The narration of failure due to hitting an invisible wall does not affect that.




Obviously your definition varies. But hasn’t the alternate view of agency been made clear? The lack of even a chance at success based solely on what the DM has decided ahead of time is what’s being cited. Call it agency or something else, do you get the complaint? 

The concern is about the play experience more than preserving the DM’s predetermined lore. What’s more important, that the player be able to succeed orfail based on his decisions, or that a wild mage lived in the area 1,000 years ago? Different people will answer that question differently, but I don’t really see how choosing one answer means you cannot understand the other one.

For me, I don’t think I’d consider every possible example of this as a negative. I’m sure we could come up with examples of predetermined lore that I would prefer remain intact. But with the example given, to let it play out as described, I would need a really compelling reason for the forcefield to be there.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> In a game in which the GM adjudicates action resolution by reference to unrevealed elements of framing ("hidden backstory") the player has less of that than otherwise.




This simply isn't true, though.  Let's go with there are two definitions of agency.  I only see two ways that your statement can be true, the first is if you are at my game trying to use your playstyle in it, which is impossible since my playstyle is the only one allowed in my game.  If your definition of agency isn't being used in my game, then my game doesn't have less agency than yours.  It just has an equal amount(full agency) of the type that my game uses. The second way is if I'm trying to play with my playstyle in your game, which also(I assume) isn't going to be allowed.  Other than those two things which will simply never happen, agency is 100% in both of our games.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> Let’s not add details to the example. I can just as easily add details that would suit my purposes.
> 
> Instead, let’s just work with the original example. Based on that, do you not understand the criticism?




You asked me what else could be causing that than DM desire, so I provided a cause.  If you don't wish to use that cause, and want to just go with the original example, then you need to accept that I also said that it wasn't DM desire, because I don't take actions on my personal desires to thwart players.



> No, that’s not what I said. I said that the scenario as described seem to serve no other purpose than to be a gotcha moment. Perhaps it could serve some other purpose depending on other relevant details, like your bit above about the wild mage.




The scenario above also didn't involve DM desire since I said it didn't, but you didn't accept that.  The detail was only added afterward since you asked me what else it could be, and because in my game there would be some sort of reason for the wall of force to be there.  I didn't expect that you would pick and choose from the scenario I provided and just toss out the part where I said that there was no DM desire involved, so I didn't think I needed more detail in that post.



> I generally don’t like such “gotcha” moments. I think if you’re going to have something like that, then you need to give the players a chance to discover it or be aware that such bizarre effects might exist.



As I said in another recent post.  A gotcha has to be something severe, like the medusa example or something else major.  A bit of humor as we have a Wile E. Coyote moment at a ditch isn't a gotcha, and that's assuming that there is no way to discover it prior to the leap, which there usually is.



> Obviously your definition varies. But hasn’t the alternate view of agency been made clear? The lack of even a chance at success based solely on what the DM has decided ahead of time is what’s being cited. Call it agency or something else, do you get the complaint?




As I am pointing out to @_*pemerton*_ right now, it's an irrelevant complaint as the only way it is even remotely an issue is if the two definitions are being mixed in a single game, which just won't happen.  Otherwise, agency is 100% in both playstyles and it's kinda useless in my opinion to complain about something happening in someone else's game, and which has no bearing on either you or your game.

It's false to say that my way has less agency than @_*pemerton*_'s way, as the two aren't in a position to be used together.  It's an apples and oranges situation.



> The concern is about the play experience more than preserving the DM’s predetermined lore. What’s more important, that the player be able to succeed orfail based on his decisions, or that a wild mage lived in the area 1,000 years ago? Different people will answer that question differently, but I don’t really see how choosing one answer means you cannot understand the other one.




Objectively?  Neither one.  Subjectively?  It's not really relevant here since we aren't playing in each others games AND trying to mix the definitions.  Were I to play in @_*pemerton*_'s game, I would do my best to play in his playstyle with his definition, since I would be being an asshat if I went to a game like that and tried to play my way.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> Well if the DM puts a ditch somewhere and then puts something on the other side of it and then puts an invisible force field blocking anyone from jumping the ditch...I have to say I agree that such a situation is a bit whacky. What else is causing the inevitable outcome other than DM desire?
> 
> I mean, why put the forcefield there in the first place other than to thwart a PC attempting the jump? What other reason could it possobly be there?
> 
> And why not simply remove it at the time of play? If I was DMing a published module and I came across this situation, I’d probably change it. It’s a “gotcha” moment and I don’t see the point of it.



The point of it is to channel the characters, and thus the players, into solving the problem via some specific set of actions, which is exactly what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] objects to. Note that there is a somewhat subtle point here. Pemerton doesn't object to the existence of only certain 'puzzle solving steps' and not others, he objects to the whole forced characterization of the situation AS A PUZZLE. His objection is to the limits on the player's agency to direct the fiction into other 'channels', to alter its thematic significance in order to align with the interests of the player instead of the GM. 

Both Max and Pemerton (and I assume all of us here) are perfectly OK with the existence of 'fictional positioning' creating constraints on the options available, but Pemerton only sees those as valid when they are effectively chosen by the player's engagement with those elements. For Max its a matter of what the GM wants to impose, which is different. Pemerton, as a GM, will ALWAYS frame the next scene in a way that reflects what was communicated by the players as their current agenda (not the character's agenda, the players). By not adhering to such a rule assiduously and by substituting hidden elements of backstory as a framing tool, in at least some cases, Max diverges from Pemerton's techniques of play. 



> I don’t know if I entirely agree with that. Agency is the ability to succeed or fail on one’s own. A character who has agency in a story is able to determine their own fate, for good or ill. Characters who don’t have agency have their fates decided by others.
> 
> So a character attempting to jump the ditch is destined to fail through no fault of his or her own. They are destined to fail because of the DM.
> 
> Perhaps if there was some choice involved on the part of the character...or if there was some reasonable chance to somehow notice the forcefield....but without additional factors like that, it seems like a removal of agency.




Well, it gets murky because Pemerton might well have such a forcefield, on the understanding that the player desires to find solutions to such obstacles, as well as some confluence of verisimilitude, genre logic, pacing, etc. Both of them might admit to a variety of solutions to the problem of the forcefield. In both cases this might be characterized as 'puzzle solving'. In Max's case that would be simply because he considers an obstacle of this type 'worthy', that it forms a 'wall in the maze', the circumventing of which establishes player skill and, by its value as an obstacle, tension.

Pemerton might allow for a puzzle solving solution to the forcefield as a way of explicating a character's portrayal as a puzzle solver (maybe a McGyvver type character for instance). He might instead admit of a different solution, say firing a blaster at the forcefield, which might be a highly reckless action (IE Dune where it could provoke something similar to a nuclear explosion). That would be a choice where recklessness is a topic being explored perhaps. Which of these solutions is presented would depend on what the player wants. In fact it could be decided on the spot by the player via his action declarations (analogous to the oft-presented searching for a secret door giving it a chance to exist example). 

It is murky simply because you cannot determine by pure examination of the resultant narrative what the process of play was. This is why Pemerton asserts that you cannot analyze RPGs based on 'results'. You have to take into account process.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> "Fourth Core" is, I presume, a 3rd-party publisher of 4e material? (never heard of them before now)
> 
> And what's that module called, in case I ever stumble across it?




It was a set of modules and some alternate thematics and adventure design concepts for 4th Edition which was put forward by an informal group of people online about 8 years ago now (well before Essentials was released IIRC, so 2009/10 timeframe). 

The concept was to create a 'player test of skill' type of Gygaxian play using 4e. Think of the essence of the original Tomb of Horrors (an essentially unsurvivable dungeon with only a technically present chance of solving it, but no realistic possibility of doing so) but translated to 4e rules. WotC then produced its own 4e 'Tomb of Horrors', which was a much more mild version of the idea (and was only ever available as a GM reward for people who ran Encounters games IIRC). 

The only reference of any kind I have found to Fourth Core online is here https://knowledgechecks.wordpress.com/category/fourth-core/ which is a play report. It looks like this adventure is still available here https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/200066/SND01-Revenge-of-the-Iron-Lich (and its free, all Fourth Core stuff AFAIK was free). The original level 1 adventure that I was referring to I don't recall the exact name of, and I haven't been able to find a link to it. Seems that pretty much all of this stuff has vanished into the mists of time. 

Ah, here it is, also on drivethroughrpg.com  http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/200064/C1-Crucible-of-the-Gods

Honestly, I wasn't that taken with the idea, it seems rather trivially easy to devise obnoxiously deadly material, and kind of felt like a cop-out to me. Like the GM who can't create tension is more varied and sophisticated ways has to resort to this? Still, anything can be fun in measure and its definitely both an amusing 'beer & pretzels' sort of adventuring, and an illustration of the point that deadliness isn't a system attribute (at least not in 4e's case).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> The only reason I've fought so hard over the definition here, is that @_*pemerton*_ and @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ have been redefining player agency in order to then say that their style gives players greater agency @_*AbdulAlhazred*_) or is how players get agency, implying that my style removes agency altogether @_*pemerton*_).  If someone is going to redefine a term so in order to poo poo on how I do things, I'm going to fight back rather than try to understand them.  I'm perfectly willing to understand a discussion on how things are different.  I even tried multiple times to extend an olive branch by saying that the agency wasn't greater for either side, just different, but they wouldn't accept the branch and move on.




What I said was that players have, in my games, the same agency they have in YOUR games, AND THEN SOME, which is clearly true since they have additional options. Pemerton stated that your players lacked agency, and qualified that with the understanding that it was with respect to what the content of the fiction was (IE what options where available to players in given fictional situations). Frankly I think that he and I are saying nearly the same thing (in a sort of "a bonus is just a mirror image of a penalty" sort of way). 

In response you then construed some dialog we provided as a game example (finding some giants) as some sort of 'Story Now is railroading' and made some, frankly wild and ludicrous, claims that our entire technique of play is a 'railroad' (talk about abuse of terminology!). All in an attempt to 'win' some sort of point that giving people less options is actually 'more agency'. I found it tediously obtuse and of no help in advancing the underlying discussion, although we managed to have a couple tangents where some clarity seemed to have emerged. Sadly you went right back to where you were at the start a couple pages later. 

I find it nothing short of vastly amusing an ironic when you then come back and complain about terminology and try to make it sound like it was other people who abused words.

It is true that any and all of us could be, and sometimes are, guilty of being unclear or fail to appreciate some point at some stage in a discussion. For my part I generally adapt my terms, or qualify them, when I see that happening. I expect other posters to at least TRY to do the same.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Maxperson said:


> You asked me what else could be causing that than DM desire, so I provided a cause.  If you don't wish to use that cause, and want to just go with the original example, then you need to accept that I also said that it wasn't DM desire, because I don't take actions on my personal desires to thwart players.




I’m pointing out how your original post could have been construed. In the way that you originally described it, it certainly seemed to amount to nothing more than a gotcha by the DM. So, without adding later comments into it, look at the scenario as described and then try and see if you can understand some of the responses.

Adding comments afterward may clarify things, but I was trying to explain to you why your post was taken the way it was when you made it. 



Maxperson said:


> The scenario above also didn't involve DM desire since I said it didn't, but you didn't accept that.  The detail was only added afterward since you asked me what else it could be, and because in my game there would be some sort of reason for the wall of force to be there.  I didn't expect that you would pick and choose from the scenario I provided and just toss out the part where I said that there was no DM desire involved, so I didn't think I needed more detail in that post.




It’s not that I didn’t accept it. It’s that there was nothing else in the initial description that would serve as a reasonable explanation for why it happened. I was explaining how your post could be perceived.

You have since pointed out the backstory about the wild mage, and also how inconsequential the failed leap is. I assumed there was a check being made and some kind of consequence, that’s why I would have taken issue with it. But given that it’s such a minor occurrence just being used to add flavor, then I wouldn’t worry about it.



Maxperson said:


> As I said in another recent post.  A gotcha has to be something severe, like the medusa example or something else major.  A bit of humor as we have a Wile E. Coyote moment at a ditch isn't a gotcha, and that's assuming that there is no way to discover it prior to the leap, which there usually is.




Well, why does a gotcha moment have to be severe? I mean, I get how the scenario as you’ve gone on to elaborate has virtually no consequence, so it’s not a big deal, but what if the ditch was a bit larger and a maybe a bit of falling damage was involved? Even such a small consequence, to me, would constitute a gotcha by the DM.



Maxperson said:


> As I am pointing out to @_*pemerton*_ right now, it's an irrelevant complaint as the only way it is even remotely an issue is if the two definitions are being mixed in a single game, which just won't happen.  Otherwise, agency is 100% in both playstyles and it's kinda useless in my opinion to complain about something happening in someone else's game, and which has no bearing on either you or your game.
> 
> It's false to say that my way has less agency than @_*pemerton*_'s way, as the two aren't in a position to be used together.  It's an apples and oranges situation.




I don’t think it’s irrelevant for someone to poibt out examples of why they do or don’t prefer a certain playstyle in a thread that’s about exactly that. 



Maxperson said:


> Objectively?  Neither one.  Subjectively?  It's not really relevant here since we aren't playing in each others games AND trying to mix the definitions.  Were I to play in @_*pemerton*_'s game, I would do my best to play in his playstyle with his definition, since I would be being an asshat if I went to a game like that and tried to play my way.




Subjectivity is all that’s in question, man.

Look....I’m not saying anything you do in your game is wrong. I really was just hoping to step in as a more “neutral party” to explain the point that was being made because it was clear to me, but was obviously not clear to you. You gave an example that seemed to fit exactly the kind of thing pemerton doesn’t like. Turns out that was only the case because your example was inconplete when first posted....okay fine. 

But you can’t fault anyone who responded to your incomplete example.


----------



## Bedrockgames

hawkeyefan said:


> Look....I’m not saying anything you do in your game is wrong. I really was just hoping to step in as a more “neutral party” to explain the point that was being made because it was clear to me, but was obviously not clear to you. You gave an example that seemed to fit exactly the kind of thing pemerton doesn’t like. Turns out that was only the case because your example was inconplete when first posted....okay fine.
> 
> But you can’t fault anyone who responded to your incomplete example.




It was pretty obvious what he was saying in the example. I think what is going on is very strict and literal readings, with very little charity. I pretty much got immediately what he was talking about.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Ah, here it is, also on drivethroughrpg.com  http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/200064/C1-Crucible-of-the-Gods
> 
> Honestly, I wasn't that taken with the idea, it seems rather trivially easy to devise obnoxiously deadly material, and kind of felt like a cop-out to me. Like the GM who can't create tension is more varied and sophisticated ways has to resort to this? Still, anything can be fun in measure and its definitely both an amusing 'beer & pretzels' sort of adventuring, and an illustration of the point that deadliness isn't a system attribute (at least not in 4e's case).



Thanks!

I'm curious as to whether it might be something I could convert for my game - thus far my experiences with converting 4e modules have been, while not awful, certainly less than brilliant; and something written form a different "direction" might be better.  Or worse. 

And yes, a DM in any system can dial the lethality and danger level up or down.  What I look at for comparison purposes is how it appears as written - what the RAW say.  

For example, it's pretty clear that instant death at 0 h.p. in a system where you don't get many h.p. (e.g. 0e or Basic D&D) is likely to be much more common than in a system where you get multiple rounds of saves to avoid it during which time you can be cured up from a distance (e.g. 4e or 5e D&D) and where you almost certainly started with relatively more h.p. in the first place.  Further, early D&D editions (pre-3e) include level draining and a relatively good chance of losing magic items now and then, both of which have been either removed or drastically scaled back in the newer version (post 3x - 3x/PF itself falls kind of in the middle here).

Edit to add: and these differences in design/rules are inevitably going to affect the play style at the table. which is my point.

Lanefan


----------



## hawkeyefan

Bedrockgames said:


> It was pretty obvious what he was saying in the example. I think what is going on is very strict and literal readings, with very little charity. I pretty much got immediately what he was talking about.




That’s fine. Obviously, others took it differently. 

Here’s the post:


Maxperson said:


> This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.  Let's say that I want to jump over a 3 foot ditch and I am unaware that there is a forcefield that is both invisible and inaudible in the way.  We will call the forcefield hidden backstory.  When I take a running leap and hit that forcefield, I have failed to succeed.  What has not happened, though, is anyone else, even the creator of that force field, controlling my actions.  I declared my action.  I engaged in that action.  I succeeded in the attempt.  Nobody controlled me, but me.  Failure when reasonable, even if due to causes unknown to the action declarer, cannot remove control from the player.
> 
> You are falsely equating hidden backstory(reasonable failure) with a DM saying, "You fail because I don't want you to succeed.", and that's a fallacy.




I don’t think that there’s much distinction between the two things based solely on this post. It’s why I mentioned in my reply “if there’s no way for the player to know” because of the fact he pointed out that the forcefield is invisible and inaudible. 

Now, he’s since gone on to eleborate, and that’s fine....but no, I don’t think the initial post is as clear as you seem to think it was.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> And? That doesn't change the fact that _the GM authored the fiction that is now dictating the outcome of the player's declared action for his/her PC_.
> 
> Upthread you got angry when I suggested that you don't distinguish between real life and fantasy. But here you are, again, not making the distinction.
> 
> _Real life is not a game._ The world I walk through in real life was not authored for game purposes.



From the PCs' perspective (a viewpoint you seem quite determined not to take even though it's highly relevant) the game world should ideally function like our real world in terms of not knowing everything, and sometimes having to make decisions based on little more than guesswork.  And it naturally follows that for the PCs not to know things the players must also not know these things.



> RPGing is a game. Like other games, it involves participants who make moves. You are describing a game in which the GM makes moves - the authoring of unrevealed backstory - which lead to the result that other participants' moves automatically fail, for reasons that haven't been revealed to them.



So stop thinking about it as a game for a moment and start thinking about it as a fully immersive experience where in your mind you are your PC.  Once you do this these inconsistencies and player-vs.-character knowledge disparities will quickly become both obvious and annoying.

And yes for this to work you need a DM who is good at a) world/setting building, b) adventure design, and [most important!] c) describing what you see/touch/smell/hear/taste in pretty good detail.

In other words, instead of approaching an action declaration as "I'm a player using the game mechanics to have my character make a search move" think of it as "I (as Falstaff) think there might be a hidden door here, so I'll look for it while you keep watch".  This sort of thing only falls apart in combat, where mechanics tend to take over no matter what you do.



> _That has a bearing on their agency_. And it certainly has a bearing on _their agency in respect of the shared fiction_, which is the particular version of agency I'm talking about.
> 
> 
> You can assert these things. That doesn't make them so. I am - clearly, unequivocally, and repeatedly - talking primarily about _player agency over the content of the shared fiction_.



And as you're (I think) the only one in here who has so harshly self-restricted your view and definition of what constitutes player agency, it's no surprise that you're catching some flak from those who see agency as a broader thing within the activity of RPGing beyond just this one element.

Lanefan


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> What I said was that players have, in my games, the same agency they have in YOUR games, AND THEN SOME, which is clearly true since they have additional options. Pemerton stated that your players lacked agency, and qualified that with the understanding that it was with respect to what the content of the fiction was (IE what options where available to players in given fictional situations). Frankly I think that he and I are saying nearly the same thing (in a sort of "a bonus is just a mirror image of a penalty" sort of way).




But they don't have the same agency as in my game.  In my game they can declare any action they like that is within the rules of the game.  In your game they are constrained from taking many actions that I would allow, but you do not allow by playing Story Now.  Declared actions in your game must focus on the primary interests of the PCs.  Their goals.  That's not the case in mine.  In mine they can focus on those goals, or on more minor things.  You have reduced agency in some areas, and pumped up in others(as has [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]).  Your agency is no greater than mine. It's only different.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> I’m pointing out how your original post could have been construed. In the way that you originally described it, it certainly seemed to amount to nothing more than a gotcha by the DM. So, without adding later comments into it, look at the scenario as described and then try and see if you can understand some of the responses.
> 
> Adding comments afterward may clarify things, but I was trying to explain to you why your post was taken the way it was when you made it.
> 
> It’s not that I didn’t accept it. It’s that there was nothing else in the initial description that would serve as a reasonable explanation for why it happened. I was explaining how your post could be perceived.




I said explicitly that I wasn't acting on my desire.  Therefore, the only way to perceive what I said as acting on DM desire is by effectively calling me a liar. I don't think that you intended to call me a liar, but that's the result of that perception.



> Well, why does a gotcha moment have to be severe? I mean, I get how the scenario as you’ve gone on to elaborate has virtually no consequence, so it’s not a big deal, but what if the ditch was a bit larger and a maybe a bit of falling damage was involved? Even such a small consequence, to me, would constitute a gotcha by the DM.




Because "gotchas" are negative.  Not only is every surprise failure due to the unknown not negative, but many are in fact positive.  Only negative ones would be "gotchas" as they are typically used in posts here.



> I don’t think it’s irrelevant for someone to poibt out examples of why they do or don’t prefer a certain playstyle in a thread that’s about exactly that.




Of course not, but then that's not what I said, either.


----------



## hawkeyefan

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] No, I was not calling you a liar. Look at your first post and tell me what is in it that would serve as a reason for the situation. 

Then about surprise failure due to the unknown....you don’t think it’s negative. You think it’s positive. And that’s great. 

Others are saying they don’t like it. 

For them, the player’s success or failure being within their own ability is more important then the backstory predetermined by the DM. So when the character goes to jump the ditch, he can either succeed or fail based on his check alone.

Now, if he fails, perhaps the reason for that is because there’s an invisible forcefield in place...that’s up to the GM to decide as part of narrating the results of the check, based on player interest and what’s been established already in the game. That’s how some of the games in question work.

I’m not saying I prefer that method or that I find it to be the best or that I personally never allow unknown elements established by the DM to influence success or failure of a PC action.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] No, I was not calling you a liar. Look at your first post and tell me what is in it that would serve as a reason for the situation.




I didn't feel it needed a reason.  My simple statement that it was not DM desire is all that is needed to keep it from being DM desire.  



> Then about surprise failure due to the unknown....you don’t think it’s negative. You think it’s positive. And that’s great.




Not necessarily positive, but there was nothing inherently negative about it.  It wasn't as if they opened the door on a medusa or bodak without any way to know about it in advance.



> Others are saying they don’t like it.
> 
> For them, the player’s success or failure being within their own ability is more important then the backstory predetermined by the DM. So when the character goes to jump the ditch, he can either succeed or fail based on his check alone.




Cool beans.  I have absolutely no problem with someone not liking my style of gaming.  None at all.  My beef is with them acting superior by saying things like, "My way has more agency than your way" and "Your way is basically a choose your own adventure book."  Dislike my style all you want.  Tell me why you disagree with it.  Don't try to prop your(general you) way up as superior and/or attack my way or I'm going to come back at you, rather than just having a civil conversation about the differences in gaming styles. 



> Now, if he fails, perhaps the reason for that is because there’s an invisible forcefield in place...that’s up to the GM to decide as part of narrating the results of the check, based on player interest and what’s been established already in the game. That’s how some of the games in question work.



I get that.  I've understood that since before this thread started.


----------



## hawkeyefan

[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]
Okay. I was hoping to clarify things. But it seems no clarification is needed. My bad, carry on.


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]
> Okay. I was hoping to clarify things. But it seems no clarification is needed. My bad, carry on.




No worries.  Clarification is generally a good thing.

P.S. To those others in this thread, this civil conversation that Hawkeyfan and I have been having is what discussions are like when you aren't acting like your way is superior and/or attacking my way.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> why are you suspicious of other peoples' enjoyment of play?



I don't know why you say that I am. Even in the post you replied to, I said that that is obviously the prerogative of people to play as they like.

I do wonder what the point is of emphasising that agency consists in the player being free to declare actions for his/her PC - because that is true in any episode of RPGing at any table in the world (isn't it?), and so doesn't seem to identify any very interesting feature of various approaches to RPGing.



Bedrockgames said:


> In most games I play in, PCs are always able to declare what they try to do.



I assume by "PCs" you mean players? Ie the players are free to declare actions for their PCs.

I would be very surprised if there were any episodes of RPGing in which that was not true. What would it even mean to "play" a RPG if you were not free to declare actions for your PC?



Bedrockgames said:


> I feel like your attitude towards people who play different is somewhat sneering



With respect, I think you are projecting something onto my posts that isn't there.




Maxperson said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In a game in which the GM adjudicates action resolution by reference to unrevealed elements of framing ("hidden backstory") the player has less of that than otherwise.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This simply isn't true, though. Let's go with there are two definitions of agency. I only see two ways that your statement can be true, the first is if you are at my game trying to use your playstyle in it, which is impossible since my playstyle is the only one allowed in my game. If your definition of agency isn't being used in my game, then my game doesn't have less agency than yours. It just has an equal amount(full agency) of the type that my game uses. The second way is if I'm trying to play with my playstyle in your game, which also(I assume) isn't going to be allowed. Other than those two things which will simply never happen, agency is 100% in both of our games.
Click to expand...


I can look at your game, or anyone else's game, and see how much agency occurs in it of the sort I care about, and then express a view about that. The fact that you don't measure your own game by my standard doesn't stop me doing that. Given that you are defending an example - namely, the forcefield example - in which the player obviously does not have unfettered agency over the content of the shared fiction (because the GM has already determined that the shared fiction can't include an unobstructed jump across the ditch), I would think it is obvious that you favour a game in which a burden on the sort of agency I care about is par for the course.

Your relativsitic contention, that no one is allowed to apply their standards to something that someone else enjoys for different reasons, is not applied in any other field of entertainment. To give a very trivial example from another entertainment medium: I have a good friend who dosn't much like violence in movies. She applies this standard _even to movies in genres where violence is expected_, like gritty thrillers and action movies. There is nothing surprising about doing that - it's how she works out what films she might or might not enjoy. It's hardly to the point that films she would rather not see, because too violent, might - by the standards of their genre - be considered only mildly violent.

Similarly, in describing what sort of RPGing I enjoy, I point to the features that are important to me. That you don't care to evaluate your own RPGing by reference to those standards doesn't bear on what I'm doing.


----------



## pemerton

eayres33 said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> How do the players learn who their friends are, where the local swimming holes are, what the local customs are?
> 
> My experience of the sort of play you describe is that the answer to these sorts of questions if "The GM tells them." Which, for me, is fairly unimmersive - it's like having to ask someone else to remind me of what and who I am!
> 
> EDIT for clarity: I'm not talking about learning new things here - eg the PC sees a new landscape or building, and the player has the GM describing it to him/her. I'm talking about all the things that are intuitive and second nature to a person, which it's therefore weird to experience as if they're being newly-learned from outside.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Well wouldn't that be their back story? If they haven't bothered to write a backstory before the game, why should they expect free will to rewrite their backstory? Wouldn't they know the general idea of the world?
Click to expand...


I think it's unrealistic to expect a player-written backstory to cover anything but the tiniest fragment of a person's life. This is the case even in a game with lifepath PC generation (eg Classic Traveller, Burning Wheel) and moreso in games that don't use that sort of method (eg D&D).

For instance, if a PC is a member of an organisation there may be literally dozens or hundreds of NPCs to whom s/he is connected by that. If s/he grew up in a village or town, the same thing will be true. My experience is that no player can be expected to write up all of that.



eayres33 said:


> Now for the swimming hole question I have yet to find the GM who has every city detailed to all the pools or projects. I like using a world overview, with major NPC's defined and major cities/ city buidlings defined but the rest is up to what I and the players create.



OK, so you seem to be agreeing with me, give that what you describe here is not _the GM tells them_, which is what I was responding to.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> From the PCs' perspective (a viewpoint you seem quite determined not to take even though it's highly relevant) the game world should ideally function like our real world in terms of not knowing everything, and sometimes having to make decisions based on little more than guesswork.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> In other words, instead of approaching an action declaration as "I'm a player using the game mechanics to have my character make a search move" think of it as "I (as Falstaff) think there might be a hidden door here, so I'll look for it while you keep watch".



From the PCs' perspective, s/he doesn't know where the map is (but hopes it is in the study, where s/he is searching); s/he does't know whether or not there is a secret door in the wall (but hopes there is, because that is her only chance for escape); s/he does't _know_ that there is no forcefield blocking the ditch (but obviously believes there is not, or else wouldn't try to jump across it).

I can tell you, when (as my PC) I was hoping to meet a knight of my order as I travelled along the riverbank, I was thinking in character as Thurgon, Knight of the Iron Tower.

That has no bearing on how the resolution system should work, though.



Lanefan said:


> This sort of thing only falls apart in combat, where mechanics tend to take over no matter what you do.



I would say, speak for yourself!

There is no reason why rolling dice in combat is any less immersive than in other contexts; or conversely, if you take an approach where the GM rolls all the dice and tells the players the outcome, that can be done in combat too.



Lanefan said:


> And it naturally follows that for the PCs not to know things the players must also not know these things.



Actually, that doesn't "naturally" follow. Different tables take different views on this. For instance, here is an extract from an actual play report from my 4e game:



pemerton said:


> The "sneak through the Shrine glamoured as kuo-toa" skill challenge went pretty well, but for one hiccup: the player of the paladin hadn't been able to turn up to the session, and no one had a copy of his PC sheet, so (as GM) I had declared that the paladin had gone on ahead. (It is his quest, and a recent encounter with his god following death and resurrection have made him newly serious about it.) The other PCs - particularly the fighter, whose player was insisting on a strong player knowledge/character knowledge distinction - had been happy enough with this until they discovered that the way forward involved passing through the Shrine. And they had become concerned that the paladin - who has neither stealth nor water-breathing capabilities - must have been captured.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> What happens next session will depend on <snippage> whether or not the player of the paladin can turn up (as only then can we decide where the paladin actually is!).



So there you have an example where the PCs don't know what has happened to the paladin, but the players do know that, at the least, he is not dead, and probably not captured either.

But in any event, in the three examples I mentioned - the map, the secret door, and the presence/absence of a forcefield across the ditch - the player doesn't know.



Lanefan said:


> So stop thinking about it as a game for a moment and start thinking about it as a fully immersive experience where in your mind you are your PC. Once you do this these inconsistencies and player-vs.-character knowledge disparities will quickly become both obvious and annoying.



Let's put to one side that I think what you describe is, literally at least, impossible - you, in your mind, are picking up dice, rolling them, writing down numbers on sheets of paper, eating and drinking snack food and beverages, etc.

Putting that to one side, what disparities are you talking about? There are no disparities in any of the examples I've described.

And even in the missing paladin example, I don't think the player of the fighter in my game found it any harder to bracket his knowledge of why the paladin was being narrated as missing (ie because the player couldn't make it to the session) than he did to put aside his knowledge of the fact that he was sitting at a table playing a game.

And as I already posted upthread, one of the biggest burdens on my own inhabitation of a player character is that I can't know what I think and feel (eg who are my friends? what are the customs around here? what are the rites of my church?) until I ask the GM to tell me. I find that quite dissociating.



Lanefan said:


> And as you're (I think) the only one in here who has so harshly self-restricted your view and definition of what constitutes player agency, it's no surprise that you're catching some flak from those who see agency as a broader thing within the activity of RPGing beyond just this one element.



You seem to think I'm interested in word games. I'm not. I'm interested in the actual experience of RPGing. I want to do a certain thing. Personally, I've had no trouble doing that thing for 30-odd years (with the odd contrary experience along the way), and so I don't think I'm "harshly self-restricted".

I mean, what is it to you that I have a particular taste in RPGing? Apropos of which, . . .



Lanefan said:


> And yes for this to work you need a DM who is good at a) world/setting building, b) adventure design, and [most important!] c) describing what you see/touch/smell/hear/taste in pretty good detail.



Your (c) is exactly what I've referred to as _a focus of play being on taking moves that will trigger the GM to relate the fiction that s/he has established in his/her notes, or is establishing as if it were in her notes_. That's not what I play RPGs for, either as GM or player.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> From the PCs' perspective, s/he doesn't know where the map is (but hopes it is in the study, where s/he is searching); s/he does't know whether or not there is a secret door in the wall (but hopes there is, because that is her only chance for escape); s/he does't _know_ that there is no forcefield blocking the ditch (but obviously believes there is not, or else wouldn't try to jump across it).
> 
> I can tell you, when (as my PC) I was hoping to meet a knight of my order as I travelled along the riverbank, I was thinking in character as Thurgon, Knight of the Iron Tower.



Perfect!  And either you met one or you didn't.  Cool.

But - and this might seem a minor twinge but it's relevant - there's a difference at the table between the two systems.  Compare the following:

1. The PC doesn't know if the map is in the study or if there's a secret door in the wall, but searches in hopes that there is.  The player declares the search action with those same hopes but knows the outcome is out of her hands just the same as it is out of the PC's hands in the fiction.  PC knowledge and player knowledge are the same.

2. The PC doesn't know if the map is in the study or if there's a secret door in the wall, but searches in hopes that there is.  The player declares the search action with full knowledge that a good roll WILL bring success even though the outcome is out of the PC's hands in the fiction.  PC knowledge and player knowledge are systemically not the same.

Which means that no matter how hard the player in (2) tries to immerse herself there's always that meta-game tickle in her mind telling her that she'll always succeed on a good roll so why not try it; where in (1) the resolution is out of her hands and thus those meta-considerations somewhat disappear.

As for the forcefield across the ditch, that could be as simple as some invisible trickster in the next field seeing someone running toward a ditch and whipping up a Wall of Force there just for kicks. 



> I would say, speak for yourself!
> 
> There is no reason why rolling dice in combat is any less immersive than in other contexts; or conversely, if you take an approach where the GM rolls all the dice and tells the players the outcome, that can be done in combat too.



Perhaps, but a more usual approach (and one that's worked for ages) is to simply have combat use different mechanics from everything else.

I'm not saying this is the perfect answer by any means - combat as a system still has truck-size holes in it and pretty much always has - but to try and shoehorn everything else into using the same mechanics as combat is not going to fix anything, nor is trying to force combat to use mechanics usually applied to something else.



> Actually, that doesn't "naturally" follow. Different tables take different views on this. For instance, here is an extract from an actual play report from my 4e game:
> 
> ...
> 
> So there you have an example where the PCs don't know what has happened to the paladin, but the players do know that, at the least, he is not dead, and probably not captured either.



Yeah, stuff like that happens - but as in this particular case it was completely 100% preventable* I have no sympathy. 

* - non-negotiable rule: character sheets stay with the DM between sessions; except if you want to take one home to update it during the week the DM is left with a full and accurate copy - and for exactly the reason you noted, that being if a player doesn't show up the PC can still be played.

In general, though, while stuff like this does happen and is sometimes unavoidable there's still some easy ways to minimize it: 

- if the party splits up - e.g. one PC goes ahead scouting - then the players split up: the DM and the scout's player retreat to another room to play through the scouting (unless the scout and main party have long-range communication such that the scout can give regular updates).
- if a PC is doing something she doesn't want the others to notice - e.g. quietly leave a donation at a roadside shrine some other PC just spat on in passing - she passes the DM a note to that effect rather than say it out loud; and the DM replies by note if necessary.



> But in any event, in the three examples I mentioned - the map, the secret door, and the presence/absence of a forcefield across the ditch - the player doesn't know.
> 
> Let's put to one side that I think what you describe is, literally at least, impossible - you, in your mind, are picking up dice, rolling them, writing down numbers on sheets of paper, eating and drinking snack food and beverages, etc.
> 
> Putting that to one side, what disparities are you talking about? There are no disparities in any of the examples I've described.



Well, see points 1 and 2 above for one clear disparity in meta-knowledge.



> And even in the missing paladin example, I don't think the player of the fighter in my game found it any harder to bracket his knowledge of why the paladin was being narrated as missing (ie because the player couldn't make it to the session) than he did to put aside his knowledge of the fact that he was sitting at a table playing a game.



It's not like he had any choice - this was clearly a table accommodation for what was clearly a table problem for that one session: fair enough.  It happens now and then.



> And as I already posted upthread, one of the biggest burdens on my own inhabitation of a player character is that I can't know what I think and feel (eg who are my friends? what are the customs around here? what are the rites of my church?) until I ask the GM to tell me. I find that quite dissociating.



Where I find such things helpful, as parameters and guidelines I can then interact with in a manner of my choosing (once I know the local customs, for example, I-as-player can decide whether I-as-character follow them, ignore them, actively rebel against them, or whatever; and factor that into how I think and what I say/do).



> I mean, what is it to you that I have a particular taste in RPGing? Apropos of which, . . .
> 
> Your (c) is exactly what I've referred to as _a focus of play being on taking moves that will trigger the GM to relate the fiction that s/he has established in his/her notes, or is establishing as if it were in her notes_. That's not what I play RPGs for, either as GM or player.



Which as GM you also do.  Whenever you frame a scene you kind of have to narrate the PCs' surroundings - a dark room in a tower, an entrance to a fire giants' cavern, a dusty study on the ground floor of a castle - don't you?  Where do those surroundings come from?  Who authors them?  And - again important! - how clearly and precisely do you describe these surroundings so as to fully inform any subsequent actions the PCs may take there?

Lanefan


----------



## Imaculata

pemerton said:


> It's one thing for the GM to be my eyes; another for him/her to also be my memories and introspection and intuitive grasp of things.




I feel like there's a gray area here, where the DM can also hand out minor information in regards to what your character knows, remembers and feels, without completely taking memories, introspection and intuition away from you.


----------



## pemerton

Imaculata said:


> I feel like there's a gray area here, where the DM can also hand out minor information in regards to what your character knows, remembers and feels, without completely taking memories, introspection and intuition away from you.



Agreed - so much of the _feel_ of RPGing depends on context, mood of the table, the details of whatever is being talked about at a particular time, etc, that it's hard to make general statements that are _universally_ true.

My worry isn't about the gray/marginal cases, but the idea - to which I was responding - that the player gets to build the character and the GM does _everything else_. The practical way this is handled much of the time in RPGing is for the PCs to be travellers/strangers, who arrive (at the Keep; in the dungeon; in the village; etc) from somewhere else, and have no roots embedded in the site of the scenario.

As soon as that changes - and the PCs are doing stuff in a place that is their home - then I think the players have to be allowed to exercise some sort of influence over these elements of backstory (if the feeeling of "PC as alien" is to be avoided). Exactly how that is handled depends on system details and table preferences.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> Which as GM you also do.  Whenever you frame a scene you kind of have to narrate the PCs' surroundings - a dark room in a tower, an entrance to a fire giants' cavern, a dusty study on the ground floor of a castle - don't you?  Where do those surroundings come from?  Who authors them?  And - again important! - how clearly and precisely do you describe these surroundings so as to fully inform any subsequent actions the PCs may take there?



The difference from what you describe, though, is that the need for the narration to establish immersion is not the same as what you were referring to in the post to which I replied.

In "story now", the principal source of immersion should be the fact that the situation is "thematically compelling". That is, the GM - in establishing the framing - is drawing on already-available stuff that everyone at the table is committed to. So the need to build a "word picture" by reference to sensation is less. The description of the setting provides a context for action rather than itself being the engine of immersion.

In Cortex+ Heroic this is formalised via the mechanic of "Scene Distinctions" - the GM may declare up to 3 scene distinctions (and may spend GM-side resources for more if desired) at the start of an action scene. In the session I GMed yesterday, the first scene involved the PCs - who had just crossed a frozen mountain lake - commencing their final ascent into the northern mountains. The scene distinctions were Chill Winds, Narrow Defile Between the Peaks, and Unpassable Snow. This, together with the description of their adversaries (a flight of wyverns, one with a rider; and the chieftain of the mountain folk), sets the scene.

Later on, after the PCs left the village of the mountain folk, them were confronted by the Earth Giant (as they knew they would be). The scene distinctions were Boulders Aplenty, Terrible Drops (which had an attached mechanic increasing the risk of PCs falling down them should they or the giant edge towards them, or break away their edges) and Clear Skies (the PCs had climbed so high there were no more clouds about them).

These distinctions establish a context in which the PCs (as directed by their players) take action. They can also be operated upon - eg the PC sorcerer used his magic to dismiss the Unpassable Snow, and again to create eldritch walls and nets to neutralise the threat of the Terrible Drops. In an earlier session, a different PC was able to rescue villagers in need of rescuing by succeeding on actions to eliminate a Frightened Villagers scene distinction.

Other systems handle this differently: but in 4e, for instance, one way to convey the really salient elements of a situation is via mechanical specification using the rules for traps, hazards, terrain powers and the like. The setting comes to life _through its role in resolving the action_ rather than simply via description.




Lanefan said:


> Compare the following:
> 
> 1. The PC doesn't know if the map is in the study or if there's a secret door in the wall, but searches in hopes that there is.  The player declares the search action with those same hopes but knows the outcome is out of her hands just the same as it is out of the PC's hands in the fiction.  PC knowledge and player knowledge are the same.
> 
> 2. The PC doesn't know if the map is in the study or if there's a secret door in the wall, but searches in hopes that there is.  The player declares the search action with full knowledge that a good roll WILL bring success even though the outcome is out of the PC's hands in the fiction.  PC knowledge and player knowledge are systemically not the same.
> 
> Which means that no matter how hard the player in (2) tries to immerse herself there's always that meta-game tickle in her mind telling her that she'll always succeed on a good roll so why not try it; where in (1) the resolution is out of her hands and thus those meta-considerations somewhat disappear.



Once the source of "drive" or momentum in "story now" is appreciated, you can see the error of description in your (2). The PC tries because s/he has hope! And the player, rolling the dice, has the same hope. So there is not disparity at all, but rather congruence!


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> I can look at your game, or anyone else's game, and see how much agency occurs in it of the sort I care about, and then express a view about that. The fact that you don't measure your own game by my standard doesn't stop me doing that. Given that you are defending an example - namely, the forcefield example - in which the player obviously does not have unfettered agency over the content of the shared fiction (because the GM has already determined that the shared fiction can't include an unobstructed jump across the ditch), I would think it is obvious that you favour a game in which a burden on the sort of agency I care about is par for the course.
> 
> Your relativsitic contention, that no one is allowed to apply their standards to something that someone else enjoys for different reasons, is not applied in any other field of entertainment. To give a very trivial example from another entertainment medium: I have a good friend who dosn't much like violence in movies. She applies this standard _even to movies in genres where violence is expected_, like gritty thrillers and action movies. There is nothing surprising about doing that - it's how she works out what films she might or might not enjoy. It's hardly to the point that films she would rather not see, because too violent, might - by the standards of their genre - be considered only mildly violent.
> 
> Similarly, in describing what sort of RPGing I enjoy, I point to the features that are important to me. That you don't care to evaluate your own RPGing by reference to those standards doesn't bear on what I'm doing.



Cool beans.  You can look at my game and see what you like and don't like about that.  I get that and I agree with it.  What you can't do is say that your game has more player agency than mine.  You can say it has more of your type of player agency, but not that it has more player agency in general.  Both of our games involve 100% player agency.  You can't get higher than that.  Your "player agency" doesn't exist in my game and vice versa.  And you don't get to disparage other playstyles by calling them "choose your own adventure" or "players just declare actions to get the DM to say stuff" without getting called out for that sort of crap.


----------



## Hriston

Maxperson said:


> What you can't do is say that your game has more player agency than mine.  You can say it has more of your type of player agency, but not that it has more player agency in general.




I'm not [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], but I think it's clear to anyone who has been keeping up with the thread that the sort of agency he has been talking about, from the beginning of the thread, is agency over the content of the shared fiction. Say it with me: "*agency over the content of the shared fiction*", _authorship_, if you will. He hasn't said anything about the sort of agency that allows you to have your character try things that are doomed to failure, except that it seems rather limited *with respect to the content of the shared fiction*.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I don't know why you say that I am. Even in the post you replied to, I said that that is obviously the prerogative of people to play as they like.
> 
> I do wonder what the point is of emphasising that agency consists in the player being free to declare actions for his/her PC - because that is true in any episode of RPGing at any table in the world (isn't it?), and so doesn't seem to identify any very interesting feature of various approaches to RPGing.
> 
> ....With respect, I think you are projecting something onto my posts that isn't there..




I am not interested in debating you Pemerton. I've seen enough of your posts over the years to know what the deal is here (and I also know what you are saying most of the time doesn't pan out at my actual table, no matter how well constructed your arguments are). 

You do it through definitions. You take something that is positive (like player agency) and define it such a way that it completely matches your style, and then wonder aloud why a more common and widespread play style doesn't seem to have it (and you then your surprised when people take issue with it). Player Agency is a term that means lots of things. And it isn't widely used the way you are using it. It is like taking a word like 'railroad' and arguing that play styles that don't give players GM-like  control over the setting (or if you prefer 'the fiction'), are always railroads. If you make that case, it shouldn't be a surprise that people find your attitude toward other play styles dismissive and even hostile. It is up there with arguing that real sandboxes don't exist. It is a disingenuous argument. 

You are a good debater. You are intelligent. But I think there are a lot of things you do rhetorically that are pretty shady in these discussions. 



> I assume by "PCs" you mean players? Ie the players are free to declare actions for their PCs.




It is obvious that I mean PCs. It is the sort of thing readers and listeners should be able to discern from context. It doesn't require building a new lexicon or always being super precise about the division when it is clear a person is talking about a player character.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hriston said:


> I'm not [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], but I think it's clear to anyone who has been keeping up with the thread that the sort of agency he has been talking about, from the beginning of the thread, is agency over the content of the shared fiction. Say it with me: "*agency over the content of the shared fiction*", _authorship_, if you will. He hasn't said anything about the sort of agency that allows you to have your character try things that are doomed to failure, except that it seems rather limited *with respect to the content of the shared fiction*.




No one takes issue with his conceptualizing player agency in that way. It is when he tries to deconsruct other peoples' notions of player character freedom (essentially arguing they are not truly free). There is a play style battle going on underneath all these arguments.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Maxperson said:


> Cool beans.  You can look at my game and see what you like and don't like about that.  I get that and I agree with it.  What you can't do is say that your game has more player agency than mine.  You can say it has more of your type of player agency, but not that it has more player agency in general.  Both of our games involve 100% player agency.  You can't get higher than that.  Your "player agency" doesn't exist in my game and vice versa.  And you don't get to disparage other playstyles by calling them "choose your own adventure" or "players just declare actions to get the DM to say stuff" without getting called out for that sort of crap.




This is the issue people are taking.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> No one takes issue with his conceptualizing player agency in that way. It is when he tries to deconsruct other peoples' notions of player character freedom (essentially arguing they are not truly free). There is a play style battle going on underneath all these arguments.



Yes, which is why I am puzzled by why this accusation is lobbed only against Pemerton. I am always amused that by the underlying presumption that this is a Pemerton-only problem and that his debators do not engage in similar tactics.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> Yes, which is why I am puzzled by why this accusation is lobbed only against Pemerton. I am always amused that by the underlying presumption that this is a Pemerton-only problem and that his debators do not engage in similar tactics.




I am just commenting on what I saw. But I said from the start, this is a very common tactic. I think the reason Pemerton gets it so much is because he is effective at it (and posts a lot). But I laid out three points for avoiding this kind of thing (i.e. use descriptive definitions, Don't equivocate, etc)


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> I am just commenting on what I saw. But I said from the start, this is a very common tactic. I think the reason Pemerton gets it so much is because he is effective at it (and posts a lot). But I laid out three points for avoiding this kind of thing (i.e. use descriptive definitions, Don't equivocate, etc)



And I would "[common] on what I saw" that Pemerton follows your three points far more than many of the people debating Pemerton that you quote.


----------



## Imaro

You know one of the things that I find strange about [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s claims about his specific type of player agency and his playstyle is that while it isn't decided by secret backstory... player agency is still decided by the GM.  

If on a successful check the fiction the player desires is realized (example: there is a secret door) and on a failed check the fiction the player desires is not realized (example: There is no secret door)... who sets the standard for success around the said action (and thus the realization or non-realization of the player's desired fiction?  Doesn't whoever decides this in turn limit or even control player agency.  Unless we are talking about a game that has objectively defined criteria to meet for every action then the GM does in fact have power to limit and even negate (impossible DC's) player agency.  Am I missing something here or is it specifically negation through secret backstory as opposed to say negation through setting of DC's or modifiers that counts?  Because I see both as limiters of player agency.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Imaro said:


> You know one of the things that I find strange about [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s claims about his specific type of player agency and his playstyle is that while it isn't decided by secret backstory... player agency is still decided by the GM.
> 
> If on a successful check the fiction the player desires is realized (example: there is a secret door) and on a failed check the fiction the player desires is not realized (example: There is no secret door)... who sets the standard for success around the said action (and thus the realization or non-realization of the player's desired fiction?  Doesn't whoever decides this in turn limit or even control player agency.  Unless we are talking about a game that has objectively defined criteria to meet for every action then the GM does in fact have power to limit and even negate (impossible DC's) player agency.  Am I missing something here or is it specifically negation through secret backstory as opposed to say negation through setting of DC's or modifiers that counts?  Because I see both as limiters of player agency.




I think that varies by game mechanic. I am not sure what that may be in Burning Wheel, which seems to be pemerton's primary game, but in Dungeon World and other Powered By the Apocalypse games, there is a set mechanic. Roll 2d6, add your relevant skill or modifier, and if you get a 10+ you succeed, a 7 to 9 you partially succeed or succeed but face some complication, and on a 6 or lower you fail. 

So the game has a mechanic that does not rely on the GM to make a judgment call on how difficult a task would be and then set that as a target number or DC, as is done in most versions of D&D and similar games. Instead, the only variables are the PC's skill or ability that is pertinent to the task at hand, and the random die roll. 

I am guessing that Burning Wheel and Cortex+ and the other games pemerton tends to cite are similarly designed. I'm sure he's shared how they work at some point, but I don't recall.


----------



## darkbard

Imaro said:


> You know one of the things that I find strange about  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s claims about his specific type of player agency and his playstyle is that while it isn't decided by secret backstory... player agency is still decided by the GM.
> 
> If on a successful check the fiction the player desires is realized (example: there is a secret door) and on a failed check the fiction the player desires is not realized (example: There is no secret door)... who sets the standard for success around the said action (and thus the realization or non-realization of the player's desired fiction?  Doesn't whoever decides this in turn limit or even control player agency.  Unless we are talking about a game that has objectively defined criteria to meet for every action then the GM does in fact have power to limit and even negate (impossible DC's) player agency.  Am I missing something here or is it specifically negation through secret backstory as opposed to say negation through setting of DC's or modifiers that counts?  Because I see both as limiters of player agency.




In [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s approach, the dictum for the GM is "say yes or roll the dice." An addendum to this is "say no if it's impossible for genre conventions" (ie, no searching for laser guns in the Luke's toilet). 

A game like 4E, for example, provides a chart of level-appropriate DCs by difficulty, easy, moderate, and hard. Those are fixed numbers. Player build choice affects how well a given PC can meet those various target numbers. None of this is left up to DM whim.


----------



## darkbard

Ninja'd!


----------



## Imaro

hawkeyefan said:


> I think that varies by game mechanic. I am not sure what that may be in Burning Wheel, which seems to be pemerton's primary game, but in Dungeon World and other Powered By the Apocalypse games, there is a set mechanic. Roll 2d6, add your relevant skill or modifier, and if you get a 10+ you succeed, a 7 to 9 you partially succeed or succeed but face some complication, and on a 6 or lower you fail.
> 
> So the game has a mechanic that does not rely on the GM to make a judgment call on how difficult a task would be and then set that as a target number or DC, as is done in most versions of D&D and similar games. Instead, the only variables are the PC's skill or ability that is pertinent to the task at hand, and the random die roll.
> 
> I am guessing that Burning Wheel and Cortex+ and the other games pemerton tends to cite are similarly designed. I'm sure he's shared how they work at some point, but I don't recall.




So this playstyle only really works for games specifically designed for it... that's interesting.

EDIT: To further expound I know he often cites the Marvel Heroic rpg and in that there are a couple of things you can do with the Doom Pool that definitely affect player agency (specifically as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] defines it) listed below.

*To use any affect that normally costs a Plot Point.
*Use special effects (SFX) that cost doom dice to activate. 
*Split a hero off from other heroes or force them together. 
*Activate a Hero's Limit. But first offer to pay them 1 PP instead.
*Create a new Scene Distinction (costs a D8 or higher). Anyonemay use this Distinction instead of their own Distinctions. 
*To have a Villain interrupt the Action Order. 
*Activate Scene or Event effects. 
*Spend 2D12 to end a scene immediately. If the Heroes wereclose to winning, ask them to describe how they get most ofwhat they want and then present them with a tough choice,you win but X happens or at Y cost. If the Heroes were notclose to winning, ask them to describe how they lost or whatthey had to sacrifice (something significant) to win.

Now I understand he has an issue with secret backstory but honestly most of these effects you can create with the Doom Pool in the MH game seem to tread on the type of player agency he is advocating for... Create a new scene distinction, Ending a scene immediately, Split a hero off or force him to join up with the group... how do these not step all over the type of agency he is advocating for?  Is it ok because they aren't secret backstory?  Or is the infringement upon agency (regardless of it's source) really the issue...


----------



## Imaro

darkbard said:


> In [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s approach, the dictum for the GM is "say yes or roll the dice." An addendum to this is "say no if it's impossible for genre conventions" (ie, no searching for laser guns in the Luke's toilet).
> 
> A game like 4E, for example, provides a chart of level-appropriate DCs by difficulty, easy, moderate, and hard. Those are fixed numbers. Player build choice affects how well a given PC can meet those various target numbers. None of this is left up to DM whim.




No I disagree... you say 4e has set DC's that are level appropriate but it's still the DM who decides whether it's a hard/moderate or easy check and thus limits player agency through his determination of which of these to use (and in a case where you're actually determining whether things exist I wonder what the process is for determining which to use say in the case of a secret dorr nbeing in a hallway or not) ... all that aside the determination of which DC to use is DM whim.


----------



## darkbard

Imaro said:


> No I disagree... you say 4e has set DC's that are level appropriate but it's still the DM who decides whether it's a hard/moderate or easy check and thus limits player agency through his determination of which of these to use (and in a case where you're actually determining whether things exist I wonder what the process is for determining which to use say in the case of a secret dorr nbeing in a hallway or not) ... all that aside the determination of which DC to use is DM whim.




That's not a limit on player agency any more than the orc's  A.C. is. GM judgment is still a thing in Story Now gaming!


----------



## Aldarc

Imaro said:


> So this playstyle only really works for games specifically designed for it... that's interesting.



As is often the case, rules systems are variously accomodating to and supportive of different playstyles.


----------



## Imaro

darkbard said:


> That's not a limit on player agency any more than the orc's  A.C. is. GM judgment is still a thing in Story Now gaming!




That is a limit on player agency... If I know Bob's character sucks at stealth and I want to shape the story so that he can't sneak up easily, I use the hard DC.  The only way it's not would be in a system like [MENTION=9200]Hawkeye[/MENTION] described Dungeon World to be... a set DC for all actions and only your attributes and abilities modify it.

As to your example about the Orc's AC... Let me pose this question, is choosing to stick a red dragon the characters only have a slim chance to beat at 1st level into an adventure... limiting their agency as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] describes it?


----------



## Imaro

Aldarc said:


> As is often the case, rules systems are variously accomodating to and supportive of different playstyles.




Oh, I agree... and that may be part of the problem with this discussion... we are trying to talk in broad terms but if the issue really is around player agency as @_*pemerton*_ defines it... well then shouldn't we look at the specific games and how they do or don't support/hinder said agency?  Now if the issue isn't agency but instead that he just doesn't prefer secret backstory... well there's not much discussion there as it's personal preference and not a broad declaration about the amount of agency in one playstyle vs. another.

EDIT: To expound a little further... I see no practical difference in the end result of secret backstory that allows for a hidden chute trap that drops a hero to another level vs. say MHR's ability to split a hero off from the group when it comes to actual amount of agency...  In fact I'd argue the hero in the first example at least has a chance to detect the trap while in MHR it's an effect that just happens when the GM decides to spend from the Doom Pool to generate it.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Imaro said:


> So this playstyle only really works for games specifically designed for it... that's interesting.
> 
> EDIT: To further expound I know he often cites the Marvel Heroic rpg and in that there are a couple of things you can do with the Doom Pool that definitely affect player agency (specifically as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] defines it) listed below.
> 
> *To use any affect that normally costs a Plot Point.
> *Use special effects (SFX) that cost doom dice to activate.
> *Split a hero off from other heroes or force them together.
> *Activate a Hero's Limit. But first offer to pay them 1 PP instead.
> *Create a new Scene Distinction (costs a D8 or higher). Anyonemay use this Distinction instead of their own Distinctions.
> *To have a Villain interrupt the Action Order.
> *Activate Scene or Event effects.
> *Spend 2D12 to end a scene immediately. If the Heroes wereclose to winning, ask them to describe how they get most ofwhat they want and then present them with a tough choice,you win but X happens or at Y cost. If the Heroes were notclose to winning, ask them to describe how they lost or whatthey had to sacrifice (something significant) to win.
> 
> Now I understand he has an issue with secret backstory but honestly most of these effects you can create with the Doom Pool in the MH game seem to tread on the type of player agency he is advocating for... Create a new scene distinction, Ending a scene immediately, Split a hero off or force him to join up with the group... how do these not step all over the type of agency he is advocating for?  Is it ok because they aren't secret backstory?  Or is the infringement upon agency (regardless of it's source) really the issue...




I've questioned some of the conclusions pemerton draws, as well. And other times, I'm not familiar with a certain game system, so it becomes hard to understand shared examples. 

I have only played the Marvel Heroic game a few times. It was not to my liking. I didn't know what rules system it uses and if this system is present in other games. Part of my dislike of the game is that it was so radically different from the TSR Marvel game that I grew up playing. So I think a large part of my dissatisfaction was due to expectations.

But, having said that, and adding the caveat that I'm not pemerton, my guess is that when a game has certain elements that are incorporated into the actual game mechanics, then that's something different than what he is talking about with GM backstory. 

GM backstory can't really be anticipated, and isn't necessarily quantifiable. But when a game has certain clearly defined moves that players can make, and also one the GM can make, I think that the game proceeds with the expectation that these moves can and will come up. 

Again....there could be a lot more to it. I only played the game a few times when it came out. 

Ultimately, I think that pemerton prefers a game where the GM's actions are as dictated by the game rules as the players' actions are. That's what I'm getting out of most of this discussion, anyway.


----------



## Imaro

hawkeyefan said:


> I've questioned some of the conclusions pemerton draws, as well. And other times, I'm not familiar with a certain game system, so it becomes hard to understand shared examples.
> 
> I have only played the Marvel Heroic game a few times. It was not to my liking. I didn't know what rules system it uses and if this system is present in other games. Part of my dislike of the game is that it was so radically different from the TSR Marvel game that I grew up playing. So I think a large part of my dissatisfaction was due to expectations.
> 
> But, having said that, and adding the caveat that I'm not pemerton, my guess is that when a game has certain elements that are incorporated into the actual game mechanics, then that's something different than what he is talking about with GM backstory.
> 
> GM backstory can't really be anticipated, and isn't necessarily quantifiable. But when a game has certain clearly defined moves that players can make, and also one the GM can make, I think that the game proceeds with the expectation that these moves can and will come up.
> 
> Again....there could be a lot more to it. I only played the game a few times when it came out.
> 
> Ultimately, I think that pemerton prefers a game where the GM's actions are as dictated by the game rules as the players' actions are. That's what I'm getting out of most of this discussion, anyway.




Fair enough, and again if the problem is just the determiner of loss of agency that's fine,  but if you are proclaiming your game has more agency then I find that distinction irrelevant... a loss of agency is a loss of agency and IMO it doesn't really matter that the game gives you a mechanic to take said agency away... it's still a loss of player agency.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Imaro said:


> Fair enough, and again if the problem is just the determiner of loss of agency that's fine,  but if you are proclaiming your game has more agency then I find that distinction irrelevant... a loss of agency is a loss of agency and IMO it doesn't really matter that the game gives you a mechanic to take said agency away... it's still a loss of player agency.




Perhaps, sure. I get what you're saying. I'll be interested to see what pemerton's thoughts may be on this. 

If the GM in Marvel can end the scene, which of course seems to imply a limit in player agency, but can only do so when the Doom Pool gets to a certain number of dice, then that's something the player can predict, and likely even track. 

So, even though this does reduce agency, it's a bit different than the Gm simply saying "no, you fail". That distinction may or may not matter to each of us. My guess is that it does to pemerton.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I assume by "PCs" you mean players? Ie the players are free to declare actions for their PCs.
> 
> I would be very surprised if there were any episodes of RPGing in which that was not true. What would it even mean to "play" a RPG if you were not free to declare actions for your PC?




Again this is the extreme literalism I am talking about here. You are taking a person's words literally, which results in you painting their position as either nonsensical or meaningless. Obviously I meant more when I said this, and it is pretty clear to me what people mean when they use agency in this way (which is by far the most common understanding of agency I've encountered at actual table play). It is about the players being able to explore freely as characters without the GM doing things to keep them on a track, etc. An example of the this would be, I have a session planned for the city of Dee, and at the start of the adventure they decide to travel east and look for business opportunities in Huisheng. They don't need things like the ability to determine what is actually there, or the ability to frame scenes, or any other of the techniques being mentioned here, for me to respect their agency. The idea of agency can be fully respected and explored in a more traditional style campaign (obviously agency can also be respected in other ways). The GM can have all the traditional powers ascribed to the GM, the players can interact with the world purely through their character, and you can have agency. 

What is maddening in this discussion is people equate the GM introducing a challenge to due backstory, pre-existing setting material, etc, as constraining agency (i.e. well if you introduce 1 invincible wall you might as well be surrounding the players in walls; which is basically prison).


----------



## Imaro

hawkeyefan said:


> Perhaps, sure. I get what you're saying. I'll be interested to see what pemerton's thoughts may be on this.
> 
> If the GM in Marvel can end the scene, which of course seems to imply a limit in player agency, but can only do so when the Doom Pool gets to a certain number of dice, then that's something the player can predict, and likely even track.
> 
> So, even though this does reduce agency, it's a bit different than the Gm simply saying "no, you fail". That distinction may or may not matter to each of us. My guess is that it does to pemerton.




Yes and no, while it seems like you could track whether the GM could do this... there's no way to tell beforehand when or if he will.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Imaro said:


> Yes and no, while it seems like you could track whether the GM could do this... there's no way to tell beforehand when or if he will.




But can you know if it is something he can or cannot do? Meaning, is it dependent on something measurable like the number of Doom Pool dice or something like that? If so, then the players know that the option is or is not yet available to the GM, and when it becomes available. 

Again, this is where lack of familiarity with the rules system can hinder understanding.....I'm totally making assumptions on some very limited play from quite some time ago.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> The difference from what you describe, though, is that the need for the narration to establish immersion is not the same as what you were referring to in the post to which I replied.
> 
> In "story now", the principal source of immersion should be the fact that the situation is "thematically compelling". That is, the GM - in establishing the framing - is drawing on already-available stuff that everyone at the table is committed to. So the need to build a "word picture" by reference to sensation is less. The description of the setting provides a context for action rather than itself being the engine of immersion.
> 
> In Cortex+ Heroic this is formalised via the mechanic of "Scene Distinctions" - the GM may declare up to 3 scene distinctions (and may spend GM-side resources for more if desired) at the start of an action scene. In the session I GMed yesterday, the first scene involved the PCs - who had just crossed a frozen mountain lake - commencing their final ascent into the northern mountains. The scene distinctions were Chill Winds, Narrow Defile Between the Peaks, and Unpassable Snow. This, together with the description of their adversaries (a flight of wyverns, one with a rider; and the chieftain of the mountain folk), sets the scene.
> 
> Later on, after the PCs left the village of the mountain folk, them were confronted by the Earth Giant (as they knew they would be). The scene distinctions were Boulders Aplenty, Terrible Drops (which had an attached mechanic increasing the risk of PCs falling down them should they or the giant edge towards them, or break away their edges) and Clear Skies (the PCs had climbed so high there were no more clouds about them).



I have to say, this absolutely boggles my mind: that the mechanics of a game system *limit what the DM can describe in a scene*!

Now in fairness these particular scenes you reference might not need much more to get the point across.  That said, "Chill Winds" doesn't tell me if it's snowing (reduced visibility?), or bright sunshine (snow blindness?), or what...which means I'd have to ask.  "Narrow Defile..." needs a direction, which when coupled with the time of day (particularly if it's sunny) would tell me whether the defile is well-lit or is in deep shadow at the moment.  Little things like this - if you describe them up front players don't have to ask about them; and yes I'm saying it's usually better to describe in too much detail rather than too little.



> These distinctions establish a context in which the PCs (as directed by their players) take action. They can also be operated upon - eg the PC sorcerer used his magic to dismiss the Unpassable Snow, and again to create eldritch walls and nets to neutralise the threat of the Terrible Drops. In an earlier session, a different PC was able to rescue villagers in need of rescuing by succeeding on actions to eliminate a Frightened Villagers scene distinction.



Though any of this could have (and likely would have) been done without the Formalized Mechanical scene descriptors, simply as part of the run of play.



> Other systems handle this differently: but in 4e, for instance, one way to convey the really salient elements of a situation is via mechanical specification using the rules for traps, hazards, terrain powers and the like. The setting comes to life _through its role in resolving the action_ rather than simply via description.



I'll give it this much: 4e does terrain well.

But, let's try an example.  The party enters a study in a castle; they're here looking for a map and have decided that if the castle has a study that's the first place they'll look...and so they either explore until they get there or are framed straight there (no difference for these purposes).  In either case, were I to go into detail my narration of the place might go something like:

"You've found what appears to be - or have been - a study.  It's a small room - maybe 15' on a side - with stone walls, rug-covered floor and plastered-over ceiling; there are no other obvious exits other than the door you are in, and no obvious occupants.  A leaded-glass window across the room from you looks out north across the lawn toward the gate house, and allows enough light in that vision here is not really a problem; the room is otherwise unlit. The place clearly isn't used often - dusty gray sheets cover most of the furniture, some of the shapes hinting at two chairs and a table beneath - and everything is covered with a thick layer of dust, slightly stirred up by your arrival.  There are but two pieces of furniture not covered by sheets: an overstuffed armchair beneath the window whose sheet - on the floor nexxt to it - has clearly fallen off at some point, and a solid-looking wooden desk just to the right of the door.  On this desk are a small box of some sort, an inkwell with what's left of a quill sticking out of it, an empty wine glass, and what might be some papers - it's hard to tell under the dust.  The desk also has a couple of closed wide shallow drawers just below its top.  A large tall sheet-covered piece of furniture against the west wall might be a bookshelf or a shallow wardrobe - again, hard to tell.  What do you do?

So, no mechanics here, just a description in enough detail to forestall some obvious questions and provide lots of things to interact with.  Would Cortex+ Heroic allow this, in this wording?



> Once the source of "drive" or momentum in "story now" is appreciated, you can see the error of description in your (2). The PC tries because s/he has hope! And the player, rolling the dice, has the same hope. So there is not disparity at all, but rather congruence!



That's my (1).  In (2) the player, while still having the hope, also has the meta-knowledge that a good roll guarantees success; which the player in (1) - just like the PC in the fiction - doesn't have.

Lanefan


----------



## Tony Vargas

Aldarc said:


> Imaro said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So this playstyle only really works for games specifically designed for it... that's interesting.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> As is often the case, rules systems are variously accomodating to and supportive of different playstyles.
Click to expand...


Also what constitutes 'supports' or working in certain systems varies widely.  Sometimes 'support' seems to mean 'RAW does not prevent you from playing in this style,' other it seems closer to 'you are free to change the game to accommodate your style,' or, on the other extreme 'support' can seem require 'naturally plays in this style,'  'rewards play in this style more than others' or 'forces you to play in this style.'


----------



## darkbard

Imaro said:


> That is a limit on player agency... If I know Bob's character sucks at stealth and I want to shape the story so that he can't sneak up easily, I use the hard DC.  The only way it's not would be in a system like [MENTION=9200]Hawkeye[/MENTION] described Dungeon World to be... a set DC for all actions and only your attributes and abilities modify it.
> 
> As to your example about the Orc's AC... Let me pose this question, is choosing to stick a red dragon the characters only have a slim chance to beat at 1st level into an adventure... limiting their agency as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] describes it?




In my Story Now 4E gaming, all DCs (including opponent defenses, HPs, etc.) and die rolls are above board. Players know the stakes before they make the roll, so there is no GM manipulation to shape outcomes unbeknownst to the players. Player agency is maintained through the transparency of the process. Players can also choose to spend PC resources (Action Points, racial, class, or other powers, etc.) to meet more difficult challenges (particularly butnot exclusively in the context of skill challenges). Your example of choosing a hard DC because Bob's character sucks at Stealth is not principled GMing! And it's certainly not "being a fan of the PCs," another maxim of Story Now gaming (see the recent discussion about this somewhere in one of these threads).

As to your question about the red dragon: I still think you don't understand how Story Now gaming works. The GM frames scenes in response to player cues (stated goals, character builds and backstory, etc.) and/or as the response to failed outcomes of declared actions. There is no "choosing to stick a red dragon the characters only have a slim chance to beat at 1st level into an adventure" because there is no adventure; there is only the story ... now. If the players have indicated their desire to meet such a dragon in some fashion, then that does not circumscribe their agency. If the GM frames the PCs into a meeting with such a dragon as the outcome of some failed check, (1) the GM is obliged to build off player cues, so they must have indicated a desire to encounter such a dragon for it to be salient, (2) the stakes would have been set prior to resolution, so if they fail the roll, they get what they bargain for, (3) red dragons can be made to be level appropriate foes even for first level characters in 4E, and (4) why would you presume such an encounter would be combat, and fight-to-the-death combat at that? More likely, such an outcome of some failed action would be the initiation of a skill challenge, perhaps to escape a threatening red dragon.


----------



## Imaro

darkbard said:


> In my Story Now 4E gaming, all DCs (including opponent defenses, HPs, etc.) and die rolls are above board. Players know the stakes before they make the roll, so there is no GM manipulation to shape outcomes unbeknownst to the players. Player agency is maintained through the transparency of the process. Players can also choose to spend PC resources (Action Points, racial, class, or other powers, etc.) to meet more difficult challenges (particularly butnot exclusively in the context of skill challenges). Your example of choosing a hard DC because Bob's character sucks at Stealth is not principled GMing! And it's certainly not "being a fan of the PCs," another maxim of Story Now gaming (see the recent discussion about this somewhere in one of these threads).




You're addressing the specific example and not the general point.  Irregardless of why the DM would/could manipulate the DC's... It is still a limiter on player agency because determining the DC is DM whim.  Even if you tell the PC's what the DC is it still is determined (and thus their chance of success) by you.  Like I said earlier DW is an example of a game where this is truly mitigated but in 4e that's not the case.  In the same way secret backstory can limit the agency of players so can subjective DC's.  It doesn't have to be a purposeful manipulation... Unless you are being transparent with how you come to choose your DC's, your players are unaware of the conscious and subconscious biases that lead to choosing one DC vs. another.  That is a limiter on agency and is an unknown in the same way that secret backstory is unknown.



darkbard said:


> As to your question about the red dragon: I still think you don't understand how Story Now gaming works. The GM frames scenes in response to player cues (stated goals, character builds and backstory, etc.) and/or as the response to failed outcomes of declared actions. There is no "choosing to stick a red dragon the characters only have a slim chance to beat at 1st level into an adventure" because there is no adventure; there is only the story ... now. If the players have indicated their desire to meet such a dragon in some fashion, then that does not circumscribe their agency. If the GM frames the PCs into a meeting with such a dragon as the outcome of some failed check, (1) the GM is obliged to build off player cues, so they must have indicated a desire to encounter such a dragon for it to be salient, (2) the stakes would have been set prior to resolution, so if they fail the roll, they get what they bargain for, (3) red dragons can be made to be level appropriate foes even for first level characters in 4E, and (4) why would you presume such an encounter would be combat, and fight-to-the-death combat at that? More likely, such an outcome of some failed action would be the initiation of a skill challenge, perhaps to escape a threatening red dragon.




Wait what?  Unless the players can now frame their own adversaries, which I haven't seen an example of so far how is this remotely true?  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has chosen the adversaries that his players have faced in the "story"  as far as I can tell and a red dragon could easily be framed as opposition to numerous goals.  This isn't really making any sense. unless you are now saying that nothing is allowed to be created without the players "ok" in Stoiry Now gaming... is that the case?


----------



## Ilbranteloth

pemerton said:


> Which terms? What "long standing definitions"? Where are these found? What makes you think you've got better cognitive access to them than I do?
> 
> And following on from these questions . . .
> 
> According to  [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION], the concept of "player agency" was invented at The Forge and means more-or-less what I use it to mean. I don't have my own independent recollection of the use of the term at The Forge - I'm more familiar with their notion of "protagonism", which has a similar (but maybe not identical) meaning.
> 
> I've just gone to check The Forge Provisional Glossary, and found that it generally uses the word "control" rather than "agency" - but it defines _force_ as
> 
> The Technique of control over characters' thematically-significant decisions by anyone who is not the character's player. When Force is applied in a manner which disrupts the Social Contract, the result is Railroading.​
> No definition is offered of "thematically-significant decision", but "theme" is defined as
> 
> The point, message, or key emotional conclusion perceived by an audience member, about a fictional series of events.​
> Now you insist that _Agency is just the players being able to control the actions of their PCs_. I don't disagree with your description _as a description_ - it entails that when there is _force_, players lack agency, and that seems right. (We could quibble over whether "decision" and "action" co-refer, but I'm not going to.)
> 
> All the action consists in the following: _what does it mean_ for a player to control the actions of his/her PC? Or for another participant (such as the GM) to exercise control over those?
> 
> My own view - which is not an expression of a semantic opinion, but an expression of a preference for play - is that if a player's declared action cannot succeed, because of an unrevealed decision by the GM about the setting/backstory, then the player _does not have control over his/her PC's actions_. The GM has, on that occasion of play, exercised control.
> 
> The previous paragraph states a real view - that is, an opinion that I really have. You have a different view, reflecting different RPGing preferences - fine! But that doesn't stop me having, and stating, my view, using English words to express it.
> 
> I have some further views, too. If an action declaration doesn't pertain to anything of thematic/dramatic significance, and puts nothing at stake, then sometimes I think it is appropriate for the GM to say "no" and move things on. A paradigm of this, which  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] mentioned not far upthread and which I think I may have mentioned a long way upthread, is - in my 4e game - searching bodies or rooms for generic loot. That is the sort of no-stake irrelevance that I'm not interested in spending time on at the table, and the alternative to "You find 12 cp" is "No, there's nothing there, now can we get on with it?!"
> 
> And here's another one: if the GM is adjudicating action resolutions by reference to a prior conception of the details of the gameworld - whether in the notes, or made up on the spot - then ascertaining those details starts to become a focus of play. Which, per se, means that thematically-significant action declarations becomes less of a focus of play. That makes RPGing less enjoyable for me.
> 
> And for fun and completeness, here's one example of how "say 'yes' or roll the dice" can be applied in the context of _thematically significant_ action declarations in relation to loot:
> 
> ​




I’d say there’s a meaningful difference between agency (control) of your character and agency (control) of results. 

Both provide input into the fiction or narrative, but in a different way. The force placed against the players/characters is essentially the same when the GM arbitrarily decides results in the moment, or ahead of time. Neither affects your control of the character’s actions, and as long as the GM is assessing the appropriateness and validity as the result is introduced into play I’d say there isn’t really a qualitative difference either.

To me its not so much a question of when something was authored, but more a question of the GM playing their part in good faith and contributing meaningfully to the narrative. I can certainly agree that with preauthored material there’s a possibility that the GM may not follow that standard, but then again the can generate a self serving agenda on the fly too.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> It is obvious that I mean PCs. It is the sort of thing readers and listeners should be able to discern from context. It doesn't require building a new lexicon or always being super precise about the division when it is clear a person is talking about a player character.



Well I thought you meant _players_, because you talked about declaring actions - and it is players who declare actions for their PCs while playing RPGs. I was doing my best to make sense of your post.

I don't know what you mean by _PCs declaring actions_, and given that is what you were saying that means I don't understand what point you were trying to make.



Bedrockgames said:


> I am not interested in debating you Pemerton.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> You do it through definitions.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I think there are a lot of things you do rhetorically that are pretty shady in these discussions.



You don't want to debate, just call my shady?

This thread isn't about definitions. It's about techniques of play.



Bedrockgames said:


> No one takes issue with his conceptualizing player agency in that way.



You seem to be, when you attack me for my "definitions".



Bedrockgames said:


> It is when he tries to deconsruct other peoples' notions of player character freedom (essentially arguing they are not truly free). There is a play style battle going on underneath all these arguments.



There is not "battle". There is analysis.

You seem to be saying that it's illegitimate to analyse the techniques that other RPGers use. Why?


----------



## Tony Vargas

darkbard said:


> As to your question about the red dragon: I still think you don't understand how Story Now gaming works. The GM frames scenes in response to player cues (stated goals, character builds and backstory, etc.) and/or as the response to failed outcomes of declared actions.



I'm not 100% clear on that 'player cues' bit, but....



> There is no "choosing to stick a red dragon the characters only have a slim chance to beat at 1st level into an adventure" because there is no adventure; there is only the story ... now. If the players have indicated their desire to meet such a dragon in some fashion, then that does not circumscribe their agency.



 And, if they haven't?  If they've stated a desire to avoid draconic entanglements?  







> If the GM frames the PCs into a meeting with such a dragon as the outcome of some failed check, (1) the GM is obliged to build off player cues, so they must have indicated a desire to encounter such a dragon for it to be salient, (2) the stakes would have been set prior to resolution, so if they fail the roll, they get what they bargain for, (3) red dragons can be made to be level appropriate foes even for first level characters in 4E, and



 A Red Dragon Wyrmling was a level 5 Elite, which was slightly less (400exp) monster than a level 1 solo (500exp) FWIW.


> (4) why would you presume such an encounter would be combat, and fight-to-the-death combat at that? More likely, such an outcome of some failed action would be the initiation of a skill challenge, perhaps to escape a threatening red dragon.



I'd presume combat because combat's the last resort - one side or another can always push it that far.  
But, OK, "escape a mildly annoyed Adult Red Dragon with better things to do than hunt you to the ends of the world" could have been a low-level skill challenge, I suppose. ;|


----------



## Emerikol

pemerton said:


> How do the players learn who their friends are, where the local swimming holes are, what the local customs are?
> 
> My experience of the sort of play you describe is that the answer to these sorts of questions if "The GM tells them." Which, for me, is fairly unimmersive - it's like having to ask someone else to remind me of what and who I am!
> 
> EDIT for clarity: I'm not talking about learning _new_ things here - eg the PC sees a new landscape or building, and the player has the GM describing it to him/her. I'm talking about all the things that are intuitive and second nature to a person, which it's therefore weird to experience as if they're being newly-learned from outside.




Prior to the start of the game, the player works with the DM to come up with a backstory which will include local knowledge if appropriate to the sandbox they are playing inside.  More often than not they are travellers coming into a somewhat new area.  What doesn't happen is that major things are just made up at the table.  The players are working together to defeat shared enemies.  Being able to conjure up just the right bit of knowledge whenever they like is mighty convenient and immersion busting for the rest of the players.   If a player has knowledge in an area, then of course they can roll for it.   To me communication between the player and DM about what they experience or know is the essence of roleplaying.  So I tend to dice for knowledge to make the flow of the game go smoothly.


----------



## Emerikol

A Pemerton Quote:
My own view - which is not an expression of a semantic opinion, but an expression of a preference for play - is that if a player's declared action cannot succeed, because of an unrevealed decision by the GM about the setting/backstory, then the player does not have control over his/her PC's actions. The GM has, on that occasion of play, exercised control.


Sorry, I copied this and didn't have the original post.  

This post is perhaps the clear demarcation between our styles.  I think it is succinct enough.  If the world exists, then the DM is merely revealing that the players lack of knowledge has prevented the declared action from happening.  If the world does not exist, then of course the DM is deciding because the world has not yet been created.  And by existence, I mean is detailed.   The difference Permerton is that my worlds really do have a lot detailed.  Stuff the players could not possibly know on day one.  Finding out those truths is the very purpose of the game to my players.  If I told them I would just make it up as I go, with perhaps a few die rolls for guidance, they'd all walk out.  We don't even need a DM for that they'd say.  We can roll ourselves if that is all you provide.

Now in those cases where something is not detailed, out approach is exactly the same.  We dice for it based upon the probability of it being true.  Perhaps you want to use some universal chance whereas the probability in my campaign will be the actually probability based on knowledge of the world.

So if you feel the DM "revealing" the world is creating it for you then sure why not create some of it yourself.  If the world to the best of the DM's ability is created already and well designed and consistent and that is what you want from your DM then no you don't feel like the DM "revealing" the world is creating it for you.


----------



## pemerton

Imaro said:


> If on a successful check the fiction the player desires is realized (example: there is a secret door) and on a failed check the fiction the player desires is not realized (example: There is no secret door)... who sets the standard for success around the said action (and thus the realization or non-realization of the player's desired fiction?  Doesn't whoever decides this in turn limit or even control player agency.



The design of resolution systems is pretty important, yes.



hawkeyefan said:


> I think that varies by game mechanic. I am not sure what that may be in Burning Wheel, which seems to be pemerton's primary game
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I am guessing that Burning Wheel and Cortex+ and the other games pemerton tends to cite are similarly designed. I'm sure he's shared how they work at some point, but I don't recall.



At the moment my primary game is Cortex+ Heroic. Cortex+ Heroic is a dice pool resolution system: each character (protagonist, antagonist, any personified traps or machines, etc) has a range of ratings across various traits, and draws on those to construct a pool. The acting character rolls the pool and (in accordance with the detailed rules for the process) creates both a total, and chooses one die to be the effect (rated by die size, not pips showing). The reacting character does the same - and if there is no character opposing the action, then the Doom Pool is rolled. There are a range of options for pool modifications both before and after the dice are rolled: players spend "plot points", the GM spends dice from the Doom Pool. There is a systematic bias in favour of the players, because (simplifying a little bit) they can spend a point to achieve a manipulation involving a die of any size; whereas the GM has to spend a die from the Doom Pool of equal or greater size than the desired manipulation; and the way the system works means that the players earn about four plot points for every d12 that appears in the Doom Pool, while a 1:1 ratio gives the GM only d6s in the Doom Pool.

There are no tight guidelines on encounter building, but the systematic bias in favour of the players gives them a definite advantage. And the size of the Doom Pool is transparent at the table, and can be (and in my experience often is) an object of player strategy.

Burning Wheel uses "objective" difficulties (called obstacles) - there are general guidelines (eg routine is Ob 2; extremely difficult is Ob 4) and also difficulties for various skills (eg using Astrology to prepare a horoscope is Ob 2, and using it to interpret omens is Ob 5; Scavenging a modest bag of coins is Ob 3; etc). The GM guidelines emphasis that determinig obstacles is an important element in establishing setting.

Resolution is rolling a pool of D6 - 4+ is a success, and overall success requires as many successful dice as the obstacle. Players have a variety of options for manipulating their dice pools, but some actions can't be succeeded at. Players have an incentive to declare a certain number of such actions, because advancement of an ability depends upon using that ability in a range of checks of varying difficulties, including some impossible ones. So one aspect of "skilled play" in BW is putting your PC into impossible circumstances, to earn the checks needed to advance. Because BW has very strong "fail forward" resolution, with the GM having a strong set of player signals to draw on (Beliefs, Instincts, Relationships, Affiliations, Reputations, Character Traits) a player who puts his/her PC into circumstances where success is impossible is nevertheless feeding into the resulting fiction. It's grittier, more intimate, more demanding on both players and GM, than Cortex+ Heroic or 4e.

4e uses "subjective" DCs - in combat statblocks they're a function of NPC/creature level; and for skill checks they're based on a DC-by-level table. Provided the maths of PC build doesn't break down, these create the "space" for the players to make their own luck, especially using various abilities that allow buffs or retries. (In my main 4e game, at 30th level, the only real breakdown in the maths is the Sage of Ages PC, who has epic destiny features that break the maths for knowledge checks.)

The fourth system that I have an active campaign in is Classic Traveller. It uses objective DCs, and in basic ethos is quite similar to Burning Wheel. However, it doesn't give players a reason to embrace some impossible circumstances; and it doesn't give players options to manipulate their check dice. This means that it is a very dice driven game.

Of these systems, Traveller's resolution system imposes the biggest burden on player agency, shifting it to the dice instead. In all these systems, its important that players have a clear sense of how hard stuff will be: in 4e and Cortex+ this arises from a general familiarity with the play of the system and the best use of PC-side resources; in BW and Traveller, this is more about a robust sense of the fiction and a high degree of imagination in how to bring detailed PC skill lists to bear on it.

EDIT:


Imaro said:


> To further expound I know he often cites the Marvel Heroic rpg and in that there are a couple of things you can do with the Doom Pool that definitely affect player agency (specifically as pemerton defines it) listed below.
> 
> *To use any affect that normally costs a Plot Point.
> *Use special effects (SFX) that cost doom dice to activate.
> *Split a hero off from other heroes or force them together.
> *Activate a Hero's Limit. But first offer to pay them 1 PP instead.
> *Create a new Scene Distinction (costs a D8 or higher). Anyonemay use this Distinction instead of their own Distinctions.
> *To have a Villain interrupt the Action Order.
> *Activate Scene or Event effects.
> *Spend 2D12 to end a scene immediately. If the Heroes wereclose to winning, ask them to describe how they get most ofwhat they want and then present them with a tough choice,you win but X happens or at Y cost. If the Heroes were notclose to winning, ask them to describe how they lost or whatthey had to sacrifice (something significant) to win.
> 
> Now I understand he has an issue with secret backstory but honestly most of these effects you can create with the Doom Pool in the MH game seem to tread on the type of player agency he is advocating for... Create a new scene distinction, Ending a scene immediately, Split a hero off or force him to join up with the group... how do these not step all over the type of agency he is advocating for?  Is it ok because they aren't secret backstory?  Or is the infringement upon agency (regardless of it's source) really the issue...



Uses of the Doom Pool to manipulate GM-side dice pools is part of the back-and-forth between players and GM. It occupies the same functional space, in this system, as does a GM in D&D deciding whether or not a NPC or creature uses some limited use ability to buff itself or counter a PC's action.

Use of the Doom Pool to affect the flow of an Action Scene, by interrputing the action order or introducing new elements, is part of managing and introducing complications. It has no analogue I can think of in classic D&D; in 4e, it is analogous to introducing new enemies into a combat encounter part way through, with the effect of stepping up the difficulty and hence the XP the PCs will accrue for the encounter.

Use of the Doom Pool to end a scene is interesting. Given that the players get to narrate consequences in response (which you have quoted from the rulebook) it doesn't completely run roughshod over their agency in respect of the shared fiction. But it is certainly something my players want to avoid, and they actively take steps to try and ensure the Doom Pool doesn't build up to include 2d12 (eg making choices about dice pools to minimise the chances of rolling 1s).



Imaro said:


> So this playstyle only really works for games specifically designed for it... that's interesting.



But not that surprising!

Classic D&D dungeon crawling will only work in a system that's designed for it (eg it needs rules for mapping, for wandering monsters, for searching, etc). You can't do that sort of play using Cortex+ Heroic, and frankly even classic systems like RQ and RM aren't very good at it because they don't have the right sort of rules for combat and saving throws.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> There is not "battle". There is analysis.
> 
> You seem to be saying that it's illegitimate to analyse the techniques that other RPGers use. Why?




People can analyze. But we don't have to accept their conclusions, and if their conclusions and use of terminology make us suspicious, we can voice that opinion. I've been on forums too long and seen this kind of thing from all sides. You say it isn't a battle but it clearly is, and you are clearly engaging in tactics that dismantle other styles and techniques in order to build up your own. That is why I am not interested in debating you and content to express my wariness of your position. I'm sorry Pemerton, I've seen too many of your posts not to recognize what you are doing. When someone uses PC in the way I did, and it is obvious what I mean, but you shrug your shoulders and insist on an unusually strict literal interpretation of my words, its clear you are just using rhetoric to win points in an argument. Your too smart to misunderstand what I was saying.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Well I thought you meant _players_, because you talked about declaring actions - and it is players who declare actions for their PCs while playing RPGs. I was doing my best to make sense of your post.
> 
> I don't know what you mean by _PCs declaring actions_, and given that is what you were saying that means I don't understand what point you were trying to make.




I did mean players. I mistyped in that response. Because most people make that distinction in context. So I use the term pretty interchangeably.

If I tell you "A player died in my campaign last night and it was awesome", you don't generally assume I mean the death of one of my friends at the table. You assume a player character died. Because it is obvious.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> If the GM in Marvel can end the scene, which of course seems to imply a limit in player agency, but can only do so when the Doom Pool gets to a certain number of dice, then that's something the player can predict, and likely even track.



They can, and at my table they do!


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> In (2) the player, while still having the hope, also has the meta-knowledge that a good roll guarantees success; which the player in (1) - just like the PC in the fiction - doesn't have.



Well, the PC doesn't know _anything_ about dice rolls. So that is already a player/PC divide in any system that uses dice to resolve action declarations.

In the end, I can only report my experience: rolling and hoping correlates strongly to searching and hoping. The player knows the action isn't futile (because success on the dice is possible); but the PC must at least _believe_ that searching isn't futile, or else s/he wouldn't be doing it.



Lanefan said:


> I have to say, this absolutely boggles my mind: that the mechanics of a game system *limit what the DM can describe in a scene*!



More description is permitted, but it will just be colour. Whereas the scene distinctions are not mere colour.



Lanefan said:


> "Chill Winds" doesn't tell me if it's snowing (reduced visibility?), or bright sunshine (snow blindness?), or what...which means I'd have to ask.



Well, it doesn't matter to resolution. If you think the Chill Winds are hampering your PC, you can declare as much (and earn a plot point). When you describe what is going on, you might refer to snow being driven by the Chill Winds, or to the winds themselves, as you feel fits your conception of the situation. No one else at the table is going to contradict you.



Lanefan said:


> "Narrow Defile..." needs a direction, which when coupled with the time of day (particularly if it's sunny) would tell me whether the defile is well-lit or is in deep shadow at the moment.



Again, this doesn't matter to resolution.

At the start of the encounter described in my earlier post, the berserker identified and established a defensive position for the PC seer and himself - he delcared that he was moving some rocks into place against the mountain wall (thus using his Godlike Strength as the biggest die in his pool). In my mind's eye, this was on the left looking at the wyverns flying in (because that fitted where those two players were seated at the table relative to me). I don't know how the player envisaged it in detail, but that didn't matter.



Lanefan said:


> Little things like this - if you describe them up front players don't have to ask about them; and yes I'm saying it's usually better to describe in too much detail rather than too little.



The number of RPG tables which worry about the location of the sun, and hence (eg) the difficulties of shooting arrows at backlit foes, or the chance of momentary blindness from looking into ths sun, is - I assert - very very small.

In Cortex+ Heroic, that risk is all subsumed into the Narrow Defile scene distinction.



Lanefan said:


> But, let's try an example.  The party enters a study in a castle; they're here looking for a map and have decided that if the castle has a study that's the first place they'll look...and so they either explore until they get there or are framed straight there (no difference for these purposes).  In either case, were I to go into detail my narration of the place might go something like:
> 
> [sblock]"You've found what appears to be - or have been - a study.  It's a small room - maybe 15' on a side - with stone walls, rug-covered floor and plastered-over ceiling; there are no other obvious exits other than the door you are in, and no obvious occupants.  A leaded-glass window across the room from you looks out north across the lawn toward the gate house, and allows enough light in that vision here is not really a problem; the room is otherwise unlit. The place clearly isn't used often - dusty gray sheets cover most of the furniture, some of the shapes hinting at two chairs and a table beneath - and everything is covered with a thick layer of dust, slightly stirred up by your arrival.  There are but two pieces of furniture not covered by sheets: an overstuffed armchair beneath the window whose sheet - on the floor nexxt to it - has clearly fallen off at some point, and a solid-looking wooden desk just to the right of the door.  On this desk are a small box of some sort, an inkwell with what's left of a quill sticking out of it, an empty wine glass, and what might be some papers - it's hard to tell under the dust.  The desk also has a couple of closed wide shallow drawers just below its top.  A large tall sheet-covered piece of furniture against the west wall might be a bookshelf or a shallow wardrobe - again, hard to tell.  What do you do?[/sblock]
> 
> So, no mechanics here, just a description in enough detail to forestall some obvious questions and provide lots of things to interact with.  Would Cortex+ Heroic allow this, in this wording?



Well, it discourages it.

I would say something more like:

You come into a small sunlit study. The scene distincitons are Stonewalled Room, Sheet-covered Furniture and Dust-covered Desk.​
Oon this approach, if the players look for things on the desk - papers, boxes, whatever - then, given that we're talking about a hunt for something, that would (in mechanical terms) be about creating assets or resources. It probably wouldn't be built into the situation by the GM. 

If the GM wants to make the box a feature, then an alternative would be:

You come into a small sunlit study. The scene distincitons are Sheet-covered Furniture, Dust-covered Desk and - on the desk - an Intriguing Box.​


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> When someone uses PC in the way I did, and it is obvious what I mean, but you shrug your shoulders and insist on an unusually strict literal interpretation of my words, its clear you are just using rhetoric to win points in an argument. Your too smart to misunderstand what I was saying.





Bedrockgames said:


> I did mean players. I mistyped in that response.



Hang on - so now you're angry at me because I conjectured that by "PC" you meant "player", you replied rather angrily saying that you meant "PC",  and I was meant to infer that your second reply was a typo and you actually meant that I was correct in my initial interpretation of your post?



Bedrockgames said:


> People can analyze. But we don't have to accept their conclusions, and if their conclusions and use of terminology make us suspicious



Suspicious of what? My play preferences aren't secret.

But anyway, you clearly have some issue with me and with this thread, so I won't be replying to any more of your posts.


----------



## pemerton

Emerikol said:


> Prior to the start of the game, the player works with the DM to come up with a backstory which will include local knowledge if appropriate to the sandbox they are playing inside.  More often than not they are travellers coming into a somewhat new area.



I made a couple of posts yesterday that seems pretty on-point in relation to this:



pemerton said:


> I think it's unrealistic to expect a player-written backstory to cover anything but the tiniest fragment of a person's life. This is the case even in a game with lifepath PC generation (eg Classic Traveller, Burning Wheel) and moreso in games that don't use that sort of method (eg D&D).
> 
> For instance, if a PC is a member of an organisation there may be literally dozens or hundreds of NPCs to whom s/he is connected by that. If s/he grew up in a village or town, the same thing will be true. My experience is that no player can be expected to write up all of that.





pemerton said:


> My worry isn't about the gray/marginal cases, but the idea - to which I was responding - that the player gets to build the character and the GM does _everything else_. The practical way this is handled much of the time in RPGing is for the PCs to be travellers/strangers, who arrive (at the Keep; in the dungeon; in the village; etc) from somewhere else, and have no roots embedded in the site of the scenario.
> 
> As soon as that changes - and the PCs are doing stuff in a place that is their home - then I think the players have to be allowed to exercise some sort of influence over these elements of backstory (if the feeeling of "PC as alien" is to be avoided). Exactly how that is handled depends on system details and table preferences.


----------



## pemerton

Emerikol said:


> my worlds really do have a lot detailed.  Stuff the players could not possibly know on day one.  Finding out those truths is the very purpose of the game to my players.



That seems to resonate with this from the OP:



pemerton said:


> In classic D&D, _the dungeon_ was a type of puzzle. The players had to map it, by declaring moves (literally) for their PCs. The players, using their PCs as vehicles, had to learn what was in there: this was about inventory - having enough torches, 10' poles, etc - and about game moves too - searching for secret doors, checking ceilings and floors, and so on. And finally, the players had to try and loot it while either avoiding or defeating the monsters guarding the treasures and wandering around the place - this is what the combat mechanics were for.
> 
> The game is something of a cross between a wargame and a complex refereed maze. And *worldbuilding* is all about making the maze.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Hang on - so now you're angry at me because I conjectured that by "PC" you meant "player", you replied rather angrily saying that you meant "PC",  and I was meant to infer that your second reply was a typo and you actually meant that I was correct in my initial interpretation of your post?




No, i wasn't angry over that post. I mistyped and said so. I was taking exception to your response to the initial post. 



> Suspicious of what? My play preferences aren't secret.
> 
> But anyway, you clearly have some issue with me and with this thread, so I won't be replying to any more of your posts.




I will fully admit this is the case Pemerton. I was applying my prior dealings with you to this thread.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Bedrockgames said:


> I did mean players. I mistyped in that response. Because most people make that distinction in context. So I use the term pretty interchangeably.



 Different styles and techniques make that distinction more or less important, or more or less, well distinct.

If going for immersion, the point is to erase that distinction as much as possible.  PC, Player, Character - it's all 'I' at the table.

In other styles the PC is like the player's piece in the game, it's very much separate, and under his control.  At the table, it's not "I open the door," it's "he'll open the door."

In still others, the Character is like a character in fiction that the player is writing or portraying or directing, and the DM is doing the same for the supporting cast of NPCs and the setting they appear in.  Sometimes you say 'I' because you're speaking in character to paint the character with that portrayal, other times you're choosing actions or options for the character, again, to express the character concept, but from outside, be defining it, or even having things happen to it that it really wouldn't want to happen, were it a conscious entity rather than an imaginary one.



Sounds like you gravitate to styles where immersions a goal, and the Player/PC/Character distinction is intentionally de-emphasized, while pemerton tends to those that keep the lines between player and character sharp.


----------



## Maxperson

Hriston said:


> I'm not [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], but I think it's clear to anyone who has been keeping up with the thread that the sort of agency he has been talking about, from the beginning of the thread, is agency over the content of the shared fiction. Say it with me: "*agency over the content of the shared fiction*", _authorship_, if you will. He hasn't said anything about the sort of agency that allows you to have your character try things that are doomed to failure, except that it seems rather limited *with respect to the content of the shared fiction*.




Cool, and if that was all he was doing, it would be good.  It's not, though.  He's taking his definitions and using them to put down other playstyles, which isn't cool.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Tony Vargas said:


> Different styles and techniques make that distinction more or less important, or more or less, well distinct.
> 
> If going for immersion, the point is to erase that distinction as much as possible.  PC, Player, Character - it's all 'I' at the table.
> 
> In other styles the PC is like the player's piece in the game, it's very much separate, and under his control.  At the table, it's not "I open the door," it's "he'll open the door."
> 
> In still others, the Character is like a character in fiction that the player is writing or portraying or directing, and the DM is doing the same for the supporting cast of NPCs and the setting they appear in.  Sometimes you say 'I' because you're speaking in character to paint the character with that portrayal, other times you're choosing actions or options for the character, again, to express the character concept, but from outside, be defining it, or even having things happen to it that it really wouldn't want to happen, were it a conscious entity rather than an imaginary one.
> 
> 
> 
> Sounds like you gravitate to styles where immersions a goal, and the Player/PC/Character distinction is intentionally de-emphasized, while pemerton tends to those that keep the lines between player and character sharp.




All I was saying is, it is usually pretty obvious when someone says something like ‘the PCs declare their actions’ that what is meant is’the players’. When it is that obvious, the distinction isn’t important to make in conversation.

my complaint was the ‘what’s a truck’ shrug posts.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Thanks!




You're welcome 



> And yes, a DM in any system can dial the lethality and danger level up or down.  What I look at for comparison purposes is how it appears as written - what the RAW say.
> 
> For example, it's pretty clear that instant death at 0 h.p. in a system where you don't get many h.p. (e.g. 0e or Basic D&D) is likely to be much more common than in a system where you get multiple rounds of saves to avoid it during which time you can be cured up from a distance (e.g. 4e or 5e D&D) and where you almost certainly started with relatively more h.p. in the first place.  Further, early D&D editions (pre-3e) include level draining and a relatively good chance of losing magic items now and then, both of which have been either removed or drastically scaled back in the newer version (post 3x - 3x/PF itself falls kind of in the middle here).
> 
> Edit to add: and these differences in design/rules are inevitably going to affect the play style at the table. which is my point.
> 
> Lanefan




I guess, but I don't think that 4e really establishes a very hard and fast lethality level at all. Maybe B/X is more likely to be filled with deaths? Honestly we didn't kill tons of PCs even back then. Some died, and replacing them was easy, but it wasn't usually considered "what it was about" for us. 

Now, in 4e what I found was that its actually VERY easy to make it lethal. H1, Keep on the Shadowfell, in fact, the first 'real' 4e adventure, is QUITE deadly. It was noted for one particular section where really superior play was required in order to survive (the 'Irontooth' encounter). Many TPKs were issued at that point (though I never ran the module myself). 

I did one real full hard TPK in 4e, though we had fun (giant spiders 'killed' the party, so of course it became an 'Ettercap', everyone groaned and was amused). Could have made them roll up new characters, but sheesh. 

There were though NUMEROUS 'valiant deaths' and similar situations. Its a lot easier to pull that off in 4e than in AD&D or B/X, etc. It just works a lot more reliably, but the actual baseline lethality is pretty ambiguous.


----------



## Lanefan

darkbard said:


> In [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s approach, the dictum for the GM is "say yes or roll the dice." An addendum to this is "say no if it's impossible for genre conventions" (ie, no searching for laser guns in the Luke's toilet).



The Luke's toilet? 

Just as an aside question: in a DM-driven game the DM can now and then introduce non-genre-convention stuff into the game e.g. a spaceship into a sword-and-sorcery setting.  How could this be done (if at all) in story-now where the players can't declare out of genre and the DM has to stick with what the players are doing?


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Classic D&D dungeon crawling will only work in a system that's designed for it (eg it needs rules for mapping, for wandering monsters, for searching, etc). You can't do that sort of play using Cortex+ Heroic,



That - and the reverse, for example doing story-now in 1e D&D - is only true if you take the view that the game/campaign/style of play is subservient to the system rather than the system being subservient to the game.  It's always possible to make something work given enough kitbashing of the rules - it just sometimes takes more effort than it's really worth.

And I've never seen any rules for mapping; only suggestions in places like the 1e PH and DMG that it's a good idead for players to do so. 



> and frankly even classic systems like RQ and RM aren't very good at it because they don't have the right sort of rules for combat and saving throws.



Again, your rules-mashing toolkit is your friend.  Overlaying a saving throw system onto any of these can't be that difficult, surely.  Combat would be messy to fix, if only because combat is always messy to fix no matter what the system. 

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

Bedrockgames said:


> I did mean players. I mistyped in that response. Because most people make that distinction in context. So I use the term pretty interchangeably.
> 
> If I tell you "A player died in my campaign last night and it was awesome", you don't generally assume I mean the death of one of my friends at the table. You assume a player character died. Because it is obvious.



This is in fact one of my own pet peeves and always has been, when people use these terms interchangeably.  It's annoying at the least, and adds greatly to confusion at the wosrt.

Lan-"I've killed many a character but have yet to kill a player, though there's occasionally been times of severe tempation..."-efan


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> That - and the reverse, for example doing story-now in 1e D&D - is only true if you take the view that the game/campaign/style of play is subservient to the system rather than the system being subservient to the game.  It's always possible to make something work given enough kitbashing of the rules - it just sometimes takes more effort than it's really worth.



I can tell you, forcing Gygax's AD&D into "story now" service is not easy. Oriental Adventures is easier, for mostly obvious reasons - both the default PC builds, and the default setting, produce pretty clear "hooks" for thematic play.

Trying to do dungeon crawling of the classic D&D variety would be impossible, or near enough to, using Cortex+ Heroic.

Of course you can introduce new rules if you want, and take out the rules that get in the way, but that doesn't show that any system can do anything; it shows that _if you design the right system_, it can do what you want.



Lanefan said:


> And I've never seen any rules for mapping; only suggestions in places like the 1e PH and DMG that it's a good idead for players to do so.



Well, you need rules - for moving X feet per turn, for instance; for buying torches, and their duration; etc. And also conventions, for example about how the GM describes rooms to the players. Cortex+ doesn't have either.



Lanefan said:


> Overlaying a saving throw system onto any of these can't be that difficult, surely.  Combat would be messy to fix, if only because combat is always messy to fix no matter what the system.



RM and RQ don't have D&D-style level scaling, hit points or saves of the sort that makes dungeon crawling work (RM has levels, but they don't do the same work; both have "Resistance Roll" mechanics, but they're not the same sort of luck-based thing as D&D saves).

Really, if someone wants to run a classic dungeon crawl why not use some version of classic D&D? (Moldvay is probably the gold standard, but I personally have a soft spot for AD&D, purely for nostalgic reasons I think.) If you're running RQ or RM, that probably means you don't want to run dungeon crawls!


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> Well, the PC doesn't know _anything_ about dice rolls. So that is already a player/PC divide in any system that uses dice to resolve action declarations.
> 
> In the end, I can only report my experience: rolling and hoping correlates strongly to searching and hoping. The player knows the action isn't futile (because success on the dice is possible); but the PC must at least _believe_ that searching isn't futile, or else s/he wouldn't be doing it.



Not quite.

In (1) the PC has no idea if the search is futile or not and on failure still has no idea if the search was futile or just badly done; ditto for the player (assuming these rolls are hidden, which for just this reason they should be).  In (2) what you say above is true, and that very player knowledge that the action isn't futile vs. their not knowing is exactly the difference I'm both getting at and saying is bad: it hauls the player out into the meta-game no matter how hard she tries to resist.



> More description is permitted, but it will just be colour. Whereas the scene distinctions are not mere colour.
> 
> Well, it doesn't matter to resolution. If you think the Chill Winds are hampering your PC, you can declare as much (and earn a plot point). When you describe what is going on, you might refer to snow being driven by the Chill Winds, or to the winds themselves, as you feel fits your conception of the situation. No one else at the table is going to contradict you.



Alright.

What if a player (intentionally or otherwise) forces you to introduce a fourth element - say, she tries to climb one of the cliffs along the defile, so now you have to worry about a Steep Cliff issue.  What then?



> Again, this doesn't matter to resolution.
> 
> At the start of the encounter described in my earlier post, the berserker identified and established a defensive position for the PC seer and himself - he delcared that he was moving some rocks into place against the mountain wall (thus using his Godlike Strength as the biggest die in his pool). In my mind's eye, this was on the left looking at the wyverns flying in (because that fitted where those two players were seated at the table relative to me). I don't know how the player envisaged it in detail, but that didn't matter.



For tactical reasons it certainly would matter!   I've had characters die in the past due to just this: where a DM describes enough to let me imagine a scene or element, and I act based on my envisioning of what was described.  Problem is, his envisioning is different and his descripton is just vague enough to allow either interpretation...

What follows is usually a fearsome argument.

This is why I use minis, so that everyone has roughly the same idea of how the various moving parts spatially correlate in situations like this.  For this set-up I'd probably make each square represent 50' or so, and place the various minis in a representational manner; it would also allow me to more clearly describe the course the wyverns were taking as they flew in (such things *always* get misinterpreted IME if just described or done TotM).



> The number of RPG tables which worry about the location of the sun, and hence (eg) the difficulties of shooting arrows at backlit foes, or the chance of momentary blindness from looking into ths sun, is - I assert - very very small.



I've never seen a table that wouldn't ask about the level of lighting in the defile if not told, as if it's in deep shadow who knows what could be hiding in there.

Which leads me to this: I'm wondering now if I've got a different view of this scene in my mind as "player" than you do as "GM".



> In Cortex+ Heroic, that risk is all subsumed into the Narrow Defile scene distinction.



Which, if "Narrow Deflie" doesn't have a clear definition somewhere in the system rules, is going to lead to a bunch of questions every time to draw out more specifics...at least, it would if I was playing. 



> Well, it discourages it.
> 
> I would say something more like:
> 
> You come into a small sunlit study. The scene distincitons are Stonewalled Room, Sheet-covered Furniture and Dust-covered Desk.​
> Oon this approach, if the players look for things on the desk - papers, boxes, whatever - then, given that we're talking about a hunt for something, that would (in mechanical terms) be about creating assets or resources. It probably wouldn't be built into the situation by the GM.
> 
> If the GM wants to make the box a feature, then an alternative would be:
> 
> You come into a small sunlit study. The scene distincitons are Sheet-covered Furniture, Dust-covered Desk and - on the desk - an Intriguing Box.​



That would be followed with a boatload of questions from me. 

Also, doesn't the system limit of so few distinctions - in a scene that might have many - tend to overmuch lead the PCs by the noses to where they need to go?  For example, you only mentioning as distinctions the Furniture, Desk and Box immediately tells me-as-player I can ignore the rug, the papers on the desk, the small chandelier*, the fireplace*, and the faded portraits* on the walls as they've all just been defined as irrelevant.  My PC, however, wouldn't know this.

* - not included in my original description but I throw them in now as things that could easily be in such a study

And another example of misinterpretation, in this case of a detailed description: in my narration I state the window looks out to the north, meaning that while the room is daylit it's unlikely to actually be sunlit unless it's early morning or late evening in the summer (and if such was the case I'd have amended the narration to suit).  Sunlit vs. daylit makes a huge difference to the ambient light level in the room; only being daylit means there'll be some dark shadowy corners, and with all this dust if someone lights a torch or candle during their search... 

Lan-"yeah, there's a reason I mention the dust three or four times in that narration: it's the room's hidden hazard"-efan


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Now, in 4e what I found was that its actually VERY easy to make it lethal. H1, Keep on the Shadowfell, in fact, the first 'real' 4e adventure, is QUITE deadly. It was noted for one particular section where really superior play was required in order to survive (the 'Irontooth' encounter). Many TPKs were issued at that point (though I never ran the module myself).



Oddly enough, that's one that I have run - I converted it for my game.  Ten years ago, mind you, so I don't remember the "Irontooth" encounter by that name.

It was nowhere near as deadly to the PCs as Keep on the Borderlands, whch I'd run shortly prior (first three adv's for that party were KotB, a homebrew one, then KotS renamed).  They were on average 2nd level throughout KotS, with some 3rds by the end.

I have grumbled about some elements of the way that thing was written ever since, but the level and type of oppostion was quite reasonable overall - no complaints there.



> There were though NUMEROUS 'valiant deaths' and similar situations. Its a lot easier to pull that off in 4e than in AD&D or B/X, etc. It just works a lot more reliably, but the actual baseline lethality is pretty ambiguous.



The sense I got from reading in here - and feel free to support or correct this - was that individual deaths were less common in 4e, but if one died chances were they'd all die as they'd tend to rise and fall together much more than in earlier editions.

Lan-"4e was designed for smaller parties than 0e-1e also, which plays into it"-efan


----------



## Bedrockgames

Lanefan said:


> This is in fact one of my own pet peeves and always has been, when people use these terms interchangeably.  It's annoying at the least, and adds greatly to confusion at the wosrt.
> 
> Lan-"I've killed many a character but have yet to kill a player, though there's occasionally been times of severe tempation..."-efan




Well, sorry to hear that, but I use them interchangeably unless I think it isn't clear from context (and even then, I honestly am not too concerned about it). Hate to sound like a jerk (and not trying to be one), but I am not going to change the way I talk or communicate because someone on a forum gets annoyed or finds it lacks precision.


----------



## darkbard

Imaro said:


> Irregardless of why the DM would/could manipulate the DC's...




No matter how many times you write "irregardless" (and I've seen you use it a dozen times, at least), it is still not a word. Use "regardless" or "irrespective of" in its place. Grammar has no bearing on your argument, and I'm not trying to "take you down"; I am simply an English professor with just enough ingrained pedantry not to pass up an opportunity for education.



Imaro said:


> It is still a limiter on player agency because determining the DC is DM whim.  Even if you tell the PC's what the DC is it still is determined (and thus their chance of success) by you.  Like I said earlier DW is an example of a game where this is truly mitigated but in 4e that's not the case.  In the same way secret backstory can limit the agency of players so can subjective DC's.  It doesn't have to be a purposeful manipulation... *Unless you are being transparent with how you come to choose your DC's*, your players are unaware of the conscious and subconscious biases that lead to choosing one DC vs. another.  That is a limiter on agency and is an unknown in the same way that secret backstory is unknown.




In my game the default is the Moderate DC; I'm not choosing DC difficulty willy-nilly. If circumstances are particularly favorable or unfavorable for a check, resulting in an Easy or Hard DC, that _is_ explicitly discussed. There are some circumstances that would call for an Easy or Hard DC as the default (one example is more complex SCs include one or more Hard checks), but, again, those are made clear to the players; they are not set to GM whim.





Imaro said:


> Wait what?  Unless the players can now frame their own adversaries, which I haven't seen an example of so far how is this remotely true?   [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has chosen the adversaries that his players have faced in the "story"  as far as I can tell and a red dragon could easily be framed as opposition to numerous goals.  This isn't really making any sense. unless you are now saying that nothing is allowed to be created without the players "ok" in Stoiry Now gaming... is that the case?




I am certainly not suggesting [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] does not choose his adversaries, nor that I do mine. I am explaining that adversaries are introduced with regard to their salience in play, not as "gotcha" impossible foes or obstacles, which would be in direct opposition to the "fail forward" maxim. (And this, of course, is not to say that PCs do not fail in declared actions, do not face serious risks of death, etc. Failing forward and failure are not mutually exclusive!)



Lanefan said:


> The Luke's toilet?




All this talk of Burning Wheel lately (Luke Crane) must have my left middle finger confused with my right ring finger! 



Lanefan said:


> TheJust as an aside question: in a DM-driven game the DM can now and then introduce non-genre-convention stuff into the game e.g. a spaceship into a sword-and-sorcery setting.  How could this be done (if at all) in story-now where the players can't declare out of genre and the DM has to stick with what the players are doing?




I can only address how I would handle this: In my game, if there were to be genre-defying elements, we, as a group, would have to have agreed upon them in advance of play, something like "Okay, we've decided to play a game focused on Bronze Age hunters faced with a new ice age who seek to discover a refuge for their people against the encroaching glaciers. But the human inhabitants of the world are actually descendents of aliens who crashed on the planet millenia ago, so some few relics of this ancient history may occasionally become part of play."

I wouldn't just add elements like this if they weren't agreed upon and didn't speak to group expectations in some way.


----------



## Bedrockgames

darkbard said:


> No matter how many times you write "irregardless" (and I've seen you use it a dozen times, at least), it is still not a word. Use "regardless" or "irrespective of" in its place. Grammar has no bearing on your argument, and I'm not trying to "take you down"; I am simply an English professor with just enough ingrained pedantry not to pass up an opportunity for education.




Really, your correcting the guy's grammar? My experience is most people who use this word, understand this, but use it because that is how people around them talk. I use all kinds of regional language I know isn't technically good grammar.


----------



## Bedrockgames

darkbard said:


> I am certainly not suggesting [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] does not choose his adversaries, nor that I do mine. I am explaining that adversaries are introduced with regard to their salience in play, not as "gotcha" impossible foes or obstacles, which would be in direct opposition to the "fail forward" maxim. (And this, of course, is not to say that PCs do not fail in declared actions, do not face serious risks of death, etc. Failing forward and failure are not mutually exclusive!)
> .




I realize you didn't specifically make this argument, but it has been suggested by others in other posts, other styles of play are not usually about 'playing gotcha' with adversary and obstacle placement. Just because a person isn't using fail forward or story now, it doesn't mean all the things they introduce are there to simply screw the players. Most GMs I know place things because they make sense to be there for some reason (i.e. this NPC really, really wants to protect his gold so he is going to place a clever and potentially lethal trap inside the main entrance to the vault). There are different points of view on how easy or hard that should be to figure and detect out in play. But if you are in a campaign where such a threat is hard to see, you know you are in such a campaign. You are not blind-sided when there is a lethal trap in the vault to the treasure, because you understand those are the kinds of threats that exist in this world (and you are probably not just going to walk straight into a vault).


----------



## Imaro

darkbard said:


> No matter how many times you write "irregardless" (and I've seen you use it a dozen times, at least), it is still not a word. Use "regardless" or "irrespective of" in its place. Grammar has no bearing on your argument, and I'm not trying to "take you down"; I am simply an English professor with just enough ingrained pedantry not to pass up an opportunity for education.




Thanks for the "education" but forum posting isn't formal writing so I think it'll be fine if I continue to use it, especially since the "word" has been in use since 1927 according to Merriam.  Oh and technically not generally accepted it is in fact a word.  Here you go teacher...

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irregardless



darkbard said:


> In my game the default is the Moderate DC; I'm not choosing DC difficulty willy-nilly. If circumstances are particularly favorable or unfavorable for a check, resulting in an Easy or Hard DC, that _is_ explicitly discussed. There are some circumstances that would call for an Easy or Hard DC as the default (one example is more complex SCs include one or more Hard checks), but, again, those are made clear to the players; they are not set to GM whim.




Ok now we are getting into your particular house rules but standard 4e let's the GM set the difficulty and none of it's outlined play procedures call for you to explicitly discuss said ruling with the players.  You modify a game enough and you can get it to do anything. 




darkbard said:


> I am certainly not suggesting  @_*pemerton*_ does not choose his adversaries, nor that I do mine. I am explaining that adversaries are introduced with regard to their salience in play, not as "gotcha" impossible foes or obstacles, which would be in direct opposition to the "fail forward" maxim. (And this, of course, is not to say that PCs do not fail in declared actions, do not face serious risks of death, etc. Failing forward and failure are not mutually exclusive!)




The red dragon doesn't have to be a "gotcha" impossible foe.  Is talking, bribing, sneaking past it, etc... not options in Story Now?  Even if for some reason the only possible choice they have is to leap head long into a battle with the dragon... I stated they have a slim chance to win... and couldn't they loose the battle and not fail forward in Story Now?  So I'll ask again, is the GM's choice of adversaries a limiter on player agency in the way @_*pemerton*_ defines it?




darkbard said:


> I can only address how I would handle this: In my game, if there were to be genre-defying elements, we, as a group, would have to have agreed upon them in advance of play, something like "Okay, we've decided to play a game focused on Bronze Age hunters faced with a new ice age who seek to discover a refuge for their people against the encroaching glaciers. But the human inhabitants of the world are actually descendents of aliens who crashed on the planet millenia ago, so some few relics of this ancient history may occasionally become part of play."
> 
> I wouldn't just add elements like this if they weren't agreed upon and didn't speak to group expectations in some way.




I know this isn't addressed to me but this really feels extremely limiting as a GM... I'm starting to realize that this playstyle, while great for those who enjoy it (and I could definitely see myself stealing some techniques from it) just doesn't deliver what I want out of GM'ing a game.  In the same way that the players are free to control their characters I want a way to express my creativity that doesn't involve a committee decision to ok it.   Can I ask in this style what exactly does the GM own (in the same way players own their characters)... it's not the world, it's not the setting, it's not the adversaries, it's not the genre... so what exactly is it?  Or does the GM ultimately own nothing, have no outlet for his creativity that doesn't involve the other players approval whether implicitly or explicitly given?


----------



## darkbard

Imaro said:


> Thanks for the "education" but forum posting isn't formal writing so I think it'll be fine if I continue to use it, especially since the "word" has been in use since 1927 according to Merriam.  Oh and technically not generally accepted it is in fact a word.  Here you go teacher...
> 
> https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irregardless




No need to get snippy. You use the word the way you want to. I thought, though, that since you use it frequently you may wish to know the correct usage, and I hoped to correct you in a polite, even self-deprecating manner (see my playful self-teasing regarding pedantry). 

Frequent misspellings and incorrect usages have long been included in dictionaries for use in reference. That doesn't make them correct usage, however.

Now back to your regularly scheduled discussion.

Here is what I wrote regarding the setting of DCs initially, and your response:



darkbard said:


> That's not a limit on player agency any more than the orc's  A.C. is. GM judgment is still a thing in Story Now gaming!






Imaro said:


> That is a limit on player agency... If I know Bob's character sucks at stealth and I want to shape the story so that he can't sneak up easily, I use the hard DC.  The only way it's not would be in a system like [MENTION=9200]Hawkeye[/MENTION] described Dungeon World to be... a set DC for all actions and only your attributes and abilities modify it.
> 
> As to your example about the Orc's AC... *Let me pose this question, is choosing to stick a red dragon the characters only have a slim chance to beat at 1st level into an adventure.*.. limiting their agency as   [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] describes it?






darkbard said:


> That'sIf the GM frames the PCs into a meeting with such a dragon as the outcome of some failed check, (1) the GM is obliged to build off player cues, so they must have indicated a desire to encounter such a dragon for it to be salient, (2) the stakes would have been set prior to resolution, so if they fail the roll, they get what they bargain for, (3) red dragons can be made to be level appropriate foes even for first level characters in 4E, and (4) why would you presume such an encounter would be combat, and fight-to-the-death combat at that? More likely, such an outcome of some failed action would be the initiation of a skill challenge, perhaps to escape a threatening red dragon.




Now you ask:



Imaro said:


> The red dragon doesn't have to be a "gotcha" impossible foe.  Is talking, bribing, sneaking past it, etc... not options in Story Now?  Even if for some reason the only possible choice they have is to leap head long into a battle with the dragon... I stated they have a slim chance to win... and couldn't they loose the battle and not fail forward in Story Now?  So I'll ask again, is the GM's choice of adversaries a limiter on player agency in the way @_*pemerton*_ defines it?




It sure seems to me your example of the red dragon IS meant to be an example of the GM limiting player agency in the same manner as "rocks fall; everyone dies." *I* was the one suggesting other ways such a GM-placed foe could not be a limiting factor on player agency.



Imaro said:


> Ok now we are getting into your particular house rules but standard 4e let's the GM set the difficulty and none of it's outlined play procedures call for you to explicitly discuss said ruling with the players.  You modify a game enough and you can get it to do anything.




As far as I can tell, both  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] and I run fairly straightforward 4E games in Story Now mode.  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] runs his own Story Now with a hack of 4E, which serves as the framework. 4E isn't explicitly a Story Now game, though it supports its play. 



Imaro said:


> I know this isn't addressed to me but this really feels extremely limiting as a GM... I'm starting to realize that this playstyle, while great for those who enjoy it (and I could definitely see myself stealing some techniques from it) just doesn't deliver what I want out of GM'ing a game.  In the same way that the players are free to control their characters I want a way to express my creativity that doesn't involve a committee decision to ok it.   Can I ask in this style what exactly does the GM own (in the same way players own their characters)... it's not the world, it's not the setting, it's not the adversaries, it's not the genre... so what exactly is it?  Or does the GM ultimately own nothing, have no outlet for his creativity that doesn't involve the other players approval whether implicitly or explicitly given?




I feel like I have plenty of creative outlet. My creativity is expressed through framing scenes and implementing new elements as the outcome of failed PC action declarations. To have agreed to run a stock Points of Light campaign, as just one example, doesn't feel limiting to me. I have a whole range of fantasy tropes at my disposal; I'm just going to do my best to bring those tropes to bear on PC interests and in accord with the limits of genre established by the group at the outset!


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> Just as an aside question: in a DM-driven game the DM can now and then introduce non-genre-convention stuff into the game e.g. a spaceship into a sword-and-sorcery setting.  How could this be done (if at all) in story-now where the players can't declare out of genre and the DM has to stick with what the players are doing?



 Wow, talk about 'bug vs feature.'  Yes, D&D was a child of the 70s, with all the grace and dignity that implies.  There's nothing in the rules of D&D per se, that 'allows' (or prevents) the DM from dropping a spaceship into what had otherwise been a very poorly-emulated High-Fantasy/S&S-sub-genre FRPG - indeed, Temple of the Frog did exactly that, nor was it alone.  

If there's a table convention that you actually stick to one genre, that genre can be High Fantasy or S&S or Planetary Romance, or goofy Science-Fantasy.  You just have to own up to it earlier.  You can't bait-and switch, offering Tolkienesque High Fantasy and then delivering Sid&Marty-Kroft-esque science-fantasy.



Lanefan said:


> That - and the reverse, for example doing story-now in 1e D&D - is only true if you take the view that the game/campaign/style of play is subservient to the system rather than the system being subservient to the game.  It's always possible to make something work given enough kitbashing of the rules - it just sometimes takes more effort than it's really worth.



 Whether your drop one system and try a new one, or extensive modify a system to make it work for your game/campaign/style of play, you're not 'making the system subservient to the game,' you're changing to a different system.  By the same token, when you pick a system that works up-front, for the game/campaign/style of play you want, that's not making your style 'subservient to the system,' it's just doing some legwork to find a system that's a good fit, instead of a lot of design work to 'fix' a system to make it fit.




Lanefan said:


> This is in fact one of my own pet peeves and always has been, when people use these terms interchangeably.  It's annoying at the least, and adds greatly to confusion at the wosrt.



 I'm surprised, because I'd expect you to be over on the immersion/first-person end of the spectrum.  

But, yes, it bothers some and seem meaningless to others.  Obviously if you say a character chooses a feat or a PC rolls the dice, you mean the player.  Obviously if you say a player was turned to stone by a medusa, you mean that player's character.  ;P



pemerton said:


> I can tell you, forcing Gygax's AD&D into "story now" service is not easy.



 Forcing 1e AD&D into /any/ style, including Gygax's own quasi-adversarial 'skilled play' style, is not easy.  It's just not an easy game no matter how you use it.  It's like trying to spin circuit boards out of primordial sludge.



> Trying to do dungeon crawling of the classic D&D variety would be impossible, or near enough to, using Cortex+ Heroic.



 Telling a story of a dungeon crawl - the one dungeon crawl in decades of campaigns that made a good story when you retell it again & again, that is - would be quite possible, though, wouldn't it?



> Of course you can introduce new rules if you want, and take out the rules that get in the way, but that doesn't show that any system can do anything; it shows that _if you design the right system_, it can do what you want.



 Modding systems is design work, yes.  I kinda don't want to admit that to myself, because I love to hide behind "I'm not a designer!"


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> What if a player (intentionally or otherwise) forces you to introduce a fourth element - say, she tries to climb one of the cliffs along the defile, so now you have to worry about a Steep Cliff issue.  What then?



If a player wants ihs/her PC to climb a cliff, that is either an action declaration to create an asset (along the lines of High Up the Cliff) or else mere colour.

If the GM thinks that Steep Cliffs could be an obstacle to creating such an asset, s/he can spend a d8 from the Doom Pool to establish that scene distinction, and then include it in the pool rolled to oppose the asset creation.


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> Telling a story of a dungeon crawl - the one dungeon crawl in decades of campaigns that made a good story when you retell it again & again, that is - would be quite possible, though, wouldn't it?



I don't quite follow, so I'm going to give a literal response: classic dungeon crawling involves maps, movement rates, wandering monster checks, the GM having the capacity to establish hidden threats, etc.

Cortex+ Heroic uses none of those devices. You can see the contrast in my conversation with [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] - no maps or minis, broad-brush scene distinctions, what would be tactical moves in a dungeon crawl being the establishment of assets by way of opposed checks in Cortex+, etc.

When the action in my current Cortex+ Fantasy game happened in a dungeon, one PC found a secret door (estabished a Secret Door asset); the PCs got teleported away by a Crypt Thing (the Doom Pool built up to 2d12, and I spent those to end the scene); the PCs deciphered mysterious sigils (I narrated a Mysterious Sigils scene distinction, and one of the players had his PC use that to establish something along the lines of an Information About the Dungeon asset); etc.

As a narrative, it was a dungeon crawl. But as a play experience, it was nothing like a classic dungeon crawl.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> I don't quite follow...
> As a narrative, it was a dungeon crawl. But as a play experience, it was nothing like a classic dungeon crawl.



 After you've completed a classic dungeon crawl, those of you who survived could recount the narrative of it.  If that narrative actually made a good story, you might very well be able to tell a similar story using an entirely different, more narrative-oriented system.  

It's kinda a monkeys typing Shakespear thing.  In a classic dungeon crawl, you put together all these elements of a possible story, with fairly arbitrary checks attached to them, and a lot of oddball gaming conventions, and, on rare occasions, they may all align in a way that creates a compelling story ("Story Later," I guess).  You could use a different system to tell a story like that, or even, hypothetically, the same story.  For instance, I could re-package the story of a successful dungeon crawl in a "Story First" style, and push/pull some players through it, generating about the same story for them.  Similarly, by sheer coincidence, a "Story Now" group doing a story about a dungeon crawl using the same elements, might come up with the same story, too.

No?


----------



## Lanefan

darkbard said:


> All this talk of Burning Wheel lately (Luke Crane) must have my left middle finger confused with my right ring finger!





And here I was, thinking you were going all obscure Star Wars on us. 



> I can only address how I would handle this: In my game, if there were to be genre-defying elements, we, as a group, would have to have agreed upon them in advance of play, something like "Okay, we've decided to play a game focused on Bronze Age hunters faced with a new ice age who seek to discover a refuge for their people against the encroaching glaciers. But the human inhabitants of the world are actually descendents of aliens who crashed on the planet millenia ago, so some few relics of this ancient history may occasionally become part of play."
> 
> I wouldn't just add elements like this if they weren't agreed upon and didn't speak to group expectations in some way.



So, no opportunity to surprise the players with something out of left field.  I understand the rationale, but still think it's a pity.

Lanefan


----------



## darkbard

Lanefan said:


> So, no opportunity to surprise the players with something out of left field.  I understand the rationale, but still think it's a pity.
> 
> Lanefan




There are still surprises aplenty; they're just not out of left field, as you say.


----------



## Maxperson

Imaro said:


> Thanks for the "education" but forum posting isn't formal writing so I think it'll be fine if I continue to use it, especially since the "word" has been in use since 1927 according to Merriam.  Oh and technically not generally accepted it is in fact a word.  Here you go teacher...
> 
> https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irregardless




To be fair, even that link says that it's not a generally accepted usage and that you should use regardless.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> I am just commenting on what I saw. But I said from the start, this is a very common tactic. I think the reason Pemerton gets it so much is because he is effective at it (and posts a lot). But I laid out three points for avoiding this kind of thing (i.e. use descriptive definitions, Don't equivocate, etc)




Yeah, again, you were not there in the earlier part of the thread where this whole 'agency debate' started. Pemerton explained himself pretty cogently, and then Maxperson basically took this "well, I don't like that you have this 'agency' thing in your game, I'm going to claim it as mine too!" and all of a sudden he's got his own 'definition'.

Its not even a good definition, what is it a definition of? Basically when Max claims he's got "just as much agency" in his game, he's defining agency as PLAYING AN RPG AT ALL! Its a meaningless definition! It adds nothing to the analysis at hand, so why even make this point except for rhetorical purposes? And then to accuse PEMERTON of being the one who's got a mean on simply because he actually usefully described a characteristic of his game and Max had to... I won't go down the path of characterizing Max, but lets put it this way, it wasn't useful or helpful to the discussion.

Now, sometimes we all do this, we see something someone says and it just bugs us and we try to come up with some counterargument, and maybe it works and maybe it doesn't. Max's didn't really work. Yet 100 pages on it lives on as a bloody flag that keeps getting waved! lol.


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, again, you were not there in the earlier part of the thread where this whole 'agency debate' started. Pemerton explained himself pretty cogently, and then Maxperson basically took this "well, I don't like that you have this 'agency' thing in your game, I'm going to claim it as mine too!" and all of a sudden he's got his own 'definition'.
> 
> Its not even a good definition, what is it a definition of? Basically when Max claims he's got "just as much agency" in his game, he's defining agency as PLAYING AN RPG AT ALL! Its a meaningless definition! It adds nothing to the analysis at hand, so why even make this point except for rhetorical purposes? And then to accuse PEMERTON of being the one who's got a mean on simply because he actually usefully described a characteristic of his game and Max had to... I won't go down the path of characterizing Max, but lets put it this way, it wasn't useful or helpful to the discussion.
> 
> Now, sometimes we all do this, we see something someone says and it just bugs us and we try to come up with some counterargument, and maybe it works and maybe it doesn't. Max's didn't really work. Yet 100 pages on it lives on as a bloody flag that keeps getting waved! lol.




I don't know what occurred in the thread, and again, no interest in delving into a 200+ page thread. Nor am I interested in taking anyone's word on what happened (whether it is you Max or Pemerton). But I will say, even if he did define it well, I have seen most people use it to mean something other than what he seems to be saying. I can see how an argument around what agency means would develop. 

I don't think your accurately describing Max's definition though. He offers a definition, I offer a definition (of how we see it used). I thought my definition was perfectly workable. It may not be how  Pemerton plays or uses the term, and that is fine, but it isn't just me describing any amount of roleplaying. For us agency is about letting the players explore freely. For us it doesn't mean the setting has to respond to their wishes though. For us it is a session without railroads or similar constraints, where the GM reasonably considers any action we take or any direction we go, and will respond in a way that is sensible and probably exciting. You guys seem to think that is isn't real freedom for some reason (at least that is the impression I am getting). Gaming is pretty balkanized so people come into discussions using the same terms differently. And it isn't like I haven' been in these conversations before. There is a clique here that uses a lot of GNS terminology. But that terminology isn't widely embraced and even when it is, it often has taken on drastically different meaning from how it was used at the forge and places like it.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> You know one of the things that I find strange about @_*pemerton*_'s claims about his specific type of player agency and his playstyle is that while it isn't decided by secret backstory... player agency is still decided by the GM.
> 
> If on a successful check the fiction the player desires is realized (example: there is a secret door) and on a failed check the fiction the player desires is not realized (example: There is no secret door)... who sets the standard for success around the said action (and thus the realization or non-realization of the player's desired fiction?  Doesn't whoever decides this in turn limit or even control player agency.  Unless we are talking about a game that has objectively defined criteria to meet for every action then the GM does in fact have power to limit and even negate (impossible DC's) player agency.  Am I missing something here or is it specifically negation through secret backstory as opposed to say negation through setting of DC's or modifiers that counts?  Because I see both as limiters of player agency.




Well, many narrative focus games determine difficulty more by dramatic salience, or set it at milieu determined values. 4e for example, DCs are mostly determined by the level of the environment the PCs are in, and that is usually assumed to be roughly at the level of the party, unless the players deliberately venture into deeper waters or paddle around in the shallow end of things. PACE provides the GM with a specific budget from which to generate difficulty levels, effectively. There is also a slush fund in that game to allow for 'raises'. Players likewise have a budget of points to spend on increased chances of success, the GM has no specific say in how hard tasks are as a general principle.

I believe similar mechanics are in effect in other games. Cortex+ Heroic has specific budgets for instance, and a Doom Pool. 

Clearly GMs have some sort of input into difficulty in a general sense, they usually present options that are more or less difficult. Usually in narrativist play the players decide what stakes to wager, with greater rewards requiring greater risks.


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Now, sometimes we all do this, we see something someone says and it just bugs us and we try to come up with some counterargument, and maybe it works and maybe it doesn't. Max's didn't really work. Yet 100 pages on it lives on as a bloody flag that keeps getting waved! lol.




Half of these online gaming discussions we invest so much time in are worthless. A lot of it is people outsmarting each other and scoring points, or winning debates but never really hearing or engaging each other. Usually people get fed up and leave, or they convert because they've been rhetorically beaten into submission. I think what Max is experiencing is something like this, where you've been dogpiled on a thread and feel like you are losing the argument, but you KNOW you are right because you know own experience at the table. I've lost countless of debates with people online about this kind of thing. But I don't let it change my mind, because I've had way too many experiences where I figure out where the flaw in the other person's logic was weeks down the line. In the intensity of an online debate, that is hard to spot sometimes. But at the end of the day, what matters is real table play. Not good sounding arguments.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> No I disagree... you say 4e has set DC's that are level appropriate but it's still the DM who decides whether it's a hard/moderate or easy check and thus limits player agency through his determination of which of these to use (and in a case where you're actually determining whether things exist I wonder what the process is for determining which to use say in the case of a secret dorr nbeing in a hallway or not) ... all that aside the determination of which DC to use is DM whim.




Not really. The Rules Companion Skill Challenge rules state flat out how many of which types of checks are used in each complexity of challenge, along with how many 'advantages' the players can deploy, and how many setbacks/obstacles the GM can get. Given that the game conceives of all major plot significant events being either an SC or a Combat Encounter I think its actually QUITE explicit. Even in the original SC rules it was still stated that 'most' checks should be moderate difficulty. 

I mean, 4e does allow for, and clearly anticipates, the existence of checks OUTSIDE of those used in any encounter, but in MANY cases the DCs for these are pretty fixed (IE if a monster is concealed then its Stealth is a value generated by a known objective process). Likewise rituals, a major use of checks outside encounters, are entirely cut-and-dried. Every ritual specifies the related skill, and the effects of different check results. This is pretty much true for powers as well, either in or out of combat.

Certainly there are ways that GMs can generate more or less difficult check situations, but its not as easy as just setting any old DC. Not if you play by the rules. This is, interestingly, a pretty standard admonishment to narrativist GMs, you have to play by the rules (PbtA is very explicit about this).


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, again, you were not there in the earlier part of the thread where this whole 'agency debate' started. Pemerton explained himself pretty cogently, and then Maxperson basically took this "well, I don't like that you have this 'agency' thing in your game, I'm going to claim it as mine too!" and all of a sudden he's got his own 'definition'.




Wow!  The sheer amount of fabrication in this post is astounding.

First, I didn't take "agency."  The definition I use is the standard definition.  It's the one used by virtually everyone in this thread outside of you, @_*pemerton*_, and @_*darkbard*_.  @_*pemerton*_ invented a new one whole cloth for this thread.  I disputed that it was the definition, but have since given up that fight and he can have his invented definition of agency.



> Its not even a good definition, what is it a definition of? Basically when Max claims he's got "just as much agency" in his game, he's defining agency as PLAYING AN RPG AT ALL! Its a meaningless definition! It adds nothing to the analysis at hand, so why even make this point except for rhetorical purposes? And then to accuse PEMERTON of being the one who's got a mean on simply because he actually usefully described a characteristic of his game and Max had to...




ROFL.  The fail in that claim is huge.  It's a general and useful definition.  And no, it isn't defined as playing the game at all.  It's defined as having control over your PC's actions, which you can lose while still playing the game.  Railroad anyone?



> I won't go down the path of characterizing Max, but lets put it this way, it wasn't useful or helpful to the discussion.



No no.  Your fiction about what I have been doing in this thread is pretty darn entertaining.  I want to hear what you were going to fabricate about my character.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> You're addressing the specific example and not the general point.  Irregardless of why the DM would/could manipulate the DC's... It is still a limiter on player agency because determining the DC is DM whim.  Even if you tell the PC's what the DC is it still is determined (and thus their chance of success) by you.  Like I said earlier DW is an example of a game where this is truly mitigated but in 4e that's not the case.  In the same way secret backstory can limit the agency of players so can subjective DC's.  It doesn't have to be a purposeful manipulation... Unless you are being transparent with how you come to choose your DC's, your players are unaware of the conscious and subconscious biases that lead to choosing one DC vs. another.  That is a limiter on agency and is an unknown in the same way that secret backstory is unknown.



Much less than you seem to think. I mean, sure, in 4e as written, a GM could present the characters with impossible 200' jumps (DC effectively based on distance) mazes of hazardous terrain, etc. This is not in accord with the encounter design guidelines, and certainly not in accord with the SC mechanics. There IS 'wiggle room' though, to an extent. 4e is only a marginally Story Now SYSTEM though, and GMs using it as such need to keep that in mind. My own 'hack' of 4e is much more rigid in this regard, you really cannot generate arbitrary DCs in HoML. The most you can do is present a situation as being higher level than the party, and thus high stakes. 

I do find this discussion interesting though in terms of helping to point out the significance of this feature of narrativist games. 



> Wait what?  Unless the players can now frame their own adversaries, which I haven't seen an example of so far how is this remotely true?  @_*pemerton*_ has chosen the adversaries that his players have faced in the "story"  as far as I can tell and a red dragon could easily be framed as opposition to numerous goals.  This isn't really making any sense. unless you are now saying that nothing is allowed to be created without the players "ok" in Stoiry Now gaming... is that the case?




It is the players story, in large part, the story of their PCs to be precise. So, yeah. I mean, sure, a GM could say to himself "The characters love the village and they set themselves up as its champions, I'll put a Red Dragon in front of them and let them decide which dies, them or the village." but to me that's pretty dirty pool, though I guess it could be OK in a grimdark sort of concept game. Even then, the GM is still not empowered to simply make the thing arbitrarily difficult. If he DOES then the players are owed some arbitrarily large reward for success! 

Frankly, a 'Kobiyashi Maru' scenario is not totally out of bounds, but really needs to be done in a way that works and isn't underhanded. The closest I ever got to this was setting a Traveler game on a doomed space station, without telling the players ahead of time what the scenario was. I wanted to evoke the whole experience of coming to a realization that their fate was inexorable. However, it was all new characters, a starting scenario, and I know all those players. The 'truth' was not beat into them with a stick either, the whole thing involved the process of realization and dealing with it. It was still tricky, though it turned out really well. By the time everyone died, the end was somehow fitting.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Tony Vargas said:


> And, if they haven't?  If they've stated a desire to avoid draconic entanglements?




It depends. You are into the weeds of narrative systems here. I mean, lets say the players had a choice to go mess with a dragon, and it didn't seem to really match with any of their existing goals/whatever, and nobody took the bait. In that case the GM is well-advised to drop it. Maybe the dragon can appear in some sort of other role where it could become relevant or at least apropos. It could appear as mere color. 

If the players HAVE established an agenda that the GM can apply tension to with a Red Dragon, then it kinda depends. How explicitly was the 'desire to avoid' expressed? Did the PCs take actions to mitigate any chance of encountering the dragon? Did those actions succeed? Well, then that success should be respected, although the GM is free to point out that certain future actions could "rouse the dragon again" or something. Clearly the PCs wouldn't be taking THOSE actions, or it wouldn't be 'avoiding entanglements'.

So, really, it SHOULD be up to the players, but the PCs might have to do something like feed it a cute girl now and then!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> The Luke's toilet?
> 
> Just as an aside question: in a DM-driven game the DM can now and then introduce non-genre-convention stuff into the game e.g. a spaceship into a sword-and-sorcery setting.  How could this be done (if at all) in story-now where the players can't declare out of genre and the DM has to stick with what the players are doing?




Interesting question. I'd say there should be some sort of level of consultation, or maybe the GM does it based on a knowledge of the players and what they like, coupled with the tone of the game. I mean, fantasy OFTEN mixes in some sci-fi, just look at Terry Brooks Shenarra novels.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> This is why I use minis, so that everyone has roughly the same idea of how the various moving parts spatially correlate in situations like this.  For this set-up I'd probably make each square represent 50' or so, and place the various minis in a representational manner; it would also allow me to more clearly describe the course the wyverns were taking as they flew in (such things *always* get misinterpreted IME if just described or done TotM).



Here we have common ground my friend. I love me my minis and battlemat! 



> Also, doesn't the system limit of so few distinctions - in a scene that might have many - tend to overmuch lead the PCs by the noses to where they need to go?  For example, you only mentioning as distinctions the Furniture, Desk and Box immediately tells me-as-player I can ignore the rug, the papers on the desk, the small chandelier*, the fireplace*, and the faded portraits* on the walls as they've all just been defined as irrelevant.  My PC, however, wouldn't know this.




I would say 'so what' myself... 

I mean, dramatically, what is the difference between "I search these 3 places" and "I search these 17 places", except one is a lot quicker and to the point. Chances are, if there's anything to be found, it will simply be found when the search progresses to that point, which it INEVITABLY will if the PCs are in a search mode (why wouldn't they search thoroughly). From a narrative standpoint, failure is not interesting in these types of situation, as a rule. If there's a time constraint, or a hazard, then I'd emphasize that over the particulars of which thing was searched in a list of things (IE make a check to search quickly enough to find X before Y happens, or make a check to perceive the hazard, then get the 'stuff').


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

darkbard said:


> No matter how many times you write "irregardless" (and I've seen you use it a dozen times, at least), it is still not a word. Use "regardless" or "irrespective of" in its place. Grammar has no bearing on your argument, and I'm not trying to "take you down"; I am simply an English professor with just enough ingrained pedantry not to pass up an opportunity for education.




If people use it as a word, then its a word, lol. You may irlike it, but you cannot irregard it!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> I realize you didn't specifically make this argument, but it has been suggested by others in other posts, other styles of play are not usually about 'playing gotcha' with adversary and obstacle placement. Just because a person isn't using fail forward or story now, it doesn't mean all the things they introduce are there to simply screw the players. Most GMs I know place things because they make sense to be there for some reason (i.e. this NPC really, really wants to protect his gold so he is going to place a clever and potentially lethal trap inside the main entrance to the vault). There are different points of view on how easy or hard that should be to figure and detect out in play. But if you are in a campaign where such a threat is hard to see, you know you are in such a campaign. You are not blind-sided when there is a lethal trap in the vault to the treasure, because you understand those are the kinds of threats that exist in this world (and you are probably not just going to walk straight into a vault).




Right, and genre expectations play into this as well, heists ALWAYS have some sort of nasty traps! 

There are some styles of play where gotcha! can be a mode of play, Gygax definitely used it in some cases, but I don't think it was USUALLY intended to be something arbitrary, like a lethal trap in some random location (Tomb of Horrors being the exception, but you should KNOW the whole dungeon is a death trap anyway, could also be considered a genre convention). 

My experience with 'classic' D&D-type play is GMs mostly don't do dick stuff, but there were always a few uncouth types who didn't get the word (or they were just 14 and did it anyway, what can you say). So its not really a 'system' issue, as you say. Fourth Core adventures were also filled with gotchas, but there was a big label on them too...


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> Ok now we are getting into your particular house rules but standard 4e let's the GM set the difficulty and none of it's outlined play procedures call for you to explicitly discuss said ruling with the players.  You modify a game enough and you can get it to do anything.



Eh, I kinda disagree, mildly. In 4e every element is normally 'level+0', and the GM is given, basically, a 'budget' in which to place some higher and lower level items (this is discussed in DMG1, though it isn't explained in budget terms this is effectively what it is). SCs are normally just assumed to be 'level+0', I don't think there's really a discussion of having them be anything else, but its an obvious possibility. Within SCs there's a budget of so many easy/medium/hard checks. 

4e leaves some 'outs' for the GM to sneak in harder/easier checks, but if you strictly follow the adventure design guidelines those should be mostly closed (IE you don't make 500' cliffs at level 1). 4e STRONGLY ties difficulties to actual details of fiction too, so its clear that you don't have a pool full of acid that does 40hp/round of damage in a level 1 encounter area, the terrain section provides a pretty thorough list of terrains and there are solid rules on damage outputs and DCs.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> I don't know what occurred in the thread, and again, no interest in delving into a 200+ page thread. Nor am I interested in taking anyone's word on what happened (whether it is you Max or Pemerton). But I will say, even if he did define it well, I have seen most people use it to mean something other than what he seems to be saying. I can see how an argument around what agency means would develop.
> 
> I don't think your accurately describing Max's definition though. He offers a definition, I offer a definition (of how we see it used). I thought my definition was perfectly workable. It may not be how  Pemerton plays or uses the term, and that is fine, but it isn't just me describing any amount of roleplaying. For us agency is about letting the players explore freely. For us it doesn't mean the setting has to respond to their wishes though. For us it is a session without railroads or similar constraints, where the GM reasonably considers any action we take or any direction we go, and will respond in a way that is sensible and probably exciting. You guys seem to think that is isn't real freedom for some reason (at least that is the impression I am getting). Gaming is pretty balkanized so people come into discussions using the same terms differently. And it isn't like I haven' been in these conversations before. There is a clique here that uses a lot of GNS terminology. But that terminology isn't widely embraced and even when it is, it often has taken on drastically different meaning from how it was used at the forge and places like it.




OK, I think its 'freedom', yes, but so is being supplied with oxygen, yet we wouldn't say that being so supplied is the same as being totally free. More to the point, EVERYONE has your form of agency in all but the most utterly degenerate of RPGing experiences, and I think we all agree it is pointless to talk about games where 'rocks fall and you die'. 

So, I agree that there is a freedom to play your character, but I think its also clear that if the GM puts the character in a cage and no actions are feasible, that this freedom is then meaningless, right? So there ARE degrees of agency, its not just 'all the same', right?

Beyond that, if Pemerton says that another form of agency exists, which is expressed in terms of the players being able to choose what the 'direction of play' is (or at least have a lot of input on that in a direct sense, like introducing new elements to scenes such as secret doors) then that is something that isn't covered by the definition of agency you are using.

Is it really all that hard to see what Pemerton then means when he says there's a 'greater agency'? Beyond that he just pointed out what I said here, that your definition of agency really just describes RPGs IN GENERAL, that all of them must have this characteristic to be even worth discussing, so why do we need to spend time on that really? 

Max's notion that one 'balances the other' somehow just never made sense. Not to me. It wasn't really even germane.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Beyond that, if Pemerton says that another form of agency exists, which is expressed in terms of the players being able to choose what the 'direction of play' is (or at least have a lot of input on that in a direct sense, like introducing new elements to scenes such as secret doors) then that is something that isn't covered by the definition of agency you are using.




Why does it matter if it's covered by the agency that we are using?  His agency doesn't cover things that our agency covers, and that doesn't matter, either.  We are playing different games, so why try to compare apples and oranges?



> Is it really all that hard to see what Pemerton then means when he says there's a 'greater agency'?




You can't get any higher than 100%, so it's not possible for his to be greater than mine.  It's just different.



> Beyond that he just pointed out what I said here, that your definition of agency really just describes RPGs IN GENERAL, that all of them must have this characteristic to be even worth discussing, so why do we need to spend time on that really?




Except that it doesn't describe RPGs in general, since RPGs can be played in a manner that reduces or eliminates the standard definition of agency that I am using.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I mean, dramatically, what is the difference between "I search these 3 places" and "I search these 17 places", except one is a lot quicker and to the point. Chances are, if there's anything to be found, it will simply be found when the search progresses to that point, which it INEVITABLY will if the PCs are in a search mode (why wouldn't they search thoroughly). From a narrative standpoint, failure is not interesting in these types of situation, as a rule. If there's a time constraint, or a hazard, then I'd emphasize that over the particulars of which thing was searched in a list of things (IE make a check to search quickly enough to find X before Y happens, or make a check to perceive the hazard, then get the 'stuff').



In the dusty study scene I narrated a page or three back I'd want a lot more specific detail on what the PCs are doing it and how; and in what sequence if not simultaneously.

Why's that, you ask?  Because the room has a hidden-in-plain-sight Hazard (the dust, quite flammable if stirred up and then a flame is put to it) and a resulting fire could damage or destroy various key elements in the room, not least of which might be the very map they seek should it happen to be exposed if-when the room goes up.

Further, with a Hazard like this I-as-DM should place the map ahead of time such that - for continuity purposes; if it wasn't important they wouldn't be looking fo rit - it's in a safer location (e.g. inside the box on the desk) should the room catch fire.  But I can't, and thus there's the risk of someone successfully searching the papers on the desk and finding the map there just as someone else lights a torch and *woof!*.  (though being the RBDM I am I'd probably have the map be one of the dust-covered papers on the desk, vulnerable to any dust fire the party may unintentionally trigger)

Lanefan


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, I think its 'freedom', yes, but so is being supplied with oxygen, yet we wouldn't say that being so supplied is the same as being totally free. More to the point, EVERYONE has your form of agency in all but the most utterly degenerate of RPGing experiences, and I think we all agree it is pointless to talk about games where 'rocks fall and you die'.




I disagree. I do a lot of sandbox style play, where freedom to explore and interact is one of the prime goals. I've played in a lot of d20 and pathfinder campaigns where this simply isn't the concern (the focus in those when I played in them was more on things like an adventure path, or d20s adventures designed around Challenge Ratings patterns (i.e. Encounter 1 is CR x, Entounter to is CR Y,). Not saying they are all like this. And I can't speak to the current situation in 5E. But there are definitely greater and lesser degrees of freedom afforded to player characters in different adventure structures and play styles. Heck sometimes I don't want to have player agency be big thing. Right now in one of my campaigns I am doing a monster-of-the-week style adventure because I didn't wanted something more focused (and that resulted in less player agency). But most of my campaigns involve letting the players freely explore an open world, and I find this isn't the most common way to run the game (it is currently more popular than it has been, but it isn't the predominate style I see at other tables). Not knocking other styles either.


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> .
> 
> So, I agree that there is a freedom to play your character, but I think its also clear that if the GM puts the character in a cage and no actions are feasible, that this freedom is then meaningless, right? So there ARE degrees of agency, its not just 'all the same', right?
> 
> Beyond that, if Pemerton says that another form of agency exists, which is expressed in terms of the players being able to choose what the 'direction of play' is (or at least have a lot of input on that in a direct sense, like introducing new elements to scenes such as secret doors) then that is something that isn't covered by the definition of agency you are using.
> 
> Is it really all that hard to see what Pemerton then means when he says there's a 'greater agency'? Beyond that he just pointed out what I said here, that your definition of agency really just describes RPGs IN GENERAL, that all of them must have this characteristic to be even worth discussing, so why do we need to spend time on that really?
> 
> Max's notion that one 'balances the other' somehow just never made sense. Not to me. It wasn't really even germane.




As I said before, they don't all have this characteristic. I've played in plenty of RPGs where I don't experience the agency I am talking about in an open sandbox or character driven situational adventure. In a lot of the 3E campaigns I played in, I felt tethered to a series of planned encounters. I could have been a jerk and walked off that path, but it was always obvious to me if that happened, the GM was not ready for it. Again, you guys are using terminology to establish one style of play as better than another. This isn't unique here. I've seen people make similar arguments in favor of sandbox play. I think that kind of argumentation is unproductive and never results in people opening their minds (seriously do you think arguing that you basically have more freedom than us in your approach is going to warm us up to your play style?). There are people on the internet who will argue that Pemerton's style isn't even roleplaying (and they will argue well, in a way that I would honestly find difficult to refute). But these kinds of perscriptive definitional or essential definitional, rather than descriptive definitional, are not a solid basis for analyzing or discussing hobby activity (where we really need to be describing how people use a term). And I am sorry to use that kind of terminology. I really don't like that form of argumentation, but I just don't know how to phrase what I am trying to say here otherwise. 

I don't question that peterson's agency is something he genuinely finds useful and experiences. What I object to is him positioning his Agency as somehow greater than the freedom I experience in sandbox. Personally, as a player, in games like the ones he is describing (which I have played in), I don't feel the sense of freedom I get in a true sandbox. That said, I don't think my approach offers greater agency either. I think they are both forms of agency. And how much liberation you find in them is going to largely depend on what interests you as a gamer.


----------



## Maxperson

Bedrockgames said:


> I don't question that peterson's agency is something he genuinely finds useful and experiences. What I object to is him positioning his Agency as somehow greater than the freedom I experience in sandbox. Personally, as a player, in games like the ones he is describing (which I have played in), I don't feel the sense of freedom I get in a true sandbox. That said, I don't think my approach offers greater agency either. I think they are both forms of agency. And how much liberation you find in them is going to largely depend on what interests you as a gamer.



As I mentioned in prior posts, it can't be greater since our agency is at 100% in the sandbox games that we run.  It has been argued that their agency has our agency PLUS theirs, which makes it greater.  However, that's a false claim.  Their method doesn't allow players to declare actions for their PCs that doesn't move the story forward towards one of their formal or informal goals.  They self-limit what actions they are allowed to take for their PCs, which means that their agency of the type we run is limited.  Then they add their new agency in which brings their total back to 100%.  Further, some Story Now DMs here have said that they would not allow actions that are contrary to the Story Now conventions, so the limitation is not only self-chosen by the players, but it's reinforced by the DM.  Players in Story Now games lack full agency of the type we use.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Maxperson said:


> As I said before, it can't be greater since our agency is at 100% in the sandbox games that we run.  It has been argued that their agency has our agency PLUS theirs, which makes it greater.  However, that's a false claim.  Their method doesn't allow players to declare actions for their PCs that doesn't move the story forward towards one of their formal or informal goals.  They self-limit what actions they are allowed to take for their PCs, which means that their agency of the type we run is limited.  Then they add their new agency in which brings their total back to 100%.  Further, some Story Now DMs here have said that they would not allow actions that are contrary to the Story Now conventions, so the limitation is not only self-chosen by the players, but it's reinforced by the DM.  Players in Story Now games lack full agency of the type we use.




The focus is totally different though. They are talking about the freedom to take the character in a direction that carved out story. We are talking about the freedom to explore and do what you want. We are talking about pretty subjective uses of terminology here. What I would say concretely is I think most times I see people speak of agency, they are using it as you and I understand it.


----------



## Maxperson

Bedrockgames said:


> The focus is totally different though. They are talking about the freedom to take the character in a direction that carved out story. We are talking about the freedom to explore and do what you want. We are talking about pretty subjective uses of terminology here. What I would say concretely is I think most times I see people speak of agency, they are using it as you and I understand it.




I know, but [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] insists that his style also has our agency, which is just plain wrong.  As a result, he incorrectly claims that their agency is greater since it's ours + theirs.  Their different focus prevents our agency from being realized fully in their games.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Maxperson said:


> I know, but @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ insists that his style also has our agency, which is just plain wrong.  As a result, he incorrectly claims that their agency is greater since it's ours + theirs.  Their different focus prevents our agency from being realized fully in their games.




I definitely think there are questionable arguments being made in that respect (I think my posts have made that clear). But I think the larger problem there is his reducing our position and our definition to "a player character taking an action". 

They don't want our kind of agency in their games. I am not interested in converting people to my style of play. If they don't want what I like in a game, that is their business. I have no interest in trying to convince them to adopt what I do. All I care about in these conversations is we allow for the multitude of play style and that people don't try to weasel their play style into other peoples' tables by making bad linguistic arguments. If they are finding pleasure in the kind of agency Pemerton is talking about. more power to them. If others see that and think it is something they might like, more power to them. I just don't want them misrepresenting what we mean by agency. We've stated out definition multiple times and it keeps getting met with "so you mean any kind of roleplaying that happens in 100% of all campaigns anyways." or some variation on that. That is the infuriating bit. 

I guess what bothers me in so many of these discussion is it is almost like people are trying to take away what pleasure others have found at the table. It would be one thing to say "Hey I have this cool style of play, here is how it works, give it a shot". But so many  of these conversations feel like attempts to convert people to a religion. It is just a game.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> As I mentioned in prior posts, it can't be greater since our agency is at 100% in the sandbox games that we run.  It has been argued that their agency has our agency PLUS theirs, which makes it greater.  However, that's a false claim.  Their method doesn't allow players to declare actions for their PCs that doesn't move the story forward towards one of their formal or informal goals.  They self-limit what actions they are allowed to take for their PCs, which means that their agency of the type we run is limited.  Then they add their new agency in which brings their total back to 100%.  Further, some Story Now DMs here have said that they would not allow actions that are contrary to the Story Now conventions, so the limitation is not only self-chosen by the players, but it's reinforced by the DM.  Players in Story Now games lack full agency of the type we use.



There are several problems with this summary, and they all have to do with the percentages you provide, namely that one can even speak of them with any certainty or accuracy to begin with. 

1) Outside of the context of roleplaying games, the statement that "[our/your] agency is at 100%" is a veritable field of volatile landmines. To the best of my own limited knowledge, most contemporary thinking rarely regards human agency at being somehow "100%" but instead as being inherently limited. Nowadays the debate seems centered more on discussing the limiting factors and the extent which they limit agency. (And as characters themselves are run by human players with presumably limited agency, the characters themselves would likely exhibit far less agency in-game than their human ones in-real-life.) The degree that the philosophical notion of (human) agency exists cannot objectively be ascertained, especially in terms of simple percentages. And as such... 

2) The idea that one could quantifiably measure the differences of agency as percentages or perform basic arithmatic would be equally fallacious. We are discussing _qualitative_ assertions of comparative agency and not _quantitative_ ones. So I don't think that you, me, or anyone else in this thread can reasonably reduce each others' arguments to "our form of agency produces a quantifiably equal amount of agency once we subtract their agency X and add their new agency Y, which as you can see is equal to our agency Z." It's a simply ridiculous assertion. 

3) This is not to say that we cannot speak of "more" or "less" agency, but we must be clear that we are not talking actual numbers and percentages but qualitative values and philosophic notions of agency. It's a discussion on the shape, caveats, and contours that the various notions of agency possess in the context of player-experience. It is still ultimately a utilitarian argument of sorts, but the utility is "measured" in terms of player-empowerment. And here, I would suggest that one of the principle battle lines in the debate of agency surrounds which form of "agency" produces the more _meaningful_ manifestation of player-empowered play. Again though, this is a qualitative assessment. 

Saying that your/our games have "100 percent agency," for example, gives me little to no idea how much of that agency is actually _substantively meaningful_ from a player-side perspective or a GM-side perspective. I am more interested in knowing how those approaches impact my decision-making abilities and choices as a player, and subsequently, how the outcomes of those approaches align with my own player values and principles, general fun-having, desired outcomes, etc. 



Bedrockgames said:


> It would be one thing to say *"Hey I have this cool style of play, here is how it works, give it a shot".* But so many  of these conversations feel like attempts to convert people to a religion. It is just a game.



See, but that sort of thought still often results in conversational religiosity, except not one of conversion, but as combating perceived heresies that threaten the prevailing hegemonic expression of the game's religious cultus.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> See, but that sort of thought still often results in conversational religiosity, except not one of conversion, but as combating perceived heresies that threaten the prevailing hegemonic expression of the game's religious cultus.




I am happy to have a real conversation with people about differences in gaming. But I am also experienced enough in life to know when people are engaged in bad-faith arguments and just trying to get their style to the top of a hierarchy. If there is something questionable about my style of play that demands to be talked about, it can be done without undermining the language I use to describe. I am always skeptical of linguistic based arguments for this reason (whether they are coming from people who advocate styles of play I enjoy, or people who are hostile to styles of play I enjoy). 

Being curious about what motivates other styles of play is a good thing. Fighting this endless play style war to land the killing blow against style X, in favor of style Y, is pointless.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> .... threaten the prevailing hegemonic expression of the game's religious cultus.




???? I seriously don't understand how you arrive at this conclusion from what I said, and I do not, for the life of my, understand why you phrase it in this way.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> There are several problems with this summary, and they all have to do with the percentages you provide, namely that one can even speak of them with any certainty or accuracy to begin with.
> 
> 1) Outside of the context of roleplaying games, the statement that "[our/your] agency is at 100%" is a veritable field of volatile landmines. To the best of my own limited knowledge, most contemporary thinking rarely regards human agency at being somehow "100%" but instead as being inherently limited. Nowadays the debate seems centered more on discussing the limiting factors and the extent which they limit agency. (And as characters themselves are run by human players with presumably limited agency, the characters themselves would likely exhibit far less agency in-game than their human ones in-real-life.) The degree that the philosophical notion of (human) agency exists cannot objectively be ascertained, especially in terms of simple percentages. And as such...
> 
> 2) The idea that one could quantifiably measure the differences of agency as percentages or perform basic arithmatic would be equally fallacious. We are discussing _qualitative_ assertions of comparative agency and not _quantitative_ ones. So I don't think that you, me, or anyone else in this thread can reasonably reduce each others' arguments to "our form of agency produces a quantifiably equal amount of agency once we subtract their agency X and add their new agency Y, which as you can see is equal to our agency Z." It's a simply ridiculous assertion.




I don't need to measure the agency exactly to know that it is 100%.  The standard definition of agency is the player having control over his PC's actions.  My players have complete control over their PCs actions, so it doesn't get any higher.  Whether that agency amounts to 10, 200, or 10,000 is irrelevant.  That it's the maximum that it can be means that it's at 100%.  With the definition of agency that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] invented for his personal use, I'd wager that he doesn't inhibit it at all, either, so his is also at 100%.  They are equal in percentage.  



> 3) This is not to say that we cannot speak of "more" or "less" agency, but we must be clear that we are not talking actual numbers and percentages but qualitative values and philosophic notions of agency. It's a discussion on the shape, caveats, and contours that the various notions of agency possess in the context of player-experience. It is still ultimately a utilitarian argument of sorts, but the utility is "measured" in terms of player-empowerment. And here, I would suggest that one of the principle battle lines in the debate of agency surrounds which form of "agency" produces the more _meaningful_ manifestation of player-empowered play. Again though, this is a qualitative assessment.




I don't see how you can speak of more or less agency, except with regard to your own personal game.  Since as you point out, we don't have hard numbers for the range between 0% and 100%, all you can know is if the agency is at maximum(100%), minimum(0%) or something in-between(unknowable%).  If I see [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] post something that shows him inhibiting the agency(as he defines it) of his players, then I know their agency is in the unknowable%, since it clearly isn't 0% or 100%.  

There can be no comparison to agency in my game, though.  They are different types of agency, standard in my game and non-standard in his, so it's essentially apples and oranges.  It's simply not possible to tell whether he or I have more or less than the other than as a percentage as I point out above.



> Saying that your/our games have "100 percent agency," for example, gives me little to no idea how much of that agency is actually _substantively meaningful_ from a player-side perspective or a GM-side perspective. I am more interested in knowing how those approaches impact my decision-making abilities and choices as a player, and subsequently, how the outcomes of those approaches align with my own player values and principles, general fun-having, desired outcomes, etc.




I'll go out on a limb and say all of it is meaningful.  Players like to be able to control the actions of their PCs and generally dislike DMs taking that control away through railroading.  I'll also go out on a limb and say [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s non-standard agency is also entirely meaningful.  It's up to each of us to figure out which he prefers.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Aldarc said:


> There are several problems with this summary, and they all have to do with the percentages you provide, namely that one can even speak of them with any certainty or accuracy to begin with.
> 
> 1) Outside of the context of roleplaying games, the statement that "[our/your] agency is at 100%" is a veritable field of volatile landmines. To the best of my own limited knowledge, most contemporary thinking rarely regards human agency at being somehow "100%" but instead as being inherently limited. Nowadays the debate seems centered more on discussing the limiting factors and the extent which they limit agency. (And as characters themselves are run by human players with presumably limited agency, the characters themselves would likely exhibit far less agency in-game than their human ones in-real-life.) The degree that the philosophical notion of (human) agency exists cannot objectively be ascertained, especially in terms of simple percentages. And as such...
> 
> 2) The idea that one could quantifiably measure the differences of agency as percentages or perform basic arithmatic would be equally fallacious. We are discussing _qualitative_ assertions of comparative agency and not _quantitative_ ones. So I don't think that you, me, or anyone else in this thread can reasonably reduce each others' arguments to "our form of agency produces a quantifiably equal amount of agency once we subtract their agency X and add their new agency Y, which as you can see is equal to our agency Z." It's a simply ridiculous assertion.
> 
> 3) This is not to say that we cannot speak of "more" or "less" agency, but we must be clear that we are not talking actual numbers and percentages but qualitative values and philosophic notions of agency. It's a discussion on the shape, caveats, and contours that the various notions of agency possess in the context of player-experience. It is still ultimately a utilitarian argument of sorts, but the utility is "measured" in terms of player-empowerment. And here, I would suggest that one of the principle battle lines in the debate of agency surrounds which form of "agency" produces the more _meaningful_ manifestation of player-empowered play. Again though, this is a qualitative assessment.
> 
> Saying that your/our games have "100 percent agency," for example, gives me little to no idea how much of that agency is actually _substantively meaningful_ from a player-side perspective or a GM-side perspective. I am more interested in knowing how those approaches impact my decision-making abilities and choices as a player, and subsequently, how the outcomes of those approaches align with my own player values and principles, general fun-having, desired outcomes, etc.
> 
> See, but that sort of thought still often results in conversational religiosity, except not one of conversion, but as combating perceived heresies that threaten the prevailing hegemonic expression of the game's religious cultus.



This is... well, a hot mess.

Specific criticisms:
1) Percentage is a relative measurement.  It measures what you have against the maximum you could have.  So saying you have 100% agency isn't saying that agency isn't limited, it's just saying "I maximize the amount agency possible" and doesn't make statements on what's possible.  A better criticism would be to point out that saying you have 100% agency isn't really saying anything at all because it's a relative measurement without a clear definition of what it's in relation to.  Now, Max does state that his version of agency means 'player get to declare PC actions without restrictions' which is fine, but without that 100% agency is just meaningless.  

2) "more" and "less" are quantitative assessments.  They talk about how much there is, not the quality of what there is.  This is definitional.

3)  No, you can't label 'more' and 'less' as qualitative arguments, because 'more' is not a quality something can possess.  These are, again, quantitative statements.  I sorely wish we'd actually talk about qualitative measures of agency, as that would mean we could talk about both where traditional play affects agency and where narrativist play affects agency and contrast, maybe, against mythical simulationist effects on agency.  Further, if you actually say you have more agency, and define agency as a desirable thing, you're making a claim that your play is better than the other play.  Which is exactly why you get the responses you do when you say this.  You being general here, and applying to anyone that thinks they have a line one using that kind of argument.

Now, once you get through this hot mess of numbers, you make a lot of sense.  I really like your summation, which doesn't depend at all on your 1-3 above (and, in fact, kinda fights against some of the points you made).  But then that last line, full of vinegar and holier-than-thou righteousness.  No, man, don't do that.  If you stop telling people that your style has 'more' agency (where agency is a positive thing), you'll get less pushback. If, instead, you actually talk about the real qualitative differences, you'll get less (it's the internet, so 'none' is not an option).  However, you then have to accept points where your style inhibits some agency (and it does) and take it with equanimity.  Haven't seen that, yet, either -- had a nice exchange earlier trying to point out where Story Now limits agency and was repeatedly told it doesn't because that kind of play isn't part of Story Now.  :\  It's like, maybe, people don't like to be told their styles aren't perfect?


----------



## Hriston

Bedrockgames said:


> No one takes issue with his conceptualizing player agency in that way. It is when he tries to deconsruct other peoples' notions of player character freedom (essentially arguing they are not truly free). There is a play style battle going on underneath all these arguments.






Bedrockgames said:


> Maxperson said:
> 
> 
> 
> Cool beans.  You can look at my game and see what you like and don't like about that.  I get that and I agree with it.  What you can't do is say that your game has more player agency than mine.  You can say it has more of your type of player agency, but not that it has more player agency in general.  Both of our games involve 100% player agency.  You can't get higher than that.  Your "player agency" doesn't exist in my game and vice versa.  And you don't get to disparage other playstyles by calling them "choose your own adventure" or "players just declare actions to get the DM to say stuff" without getting called out for that sort of crap.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is the issue people are taking.
Click to expand...



That's the post I was addressing with my post. I have no doubt that's what [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] (and others) are taking issue with, but I think you and he are reading what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is saying about agency over the content of the shared fiction, which usage of the word _agency_ he has been very careful to describe throughout this thread, and applying what he's saying about _that_ to other forms of agency he isn't really addressing at all. 

When he says that a game plays like a _Choose Your Own Adventure_ book, he isn't saying that *all* choices available to players in that game are limited. He's saying that choices available to players in that game are limited with respect to the sort of fiction that can result from them. 

When he says the players declare actions to get the GM to relate things the GM has made up, he's contrasting that with a game where the players declare actions to move the fiction in the direction they desire. Obviously, in the first sort of game, the players can only move the fiction in a direction that fits with what's already in the GM's notes. 

When he says that sort of game railroads the players, he doesn't mean they are railroaded into having their PCs take only certain actions. He means that the impact of their declared actions on the content of the shared fiction is confined by what the GM has decided the fiction contains.

I think it's unfair to interpret his statements as if they're meant to apply to other forms of player, or even character, agency, especially when he's been so clear about what sort of agency to which they're meant to apply.


----------



## Imaro

Hriston said:


> That's the post I was addressing with my post. I have no doubt that's what @_*Maxperson*_ (and others) are taking issue with, but I think you and he are reading what @_*pemerton*_ is saying about agency over the content of the shared fiction, which usage of the word _agency_ he has been very careful to describe throughout this thread, and applying what he's saying about _that_ to other forms of agency he isn't really addressing at all.
> 
> When he says that a game plays like a _Choose Your Own Adventure_ book, he isn't saying that *all* choices available to players in that game are limited. He's saying that choices available to players in that game are limited with respect to the sort of fiction that can result from them.




But so are his games, the difference is that his game is limited with respect to the sort of fiction that can result based on strict adherence to genre, theme, player concerns, etc... right?  So is it just that the 2 playstyles are just 2 different types of choose your own adventure books?



Hriston said:


> When he says the players declare actions to get the GM to relate things the GM has made up, he's contrasting that with a game where the players declare actions to move the fiction in the direction they desire. Obviously, in the first sort of game, the players can only move the fiction in a direction that fits with what's already in the GM's notes.




Yes and again this type of game has it's own set of restrictions that limit the direction the fiction can move in...



Hriston said:


> When he says that sort of game railroads the players, he doesn't mean they are railroaded into having their PCs take only certain actions. He means that the impact of their declared actions on the content of the shared fiction is confined by what the GM has decided the fiction contains.




I don't want to repeat myself again but yeah... the impact of declared actions in his game is limited by certain concerns as well. 



Hriston said:


> I think it's unfair to interpret his statements as if they're meant to apply to other forms of player, or even character, agency, especially when he's been so clear about what sort of agency to which they're meant to apply.




The problem is his playstyle has it's own set of limitations on all of these things that have been (by various posters arguing for said playstyle throughout the thread) ignored... promoted as "good" limitations" or brushed aside as an accepted part of the playstyle... when in fact none of that stops them from limiting player agency.


----------



## Hriston

Imaro said:


> But so are his games, the difference is that his game is limited with respect to the sort of fiction that can result based on strict adherence to genre, theme, player concerns, etc... right?  So is it just that the 2 playstyles are just 2 different types of choose your own adventure books?
> 
> 
> 
> Yes and again this type of game has it's own set of restrictions that limit the direction the fiction can move in...
> 
> 
> 
> I don't want to repeat myself again but yeah... the impact of declared actions in his game is limited by certain concerns as well.
> 
> 
> 
> The problem is his playstyle has it's own set of limitations on all of these things that have been (by various posters arguing for said playstyle throughout the thread) ignored... promoted as "good" limitations" or brushed aside as an accepted part of the playstyle... when in fact none of that stops them from limiting player agency.




The limitations on player agency over the content of the shared fiction in Story Now gaming are the genre considerations, themes, and other concerns/priorities *introduced by the players themselves?* I don't get that.

Edited to add: Those are examples of the players exercising control/agency over the content of the fiction, not the other way around!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> Why does it matter if it's covered by the agency that we are using?  His agency doesn't cover things that our agency covers, and that doesn't matter, either.  We are playing different games, so why try to compare apples and oranges?
> 
> 
> 
> You can't get any higher than 100%, so it's not possible for his to be greater than mine.  It's just different.
> 
> 
> 
> Except that it doesn't describe RPGs in general, since RPGs can be played in a manner that reduces or eliminates the standard definition of agency that I am using.




Suffice it to say we will have to agree to disagree. I think your choice of terminology was made for rhetorical purposes, and that this is just not the case. 

I'll even grant [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] an edge case kind of concession about his 'case 2' (there's a shade of difference between a character who's in doubt about pretend 'reality', and a player who's in doubt about a die coming up 12+). I think its a pretty razor thin sort of territory to stand on, but that's really it. Beyond that you don't get Less from Story Now, in ANY respect. Not unless you have some sort of bad thing going at your table.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> In the dusty study scene I narrated a page or three back I'd want a lot more specific detail on what the PCs are doing it and how; and in what sequence if not simultaneously.
> 
> Why's that, you ask?  Because the room has a hidden-in-plain-sight Hazard (the dust, quite flammable if stirred up and then a flame is put to it) and a resulting fire could damage or destroy various key elements in the room, not least of which might be the very map they seek should it happen to be exposed if-when the room goes up.




Yes, I got the whole dust thing, so dice for it! I mean, its effectively arbitrary where people search. Or have it work like if they check the first 'distinction' in [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s list, that's OK, but each one stirs up MORE dust, so if you have to get to #3, and you used fire for your light source, then kaboom! I don't see a need for 17 things to be fully described.



> Further, with a Hazard like this I-as-DM should place the map ahead of time such that - for continuity purposes; if it wasn't important they wouldn't be looking fo rit - it's in a safer location (e.g. inside the box on the desk) should the room catch fire.  But I can't, and thus there's the risk of someone successfully searching the papers on the desk and finding the map there just as someone else lights a torch and *woof!*.  (though being the RBDM I am I'd probably have the map be one of the dust-covered papers on the desk, vulnerable to any dust fire the party may unintentionally trigger)
> 
> Lanefan




Well, sure you can, if that's the consideration, then the Box is a distinction, which Pemerton mentioned as an option IIRC. Again, I don't see how some long list of things in the room helps you here. I subscribe to the theory of "one, two, many, too many" being the dramatic version of number theory...

I mean, if it was an enumeration of a fantastical dragon horde, then that would be one thing, it could be FUN to just reel off a huge list of crazy stuff, for color purposes mainly. This is clearly not that kind of case.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> The focus is totally different though. They are talking about the freedom to take the character in a direction that carved out story. We are talking about the freedom to explore and do what you want. We are talking about pretty subjective uses of terminology here. What I would say concretely is I think most times I see people speak of agency, they are using it as you and I understand it.




Right, the kind of 'math' [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] is doing is simply meaningless. 

Frankly I don't feel particularly interested in being argumentative WRT your statements about sandboxes. I think they are less 'free and open' than people like to admit, but we could wander around in that swamp forever and its plain you're no more eager to engage in that debate than I am  I'm sure equivalent statements could be made about Story Now games, though I think, myself, its hard to get more open than "player, tell me what you want to do and I'll feed you that storyline". hehe.


----------



## Maxperson

Hriston said:


> When he says that a game plays like a _Choose Your Own Adventure_ book, he isn't saying that *all* choices available to players in that game are limited. He's saying that choices available to players in that game are limited with respect to the sort of fiction that can result from them.




He's saying that you only have a few options to pick from and then you get to see what is written for you with no possibility of changing anything, because that's what a Choose Your Own Adventure book is.  If he meant anything else, he needs to get his terms straight.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Suffice it to say we will have to agree to disagree. I think your choice of terminology was made for rhetorical purposes, and that this is just not the case.
> 
> I'll even grant [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] an edge case kind of concession about his 'case 2' (there's a shade of difference between a character who's in doubt about pretend 'reality', and a player who's in doubt about a die coming up 12+). I think its a pretty razor thin sort of territory to stand on, but that's really it. Beyond that you don't get Less from Story Now, in ANY respect. Not unless you have some sort of bad thing going at your table.




You'll have to explain to me how you get "less" from "equal".  I'm not claiming Story Now has less.



> Right, the kind of 'math' @Maxperson is doing is simply meaningless.




And I'm not doing any math.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> ???? I seriously don't understand how you arrive at this conclusion from what I said, and I do not, for the life of my, understand why you phrase it in this way.



Not sure why you felt obligated to make two separate posts from the same quote. Oh well. 

I simply took your language of religious conversion and "if people only said this" but from a different angle such that the religious fervor would still be there regardless of whether someone changed their language. I thought it was obvious. 



Bedrockgames said:


> I am happy to have a real conversation with people about differences in gaming. But I am also experienced enough in life to know when people are engaged in bad-faith arguments and just trying to get their style to the top of a hierarchy. If there is something questionable about my style of play that demands to be talked about, it can be done without undermining the language I use to describe. I am always skeptical of linguistic based arguments for this reason (whether they are coming from people who advocate styles of play I enjoy, or people who are hostile to styles of play I enjoy).
> 
> Being curious about what motivates other styles of play is a good thing. Fighting this endless play style war to land the killing blow against style X, in favor of style Y, is pointless.



I would say that if you believe that Pemerton is arguing in bad faith, then you may want to reexamine your own "good faith" in this discussion.


----------



## Sadras

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Frankly I don't feel particularly interested in being argumentative WRT your statements about sandboxes. I think they are less 'free and open' than people like to admit, but we could wander around in that swamp forever and its plain you're no more eager to engage in that debate than I am  I'm sure equivalent statements could be made about Story Now games, though I think, myself, its hard to get more open than "player, tell me what you want to do and I'll feed you that storyline". hehe.




I believe (and I have no stats to back this statement) that the majority of us play a combination of both when given the opportunity by the players*.
Many tables run the traditional combo Sandbox-Railroad and not a strict one or another, I feel Story Now also emerges in general play as players' interests start becoming increasingly more important in a campaign.
Maybe I'm self-reflecting too much, but I don't think so based on what I have read on Enworld.

*requires players' input to run Story Now arcs


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> After you've completed a classic dungeon crawl, those of you who survived could recount the narrative of it.  If that narrative actually made a good story, you might very well be able to tell a similar story using an entirely different, more narrative-oriented system.



Sure. But when I talk about whether or not a system supports classic dungeon-crawling, I'm not talking about it's capacity to generate a certain sort of imagined series of happenings. I'm talking about the actual play experience it will deliver.

To take an even more stark contrast - sitting around and telling imaginary war stories, even really gritty ones, isn't the same as playing Advanced Squad Leader.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> I didn't take "agency."  The definition I use is the standard definition.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> it isn't defined as playing the game at all.  It's defined as having control over your PC's actions, which you can lose while still playing the game.  Railroad anyone?



How can a player in a RPG, at one and the same time, be _playing the game/I] and yet not have control over the declaration of actions for his/her PC? I don't know what you have in mind.



Maxperson said:



			Players like to be able to control the actions of their PCs and generally dislike DMs taking that control away through railroading.
		
Click to expand...


If the GM is doing what you describe as railroading - ie declaring actions for the players (I think that's what you mean?) - then what are the players doing? They don't seem to be playing.



Maxperson said:



			The standard definition of agency is the player having control over his PC's actions.  My players have complete control over their PCs actions, so it doesn't get any higher.
		
Click to expand...


This doesn't change the fact that there is something that I care about in RPGing, that isn't a feature of your games. For some reason it angers you that I call it agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction. But whatever label I gave to it, your game still - by your own account - would not exhibit it._


----------



## pemerton

Imaro said:


> But so are his games, the difference is that his game is limited with respect to the sort of fiction that can result based on strict adherence to genre, theme, player concerns, etc... right?





Hriston said:


> The limitations on player agency over the content of the shared fiction in Story Now gaming are the genre considerations, themes, and other concerns/priorities *introduced by the players themselves?* I don't get that.
> 
> Edited to add: Those are examples of the players exercising control/agency over the content of the fiction, not the other way around!



I can only agree with what [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] has said. I simply don't see how getting to contribute to fiction that involves the stuff one wants, and addresses the thematic concerns one has signalled one cares about, can count as a limit on one's agency. It's an _expression_ of it!

(Also: I've made this same point upthread; and so has [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION].)


----------



## Aldarc

Ovinomancer said:


> This is... well, a hot mess.



So glad that you could return the favor then with your own hot mess. 



> Specific criticisms:
> 1) Percentage is a relative measurement.  It measures what you have against the maximum you could have.  So saying you have 100% agency isn't saying that agency isn't limited, it's just saying "I maximize the amount agency possible" and doesn't make statements on what's possible.  A better criticism would be to point out that saying you have 100% agency isn't really saying anything at all because it's a relative measurement without a clear definition of what it's in relation to.  Now, Max does state that his version of agency means 'player get to declare PC actions without restrictions' which is fine, but without that 100% agency is just meaningless.



The problem is that Max does not stop at "I maximize the amount agency possible," but also makes claims of percentile subtraction and addition, and in regards to differing systems of agency, and turning this into a matter of dubious maths. 



> 2) "more" and "less" are quantitative assessments.  They talk about how much there is, not the quality of what there is.  This is definitional.
> 
> 3)  No, you can't label 'more' and 'less' as qualitative arguments, because 'more' is not a quality something can possess.  These are, again, quantitative statements.  I sorely wish we'd actually talk about qualitative measures of agency, as that would mean we could talk about both where traditional play affects agency and where narrativist play affects agency and contrast, maybe, against mythical simulationist effects on agency.



The problem is that agency cannot be measured, except as you mention before in relation to some presumed standard of agency. These tend to be less about quantitative assessments but qualitative ones. Children may ask their parents for example "Who do you love more?" but with the understanding that this question cannot be substantiated, measured, or quantified, but will be qualitatively discussed. 



> Now, once you get through this hot mess of numbers, you make a lot of sense.  I really like your summation, which doesn't depend at all on your 1-3 above (and, in fact, kinda fights against some of the points you made).



I'm so glad that you spent one sentence out of your wall of text to say that you liked something that I wrote only to follow it up with eight sentences where you completely undermine that with ignorance of my argument. 



> But then that last line, full of vinegar and holier-than-thou righteousness.  No, man, don't do that.  If you stop telling people that your style has 'more' agency (where agency is a positive thing), you'll get less pushback. If, instead, you actually talk about the real qualitative differences, you'll get less (it's the internet, so 'none' is not an option).  However, you then have to accept points where your style inhibits some agency (and it does) and take it with equanimity.  Haven't seen that, yet, either -- had a nice exchange earlier trying to point out where Story Now limits agency and was repeatedly told it doesn't because that kind of play isn't part of Story Now.  :\  It's like, maybe, people don't like to be told their styles aren't perfect?



What are you talking about? Please do not read things into my statements that are not there. Or make claims about my arguments that are not there. Do not make strong claims about "[my] style" when I have said little to nothing in this thread about what my preferred style is. My last statement is not meant to be self-righteous at all. And when I re-read my own statement, I see an absence of "vinegar." These sort of misreadings kinda undercut the accuracy of your assessments and ventures into more veiled personal attacks, Ovinomancer. I can't say that I'm a fan of it.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> I've never seen a table that wouldn't ask about the level of lighting in the defile if not told, as if it's in deep shadow who knows what could be hiding in there.



In the context of Cortex+ Heroic, the GM can just make something up if asked! I mean, there could be something hiding in shadows. Or perched on a peak waiting to drop. Or about to teleport in. Etc. In Cortex+ Heroic the introduction of new scene elements is generally handled by expenditure of dice from the Doom Pool, so that status of the defile as shadowy or well-lit only pertains to the _colour_ accompanying any such thing.

Players who are worried about threats watch the Doom Pool, which tells them how much latent danger is in the situation; they don't worry about mere colour.

Of course I could have used, as a Scene Distinction, Shadowy Defile Between the Peaks, but I didn't. That different scene distinction would generate different outcomes in some circumstances - eg if a player was using Enhanced Senses to try and establish (say) a Clear View of the Battlefield asset, I could put the Shadowy Defile distinction into the Doom Pool for the opposing roll.

But as it happens I didn't, so I couldn't. But in any event it didn't come up because no one was worried about the lighting in the defile. They were concerned with the wyverns, and their rider and leader: should they fight them or befriend them? (It ended up going <failed attempt to befriend>, <fight which the PCs won>, <grudging agreement to lead them through the mountains>).



Lanefan said:


> if "Narrow Deflie" doesn't have a clear definition somewhere in the system rules



"Narrow Defile" is a natural-language phrase that I made up. Just like Boulders Aplenty, Unpassable Snow, Terrible Drops, Clear Skies, Chill Wind (obviously the last two at least have been used by English speakers before me!, but I was the one who coined them in this context).

Cortex+ Heroic isn't a fully-fledged natural-language descriptor RPG (like HeroWars/Quest, or Maelstrom Storytelling, and probably others I don't know). But it does have a strong streak of that.



Lanefan said:


> doesn't the system limit of so few distinctions - in a scene that might have many - tend to overmuch lead the PCs by the noses to where they need to go?



The scene distinctions tells the players what the GM thinks is interesting here. (Upthread some posters have asked "Does the 'story now' GM not get to exercise any creativity and affect the direction of play?" As [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] has said, the answer is obviously "Of course s/he does!" Here we see one way that manifests in MHRP/Cortex+ Heroic.)

But there is no _need_. There is a situation - the GM provides the framing, the players declare actions for their PCs, and we find out what happens. Of course the framing contributes to shaping that: eg it would be odd (although maybe not impossible given the PCs include a character with Supreme Sorcery) for a scene that involves Chill Winds, a Narrow Defile Between the Mountain Peaks, Unpassable Snow, a flight of wyverns, a rider of one wyvern, and Asgeir the chief of the mountain-folk, to end up with the PCs all resting on a sunny beach drinking cocktails with Asgeir. But it wasn't foreordained that it would end with the PCs being guests in the village of the mountain folk, hearing tails of the Earth Giant. Nor was it foreordained that _this_ would be the event that led the berserker PC to foreswear words (his attempts to sway Asgeir having been unsuccessful, and leaving him looking slightly foolish as his words blew away on the wind).



Lanefan said:


> For example, you only mentioning as distinctions the Furniture, Desk and Box immediately tells me-as-player I can ignore the rug, the papers on the desk, the small chandelier*, the fireplace*, and the faded portraits* on the walls as they've all just been defined as irrelevant.  My PC, however, wouldn't know this.
> 
> * - not included in my original description but I throw them in now as things that could easily be in such a study
> 
> And another example of misinterpretation, in this case of a detailed description: in my narration I state the window looks out to the north, meaning that while the room is daylit it's unlikely to actually be sunlit unless it's early morning or late evening in the summer (and if such was the case I'd have amended the narration to suit).  Sunlit vs. daylit makes a huge difference to the ambient light level in the room; only being daylit means there'll be some dark shadowy corners, and with all this dust if someone lights a torch or candle during their search...
> 
> Lan-"yeah, there's a reason I mention the dust three or four times in that narration: it's the room's hidden hazard"-efan





Lanefan said:


> In the dusty study scene I narrated a page or three back I'd want a lot more specific detail on what the PCs are doing it and how; and in what sequence if not simultaneously.
> 
> Why's that, you ask?  Because the room has a hidden-in-plain-sight Hazard (the dust, quite flammable if stirred up and then a flame is put to it) and a resulting fire could damage or destroy various key elements in the room, not least of which might be the very map they seek should it happen to be exposed if-when the room goes up.
> 
> Further, with a Hazard like this I-as-DM should place the map ahead of time such that - for continuity purposes; if it wasn't important they wouldn't be looking fo rit - it's in a safer location (e.g. inside the box on the desk) should the room catch fire.  But I can't, and thus there's the risk of someone successfully searching the papers on the desk and finding the map there just as someone else lights a torch and *woof!*



As far as the map is concerned, there is no _it's important and so has to be in the box_.

But if you want the dust and the lighting to be important, than frame it that way: the action takes place in a room with Pools of Shadow, an Intriguing Box, and Layers of Dust. Then, when a player says something about using a candle or torch or whatever to look in the shadowy areas, spend a die from the Doom Pool to introduce a complication into the scene: Room Ablaze! You can even make it a timer complication, so it starts at the size of the die spent and steps up on is turn, until it gets to d12, and then on its next turn doubles and moves to the Doom Pool (allowing the GM to end the scene).

Or if you want an explosion rather than a timed threat, spend a die to introduce Gunpowder as a distinction that takes an attack (using the Doom Pool) at the end of the action sequence. (Allowing players who still have actions left to take the chance to try to get the powder away from the flame, using their Reflexes or Wind Mastery or whatever abilities.)

There are a lot of GM-side tricks that can be used in Cortex+ Heroic, and for my part I'm still developing my familiarity and capabilities with the full range of them. But they're about spending GM-side resources to introduce various sorts of elements into the scene. In mechanical and resolution terms they have almost nothing in common with writing up a dungeon map and key.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Aldarc said:


> So glad that you could return the favor then with your own hot mess.
> 
> The problem is that Max does not stop at "I maximize the amount agency possible," but also makes claims of percentile subtraction and addition, and in regards to differing systems of agency, and turning this into a matter of dubious maths.



You mistake me, I'm not defending Max's argument.  I did say that his 100% argument didn't actually say anything, so adding and subtracting to that would also mean nothing. Your tilting at the wrong windmill.


> The problem is that agency cannot be measured, except as you mention before in relation to some presumed standard of agency. These tend to be less about quantitative assessments but qualitative ones. Children may ask their parents for example "Who do you love more?" but with the understanding that this question cannot be substantiated, measured, or quantified, but will be qualitatively discussed.



I'm left wondering what you disagreed with, here.


> I'm so glad that you spent one sentence out of your wall of text to say that you liked something that I wrote only to follow it up with eight sentences where you completely undermine that with ignorance of my argument.
> 
> What are you talking about? Please do not read things into my statements that are not there. Or make claims about my arguments that are not there. Do not make strong claims about "[my] style" when I have said little to nothing in this thread about what my preferred style is. My last statement is not meant to be self-righteous at all. And when I re-read my own statement, I see an absence of "vinegar." These sort of misreadings kinda undercut the accuracy of your assessments and ventures into more veiled personal attacks, Ovinomancer. I can't say that I'm a fan of it.



You did construct an argument that it was a qualitative statement to say "more" or "less", and this was in response to a payer disliking anothet poster's claim of "more," so I assumed your argument was defending being able to claim "more."  If you had a different point, it remains unclear.

Note to self: [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] does not like the term "vinegar."

When you use words like, "See, but that sort of thought still often results in conversational *religiosity*, except not one of conversion, but as combating perceived *heresies* that *threaten the prevailing hegemonic expression* of the game's *religious cultus* [sic]...." it kinda seems like you have a bit of anger.  Those aren't the words one uses to charitably describe another's argument, after all.  Calling another's posts about playing pretend elves hegemonic and religious is a framing not used for discussion but dismissal.

You're welcome, by the way; I did think you had a good statement wedged in there between the bad arguments about percentages and qualitative measures and the ridiculous bits at the end.  You should run with that


----------



## Ovinomancer

Hriston said:


> The limitations on player agency over the content of the shared fiction in Story Now gaming are the genre considerations, themes, and other concerns/priorities *introduced by the players themselves?* I don't get that.
> 
> Edited to add: Those are examples of the players exercising control/agency over the content of the fiction, not the other way around!



You're forgetting the mandate on the GM to frame into crisis.  Yes, the player's have additional knot into the themes of okay and _may_ have additional ability to write to backstory with actions ( ie, secret door creation) , but this is countered by the fact that the GM is required to frame the PCs into crisis over these points.  The players lose the ability to mitigate issues with planning and are instead thrust into crisis regardless.

This is often dismissed because it's assumed that the players buy into this and desire it (and this is true), but a similar argument for traditional play is dismissed.  Many Story Now games actually build in mechanics to mitigate this very issue by giving players extra story levers to mitigate bad things that happen to their PCs.  Strangely, this is seem as more agency over traditional games rather than mechanics implemented to directly offset the agency restrictions built into the framing mechanisms of Story Now.

Don't get me wrong, here, I dont think this is a negative to Story Now.  It aims for a target and hits it with the play it generates.


----------



## Aldarc

Ovinomancer said:


> I'm left wondering what you disagreed with, here.



I am clarifying my original statements. If you agree, then we can move on. 



> You did construct an argument that it was a qualitative statement to say "more" or "less", and this was in response to a payer disliking anothet poster's claim of "more," so I assumed your argument was defending being able to claim "more."  If you had a different point, it remains unclear.



In general, the use of "more" and "less" are almost unavoidable as terms of discourse in this discussion of agency, but I find that these arguments are essentially qualitative arguments couched in quantitative language. It's about like attempting somehow to quantify "Which country has more liberty: US or Canada?" It's a question attempting to quantify a more abstract notion with differing moral values about what qualifies as "liberty." But my acquiesence of using the terms "more" and "less" is more or less (no pun intended) an admission that these are almost unescapable when discussing what amount to moral values, principles, and such in the context of gaming. 



> Note to self: [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] does not like the term "vinegar."



No, I dislike you falsely reading "vinegar" into my statements. 



> When you use words like, "See, but that sort of thought still often results in conversational *religiosity*, except not one of conversion, but as combating perceived *heresies* that *threaten the prevailing hegemonic expression* of the game's *religious cultus* [sic]...." *it kinda seems like you have a bit of anger.*  Those aren't the words one uses to charitably describe another's argument, after all.  Calling another's posts about playing pretend elves hegemonic and religious is a framing not used for discussion but dismissal.



Except I don't, which again is you misreading things into my statements that are not there. Look, my own work is primarily religious in nature. For the last 10 years and counting, I have been surrounded by seminarians, priests, and religious scholars. It tends to flavor a lot of my language, but in this case, Bedrockgames introduced the language of religion in the discourse when describing the discussion in terms of religious conversion. Though I agree with Bedrockgames that this sentiment tends to crop a lot, I also find that the reverse to also be true, namely that a sort of religious fervor is present not only for "conversion," but also for any perceived "heresy" to the norms. This is not self-righteousness. This is not vinegar. This is not anger. It's simply a descriptive observation of our gaming culture. But I certainly will "have a bit of anger" when mistakenly people admonish me at length for behaviors and attitudes that I did not perform. 



> You're welcome, by the way; I did think you had a good statement wedged in there between the bad arguments about percentages and qualitative measures and the ridiculous bits at the end.  You should run with that



Note to Self: In the future remember that gratitude is owed to one who prefaces insults of character with one sentence of general agreement with no substantive follow-through.


----------



## Caliburn101

Amazing that anyone would bother to argue what a GM is.

The hobby defined this decades ago, and all more modern metagame mechanics or relative preferences for world-building detail did was give the definition a set of flavours.

It's still the same job, and pretending that your own preference in GM style is somehow a definition of what a GM MUST BE, is myopic reasoning.

It's entirely obvious what the role of a GM is unless you haven't role-played before, and it's equally obvious what world-building is for.

Storytelling needs a setting, and the characters in a story, while impacting that setting, didn't create it. Likewise some of the drama created is from their interaction with that setting, so like the character and motives of antagonists and protagonists, it has to suspend disbelief and be consistent.

What you, the player, or you the GM prefer in terms of meeting these requirements of an rpg session in terms of style and delivery is for you - you're way of doing things isn't 'The One True Way', and I see a lot of that kind of thinking in this thread.


----------



## Imaro

Hriston said:


> The limitations on player agency over the content of the shared fiction in Story Now gaming are the genre considerations, themes, and other concerns/priorities *introduced by the players themselves?* I don't get that.
> 
> Edited to add: Those are examples of the players exercising control/agency over the content of the fiction, not the other way around!




Wait so if the players agree that they want to explore/play through a particular module or a specific GM's world are they then exercising control/agency over the content of the fiction since playing said module or in said world is addressing their concerns and priorities for play?

If not, why not?

EDIT: To expound a little more... I feel like in the case of the examples of Story Now gaming, the play style and process is always presented as being in accordance with the concerns and priorities of the players but when looking at other playstyles it's not... but why is this assumed to be the case, why is it assumed that the playing of the module, it's themes, adversaries, etc are not in accordance with the concerns and priorities of the players?  Why is it assumed that when players sit down to play in a GM's world they aren't aware enough that their concerns and priorites are aligned with the GM's world?  I mean honestly I think this is where alot of the bad faith accusations are coming from.


----------



## Imaro

pemerton said:


> I can only agree with what  [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] has said. I simply don't see how getting to contribute to fiction that involves the stuff one wants, and addresses the thematic concerns one has signalled one cares about, can count as a limit on one's agency. It's an _expression_ of it!
> 
> (Also: I've made this same point upthread; and so has [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION].)




Same question I asked [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] above...


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> How can a player in a RPG, at one and the same time, be _playing the game/I] and yet not have control over the declaration of actions for his/her PC? I don't know what you have in mind._



_

Your players opt to be unable to declare actions that don't pursue one of their formal or informal goals.  Mine don't.  You move the game along just placing them where they are going, rather than traveling there, denying them the opportunity(again opted into by them) to declare certain actions along the way, as the travel and those actions don't pertain to the goals and are "boring".

This is not about the number of actions a player can make, because as you pointed out very early in the thread, there are only so many actions a player can make in a night and they are making just as many in your game as they do in mine.  This is about the number of actions they can choose from.  My players can choose from any action appropriate to the game(No "I look for a rocket ship." in a D&D game), and yours cannot.  Your players have the added ability to add things to the game through the fewer actions that they have to choose from, mine can't.  




			If the GM is doing what you describe as railroading - ie declaring actions for the players (I think that's what you mean?) - then what are the players doing? They don't seem to be playing.
		
Click to expand...



Only if the DM is railroading ever moment of the game, which never happens unless the DM is also the players and he is doing a solo game.  Instead, the DM railroads here and there(to varying degrees), only removing agency when he does it.  That lessens agency, but does not remove it.  It also typically pisses off the players.




			This doesn't change the fact that there is something that I care about in RPGing, that isn't a feature of your games. For some reason it angers you that I call it agency in respect of the content of the shared fiction. But whatever label I gave to it, your game still - by your own account - would not exhibit it.
		
Click to expand...


Not angry dude. _


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> You mistake me, I'm not defending Max's argument.  I did say that his 100% argument didn't actually say anything, so adding and subtracting to that would also mean nothing. Your tilting at the wrong windmill.




And a straw windmill at that, since I haven't actually done any math.  You don't need to do math to know that if you have complete agency it's 100%, no agency at all it's 0%, or limited agency is somewhere in-between.  Nor do you have to do math to know that if my agency is complete and so is [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s, they are both at an equal percentage, with that percentage being 100%.

 [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] continues to alter my argument, and then respond to his own fictitious change.  A classic Strawman.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> And a straw windmill at that, since I haven't actually done any math.  You don't need to do math to know that if you have complete agency it's 100%, no agency at all it's 0%, or limited agency is somewhere in-between.  Nor do you have to do math to know that if my agency is complete and so is [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s, they are both at an equal percentage, with that percentage being 100%.



You have talked about addition and subtraction in regards to percentages. You repeat the claim that you have "complete agency" and that it exists at "100% agency" without ever substantiating that. 



> [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] continues to alter my argument, and then respond to his own fictitious change.  A classic Strawman.



Citation needed; your personal attacks, however, are not.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Hriston said:


> The limitations on player agency over the content of the shared fiction in Story Now gaming are the genre considerations, themes, and other concerns/priorities *introduced by the players themselves?* I don't get that.
> 
> Edited to add: Those are examples of the players exercising control/agency over the content of the fiction, not the other way around!




I think we could debate which approach is quantifiably more free all day, and no one would ever agree, because this is about a very subjective conceptualization of play. I can completely buy, that for someone interested in exploring the themes Permerton and company want, this approach feels like greater agency. However, I the point we are trying convey here is being able to shape the story isn't the only thing that matters when you are talking about player freedom and agency. If you are there to experience that, of course it will feel like greater agency to you. But someone like Max isn't using that as a benchmark for how free he is. I am willing to bet, if Max played in a game with Pemerton's style, he'd feel his agency being curtailed. While Pemerton would probably feel the same way in a game using Max's approach. 

Also, what does this ultimately have to do with world building? We've been debating agency for God knows how many pages, and I am beginning to wonder why we are so stuck on this point. Obviously people disagree about it. I don't see the conversation moving that much more in either direction at this stage. 

Right now I feel like this whole conversation is veering into sophistry IMO. I am reminded of the corn scene in I, Claudius.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> I would say that if you believe that Pemerton is arguing in bad faith, then you may want to reexamine your own "good faith" in this discussion.




I am trying to. But it is very difficult to treat arguments as being good faith, when you state an opinion and people restate your position to mean something completely different.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> I am trying to. But it is very difficult to treat arguments as being good faith, when you state an opinion and people restate your position to mean something completely different.



That does sound frustrating, but I suspect that Pemerton and others are also frustrated from being repeatedly subjected to similar issues. If you were both feeling this way - that neither side was operating in food faith due to misconceptions/misrepresentations of your argument - how might you go forward in your conversation?


----------



## Ovinomancer

Aldarc said:


> I am clarifying my original statements. If you agree, then we can move on.
> 
> In general, the use of "more" and "less" are almost unavoidable as terms of discourse in this discussion of agency, but I find that these arguments are essentially qualitative arguments couched in quantitative language. It's about like attempting somehow to quantify "Which country has more liberty: US or Canada?" It's a question attempting to quantify a more abstract notion with differing moral values about what qualifies as "liberty." But my acquiesence of using the terms "more" and "less" is more or less (no pun intended) an admission that these are almost unescapable when discussing what amount to moral values, principles, and such in the context of gaming.
> 
> No, I dislike you falsely reading "vinegar" into my statements.
> 
> Except I don't, which again is you misreading things into my statements that are not there. Look, my own work is primarily religious in nature. For the last 10 years and counting, I have been surrounded by seminarians, priests, and religious scholars. It tends to flavor a lot of my language, but in this case, Bedrockgames introduced the language of religion in the discourse when describing the discussion in terms of religious conversion. Though I agree with Bedrockgames that this sentiment tends to crop a lot, I also find that the reverse to also be true, namely that a sort of religious fervor is present not only for "conversion," but also for any perceived "heresy" to the norms. This is not self-righteousness. This is not vinegar. This is not anger. It's simply a descriptive observation of our gaming culture. But I certainly will "have a bit of anger" when mistakenly people admonish me at length for behaviors and attitudes that I did not perform.
> 
> Note to Self: In the future remember that gratitude is owed to one who prefaces insults of character with one sentence of general agreement with no substantive follow-through.



Where did I insult your character?  I spoke to your arguments, not your character.

Bringing religion into a discussion on playing pretend elves (unless it's the religion of the legend elves under discussion) is fraught.  It's well known to be fraught.  That you work in a religion-oriented field and yet seemingly are unaware of this is... odd?  The use of religious terminology, especially in a pejorative sense, ous not sneering that I routinely assume "oh, this person must work in a religion-oriented field, their probably just using familiar terminology that, absent that understanding, would appear inflammatory."  I'm willing to accept your explanation, but not willing to accept criticism that your use of pejorative religious terms placed a burden on me to figure out ways you might not have meant them pejoratively.  You seem like a smart person -- I general assume smart people are aware of what they are saying.  I get everyday use seeping into other topics, but not that I'm supposed to know that about you a priori.


----------



## Aldarc

Ovinomancer said:


> Where did I insult your character?  I spoke to your arguments, not your character.



The "full of vinegar and holier-than-thou righteousness." That's not just about the words; that's an implicit statement on the person behind the words, which was then followed up with admonishment on my posting behavior based on that misreading. 



> *Bringing religion into a discussion* on playing pretend elves (unless it's the religion of the legend elves under discussion) is fraught.



And so the blame gets shifted on me. Lovely. 



> It's well known to be fraught.  *That you work in a religion-oriented field and yet seemingly are unaware of this is... odd?*



And this is patronizing. Cut it out. 



> The use of religious terminology, especially in a pejorative sense, ous not sneering that I routinely assume "oh, this person must work in a religion-oriented field, their probably just using familiar terminology that, absent that understanding, would appear inflammatory."  I'm willing to accept your explanation, but not willing to accept criticism that your use of pejorative religious terms placed a burden on me to figure out ways you might not have meant them pejoratively.  You seem like a smart person -- I general assume smart people are aware of what they are saying.  I get everyday use seeping into other topics, but not that I'm supposed to know that about you a priori.



What this tells me is that you regard the use of religious language as a pejorative. I don't. That's fine. But don't eisegete that into my statements. I don't assume that people know what I do, but I did expect that most reasonable people will respectfully give others the benefit of the doubt.

Edit: This particular conversation has mostly run its course. I am game to drop it if you are, such that more "productive" - and I do use that term loosely - conversation can hopefully take root in this thread.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> You have talked about addition and subtraction in regards to percentages.



Yes, I mentioned that someone else added my agency and his agency. For MY argument, see the post you just responded to.



> You repeat the claim that you have "complete agency" and that it exists at "100% agency" without ever substantiating that.




I defined agency and said that it is not limited in my game.   That is enough to substantiate my 100% claim.



> Citation needed; your personal attacks, however, are not.




First, I cite your posts.   Odd that you would need me to do that.  Second, pointing out your Strawman isn't a personal attack.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Aldarc said:


> The "full of vinegar and holier-than-thou righteousness." That's not just about the words; that's an implicit statement on the person behind the words, which was then followed up with admonishment on my posting behavior based on that misreading.
> 
> And so the blame gets shifted on me. Lovely.
> 
> And this is patronizing. Cut it out.
> 
> What this tells me is that you regard the use of religious language as a pejorative. I don't. That's fine. But don't eisegete that into my statements. I don't assume that people know what I do, but I did expect that most reasonable people will respectfully give others the benefit of the doubt.
> 
> Edit: This particular conversation has mostly run its course. I am game to drop it if you are, such that more "productive" - and I do use that term loosely - conversation can hopefully take root in this thread.



You're right, holier than thou was a comment on your character.  Mea culpa.

That said, no, religious language is not inherently pejorative.  The religious language _you chose_ was pejorative.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Aldarc said:


> That does sound frustrating, but I suspect that Pemerton and others are also frustrated from being repeatedly subjected to similar issues. If you were both feeling this way - that neither side was operating in food faith due to misconceptions/misrepresentations of your argument - how might you go forward in your conversation?



I have an answer: by advocating for your style and not trying to use reductive analysis on other styles without first honestly critiquing your own.

If posters stuck to "here's how I play and have fun!" we'd be better off, and that goes to both sides.

Alternatively, if you ask what a particular tool is used for by other players, maybe just acknowledge their uses rather than reduce it to terms like choose-your-own-adventure?  Inviting people to give you honest input and then belittling that input is generally going to cause a backlash.  If this is surprising to you....


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> Sure. But when I talk about whether or not a system supports classic dungeon-crawling, I'm not talking about it's capacity to generate a certain sort of imagined series of happenings. I'm talking about the actual play experience it will deliver.



Nod, my comment was a tangent from that point, I guess.

You're right that, if it's the process/procedure of an old-school dungeon crawl that you're trying to replicate, you have to go back and use the old-school systems & conventions that produced it, or new ones that emulate the same pathologies.  But, if you want the kind of meta-genre that they took place in or the kind of story they could, at their best, produce, then you could get either or both from very different games.


----------



## Aldarc

Ovinomancer said:


> I have an answer: by advocating for your style and not trying to use reductive analysis on other styles without first honestly critiquing your own.
> 
> If posters stuck to "here's how I play and have fun!" we'd be better off, and that goes to both sides.
> 
> Alternatively, if you ask what a particular tool is used for by other players, maybe just acknowledge their uses rather than reduce it to terms like choose-your-own-adventure?  Inviting people to give you honest input and then belittling that input is generally going to cause a backlash. If this is surprising to you....



And you were doing so well until your final paragraph where you couldn't help but get your final passive aggressive barbs and cuts into others. Oh well.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Aldarc said:


> And you were doing so well until your final paragraph where you couldn't help but get your final passive aggressive barbs and cuts into others. Oh well.



It wasn't that passive.  I could be more explicit, if it would make it better for you?  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] asking the question in the OP and then taking honest responses and characterizing then in a negative way is NOT how this topic should be engaged.
 [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s posts yelling "railroad" at pemerton's play examples is NOT how this topic should be engaged.

Better?


----------



## Jeremy E Grenemyer

Worldbuilding is for the enjoyment of the DM.

It's that part of the game where the pleasure of writing and creating coincides with planning out how to generate fun and a good time for others.

Even with established campaign worlds like the Forgotten Realms, worldbuilding is a blast.


----------



## Emerikol

The problem with the OP's premise and some of his defenders is him asserting the superiority of his style and arguing that it gives more freedom in some way that should be cherished.  First it is cherished if you enjoy his style and it is hated if you do not enjoy his style.  So it is a matter of preference.  I think most people are willing to concede that people like different things and enjoy what you like.  It only becomes a conflict when those assertions are made as if a fact.

I do think the term authorship should be used instead of freedom.  Because honestly my players have tons of freedom and they'd look bewildered if you said they didn't.  I think they would agree wholeheartedly that they do no authoring of the setting.  So the term to use I believe in this situation is the level of player authorship.  And I also agree that even with DM's that allow some player authorship the amount varies so there are nuances within that playstyle.


----------



## Campbell

*On Heresy:* I am not certain religious language is the best way to frame it, but I have encountered a certain sense of orthodoxy  or at least attachment to the mainstream in our shared hobby. There is a certain sense that there is one way to play a role playing game instead of many ways. It also feels like more leniency is provided to use of less mainstream techniques when you do not specifically set yourself apart from the mainstream of the hobby. I am not particularly wedded to this way of framing the cultural zeitgeist, but the overall sense of resistance I have gotten in the past when I have tried to explain why I have experienced deep dissatisfaction in gaming before I discovered Sorcerer, Apocalypse World and Moldvay B/X. 

It feels like instead of having conversations where we actually analyze and discuss play techniques and how they shape play we often forced to defend our right to even share our perspective or forced to use language that makes it  entirely too difficult to draw meaningful distinctions to the things that are personally very important to me. A lot of the terminology including things like world building over setting design or game master over referee are inherently skewed towards mainstream techniques. Beyond that it often seems to me like discussion often seems to consist of merely attacking the framing of analysis over actually discussing the substance behind the analysis.

That all being said as I have discussed elsewhere discussing agency generally without regard to what it is over is something that I have little interest in. In fact discussing how games work based on power relationships is not all that interesting to me, particularly from a stance that seems far more interested in theoretical power dynamics over real ones mediated by social expectations. I think it far more interesting to speak in terms of responsibilities and expectations that shape play. That conversation is often more difficult to have, often due to strong shared but unspoken assumptions that underlay much of mainstream play.

I'll have more later.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> I definitely think there are questionable arguments being made in that respect (I think my posts have made that clear). But I think the larger problem there is his reducing our position and our definition to "a player character taking an action".
> 
> They don't want our kind of agency in their games. I am not interested in converting people to my style of play. If they don't want what I like in a game, that is their business. I have no interest in trying to convince them to adopt what I do. All I care about in these conversations is we allow for the multitude of play style and that people don't try to weasel their play style into other peoples' tables by making bad linguistic arguments. If they are finding pleasure in the kind of agency Pemerton is talking about. more power to them. If others see that and think it is something they might like, more power to them. I just don't want them misrepresenting what we mean by agency. We've stated out definition multiple times and it keeps getting met with "so you mean any kind of roleplaying that happens in 100% of all campaigns anyways." or some variation on that. That is the infuriating bit.
> 
> I guess what bothers me in so many of these discussion is it is almost like people are trying to take away what pleasure others have found at the table. It would be one thing to say "Hey I have this cool style of play, here is how it works, give it a shot". But so many  of these conversations feel like attempts to convert people to a religion. It is just a game.




And I find it entirely puzzling why anyone would imagine that anything I've said would count as that! I have nothing against 'your kind of agency', as I've said several times, and I know [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] said it too, probably others, 'your kind of agency' (lets call it character agency) is simply the core activity of playing an RPG, so OF COURSE I approve of it! 

I mean, don't we BOTH AGREE, that a GM who isn't giving the players a chance to make basic types of choices, not even going near "inventing some new element of the setting" or whatever, just basic "I go here, I do this, I say X", that such a GM is not what exemplifies ANYONE's method of play. That GM is applying force, or something close to it. Maybe we can live with that, and maybe there's a theory for when that's OK, but it isn't what either of us are talking about. So of course we agree that players exercise 'character agency'. Its a given! 

Now, in Story Now there are other kinds of things players can do, usually, besides just say "my character opens the door", but THAT can and does happen too, all the time. The reasons for engaging in that sort of activity may be different for different types of games, but we've already been over many times how the various game types are ALL PRETTY SIMILAR in many basic respects! So really, there is no need for all this hand wringing and vilifying of anyone else.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> But so are his games, the difference is that his game is limited with respect to the sort of fiction that can result based on strict adherence to genre, theme, player concerns, etc... right?  So is it just that the 2 playstyles are just 2 different types of choose your own adventure books?



No, because, for one thing, the genre of, lets say, 'Epic High Fantasy' is MUCH MUCH larger than 'what can happen in DL1' (Dragon Lance being Epic High Fantasy, though I'm sure we could hair split about that, but lets not). You understand the difference? In Story Now there's no 'plot', there's no 'adventures you can go on', or even well-established world-facts that can't be contravened for the sake of story. 

The very genesis of the story is also QUALITATIVELY different, and this gets back to what [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] said before, there's a qualitative dimension to this whole 'agency debate' thing. You cannot simply spit out numbers, or even relative measures, like [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] is doing. It simply doesn't work. He's also correct, IMHO, in his analysis of the very nature of 'agency' itself, which is that nobody who seriously has the sort of philosophical credentials to be serious about defining it is going to say that actual humans have '100% agency'. Many might say exactly the opposite! 

The point is, players in [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s game are not simply given choices of circumstances within which they must have their characters navigate. They have a higher level input, to help determine what those circumstances are, the very process of creation of them, from the very beginning. It may be that in [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s game you can burn down the building and change the scenario, or walk away and go elsewhere, but, unless you engage him outside the realm of the narrative, you can't actually engage in the creative process of picking the elements that will go into the story, ab initio. 

This is a real difference, and its a dimension in which there is a quality which is existing in Story Now and not existing in Story Before or Story Later, or etc. 



> The problem is his playstyle has it's own set of limitations on all of these things that have been (by various posters arguing for said playstyle throughout the thread) ignored... promoted as "good" limitations" or brushed aside as an accepted part of the playstyle... when in fact none of that stops them from limiting player agency.




The problem is, when you take the kinds of 'limitations' that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has in his game, you are simply stating that 'if its a game at all, then its just as limited as ANY game." By this notion there's no meaningful difference of any kind between any two RPGs. 

THREAD IS OVER!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Sadras said:


> I believe (and I have no stats to back this statement) that the majority of us play a combination of both when given the opportunity by the players*.
> Many tables run the traditional combo Sandbox-Railroad and not a strict one or another, I feel Story Now also emerges in general play as players' interests start becoming increasingly more important in a campaign.
> Maybe I'm self-reflecting too much, but I don't think so based on what I have read on Enworld.
> 
> *requires players' input to run Story Now arcs




Yeah, I think this is something of a counterpoint that has been present in the thread all along. There are, in the real world, few pure examples of one way of playing. I can remember back to the oldest games I ran, and there was always a time when the players started making up MOST of the stuff that was going on, but it was definitely not systematic like what we do now.

I think some games, some genre, etc. are more likely to evoke a sort of Emergent Story Now than others, high level D&D play seems one where it can happen. Traveler, a game Pemerton sometimes talks about, can be another.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> You're forgetting the mandate on the GM to frame into crisis.  Yes, the player's have additional knot into the themes of okay and _may_ have additional ability to write to backstory with actions ( ie, secret door creation) , but this is countered by the fact that the GM is required to frame the PCs into crisis over these points.  The players lose the ability to mitigate issues with planning and are instead thrust into crisis regardless.
> 
> This is often dismissed because it's assumed that the players buy into this and desire it (and this is true), but a similar argument for traditional play is dismissed.  Many Story Now games actually build in mechanics to mitigate this very issue by giving players extra story levers to mitigate bad things that happen to their PCs.  Strangely, this is seem as more agency over traditional games rather than mechanics implemented to directly offset the agency restrictions built into the framing mechanisms of Story Now.
> 
> Don't get me wrong, here, I dont think this is a negative to Story Now.  It aims for a target and hits it with the play it generates.




I feel like 'crisis' may be doing too much work here. I mean, yes, you have a mandate to create drama by engaging the character traits/story put forward by the players. This WILL be some form of conflict, and 'crisis' is certainly one of the things that will come up. That doesn't mean that there's nothing else. I mean, when the Titanic sinks, there's a crisis, but other stuff happens too. That's an ongoing disaster situation, but even so there are likely to be scenes that are more 'build up' etc. than 'crisis'.

Remember, dramas still have establishment, and build up, etc. Its not all climax.

I'm thinking of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s character that has cooking skill. I mean, you wouldn't consider someone hungry showing up in camp a crisis, but its still a reasonable framing for Story Now play.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> And I find it entirely puzzling why anyone would imagine that anything I've said would count as that! I have nothing against 'your kind of agency', as I've said several times, and I know [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] said it too, probably others, 'your kind of agency' (lets call it character agency) is simply the core activity of playing an RPG, so OF COURSE I approve of it!
> 
> I mean, don't we BOTH AGREE, that a GM who isn't giving the players a chance to make basic types of choices, not even going near "inventing some new element of the setting" or whatever, just basic "I go here, I do this, I say X", that such a GM is not what exemplifies ANYONE's method of play. That GM is applying force, or something close to it. Maybe we can live with that, and maybe there's a theory for when that's OK, but it isn't what either of us are talking about. So of course we agree that players exercise 'character agency'. Its a given!



Not so universally as you might think, I'm afraid.

For example, in one of the other threads I'm into it a bit with a "Yes, and..." playstyle supporter, in whose game if someone makes a suggestion or declares an action (e.g. "we go left", or "I charge the fortress") everyone else is ultimately bound to support it - the table mechanics don't give them the agency to disagree* or to try to prevent the action or to do something else.  Hence, once someone's made the suggestion or declared the action all the rest can do is respond with "Yes, and I <narrate or declare my action in support of what was declared/suggested>."

* - except for colour, but it's just going through the motions as ultimately you have to find a reason to concur.

Personally I find this a far greater denial of player agency than anything to do with co-authorship would ever amount to.

Lanefan


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> Wait so if the players agree that they want to explore/play through a particular module or a specific GM's world are they then exercising control/agency over the content of the fiction since playing said module or in said world is addressing their concerns and priorities for play?
> 
> If not, why not?
> 
> EDIT: To expound a little more... I feel like in the case of the examples of Story Now gaming, the play style and process is always presented as being in accordance with the concerns and priorities of the players but when looking at other playstyles it's not... but why is this assumed to be the case, why is it assumed that the playing of the module, it's themes, adversaries, etc are not in accordance with the concerns and priorities of the players?  Why is it assumed that when players sit down to play in a GM's world they aren't aware enough that their concerns and priorites are aligned with the GM's world?  I mean honestly I think this is where alot of the bad faith accusations are coming from.




I don't think that 'classic' games NECESSARILY lack this characteristic. There are three points to consider:

1) In some degree this accordance may actually reflect use of informal narrativist techniques. To the degree that this is true one style of play can approach the other by becoming the other style!

2) Narrativist techniques and Story Now, which is really what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has been focused on from post #1 IMHO, are not totally the same thing. Story Now is more specific, and the use of some narrative focus isn't automatically the same sort of focus.

3) The accordance in Story Now is guaranteed by the rules and process of play. Its not accidental or implicit or informal. It is the very essence of the nature of this form of play. It could be that you could produce EXACTLY the same level of focus informally, but I think the difference is still material when we talk about techniques of play.

So, personally, I would just rather play the game where this is an explicit process, but it is perfectly true that at some level games ultimately have to address player interests, or the game will wither. We still can have better games for it, and my feeling is that Story Now games have a more PARTICULAR focus on player agenda/interests, generally. That is, its always, in every scene, the player's agenda. A module may be "Yeah, we want to test ourselves against Tomb of Horror, lets play that!" and (particularly for such a tightly focused module) its going to be quite true that player interests are engaged. Still, it may not be ALWAYS true, even in that module. Maybe the players would have more interest in mummies or yuan ti, or something as their main antagonist and not a lich. The lich is what they got, not a tragedy.


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s posts yelling "railroad" at pemerton's play examples is NOT how this topic should be engaged.




I only began that after [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s repeated and incorrect depictions of my playstyle as "railroad" and "choose your own adventure".  He just kept on ignoring the corrections and explanations.  Once I'm sure that a person is just willfully insulting the playstyle, I throw his actions back at him.


----------



## pemerton

Many early posts in thie thread said that the purpose of worldbuilding is to underping _exploration_, which means - more-or-less - _learning stuff from the GM about the setting s/he has established and is curating_.

Now that's not my favourite style of play. But if I was going to explain why it can be appealing as a type of RPGing, I wouldn't begin by emphasising how much agency it gives the players over the content of the shared fiction, because it seems to me almost self-evident that there are other approaches to RPGing that give the players greater agency of that sort.

I would begin by explaining what the virtues are of having someone else tell you stuff about the setting they created. Presumably that has at least something in common with the virtues of storytelling, and the pleasures of being an audience member.

Likewise, I would want to explain how players have the capacity - by choosing, eg what moves they declare for their PCs which, in the fiction, will result in those PCs moving from place to place - to trigger GM narration is a good thing. How is learning about the duergar (to pick an example) _by having the GM narrate a scene in which one's PC is present_ different from learning about the duergar by reading an imaginary encyclopedia entry? Presumably there's an answer to that question - but is it connected to the second-personality of the narration? The imaginative projection of oneself into the narrated scene (which is not normally part of reading an ecncyclopedia)?

It doesn't seem to me that there's _nothing _to say along these lines.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> Many early posts in thie thread said that the purpose of worldbuilding is to underping _exploration_, which means - more-or-less - _learning stuff from the GM about the setting s/he has established and is curating_.
> 
> Now that's not my favourite style of play. But if I was going to explain why it can be appealing as a type of RPGing, I wouldn't begin by emphasising how much agency it gives the players over the content of the shared fiction, because it seems to me almost self-evident that there are other approaches to RPGing that give the players greater agency of that sort.
> 
> I would begin by explaining what the virtues are of having someone else tell you stuff about the setting they created. Presumably that has at least something in common with the virtues of storytelling, and the pleasures of being an audience member.
> 
> Likewise, I would want to explain how players have the capacity - by choosing, eg what moves they declare for their PCs which, in the fiction, will result in those PCs moving from place to place - to trigger GM narration is a good thing. How is learning about the duergar (to pick an example) _by having the GM narrate a scene in which one's PC is present_ different from learning about the duergar by reading an imaginary encyclopedia entry? Presumably there's an answer to that question - but is it connected to the second-personality of the narration? The imaginative projection of oneself into the narrated scene (which is not normally part of reading an ecncyclopedia)?
> 
> It doesn't seem to me that there's _nothing _to say along these lines.




The problem is your language is so loaded, the judgments are already there before you finish a sentence. Stop forcing an idea like "Moves" onto a style that doesn't even use that as a concept and see if it change your evaluation of what is going on when they explore the world. I understand why some games have adopted the idea of 'moves'. But this is a concept that most people who play in the style you are trying to analyze, don't use and actively reject as a simplification. The same with agency. People are not talking about their ability to shape the content of shared fiction, they are talking about the agency to explore a place that feels like a a living world with exciting NPCs and people you can interact with however you want. 

I guess the problem here is it is just hard not to read these kinds of assessments as a show of analysis, with the aim of just placing your style higher than another. I don't think it is unique to you, or your side of the fence. I encounter all the time in my own circles. But I always reject because it is so obvious that people are just trying to control the language to place their style at the top, as the real, or the more important style. Right now the idea of player freedom and agency is being used but it can just as easily be anything else. 





AbdulAlhazred said:


> And I find it entirely puzzling why anyone would imagine that anything I've said would count as that! I have nothing against 'your kind of agency', as I've said several times, and I know [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] said it too, probably others, 'your kind of agency' (lets call it character agency) is simply the core activity of playing an RPG, so OF COURSE I approve of it!




No it isn't. We are not just talking about gaming as it is always done. This is part of the dispute. Most games I've played in, do not allow for a 100%, go anywhere, do anything you want approach. There are usually either conceits of where the game is intended to go (i.e. players are expected to look for the obvious adventure hooks and take them, or the players are expected to stay in this area of the world, or the PCs are expected to be particular kinds of characters, etc). Games where the players are free to explore, are more popular now than they've been in the recent past, but they are far from ubiquitous and far from the default mode of play. So when people like me talk about agency in that context, we are not just saying something meaningless. It is something we hear at the table, when players don't feel freedom to explore is being honored. I've heard and seen that word thrown around countless times, at tables where the focus is something like a sandbox or a situational adventure. And it isn't meant in the way Pemerton is using it. 

Again, this is the infuriating part of the discussion. We are literally saying A, and you guys respond by saying "Okay so you mean B, well that doesn't mean anything anyways".


----------



## Imaro

AbdulAlhazred said:


> No, because, for one thing, the genre of, lets say, 'Epic High Fantasy' is MUCH MUCH larger than 'what can happen in DL1' (Dragon Lance being Epic High Fantasy, though I'm sure we could hair split about that, but lets not). You understand the difference? In Story Now there's no 'plot', there's no 'adventures you can go on', or even well-established world-facts that can't be contravened for the sake of story.




I'm confused here... are you claiming that in a game based around worldbuilding there must necessarily be a "plot" (in quotations because perhaps I'm not understanding the definition being used here)?  Because I can assure you from actual play that's not the case.  I can only speak to my style of running a game but I have run traditional games that leaned heavily on worldbuilding and what they had wasn't plot but instead situations that the PC's were free to deal with, not deal with or do something else entirely.  I don't think what can happen in DL1 is enough to describe either of our styles and thus why there's umbrage around the statement that a traditional game with worldbuilding is a "Choose your own adventure" game.  It's like me claiming Story Now is just a "Let the dice make whatever up in the moment" game.  It's a simplistic statement that's mildly insulting and fails to capture the nuances of the playstyle.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> The very genesis of the story is also QUALITATIVELY different, and this gets back to what [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] said before, there's a qualitative dimension to this whole 'agency debate' thing. You cannot simply spit out numbers, or even relative measures, like  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] is doing. It simply doesn't work. He's also correct, IMHO, in his analysis of the very nature of 'agency' itself, which is that nobody who seriously has the sort of philosophical credentials to be serious about defining it is going to say that actual humans have '100% agency'. Many might say exactly the opposite!




Yes and I (as well as a few other posters who have addressed this)am recognizing that qualitative component by addressing the fact that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s limiters on player agency are different.  However when one starts from a position of wanting to understand something (I assume that was the point of the OP in this thread) but then turns it into a comparison/competition where not only do they use negatively skewed language to describe the other playstyle but also define the parameters of the comparison and the nature of the "win" conditions well it's apt to irritate those who probabnly feel like the entire thread was a bait and switch that has been pulled on them in bad faith.  It feels less like I want to understand and more like I drew you in to this so I could tell you how much better my style is and force you to defend your own.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> The point is, players in  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s game are not simply given choices of circumstances within which they must have their characters navigate. They have a higher level input, to help determine what those circumstances are, the very process of creation of them, from the very beginning. It may be that in  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s game you can burn down the building and change the scenario, or walk away and go elsewhere, but, unless you engage him outside the realm of the narrative, you can't actually engage in the creative process of picking the elements that will go into the story, ab initio.
> 
> 
> This is a real difference, and its a dimension in which there is a quality which is existing in Story Now and not existing in Story Before or Story Later, or etc.





I can't speak specifically to [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] 's games but he's free to comment on this if he wants...  What I can say is that as far as I can tell [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] doesn't run a game where players can just create things on the fly.  They create characters with certain themes, interests, etc. and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] runs adventures around those things.  Again as I stated in a previous post... the same thing can be (and at least by me often is) done with a traditional style of play both implicitly and explicitly. 

As an example... I have players who want to play in Planescape, they pick whether they are planar/prime... pick race...pick class...pick faction... background and so on... we discuss their characters before the game starts and I in turn set up situations within the Planescape campaign setting around these things.  When session zero + inherent world themes (from worldbuilding) come together for character creation I find it hard to find a good faith scenario where the players interests and concerns don't naturally flow during the actual game sessions.  How does [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s game give a higher level of input than this (and note this is all session zero stuff that I think alot of GM's with traditional playstyles use when their players want to be that invested).


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> The point is, players in [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s game are not simply given choices of circumstances within which they must have their characters navigate. They have a higher level input, to help determine what those circumstances are, the very process of creation of them, from the very beginning. It may be that in [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s game you can burn down the building and change the scenario, or walk away and go elsewhere, but, unless you engage him outside the realm of the narrative, you can't actually engage in the creative process of picking the elements that will go into the story, ab initio.




That's not true and I demonstrated that with the barbarian example.  The players dictate to me what is going on and I react.  They chose the creative elements of going north, finding the barbarians, and setting one of them up as the barbarian king, not me.  I just reacted to them.


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## Imaro

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I don't think that 'classic' games NECESSARILY lack this characteristic. There are three points to consider:




I don't either and this is one of the problems with trying to define a "playstyle" as a singular monolithic thing... but we do love our us vs. them time, don't we?



AbdulAlhazred said:


> 1) In some degree this accordance may actually reflect use of informal narrativist techniques. To the degree that this is true one style of play can approach the other by becoming the other style!




Could you explain what encompasses "narrativist techniques"?  I'd like to make sure we are on the same page for further discussion.  



AbdulAlhazred said:


> 2) Narrativist techniques and Story Now, which is really what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has been focused on from post #1 IMHO, are not totally the same thing. Story Now is more specific, and the use of some narrative focus isn't automatically the same sort of focus.




Again I agree but I'm not claiming these games are being run in a Story Now style (I actually feel they aren't at all) and, until you better define what narrativist techniques are I'll withhold commenting on that.  But I'm not sure how this addresses my point as this doesn't necessarily counter what I claim.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> 3) The accordance in Story Now is guaranteed by the rules and process of play. Its not accidental or implicit or informal. It is the very essence of the nature of this form of play. It could be that you could produce EXACTLY the same level of focus informally, but I think the difference is still material when we talk about techniques of play.




But why does that matter?  If you claim a style cannot do something but it can why does whether it does it informally. accidentally or implicitly?  You are claiming it lacks this thing if it can in fact produce said thing then the new conversation (and a much more interesting and civil one) would have been how are these things brough out and handled in a traditional vs. Story Now game...



AbdulAlhazred said:


> So, personally, I would just rather play the game where this is an explicit process, but it is perfectly true that at some level games ultimately have to address player interests, or the game will wither. We still can have better games for it, and my feeling is that Story Now games have a more PARTICULAR focus on player agenda/interests, generally. That is, its always, in every scene, the player's agenda. A module may be "Yeah, we want to test ourselves against Tomb of Horror, lets play that!" and (particularly for such a tightly focused module) its going to be quite true that player interests are engaged. Still, it may not be ALWAYS true, even in that module. Maybe the players would have more interest in mummies or yuan ti, or something as their main antagonist and not a lich. The lich is what they got, not a tragedy.




And I get you preference but that's not the same as claiming these games don't have that level of player agency or can't achieve it.  

Emphasis Mine: No see in the same way we have to assume that a player in the Story Now style knows the genre, concerns and interests he wants to explore... We should also for the other style practice good faith and assume the same thing.  If their interests and concerns lie in exploring the Tomb of Horror as opposed to the Tomb of Horror modified with mummies or Yuan-ti.  Otherwise couldn't a player who isn't upfront about his interests and concerns create the same situation in a Story Now game?


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## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> The same with agency. People are not talking about their ability to shape the content of shared fiction, *they are talking about the agency to explore a place that feels like a a living world with exciting NPCs and people you can interact with however you want.*



Even as an observer to this conversation, I tend to disagree with this assessment. Under that sort of definition, then yes it would be a definition of agency tantamount to "playing the game." And with my growing interest in games such as Fate and Dungeon World, the pre-bold seems like a more applicable and meaningful sense of player agency than the bold.


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## Hriston

AbdulAlhazred said:


> The very genesis of the story is also QUALITATIVELY different, and this gets back to what [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION] said before, there's a qualitative dimension to this whole 'agency debate' thing. You cannot simply spit out numbers, or even relative measures, like  [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] is doing. It simply doesn't work. He's also correct, IMHO, in his analysis of the very nature of 'agency' itself, which is that nobody who seriously has the sort of philosophical credentials to be serious about defining it is going to say that actual humans have '100% agency'. Many might say exactly the opposite!




I think it was [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] who said that stuff, not me, but I'm generally in agreement. I think [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s "100% agency" argument is silly and seems designed to stifle analysis by positing a sameness for all systems/games with regard to agency, which he seems to define as whatever that particular game lets the player do. I mean, sure, in a game of chess I have "100% agency" to move my knight according to the rules of chess. That really doesn't tell us anything of value about chess relative to Monopoly, for example.


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## Imaro

Aldarc said:


> Even as an observer to this conversation, I tend to disagree with this assessment. Under that sort of definition, then yes it would be a definition of agency tantamount to "playing the game." And with my growing interest in games such as Fate and Dungeon World, the pre-bold seems like a more applicable and meaningful sense of player agency than the bold.




I disagree... you take a look at many of the games/adventures/camapigns/etc. of the 90's and you can readily see this type of agency (which was curtailed, ignored and even overridden by many of the products of that time) does not equate to just "playing the game".  People played games and lacked this type of agency... for a great example just look at the Dragonlance modules, some of the stuff that came out for White Wolf and even some of the stuff for AD&D.


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## Arilyn

The argument over agency is getting odd. The detractors of Story Now gaming have claimed that their players wouldn't want to have input into the fiction. The players want to inhabit their characters as if they are there. It's the GM's job to create and describe the world. Fair enough. Why then, are there  arguments that Classical players have just as much, if not more agency than Story Now gamers? It seems pretty obvious that not having input over the actual fiction, other than character decisions, is less agency. And since it is not desirable for the players to be declaring actions which shape the world, what's the problem? Aren't Classical games aiming for high character agency and low player agency? If you are letting players have some control over the fiction than you are at least dabbling in Story Now, and so, I would assume, not be too opposed to Story Now advocates.

The argument that Story Now gamers actually have less agency is even stranger. It seems to come from the idea that players are being flung from one crisis to another, with no choice or room to breathe. I'm sure that if the players desired some time to explore a bazaar or share a "family" meal aboard their spaceship, it would happen. I'm sure Story Now GMs aren't anymore tyrannical than regular ones.

The other objection is the idea that multiple players having multiple goals is going to cause less agency for the players who don't get their own way. How is this any different from every other rpg out there? Players compromise and GMs assure no one player dominates the table. 

Although, some of these posts are getting a little heated, I think we need to also remember that good debators ask challenging questions. It's not necessarily personal attacks, or "one true wayism."


----------



## Imaro

Arilyn said:


> The argument over agency is getting odd. The detractors of Story Now gaming have claimed that their players wouldn't want to have input into the fiction. The players want to inhabit their characters as if they are there. It's the GM's job to create and describe the world. Fair enough. *Why then, are there  arguments that Classical players have just as much, if not more agency than Story Now gamers? It seems pretty obvious that not having input over the actual fiction, other than character decisions, is less agency.* And since it is not desirable for the players to be declaring actions which shape the world, what's the problem? Aren't Classical games aiming for high character agency and low player agency? If you are letting players have some control over the fiction than you are at least dabbling in Story Now, and so, I would assume, not be too opposed to Story Now advocates.




Emphasis mine: I think this has been addressed.  If the players themes, concerns and interests are met in the classical game then they don't have less agency.  This can be as simple as having character creation guidelines or discussion before play and doesn't necessarily require player input into the fiction... see my earlier post about a Planescape campaign where everyone is on board with it being Planescape.

EDIT: Also I think player's can declare actions in both types of games that shape the world... though I am a little confused on what character agency is supposed to be since it's always the player making the choice.


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## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> Even as an observer to this conversation, I tend to disagree with this assessment. Under that sort of definition, then yes it would be a definition of agency tantamount to "playing the game." And with my growing interest in games such as Fate and Dungeon World, the pre-bold seems like a more applicable and meaningful sense of player agency than the bold.




Then we are not even speaking the same language. I've tried to be clear. I know there is a big distinction in play at the table, because I've seen it first hand, between a game where agency is respected so the players can explore freely and just "playing the game". I really don't know what to say if I keep saying X and you keep telling me I am saying Y. If this isn't bad faith argument, I don't know what is.


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## Arilyn

Imaro said:


> Emphasis mine: I think this has been addressed.  If the players themes, concerns and interests are met in the classical game then they don't have less agency.  This can be as simple as having character creation guidelines or discussion before play and doesn't necessarily require player input into the fiction... see my earlier post about a Planescape campaign where everyone is on board with it being Planescape.




This just means they are happy with the current level;ithas no bearing on their agency in comparison to Story Now games. There seems to be an underlying theme that more agency equals better. This isn't true for all games or players. Total agency is not necessarily a good thing. If I start a new job, and am told  to do as I think best with no constraints or guidelines, I'm going to feel at a loss. I would prefer some direction. I think the weakness of Story Now can be high player agency. The players might not know what they want to do. Story Now also runs the risk of the group ending up with not much story at all. There are strengths and weaknesses in both styles. In Story Now, the players have agency over what has traditionally been in the GM's hands. This gives them more agency overall--their character's agency in the imaginary world plus the player's agency over the fiction. It may be apples and oranges, in a way, but Story Now gamers are getting more fruit. For some, it might be too much fruit.

You say your players have just as much agency because they are playing in the campaign they want and are free to explore the world as they see fit. Yes, they have lots of agency. Your GMing style sounds great. It can't provide the same amount of agency as Story Now, without adopting Story Now, however. In Story Now, the player input on the fiction is continual. But so what? As mentioned above, too much agency can cause difficulties. Story Now remains a minority style, and I doubt will ever dominate rpgs. I have been recently been playing in a Story Now campaign. It's fun and engaging. I appreciate it, but I enjoy Classical just as much. pemerton, on the other hand, prefers Story Now exclusively, and I'm sure Lanefan will never like Story Now. I think we've been getting caught up in agency as a measurement of quality, which is leading to odd arguments and accusations of railroading on both sides of the debate.


----------



## Aldarc

Imaro said:


> I disagree... you take a look at many of the games/adventures/camapigns/etc. of the 90's and you can readily see this type of agency (which was curtailed, ignored and even overridden by many of the products of that time) does not equate to just "playing the game".  People played games and lacked this type of agency... for a great example just look at the Dragonlance modules, some of the stuff that came out for White Wolf and even some of the stuff for AD&D.



You are certainly welcome to disagree. I will take your word for it regarding "many of the games/adventures/campaigns/etc. of the 90's" since my RP days began with the release of 3rd edition D&D. 



Bedrockgames said:


> Then we are not even speaking the same language. I've tried to be clear. I know there is a big distinction in play at the table, because I've seen it first hand, between a game where agency is respected so the players can explore freely and just "playing the game". I really don't know what to say if I keep saying X and you keep telling me I am saying Y. *If this isn't bad faith argument, I don't know what is.*



Then it's very well possible that you don't know what is. If you are unable to communicate your ideas clearly or they are routinely understood as communicating something else, then maybe there is something wrong with how you are communicating your message. But accusing me of bad faith in this case only poisons the conversational well.


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## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> You are certainly welcome to disagree. I will take your word for it regarding "many of the games/adventures/campaigns/etc. of the 90's" since my RP days began with the release of 3rd edition D&D.




It happened all the time in 3rd edition too, when people would structure adventures around encounter levels for example. It could be very difficult for groups to deviate from the planned series of encounters. Happened a lot in my experience. 



> Then it's very well possible that you don't know what is. If you are unable to communicate your ideas clearly or they are routinely understood as communicating something else, then maybe there is something wrong with how you are communicating your message. But accusing me of bad faith in this case only poisons the conversational well.




The only time I've ever encountered difficulty being understood on this point, is in this conversation. It hasn't happened to me elsewhere or in real life. Again, I am clearly saying Y (even defining it) and you and others twist my meaning into something else. Maybe you are not intending to do anything in bad faith, but can't you see how this rhetorical tactic is creating needless conflict. 

In terms of understanding one another, I think I've come to understand your position and style well, and made every effort to describe it in the terms you are using. But that isn't reciprocated at all. I think I get what the other side like about the kind of agency people are describing, because I take them at their word when you say being able to shape the content of the fiction. I don't try to read it in the least charitable light, or twist it into some other meaning. And I am not even saying that what they are dealing with isn't agency. I am simply observing we are using agency in two different ways to to help conceptualize play. But I don't think you understand what my position is at all.


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## Aenghus

Over the years I can't remember the number of games I was in as a player, some years ago at this point when roleplaying was less self-aware, where my announced personal goals and ambitions for my character never got any satisfying closure on these issues by the time they left play. A subjective judgement for sure, but many issues in RPGs are subjective and resist being reduced to simple numbers.

In most cases it wasn't anyone acting in bad faith per se, it was just differences in priorities. Many GMs are primarily interested in their own creative work (worldbuilding, plots, situations) and consider player goals secondary or lesser. Some required that players "earn" the right to address their ambitions during play, or relegated them to downtime, or other variations of hurry up and wait.

I can see there's no immediate reward for a GM coming clean and saying that a players ambitions won't be possible in the current game, indeed it could cost them a player for that particular campaign. The GM can always hope the player will drop the goal or settle for the other activities of the game. Sometimes that's what happens.

But in other cases the possibly well-meant GM excuses get tired and frustrating over time, as it becomes obvious that seriously addressing the player goals just won't be possible in the life of the game.

IMO Story Now directly addresses this issue, giving assurances that the players can address their personal goals right now, no excuses, no "earning the right to try", no waiting to get to the fun part of the game.

The downside of Story Now gaming for me as a player is that I don't like self conscious big decisions, I suffer from analysis paralysis and the bigger the decision the more difficult I find it. As a player I often find conventional procedural play easier, as lots of small procedural decisions are easier for me than  a smaller number of big drama-soaked decisions.


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## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> The only time I've ever encountered difficulty being understood on this point, is in this conversation. It hasn't happened to me elsewhere or in real life. Again, I am clearly saying Y (even defining it) and you and others twist my meaning into something else. Maybe you are not intending to do anything in bad faith, but can't you see how this rhetorical tactic is creating needless conflict.



"This rhetorical tactic" implies malicious intent, and once again you are playing the blame game. 



> In terms of understanding one another, *I think I've come to understand your position and style well, *and made every effort to describe it in the terms you are using. But that isn't reciprocated at all. I think I get what the other side like about the kind of agency people are describing, because I take them at their word when you say being able to shape the content of the fiction. I don't try to read it in the least charitable light, or twist it into some other meaning. And I am not even saying that what they are dealing with isn't agency. I am simply observing we are using agency in two different ways to to help conceptualize play. But I don't think you understand what my position is at all.



Speaking of bad faith rhetorical tactics... Don't group me into a camp for the sake of your reductionist blanket statements here. I have not declared any allegiance here. I am no "other side." I have raised my views on several points, but not enough to say that I belong to any "camp" or train of thought here. I disagree with your understanding of the term "agency," but that does not put me into any other camp anymore than [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] belongs to a camp for disagreeing with me on a few points regarding how I formulated my argument. Furthermore, please keep in mind that just because people may understand your position, they are not obligated to agree with it, your definition, or how you use it.


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## Lanefan

This is well put, and sums it all up quite reasonably.  But, a few notes: (I've taken the liberty of inserting some numbers into the quote to connect to my responses below, as I wanted to leave your message otherwise intact)


Arilyn said:


> This just means they are happy with the current level;ithas no bearing on their agency in comparison to Story Now games. There seems to be an underlying theme that more agency equals better. (1) This isn't true for all games or players. Total agency is not necessarily a good thing. If I start a new job, and am told  to do as I think best with no constraints or guidelines, I'm going to feel at a loss. I would prefer some direction. I think the weakness of Story Now can be high player agency. The players might not know what they want to do. Story Now also runs the risk of the group ending up with not much story at all. There are strengths and weaknesses in both styles. In Story Now, the players have agency over what has traditionally been in the GM's hands. This gives them more agency overall--their character's agency in the imaginary world plus the player's agency over the fiction. (2) It may be apples and oranges, in a way, but Story Now gamers are getting more fruit. For some, it might be too much fruit.
> 
> You say your players have just as much agency because they are playing in the campaign they want and are free to explore the world as they see fit. Yes, they have lots of agency. Your GMing style sounds great. It can't provide the same amount of agency as Story Now, without adopting Story Now, however. (3) In Story Now, the player input on the fiction is continual. But so what? As mentioned above, too much agency can cause difficulties. Story Now remains a minority style, and I doubt will ever dominate rpgs. I have been recently been playing in a Story Now campaign. It's fun and engaging. I appreciate it, but I enjoy Classical just as much. pemerton, on the other hand, prefers Story Now exclusively, and I'm sure Lanefan will never like Story Now. (4) I think we've been getting caught up in agency as a measurement of quality, (5) which is leading to odd arguments and accusations of railroading on both sides of the debate.



1. It's not just a question of "more" or "less" agency, it's also been a comparison of different types of agency with some saying one is better than another.

2. The underlying risk here is that if these two agencies are taken too far (and defining "too far" in this case might on its own be a lengthy debate!) you could end up with players authoring both the problem via agency over the fiction and the solution via agency over their characters.  I'm willing to go out on a limb and say even the hardest-core story now proponents don't want this, never mind the rest of us. 

So there still have to be limits somewhere.

3. Here's where quantifying agency gently runs aground.  The agency given by story now isn't directly additive to the agency of exploration-as-seen-fit, in that with story now (as we've been told a few hundred times and counting  ) there's nothing to explore.  As a direct result there's much less agency of exploration, but as this is more or less replaced by agency that's granted over the fiction the end result is about a steady state.  

The agency of free-will action declaration - i.e. a player has the agency to play her character as seen fit - seems roughly the same in either style.

4. Oddly enough, coming from me, I'd probably find a story-now-like game quite engaging in the short term; assuming reasonably decent players and GM and a rules-light system.  However, short term isn't what I look for in a campaign; and particularly if I'm expected to learn a new rule set or system for it I expect a campaign to have the capability to sustain itself for many years.  Story-now, from what I've seen, doesn't seem all that able to do this - you play through the story arcs you and the other players defined up front and that's it.

Tangentially, but still relevant: story now seems to very much focus on the individual character story arcs rather than the story arc of the party as a whole.  I'd rather focus on the story arc of the party, and let individual characters come and go during that span.  Focusing on the party story gives all the players equal reason to be engaged all the time, where jumping the focus back and forth between individual character's stories mean each player's reason for engagement waxes (when it's their story in focus) and wanes (when it's someone else's in which maybe they've less interest).

5. Agency maybe isn't a direct _measure of_ quality but I think everyone here sees a well-managed application of their definition of agency as a significant _contributor to_ quality.

Lan-"if the fourth is with you too much today will you be pleading the fifth tomorrow?"-efan


----------



## Tony Vargas

Aldarc said:


> You are certainly welcome to disagree. I will take your word for it regarding "many of the games/adventures/campaigns/etc. of the 90's" since my RP days began with the release of 3rd edition D&D.



The 90s were not a great decade for TTRPGs, I suppose.  CCGs were introduced in '93 and cut into the typical new-RPGer demographic heavily, they (it, really: M:tG) dominated conventions for years, by the end of the 90s, young (under 30) TTRPG players were somewhat uncommon, and often had come to the hobby via LARPing.  WWGS was the head-space leader in the industry, and TSR imploded.  

In the 90s, 'story' was actually a big deal (nothing like 'Story Now,' it'd be more like "Story First," the GM, or even the writers of setting material, write a story/'meta-plot' and the GM pulls the players through it, more or less consensually/participationally), FWIW.  It was also the era of UseNet and the infamous Roll v Role debate - which led to Threefold Theory, which led to all this crazy Forge lingo we use so inconsistently today.  The most popular games of the decade were, IIRC, AD&D 2e (natch), Storyteller (WoD), and, though not really an RPG, Battletech (it was crazy popular, including crossover with a lot of RPGers at least at the cons I went to, and it had a crap RPG attached to it).  Towards the end of the decade, the conventional wisdom was that those three won out because of the depth/wealth of their settings, which included novels and/or 'meta-plots' woven through the setting which, if your GM wanted to keep using the next book that came out (and one likely came out each month), constrained the kinds of stories your 'troupe' could tell.  

So I guess we weren't just getting limited player agency, but limited GM agency, in a sense...


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## Maxperson

Hriston said:


> I think it was @_*Aldarc*_ who said that stuff, not me, but I'm generally in agreement. I think @_*Maxperson*_'s "100% agency" argument is silly and seems designed to stifle analysis by positing a sameness for all systems/games with regard to agency, which he seems to define as whatever that particular game lets the player do. I mean, sure, in a game of chess I have "100% agency" to move my knight according to the rules of chess. That really doesn't tell us anything of value about chess relative to Monopoly, for example.




This just shows that you don't really understand what agency is.  The game of chess is all about limiting your opponents agency.  You win the game when you are threatening the opposing king and you have removed all agency from the player regarding that king.  You can force the player to move pieces by threatening the king in such a way that the player has to block with a piece.  When I do those things, I remove his agency.  If I put one of my pieces in front of a pawn that my opponent wants to move, I have removed his agency.


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## Maxperson

Arilyn said:


> The argument over agency is getting odd. The detractors of Story Now gaming have claimed that their players wouldn't want to have input into the fiction. The players want to inhabit their characters as if they are there. It's the GM's job to create and describe the world. Fair enough. Why then, are there  arguments that Classical players have just as much, if not more agency than Story Now gamers? It seems pretty obvious that not having input over the actual fiction, other than character decisions, is less agency. And since it is not desirable for the players to be declaring actions which shape the world, what's the problem? Aren't Classical games aiming for high character agency and low player agency? If you are letting players have some control over the fiction than you are at least dabbling in Story Now, and so, I would assume, not be too opposed to Story Now advocates.
> 
> The argument that Story Now gamers actually have less agency is even stranger. It seems to come from the idea that players are being flung from one crisis to another, with no choice or room to breathe. I'm sure that if the players desired some time to explore a bazaar or share a "family" meal aboard their spaceship, it would happen. I'm sure Story Now GMs aren't anymore tyrannical than regular ones.
> 
> The other objection is the idea that multiple players having multiple goals is going to cause less agency for the players who don't get their own way. How is this any different from every other rpg out there? Players compromise and GMs assure no one player dominates the table.
> 
> Although, some of these posts are getting a little heated, I think we need to also remember that good debators ask challenging questions. It's not necessarily personal attacks, or "one true wayism."




So much wrong with this post.  Let's see...

Your very first statement is wrong.  First wrong thing about the first statement.  We aren't detractors of Story Now, the reverse is actually true with the Story Now people continually presenting their way as superior.  We just say that it's not for us.  Second wrong thing with the first statement.  Our players do have input into the fiction.  They just have a different method of input into the fiction.

Second, you don't get to re-define agency and then tell us we have less of it.  If you re-define it, that definition only applies to YOU.  Our agency remains at 100%, as does yours presumably.  That makes the agencies equal in the ONLY way to compare them.  You can't say one style more or less, because we don't have numbers for each aspect of either type of agency.

Third, you can let players have control over the fiction without getting into Story Now at all.  If my players suddenly tell me that they are going to head north and set one of their number up as the chief of the northern barbarians, the players are dictating the fiction, but in a manner consistent with the traditional style of play.  They have chosen the direction and content of the fiction, but without using player powers to create things in the game via Story Now techniques.  They did it entirely within the fiction of the game.

Fourth, we aren't arguing that Story Now has less agency.  It's at an equal 100%.

You should stop listening to the Story Now people, and start listening to what we are actually saying.  The Story Now people have continuously misrepresented our arguments and playstyle.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> You are certainly welcome to disagree. I will take your word for it regarding "many of the games/adventures/campaigns/etc. of the 90's" since my RP days began with the release of 3rd edition D&D.
> 
> Then it's very well possible that you don't know what is. If you are unable to communicate your ideas clearly or they are routinely understood as communicating something else, then maybe there is something wrong with how you are communicating your message. But accusing me of bad faith in this case only poisons the conversational well.




It's happened in 3e, 4e and 5e as well.  Every instance of railroading is a part of playing the game, but curtails agency to some degree.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Tony Vargas said:


> The 90s were not a great decade for TTRPGs, I suppose.  CCGs were introduced in '93 and cut into the typical new-RPGer demographic heavily, they (it, really: M:tG) dominated conventions for years, by the end of the 90s, young (under 30) TTRPG players were somewhat uncommon, and often had come to the hobby via LARPing.  WWGS was the head-space leader in the industry, and TSR imploded.
> 
> In the 90s, 'story' was actually a big deal (nothing like 'Story Now,' it'd be more like "Story First," the GM, or even the writers of setting material, write a story/'meta-plot' and the GM pulls the players through it, more or less consensually/participationally), FWIW.  It was also the era of UseNet and the infamous Roll v Role debate - which led to Threefold Theory, which led to all this crazy Forge lingo we use so inconsistently today.  The most popular games of the decade were, IIRC, AD&D 2e (natch), Storyteller (WoD), and, though not really an RPG, Battletech (it was crazy popular, including crossover with a lot of RPGers at least at the cons I went to, and it had a crap RPG attached to it).  Towards the end of the decade, the conventional wisdom was that those three won out because of the depth/wealth of their settings, which included novels and/or 'meta-plots' woven through the setting which, if your GM wanted to keep using the next book that came out (and one likely came out each month), constrained the kinds of stories your 'troupe' could tell.
> 
> So I guess we weren't just getting limited player agency, but limited GM agency, in a sense...




It is a whole other conversation really, but I would say it wasn't all as bad as people remember it sometimes. The way storytelling got used a lot, could get railroady, but you also had lots of really cool settings for 2E being released at that time, as well as the historical campaign books and the blue line (which had some good ones). The Van Richten books completely changed how I handled monster hunts and investigations (and proved highly gameable over many years for me). Things were kind of all over the map for AD&D. Even within the same line you'd have big differences (just compare/contrast Feast of Goblyns, Castles Forlorn and the Created for example). And if you played 2E, much of the 1E material was still available, played and compatible. We also had a small boom that I remember because of white wolf (and it seemed we had more women coming into the hobby as well with the WW stuff). And you had all kinds of interesting games being put out from TORG to Feng Shui. I think the big thing that worked then though was the settings. The meta plot got crazy. But even there, the idea of advancing the world isn't a bad one (it should just probably be done in an easier to manage, less profit-driven way--like optional timeline announcements so you can have significant events going on in the world the game is set). I think it was mainly the way they would use meta plot as an excuse to release a new boxed set or something. Sometimes meta plot improved things (in Ravenloft moving around some of the domains was good). Sometimes it didn't (also in Ravenloft, the Requiem stuff messing up Darkon wasn't something I enjoyed all that much).


----------



## Arilyn

Lanefan said:


> This is well put, and sums it all up quite reasonably.  But, a few notes: (I've taken the liberty of inserting some numbers into the quote to connect to my responses below, as I wanted to leave your message otherwise intact)
> 1. It's not just a question of "more" or "less" agency, it's also been a comparison of different types of agency with some saying one is better than another.
> 
> 2. The underlying risk here is that if these two agencies are taken too far (and defining "too far" in this case might on its own be a lengthy debate!) you could end up with players authoring both the problem via agency over the fiction and the solution via agency over their characters.  I'm willing to go out on a limb and say even the hardest-core story now proponents don't want this, never mind the rest of us.
> 
> So there still have to be limits somewhere.
> 
> 3. Here's where quantifying agency gently runs aground.  The agency given by story now isn't directly additive to the agency of exploration-as-seen-fit, in that with story now (as we've been told a few hundred times and counting  ) there's nothing to explore.  As a direct result there's much less agency of exploration, but as this is more or less replaced by agency that's granted over the fiction the end result is about a steady state.
> 
> The agency of free-will action declaration - i.e. a player has the agency to play her character as seen fit - seems roughly the same in either style.
> 
> 4. Oddly enough, coming from me, I'd probably find a story-now-like game quite engaging in the short term; assuming reasonably decent players and GM and a rules-light system.  However, short term isn't what I look for in a campaign; and particularly if I'm expected to learn a new rule set or system for it I expect a campaign to have the capability to sustain itself for many years.  Story-now, from what I've seen, doesn't seem all that able to do this - you play through the story arcs you and the other players defined up front and that's it.
> 
> Tangentially, but still relevant: story now seems to very much focus on the individual character story arcs rather than the story arc of the party as a whole.  I'd rather focus on the story arc of the party, and let individual characters come and go during that span.  Focusing on the party story gives all the players equal reason to be engaged all the time, where jumping the focus back and forth between individual character's stories mean each player's reason for engagement waxes (when it's their story in focus) and wanes (when it's someone else's in which maybe they've less interest).
> 
> 5. Agency maybe isn't a direct _measure of_ quality but I think everyone here sees a well-managed application of their definition of agency as a significant _contributor to_ quality.
> 
> Lan-"if the fourth is with you too much today will you be pleading the fifth tomorrow?"-efan




Hey, thanks for the numbering.

1. Yes, I agree mostly, but having players with agency over the fiction is still more agency. Whether that's desirable is subjective.

2.Yes, can't argue with that! I think Story Now could be harder to run properly, although maybe kids would have less trouble with it, as its more or less how they play. Minus the squabbling, of course.

3. Maybe? I think there can be exploration in both styles, just one is pre-built, and the other unfolds during play. 

4. It is fun. Don't know about long term campaigns. Have to ask pemerton about that, or maybe he's already said. These threads are getting really long. I think it might be important in Story Now gaming to weave the player plots together as much as possible without getting silly. And if player B's story is exciting, there is no reason for player A to get detached. Another question for pemerton, but doesn't all the player goals kind of merge together, anyway? Kind of like watching Avengers or Leverage. It's happening in our current campaign. We have different drives and long term goals, but we form a cohesive unit against the baddies, and are more than willing to help each other further their individual arcs. Sometimes this causes some inter-character strife, but that's cool.

5. Oh definitely. I didn't mean to imply agency isn't important or meaningful. I was just trying to point out that having the most isn't some kind of "I win!" badge. I have been in some tightly focussed GM driven stories that were awesome, and have played in wide open sandboxes that were excruciatingly dull. I get a little tired of hearing about sandboxes actually, but that's off topic.

Anyway, hello to a fellow British Columbian.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Bedrockgames said:


> We also had a small boom that I remember because of white wolf (and it seemed we had more women coming into the hobby as well with the WW stuff)



 Yep, that's when we started getting more women into the hobby, V:tM & LARPs in general had a much less male-dominated fanbase, and, I suspect, there was more crossover from LARP to TTRPGs than from M:tG to TT, at the time.  (Now, I'm not so sure:  it seems like there's a lot of MtG to D&D crossover.)



> The meta plot got crazy. But even there, the idea of advancing the world isn't a bad one (it should just probably be done in an easier to manage, less profit-driven way--like optional timeline announcements so you can have significant events going on in the world the game is set). I think it was mainly the way they would use meta plot as an excuse to release a new boxed set or something.



I'm not saying meta-plot is innately good or bad, just that if you want to keep your campaign aligned with it, it narrows your options.  That and agreeing that the storytelling trend could have sold some GMs on limiting what would now be called player agency in the name of story (which we'd now call 'Story First' I guess).  

Personally, I'm not entirely convinced by the conventional wisdom of the late 90s, that it really was setting, let alone meta-plot, that was driving sales of the more popular games.  Rather, I think the relative lack of new players, and the time in life many of us found ourselves then, cut down on opportunities to play, so game supplements that were good reads (WWGS was the master at that) became more appealing than games & supplements that were mechanically sound.  

(If the come-back is sustained and we still have millions of new gamers 10 years from now, I wonder if system will start mattering? 
 ...yeah, yeah, stick me in the 'purist for system' box, and ignore me...)


----------



## Maxperson

Arilyn said:


> Hey, thanks for the numbering.
> 
> 1. Yes, I agree mostly, but having players with agency over the fiction is still more agency. Whether that's desirable is subjective.




I look forward to you proving this statement of fact with hard numbers.


----------



## pemerton

I will try again, trying to build on what [MENTION=6816042]Arilyn[/MENTION] posted.

If the thing that a person enjoys in RPGing is _a sense of being in the GM's world_, then why would you explain that in terms of agency? The notion of _audience membership_ seems like a more fruitful starting point.

I enjoy going to movies, and I enjoy listening to music, but I don't explain that pleasure in terms of my agency.

If the purposes of worldbuilding include _establishing material for the GM to present to the players_, is anyone interested in explaining why that is worthwhile?

If the purpose of worldbuilding is - in metaphorical terms - to give the players stuff to interact with via their PCs, which means - in literal terms - to establish frameworks for declaring actions which then affect the way the GM narrates his/her setting - is anyone interested in explaining why that is worthwhile?


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> If the thing that a person enjoys in RPGing is _a sense of being in the GM's world_, then why would you explain that in terms of agency? The notion of _audience membership_ seems like a more fruitful starting point.




You aren't in the DM's world.  He may have created the part of it that the game is set in, but the world belongs to both the DM and players once play starts, and the resulting story that comes from the DM/Player interactions is a collaboration.  Players aren't there to be an audience of any kind.



> I enjoy going to movies, and I enjoy listening to music, but I don't explain that pleasure in terms of my agency.




Me, too.  I also don't go to movies or concerts to take part in them, affecting them with my actions.  That gets me arrested. 



> If the purposes of worldbuilding include _establishing material for the GM to present to the players_, is anyone interested in explaining why that is worthwhile?




The purpose is to establish a setting for the players to play in.  It's that simple.  You worldbuild.  I worldbuild.  We all do it.  You just worldbuild to a much smaller extent.  You've told us how when you ran a game in Greyhawk you used the city names and basic things like that, but built the details as you went along.  Even the simple use of the names and map of Greyhawk is worldbuilding. 

Having a setting to play in is very worthwhile in my opinion.  It saves a lot of time and hassle.  I'd really dislike playing in a game where the DM and I(and the other players) have to collaboratively build the cosmos, the planet, the continents, countries, cities, etc. as we went along.  



> If the purpose of worldbuilding is - in metaphorical terms - to give the players stuff to interact with via their PCs, which means - in literal terms - to establish frameworks for declaring actions which then affect the way the GM narrates his/her setting - is anyone interested in explaining why that is worthwhile?




That's not the purpose of worldbuilding.  The purpose is just to create a setting.  What you do after that isn't worldbuilding, it's playing the game with whatever methods you use.


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## Arilyn

In Classical play, world building, whether homebrew or published gives the players a place to adventure in. The GM creates stories, or develops adventure areas and the players explore or work through the story. It's advantages are there is a less likely chance for the session to fizzle, because the GM comes prepared. The adventure in a skilled GM's hands will feel satisfying as it will hit narrative beats resulting in a climax. For many players, they will feel that there is an actual world outside their own little sphere.

The disadvantages are that players might not really care about this week's story about the missing duke. If it is more sandbox, there could be a sense that there is no story, just a string of events. The players could very well have agency to pursue whatever goals they wish, but it is still the GM's world.

In Story Now, there is no or very little in the way of world building. It gets created through play as a collaboration between GM and players. There are no pre-set notions whatsoever on the direction the story will take. It is driven by player drives and goals. Having the history of the Elven people written down ahead of time is immaterial. The history of the elves will only come up if it's tied to a particular player or goal of the group. It avoids the pitfalls of GM preference. I have a soft spot for running ghost stories, for example, but maybe my players are beginning to roll their eyes when I introduce yet another phantom...Story Now games also have a real sense of immediacy and drama. I like that. There is a thrill when it all comes together and nobody had any plans when you started.

On the other hand, Story Now games have a greater risk of ending in a chaotic mess. Participants have to be on their toes. There is no coasting tonight, cause I'm tired, so I'll just show up and hit things. As a GM it's a little intimidating because you are operating without a safety net. It's trickier and more demanding. The world is more centred around the pcs, and drama trumps world solidity. For a lot of players, this is not what they are looking for in a rpg.

Personally, I enjoy both. I think as a GM, I feel more comfortable with a more traditional style, but 
encourage player Input. "You are approaching the Swamp of Dread. Has anyone been here before? Yes? Fill us in please." I roughly sketch out the world, and let it get filled in through player choices and input. If I'm doing a historical setting, however, I'll do lots of research to get it as accurate as possible. 

My table enjoys different styles and games, thus our dip into Story Now. I haven't been GMing it, however, because I was a little chicken. Maybe next time.


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## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I will try again, trying to build on what @_*Arilyn*_ posted.
> 
> If the thing that a person enjoys in RPGing is _a sense of being in the GM's world_, then why would you explain that in terms of agency? The notion of _audience membership_ seems like a more fruitful starting point.
> 
> I enjoy going to movies, and I enjoy listening to music, but I don't explain that pleasure in terms of my agency.




Because they are not a passive audience. They are free to interact with it in a way that is probably the closest I've felt to actually being in the thing itself. The players affect the world through their characters, but they still can affect it. And not in a 'choose your own adventure' way, but in a 'it feels like you are really there' way. The role of the GM is to mediate that (not to give them a tour of his or her world, his or her story, etc). But to adjudicate what the players try to do. I think you are minimizing the impact player actions and words can have on the world here. It is a different approach but it is still very much a question of agency. The difference between a movie and an RPG as we are describing it, is the characters have agency. In a movie they don't. They do whatever the writers and directors want them to do. This is the central problem people encountered in the 90s during the storyteller wave. And there were lots of answers to the problem. One was to go back to a more free and open approach, that played to the strengths of the medium (the strength, at least in my view, is the characters are free to do what they will). If you remove GM railroading, and give the GMs tools to manage unexpected developments (particularly through solid wolrdbuilding tools), it can work out great. And it is pretty much all about agency.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Not so universally as you might think, I'm afraid.
> 
> For example, in one of the other threads I'm into it a bit with a "Yes, and..." playstyle supporter, in whose game if someone makes a suggestion or declares an action (e.g. "we go left", or "I charge the fortress") everyone else is ultimately bound to support it - the table mechanics don't give them the agency to disagree* or to try to prevent the action or to do something else.  Hence, once someone's made the suggestion or declared the action all the rest can do is respond with "Yes, and I <narrate or declare my action in support of what was declared/suggested>."
> 
> * - except for colour, but it's just going through the motions as ultimately you have to find a reason to concur.
> 
> Personally I find this a far greater denial of player agency than anything to do with co-authorship would ever amount to.
> 
> Lanefan




See, now, I would consider any 'rule' which tries to tell you that something you could do is something you CANNOT do, just for 'mysterious game reason X' is silly. I mean, I'm fine with some slightly gamist kind concepts like daily powers in 4e, where you just aren't getting to spam some great move all over the place, but you can easily assign it some narrative explanation. Some sort of blanket 'you can never contradict anyone else' doesn't cut muster though. 

I mean, maybe there's some specific mechanics involved in which you have to declare your 'interruption' before the action is resolved, or you need some resource, or SOMETHING, but if some player is about to pull a giant boner and my character can stick his arm out and save the day, then there darn well will be a provision for that to happen, or I'm writing some new rules! 

I don't even consider that kind of thing properly 'story game', its just silly if it precludes obvious possibilities. Whatever else an RPG is, its a framework to adjudicate the conflicts which arise through RP, not a system to tell you that you cannot RP!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> No it isn't. We are not just talking about gaming as it is always done. This is part of the dispute. Most games I've played in, do not allow for a 100%, go anywhere, do anything you want approach. There are usually either conceits of where the game is intended to go (i.e. players are expected to look for the obvious adventure hooks and take them, or the players are expected to stay in this area of the world, or the PCs are expected to be particular kinds of characters, etc). Games where the players are free to explore, are more popular now than they've been in the recent past, but they are far from ubiquitous and far from the default mode of play. So when people like me talk about agency in that context, we are not just saying something meaningless. It is something we hear at the table, when players don't feel freedom to explore is being honored. I've heard and seen that word thrown around countless times, at tables where the focus is something like a sandbox or a situational adventure. And it isn't meant in the way Pemerton is using it.
> 
> Again, this is the infuriating part of the discussion. We are literally saying A, and you guys respond by saying "Okay so you mean B, well that doesn't mean anything anyways".




Well, can you see where I'm coming from? I mean, yes, I get that you don't like games where there's some sort of force/illusionism/railroad (maybe mild forms of these, perhaps) and you consider that to be cutting into your agency. I think I just take a more literalistic and less subjective position on ALL of this stuff. That is, you can declare actions that represent any possible (and some impossible) moves within the present fiction in these games. Wouldn't a GM who would certainly instantly gank your character for doing X, still say you have agency to do X, so you have total agency? That's the problem with this whole line of reasoning IMHO. It leads inevitably to some very perverse results, doesn't it?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> I'm confused here... are you claiming that in a game based around worldbuilding there must necessarily be a "plot" (in quotations because perhaps I'm not understanding the definition being used here)?  Because I can assure you from actual play that's not the case.  I can only speak to my style of running a game but I have run traditional games that leaned heavily on worldbuilding and what they had wasn't plot but instead situations that the PC's were free to deal with, not deal with or do something else entirely.  I don't think what can happen in DL1 is enough to describe either of our styles and thus why there's umbrage around the statement that a traditional game with worldbuilding is a "Choose your own adventure" game.  It's like me claiming Story Now is just a "Let the dice make whatever up in the moment" game.  It's a simplistic statement that's mildly insulting and fails to capture the nuances of the playstyle.



Well, there are a LOT of different variations on types of games, so I'm not sure I can cover them all with any blanket statement, and we all often get into this problem where we talk in somewhat general terms and then there's some games where X doesn't apply.

So, like here, sure, if its a PURE sandbox, and the GM is really seriously good at being a purely neutral arbiter, then that might be entirely the case, but that seems almost impossible. I mean, the GM in a game like that is STILL going to drop some story hooks, right? Which ones does she drop? Is it pretty much never the ones that might fool the party into going to the 'place of certain death?' Is it pretty much always the ones that lead to the 'place of level-appropriate lootz?' I mean this is how you run these games, I've done 100's of them myself, so I have a fairly good idea.

Even if we are less harsh in our analysis, its still hard to find a game that REALLY lives up completely to your standards, because it means there virtually isn't going to be any sort of backstory. I mean, your problem now is actually that story creeps in so easily, and its so hard not to draw it along and help it happen.

So, I don't want to be argumentative with you, I think your commentary is pretty fair and its not like its ridiculous or anything. I do get what you are saying. I think its, again, one of those things where there's a degree of truth in what different people say. Maybe nobody is precisely correct all the time. I think a built world implies a lot of things, including plots, which are likely to become actual in play. Sometimes that will be because a player wanted it thus, and sometimes not. 



> Yes and I (as well as a few other posters who have addressed this)am recognizing that qualitative component by addressing the fact that @_*pemerton*_'s limiters on player agency are different.  However when one starts from a position of wanting to understand something (I assume that was the point of the OP in this thread) but then turns it into a comparison/competition where not only do they use negatively skewed language to describe the other playstyle but also define the parameters of the comparison and the nature of the "win" conditions well it's apt to irritate those who probabnly feel like the entire thread was a bait and switch that has been pulled on them in bad faith.  It feels less like I want to understand and more like I drew you in to this so I could tell you how much better my style is and force you to defend your own.



Yeah, I don't feel defensive. I feel misunderstood by some people, but I think there's actually a pretty reasonable amount of mutual understanding here. Some people got chapped a little and I think some of them talked themselves into some questionable positions that kind of irritated me a little bit. These things tend to take over threads unless we just move on. 




> I can't speak specifically to @_*Maxperson*_ 's games but he's free to comment on this if he wants...  What I can say is that as far as I can tell @_*pemerton*_ doesn't run a game where players can just create things on the fly.  They create characters with certain themes, interests, etc. and @_*pemerton*_ runs adventures around those things.  Again as I stated in a previous post... the same thing can be (and at least by me often is) done with a traditional style of play both implicitly and explicitly.



I think its fair to state that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s players can only 'create' that which is logically consistent with the state of the fiction and the nature of the fiction. That doesn't mean they cannot 'author' anything, they can certainly author a secret door, with a good Perception check. From there its a mixture of simply character choices (where things which are natural and not contested simply happen, and the player is expressing his interests) and conflicted actions where checks are required. These are often simply 'character agency' things, but they help tell the GM what direction to take the fiction in. I mean, such things can be VERY powerful and you can see how with a system like Cortex+ Heroic they can have a very large impact on how the story unfolds. A character in that game could invent a 'girlfriend resource' for instance, or a 'historical event' resource, or a 'the town is burning' resource, etc.! 



> As an example... I have players who want to play in Planescape, they pick whether they are planar/prime... pick race...pick class...pick faction... background and so on... we discuss their characters before the game starts and I in turn set up situations within the Planescape campaign setting around these things.  When session zero + inherent world themes (from worldbuilding) come together for character creation I find it hard to find a good faith scenario where the players interests and concerns don't naturally flow during the actual game sessions.  How does @_*pemerton*_'s game give a higher level of input than this (and note this is all session zero stuff that I think alot of GM's with traditional playstyles use when their players want to be that invested).




I think that's perfectly fair. In that, not insignificant, respect you are playing in a narrativistic fashion, to create a story. Its when games sidetrack into the sorts of things that Lanefan and Maxperson sometimes describe that I think the big difference arises. In my games you won't end up spending lots of time dwelling on blind alleys and loose ends that aren't tied to any kind of interest of the players. Now, I don't know the particulars of your games enough to know if that is true for yours or not. Beyond that, I'm not trying to condemn it, I'm just saying it got old for me. I have played 1000 characters in 1000 games (conservatively!) and I just like to get on to the 'good stuff'.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> I don't either and this is one of the problems with trying to define a "playstyle" as a singular monolithic thing... but we do love our us vs. them time, don't we?
> 
> 
> 
> Could you explain what encompasses "narrativist techniques"?  I'd like to make sure we are on the same page for further discussion.



I mean techniques which are intended to concentrate the focus of the game on story considerations. I would say that PbtA games like Dungeon World are narrativist (there's very little 'crunch' in DW really). It talks almost entirely about how things relate to the story. In fact 'moves' in DW have only the thinnest amount of mechanics. The text of a move is pretty much all about how it alters the story. For example:



> *Discern Realities*
> When you *closely study a situation or
> person*, roll+Wis. On a 10+ ask the GM
> three questions from the list below. On a
> 7–9 ask only one. Take +1 forward when
> acting on the answers.
> What happened here recently?
> What is about to happen?
> What should I be on the lookout for?
> What here is useful or valuable to me?
> Who’s really in control here?
> What here is not what it appears to be?






> But why does that matter?  If you claim a style cannot do something but it can why does whether it does it informally. accidentally or implicitly?  You are claiming it lacks this thing if it can in fact produce said thing then the new conversation (and a much more interesting and civil one) would have been how are these things brough out and handled in a traditional vs. Story Now game...



Sometimes emergent behavior is fine and does what you want, but I think it is likely to be a lot easier to 'get it right' if you just say what you want right on the front cover of the book, so to speak. I'm not putting anything down, I just stated that there's a set of techniques which reliably produces X, Y, and Z. It seemed to me that I was then told that was so much balderdash by some, and how it was insulting their style of play that I said that. 



> And I get you preference but that's not the same as claiming these games don't have that level of player agency or can't achieve it.
> 
> Emphasis Mine: No see in the same way we have to assume that a player in the Story Now style knows the genre, concerns and interests he wants to explore... We should also for the other style practice good faith and assume the same thing.  If their interests and concerns lie in exploring the Tomb of Horror as opposed to the Tomb of Horror modified with mummies or Yuan-ti.  Otherwise couldn't a player who isn't upfront about his interests and concerns create the same situation in a Story Now game?




They could, but the GM who runs Tomb of Horror is probably just saying to himself "I have this module, its written this way, I'm going to run it..." right? I mean, even I might say that under the circumstances. I might well have said it years ago at the very least. So, yes, I think its true, if the player was very specific about wanting a lich-built death-maze, then he got exactly what he wanted. Most players aren't that explicit right up front, and in fact its hard to actually BE that explicit, as you don't really know what about the pre-built adventure differs from your expectations or interests. 

I mean, its quite plausible to imagine a party who was just looking for a little fun stumbling into Tomb of Horrors and getting utterly decimated without ever wishing to engage in that kind of story at all. So plausible in fact that I've witnessed it myself! I would never use that unfortunate incident to tar all play of a given type, but I don't think its unfair to point out that it is a hazard of this sort of play (and in lesser forms I think a pretty common one).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Hriston said:


> I think it was @_*Aldarc*_ who said that stuff, not me, but I'm generally in agreement. I think @_*Maxperson*_'s "100% agency" argument is silly and seems designed to stifle analysis by positing a sameness for all systems/games with regard to agency, which he seems to define as whatever that particular game lets the player do. I mean, sure, in a game of chess I have "100% agency" to move my knight according to the rules of chess. That really doesn't tell us anything of value about chess relative to Monopoly, for example.




Yeah, my mistake. Thanks for catching that! Sorry [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION]!


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I feel like 'crisis' may be doing too much work here. I mean, yes, you have a mandate to create drama by engaging the character traits/story put forward by the players. This WILL be some form of conflict, and 'crisis' is certainly one of the things that will come up. That doesn't mean that there's nothing else. I mean, when the Titanic sinks, there's a crisis, but other stuff happens too. That's an ongoing disaster situation, but even so there are likely to be scenes that are more 'build up' etc. than 'crisis'.
> 
> Remember, dramas still have establishment, and build up, etc. Its not all climax.
> 
> I'm thinking of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s character that has cooking skill. I mean, you wouldn't consider someone hungry showing up in camp a crisis, but its still a reasonable framing for Story Now play.






Arilyn said:


> The argument over agency is getting odd. The detractors of Story Now gaming have claimed that their players wouldn't want to have input into the fiction. The players want to inhabit their characters as if they are there. It's the GM's job to create and describe the world. Fair enough. Why then, are there  arguments that Classical players have just as much, if not more agency than Story Now gamers? It seems pretty obvious that not having input over the actual fiction, other than character decisions, is less agency. And since it is not desirable for the players to be declaring actions which shape the world, what's the problem? Aren't Classical games aiming for high character agency and low player agency? If you are letting players have some control over the fiction than you are at least dabbling in Story Now, and so, I would assume, not be too opposed to Story Now advocates.
> 
> The argument that Story Now gamers actually have less agency is even stranger. It seems to come from the idea that players are being flung from one crisis to another, with no choice or room to breathe. I'm sure that if the players desired some time to explore a bazaar or share a "family" meal aboard their spaceship, it would happen. I'm sure Story Now GMs aren't anymore tyrannical than regular ones.
> 
> The other objection is the idea that multiple players having multiple goals is going to cause less agency for the players who don't get their own way. How is this any different from every other rpg out there? Players compromise and GMs assure no one player dominates the table.
> 
> Although, some of these posts are getting a little heated, I think we need to also remember that good debators ask challenging questions. It's not necessarily personal attacks, or "one true wayism."




Sigh, apparently we have to have the crisis discussion again.

By crisis, I mean that something about the characters, their goals, or the theme of the game is challenged as part of scene framing.  The play is to discover something about that through the crisis it's placed in.  Can you have down moments, or narration of quieter times?  Sure.  Crisis doesn't mean "OH DEAR GOD" it means that the play of Story Now is pointedly to draw things the player's care about into sharp focus and challenge.  This is the crux of drama.  So, yes, Story Now frames the characters into a crisis as part of it's game design.  Crisis, not climax or never have room to breathe, but actually point where something the players care about is at stake.

So, if we can agree that the point of play in Story Now is to frame the characters into situations that challenge, perhaps fundamentally but at least risk, things that the players care about, then we can continue.  If you disagree, well, then, I've been playing Blades wrong and would like some help on Story Now.  If we do agree, then the point that the players lose some agency due to the way Story Now frames scenes directly into drama and crisis is a valid point.  The players WILL be challenged via the framing mechanism -- the DM is required to place things the player's care about in jeopardy -- as a core tenet of play.  The framing mechanisms in Story Now do limit agency by forcing this case. 

Again, this isn't bad -- loss of agency isn't inherently bad when it serves the purpose of the game.  This loss due to the framing mechanisms is the POINT of Story Now.  Claiming that it's a bad thing would be very strange.  Story Now accepts this loss to avoid play that doesn't get straight to the drama; that doesn't generate the kind of play the system is designed for.  This is, in fact, a good design element of Story Now.  But, it is also a limitation on agency.

An example:  the Engagement roll in Blades.  The players decide on a score and an approach and set their detail.  The Engagement roll is made, and then the GM uses that roll to inform the opening scene -- which may be at ANY point in the heist the GM wants so long as it immediately puts pressure on the characters.  This jumps over tedious planning (which some players like) and assumes a whole host of actions on the character's part to get to the part of the score that the GM feels best represents the nature of the score, approach, detail, and the Engagement roll.  The example in the text for this is a theft that starts with the characters in the office of the target with the object desired in hand but with an alarm going off  -- play now proceeds not to obtain the object but to escape with it.  Regardless, the player's cares are addressed and put into crisis -- with their characters succeed in escaping the now alerted guards with the goods?  But, again, to get there, a huge number of decisions are elided by the framing mechanic and agency that might exist in other games (to plan, to actually play through the opening of the heist, etc.) are skipped over to frame the crisis of play.

THIS is what I mean by 'frame into crisis' and why I say it reduces some agency.  Blades adds in on the backside with mechanics to offset the inability to mitigate risk a priori with lots of mechanics to mitigate outcomes post hoc.  Blades trades play to reduce risk with play that modifies outcomes, and so offers some new tools that add agency while at the same time reducing it in other places.  Traditional play would allow a lot of agency on the front end and during play but almost no ability to mitigate outcomes post hoc.  Traditional play puts the agency more out in front while Story Now games tend to have more on the backend of play or ad hoc during play.  I don't think you could say that one style has 'more' than the other in regards to agency so much as you can say that specific instances of agency exist differently between the two.  The claim that Story Now has MORE agency with respect to players adding to the fiction is nonsensical; rather it's more reasonable to say that Story Now typically has agency for players to add to the fiction while traditional play typically does not.  This is a category of agency, not a measure of it.  Traditional play tends to have agency to meticulously plan and for players to have a lot of control over pacing.  Story Now offers almost no agency to plan and almost no agency to control pace.  This doesn't mean one has MOAR AGENCYS!  It means that they have different focuses of play and the agencies granted are aimed at those focuses of play.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I feel like 'crisis' may be doing too much work here. I mean, yes, you have a mandate to create drama by engaging the character traits/story put forward by the players. This WILL be some form of conflict, and 'crisis' is certainly one of the things that will come up. That doesn't mean that there's nothing else. I mean, when the Titanic sinks, there's a crisis, but other stuff happens too. That's an ongoing disaster situation, but even so there are likely to be scenes that are more 'build up' etc. than 'crisis'.
> 
> Remember, dramas still have establishment, and build up, etc. Its not all climax.
> 
> I'm thinking of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s character that has cooking skill. I mean, you wouldn't consider someone hungry showing up in camp a crisis, but its still a reasonable framing for Story Now play.






pemerton said:


> I will try again, trying to build on what  [MENTION=6816042]Arilyn[/MENTION] posted.
> 
> If the thing that a person enjoys in RPGing is _a sense of being in the GM's world_, then why would you explain that in terms of agency? The notion of _audience membership_ seems like a more fruitful starting point.
> 
> I enjoy going to movies, and I enjoy listening to music, but I don't explain that pleasure in terms of my agency.
> 
> If the purposes of worldbuilding include _establishing material for the GM to present to the players_, is anyone interested in explaining why that is worthwhile?
> 
> If the purpose of worldbuilding is - in metaphorical terms - to give the players stuff to interact with via their PCs, which means - in literal terms - to establish frameworks for declaring actions which then affect the way the GM narrates his/her setting - is anyone interested in explaining why that is worthwhile?




I think you're still stuck on worldbuilding being outcome determining -- ie, not just setting information but planned story outcomes.  And, yes, that is a style of traditional play, and, yes, you're not wrong in describing this kind of play.  However, that kind of play is not the sum of traditional playstyles.  In sandbox play, your formulation is incorrect, as the worldbuilding only informs the framing -- player actions lead to narration of outcomes when then change the setting.  In this formulation, worldbuilding is there to provide information so that players can plan for success, a type of play that is absent in Story Now (by design, not by fault).  Traditional playstyle systems lack the more neutral resolution mechanics (where, regardless of situation, a success is X, a mixed success is <X but >Y and a failure is <Y) and the often strong mechanics to offset outcomes after the fact (systems where you can choose to lose a resource rather than accept an outcome from a failure).  Instead, they feature the ability to learn what's ahead and to mitigate risk via preparation and planning and approach.  If a Story Now group declares they're being stealthy, this really doesn't make much difference -- the GM will still frame a scene into drama/crisis and all the stealthy approach does is alter the framing a bit.  Whereas in traditional play, a stealthy approach can trivialize a challenge that would otherwise be much more risky.  

So, what's the purpose of worldbuilding in traditional games? To provide the player's information and foreshadowing so that they can make meaningful choices and alter the setting.  I point back to my 'negotiate with the orcs' example from much earlier in this thread, where I used the worldbuilding I had set up to provide the framework for when the characters unexpectedly decided to negotiate with orcs.  The outcome of that negotiation was a group of orc allies for the players.  The fact that this could easily have happened in Story Now goes a good way towards showing that backstory that informs framing but not outcomes can still have player action declarations that have a lot of impact on the fiction.  Now, true, you aren't finding a secret door by succeeding, but, again, I strongly contend that's an exercise in the player engaging in backstory authoring as part of their action declaration and not just a simple action declaration.  There's a different element to that.  And, as [MENTION=6816042]Arilyn[/MENTION] just said, the offer for players to create backstory in traditional play can also be present.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> See, now, I would consider any 'rule' which tries to tell you that something you could do is something you CANNOT do, just for 'mysterious game reason X' is silly. I mean, I'm fine with some slightly gamist kind concepts like daily powers in 4e, where you just aren't getting to spam some great move all over the place, but you can easily assign it some narrative explanation. Some sort of blanket 'you can never contradict anyone else' doesn't cut muster though.
> 
> I mean, maybe there's some specific mechanics involved in which you have to declare your 'interruption' before the action is resolved, or you need some resource, or SOMETHING, but if some player is about to pull a giant boner and my character can stick his arm out and save the day, then there darn well will be a provision for that to happen, or I'm writing some new rules!



For that game, start writing. 



> I don't even consider that kind of thing properly 'story game', its just silly if it precludes obvious possibilities. Whatever else an RPG is, its a framework to adjudicate the conflicts which arise through RP, not a system to tell you that you cannot RP!



I don't think the game in question is any sort of story-now game; it's just the violation of agency in it that - in a general I'm-not-in-that-game-but-it's-the-principle-that-matters-kind-of-way - annoys me.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> So, like here, sure, if its a PURE sandbox, and the GM is really seriously good at being a purely neutral arbiter, then that might be entirely the case, but that seems almost impossible. I mean, the GM in a game like that is STILL going to drop some story hooks, right? Which ones does she drop? Is it pretty much never the ones that might fool the party into going to the 'place of certain death?' Is it pretty much always the ones that lead to the 'place of level-appropriate lootz?' I mean this is how you run these games, I've done 100's of them myself, so I have a fairly good idea.



Were I running a pure sandbox I'd drop hooks and stop there.  It'd be up to the party to determine whether any particular hook led to something they could handle or not. 



> I have played 1000 characters in 1000 games (conservatively!) and I just like to get on to the 'good stuff'.



Yikes!

Ignoring convention games and drunken one-offs I've played maybe 55 characters in about 6 or 8 games, though some of those games (and characters) lasted for many years.  Chucking in the cons and drunks it might be more like 70 in 20.

Lan-"for example Lanefan the character was rolled up in 1984 and, after a career with many fits and starts and gaps, only just last year retired to try and build his stronghold"-efan


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I will try again, trying to build on what @_*Arilyn*_ posted.
> 
> If the thing that a person enjoys in RPGing is _a sense of being in the GM's world_, then why would you explain that in terms of agency? The notion of _audience membership_ seems like a more fruitful starting point.
> 
> I enjoy going to movies, and I enjoy listening to music, but I don't explain that pleasure in terms of my agency.
> 
> If the purposes of worldbuilding include _establishing material for the GM to present to the players_, is anyone interested in explaining why that is worthwhile?
> 
> If the purpose of worldbuilding is - in metaphorical terms - to give the players stuff to interact with via their PCs, which means - in literal terms - to establish frameworks for declaring actions which then affect the way the GM narrates his/her setting - is anyone interested in explaining why that is worthwhile?




I think the proposition is that someone, a 'GM', provides a box full of toys, the 'sandbox' if you will. The players are then challenged to essentially build whatever sort of castle they want with the pieces parts provided. Its like Lego where you wanted to build the Starship Enterprise, but maybe you got the Castle Set for your birthday! 

Honestly, I'm being a little bit silly here, its midnight, but this is clearly the idea, that you have a set of situations and 'things' that make up the world, and the entire activity of the players is in MANIPULATING them, not in 'being told about them'. I think this IS a mistake you make in your explication. The activity of DOING STUFF is what is primary (at least for some players, this is where the old 'WotC player types' thing comes in). 

In Story Now, its doing stuff with a focus on your story/conflict and with a goal of character growth and interesting narrative resulting. In 'classic' play the activity is just more concrete and working with a more limited set of elements (maybe, truthfully it might not turn out to be so).


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, can you see where I'm coming from? I mean, yes, I get that you don't like games where there's some sort of force/illusionism/railroad (maybe mild forms of these, perhaps) and you consider that to be cutting into your agency. I think I just take a more literalistic and less subjective position on ALL of this stuff. That is, you can declare actions that represent any possible (and some impossible) moves within the present fiction in these games. Wouldn't a GM who would certainly instantly gank your character for doing X, still say you have agency to do X, so you have total agency? That's the problem with this whole line of reasoning IMHO. It leads inevitably to some very perverse results, doesn't it?




I honestly can't see where you are coming from on this specific point. And I think you are being a lot more subjective than you realize. If the problem is your being too literalist. I'd say stop being so literalist. We're talking about gaming at the actual table, and stuff we've seen in live play. I really don't see what point you are trying to make here. If I get instantly ganked for doing something, because the GM doesn't want me to go there, that isn't really agency. Characterizing that as agency (because I literally can always say or do anything I want before the GM decides to rank me) is one of the most specious things I've seen on this thread. The point is there are limits to your agency and a practical limit to what you can declare in a railroaded session or even in a session that isn't fully open. You can't just declare you go north in a game where the GM absolutely wants the party go on the haunted house adventure in the south, if you do, the game starts to collapse. You know this and the GM knows this, so it places a limit on your agency. There is a big difference between a session where there is one adventure planned for the evening, and a session where the players are free to explore the world. I don't know how much clearer I can make this, and I don't know why we keep coming back to this issue where we are trying to explain this, and we keep getting told "Oh that is just roleplaying in 100% of any game".


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> You aren't in the DM's world.  He may have created the part of it that the game is set in, but the world belongs to both the DM and players once play starts, and the resulting story that comes from the DM/Player interactions is a collaboration.  Players aren't there to be an audience of any kind.



This may be true of your game. It's clearly not true of everyone though, given some of the posts early in this thread.



Maxperson said:


> The purpose is to establish a setting for the players to play in.  It's that simple.



What does _to play in_ mean? It's not like a sandpit or a playground. The actual activity at the table is primarily the speaking of words. Until we drop metaphor for literal descriptions, very little useful analysis is going to follow.



Maxperson said:


> Having a setting to play in is very worthwhile in my opinion.



Again, what does this mean? What _actual utterances at the table_ are you referring to?



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think the proposition is that someone, a 'GM', provides a box full of toys, the 'sandbox' if you will. The players are then challenged to essentially build whatever sort of castle they want with the pieces parts provided.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Honestly, I'm being a little bit silly here, its midnight, but this is clearly the idea, that you have a set of situations and 'things' that make up the world, and the entire activity of the players is in MANIPULATING them, not in 'being told about them'. I think this IS a mistake you make in your explication. The activity of DOING STUFF is what is primary (at least for some players, this is where the old 'WotC player types' thing comes in).



This is more metaphor, though. The "toys" and "parts" are purely imaginary, and the "manipulating" is talking. What does the talking look like? Who is allowed to say what? And why? What role do the GM's words play in affecting the players', and vice versa?



Arilyn said:


> In Classical play, world building, whether homebrew or published gives the players a place to adventure in.



Again, this is metaphor. Can you describe this in _literal_ terms?



Arilyn said:


> The GM creates stories, or develops adventure areas and the players explore or work through the story.



OK, so let's talk about this. What's the difference between "players working through a story" and reading a novel?

The question's not rhetorical. Presumably there's a difference. I assume that the second-personality is part of it? Is it all of it? Is there something else going on?


----------



## Bedrockgames

Pemerton, you ask so many questions, and people answer them, but the answers never seem satisfying. The whole thread was a simple question about what world building is for beyond the dungeon. People have given you answers, and you don't seem able or willing to understand them (and keep turning it an argument against world building in the traditional  sense (or even mainstream sense) to make an argument for your preferred style of play. This is why these threads never go anywhere and always result in you and the same three posters circling the wagon.

My advice would be venture beyond posts by people like Luke Crane, delve into some of the communities that are actively involved in the type of gaming you are trying to understand. Even with posters like me stepping in to try and add some clarity from that point of view, we are just a handful of people and not representative of the whole. You can't understand this stuff by sitting on a mountain from affair and puzzling over terminology. You have to dive in. And if you have this constant wall of skepticism about what other people find engaging or exciting, that you only apply to the other side, but not to your own approach, your not going to make any headway. It just doesn't feel like the purpose here is to truly get answers to the questions you are asking. It feels like this whole thread begins with a conclusion.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> This may be true of your game. It's clearly not true of everyone though, given some of the posts early in this thread.




If a DM truly believes that, it's not a red flag, but a giant flashing red neon sign.  



> What does _to play in_ mean? It's not like a sandpit or a playground. The actual activity at the table is primarily the speaking of words. Until we drop metaphor for literal descriptions, very little useful analysis is going to follow.
> 
> Again, what does this mean? What _actual utterances at the table_ are you referring to.




I don't believe a second that you don't know what I'm talking about.  Call it the "shared imagined space" if you want, but we all play inside of it and it requires a setting to accomplish.  Worldbuilding is the creation of that setting.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Maxperson said:


> I don't believe a second that you don't know what I'm talking about.  Call it the "shared imagined space" if you want, but we all play inside of it and it requires a setting to accomplish.  Worldbuilding is the creation of that setting.




I think the reason people are so reluctant to describe things is because people keep twisting what we say. But just to lend another voice here. What it means literally in play for me, is I create the places, the people, the groups, and the customs, etc. When the players explore the game world they inevitably meet people, develop relationships, conflicts, connections, and produce a history in that environment. All that stuff is fuel going forward. And it is also there to help guide me when I have to invent new content on the fly. Part of my job is to react to what the players are doing and decide how the characters and setting respond. I try to handle the developments through NPCs and groups first, situations second. I try not to think in terms of the outcomes I want. Just to use a simple example, if the players stop investigating a local mystery all of a sudden and go visit Iron Temple Sect to help smooth over a conflict in the region, and murder the Iron Temple Master in his sleep out of the blue, I immediately am going to try to figure out what Iron Temple will do as an organization as soon as they discover the body (or better yet, what Iron Temple Master's son will do since he's the new leader). Now I have to look at who the allies of Iron Temple Sect are, consider the resources available to them, and any local martial heroes they might hire to handle the PCs. This is all a product of interaction between the GM and players. The only difference in our approach from what some of the people are describing here, is players affect the world through their characters, and the GM is mainly building off of world building stuff to carry things on. In this scenario, killing Iron Temple Master in his sleep wasn't something I had expected when the session started. And the players deviated from what I was probably expecting to be the focus of the session. The point is to respect their agency if they don't want to engage the mystery and to use the world building stuff to help handle whatever directions and actions they happen to take (and you can bring that to more dramatic and story focused places if you want, or less---whether your decisions are guided by dramatics, character motivations, physics of the world, story or a blend is entirely a GM preference thing).


----------



## Aldarc

Tony Vargas said:


> So I guess we weren't just getting limited player agency, but limited GM agency, in a sense...



I guess that adventures never have really registered for me in this conversation since players and GMs alike are conscientiously surrendering part of their agency when playing adventures so adventures strike me as being beside everyone's point.


----------



## Arilyn

Playing in someone's pre-built world and engaging in an adventure is not the same as reading a novel or watching a movie. It's too improvisational. Scripts and novels are, hopefully, carefully crafted. It shows when they are not. I wasn't surprised to discover that Lucas started filming "Phantom Menace" before his script was written. 

There can be similarities between rpging and stories, especially if an adventure has been prepared by the GM. This can be very rewarding. I was playing in a Buffy campaign where the GM was very good at crafting Buffy style adventures, and it was a blast. How is this different from watching the show? Well, there was more immersion, we were making decisions which affected the plot, and we were experiencing  our own, never before seen stories, with our own characters, in Joss' universe. 

There are similarities between classical play and a "choose your own adventure." A living GM, however, is way more complex, and can adjust, add, and rewrite  "pages" on the fly. I have gone through a few surprisingly well done "choose your own adventures", but no matter how well created, they can't come even remotely close to the same experience as a classical adventure with a GM.

The world created by the GM is described verbally from written description. It's shared with players, who have more or less agency to add to the world, depending on the GM. Then, if all goes according to plan, the magic happens. The world and the stories come to life in a shared imagination space. Excitement and immersion occurs through conversation and a few (or none) simple props. The world acts as a shared language in a way, a short cut, helping players understand where they are, and what is expected of them I think that's why familiar tropes work best in rpgs. Create a too unfamiliar world, and players feel at a loss. But space opera, fantasy, horror, we can get that right away. 

Story Now is a rpg style hoping to create stories too. With the narrativist approach, however, it's not simulating stories, in the way pre-built adventures are. Story Now is creating them at the moment of play, with very minimal world building, and absolutely no preconceived notions of what players might do. It's very immediate, focussed on dramatic moments which come entirely from the player characters drives, foibles, etc. When it goes right, the players can look back and see which threads wove together into a story. This is really neat and surprising. If you are engaging in Story Now, however, the players also have to accept the fact that some sessions are going to have those threads end up in a gnarled mess. Price you pay for greater agency...In these games, I suppose, the characters become the shared language, taking on most of the role of traditional world building. You don't need both.

pemerton's questions did let me think more deeply about these topics. I don't know if he'll feel that I answered him sufficiently, though.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Bedrockgames said:


> Pemerton, you ask so many questions,



...It's called the Socratic Method, I believe...



Arilyn said:


> pemerton's questions did let me think more deeply about these topics.



 ...and that's how it works...


----------



## Arilyn

Tony Vargas said:


> ...It's called the Socratic Method, I believe...
> 
> ...and that's how it works...[/QUOTE
> 
> And looked what happened to Socrates


----------



## Bedrockgames

Tony Vargas said:


> ...It's called the Socratic Method, I believe...




I don't know what to say to that. I think it is pretty clueless to think that is what is going on here.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Tony Vargas said:


> ...
> 
> ...and that's how it works...




Except people have been trying to tell Pemerton and others some variation of what Arliyn just said for dozens of pages now (if not from the very start of the thread), only to be met with the kinds of tactics me and others were complaining about. I find it very puzzling if you see that post as evidence that the original question was productive or asked in good faith.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Arilyn said:


> And looked what happened to Socrates



@Hemlock's not even posting on this thread.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Were I running a pure sandbox I'd drop hooks and stop there.  It'd be up to the party to determine whether any particular hook led to something they could handle or not.
> 
> Yikes!
> 
> Ignoring convention games and drunken one-offs I've played maybe 55 characters in about 6 or 8 games, though some of those games (and characters) lasted for many years.  Chucking in the cons and drunks it might be more like 70 in 20.
> 
> Lan-"for example Lanefan the character was rolled up in 1984 and, after a career with many fits and starts and gaps, only just last year retired to try and build his stronghold"-efan




Well, it sounds like a LOT, but I'm sure I've been in 30 different campaigns just with [MENTION=2093]Gilladian[/MENTION]! Some of them were brief affairs, so I guess you'd hardly count them, but we tend to hop around and do different things fairly often. For a long time I had several overlapping player groups where we'd be doing 2-3 different campaigns at the same time with various combinations of players (which often recombined in various ways). 

There have been a few fairly notable 'long' campaigns. Several come to mind which lasted 2 or more years. A couple of them 5 or more, though sometimes there were different 'phases' with different people in them and only a couple of continuous characters.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> This may be true of your game. It's clearly not true of everyone though, given some of the posts early in this thread.
> 
> What does _to play in_ mean? It's not like a sandpit or a playground. The actual activity at the table is primarily the speaking of words. Until we drop metaphor for literal descriptions, very little useful analysis is going to follow.
> 
> Again, what does this mean? What _actual utterances at the table_ are you referring to?
> 
> This is more metaphor, though. The "toys" and "parts" are purely imaginary, and the "manipulating" is talking. What does the talking look like? Who is allowed to say what? And why? What role do the GM's words play in affecting the players', and vice versa?
> 
> Again, this is metaphor. Can you describe this in _literal_ terms?
> 
> OK, so let's talk about this. What's the difference between "players working through a story" and reading a novel?
> 
> The question's not rhetorical. Presumably there's a difference. I assume that the second-personality is part of it? Is it all of it? Is there something else going on?




There are no 'literal terms' that mean anything because this is a construct of the imagination. Its the construct itself which is held to have value. If you want to make it concrete, then we can talk about mental activity, which obviously has a concrete physical basis, but I'm not entirely sure where that analysis can go...

There's very little similarity between 'playing in a world' and 'reading a novel'. Playing in a world means depicting the actions of a character or characters, as constrained by the parameters of this artificial constructed world. The parameters are EMBODIED IN the Game Master, literally. 

This is the THEORY anyway. Now, lest you think I may have suddenly changed sides in this debate, I find that the theory, and the hypothetical practice, don't actually live up to and exist in real play at real tables, for MANY reasons.

1) No two people actually agree on the content of the mental construct, the setting. They may may manage to agree on some details, but other areas, probably MAJOR ones that would have real implications, are simply imagined in different ways.

2) The world cannot possibly be imagined in enough detail, even with an army of 100 GMs working for 50 years, to be able to make any sort of realistic prediction about 'what would happen in situation X'. Thus it is ALWAYS the GM's whim/judgment, constrained only by informal understanding that the players are only willing to accept certain things.

3) The GM has a need to move the game forward, and the players have a desire for that as well, in general. So the GM will never be a really neutral arbiter. 

4) The GM has a vested interest in producing something that isn't boring or frustrating to the players, meaning again he's not a neutral arbiter.

There are other things, I could go on for a long time. GMs are like 'ring masters', they orchestrate. The idea that GMs are 'referees' is prevalent but nonsense.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> Sigh, apparently we have to have the crisis discussion again.
> 
> By crisis, I mean that something about the characters, their goals, or  the theme of the game is challenged as part of scene framing.  The play  is to discover something about that through the crisis it's placed in.   Can you have down moments, or narration of quieter times?  Sure.  Crisis  doesn't mean "OH DEAR GOD" it means that the play of Story Now is  pointedly to draw things the player's care about into sharp focus and  challenge.  This is the crux of drama.  So, yes, Story Now frames the  characters into a crisis as part of it's game design.  Crisis, not  climax or never have room to breathe, but actually point where something  the players care about is at stake.



OK, there was just a  round of this discussion where it was then extrapolated by someone into  an accusation of 'railroading' the players from one 'action sequence'  to the next without remit or pacing, and as if they weren't picking  where they went next (at least in part).

The other response to  this which springs to mind is, "how is it different in practical terms  from any other type of play?" I mean, even Gygaxian dungeon crawls, are  effectively a 'crisis' by this sort of reckoning. I don't disagree with  your employment of the term, its quite correct. It is just a question of  if this is really the critical point. In any RPG, 90% of the time  there's a conflict in progress. It may be at a lower level where the PCs  are crawling around in the 'dungeon', but that's just "man against  nature" basically, with hazards, traps, darkness, etc. The PCs 'need for  treasure' in classic D&D is pitted against the abstract opposition  of the dungeon. Even in later types of play where character and story  appear, the characters still have basically "amass power and fortune"  opposed to some cast of 'enemies'. 

My TRUE fundamental  proposition, which I only touched on briefly much earlier in the thread,  is that story is ALWAYS the point. I find the whole 'GNS theory' (in  all its forms) to be bogus because STORY IS ALWAYS EVERYTHING in all  games! That is, without some sort of framework of story, the rest of an  RPG can do no work! So its natural to ask why it isn't just what the  rules focus on.



> So, if we can agree that the point of play in Story Now is to frame the  characters into situations that challenge, perhaps fundamentally but at  least risk, things that the players care about, then we can continue.   If you disagree, well, then, I've been playing Blades wrong and would  like some help on Story Now.  If we do agree, then the point that the  players lose some agency due to the way Story Now frames scenes directly  into drama and crisis is a valid point.  The players WILL be challenged  via the framing mechanism -- the DM is required to place things the  player's care about in jeopardy -- as a core tenet of play.  The framing  mechanisms in Story Now do limit agency by forcing this case.



I  remember that, back in the days when I asked players for backstory but  they weren't given any sort of guarantee of agency over fiction, they  were very reluctant to commit to anything concrete. I got a lot of  backstories that amounted to "my character is a rootless orphan." I  mean, there'd always be SOMETHING there, but it was quite often very  'slippery' and clearly the player was reluctant to create some sort of  'hook' because they were quite aware that the GM was going to grab onto  those hooks and pull! This is even more so true in less story-focused  games, as there's correspondingly less possibility of getting some  reward, interesting story, out of taking that risk.

My point is, story was always a major thrust of things.



> Again, this isn't bad -- loss of agency isn't inherently bad when it  serves the purpose of the game.  This loss due to the framing mechanisms  is the POINT of Story Now.  Claiming that it's a bad thing would be  very strange.  Story Now accepts this loss to avoid play that doesn't  get straight to the drama; that doesn't generate the kind of play the  system is designed for.  This is, in fact, a good design element of  Story Now.  But, it is also a limitation on agency.



I  think you may not have played much of this type of game if you imagine  it that way. I mean, yes, you will put things in doubt. However, THE  SAME IS TRUE IN OTHER GAMES, its just that the things in doubt may only  matter to the players/characters because the GM wants them to, not  because the players want them to. 



> An example:  the Engagement roll in Blades.  The players decide on a  score and an approach and set their detail.  The Engagement roll is  made, and then the GM uses that roll to inform the opening scene --  which may be at ANY point in the heist the GM wants so long as it  immediately puts pressure on the characters.  This jumps over tedious  planning (which some players like) and assumes a whole host of actions  on the character's part to get to the part of the score that the GM  feels best represents the nature of the score, approach, detail, and the  Engagement roll.  The example in the text for this is a theft that  starts with the characters in the office of the target with the object  desired in hand but with an alarm going off  -- play now proceeds not to  obtain the object but to escape with it.  Regardless, the player's  cares are addressed and put into crisis -- with their characters succeed  in escaping the now alerted guards with the goods?  But, again, to get  there, a huge number of decisions are elided by the framing mechanic and  agency that might exist in other games (to plan, to actually play  through the opening of the heist, etc.) are skipped over to frame the  crisis of play.



I don't think this is for 'Story Now'  reasons, for the most part. I mean, yes, it creates a certain type of  very 'immediate' story, with action scenes coming 'in media res' so to  speak. This is a technique, a style of game. It isn't an absolute  logical necessity of Story Now. I mean, if you are engaged by setting up  the construction schedule, recruiting the workers, etc. for the build  of your castle, then I don't think there's any reason to expect you will  suddenly be framed into some scene where a disaster takes place! You  may be framed into scenes which include some sort of key decision point  or something which may later (or immediately, whichever) bear on some  urgent crisis. 

Here's the thing. This type of game could VERY  WELL actually be more realistic in some cases than simply playing out  every little choice. This is because, in general, there are certain  choices and options which are critical, and the rest really aren't. Its  hard to achieve that in the sort of play you are advocating. In my kind  of game though, while building the castle the key points might be if you  chose the cheap mortar, if you paid off the Carpenter's Guild or not,  whether you got the gnome's permission to mine the quarry, etc. These  choices could be framed in terms of conflicts with the character's  greed, or his obligations, or his desire to be fair while having  marginal amounts of funding, etc. 



> THIS is what I mean by 'frame into crisis' and why I say it reduces some  agency.  Blades adds in on the backside with mechanics to offset the  inability to mitigate risk a priori with lots of mechanics to mitigate  outcomes post hoc.  Blades trades play to reduce risk with play that  modifies outcomes, and so offers some new tools that add agency while at  the same time reducing it in other places.  Traditional play would  allow a lot of agency on the front end and during play but almost no  ability to mitigate outcomes post hoc.  Traditional play puts the agency  more out in front while Story Now games tend to have more on the  backend of play or ad hoc during play.  I don't think you could say that  one style has 'more' than the other in regards to agency so much as you  can say that specific instances of agency exist differently between the  two.  The claim that Story Now has MORE agency with respect to players  adding to the fiction is nonsensical; rather it's more reasonable to say  that Story Now typically has agency for players to add to the fiction  while traditional play typically does not.  This is a category of  agency, not a measure of it.  Traditional play tends to have agency to  meticulously plan and for players to have a lot of control over pacing.   Story Now offers almost no agency to plan and almost no agency to  control pace.  This doesn't mean one has MOAR AGENCYS!  It means that  they have different focuses of play and the agencies granted are aimed  at those focuses of play.




I think BitD is a certain type of game. I am again not at all sure  that Story Now prevents one from engaging in up front risk mitigation.  It doesn't in HoML. In fact I specifically designed my game to allow  planning and thus a more narratively focused type of strategic thinking  to be an important element. Now, it isn't like tons of people have  played this game, its just something I run myself in my spare time, but  it seems to work and it wasn't exactly HARD (I am no genius game  designer).


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> My TRUE fundamental  proposition, which I only touched on briefly much earlier in the thread,  is that story is ALWAYS the point. I find the whole 'GNS theory' (in  all its forms) to be bogus because STORY IS ALWAYS EVERYTHING in all  games! That is, without some sort of framework of story, the rest of an  RPG can do no work! So its natural to ask why it isn't just what the  rules focus on.



Is it always as absolute as that, though?

Sometimes, e.g. in a sandbox-style campaign, there doesn't really have to be a story* at all for play to begin and in fact it's the game itself that does the work to build a story as a simple telling of the tale of what the PCs do/encounter/say/etc. over time.  It's story-after.

* - beyond a simple static background with no ongoing plots behind the scenes.

Now if you're talking about story-first type of campaign e.g. a hard AP then yes, without the pre-authored story the game won't accomplish much.

And even in story-now you are, like with story-after, building the story as you go along.  You say that without a story an RPG can do no work, but in two of three possibilities (story-first, -now, or -after) the work of the game (and the people playing it) is in fact the building of the story.  Only in story-first is the story built...well, first; leaving the actual run of play with a lot less work to do.

Lanefan


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## Nagol

Lanefan said:


> Is it always as absolute as that, though?
> 
> Sometimes, e.g. in a sandbox-style campaign, there doesn't really have to be a story* at all for play to begin and in fact it's the game itself that does the work to build a story as a simple telling of the tale of what the PCs do/encounter/say/etc. over time.  It's story-after.
> 
> * - beyond a simple static background with no ongoing plots behind the scenes.
> 
> Now if you're talking about story-first type of campaign e.g. a hard AP then yes, without the pre-authored story the game won't accomplish much.
> 
> And even in story-now you are, like with story-after, building the story as you go along.  You say that without a story an RPG can do no work, but in two of three possibilities (story-first, -now, or -after) the work of the game (and the people playing it) is in fact the building of the story.  Only in story-first is the story built...well, first; leaving the actual run of play with a lot less work to do.
> 
> Lanefan





Of course not.  Story can be useful to provide context, it can be helpful to provide external impetus, it is one of the things that can be recounted at a later date, but it is not particularly necessary.  You can (and I have) run RPG sessions with a few characters new to each other in effectively a locked room or featureless plain.  There is no external story; nothing is driving the group forward other than whatever motives the characters bring.  The only interaction is the players among themselves.

Much like literature, most RPG games have story first (since it is such a useful tool for providing context to the players and external pressure to act), but there are genres where story takes a back seat to character study, where continuity cannot be relied upon and the story is only the immediate situation, or where some other facet of the game is completely at the forefront.

The only thing that is always the point is for the participants to enjoy themselves.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> This is the THEORY anyway. Now, lest you think I may have suddenly changed sides in this debate, I find that the theory, and the hypothetical practice, don't actually live up to and exist in real play at real tables, for MANY reasons.
> 
> 1) No two people actually agree on the content of the mental construct, the setting. They may may manage to agree on some details, but other areas, probably MAJOR ones that would have real implications, are simply imagined in different ways.
> 
> 2) The world cannot possibly be imagined in enough detail, even with an army of 100 GMs working for 50 years, to be able to make any sort of realistic prediction about 'what would happen in situation X'. Thus it is ALWAYS the GM's whim/judgment, constrained only by informal understanding that the players are only willing to accept certain things.
> 
> 3) The GM has a need to move the game forward, and the players have a desire for that as well, in general. So the GM will never be a really neutral arbiter.
> 
> 4) The GM has a vested interest in producing something that isn't boring or frustrating to the players, meaning again he's not a neutral arbiter.
> 
> There are other things, I could go on for a long time. GMs are like 'ring masters', they orchestrate. The idea that GMs are 'referees' is prevalent but nonsense.




1) The mental construct will never be perfectly imagined by all involved, but in my experience this only rarely results in a conflict of imagination that needs to be resolved.  The vast majority of time what is imagined by those involved is close enough that the game runs smoothly and nobody every really realizes what those differences are.

2) That level of detail is just not necessary and it hasn't been since at least 1e when I started playing the game.  If a detail becomes important, or at least worth looking at in some way, the DM will say yes, no, or if the outcome is in doubt call for a roll to see if the detail is present.

3 & 4 and your last statement) I'm putting these together since "arbiter" and "referee" are synonyms.  The DM should strive to be neutral, meaning that he's not putting his wants and desires into the game, but is instead trying to make things fun and interesting for all of the players as equally as possible.  In that regard he is neutral.  As for "referee" and "arbiter", the DM is those things.  He just isn't ONLY those things.  When the rules don't cover a situation, cover it badly or inadequately, or come into conflict with other rules, the DM does act as a referee and make a ruling.  It's one of his hats.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, there was just a  round of this discussion where it was then extrapolated by someone into  an accusation of 'railroading' the players from one 'action sequence'  to the next without remit or pacing, and as if they weren't picking  where they went next (at least in part).
> 
> The other response to  this which springs to mind is, "how is it different in practical terms  from any other type of play?" I mean, even Gygaxian dungeon crawls, are  effectively a 'crisis' by this sort of reckoning. I don't disagree with  your employment of the term, its quite correct. It is just a question of  if this is really the critical point. In any RPG, 90% of the time  there's a conflict in progress. It may be at a lower level where the PCs  are crawling around in the 'dungeon', but that's just "man against  nature" basically, with hazards, traps, darkness, etc. The PCs 'need for  treasure' in classic D&D is pitted against the abstract opposition  of the dungeon. Even in later types of play where character and story  appear, the characters still have basically "amass power and fortune"  opposed to some cast of 'enemies'.




That's not the sort of conflict he's talking about.  He's talking about situations where things important to the character are put into conflict with other things in the game.  

In one game I was playing a ranger of Mielikki who was trying to become a multi-class ranger/cleric of Mielikki(in 2e).  I had established him as having a hatred of slavers as they took away freedom from others and freedom was a critical issue for my character.  At one point while scouting for the party, he encountered a small caravan of slavers and wiped out the slaver in surprise attack.  He showed them no mercy, even when they surrendered.  After it was done, he told the slaves to gather the weapons, money and food that was there and get as far away as possible as they would be killed if they were close by when this was discovered.  Then he left them free to do as they wished and went back to the party.  

Later he found a grove sacred to Mielikki and went out to pray and dwell there for a while.  After a few days he had a dream.  In that dream I was in a large field where there was a group of slavers carrying slaves away towards a city.  Across the field there was also a group of orcs surrounding a bound unicorn, about kill it.  I had a choice.  What do I do?  THAT'S the sort of conflict he's talking about.  The sort of conflict where the decision is tough and no matter which way it goes, you learn something about the character.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Is it always as absolute as that, though?
> 
> Sometimes, e.g. in a sandbox-style campaign, there doesn't really have to be a story* at all for play to begin and in fact it's the game itself that does the work to build a story as a simple telling of the tale of what the PCs do/encounter/say/etc. over time.  It's story-after.
> 
> * - beyond a simple static background with no ongoing plots behind the scenes.
> 
> Now if you're talking about story-first type of campaign e.g. a hard AP then yes, without the pre-authored story the game won't accomplish much.
> 
> And even in story-now you are, like with story-after, building the story as you go along.  You say that without a story an RPG can do no work, but in two of three possibilities (story-first, -now, or -after) the work of the game (and the people playing it) is in fact the building of the story.  Only in story-first is the story built...well, first; leaving the actual run of play with a lot less work to do.
> 
> Lanefan




Eh, I don't like to actually get into a deep analysis of the mythology of the 'sandbox', because it raises so many hackles, but suffice it to say that I think this is theorycrafting. The GM is always building stories. He may be letting them lie somewhat passively, but even sandbox GMs constantly ask themselves "how do I push this thing forward?" At best they may be neutral in terms of which way it goes forward, but they're never satisfied with just leaving lie. Every tavern has a tale, every library has a dusty book (that the PCs will likely be the ones to find), every court has some sage with a story about this or that lost McGuffin, etc. 

Why is it always the PCs who find these hooks, and they weren't long ago exhausted? Because the GM needs a STORY! Why do the PCs always (almost always) stumble upon a level-appropriate adventure location? Because it wouldn't be interesting to tell the tale of them getting slaughtered by 7HD monsters at level 1! Why is there always some easy beginner dungeon an hour's walk from the town (B2 please stand up)? Right where every greedy git would be able to find and loot it? Because we need STORY!

Sandbox is a way to be coy about setting up and running the story, but its still fundamentally story-oriented gaming. I put it as, in real practical terms, not theory, as a subcategory of 'Story Before' (though I don't think I like these terms, 'classical' play seems more like 'Arranged Story' vs Story Now being 'Developed Story' or something, but I quibble). 

Anyway, I get what you're saying, but I really do think that when you get down to actual play, if you were to analyze sessions of play and what was happening, and why, and what the actual roles of the participants were in practice, vs theory, my assertion is that you'd find creating story, and driving the game with it, is quite important. In a sense even Gygaxian play has story as a central theme. I mean, why do the players care? Why is advancement of the characters meaningful? The very fact of level names and name-level domain rules and such signifies that somewhere at the core of it is trying to enact a kind of tale. None of this is surprising either. Even very abstract games like Chess actually come with a story attached. Story is so fundamental to everything to do with human thought and experience that it cannot be anything BUT central to play.


----------



## Tony Vargas

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I find that the theory, and the hypothetical practice, don't actually live up to and exist in real play at real tables, for MANY reasons.
> ...
> 4) The GM has a vested interest in producing something that isn't boring or frustrating to the players, meaning again he's not a neutral arbiter.



 I wish I hadn't personally experienced so many counter-examples to this last one.  



> There are other things, I could go on for a long time. GMs are like 'ring masters', they orchestrate. The idea that GMs are 'referees' is prevalent but nonsense.



 I don't have to tell you why, either: DM as 'judge or impartial arbitrator was inhereited from the wargaming of the day.  The need for impartially is more or less gone as the game is no longer comparative, but expectation remauns...


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Eh, I don't like to actually get into a deep analysis of the mythology of the 'sandbox', because it raises so many hackles, but suffice it to say that I think this is theorycrafting. The GM is always building stories. He may be letting them lie somewhat passively, but even sandbox GMs constantly ask themselves "how do I push this thing forward?" At best they may be neutral in terms of which way it goes forward, but they're never satisfied with just leaving lie. Every tavern has a tale, every library has a dusty book (that the PCs will likely be the ones to find), every court has some sage with a story about this or that lost McGuffin, etc.
> 
> Why is it always the PCs who find these hooks, and they weren't long ago exhausted? Because the GM needs a STORY! Why do the PCs always (almost always) stumble upon a level-appropriate adventure location? Because it wouldn't be interesting to tell the tale of them getting slaughtered by 7HD monsters at level 1! Why is there always some easy beginner dungeon an hour's walk from the town (B2 please stand up)? Right where every greedy git would be able to find and loot it? Because we need STORY!



We had a running joke among the players when I was in junior high and high school that every dungeon or item was within 3 days walk of town.  We grew out of that and outside of Undermountain, I can't think of any dungeons that close to a city or town.



> Sandbox is a way to be coy about setting up and running the story, but its still fundamentally story-oriented gaming. I put it as, in real practical terms, not theory, as a subcategory of 'Story Before' (though I don't think I like these terms, 'classical' play seems more like 'Arranged Story' vs Story Now being 'Developed Story' or something, but I quibble).




A sandbox is story neutral unless the players want the DM to come up with something.  When they are in a tavern listening for rumors, I just make stuff up.  If they want to investigate, that their choice and I have to come up with more along that particular tangent.  I've learned to improvise fairly well.  If they want to continue with their own plans, that's also their choice.  Sometimes they will tell me that they are going to X place to see if services are needed for something, indicating to me that that they want me to come up with a hook or three.  Sometimes they bite, sometimes they walk out and leave the hooks behind.  It's all a big so what to me.  Often, though, they will establish their own "hook" and tell me what it is they are going to do.


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Eh, I don't like to actually get into a deep analysis of the mythology of the 'sandbox', because it raises so many hackles, but suffice it to say that I think this is theorycrafting. The GM is always building stories. He may be letting them lie somewhat passively, but even sandbox GMs constantly ask themselves "how do I push this thing forward?" At best they may be neutral in terms of which way it goes forward, but they're never satisfied with just leaving lie. Every tavern has a tale, every library has a dusty book (that the PCs will likely be the ones to find), every court has some sage with a story about this or that lost McGuffin, etc.
> 
> Why is it always the PCs who find these hooks, and they weren't long ago exhausted? Because the GM needs a STORY! Why do the PCs always (almost always) stumble upon a level-appropriate adventure location? Because it wouldn't be interesting to tell the tale of them getting slaughtered by 7HD monsters at level 1! Why is there always some easy beginner dungeon an hour's walk from the town (B2 please stand up)? Right where every greedy git would be able to find and loot it? Because we need STORY!
> 
> Sandbox is a way to be coy about setting up and running the story, but its still fundamentally story-oriented gaming. I put it as, in real practical terms, not theory, as a subcategory of 'Story Before' (though I don't think I like these terms, 'classical' play seems more like 'Arranged Story' vs Story Now being 'Developed Story' or something, but I quibble).
> 
> Anyway, I get what you're saying, but I really do think that when you get down to actual play, if you were to analyze sessions of play and what was happening, and why, and what the actual roles of the participants were in practice, vs theory, my assertion is that you'd find creating story, and driving the game with it, is quite important. In a sense even Gygaxian play has story as a central theme. I mean, why do the players care? Why is advancement of the characters meaningful? The very fact of level names and name-level domain rules and such signifies that somewhere at the core of it is trying to enact a kind of tale. None of this is surprising either. Even very abstract games like Chess actually come with a story attached. Story is so fundamental to everything to do with human thought and experience that it cannot be anything BUT central to play.




If story is that fundamental, I guess it doesn't matter. If the stories are going to flow anyways, we don't need to worry about making sure they do. But the point of something like sandbox, is provides an easy framework for longterm regular gaming, gives player freedom to go where they want, and can produce lots of unexpected results. 

Just to take the 7HD example: this does occur in lots of sandbox style campaigns. Total Party Kill can happen, and encounters are not always perfectly balanced like you have in say the 3E/3.5 Encounter Level system. That is part of the attraction as a player. The sense of danger, rather than mere danger through slow HP attrition or boneheaded mistakes, makes the game more exciting IMO. 

You can go on about the theory here. I think anyone who has played the kinds of games were talking about at length, has enough direct experience with them, to be skeptical of your assertions. One can take a skeptical lens to anything. We could go into a narrative style campaign with the same lens and dismantle it. But all you are doing is making a linguistic argument to dismantle and change the language, so we have to agree with your play style. Personally I don't care why sandbox works. I just like that it works and is fun. And I think story is such a broad term, the problem that occurs in these discussions is people equivocate on it, jumping from its various meanings, in order to build arguments for what good games should include. I think you'd be much better off, making good games, showing them and getting people to play them, than building this highly theoretical arguments for why sandbox might not be as enjoyable as we seem to think it is. 

Again I am not the best person to make this argument. And I personally don't really care about play style conflicts. I think it is better for everyone when there are multiple playstyles out there to choose from, so people can try different approaches, mix and match, etc. But if your just hostile to a style, with no curiosity about it (except as something to destroy or argue against), you'll never really understand it. Believe me, I've been on the other side of the fence doing that and it does not lead to understanding what excites people about the type of play you think you are analyzing.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> 1) The mental construct will never be perfectly  imagined by all involved, but in my experience this only rarely results  in a conflict of imagination that needs to be resolved.  The vast  majority of time what is imagined by those involved is close enough that  the game runs smoothly and nobody every really realizes what those  differences are.



Sure, it is self-evident that we manage  to play despite this. What isn't self-evident is that there's a commonly  held set of facts from which to reason about the game world. This makes  it difficult, at best, to make the game 'about' a particular thing.  Story exists, but its several conflicting stories and nobody has really  'bought' a particular one. Story Now helps with this (though nothing  makes it go away as an issue, and for that matter people get different  stories out of a book too). I don't think it disqualifies any mode of  play, but it calls into question what the technique really actually is  in practice.



> 2) That level of detail is just not necessary and it hasn't been since  at least 1e when I started playing the game.  If a detail becomes  important, or at least worth looking at in some way, the DM will say  yes, no, or if the outcome is in doubt call for a roll to see if the  detail is present.



It isn't about 'can we resolve X', it  is about who can say if X is going to be significant and determine in an  objective fashion the odds of ANYTHING at all? This is the problem  which plagues lots of play, including examples in this thread such as  the "unknown operative" example (much earlier) where the PCs  inadvertently made an enemy by hiring some woman due to facts which they  could not possibly know. Even had they known SOME of the facts they  couldn't reliably reason from that to some inevitable conclusion that  they would make an enemy. In truth its impossible to know if any  particular action my character is going to take is even feasible or not.  I have to rely on some very highly conserved conventions of play for  that.



> 3 & 4 and your last statement) I'm putting these together since  "arbiter" and "referee" are synonyms.  The DM should strive to be  neutral, meaning that he's not putting his wants and desires into the  game, but is instead trying to make things fun and interesting for all  of the players as equally as possible.  In that regard he is neutral.   As for "referee" and "arbiter", the DM is those things.  He just isn't  ONLY those things.  When the rules don't cover a situation, cover it  badly or inadequately, or come into conflict with other rules, the DM  does act as a referee and make a ruling.  It's one of his hats.




Yes, they are synonyms. Which 'hats' belong to whom is of course  some of what the thread seems to have become about. My point was that  'neutral' is not realistic. It just isn't something that can be viable  in practice, regardless of theory. I don't even see how it is desirable  to be perfectly honest! I mean, the GM shouldn't be biased against any  particular player or character. At least not in most games (I think  Paranoia and similar things might allow for it).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> That's not the sort of conflict he's talking about.  He's talking about situations where things important to the character are put into conflict with other things in the game.
> 
> In one game I was playing a ranger of Mielikki who was trying to become a multi-class ranger/cleric of Mielikki(in 2e).  I had established him as having a hatred of slavers as they took away freedom from others and freedom was a critical issue for my character.  At one point while scouting for the party, he encountered a small caravan of slavers and wiped out the slaver in surprise attack.  He showed them no mercy, even when they surrendered.  After it was done, he told the slaves to gather the weapons, money and food that was there and get as far away as possible as they would be killed if they were close by when this was discovered.  Then he left them free to do as they wished and went back to the party.
> 
> Later he found a grove sacred to Mielikki and went out to pray and dwell there for a while.  After a few days he had a dream.  In that dream I was in a large field where there was a group of slavers carrying slaves away towards a city.  Across the field there was also a group of orcs surrounding a bound unicorn, about kill it.  I had a choice.  What do I do?  THAT'S the sort of conflict he's talking about.  The sort of conflict where the decision is tough and no matter which way it goes, you learn something about the character.




That's a perfectly reasonable example. My point is that, in every sort of game, however it is run, these sorts of things arise, and they OFTEN drive the entire game. In fact games which lack any of this at all are hard to drive, period. They can work, to an extent, as just "we want treasure", but even that doesn't work WELL.

Your example is very similar to one of my own PCs, and that was in 1e. The GM in that case was pretty good about playing to our interests. Still, he was ALSO infamous for railroading! He would have had a lot better game, IMHO, if he'd had something like DW (but this was the early 80s up through the mid 90s).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Tony Vargas said:


> I wish I hadn't personally experienced so many counter-examples to this last one.
> 
> I don't have to tell you why, either: DM as 'judge or impartial arbitrator was inhereited from the wargaming of the day.  The need for impartially is more or less gone as the game is no longer comparative, but expectation remauns...




Yup! you are entirely correct. LOTS of 'classic play' is a holdover from wargames. This was first noted back in the mid-90s.


----------



## Doug McCrae

Maxperson said:


> We grew out of that and outside of Undermountain, I can't think of any dungeons that close to a city or town.



Castle Blackmoor, from Dave Arneson's campaign, is right beside the village of Blackmoor.




Outside of D&D there's Pavis and the Big Rubble from RuneQuest's world of Glorantha, which are adjacent.



I've not been able to figure out how close Castle Greyhawk was to the City of Greyhawk in Gary Gygax's original campaign. The distance must be relatively small though.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> There are no 'literal terms' that mean anything because this is a construct of the imagination.



But I think we can talk meaningfully about processes of establishing constructs of the imagination. We can - and people often do - talk eg about how a film was scripted, filmed, etc.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Its the construct itself which is held to have value. If you want to make it concrete, then we can talk about mental activity, which obviously has a concrete physical basis, but I'm not entirely sure where that analysis can go



I think talking about mental activity is not that productive in the sort of conversation we can have on these boards! That's why I tried to focus on _talking_, which is the shared, social manifestation of that mental activity.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> There's very little similarity between 'playing in a world' and 'reading a novel'. Playing in a world means depicting the actions of a character or characters, as constrained by the parameters of this artificial constructed world. The parameters are EMBODIED IN the Game Master, literally.



The "embodied in the GM" claim is obviously controversial eg [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] described it as worse than a "red flag" (a "red neon sign" I think was the phrase used).

But again the notion of "embodiment" heads towards imponderables. That's why I've tended to focus on _narrating_ or _telling_. These, again, are shared, social events.

As you present it, but with my translations into terms of _talking_, it seems to look like this: a player says "I do X", where "I" denotes the PC; the GM narrates results/consequences, having regard to the parameters of the world.

I think there are three main types of _X_ in RPGing.

(1) _I go to . . . ._. The relevant parameters are the world map/key/encyclopedia-like description. The GM tells the player what his/her PC see/encounters. There is a difference between this and just reading the notes/description the GM is working from. _What underpins the difference?_ I've conjectured that second-personality is part of that.

(2) _I look for/recall information about . . ._. Knowledge and search checks are the paradigm here. This is more likely to involve a check than (1). If things go according to plan, the GM tells the player what it is that his/her PC discovers or recalls. Again, there is a difference between this and just reading the description the GM is working from. Is it related to fact that the player is seeking the information so as to solve a problem?

(3) _I inflct condition PQR on such-and-such a part of the gameworld_. This includes attempts to attack, to persuade, to demolish, etc. In this sort of action declaration, the outcome is extrapolated by some combination of application of the mechanics and GM intuition about the "physics" of the situation. The more the GM is relying on intuitions about the "physics", the more this can start to resemble (1) and (2). The more there is reliance on mechanics, the less it will resemble those.​
Even if the above was reasonable as a starting sketch, there's a lot more to be said - eg _what motivates the player_ to declare an action for his/her PC? How does the GM's narration of results/consequences feed back into that motivation?

But any analysis has to start somewhere!


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Sure, it is self-evident that we manage  to play despite this. What isn't self-evident is that there's a commonly  held set of facts from which to reason about the game world. This makes  it difficult, at best, to make the game 'about' a particular thing.  Story exists, but its several conflicting stories and nobody has really  'bought' a particular one. Story Now helps with this (though nothing  makes it go away as an issue, and for that matter people get different  stories out of a book too). I don't think it disqualifies any mode of  play, but it calls into question what the technique really actually is  in practice.




I agree that the game isn't about one particular thing, except perhaps fun.  I'm not sure that I agree that story is comprised of multiple conflicting stories.  The stories that differ slightly don't have to be in conflict, and I don't think there will be many, if any major deviations in the story we are sharing.  For example, when the party goes into a dining room and has it described, we will each have a different image of what the table looks like, and perhaps we will add in a few details about what might be on it.  That's not really going to matter, though.  The relevant shared image of a table is what will matter and that's not going to be in conflict from one person to the next.  The same goes with the 8 orcs heading towards us.  We will all be envisioning different looking orcs, but it's the orc itself that matters, not the appearance.  Still no conflict.



> It isn't about 'can we resolve X', it  is about who can say if X is going to be significant and determine in an  objective fashion the odds of ANYTHING at all? This is the problem  which plagues lots of play, including examples in this thread such as  the "unknown operative" example (much earlier) where the PCs  inadvertently made an enemy by hiring some woman due to facts which they  could not possibly know. Even had they known SOME of the facts they  couldn't reliably reason from that to some inevitable conclusion that  they would make an enemy. In truth its impossible to know if any  particular action my character is going to take is even feasible or not.  I have to rely on some very highly conserved conventions of play for  that.




Hidden things can be a problem, as are unforeseen consequences.  As for what's important, I think that is determined by the actions of the players and the descriptions the DM gives.  If a player wants to make sure a window is securely shut, that window becomes something significant and it will be addressed.  If the DM is describing a chest of gold and an iron cobra with glowing green eyes sitting on top of it, that's pretty obviously going to be something significant.  If no one addresses/emphasizes a detail, then it's not going to be something important, unless it's a hidden detail that has to be found first, such as a map in a drawer.



> Yes, they are synonyms. Which 'hats' belong to whom is of course  some of what the thread seems to have become about. My point was that  'neutral' is not realistic. It just isn't something that can be viable  in practice, regardless of theory. I don't even see how it is desirable  to be perfectly honest! I mean, the GM shouldn't be biased against any  particular player or character. At least not in most games (I think  Paranoia and similar things might allow for it).




Yes, of course.  Hats can be shared and the style of play and game being played will affect things.  I was just pointing out that in the traditional sense, the DM is a referee as one of his duties.  I also agree that neutrality is impossible to achieve.  That doesn't mean that DMs shouldn't strive to achieve it.  That way any deviance will typically be minimal and almost certainly unintentional.  It won't have the same impact as the DM who likes to insert his powerful DMPC into the party, or act to keep his NPCs alive when the party in all rights should succeed in killing them.


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> That's a perfectly reasonable example. My point is that, in every sort of game, however it is run, these sorts of things arise, and they OFTEN drive the entire game. In fact games which lack any of this at all are hard to drive, period. They can work, to an extent, as just "we want treasure", but even that doesn't work WELL.




I agree that these sorts of things will arise in most, if not all games.  However, a DM who gives thought to that sort of conflict will in my opinion be a better DM than one that just allows these things to come up by chance.  In my experience, players enjoy these sort of challenging conflicts, excepting when it's something like a catch 22 that causes your paladin to fall from grace.



> Your example is very similar to one of my own PCs, and that was in 1e. The GM in that case was pretty good about playing to our interests. Still, he was ALSO infamous for railroading! He would have had a lot better game, IMHO, if he'd had something like DW (but this was the early 80s up through the mid 90s).



I think railroading was much more common in 1e.  The game was still fairly new and DMs were going through their growing pains AND many of them were young.


----------



## Maxperson

Doug McCrae said:


> Castle Blackmoor, from Dave Arneson's campaign, is right beside the village of Blackmoor.
> 
> Outside of D&D there's Pavis and the Big Rubble from RuneQuest's world of Glorantha, which are adjacent.
> 
> I've not been able to figure out how close Castle Greyhawk was to the City of Greyhawk in Gary Gygax's original campaign. The distance must be relatively small though.




Cool.  That still doesn't make it a very common thing, which was my point.  Very few dungeons are like that, and mostly when they are, it's because teenagers.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> But I think we can talk meaningfully about processes of establishing constructs of the imagination. We can - and people often do - talk eg about how a film was scripted, filmed, etc.<br>



<br>Sure, but its all fuzzy. Its hard (and you are a philosopher of some kind, you know better than I) to even talk about CONCRETE THINGS in definite terms! <br>
<br>







> <br>
> I think talking about mental activity is not that productive in the sort of conversation we can have on these boards! That's why I tried to focus on <em>talking</em>, which is the shared, social manifestation of that mental activity.<br>



<br>Well, it has the virtue of being something we might objectively agree about the qualities of, if we're not too persnickety. <br>
<br>







> <br>
> The "embodied in the GM" claim is obviously controversial eg @<em><strong><u><a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=23751" target="_blank">Maxperson</a></u></strong></em> described it as worse than a "red flag" (a "red neon sign" I think was the phrase used).<br>



<br>Someone didn't like something I said on the Internet! News at 11!!!! <br>
<br>







> <br>
> But again the notion of "embodiment" heads towards imponderables. That's why I've tended to focus on <em>narrating</em> or <em>telling</em>. These, again, are shared, social events.<br>



<br>I think its 'ponderable' as a statement. The GM is literally the setting, in classic styles of play. ALL setting information, all environmental information of any kind, and all decisions relating to how the environment works, how the rules apply to it, etc. is entirely a function of the GM. More importantly, how the setting REACTS to the players, or ACTS against/for them (or in spite of them) is a GM function.<br><br>I agree, these are 'shared social events'. The problem with getting any more specific is, you have to point to specific styles of play, specific game systems, specific TABLES, and even specific examples of play. Is there a way to generalize and create categories of interactions? I mean GNS was obviously an attempt to categorize SOMETHING, but I'm not sure it was interactions. Those seem to be a concern there, but not the sole focus. So maybe a different language needs to be employed.<br>
<br>







> <br>
> As you present it, but with my translations into terms of <em>talking</em>, it seems to look like this: a player says "I do X", where "I" denotes the PC; the GM narrates results/consequences, having regard to the parameters of the world.<br>
> <br>
> I think there are three main types of <em>X</em> in RPGing.<br>
> <div style="margin-left:40px">(1) <em>I go to . . . .</em>. The relevant parameters are the world map/key/encyclopedia-like description. The GM tells the player what his/her PC see/encounters. There is a difference between this and just reading the notes/description the GM is working from. <em>What underpins the difference?</em> I've conjectured that second-personality is part of that.<br>
> <br>
> (2) <em>I look for/recall information about . . .</em>. Knowledge and search checks are the paradigm here. This is more likely to involve a check than (1). If things go according to plan, the GM tells the player what it is that his/her PC discovers or recalls. Again, there is a difference between this and just reading the description the GM is working from. Is it related to fact that the player is seeking the information so as to solve a problem?<br>
> <br>
> (3) <em>I inflct condition PQR on such-and-such a part of the gameworld</em>. This includes attempts to attack, to persuade, to demolish, etc. In this sort of action declaration, the outcome is extrapolated by some combination of application of the mechanics and GM intuition about the "physics" of the situation. The more the GM is relying on intuitions about the "physics", the more this can start to resemble (1) and (2). The more there is reliance on mechanics, the less it will resemble those.<br></div><br>
> Even if the above was reasonable as a starting sketch, there's a lot more to be said - eg <em>what motivates the player</em> to declare an action for his/her PC? How does the GM's narration of results/consequences feed back into that motivation?<br>
> <br>
> But any analysis has to start somewhere!



<br>
<br>OK, but I would reduce your 1, 2, and 3 to 2 things, effect and affect. Effect is when you take an action to change the state of your environment, and affect is when you take an action to change the state of your knowledge OF that environment (obviously they are often tightly coupled, but even in real life this division is possible and is used in behavioral science). <br><br>Again, though, I think once we get much past this categorization we can't just talk in general terms about 'all games'.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Maxperson said:


> I agree that the game isn't about one particular thing, except perhaps fun.  I'm not sure that I agree that story is comprised of multiple conflicting stories.  The stories that differ slightly don't have to be in conflict, and I don't think there will be many, if any major deviations in the story we are sharing.



I think there are many cases where this is true, but I've played enough to know that there are many cases where it is NOT true! I've had players tell me almost completely different interpretations of significant events more than once. Like they attended different game sessions or something. Anyway, I'm certainly not hostile to the idea that there's SOME degree, most often quite a lot, of consensus. Its just that you never really know! I can't easily test the GM's understanding of the situation, except by trying things. 



> Hidden things can be a problem, as are unforeseen consequences.  As for what's important, I think that is determined by the actions of the players and the descriptions the DM gives.  If a player wants to make sure a window is securely shut, that window becomes something significant and it will be addressed.  If the DM is describing a chest of gold and an iron cobra with glowing green eyes sitting on top of it, that's pretty obviously going to be something significant.  If no one addresses/emphasizes a detail, then it's not going to be something important, unless it's a hidden detail that has to be found first, such as a map in a drawer.



It strikes me as a rather narrativist way of putting it  That is, I would say that things are only important which the players focus on and MAKE important. 



> Yes, of course.  Hats can be shared and the style of play and game being played will affect things.  I was just pointing out that in the traditional sense, the DM is a referee as one of his duties.  I also agree that neutrality is impossible to achieve.  That doesn't mean that DMs shouldn't strive to achieve it.  That way any deviance will typically be minimal and almost certainly unintentional.  It won't have the same impact as the DM who likes to insert his powerful DMPC into the party, or act to keep his NPCs alive when the party in all rights should succeed in killing them.




Yeah, well, I think we all agree that certain kinds of bias are no good, certainly if pushed too far. OTOH I think DW's 'the GM is a fan of the PCs' is a really good solid concept which I have always followed in all games. I mean, you can still kill 'em, you just have to be cool about it


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> The problem with getting any more specific is, you have to point to specific styles of play, specific game systems, specific TABLES, and even specific examples of play. Is there a way to generalize and create categories of interactions? I mean GNS was obviously an attempt to categorize SOMETHING, but I'm not sure it was interactions. Those seem to be a concern there, but not the sole focus. So maybe a different language needs to be employed.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I think once we get much past this categorization we can't just talk in general terms about 'all games'.



I'm very happy to get specific about particular episodes of play!

But in the same way that we can talk in general terms about "story now" or "the standard narrativistic model" or "PBtA-style" games, we can probably talk in general terms about other sorts of RPGing. For instance, what's the broad dynamic of AP/module-focused play in which the players "work though" the pre-authored adventure? I just don't think talking about _agency _is the most insightful starting point for discussing that sort of RPGing. Something about the experience of _the adventure_, how that is communicated, etc, seems more apposite.



Maxperson said:


> If a player wants to make sure a window is securely shut, that window becomes something significant and it will be addressed.  If the DM is describing a chest of gold and an iron cobra with glowing green eyes sitting on top of it, that's pretty obviously going to be something significant.  If no one addresses/emphasizes a detail, then it's not going to be something important, unless it's a hidden detail that has to be found first, such as a map in a drawer.



In some styles of play, there is no such thing as _a hidden detail that has to be found_. In some other styles of play - CoC modules are a paradigm, but there are D&D examples also - there are such things.

How does it come to be that _there is a hidden detail that has to be found_?


----------



## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think there are many cases where this is true, but I've played enough to know that there are many cases where it is NOT true! I've had players tell me almost completely different interpretations of significant events more than once. Like they attended different game sessions or something. Anyway, I'm certainly not hostile to the idea that there's SOME degree, most often quite a lot, of consensus. Its just that you never really know! I can't easily test the GM's understanding of the situation, except by trying things.




Right, but that's the sort of thing I was describing earlier.  It's pretty rare for a significant conflict to happen, but it does happen sometimes.  It happened to me once last year(or maybe the year before).  I was describing a long wall(I didn't give the exact length in feet) that one of the PCs climbed up on and was walking down.  I also described some goblins in the middle of the courtyard.  The player told me that he went to the end of the wall and got into a nook behind a piece of stone(it was a ruined wall).  A bit later he said that he pulled out his short bow to shoot down at the goblins and I let him know that he was out of range.  The player was like, "What?  How?"  We obviously had very different ideas of how long the wall was.  I stopped the game and clarified, then I asked what he would have done knowing the length of the wall.  We rolled and there wasn't the same kind of nook that he found at the end for him to shoot the goblins in the middle of the wall, so he opted to continue with hiding at the far end.  



> It strikes me as a rather narrativist way of putting it  That is, I would say that things are only important which the players focus on and MAKE important.




I do believe I've been telling you that I play a blend of the styles.  I play a traditional game with other style aspects in it. 



> Yeah, well, I think we all agree that certain kinds of bias are no good, certainly if pushed too far. OTOH I think DW's 'the GM is a fan of the PCs' is a really good solid concept which I have always followed in all games. I mean, you can still kill 'em, you just have to be cool about it



I don't go with fan of the PCs, but rather fan of the players.  I want them to have a good time, so I try to come up with and do things that they will find to be fun.  And yes, I do occasionally kill a PC.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> In some styles of play, there is no such thing as _a hidden detail that has to be found_. In some other styles of play - CoC modules are a paradigm, but there are D&D examples also - there are such things.




Yes, I understand this.



> How does it come to be that _there is a hidden detail that has to be found_?



There are a few ways.  First, sometimes there is a strong door with a good lock that I know is in the dungeon/building/wherever, so I will sometimes place a key in a drawer.  I don't think to myself, "This is an important detail", but rather, "This key will make it easier to get through that door if they find it."  Second, sometimes I place the door and don't even think about a key.  When the players have their PCs search the BBEG's office(or wherever), sometimes a player will ask me, "Hey, did we happen to see a key to that locked door we found?"  At that point, realizing that I didn't consider a key and that such a key must exist, I will give them a d20 roll to see whether or not the key was present in the office.  A successful roll will have me let them know that they did see a key in the drawer.  An unsuccessful roll means that the key is elsewhere.


----------



## Manbearcat

Arilyn said:


> The argument over agency is getting odd. The detractors of Story Now gaming have claimed that their players wouldn't want to have input into the fiction. The players want to inhabit their characters as if they are there. It's the GM's job to create and describe the world. Fair enough. Why then, are there  arguments that Classical players have just as much, if not more agency than Story Now gamers? It seems pretty obvious that not having input over the actual fiction, other than character decisions, is less agency. And since it is not desirable for the players to be declaring actions which shape the world, what's the problem? Aren't Classical games aiming for high character agency and low player agency? If you are letting players have some control over the fiction than you are at least dabbling in Story Now, and so, I would assume, not be too opposed to Story Now advocates.
> 
> The argument that Story Now gamers actually have less agency is even stranger. It seems to come from the idea that players are being flung from one crisis to another, with no choice or room to breathe. I'm sure that if the players desired some time to explore a bazaar or share a "family" meal aboard their spaceship, it would happen. I'm sure Story Now GMs aren't anymore tyrannical than regular ones.
> 
> The other objection is the idea that multiple players having multiple goals is going to cause less agency for the players who don't get their own way. How is this any different from every other rpg out there? Players compromise and GMs assure no one player dominates the table.
> 
> Although, some of these posts are getting a little heated, I think we need to also remember that good debators ask challenging questions. It's not necessarily personal attacks, or "one true wayism."




Alright, so I haven't posted in almost 3 months.  I'm pretty much in my death throes of posting thoughts on TTRPGs.  But I'm going to flail out a response here before rigamortis fully sets in.

There are so many reasons why these conversations never bear out any fruit on ENWorld, but a big portion has to do with play priorities and the facts that:

a) Not all play priorities play nice with each other because...

b) Play priority _x _may either subordinate (in play) or be nearly mutually exclusive to play priority _y_...

c) Play priority _x's _machinery may force multiply its priorities to the exclusion of priority _y_.

d) When this happens, the expression of player agency inherent to play priority _y_ is impacted.

This is where people get annoyed, because this is a large component of The Forge's concept of incoherency.  And The Forge and ideas of incoherency of game agendas/priorities gets people pissed.

But it always becomes manifest in a thread like this and should be (but my guess is I can't do it) easily conveyed when you examine a game like Moldvay Basic vs a game like Dungeon World.  At the veneer level, they look to be similar fantasy games.  In play, they are most definitely not.

Moldvay Basic's primary play priority is about testing a player's skill at logistics/strategic planning, puzzle solving, and using effective teamwork (in both maximizing output in Exploration Turns, parlay, and combat) to overcome the game's machinery (a complex series of obstacles + the Exploration Turn > Wandering Monster Clock > Monster Reaction synthesis) to limit dire peril in order to pull treasure out of a dangerous dungeon.

Dungeon World's primary play priority is about an endless stream of danger and peril and finding out what what kind of world and rich characters comes out of such a fray.  *ALL *of the game's machinery pushes towards that play priority.  Yes, there is some resource management and logistics, but that component of the game is there to augment that primary play priority, not to reduce its impact (eg; dire peril and danger is coming no matter what...that is the point of play...so spend your Adventuring Gear "here" or "there", it won't reduce the game's overall danger, but it will change its present nature, shape the world, and enrich your characters and others as we find out what happens).

If you try to mash those two together?...

One of those two play priorities will invariably become subordinate to the other.  They don't inherently play nice together and matters are made worse when the game's machinery supports one paradigm over the other.  Imagining that they do is a big problem in these sorts of conversations.

Now some games do a better job of synthesizing those particular play priorities than others due to the cleverness of their machinery.  This is one of the reasons why _Blades in the Dark_ has become such a hit.


----------



## pemerton

Manbearcat said:


> Alright, so I haven't posted in almost 3 months.



Luckily for you, we've kept this thread alive for all that time!



Manbearcat said:


> Not all play priorities play nice with each other



OK, so you've teased this out in relation to DW and Moldvay Basic.

I think I am making a similar claim in relation not to two particular systems, but two reasonably broad but also recognisable play priorities: _players exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction by way of action resolution_ - a whole range of games prioritise this, but 4e will do as well as any as a working example - and _players learning what setting ideas and elements the GM has come up with, and enjoying the experience of learning them by way of second-person narration_ - I think that this is an important aspect of a lot of CoC play, a lot of post-DL D&D module play, and a fair bit of what (in this thread) has been described as the players, via their characters, "exploring" the gameworld and gathering information about it.

I think it's pretty hard for the same episode of RPGing to serve both those priorities.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Manbearcat said:


> Alright, so I haven't posted in almost 3 months.  I'm pretty much in my death throes of posting thoughts on TTRPGs.  But I'm going to flail out a response here before rigamortis fully sets in.
> 
> There are so many reasons why these conversations never bear out any fruit on ENWorld, but a big portion has to do with play priorities and the facts that:
> 
> a) Not all play priorities play nice with each other because...
> 
> b) Play priority _x _may either subordinate (in play) or be nearly mutually exclusive to play priority _y_...
> 
> c) Play priority _x's _machinery may force multiply its priorities to the exclusion of priority _y_.
> 
> d) When this happens, the expression of player agency inherent to play priority _y_ is impacted.
> 
> This is where people get annoyed, because this is a large component of The Forge's concept of incoherency.  And The Forge and ideas of incoherency of game agendas/priorities gets people pissed.
> 
> But it always becomes manifest in a thread like this and should be (but my guess is I can't do it) easily conveyed when you examine a game like Moldvay Basic vs a game like Dungeon World.  At the veneer level, they look to be similar fantasy games.  In play, they are most definitely not.
> 
> Moldvay Basic's primary play priority is about testing a player's skill at logistics/strategic planning, puzzle solving, and using effective teamwork (in both maximizing output in Exploration Turns, parlay, and combat) to overcome the game's machinery (a complex series of obstacles + the Exploration Turn > Wandering Monster Clock > Monster Reaction synthesis) to limit dire peril in order to pull treasure out of a dangerous dungeon.
> 
> Dungeon World's primary play priority is about an endless stream of danger and peril and finding out what what kind of world and rich characters comes out of such a fray.  *ALL *of the game's machinery pushes towards that play priority.  Yes, there is some resource management and logistics, but that component of the game is there to augment that primary play priority, not to reduce its impact (eg; dire peril and danger is coming no matter what...that is the point of play...so spend your Adventuring Gear "here" or "there", it won't reduce the game's overall danger, but it will change its present nature, shape the world, and enrich your characters and others as we find out what happens).
> 
> If you try to mash those two together?...
> 
> One of those two play priorities will invariably become subordinate to the other.  They don't inherently play nice together and matters are made worse when the game's machinery supports one paradigm over the other.  Imagining that they do is a big problem in these sorts of conversations.
> 
> Now some games do a better job of synthesizing those particular play priorities than others due to the cleverness of their machinery.  This is one of the reasons why _Blades in the Dark_ has become such a hit.




That explains why this discussion has gone nowhere.


----------



## Sebastrd

pemerton said:


> I think I am making a similar claim in relation not to two particular systems, but two reasonably broad but also recognisable play priorities:




Your claim is incorrect.



pemerton said:


> _players exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction by way of action resolution_
> _players learning what setting ideas and elements the GM has come up with, and enjoying the experience of learning them by way of second-person narration_
> 
> I think it's pretty hard for the same episode of RPGing to serve both those priorities.




While it might be difficult or impossible to serve both of those priorities within the same _action_, it's absolutely possible to serve them both within the same episode, adventure, campaign, etc. I do it in every single game I run.
Your inability to accept this is clearly why you have such a hard time understanding dissenting responses in this thread.

For example: This weekend I'll be running a one-shot for a friend and his two sons. I've decided that:

I want to go with a gothic horror theme.
Werewolves and vampires are played out for me, so I want the primary antagonist to be a flesh golem.
The flesh golem didn't create itself, so I'll include a wizard/mad scientist character that created the golem.
I don't want the two to be allies, so I'm deciding the wizard botched the amulet that would control the golem; the golem has run amok and it resents its creator.
I also like including undead in my adventures; so the wizard's harvesting activity in the town's cemeteries gives me a natural way to involve undead, and they can provide a way for his shenanigans to get noticed.
That means there's a town, so I should come up with a few details. I'll name the town Crow's Landing (a play on "Ravenloft", with which my players are unfamiliar).
"Crow's Landing" reminds me of "crow's nest", a nautical term, so I decide the town will be a port. That means the sewers beneath the town probably connect with the ocean via some sea caves.
There's probably a lighthouse, as well. Availability of corpses means they don't bury their dead at sea, so they probably don't view the sea god(dess) as benevolent. That also means the cemeteries are either uphill and landward from the town or the townsfolk are willing to struggle with waterlogged earth to get the bodies into the ground.
The second option seems more thematic and interesting, so I'll go with that. So, maybe the wizard was creating the golem to expedite digging up corpses, since that's clearly hard work.
There will be an inn, the Sea Dog's Roost; a tavern, Black Bart's; a temple to the cult of sea-god(dess) worshippers, probably in secret; and a church that maintains the lighthouse, since it represents a bastion against the dangerous sea.
Since the lighthouse is a religious, protective structure, I'll place the cemeteries in its shadow. That means the lighthouse can only be accessed by passing through the cemeteries.
And, now I have my hook. The lighthouse requires some kind of maintenance or resupply, but the wizard's activities have the townsfolk/clergy spooked. Someone has to brave the cemeteries to reach the lighthouse.
Also, I'll add the threat of an approaching storm. This is a one-shot, so I want to instill a sense of urgency from the get-go.
All of the above is wordbuilding. None of the above has scripted anything out. Its an interesting situation, and it's up to the players and their characters to deal with it. All of it is subject to change as the adventure unfolds until it has been established as part of the fiction in play. However, it provides me with a framework from which to hang the opening scenes and to guide me as I adjudicate the players' actions and to answer their questions as we proceed. There is plenty of room for the players to exercise agency via suggestion or action resolution. There is also plenty of room for the players to discover the setting ideas and elements I've come up with and enjoy learning what only _I_ know thus far. That's what worldbuilding is for, after all.


----------



## Nagol

pemerton said:


> Luckily for you, we've kept this thread alive for all that time!
> 
> OK, so you've teased this out in relation to DW and Moldvay Basic.
> 
> I think I am making a similar claim in relation not to two particular systems, but two reasonably broad but also recognisable play priorities: _players exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction by way of action resolution_ - a whole range of games prioritise this, but 4e will do as well as any as a working example - and _players learning what setting ideas and elements the GM has come up with, and enjoying the experience of learning them by way of second-person narration_ - I think that this is an important aspect of a lot of CoC play, a lot of post-DL D&D module play, and a fair bit of what (in this thread) has been described as the players, via their characters, "exploring" the gameworld and gathering information about it.
> 
> I think it's pretty hard for the same episode of RPGing to serve both those priorities.




But world-building offers more than "enjoying the experience of learning them by way of second-person narration".  _Dungeon World_ expects world-building e.g. "Draw maps, leave blanks". 

World-building, as has been pointed out over and over again in thread,  offers other value. Not least is the establishment of common expectation.

If you use a PC race's/creature's published background you've engaged in world-building.  If you name a country, city, or person, you engaged in world-building.  If you establish a law, type of ruler, or architectural style, you've engaged in world-building.

The first scene of the campaign almost always involves some world building (where are the PCs?  Is anything other than PCs present? Do any non-player defined relationships exist?)  In fact, every scene transition involves either new world-building (we've never been established this location before, what's it like?) or relies on previously established world-building for its initial conditions.

From the player's perspective, whether that world-building is happening a priori or pre-hoc is indistinguishable.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Manbearcat said:


> Alright, so I haven't posted in almost 3 months.  I'm pretty much in my death throes of posting thoughts on TTRPGs.  But I'm going to flail out a response here before rigamortis fully sets in.
> 
> There are so many reasons why these conversations never bear out any fruit on ENWorld, but a big portion has to do with play priorities and the facts that:
> 
> a) Not all play priorities play nice with each other because...
> 
> b) Play priority _x _may either subordinate (in play) or be nearly mutually exclusive to play priority _y_...
> 
> c) Play priority _x's _machinery may force multiply its priorities to the exclusion of priority _y_.
> 
> d) When this happens, the expression of player agency inherent to play priority _y_ is impacted.
> 
> This is where people get annoyed, because this is a large component of The Forge's concept of incoherency.  And The Forge and ideas of incoherency of game agendas/priorities gets people pissed.
> 
> But it always becomes manifest in a thread like this and should be (but my guess is I can't do it) easily conveyed when you examine a game like Moldvay Basic vs a game like Dungeon World.  At the veneer level, they look to be similar fantasy games.  In play, they are most definitely not.
> 
> Moldvay Basic's primary play priority is about testing a player's skill at logistics/strategic planning, puzzle solving, and using effective teamwork (in both maximizing output in Exploration Turns, parlay, and combat) to overcome the game's machinery (a complex series of obstacles + the Exploration Turn > Wandering Monster Clock > Monster Reaction synthesis) to limit dire peril in order to pull treasure out of a dangerous dungeon.
> 
> Dungeon World's primary play priority is about an endless stream of danger and peril and finding out what what kind of world and rich characters comes out of such a fray.  *ALL *of the game's machinery pushes towards that play priority.  Yes, there is some resource management and logistics, but that component of the game is there to augment that primary play priority, not to reduce its impact (eg; dire peril and danger is coming no matter what...that is the point of play...so spend your Adventuring Gear "here" or "there", it won't reduce the game's overall danger, but it will change its present nature, shape the world, and enrich your characters and others as we find out what happens).
> 
> If you try to mash those two together?...
> 
> One of those two play priorities will invariably become subordinate to the other.  They don't inherently play nice together and matters are made worse when the game's machinery supports one paradigm over the other.  Imagining that they do is a big problem in these sorts of conversations.
> 
> Now some games do a better job of synthesizing those particular play priorities than others due to the cleverness of their machinery.  This is one of the reasons why _Blades in the Dark_ has become such a hit.




This is the "Checkers and Chess" contrast that was mentioned quite some way back, mostly by [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]. I think it's very true. 

We can talk about the good and bad aspects of either game. 

Once we begin to contrast them, then it becomes a bit sticky because that's where the preferences take over rather than just examining one game and its intentions. Now, we're looking at both games, and how they perform the goals of one of them.


----------



## Arilyn

Bedrockgames said:


> That explains why this discussion has gone nowhere.




Yes, there's been repetitive arguments and loops, but I believe that overall, the discussion has been interesting and thought provoking. I've learned some things, thought more deeply about how rpging happens, and have been engaged enough to do some more digging into Story Now.

The mistake I made earlier was assuming that I had been mixing Classical play with Story Now elements. My players had lots of agency, and made decisions which could take the story in any direction. They could even add elements to the fiction. Other times, I set up more traditional play. What could be more narrativist than that? If players weren't feeling creative, no problem, they would have my story to fall back on. This is a sound style of GMing, and will probably continue to be my preferred style, but it is not Story Now. It is in fact, as Ron Edwards describes it, simulationist. My table is simulating story. If I set up, even a loose framework of renegade outlaws rebelling against an evil king, my players are going to dive in and further those tropes. There is an assumption ahead of time of where this particular story is going, even if details are fuzzy, and the players will have buy-in. Even if the players do something unexpected, like joining the king's forces, the story is still about corrupt nobility vs. champions of the down-trodden. If I do a more sandbox style, the story and themes are still set up ahead of time. Players know they are wandering adventures seeking a variety of dangers, and probably accumulating wealth. A pre-set trope.

Story Now has limited world building, just enough to establish place, as there has to be some practicalities. Theme is not pre-determined, as it arises during play. The choices the players make at the moment determine the story and theme. The GM should be putting on the pressure in each scene, so players must make those decisions, which will shape the theme and tone. It doesn't necessarily mean constant physical danger. The questions can also be moral ones, or  anguishing ones, where there is no clear choice, and someone will suffer no matter which way you go.

The important take away is that Story Now is not inherently better. Even Ron Edwards makes no value judgement, despite his reputation. All rpgs tell stories. How you tell them is a subjective choice. 

So, a very long winded post (normal for this thread) to just say, I learned stuff!


----------



## Bedrockgames

Arilyn said:


> Yes, there's been repetitive arguments and loops, but I believe that overall, the discussion has been interesting and thought provoking. I've learned some things, thought more deeply about how rpging happens, and have been engaged enough to do some more digging into Story Now.
> 
> The mistake I made earlier was assuming that I had been mixing Classical play with Story Now elements. My players had lots of agency, and made decisions which could take the story in any direction. They could even add elements to the fiction. Other times, I set up more traditional play. What could be more narrativist than that? If players weren't feeling creative, no problem, they would have my story to fall back on. This is a sound style of GMing, and will probably continue to be my preferred style, but it is not Story Now. It is in fact, as Ron Edwards describes it, simulationist. My table is simulating story. If I set up, even a loose framework of renegade outlaws rebelling against an evil king, my players are going to dive in and further those tropes. There is an assumption ahead of time of where this particular story is going, even if details are fuzzy, and the players will have buy-in. Even if the players do something unexpected, like joining the king's forces, the story is still about corrupt nobility vs. champions of the down-trodden. If I do a more sandbox style, the story and themes are still set up ahead of time. Players know they are wandering adventures seeking a variety of dangers, and probably accumulating wealth. A pre-set trope.
> 
> Story Now has limited world building, just enough to establish place, as there has to be some practicalities. Theme is not pre-determined, as it arises during play. The choices the players make at the moment determine the story and theme. The GM should be putting on the pressure in each scene, so players must make those decisions, which will shape the theme and tone. It doesn't necessarily mean constant physical danger. The questions can also be moral ones, or  anguishing ones, where there is no clear choice, and someone will suffer no matter which way you go.
> 
> The important take away is that Story Now is not inherently better. Even Ron Edwards makes no value judgement, despite his reputation. All rpgs tell stories. How you tell them is a subjective choice.
> 
> So, a very long winded post (normal for this thread) to just say, I learned stuff!




The problem in the conversation is the only thing being revealed to anyone is a few poster's conception of Story Now. And this is the only approach opponents are attempting to accurately describe. The issue isn't that style, Pemerton's definition of it, or anything like that. I have no objection to that style. But any other approaches are being dismissed. The only thing up for discussion it seems, is what is Pemerton and crew's understanding of story now. Any attempt to describe other play styles and other conceptions of character agency are dismissed or mischaracterized. It is just odd, that we seem to be perfectly capable of understanding what they are saying in their own terms. But our terms get twisted into something we didn't mean (and our very assumptions of what we experience at the table are called into question). It is as if the existence of free-open sandbox (or any variety of similar styles) are such a threat they can't acknowledge them. They have to define them away.

And if the discussion "What is world building for" is really about getting people to adopt the GNS model, I think it is a misleading topic in general. Not that GNS has zero value. Just it isn't the only way to think of gaming, and I think most people have moved well past those kinds of arguments about design. These days there is much more of a 'the proof is in the pudding' approach. Nice sounding arguments do not matter as much as table play.


----------



## Ilbranteloth

hawkeyefan said:


> But are those things different?
> 
> If the presence of the force field is in no way hinted at, if the player has no idea it could possibly be there, then the character cannot succeed at the attempt. In which case, the decision of success and failure has already been made. So in that sense, there is a lack of agency in the sense that the chance for success does not originate with the PC.
> 
> I don’t agree with all of pemerton’s conclusions, but I do understand what he’s criticizing in this regard.




I can understand the criticism, but I think it is different if the intent is different.

If the GM's intent is to make it an interesting challenge along the way to whatever their goal is, then it is quite different than "you fail because I don't want you to succeed." If the force field is something that goes beyond that, and tells the characters (players) something they didn't know about the scenario, and is foreshadowing a tougher challenge in the future, then again it is far from "you fail because I don't want you to succeed." Whether the GM created that force field on the spot, or ahead of time is irrelevant in the player's experience of the game. At least it should be. The player indicates and attempt to leap across, the GM adjudicates. 

And the reality is, the GM can have the wrong intention whether it's prewritten or not. To me there are two things that matter here - what is the GM's intent, and does the GM have the ability to alter the preauthored material to suit the game if needed? That is, if the preauthored material isn't appropriate, can he alter it before bringing it into play? If so, the preauthoring doesn't restrict anything.

Regardless, I also don't consider a preauthored "failure" to be bad either if the intent is good. For example, the GM couldn't know that the PCs would attempt to jump. Perhaps he expected them to search for force fields. In that case it would be an automatic success. Perhaps it's just a thing that's there, and the PCs don't interact with it all. Again, it is just part of the setting that presents a challenge for the characters to overcome. So they fail to jump through the force field. How tall is it? Can they go over it? Can they go under it? Around it? Disable it? Use magic to go through it? Their agency remains fully intact - they can roleplay their character's reaction to this new bit of information without restriction. 

Part of the issue with all of these examples (including my own, and I'm not sure how to get around it), is that whether you succeed or fail on a specific task such as this is too narrow of a moment in time to really describe what's going on in the campaign. And that's also why I disagree with the idea that it's affecting player agency. At the table, success or failure of a task is far from success or failure in the game as a whole. If the player is able to make decisions and take actions for their character, that is, they can role-play their character, then I think they have their full player agency.

If I were to give an extreme example, how about an RPG where your character is imprisoned hanging by chains in an oubliette? The guards periodically throw filth or cold water down the hole, they sometimes drag you out of the hole and beat you, they give you stale bread and sour wine. Most of the time it is simply dark, the stench horrific as whatever water they throw down is never enough to wash away the waste through the sluices, rats crawl down the chains to gnaw at the sores on your arms and shoulders, and you never get more than what seems a few minutes of sleep. The character, and indeed the player, has no idea if they will ever be released or even survive. Is escape even possible? Is death the escape? 

Your character literally has almost no agency at all. But the role-playing of the character is all about what's going on in his head. You have 100% agency in role-playing your character in this horrific, potentially character defining experience. Again, I think there is a meaningful difference between character agency and player agency. A previously undiscovered force field affects character agency, not player agency.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> two reasonably broad but also recognisable play priorities: _players exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction by way of action resolution_ and _players learning what setting ideas and elements the GM has come up with, and enjoying the experience of learning them by way of second-person narration_
> I think it's pretty hard for the same episode of RPGing to serve both those priorities.



Seems like it would be hard to avoid at least elements of each.  Clearly the DM has to come up with /something/ to get the ball rolling, and players have to do /something/ to keep it rolling.  



Arilyn said:


> The mistake I made earlier was assuming that I had been mixing Classical play with Story Now elements. My players had lots of agency, and made decisions which could take the story in any direction. They could even add elements to the fiction. Other times, I set up more traditional play. What could be more narrativist than that? If players weren't feeling creative, no problem, they would have my story to fall back on. This is a sound style of GMing, and will probably continue to be my preferred style, but it is not Story Now.



 I think the only mistake you're making is in paying attention to those labels, and, especially.... 







> It is in fact, as Ron Edwards describes it, simulationist. My table is simulating story.



...any label dreamed up by Mr. Edwards.  ;P


----------



## Arilyn

Tony Vargas said:


> Seems like it would be hard to avoid at least elements of each.  Clearly the DM has to come up with /something/ to get the ball rolling, and players have to do /something/ to keep it rolling.
> 
> I think the only mistake you're making is in paying attention to those labels, and, especially.... ...any label dreamed up by Mr. Edwards.  ;P




But in terms of Story Now his explanation holds water. He didn't actually come up with the term, just expounded on it at great length. And since the explanation holds up with what others are saying, than I assume it's a correct definition of that technique. I am not abandoning my GM style, and when I said I was in error, it was strictly in relation to Story Now, not that my technique is wrong.

As far as Ron Edwards explanation of Story simulation, isn't that what we do in rpging, and do you find something wrong with this definition? There is no implication in the explanation that states our stories are weak or not original. In fact, Mr. Edwards himself, states that Classical play is less likely to get screwed up. 

I know there is a lot of resistance to GNS, but it's not that bad. The model assumes most groups are mingling the play styles. If you go far enough into narrative, you get Story Now, which doesn't play well with others, for sure. No matter which style you lean toward, all rpging is storytelling, however. There are different styles, but very very few groups are purely one style. Any game can be used for any play style, but some games support some better than others. It's not all that controversial, is it?


----------



## pemerton

Nagol said:


> But world-building offers more than "enjoying the experience of learning them by way of second-person narration".  _Dungeon World_ expects world-building e.g. "Draw maps, leave blanks".
> 
> World-building, as has been pointed out over and over again in thread,  offers other value. Not least is the establishment of common expectation.



Sure, but does that mean that we can't talk about one particular feature that has _also/I] been repeatedly mentioned and extolled in the thread?



Nagol said:



			The first scene of the campaign almost always involves some world building (where are the PCs? Is anything other than PCs present? Do any non-player defined relationships exist?) In fact, every scene transition involves either new world-building (we've never been established this location before, what's it like?) or relies on previously established world-building for its initial conditions.

From the player's perspective, whether that world-building is happening a priori or pre-hoc is indistinguishable.
		
Click to expand...


I don't think that last claim is true. If a player says "I want to explore the catacombs, assuming this city has some?" and the GM checks a book/key and says "No, sorry, no catacombs", that is distinguishable from "I'm really not in the mood for catacombs today - can we do something else?" and both are different from "Sure, there are catacombs - you've heard there's an entrance at the back of the cathedral", or "Maybe - make a Catacombs-wise check".

If the first scene has been authored by a player (eg in the form of a "kicker" for his/her PC), the player can tell that too.

All these different ways of establishing the framing of scenes generate different dynamics and experiences of play._


----------



## pemerton

Sebastrd said:


> The lighthouse requires some kind of maintenance or resupply, but the wizard's activities have the townsfolk/clergy spooked. Someone has to brave the cemeteries to reach the lighthouse.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> This is a one-shot, so I want to instill a sense of urgency from the get-go.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> None of the above has scripted anything out. Its an interesting situation, and it's up to the players and their characters to deal with it.



If the players all build PCs who are roguish smuggler types, what happens?


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> If the players all build PCs who are roguish smuggler types, what happens?



Considering you yourself presented an example where you gave your players a requirement for their characters to have a reason to fight goblins so that it matched your intended theme, surely this isn't the problem you're trying to imply it is?


----------



## Ovinomancer

Arilyn said:


> But in terms of Story Now his explanation holds water. He didn't actually come up with the term, just expounded on it at great length. And since the explanation holds up with what others are saying, than I assume it's a correct definition of that technique. I am not abandoning my GM style, and when I said I was in error, it was strictly in relation to Story Now, not that my technique is wrong.
> 
> As far as Ron Edwards explanation of Story simulation, isn't that what we do in rpging, and do you find something wrong with this definition? There is no implication in the explanation that states our stories are weak or not original. In fact, Mr. Edwards himself, states that Classical play is less likely to get screwed up.
> 
> I know there is a lot of resistance to GNS, but it's not that bad. The model assumes most groups are mingling the play styles. If you go far enough into narrative, you get Story Now, which doesn't play well with others, for sure. No matter which style you lean toward, all rpging is storytelling, however. There are different styles, but very very few groups are purely one style. Any game can be used for any play style, but some games support some better than others. It's not all that controversial, is it?



Well... your description of Story Now is off -- there can be very strong established themes for Story Now.  Otherwise you're claiming Blades in the Dark isn't Story Now.

And, your description of Simulationism is... very odd.  It's not about simulating story so much as trying to simulate a world or genre as much as possible.  It's the feel simulationism goes for, not really story.  If you're bending your game or unsung a system specifically so that the sorry that emerges has the right feel, that's simulationism.  

Call of Cthulu is pretty strongly simulationist -- your PCs investigate a horror that likely kills them or drives them mad and reinforces the feel of Lovcraftian horror.  You aren't supposed to win so much as experience the simulation of Lovecraft's stories.


----------



## Aldarc

I wish these sort of conversations could move beyond Ron Edwards and his terminology.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> Considering you yourself presented an example where you gave your players a requirement for their characters to have a reason to fight goblins so that it matched your intended theme, surely this isn't the problem you're trying to imply it is?



It's not a rhetorical question.


----------



## pemerton

Aldarc said:


> I wish these sort of conversations could move beyond Ron Edwards and his terminology.



Well, to some extent Edwards moved beyond his terminology (eg he prefers "story now" to "narrativism").

Still, one reason that people continue to use his terminology is because there is not a lot else available for serious critical discussion about the aesthetics of RPGing.


----------



## pemerton

Arilyn said:


> The mistake I made earlier was assuming that I had been mixing Classical play with Story Now elements. My players had lots of agency, and made decisions which could take the story in any direction. They could even add elements to the fiction. Other times, I set up more traditional play. What could be more narrativist than that? If players weren't feeling creative, no problem, they would have my story to fall back on. This is a sound style of GMing, and will probably continue to be my preferred style, but it is not Story Now. It is in fact, as Ron Edwards describes it, simulationist. My table is simulating story. If I set up, even a loose framework of renegade outlaws rebelling against an evil king, my players are going to dive in and further those tropes. There is an assumption ahead of time of where this particular story is going, even if details are fuzzy, and the players will have buy-in. Even if the players do something unexpected, like joining the king's forces, the story is still about corrupt nobility vs. champions of the down-trodden. If I do a more sandbox style, the story and themes are still set up ahead of time. Players know they are wandering adventures seeking a variety of dangers, and probably accumulating wealth. A pre-set trope.



Thanks for this thoughtful post.


----------



## Aldarc

pemerton said:


> Well, to some extent Edwards moved beyond his terminology (eg he prefers "story now" to "narrativism").
> 
> Still, one reason that people continue to use his terminology is because there is not a lot else available for serious critical discussion about the aesthetics of RPGing.



I also wish that we could move beyond Edwards and The Forge. Though if this is all we have, then RPG theory is in a sad sorry state.


----------



## pemerton

Aldarc said:


> I also wish that we could move beyond Edwards and The Forge. Though if this is all we have, then RPG theory is in a sad sorry state.



Well, what else do you want to point us to?

As far as I can recall the only person who has linked to that sort of material in this thread is me. (If I'm forgetting others, I apologise.) I've linked directly to Edwards. I've linked to Eero Tuovinen, who is heavily influenced by Edwards and The Forge. I've linked to an account of "no myth", which is derived from posts on The Forge. I've linked to Christopher Kubasik, whose essay predates The Forge and is one prominent influence on Edwards's account of "story now". And I've linked to Luke Crane, whose flagship game borrows a rule straight from DitV (which Vincent Baker, a bit self-deprecatingly, says might as well be a supplement to Edwards's game Sorcerer) and whose acknowledgements include Baker, Edwards and their RPGs.

The last time I read anything by Mearls commenting on RPG design theory (which is a while ago now), he suggested that The Forge was the best there was around.

I'm not trying to persaude you that you should change your dislike of The Forge. But if there's a different school that analyses techniques and aesthetics in a useful but different way, you're going to have to point me to it, because I'm working with what I know and, as I've just recounted, it's all ultimately part of the school you don't like.


----------



## Aldarc

pemerton said:


> Well, what else do you want to point us to?



I am self-admittedly at a loss. IME, I have simply found, however, that Ron Edwards, the Forge, and all associated terminology generally engender divisive conversations. These can be, as per [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s observation, due to differences of core gaming values, but I also think that the terminology itself has accumulated a lot of visceral connotations and negative reactions. (The terms also seem infused with presumed value-judgments of different game approaches.) 

It would certainly be nice if I was familiar with academic tabletop design game theory who have likely developed their own set of jargon, but I am not. And perhaps this even points to a gap in the conversation. 



> I'm not trying to persaude you that you should change your dislike of The Forge. But if there's a different school that analyses techniques and aesthetics in a useful but different way, you're going to have to point me to it, because I'm working with what I know and, as I've just recounted, it's all ultimately part of the school you don't like.



Yeah, but it's just my own vain sentiment. A whim. A want. A desire to go beyond what we have as it seems that we are too attached to these terms and all their associated baggage. I can't help but shake the feeling that these terms do a massive disservice to all gamers and their preferences.


----------



## Sebastrd

pemerton said:


> If the players all build PCs who are roguish smuggler types, what happens?




That's entirely up to them, isn't it? I've set the scene and introduced a situation. It's not up to me to decide what they do with it, so I really can't say.

I can tell you what _did_ happen, though. I presented the scene and situation to the players. They rolled up a bard, a ranger, and a monk who had just arrived via a ship racing ahead of the storm, and the last player rolled up a vagabond rogue living in an alley. Using the *Bonds* mechanic from Dungeon World, the players developed a quick shared history. The players decided to volunteer to deliver supplies to the lighthouse, but I asked them all to declare their motivation for doing so. They all described appropriate motivations based on their character personalities, including the rogue who wanted money up front. I had him make a charisma check, and he rolled a success. So I told him the townsfolk were desperate and pressed for time so they offered 100gp up front; that was enough to satisfy him. When we start the adventure on Saturday, they'll be off to the lighthouse.


----------



## Arilyn

Ovinomancer said:


> Well... your description of Story Now is off -- there can be very strong established themes for Story Now.  Otherwise you're claiming Blades in the Dark isn't Story Now.
> 
> And, your description of Simulationism is... very odd.  It's not about simulating story so much as trying to simulate a world or genre as much as possible.  It's the feel simulationism goes for, not really story.  If you're bending your game or unsung a system specifically so that the sorry that emerges has the right feel, that's simulationism.
> 
> Call of Cthulu is pretty strongly simulationist -- your PCs investigate a horror that likely kills them or drives them mad and reinforces the feel of Lovcraftian horror.  You aren't supposed to win so much as experience the simulation of Lovecraft's stories.




In a later article, Ron Edwards claims he was in error over his initial description of narrativist. He, like many others, considered it heavy on story telling. On reflecting further, he realized that was a poor description, since all rpgs tell stories. In fact, most "narrative" games are actually simulationist, because it's story that is being simulated. It's a little tricky. But if you think of players getting together to do CoC, they are simulating Lovecraft stories, as you mentioned. It can be broader, however. Fantasy rpging could be simulating the epic quest, or swords and sorcery. If you are playing, and saying, "Hey, it would be really cool if....or it makes sense that the villain would do this...or my players will obviously do this, so I better make sure..." This is predicting, probably crafting a story at least a little ahead of time, and is therefore simulationist, because a story with familiar tropes is being formed ahead of time, or being used to help the story be more story- like. Story Now isn't totally a blank slate to start with, but little or no assumptions are made. The story, if one forms, is seen only at the end of the session. It's immediate.
The original description of Simulationism still stands, it's just been expanded to include story simulation, as well as reality simulating. Anyway, article is super long, and I probably haven't explained it all that well.

I said Story Now can't mix with other styles because it's the extreme of narrativist play, but not sure I'm right. Since very few players only play one style, but a mix of differing proportions, I'm thinking BiTD, is heavy narrativist with a dose of Simulationism? 

I know it really doesn't matter, but this is a thread on game philosophy, so....


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> It's not a rhetorical question.



Would out not be rhetorical, then, to all you what you would do if a player in the game referenced showed up with an adamant goblin ally?

What you're going at isn't a playstyle issue, its a social contract issue.  This is a basic communication issue that should be handled before the game even starts, and, clearly, had nothing to do with playstyle as you do it, too.  Your question is akin to asking what a GM would do if a player showed up with a Wizard to her announced hard sci-fi game -- something other than intended playstyle or use of worldbuilding has gone wrong.


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I don't think that last claim is true. If a player says "I want to explore the catacombs, assuming this city has some?" and the GM checks a book/key and says "No, sorry, no catacombs", that is distinguishable from "I'm really not in the mood for catacombs today - can we do something else?"



If one of those is distinguishable from the other the GM is doing it wrong. 



> and both are different from "Sure, there are catacombs - you've heard there's an entrance at the back of the cathedral",



In result, obviously; but that result could also have come from the GM's notes, or her catacomb-friendly mood at the time.



> or "Maybe - make a Catacombs-wise check".



Or perhaps "OK. What are you doing to determine whether the city has some?" (this would be my most likely response whether my DM notes already covered catacombs or not)



> If the first scene has been authored by a player (eg in the form of a "kicker" for his/her PC), the player can tell that too.



If the "kicker" is a scene specifically intended to lead to exploring catacombs the GM is, if I read things right, somewhat obliged to go along with this.  Otherwise, why use kickers?

On a different note, however, if each player's kicker scene doesn't somehow directly involve meeting some of the other PCs I'd be demanding rewrites until they do.  I far prefer at least some of the party to meet each other first, and have a chance to get to know each other a bit (and roleplay through this process!), before they start in on their adventures.



> All these different ways of establishing the framing of scenes generate different dynamics and experiences of play.



Perhaps, though I'm not sure to any extreme degree.  Much more difference would ceom from the pacing used by the GM and-or expected (or forced) by the players.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> If the players all build PCs who are roguish smuggler types, what happens?



Well then, things probably wouldn't proceed according to the DM's plans. 

The PCs would likely end up taking the lighthouse for their own and start using it as a signalling device for their smuggling exploits.

Which would absolutely rock!


----------



## Tony Vargas

Aldarc said:


> I am self-admittedly at a loss. IME, I have simply found, however, that Ron Edwards, the Forge, and all associated terminology generally engender divisive conversations.



That's my observation, as well.  

If you take a group of people, and arbitrarily divide them up into categories, however valid or invalid, they'll immediately start making cases for their category being better than the others...

...preceding the categorization with a mushy "y'all have qualities of each category & are special snowflakes, but..." in no way heads off that tendency, it's just a way of dodging responsibility for the conflict you just touched off.  


Using the edition war metaphor:  Edward's was that conflict's Merchant of Death, selling weaponized labels to both sides.


----------



## Calithorne

The purpose of worldbuilding is to have fun.  What I mean is that YOU, the DM is having fun building a world.  If you are not having fun building a world, then really there's no point to it, because DMing is a hobby, not a job.

You should not expect your players to care as much as you do about your world.  Here's the trick, let them make characters they love, let them do awesome stuff, and then they will start loving your world because their character is part of it.

What that means is that you really need to make sure that character death almost never happens, or if it does, you allow them to come back to life without too much difficulty.  Sometimes, a whole campaign might die because someone lost a beloved character.  I've seen this happen on more than one occasion.

Of course, sometimes a player wants his character to die to make some sort of noble sacrifice for the good of the group.  I've done that twice myself, allowing my character to die in some awesome way that saves everyone else.  Such a death should be rewarded by allowing the player who did it to have a pretty good replacement character, without too much penalty in experience points.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> Would out not be rhetorical, then, to all you what you would do if a player in the game referenced showed up with an adamant goblin ally?



Are you asking? If so, here's an answer: it would depend. I might ask the player why they just didn't say they didn't want to play a game where conflicts with goblins might be expected. But if the goblin ally is a renegade goblin, we might start working out together (or maybe I'd just have the player tell me) how goblins respond to renegades, and what makes a goblin renegade in any event, or . . .



Ovinomancer said:


> What you're going at isn't a playstyle issue, its a social contract issue.  This is a basic communication issue that should be handled before the game even starts, and, clearly, had nothing to do with playstyle as you do it, too.  Your question is akin to asking what a GM would do if a player showed up with a Wizard to her announced hard sci-fi game -- something other than intended playstyle or use of worldbuilding has gone wrong.





Sebastrd said:


> That's entirely up to them, isn't it? I've set the scene and introduced a situation. It's not up to me to decide what they do with it, so I really can't say.



It seems that Ovinomancer may have misunderstood the social contract at your game.



Lanefan said:


> Well then, things probably wouldn't proceed according to the DM's plans.



Well, the GM in question said there was no script - that seems also to imply no plans, or at least no plans of a particular sort.


----------



## pemerton

Lanefan said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> f a player says "I want to explore the catacombs, assuming this city has some?" and the GM checks a book/key and says "No, sorry, no catacombs", that is distinguishable from "I'm really not in the mood for catacombs today - can we do something else?"
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If one of those is distinguishable from the other the GM is doing it wrong.
Click to expand...


I think to any English speaker they're going to be distinguishable. Unless you're saying that a good GM should mumble!?


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> Are you asking? If so, here's an answer: it would depend. I might ask the player why they just didn't say they didn't want to play a game where conflicts with goblins might be expected. But if the goblin ally is a renegade goblin, we might start working out together (or maybe I'd just have the player tell me) how goblins respond to renegades, and what makes a goblin renegade in any event, or . . .
> 
> 
> It seems that Ovinomancer may have misunderstood the social contract at your game.
> 
> Well, the GM in question said there was no script - that seems also to imply no plans, or at least no plans of a particular sort.



Sorry, I did what?  Clearly there's a social contract in play there, and this situation has been handed by it, and it didn't involve playstyle or amount of worldbuilding. Given that's all I said perhaps you can point out where I said anything about that specific social construct that's in error?  Failing this, perhaps you could then apologize for putting words into my mouth?

Not rhetorical questions.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> Considering you yourself presented an example where you gave your players a requirement for their characters to have a reason to fight goblins so that it matched your intended theme, surely this isn't the problem you're trying to imply it is?




But the post he's responding to doesn't make such an assertion. Given the detail with which the story was framed in that post, it seems reasonable to consider that no such instruction was intended, though its possible [MENTION=21473]Sebastrd[/MENTION] simply didn't consider that dimension.

However, even the lack of any such consideration is indicative. He says 


> For example: This weekend I'll be running a one-shot for a friend and his two sons. I've decided that:
> 
> 
> I want to go with a gothic horror theme.



which to me at least points in the direction of a set notion of how the game is 'supposed' to go, and that he himself decided the theme, genre, and tone of the game on his own. Now he COULD have done so in consultation with the players, that's entirely possible, he just doesn't present it that way. Again, this tends to make me think that the paradigm is "GM comes up with story elements, players follow along and make it work."

Later he says 


> All of the above is wordbuilding. None of the above has scripted  anything out. Its an interesting situation, and it's up to the players  and their characters to deal with it. All of it is subject to change as  the adventure unfolds until it has been established as part of the  fiction in play. However, it provides me with a framework from which to  hang the opening scenes and to guide me as I adjudicate the players'  actions and to answer their questions as we proceed. There is plenty of  room for the players to exercise agency via suggestion or action  resolution. There is also plenty of room for the players to discover the  setting ideas and elements I've come up with and enjoy learning what  only _I_ know thus far. That's what worldbuilding is for, after all.



which is frankly kind of a mixed message. He talks about "discover the setting ideas and elements I've come up with" etc. He also claims that 'nothing is scripted'. Still, if you read the list of elements it is at least a rudimentary meta-plot and backstory. Certain things seem to be thought of as 'stuff that will happen', 'a storm', 'maintenance of the light-house', etc. 

What I would call Story Now play would leave the idea of a golem/undead and interest in taking on some sort of mission (possibly as a concomitant to another more general goal) as things that would evolve out of PLAYER ideas, not usually ones that would be hatched by GM and thought of as the central elements of plot. In other words we have, to whatever degree Sebastrd sticks/stuck with it, a 'Story Before' represented by that plot. 

I think he quite reasonably explicates what world building (at least adventure building, I don't want to quibble) is about. It is supplying a ready-made situation and supporting details which feed into that story. Now, this is described as a 'one-shot', there's quite limited time to spend on establishment. So that could also be cited as a reason to generate these elements ahead of time. While Story Now could easily work in this time frame if you are somewhat practiced you probably want to have a chance to take a few sessions to get it right. 

Anyway, its probably something you could find in a TSR module (somewhat elaborated). The assumption of the table is that the GM presents an 'adventure' and the players USUALLY are 'good sports' and take it up, with the understanding that if they want to carry on some activity of their own on the side, or further explore some aspect of the situation not addressed already, then the GM will likely go along, at least up to a certain point. 

Of course, Sebastrd could simply ignore all his own notes and material and just go with what the player's backstory or whatnot suggests when it comes to it, or he could push the players to stay mostly on the 'rails' (IE by having the townsfolk insist in no uncertain terms that the PCs be the ones to go out to the lighthouse). I'm assuming from what he's said that he isn't going to be that insistent.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Aldarc said:


> I am self-admittedly at a loss. IME, I have simply found, however, that Ron Edwards, the Forge, and all associated terminology generally engender divisive conversations. These can be, as per @_*Manbearcat*_'s observation, due to differences of core gaming values, but I also think that the terminology itself has accumulated a lot of visceral connotations and negative reactions. (The terms also seem infused with presumed value-judgments of different game approaches.)
> 
> It would certainly be nice if I was familiar with academic tabletop design game theory who have likely developed their own set of jargon, but I am not. And perhaps this even points to a gap in the conversation.
> 
> Yeah, but it's just my own vain sentiment. A whim. A want. A desire to go beyond what we have as it seems that we are too attached to these terms and all their associated baggage. I can't help but shake the feeling that these terms do a massive disservice to all gamers and their preferences.




I think what does a massive disservice is that so many people are so afraid of any analysis that they have gotten themselves in a tizzy over Ron Edwards, The Forge, and GNS terminology (and anything else that has spun off from it) because that suites their purpose in derailing attempts at thoughtful analysis. 

The fact that no other alternative analytical theory and terminology has arisen, anywhere, says more to me about the community than it does about the analytical technique. Now, I'm not really a huge fan of GNS as a theory, or its terminology, but like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], I have to have something to describe what I observe and think, and at least those are terms that we all have SOME idea what they mean, even if they're pretty flawed.

Now, Ron long ago closed The Forge (its been 6 years AFAIK since posting was disabled there), and whatever he's said since then has been much more in the form of writing games as far as I can tell. I really don't follow the guy or care that much what he's on about now, but my guess is he got tired of the stink people raised and wanted to spend his time on actual gaming. Presumably someone else will come along at some point and establish some other analytical framework. When that happens maybe I'll use it, and maybe I won't.


----------



## Manbearcat

pemerton said:


> Luckily for you, we've kept this thread alive for all that time!
> 
> OK, so you've teased this out in relation to DW and Moldvay Basic.
> 
> I think I am making a similar claim in relation not to two particular systems, but two reasonably broad but also recognisable play priorities: _players exercising agency over the content of the shared fiction by way of action resolution_ - a whole range of games prioritise this, but 4e will do as well as any as a working example - and _players learning what setting ideas and elements the GM has come up with, and enjoying the experience of learning them by way of second-person narration_ - I think that this is an important aspect of a lot of CoC play, a lot of post-DL D&D module play, and a fair bit of what (in this thread) has been described as the players, via their characters, "exploring" the gameworld and gathering information about it.
> 
> I think it's pretty hard for the same episode of RPGing to serve both those priorities.




I agree that it is pretty hard (I'll go with extremely) for the same episode of RPGing to serve both of those priorities.  Story Now and Story Before/Sim priorities + play principles and game infrastructure (the latter two serving the first) push in different (perhaps not opposite in all ways...but certainly different) directions.



hawkeyefan said:


> This is the "Checkers and Chess" contrast that was mentioned quite some way back, mostly by [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]. I think it's very true.
> 
> We can talk about the good and bad aspects of either game.
> 
> Once we begin to contrast them, then it becomes a bit sticky because that's where the preferences take over rather than just examining one game and its intentions. Now, we're looking at both games, and how they perform the goals of one of them.




I'm going to extend this with another example.  Let me know what you think (and anyone else).

You weren't active during the lead-up to and the 5e playtest, but there were a considerable number of conversations about prospective 5e design that we had on here that were central to the discussion of play priorities.  One of the absolutely most fundamental ones was this:

_Balance By the Encounter vs Balance By the Adventuring Day_

With the original "big tent" goal of 5e, my position on this was/is that balance by the adventuring day is easily achieved if you start with balance at the encounter level, while the inverse is absolutely untrue (they, obviously, went with the latter).  But that is just a position taken with the design impetus of "big tent" in mind.  So forget that for a moment, and just consider the competing play priorities of the above two paradigms.

4e's locus of the action was the conflict-charged scene.  The game's ethos and infrastructure was built around it.  I cannot for sure say that this was derived directly from indie predecessors such as Fate, Dogs in the Vineyard, My Life With Master, and Sorcerer, but when I read the books and ran the game, I couldn't come up with another inspiration.   

This play paradigm pushes mental frameworks toward "the here and now".  It emphasizes short-term tactics with a tight (and potentially punishing or rewarding) feedback loop with respect to intersecting mechanics (both player to player and players to obstacles).  It engenders an experience of emergent "chunks" of story that are focused on thematic heft and that are meant to flow intimately from one to the next (again, with a tight feedback loop).  GMing mental overhead is focused (and enabled to be given the balance at the scene level) pretty much exclusively on short-term feedback loops (story and mechanical).

If it does all of the things that I say it does above (and it does), then naturally, strategic agency/focus and related long-term feedback loops are going to be inhibited relative to an alternative paradigm (like AD&D, 3.x, or 5e).  Its just a natural outgrowth of the paradigm.  So play where players expect to express agency at a very granular level (both temporal and spatial) and where thematic heft (or protagonist-centered, conflict-charged content) is not the exclusive premise of each moment of play (or perhaps even a priority at all) is going to be somewhere between hindered and discouraged.

The "Combat As War vs Combat As Sport" threads that we engaged with never expressed their disdain of 4e in the way I did above, but that is, in effect, what the problem was.  Due to 4e's ethos and infrastructure (a "conflict-charged scene" game with not_quite_exclusive_but_overwhelming focus on short term feedbacks and tactical overhead/agency) Story Now play was enabled in a few key ways shared with the games mentioned above.  Simultaneously, play priorities that pushed toward "Fantasy Effing Vietnam", hex-crawling, or emulating "The Dragonlance Chronicles" sort of play that was very present during 2e's day were negatively impacted.


----------



## Manbearcat

I was thinking about this thread as I was introspecting upon something related to my own play priorities:

"What is the difference between a game with a baked-in premise (say Dogs in the Vineyard or My Life With Master) vs a fully GM-authored premise and attendant game?"

For myself, as GM, I'd say its the following:

1 - Playing a game with a baked-in premise invariably comes with some form of vetting by the rest of the participants (even if just tacit) of what exactly our conversations and play are going to be focused on.  This ensures a shared buy-in, therefore constraining my (unwanted) burden of responsibility or "tea-leaf-reading" as host.

2 - Games with a baked-in premise have machinery and an ethos that does the heavy lifting of ensuring that whatever is being tested/whatever questions are being answered will be front and center and resolved.  Contrast with a game that has premise-neutral machinery and a premise-neutral ethos whereby the burden for the focus of play is offloaded onto the participants generally, the social contract (possibly multiples), and the game master specifically (and very heavily).  Relative to the former, there are a lot of "failure points" introduced (with respect to all components of the desired gameplay experience manifesting)...or, at the very least, there is a burden of much more overhead (mental and social) introduced between START > DESIRED EXPERIENCE.


----------



## Jeremy E Grenemyer

Calithorne said:


> The purpose of worldbuilding is to have fun.  What I mean is that YOU, the DM is having fun building a world.



Spot on.

If a DM is having fun building a campaign world, then it will show in the experience the players have at the gaming table. 

The same happens to be true for game design, I've found.


----------



## Lanefan

Manbearcat said:


> You weren't active during the lead-up to and the 5e playtest, but there were a considerable number of conversations about prospective 5e design that we had on here that were central to the discussion of play priorities.  One of the absolutely most fundamental ones was this:
> 
> _Balance By the Encounter vs Balance By the Adventuring Day_
> 
> With the original "big tent" goal of 5e, my position on this was/is that balance by the adventuring day is easily achieved if you start with balance at the encounter level, while the inverse is absolutely untrue (they, obviously, went with the latter).  But that is just a position taken with the design impetus of "big tent" in mind.  So forget that for a moment, and just consider the competing play priorities of the above two paradigms.



And a third type, swept away annoyingly quickly: Balance by the Adventure, or by the Campaign.



> 4e's locus of the action was the conflict-charged scene.  The game's ethos and infrastructure was built around it.  I cannot for sure say that this was derived directly from indie predecessors such as Fate, Dogs in the Vineyard, My Life With Master, and Sorcerer, but when I read the books and ran the game, I couldn't come up with another inspiration.
> 
> This play paradigm pushes mental frameworks toward "the here and now".  It emphasizes short-term tactics with a tight (and potentially punishing or rewarding) feedback loop with respect to intersecting mechanics (both player to player and players to obstacles).  It engenders an experience of emergent "chunks" of story that are focused on thematic heft and that are meant to flow intimately from one to the next (again, with a tight feedback loop).  GMing mental overhead is focused (and enabled to be given the balance at the scene level) pretty much exclusively on short-term feedback loops (story and mechanical).
> 
> If it does all of the things that I say it does above (and it does), then naturally, strategic agency/focus and related long-term feedback loops are going to be inhibited relative to an alternative paradigm (like AD&D, 3.x, or 5e).  Its just a natural outgrowth of the paradigm.  So play where players expect to express agency at a very granular level (both temporal and spatial) and where thematic heft (or protagonist-centered, conflict-charged content) is not the exclusive premise of each moment of play (or perhaps even a priority at all) is going to be somewhere between hindered and discouraged.
> 
> The "Combat As War vs Combat As Sport" threads that we engaged with never expressed their disdain of 4e in the way I did above, but that is, in effect, what the problem was.  Due to 4e's ethos and infrastructure (a "conflict-charged scene" game with not_quite_exclusive_but_overwhelming focus on short term feedbacks and tactical overhead/agency) Story Now play was enabled in a few key ways shared with the games mentioned above.  Simultaneously, play priorities that pushed toward "Fantasy Effing Vietnam", hex-crawling, or emulating "The Dragonlance Chronicles" sort of play that was very present during 2e's day were negatively impacted.



So, if I boil this down to its basics are you saying that 4e is sport and 1-3-5e are war?

If not, what are you saying; as I think I'm missing something here (which might be obvious to others, but I don't get it). 

Lanefan


----------



## Aldarc

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think what does a massive disservice is that so many people are so afraid of any analysis that they have gotten themselves in a tizzy over Ron Edwards, The Forge, and GNS terminology (and anything else that has spun off from it) because that suites their purpose in derailing attempts at thoughtful analysis.



Often in this thread I have found myself agreeing with you, but I don't think this is one of those times. Overall, people are not afraid of game analysis; they are afraid of being accused of "badwrongfun" or having a game style that the game theory deems "inferior." I am not opposed to descriptive game theory, but the problem is that a lot of the Ron Edwards/Forge/GNS discussion came across as being prescriptive and laden with value judgments about particular game styles. (Or with Ron Edwards accusing gamers in the history of roleplaying as suffering from brain damage. Sorry, but that isn't the person whose theories should be lauded and used.) 



Jeremy E Grenemyer said:


> If a DM is having fun building a campaign world, then it will show in the experience the players have at the gaming table.
> 
> The same happens to be true for game design, I've found.



This sounds nice and all, but sadly correlation does not equal causation. Even then, I don't think that a GM's "fun" in worldbuilding necessarily correlates to the resultant fun for the players.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Manbearcat said:


> I'm going to extend this with another example.  Let me know what you think (and anyone else).
> 
> You weren't active during the lead-up to and the 5e playtest, but there were a considerable number of conversations about prospective 5e design that we had on here that were central to the discussion of play priorities.  One of the absolutely most fundamental ones was this:
> 
> _Balance By the Encounter vs Balance By the Adventuring Day_
> 
> With the original "big tent" goal of 5e, my position on this was/is that balance by the adventuring day is easily achieved if you start with balance at the encounter level, while the inverse is absolutely untrue (they, obviously, went with the latter).  But that is just a position taken with the design impetus of "big tent" in mind.  So forget that for a moment, and just consider the competing play priorities of the above two paradigms.
> 
> 4e's locus of the action was the conflict-charged scene.  The game's ethos and infrastructure was built around it.  I cannot for sure say that this was derived directly from indie predecessors such as Fate, Dogs in the Vineyard, My Life With Master, and Sorcerer, but when I read the books and ran the game, I couldn't come up with another inspiration.
> 
> This play paradigm pushes mental frameworks toward "the here and now".  It emphasizes short-term tactics with a tight (and potentially punishing or rewarding) feedback loop with respect to intersecting mechanics (both player to player and players to obstacles).  It engenders an experience of emergent "chunks" of story that are focused on thematic heft and that are meant to flow intimately from one to the next (again, with a tight feedback loop).  GMing mental overhead is focused (and enabled to be given the balance at the scene level) pretty much exclusively on short-term feedback loops (story and mechanical).
> 
> If it does all of the things that I say it does above (and it does), then naturally, strategic agency/focus and related long-term feedback loops are going to be inhibited relative to an alternative paradigm (like AD&D, 3.x, or 5e).  Its just a natural outgrowth of the paradigm.  So play where players expect to express agency at a very granular level (both temporal and spatial) and where thematic heft (or protagonist-centered, conflict-charged content) is not the exclusive premise of each moment of play (or perhaps even a priority at all) is going to be somewhere between hindered and discouraged.
> 
> The "Combat As War vs Combat As Sport" threads that we engaged with never expressed their disdain of 4e in the way I did above, but that is, in effect, what the problem was.  Due to 4e's ethos and infrastructure (a "conflict-charged scene" game with not_quite_exclusive_but_overwhelming focus on short term feedbacks and tactical overhead/agency) Story Now play was enabled in a few key ways shared with the games mentioned above.  Simultaneously, play priorities that pushed toward "Fantasy Effing Vietnam", hex-crawling, or emulating "The Dragonlance Chronicles" sort of play that was very present during 2e's day were negatively impacted.




I see your point about how 4E's design favored a more immediate need within the game, and how that may correlate with more Story Now style games. This wasn't my take away from 4E, but I can see it in retrospect. 

Certainly such design choices will impact how a game functions, and what kind of style to which it may lend itself. I think this is at the core of this discussion (or intended discussion!). 

I don't know if the two paradigms are so opposed as to be mutually exclusive, though. However, as you mentioned, I wasn't active during that period, so I didn't see a lot of those conversations, and so I can't say for certain. But what I mean is that if both paradigms are attempting to balance the game, even though they use different methods, I don't know if they must be strongly opposed. I think you agree at least partially because of your statement about balancing encounters would lead to a balanced adventuring day. 

So is it a question of the more top down approach not being tenable? Could encounter balance be achieved by first seeking adventuring day balance?


----------



## hawkeyefan

Manbearcat said:


> I was thinking about this thread as I was introspecting upon something related to my own play priorities:
> 
> "What is the difference between a game with a baked-in premise (say Dogs in the Vineyard or My Life With Master) vs a fully GM-authored premise and attendant game?"
> 
> For myself, as GM, I'd say its the following:
> 
> 1 - Playing a game with a baked-in premise invariably comes with some form of vetting by the rest of the participants (even if just tacit) of what exactly our conversations and play are going to be focused on.  This ensures a shared buy-in, therefore constraining my (unwanted) burden of responsibility or "tea-leaf-reading" as host.
> 
> 2 - Games with a baked-in premise have machinery and an ethos that does the heavy lifting of ensuring that whatever is being tested/whatever questions are being answered will be front and center and resolved.  Contrast with a game that has premise-neutral machinery and a premise-neutral ethos whereby the burden for the focus of play is offloaded onto the participants generally, the social contract (possibly multiples), and the game master specifically (and very heavily).  Relative to the former, there are a lot of "failure points" introduced (with respect to all components of the desired gameplay experience manifesting)...or, at the very least, there is a burden of much more overhead (mental and social) introduced between START > DESIRED EXPERIENCE.




There are clear advantages to a game where there is a specific premise assumed and all the rules are designed around delivering that premise. Something like _Blades in the Dark_ seems so strong (I've not yet played, but I'm really looking forward to it) because the elements of the game are designed to deliver the experience of a group of scoundrels trying to establish themselves. Rep and Scores and Turf and Heat and all the other game elements are tightly designed around the core concept. 

By contrast, there are advantages to having a more general system that is designed to deliver more of a variety of experiences. I think in such a system, depending on what the players/GM want, there may be a lot of effort needed on their part to design a more specific experience.


----------



## Ovinomancer

hawkeyefan said:


> I see your point about how 4E's design favored a more immediate need within the game, and how that may correlate with more Story Now style games. This wasn't my take away from 4E, but I can see it in retrospect.
> 
> Certainly such design choices will impact how a game functions, and what kind of style to which it may lend itself. I think this is at the core of this discussion (or intended discussion!).
> 
> I don't know if the two paradigms are so opposed as to be mutually exclusive, though. However, as you mentioned, I wasn't active during that period, so I didn't see a lot of those conversations, and so I can't say for certain. But what I mean is that if both paradigms are attempting to balance the game, even though they use different methods, I don't know if they must be strongly opposed. I think you agree at least partially because of your statement about balancing encounters would lead to a balanced adventuring day.
> 
> So is it a question of the more top down approach not being tenable? Could encounter balance be achieved by first seeking adventuring day balance?



Day balance is 5e wizard spells -- a pc gets so many, refreshed daily.  This is not encounter balanced because that oc can burn them all in one encounter and have none left for future encounters.

Encounter balance creators effects that are limited in use to the encounter.  5e warlocks are more encounter balanced - they have resources that mostly refresh pin a per encounter basis and were limited to only a few uses per encounter.  

These things can coexist, but the recurring discussions on encounter/adventuring day pacing that balances short rest vs long rest recoveries shows that mixing the two has issues that result from different pressures on play.  1 encounter pet day is as balanced as 8 for the warlock (with short rests), but not fir the wizard.

This is exactly the point that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] is making:  the different incentives and pressures on the game between encounter balancing and day balancing are often at odds.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Ovinomancer said:


> Day balance is 5e wizard spells -- a pc gets so many, refreshed daily.  This is not encounter balanced because that oc can burn them all in one encounter and have none left for future encounters.
> 
> Encounter balance creators effects that are limited in use to the encounter.  5e warlocks are more encounter balanced - they have resources that mostly refresh pin a per encounter basis and were limited to only a few uses per encounter.
> 
> These things can coexist, but the recurring discussions on encounter/adventuring day pacing that balances short rest vs long rest recoveries shows that mixing the two has issues that result from different pressures on play.  1 encounter pet day is as balanced as 8 for the warlock (with short rests), but not fir the wizard.
> 
> This is exactly the point that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] is making:  the different incentives and pressures on the game between encounter balancing and day balancing are often at odds.




They have to appeal to the widest possible base. The problem with a highly specialized system that caters to thing X, when it is going to be played at a table of 5 people who probably all have varying tastes, is it becomes very niche. 4E was an effective niche product, but a lot of people left the game when it came out. I don't play 5E, but it is pretty obvious they've managed to get a lot of people back in, broaden the base a bit, etc by taking a more compromised approach. It isn't going to satisfy people at the extreme ends of preferences. But it is the kind of approach that is called for in a mainstream product.


----------



## Imaro

Ovinomancer said:


> Day balance is 5e wizard spells -- a pc gets so many, refreshed daily.  This is not encounter balanced because that oc can burn them all in one encounter and have none left for future encounters.
> 
> Encounter balance creators effects that are limited in use to the encounter.  5e warlocks are more encounter balanced - they have resources that mostly refresh pin a per encounter basis and were limited to only a few uses per encounter.
> 
> These things can coexist, but the recurring discussions on encounter/adventuring day pacing that balances short rest vs long rest recoveries shows that mixing the two has issues that result from different pressures on play.  1 encounter pet day is as balanced as 8 for the warlock (with short rests), but not fir the wizard.
> 
> This is exactly the point that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] is making:  the different incentives and pressures on the game between encounter balancing and day balancing are often at odds.




I don't know... it would seem if one has the number of recharges of encounter abilities per adventuring day it would be trivially easy to move everything to a daily balancing paradigm if homogeneity is desired.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Imaro said:


> I don't know... it would seem if one has the number of recharges of encounter abilities per adventuring day it would be trivially easy to move everything to a daily balancing paradigm if homogeneity is desired.



I'm assuming you mean abilities that have limited in encounter usages that would then recharge daily rather than by encounter.  You could, but then you'd be placing a strong incentive on daily encounter design to only have that many encounters a day, which would then pretty much be encounter balanced despite the daily recharge.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Bedrockgames said:


> They have to appeal to the widest possible base. The problem with a highly specialized system that caters to thing X, when it is going to be played at a table of 5 people who probably all have varying tastes, is it becomes very niche. 4E was an effective niche product, but a lot of people left the game when it came out. I don't play 5E, but it is pretty obvious they've managed to get a lot of people back in, broaden the base a bit, etc by taking a more compromised approach. It isn't going to satisfy people at the extreme ends of preferences. But it is the kind of approach that is called for in a mainstream product.



Huh?  Where were either me or [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] taking about popularity?  I don't follow the context of your post -- it's not addressing any argument I made that I can tell.


----------



## Imaro

Ovinomancer said:


> I'm assuming you mean abilities that have limited in encounter usages that would then recharge daily rather than by encounter.  You could, but then you'd be placing a strong incentive on daily encounter design to only have that many encounters a day, which would then pretty much be encounter balanced despite the daily recharge.




I would assume even daily encounter design has a limit which should be unaffected by the change.  I also would think, though it might be a bit harder, one could also reverse engineer daily abilities to have a recharge rate based around an encounter paradigm... though honestly I haven't given it nearly as much thought.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Imaro said:


> I would assume even daily encounter design has a limit which should be unaffected by the change.  I also would think, though it might be a bit harder, one could also reverse engineer daily abilities to have a recharge rate based around an encounter paradigm... though honestly I haven't given it nearly as much thought.



There are entire long threads on this very thing -- rebalancing 5e in one direction or the other.  The vast amount of contention is which way to balance, alongside a decent bit of "if the DM just does lots of work to force balance, it works fine as is."

I'm not arguing for one side or the other, I'm just pointing out that there's a conflict between to two designs.  I see it in my 5e game and try to do the work.  That works for us, but it's not a general solution.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Ovinomancer said:


> Huh?  Where were either me or [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] taking about popularity?  I don't follow the context of your post -- it's not addressing any argument I made that I can tell.




I am just pointing out what happened before when they went hard in a one direction. These online discussions tend to lose sight of the need for a game like this to appeal to people who might have conflicting tastes and be gaming at the same table.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Bedrockgames said:


> I am just pointing out what happened before when they went hard in a one direction. These online discussions tend to lose sight of the need for a game like this to appeal to people who might have conflicting tastes and be gaming at the same table.



Lol.  2e and 3e are hard day balanced. 4e's problem wasn't going hard in a direction, it was the sudden shift from.previous editions and betting unclear about it.  I'd say early 4e was fairly schizophrenic when talking about its balance, frankly.  But this isn't about going in hard in one way or the other -- it's trying the middle that causes issues, add seen in 5e with daily encounter balance being a hard to hit target because of the different balance mechanics.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Ovinomancer said:


> Lol.  2e and 3e are hard day balanced.....




I'd say 2E was more balanced over the course of the campaign.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Ovinomancer said:


> I'd say early 4e was fairly schizophrenic when talking about its balance, frankly.  But this isn't about going in hard in one way or the other -- it's trying the middle that causes issues, add seen in 5e with daily encounter balance being a hard to hit target because of the different balance mechanics.




This is why I brought up popularity. I think the proof is in pudding here. In my view 4E did go very hard in the direction of balance by encounter. And I think that pretty obviously drove away a lot of fans. Now they seem to be trying a middle approach all around. Not just in terms of daily balance versus encounter balance; but a much more moderate approach to balance in general (just look at Mearls comment on Fireball). I'd say this is a much healthier approach for long term. You are guys are arguing for moving hard in the direction of one particular preference. But the problem is D&D is not a single serve game. You are making a meal for lots of people and they tend to have mixed preferences. 

The reason this made 4E a problem at my table when it came out, was we could only every get about 1/4th of the group enthused about it. Now that 1/4th was very enthused. But the rest just rwere not. And this was at a table that isn't afraid to play all kinds of games.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Bedrockgames said:


> I'd say 2E was more balanced over the course of the campaign.



What on earth are you taking about now?  Abilities in 2e are on a daily reset.

Look, this isn't a value statement.  It's an observation about how ability balance affects play and how.  Encounter balance incentivizes more immediate play focus, stressing "in the moment" play vs strategic play.  This is because you get your full suite (or most of it) at the start of every encounter/scene and so dying have to conserve or worry about the next encounter.  4e shows this play effect.

Daily balance means abilities recharge on the day, not the encounter.  This incentivizes more strategic play, where immediate expenditure is balanced both against current events and possible footie events.  2e/3e show this in play, or break with "5 minute workday" issues.

Neither is better or worse, but they have opposing incentives and that should be recognized.  5e mixes balances with different classes using different balance points, and this shows in the continued discussions on the best way to balance encounters a day when classes from reach balance point are present.  It's not much of an issue if you happen to have the same balances in the party.

That's it.  Love whichever you want; I've liked them all.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Bedrockgames said:


> This is why I brought up popularity. I think the proof is in pudding here. In my view 4E did go very hard in the direction of balance by encounter. And I think that pretty obviously drove away a lot of fans. Now they seem to be trying a middle approach all around. Not just in terms of daily balance versus encounter balance; but a much more moderate approach to balance in general (just look at Mearls comment on Fireball). I'd say this is a much healthier approach for long term. You are guys are arguing for moving hard in the direction of one particular preference. But the problem is D&D is not a single serve game. You are making a meal for lots of people and they tend to have mixed preferences.
> 
> The reason this made 4E a problem at my table when it came out, was we could only every get about 1/4th of the group enthused about it. Now that 1/4th was very enthused. But the rest just rwere not. And this was at a table that isn't afraid to play all kinds of games.



I disagree.  Firstly, popularity is a terrible metric for discussing ability balance points.  It's irrelevant.  

Second, 4e's issues were not because of being encounter balanced.  It was the way they choose the balance, the confused messaging about that balance, and some other business choices they made at the time.  4e had communication issues that contributed to it's loss, it's not valid to point that on encounter balance.

And this proves out with 5e, which has a number of popular encounter balanced features/classes.  Monks, warlocks, barbarians, etc.

So, no, I disagree that the popularity of 4e had very much at all to do with how it balanced abilities, but lots to do with how it communicated that balance.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Bedrockgames said:


> This is why I brought up popularity. I think the proof is in pudding here. In my view 4E did go very hard in the direction of balance by encounter. And I think that pretty obviously drove away a lot of fans. Now they seem to be trying a middle approach all around. Not just in terms of daily balance versus encounter balance; but a much more moderate approach to balance in general (just look at Mearls comment on Fireball). I'd say this is a much healthier approach for long term. You are guys are arguing for moving hard in the direction of one particular preference. But the problem is D&D is not a single serve game. You are making a meal for lots of people and they tend to have mixed preferences.
> 
> The reason this made 4E a problem at my table when it came out, was we could only every get about 1/4th of the group enthused about it. Now that 1/4th was very enthused. But the rest just rwere not. And this was at a table that isn't afraid to play all kinds of games.



I disagree.  Firstly, popularity is a terrible metric for discussing ability balance points.  It's irrelevant.  

Second, 4e's issues were not because of being encounter balanced.  It was the way they choose the balance, the confused messaging about that balance, and some other business choices they made at the time.  4e had communication issues that contributed to it's loss, it's not valid to point that on encounter balance.

And this proves out with 5e, which has a number of popular encounter balanced features/classes.  Monks, warlocks, barbarians, etc.

So, no, I disagree that the popularity of 4e had very much at all to do with how it balanced abilities, but lots to do with how it communicated that balance.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Ovinomancer said:


> What on earth are you taking about now?  Abilities in 2e are on a daily reset
> 
> 
> .




I am talking about how 1e and 2E balances classes over the campaign Magic Users started out weak, but had some truly powerful abilities later, when they reached higher levels. Classes even advanced at different rates. That is all about balance over the campaign.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Ovinomancer said:


> I disagree.  Firstly, popularity is a terrible metric for discussing ability balance points.  It's irrelevant.




Why?


----------



## Bedrockgames

Ovinomancer said:


> Second, 4e's issues were not because of being encounter balanced.  It was the way they choose the balance, the confused messaging about that balance, and some other business choices they made at the time.  4e had communication issues that contributed to it's loss, it's not valid to point that on encounter balance.
> .




There were a lot of things going on with 4E that made it unpopular. I think focusing a lot of balance considerations around encounters was a big part of it (but certainly not the only thing). I don't think the trouble was poor communication. But this is ground that has been gone over endlessly for years.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Ovinomancer said:


> I disagree.  Firstly, popularity is a terrible metric for discussing ability balance points.
> ...I disagree that the popularity of 4e had very much at all to do with how it balanced abilities, but lots to do with how it communicated that balance.



 Oh, the warring against 4e had a lot to do with how it balanced abilities - that it dared to balance classes at all - because there's just this established base that thrives on such imbalances, and doesn't want to let go of them.  Though, ultimately, that still doesn't prove much, since the failure of the line at that point had more to do with business & communications issues.  



Ovinomancer said:


> What on earth are you taking about now?  Abilities in 2e are on a daily reset.



 AD&D wasn't balanced within a given day, like 5e theoretically is balanced around a 6-8 encounter/2-3 short rest day.  Rather, the theoretical balance was realized over the course of many levels, at least from 1st through name level, if not well into the teens.  Some classes leveled at very different rates from others, races & classes had hard level limits, and some classes started strong and became irrelevant later, while others started weak & fragile, and became very powerful.  At the end of the campaign, if you'd all played the same character throughout, the joys & pains of the above might theoretically have evened out and 'balanced' as a whole.

It was prettymuch nonsense. But in 1e, at least, I think EGG did make the point, at least obliquiely, a number of times, that it was intended.



> It's an observation about how ability balance affects play and how.  Encounter balance incentivizes more immediate play focus, stressing "in the moment" play vs strategic play.  This is because you get your full suite (or most of it) at the start of every encounter/scene and so dying have to conserve or worry about the next encounter.  4e shows this play effect.



 It shows a middle-of-the-road version of it, relative to traditional all-daily-focus D&D, anyway.  4e did have significant daily resources to manage, healing surges, item dailies, daily attack powers, as well as encounter resource (encounter attack powers, racial powers).  The big difference between 4e & other versions of D&D was that the classes had about the same mix of encounter & daily resources, so the game wasn't much distorted by long or short 'days' - a robust, relativley simple solution to a 'problem' still treated by many as insoluble.  FWIW.

A better example of encounter-based play would be the superficially similar version of Gamma World out at the same time.  It did not have daily powers or surges.  Instead, every resource was managed within the encounter, and recharged between encounters.  That's 'origin' powers, artifacts (which could burn out after an encounter), mutations (which could change randomly), even (sorta) ammunition - and, of course, hps.  Between encounters you just plain go all your hp back.  

It did play differently, indeed.  Pacing was irrelevant, in GW games, I'd often find we weren't even thinking about days spent doing things or travel times or the like, just wandering around the wasteland, encountering stuff.    Very beer & pretzels.   Fun for it's own sake, not too serious.



> Daily balance means abilities recharge on the day, not the encounter.  This incentivizes more strategic play, where immediate expenditure is balanced both against current events and possible footie events.  2e/3e show this in play, or break with "5 minute workday" issues.



Traditoinal D&D was that other extreme:  all about managing the day and resources that take at least a day to re-gain.  Much more serious, challenge-oriented, fun is an emergent property.  

Not really much need to go into explaning that paradigm, the hard part is usually getting any acknowledgement that there are other paradigms.  



> Neither is better or worse, but they have opposing incentives and that should be recognized.



4e was arguably and attempt at that.  It was between the two extremes - it even /tried/ to encentivize longer days with milestone-recharging resources, like action points (and, earlier, item-daily limits).
You could get by without worrying too much about daily resources - you'd 'burn out' faster, in all likelihood, and you'd be less effective, overall, but you could do it and the game was still playable.  
You could pay careful attention to such resources and push through a grueling day to 'win' a time-restricted scenario, the individual battles might have to be a little less interesting a litle more systematic in approach, and you might opt into skill challenges to avoid or reduce the difficulty of some of them if you could engineer such opportunities.  
You could play some 'day's one way, some the others, scenarious and pacing could be varied from table to table, or within a single encounter, and class balance wouldn't suffer.  



> That's it.  Love whichever you want; I've liked them all.



 Agreed!


----------



## Ovinomancer

Do you have trouble with responding to a post one time?  



Bedrockgames said:


> There were a lot of things going on with 4E that made it unpopular. I think focusing a lot of balance considerations around encounters was a big part of it (but certainly not the only thing). I don't think the trouble was poor communication. But this is ground that has been gone over endlessly for years.




I dont think it has, actually.  That 4e is encounter balanced is not something I've ever seen as a complaint.  On the other hand, people complaining about how our failed to do a good job of explaining the changes is.  On the gripping hand, most complaints about 4e revolve around HOW 4e did its encounter balancing.



Bedrockgames said:


> Why?



Nope, your job to show that it is a good metric.  Dilation why popularity is a good metric for comparing the ability balance points of, say, 1e and 5e.  They have very different balance points, so popularity should be a good indicator of something, right?




Bedrockgames said:


> I am talking about how 1e and 2E balances classes over the campaign Magic Users started out weak, but had some truly powerful abilities later, when they reached higher levels. Classes even advanced at different rates. That is all about balance over the campaign.




You clearly aren't picking up what's being put down if you think that's at all relevant for how there are different ways ability use in game is balanced by recharge mechanics and the repercussions of each.  Quadratic wizard; linear fighter may be a design ethic you prefer (and that's awesome), but it doesn't speak to how a game has different play incentives if it has spells recharge per encounter or per day.


----------



## Lanefan

Aldarc said:


> Often in this thread I have found myself agreeing with you, but I don't think this is one of those times. Overall, people are not afraid of game analysis; they are afraid of being accused of "badwrongfun" or having a game style that the game theory deems "inferior." I am not opposed to descriptive game theory, but the problem is that a lot of the Ron Edwards/Forge/GNS discussion came across as being prescriptive and laden with value judgments about particular game styles. (Or with Ron Edwards accusing gamers in the history of roleplaying as suffering from brain damage. Sorry, but that isn't the person whose theories should be lauded and used.)



I've not read all of his stuff and likely never will, but what of it I have seen consistently held a tone of condescension verging into arrogance at times.



> This sounds nice and all, but sadly correlation does not equal causation. Even then, I don't think that a GM's "fun" in worldbuilding necessarily correlates to the resultant fun for the players.



Not every time - nothing in this hobby is true every time - but I think it clearly shifts the odds somewhat: if a DM has fun building her world that sense of fun and enthusiasm is naturally going to radiate to the players once she starts running games in said world.  Conversely, a DM who isn't so keen on the world she's running (e.g. she's running in a prepublished world that she hasn't had time to tweak to her own tastes) is likely going to project that lack of enthusiasm onto her table once play begins.  Either way, the enthusiasm or lack thereof projected by the DM with regards to the setting is going to set a tone for the game, like it or not.

Lanefan


----------



## Lanefan

Tony Vargas said:


> AD&D wasn't balanced within a given day, like 5e theoretically is balanced around a 6-8 encounter/2-3 short rest day.  Rather, the theoretical balance was realized over the course of many levels, at least from 1st through name level, if not well into the teens.  Some classes leveled at very different rates from others, races & classes had hard level limits, and some classes started strong and became irrelevant later, while others started weak & fragile, and became very powerful.  At the end of the campaign, if you'd all played the same character throughout, the joys & pains of the above might theoretically have evened out and 'balanced' as a whole.
> 
> It was prettymuch nonsense. But in 1e, at least, I think EGG did make the point, at least obliquiely, a number of times, that it was intended.



I don't mind this sort of long-term balance at all, and disagree with the "pretty much nonsense" claim. 



> It shows a middle-of-the-road version of it, relative to traditional all-daily-focus D&D, anyway.  4e did have significant daily resources to manage, healing surges, item dailies, daily attack powers, as well as encounter resource (encounter attack powers, racial powers).  The big difference between 4e & other versions of D&D was that the classes had about the same mix of encounter & daily resources, so the game wasn't much distorted by long or short 'days' - a robust, relativley simple solution to a 'problem' still treated by many as insoluble.  FWIW.



A simple solution perhaps, but at cost of a bunch of other things not least of which is clear mechanical distinction between classes; and there being no "starter" mechanics-lite or mechanics-absent classes.  Also, with everything resetting overnight any sort of long-term resource management went out the window, and 5e has sadly perpetuated this issue.

Lan-"finding myself wondering what game-mechanical balance of any kind has to do with worldbuilding"-efan


----------



## Ovinomancer

Tony Vargas said:


> Oh, the warring against 4e had a lot to do with how it balanced abilities - that it dared to balance classes at all - because there's just this established base that thrives on such imbalances, and doesn't want to let go of them.  Though, ultimately, that still doesn't prove much, since the failure of the line at that point had more to do with business & communications issues.
> 
> AD&D wasn't balanced within a given day, like 5e theoretically is balanced around a 6-8 encounter/2-3 short rest day.  Rather, the theoretical balance was realized over the course of many levels, at least from 1st through name level, if not well into the teens.  Some classes leveled at very different rates from others, races & classes had hard level limits, and some classes started strong and became irrelevant later, while others started weak & fragile, and became very powerful.  At the end of the campaign, if you'd all played the same character throughout, the joys & pains of the above might theoretically have evened out and 'balanced' as a whole.
> 
> It was prettymuch nonsense. But in 1e, at least, I think EGG did make the point, at least obliquiely, a number of times, that it was intended.
> 
> It shows a middle-of-the-road version of it, relative to traditional all-daily-focus D&D, anyway.  4e did have significant daily resources to manage, healing surges, item dailies, daily attack powers, as well as encounter resource (encounter attack powers, racial powers).  The big difference between 4e & other versions of D&D was that the classes had about the same mix of encounter & daily resources, so the game wasn't much distorted by long or short 'days' - a robust, relativley simple solution to a 'problem' still treated by many as insoluble.  FWIW.
> 
> A better example of encounter-based play would be the superficially similar version of Gamma World out at the same time.  It did not have daily powers or surges.  Instead, every resource was managed within the encounter, and recharged between encounters.  That's 'origin' powers, artifacts (which could burn out after an encounter), mutations (which could change randomly), even (sorta) ammunition - and, of course, hps.  Between encounters you just plain go all your hp back.
> 
> It did play differently, indeed.  Pacing was irrelevant, in GW games, I'd often find we weren't even thinking about days spent doing things or travel times or the like, just wandering around the wasteland, encountering stuff.    Very beer & pretzels.   Fun for it's own sake, not too serious.
> 
> Traditoinal D&D was that other extreme:  all about managing the day and resources that take at least a day to re-gain.  Much more serious, challenge-oriented, fun is an emergent property.
> 
> Not really much need to go into explaning that paradigm, the hard part is usually getting any acknowledgement that there are other paradigms.
> 
> 4e was arguably and attempt at that.  It was between the two extremes - it even /tried/ to encentivize longer days with milestone-recharging resources, like action points (and, earlier, item-daily limits).
> You could get by without worrying too much about daily resources - you'd 'burn out' faster, in all likelihood, and you'd be less effective, overall, but you could do it and the game was still playable.
> You could pay careful attention to such resources and push through a grueling day to 'win' a time-restricted scenario, the individual battles might have to be a little less interesting a litle more systematic in approach, and you might opt into skill challenges to avoid or reduce the difficulty of some of them if you could engineer such opportunities.
> You could play some 'day's one way, some the others, scenarious and pacing could be varied from table to table, or within a single encounter, and class balance wouldn't suffer.
> 
> Agreed!




Balancing classes isn't relevant to the points about how ability recharges are balanced.  They are separate issues altogether.  You can have class balance regardless of how abilities are balanced with respect to encounter vs day.

4e is also pretty strongly encounter balanced.  Yes, it had some daily recharge abilities, but those had little to no effect on individual encounters -- at most healing surges were a daily resource that influenced play, but most play never ran the risk of exhausting healing surges, so it was largely a moot consideration for how you addressed play.  I contend that play that seriously focused on the few daily resources was the exception to the rule that they largely didn't matter much in play.  I ran 4e for a few years before moving to roll and keep hacks for a few years, so I'm speaking to my experience and to what I saw/read on the boards at the time.  Hording surges wasn't a strong play tactic -- they were almost always better as hitpoints outside of a few classes that used them to power abilities.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> I don't mind this sort of long-term balance at all, and disagree with the "pretty much nonsense" claim.



 It works in theory - as long as everyone plays their one character, for the whole campaign, including the guy who rolled up an MU who died the first day sitting out the campaign for however many years it lasts - as in, showing up at all the sessions, and saying "I decompose" on his turn.

Short of that, it's prettymuch nonsense.  



> A simple solution perhaps, but at cost of a bunch of other things not least of which is clear mechanical distinction between classes; and there being no "starter" mechanics-lite or mechanics-absent classes.



 You don't need 'starter' mechanics or ways to dodge engaging with mechanics, when the designer has resorted to the extremity of designing functional mechanics in the first place.  As for 'clear mechanical distinction between classes' - each class had it's own unique set of features and resources, there was rough parity in the number of each, and attempts made to balance them, but they were separate to a degree not seen since AD&D.



> Also, with everything resetting overnight any sort of long-term resource management went out the window, and 5e has sadly perpetuated this issue.



 Actually, 5e has taken things back beyond the single day, a bit:  HD do take a second day to recharge, and there's actual, if kidna sketchy, Downtime rules.  It's not the kind of fiddly bookkeeping we enjoyed back in the day, but it's OK for the kiddies, I guess.  



> Lan-"finding myself wondering what game-mechanical balance of any kind has to do with worldbuilding"-efan



There's three closely-related threads with all the same folks in 'em, I'm not having much luck keeping them straight.  

But, pacing, maybe is part of world building?  ::shrug::


----------



## Tony Vargas

Ovinomancer said:


> Balancing classes isn't relevant to the points about how ability recharges are balanced.  They are separate issues altogether.  You can have class balance regardless of how abilities are balanced with respect to encounter vs day.



 Classes are central to each of the examples you're using, though - D&D having always used classes, even at it's least-D&D-like.

Another reason Gamma World makes a better example of encounter-balancing:  no classes to confuse the issue.   



> 4e is also pretty strongly encounter balanced.  Yes, it had some daily recharge abilities, but those had little to no effect on individual encounters -- at most healing surges were a daily resource that influenced play, but most play never ran the risk of exhausting healing surges, so it was largely a moot consideration for how you addressed play.  I contend that play that seriously focused on the few daily resources was the exception to the rule that they largely didn't matter much in play.  I ran 4e for a few years before moving to roll and keep hacks for a few years, so I'm speaking to my experience and to what I saw/read on the boards at the time.  Hording surges wasn't a strong play tactic -- they were almost always better as hitpoints outside of a few classes that used them to power abilities.



I played 4e for it's whole run, and still do infrequently, and have run it since 2010, regularly since 2012 (a campaign now at 25th level), so I've seen it play out in quite a range of ways.  The claim 4e is primarily or solely encounter-balanced is refuted, objectively, by the presence & signifcance of surges, daily attack powers, item dailies, and milestone-activated resources.  Surges do represent an upper limit to how many encounters you can endure without a long rest, so time-constrained scenarios do need to be approached and managed differently.  If it were entirely encounter balanced, such considerations would make no difference - as was the case in the corresponding ed of Gamma World.
Daily powers in 4e could easily swing a combat, changing the whole character of it, multiple dailies could enable a party to punch above their weight class and take on enormously difficult encounters, including multiple encounters w/o a short rest (again, not considerations that'd come up in a purely-encounter-based design).  Groups under time pressure can horde dailies for an assumed 'boss fight,' but can end up blowing through surges faster as a result, and find themselves under pressure to use dailies less effectively later in the day as some of the group run out of surges and can't afford to grind it out with encounters & at-wills; groups under no time pressure can 'alpha strike' and take down encounters easily, or take on tougher than normal encounters, but doing so doesn't imbalance the classes, just shifts the balance of individual encounters - again, not a feature of a game that's primarily encounter-balanced.

That said, I think the fair point is that 4e had much more robust balance within an encounter, just as it did among classes, relative to other editions.  Which is comparing it to extreme examples of attempting to set balance to a specific encounter:rest:time ratio, or even, as someone observed, above (or maybe in another thread, they're all runn'n together), over many levels or whole campaigns.  4e does have modestly robost balance within each encounter, and somewhat more robust balance among classes, and important resources to manage over a given day (without which encounter balance would be a lot more solid).  It's closer to the middle of the daily-balance|encounter-balance continuum, if such a thing is even a conceptually valid.   D&D, more generally, is over on the daily end.  

Really, though, other systems aren't even on that spectrum, not tying anything to calendar days or timed rests.


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## Ovinomancer

Tony Vargas said:


> Classes are central to each of the examples you're using, though - D&D having always used classes, even at it's least-D&D-like.
> 
> Another reason Gamma World makes a better example of encounter-balancing:  no classes to confuse the issue.
> 
> I played 4e for it's whole run, and still do infrequently, and have run it since 2010, regularly since 2012 (a campaign now at 25th level), so I've seen it play out in quite a range of ways.  The claim 4e is primarily or solely encounter-balanced is refuted, objectively, by the presence & signifcance of surges, daily attack powers, item dailies, and milestone-activated resources.  Surges do represent an upper limit to how many encounters you can endure without a long rest, so time-constrained scenarios do need to be approached and managed differently.  If it were entirely encounter balanced, such considerations would make no difference - as was the case in the corresponding ed of Gamma World.
> Daily powers in 4e could easily swing a combat, changing the whole character of it, multiple dailies could enable a party to punch above their weight class and take on enormously difficult encounters, including multiple encounters w/o a short rest (again, not considerations that'd come up in a purely-encounter-based design).  Groups under time pressure can horde dailies for an assumed 'boss fight,' but can end up blowing through surges faster as a result, and find themselves under pressure to use dailies less effectively later in the day as some of the group run out of surges and can't afford to grind it out with encounters & at-wills; groups under no time pressure can 'alpha strike' and take down encounters easily, or take on tougher than normal encounters, but doing so doesn't imbalance the classes, just shifts the balance of individual encounters - again, not a feature of a game that's primarily encounter-balanced.
> 
> That said, I think the fair point is that 4e had much more robust balance within an encounter, just as it did among classes, relative to other editions.  Which is comparing it to extreme examples of attempting to set balance to a specific encounter:rest:time ratio, or even, as someone observed, above (or maybe in another thread, they're all runn'n together), over many levels or whole campaigns.  4e does have modestly robost balance within each encounter, and somewhat more robust balance among classes, and important resources to manage over a given day (without which encounter balance would be a lot more solid).  It's closer to the middle of the daily-balance|encounter-balance continuum, if such a thing is even a conceptually valid.   D&D, more generally, is over on the daily end.
> 
> Really, though, other systems aren't even on that spectrum, not tying anything to calendar days or timed rests.



You can jettison almost every one of the daily resources in 4e and encounter dynamic barely change.  Hence why I said they're largely irrelevant to where 4e balances in regards to ability recharge.

Healing surges are the exception, but those rarely imposed on play dynamics -- it was a rare situation that number ofctenant surges impacted play to any significant amount.


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## pemerton

Manbearcat said:


> You weren't active during the lead-up to and the 5e playtest, but there were a considerable number of conversations about prospective 5e design that we had on here that were central to the discussion of play priorities.  One of the absolutely most fundamental ones was this:
> 
> _Balance By the Encounter vs Balance By the Adventuring Day_





hawkeyefan said:


> I don't know if the two paradigms are so opposed as to be mutually exclusive, though. However, as you mentioned, I wasn't active during that period, so I didn't see a lot of those conversations, and so I can't say for certain. But what I mean is that if both paradigms are attempting to balance the game, even though they use different methods, I don't know if they must be strongly opposed. I think you agree at least partially because of your statement about balancing encounters would lead to a balanced adventuring day.



From my point of view, the contrast is this: if the unit of balance is the encounter (scene), then it is possible to allow events to unfold as they do in accordance with the logic of play, complications, framing, etc, _without_ this having any implications for mechanical balance across PCs (which is a feature of a mechanically heavy system like D&D).

If the unit of balance is the adventuring day which is understood to include multiple encounters (eg 6 to 8 in 5e), then the dynamic becomes different. The GM has to have sketched out a sequence of events in advance, or at least maintain the "threat" of such, in order to constrain the use of resources by players whose PCs are on a longer rather than shorter recharge cycle. As well as this implication for pacing and expectations around pacing/framing, there is also another consequence: players who withhold the use of resources out of concern for subsequent encounters which don't occur don't get to use those resources, which leaves those elements of the player archetype unrealised.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Ovinomancer said:


> You can jettison almost every one of the daily resources in 4e and encounter dynamic barely change. Hence why I said they're largely irrelevant to where 4e balances in regards to ability recharge.
> Healing surges are the exception, but those rarely imposed on play dynamics -- it was a rare situation that number ofctenant surges impacted play to any significant amount.



If that's your experience - if your group didn't make much or much effective use of dailies, and if they rarely pushed to the point anyone ran low enough on surges for it to affect their tactics in an encounter - then that's your experience.   I've certainly seen dailies have very high impact in specific encounters, and seen being out of dailies or low on surges impact how a character or party had to aproach an encounter (or try to avoid further encounters) - from both sides of the screen.  

It's not just that our experiences are hard to reconcile, though - I can see how a narrow range of play, short days combined with unnecessary hording of dailies, for instance, could result in under-valuing surges & daily attack powers, for instance - but I don't see how you can expect me to accept your experiences as negating the facts of the system.  4e granted AEDU classes equal numbers of encounter & daily attacks, the latter being significantly more powerful.  That's a lot less concentration of power in dailies than prior eds (which topped out with dozend of dailies, vs 3 or 4 in 4e), and a lot more concentration of power in encounters compared to, well /none/ for most prior-ed characters.  But, that's more less daily power & more encounter power, relative to an extreme of all-daily, no encounter.

If you compare 4e to the basic-mechanics similar of Gamma World, for the other extreme, it's adding Daily attack powers, Daily utilities, daily healing surges and long-rest recovery of hps, it's all about daily stuff in that comparison.

Hence it being nearer the middle of the very hypothetical daily-to-encounter spectrum.  It provides more robust/consistent balance within encounters than a game that aims to deliver balance only over a campaign or within a day of prescribed length, but less consistent than one that simply resets after every encounter.  It's not balanced only around the generic encounter or only at a specific day length - it'd be closer to the truth to say it aims for balance independent of either.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Ovinomancer said:


> I dont think it has, actually.  That 4e is encounter balanced is not something I've ever seen as a complaint.  On the other hand, people complaining about how our failed to do a good job of explaining the changes is.  On the gripping hand, most complaints about 4e revolve around HOW 4e did its encounter balancing.




You are not the only person in the world. I've heard lots of people complain about how 4E was balance and structured around encounters. I haven't heard to many people complain about how they explained it. I've heard people defend 4E by making that argument, but I've never encountered anyone being critical of the game, say their issue was how the game was communicated.


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## Bedrockgames

Ovinomancer said:


> Nope, your job to show that it is a good metric.  Dilation why popularity is a good metric for comparing the ability balance points of, say, 1e and 5e.  They have very different balance points, so popularity should be a good indicator of something, right?




I think if you are going to dismiss popularity as a consideration out of hand, it is on you to explain why.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Ovinomancer said:


> You clearly aren't picking up what's being put down if you think that's at all relevant for how there are different ways ability use in game is balanced by recharge mechanics and the repercussions of each.  Quadratic wizard; linear fighter may be a design ethic you prefer (and that's awesome), but it doesn't speak to how a game has different play incentives if it has spells recharge per encounter or per day.




I thought we were talking about balance not play incentives. But it isn't my fault if you are being unclear.


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## Bedrockgames

Ovinomancer said:


> Do you have trouble with responding to a post one time?




No, I just dislike communicating in long, multi quote posts.


----------



## Lanefan

As a complete aside: in our session this past weekend my character found herself in a bazaar in a strange city looking to purchase, among other things, a feather.

 [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] , I thought of you...


----------



## Ovinomancer

Bedrockgames said:


> No, I just dislike communicating in long, multi quote posts.




That's okay, I don't like responding to broken up posts.


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## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> From my point of view, the contrast is this: if the unit of balance is the encounter (scene), then it is possible to allow events to unfold as they do in accordance with the logic of play, complications, framing, etc, _without_ this having any implications for mechanical balance across PCs (which is a feature of a mechanically heavy system like D&D).



 Sure - but if you have a hard-reset between encounters, like the last ed of Gamma World did - then events might unfold a little oddly, too.  If your recent experiences & challenges make no impression on you, at all, that's likely to be at odds with some those (or other) elements, too, no?  



> If the unit of balance is the adventuring day which is understood to include multiple encounters (eg 6 to 8 in 5e), then the dynamic becomes different. The GM has to have sketched out a sequence of events in advance, or at least maintain the "threat" of such, in order to constrain the use of resources by players whose PCs are on a longer rather than shorter recharge cycle. As well as this implication for pacing and expectations around pacing/framing, there is also another consequence: players who withhold the use of resources out of concern for subsequent encounters which don't occur don't get to use those resources, which leaves those elements of the player archetype unrealised.



True, it's a constraining approach, but it does allow for some tension between urgency & preparation.

On one extreme, pacing is irrelevant to play as well as balance, at the other, pacing is dictated to the degree that you don't (or do, in the case of the classic 5MWD) want to wreck balance.  Ideally, depending on exactly what you're going for, you'd want the potential for tension in pacing, so pacing has a meaningful, but not overwheliming impact on difficulty, for instance, without the worry of significant imbalances among the PCs, as well.


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## Sepulchrave II

I’ve scanned this thread and the other – I admit, I don’t have the patience to read upwards of 4000 posts – but I’ve gotten a general sense of the arguments articulated.

I advocate for worldbuilding. I reject efforts to separate worldbuilding from “setting development” or “adventure preparation”; these are artificial divisions on a continuum of creativity. 

Worldbuilding is an art. Like any art, it can be crap. It can be predictable, derivative, onanistic garbage. Bad GMs can over-identify with their own creations to such an extent that it negatively impacts the experience of players at the table; that’s fine, but it doesn’t reflect on the value of worldbuilding itself which, as an art, I maintain is an intrinsic good.

Worldbuilding can hone the eye for verisimilitude. It demands that we investigate history, sociology, anthropology, religion, language, myth and culture in the quest for authenticity. The act of creation – or _sub_-creation, if one wants to adopt a particular Tolkienesque lens – is rewarding and exhilarating.

How can creative endeavor ever be _bad_?

Only the finished effort can be judged as _bad_ – and that is an aesthetic judgment.

What is worldbuilding *for* ?

What is art for?


----------



## Maxperson

Ovinomancer said:


> I'm assuming you mean abilities that have limited in encounter usages that would then recharge daily rather than by encounter.  You could, but then you'd be placing a strong incentive on daily encounter design to only have that many encounters a day, which would then pretty much be encounter balanced despite the daily recharge.




You wouldn't need to provide the same number of encounters in a given day.  All you need to do is occasionally have that many encounters.  Players won't nova it all away and risk a TPK if they know that sometimes a day will be encounter heavy.  They will self-limit during the days with fewer encounters.


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## Maxperson

Bedrockgames said:


> I am talking about how 1e and 2E balances classes over the campaign Magic Users started out weak, but had some truly powerful abilities later, when they reached higher levels. Classes even advanced at different rates. That is all about balance over the campaign.




5th level.  Once a wizard hit 5th level he was gold, especially if you were playing 2e and specialized.  7th and you were platinum.  Higher levels were not required for the power to come out.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Maxperson said:


> You wouldn't need to provide the same number of encounters in a given day.  All you need to do is occasionally have that many encounters.  Players won't nova it all away and risk a TPK if they know that sometimes a day will be encounter heavy.  They will self-limit during the days with fewer encounters.




That's DM overhead, though -- the DM now has to plan and push encounters onto the party to find a reason to prevent players from using their encounter powers during encounters based on the possibility that they need to reserve some for later.  I've already mentioned that as a workaround for day/encounter balance issues.  The problem I have with that is that it falls entirely on the DM's shoulders to make the encounter budget work.  For me, there's already a lot I have to work on as DM, anything that adds to that overhead (like balancing the game through encounter pace planning) isn't something I'm keen on.

Also, this concept doesn't work in sandbox play, where the players set their own pace.  In the threads on encounter pacing here, this is a common theme -- how do I allow the players their freedom to choose while making adventuring days balance against the different recovery mechanisms?

Regardless, we're talking about how to work around issues caused by ability recovery mechanics, which is much better than if classes are balanced in a given edition.  It's addressing a way to analyze games.  I think there's a lot of value in looking at how games govern character ability recovery, as this gives strong indications as to what kinds of play that game is well suited for.  D&D through 3rd used daily recovery almost exclusively, and the style of play best supported is the more traditional, strategically focused play.  This aligns.  4e shifted to a strong encounter based recovery mechanism (hp recharged per encounter with short rests, most abilities recharged per encounter, etc.) and that strongly affected play.  For the first (and only) time, an edition of D&D reasonably supported a much more narrativist gamestyle without heavy hacking.  5e has moved the needle back towards a blend, with both kinds of balance discussed so far in evidence.  This has led to some incoherence in daily encounter balancing, depending on party make-up, but there's a broad width of play mechanics being used with 5e, from more permissive, character driven story styles with framework worldbuilding rather than adventure planning, to traditional DM-led play.  It's interesting to look at just this narrow analysis of ability recharge and see how it impacts play.

Non-D&D games can use this as well.  One of the things I did in learning Blades was look at how abilities are used, the frequency available, and the recharge mechanics.  Blades uses a mix of recovery mechanics to create a focus of tension in the scene framework (or encounter) by how abilities are spent.  The most common recover mechanic is more of a spending mechanic -- you can use X ability Y times this score.  Equipment works this way.  But some mechanics randomize the costs, like how denying an outcome works as at variable cost in stress (too much stress and you're out of the score).  Wounds are interesting as well, because their earned negative conditionals rather than taken away from a resource pool, and removing them takes expending other limited resources (downtime actions) with variable results.  All of these interlocked and variable recovery mechanics (and expenditure mechanics) function to make Blades a very fluid game where you cannot count on an outcome.  This means that it's very much in the player interest to maximize the immediate action results, because failure will limit next actions, sometimes gravely.  So play is in the moment with long term strategic consequences emerging from play rather than the focus of it.

Looking at how players can spend and recover PC abilities is a good way to get a handle on the type of play a ruleset enables.  Fighting against that ruleset due to a misunderstanding of the incentivized play will lead to bad outcomes.  4e suffered from this as traditional play was tried with a ruleset that didn't work as well with that objective.  5e doesn't do Story Now well at all, as so many abilities for many classes are daily balanced requiring strategic expediture and so fight against the focus on the now of that playstyle.  Blades would be absolute pants at trying to do a dungeon crawl.  Looking at games in this way is useful, and doesn't say that a game is bad -- games cannot be everything to everyone, so choices limiting some playstyles and play objectives are to be expected and welcomed, not dismissed.  There's a lot of dismissal going on, and defensive thinking.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> From my point of view, the contrast is this: if the unit of balance is the encounter (scene), then it is possible to allow events to unfold as they do in accordance with the logic of play, complications, framing, etc, _without_ this having any implications for mechanical balance across PCs (which is a feature of a mechanically heavy system like D&D).



This isn't sufficient for your conclusion.  There are games that use encounter framing that have huge disparities in character mechanical balance (Buffy, frex, where one character is vastly superior in many ways to others, such that some encounters can be trivialized by their mere presence in the scene).  Encounter balanced games doesn't have to have character balance at all.  4e does.  Most Story Now games do, but that's mostly because it's a design goal of the game in addition to encounter based ability balance.

If the unit of balance is the adventuring day which is understood to include multiple encounters (eg 6 to 8 in 5e), then the dynamic becomes different. The GM has to have sketched out a sequence of events in advance, or at least maintain the "threat" of such, in order to constrain the use of resources by players whose PCs are on a longer rather than shorter recharge cycle. As well as this implication for pacing and expectations around pacing/framing, there is also another consequence: players who withhold the use of resources out of concern for subsequent encounters which don't occur don't get to use those resources, which leaves those elements of the player archetype unrealised.[/QUOTE]

Again, you're analyzing using the same play objective for both styles.  A play objective to get through the session maximizing the strategic use of your abilities isn't well served by encounter balanced play, but it is by daily balanced play.  Matching play objectives with game mechanics is important. That a given play objective, no matter how much it's important to you, isn't well served by a ruleset isn't automatically indicative of a failing of that ruleset.  Only if the ruleset fails to deliver it's promised play objectives is it a failure.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Maxperson said:


> 5th level.  Once a wizard hit 5th level he was gold, .



 Well sure, he was Gandalf at that point.

(No, I never do get tired of that one, it seems - and it was actually a bit before my time...)


----------



## Tony Vargas

Ovinomancer said:


> .  I think there's a lot of value in looking at how games govern character ability recovery, as this gives strong indications as to what kinds of play that game is well suited for.



 Games can be  like the proverbial stopped clock that's right twice per day, sure.  Instead of trying to fix one, you can make best use of it.  



> D&D through 3rd used daily recovery almost exclusively, and the style of play best supported is the more traditional, strategically focused play.



 To be fair, 3e made some very significant changes that deviated from the DM-dominated/mediated dynamic in which the classic game was most nearly functional.  A major one was shifting magic items from arbitrary DM mcguffins to systematic player build resources - heck the 3.x functional mode of play pretty much was the build mera-game, so much had the emphasis shifted from DM to player - one particularly notorious example being wands, the make/buy pricing of which radically changed some dynamics, such as...



> 4e shifted to a strong encounter based recovery mechanism (hp recharged per encounter with short rests,



 ... between-combat healing:  you could drain a wand and heal 275 hps in, coincidentally, 5 min.  And, as you leveled, the cost of one became increasingly trivial, so hps became a de-facto encounter resource in 3e.  4e pulled /back/ from that, by basing most healing (even potions) on a daily resource, surges, managed by the recipient, and virtually all non-surge healing on other daily resources, like utility powers. 


> 4e shifted to a strong encounter based recovery mechanism...
> most abilities recharged per encounter, etc.)



 4e also added in-combat second wind, also using daily surges, action points that re-carged on milestones, at-will powers, and yeah, encounter powers.  A first level character had one of them, to go with his two at-wills and one daily.  Not exactly 'most' of his abilities.

But a much greater proportion of encounters to dailies than 3.5's amped up daily spell progression to it's more or less non-existent encounter ones.  D&D having always been an extreme case of daily-resource-management emphasis.



> 5e has moved the needle back towards a blend, with both kinds of balance discussed so far in evidence.  This has led to some incoherence in daily encounter balancing, depending on party make-up,



 5e did not go all the way back to that extreme, but it did greatly increase daily spell resources, and give fewer classes encounter resources, at all.  I don't think that's exactly incoherent, even by Force definitions, it's just innately imbalancing outside of the theoretical pacing target.  That's limiting in a lot of ways, but, along with the many other DM -Empowerment measures the edition takes, does bring back the DM-led play dynamics of the classic game...

That can mean a traditional dungeon-crawl, but we were able to do more than just that with those same dynamics back in the day.



> Blades would be absolute pants at trying to do a dungeon crawl.



 By the same token, D&D doesn't have a lock on the dungeon, even some story-now indy game could go into one, if that's where the players took it.  It just wouldn't /have/ to be the same kind of exercise in paranoia ...



> Looking at games in this way is useful, and doesn't say that a game is bad -- games cannot be everything to everyone, so choices limiting some playstyles and play objectives are to be expected and welcomed, not dismissed.  There's a lot of dismissal going on, and defensive thinking.



 I suppose you can conveniently dismiss this opinion as purist-for-system, but what you can do with a system expands the better-balanced it is, because more of what it presents remains meaningful & viable.  It's true that, like the stopped clock an imbalanced game can do a few specific things relatively well, in that doing anything else turns non-viable.  You don't/need/ that to support a style, though.


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> Ideally, depending on exactly what you're going for, you'd want the potential for tension in pacing, so pacing has a meaningful, but not overwheliming impact on difficulty, for instance, without the worry of significant imbalances among the PCs, as well.



I'm not sure who you are positing this as an ideal for - a designer? a game publisher? an individual table, or GM?

In 4e, without changing the resting rules, the passage of ingame time does have a "meaningful but not overwhelming impact on difficulty" - because of daily powers and healing surge replenishment. But the GM also has the capacity to shape challenge by using the encounter-building rules.

In Cortex+ Heroic, pacing is entirely in terms of "Action Scenes" (recovery is generally harder), "Transition Scenes" (recovery is generally easier) and "Acts" (the Doom Pool resets). But these don't correlate to ingame time periods. There is also the Doom Pool, which generates a similar "threat" dynamic to hp attrition in classic D&D, but isn't directly connected to _pacing_ at all.

In HeroQuest revised, there are only scenes/encounters, and difficulty is a function of the PCs' run of successes. (The more they succeed, the higher the difficulty, with failures producing resets of the difficulty level.) So all pacing, "encounter building", escalation, etc is built into a single mechanic.

I'm not sure any of these is _the_ ideal, nor any sort of departure from it. I see them as various approaches. 



Tony Vargas said:


> if you have a hard-reset between encounters, like the last ed of Gamma World did - then events might unfold a little oddly, too.  If your recent experiences & challenges make no impression on you, at all, that's likely to be at odds with some those (or other) elements, too, no?



I think the issue of lingering consequences is different from the issue of _class mechanical balance on a per-encounter (short rest) or per-day (extended rest) basis_. For instance, Cortex+ Heroic and HeroQuest revised both have lingering consequences although they have no "per day" mechanic at all.

And in a 4e-like framework one could fairly easily make hit point recovery strictly per-encounter (of course that would require revisiting other aspects of class balance, given HS is currently part of that) without getting rid of lingering consequences (eg via conditions, curses, diseases, etc). I don't know the 4e-version of Gamma World very well, so I don't know whether it had any sort of lingering consequence mechanic.



Ovinomancer said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From my point of view, the contrast is this: if the unit of balance is the encounter (scene), then it is possible to allow events to unfold as they do in accordance with the logic of play, complications, framing, etc, without this having any implications for mechanical balance across PCs (which is a feature of a mechanically heavy system like D&D).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This isn't sufficient for your conclusion.  There are games that use encounter framing that have huge disparities in character mechanical balance (Buffy, frex, where one character is vastly superior in many ways to others, such that some encounters can be trivialized by their mere presence in the scene).  Encounter balanced games doesn't have to have character balance at all.  4e does.  Most Story Now games do, but that's mostly because it's a design goal of the game in addition to encounter based ability balance.
Click to expand...


I am not saying that "per encounter" balance is a sufficient condition of mechanical balance between classes. (How could it be?)

I'm saying that "per-encounter" balance is a necessary condition of a game allowing events to unfold in the way I describe, while also achieving mechanical balance across classes. Whereas "per day" balance is at odds with this, because in order to achieve that sort of balance across classes it requires the GM to treat the "future" of play as in some sense fixed or foretold (so as to generate the pressure and consequences that in turn will yield the balance).



Ovinomancer said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If the unit of balance is the adventuring day which is understood to include multiple encounters (eg 6 to 8 in 5e), then the dynamic becomes different. The GM has to have sketched out a sequence of events in advance, or at least maintain the "threat" of such, in order to constrain the use of resources by players whose PCs are on a longer rather than shorter recharge cycle. As well as this implication for pacing and expectations around pacing/framing, there is also another consequence: players who withhold the use of resources out of concern for subsequent encounters which don't occur don't get to use those resources, which leaves those elements of the player archetype unrealised.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Again, you're analyzing using the same play objective for both styles.  A play objective to get through the session maximizing the strategic use of your abilities isn't well served by encounter balanced play, but it is by daily balanced play.  Matching play objectives with game mechanics is important. That a given play objective, no matter how much it's important to you, isn't well served by a ruleset isn't automatically indicative of a failing of that ruleset.  Only if the ruleset fails to deliver it's promised play objectives is it a failure.
Click to expand...


Where did the word "failing", or any synonym, appear in the post of mine that you quoted? I identified a contrast that is, from my point of view, salient. Since when did identifying a salient contrast - which is not utterly at odds with a contrast you have been drawing for the past page or two - become a (purported) identification of a failing in a ruleset?


----------



## Lanefan

pemerton said:


> I think the issue of lingering consequences is different from the issue of _class mechanical balance on a per-encounter (short rest) or per-day (extended rest) basis_. For instance, Cortex+ Heroic and HeroQuest revised both have lingering consequences although they have no "per day" mechanic at all.



I kind of agree with this - as lingering effects should in theory work pretty much the same for all characters their impact on overall class balance should be about zero.

They will, however, greatly impact character balance within an encounter if one or more PCs carry lingering effects into said encounter and are thus weakened somehow.  This is not a bad thing.



> I am not saying that "per encounter" balance is a sufficient condition of mechanical balance between classes. (How could it be?)
> 
> I'm saying that "per-encounter" balance is a necessary condition of a game allowing events to unfold in the way I describe, while also achieving mechanical balance across classes. Whereas "per day" balance is at odds with this, because in order to achieve that sort of balance across classes it requires the GM to treat the "future" of play as in some sense fixed or foretold (so as to generate the pressure and consequences that in turn will yield the balance).



Yet another difference in our philosophies, I guess; as I've no problem whatsoever with rather severe class imbalance in an encounter.

Sometimes an encounter's setup favours the casters and blasters (1).  Other times it best suits the front-line tanks (2).  Other times, the stealthies and sneakies (3).  Yet other times, the talkers and thinkers (4).  And in each of these cases those who the particular encounter doesn't suit can either try to find ways to contribute as best they can or just leave it to the trained professionals.

Examples:
(1) An enemy physically separated from the PCs yet able to affect them e.g. a squad of arbalestiers across a canyon taking target practice on the PCs.  Casters and shooters, open fire.
(2) A close-quarters battle in a narrow passage with poor visibility and no room to cross through or skirt around the fighting.  Front-line tanks, this is all yours.
(3) You need to cross a cavern, but it's full of giants who are 99% likely to smear the PCs across the walls in any sort of fight.  Sneakies and stealthies, find us a way around this please.
(4) The dragon whose lair you've just crept into wakes up, but in a good mood as she's well-fed and happy.  Diplomatic types, use your brains and silver tongues to get us out of this one.

It's on the DM to at least vaguely try to ensure each type of encounter comes up more or less regularly, along of course with other more-conventional encounters where everyone can weigh in.

Lanefan


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## pemerton

[MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], my concern about class balance of mechanical effectiveness isn't so much about the sort of idiosyncratic tactical scenarios you describe, but systemic effects. Eg if one PC has a whole suite of spells that s/he can bring to bear on the situation, while the other PC has only his/her wits, then (everything else being equal) the first PC seems to have a mechanical advantage.

The typical solution to this in D&D (and the prescribed solution in 5e) is to set things up so that the second PC has to string those spells out over X encounters. Which is the whole "fixing of the future" thing I mentioned in my post.

(I would add: this issue is not unique to D&D. Eg it comes up in Rolemaster too.)


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## Bedrockgames

Maxperson said:


> 5th level.  Once a wizard hit 5th level he was gold, especially if you were playing 2e and specialized.  7th and you were platinum.  Higher levels were not required for the power to come out.




They get 1 third level spell at 5th. I think they are much more survivable at that level, but they still have to mind what they cast. But at 9th level you get stuff like teleport. Their powers keep increasing considerably. Sure they get good at 5th level. It is still quite nice being a fighter or thief at 5th too. 

People can quibble over the details all day. My experience at the table is wizards are pretty pitiful at the start and increase overtime. When you get to the higher levels they have truly powerful magic (not just good combat magic but strange, reality altering magic). Personally I like the way 1E and 2E balanced the classes. But that wasn't the point of my post. My point was simply that things are balanced more in terms of experience over a campaign. For instance, sometimes I'd choose a thief just because I wanted to advance faster.


----------



## Aldarc

For my own sake following here, how does this current discussion on encounter design/balance connect with the overarching discussion of what worldbuilding is for? 

And though some of you are indeed doing this, it may also be helpful to look more broadly at how other game systems (other than iterations of D&D) have designed their encounter/day assumptions for characters.


----------



## Sadras

Aldarc said:


> For my own sake following here, how does this current discussion on encounter design/balance connect with the overarching discussion of what worldbuilding is for?




Why oh why, would you want them to return to that topic!??

EDIT: Besides [MENTION=4303]Sepulchrave II[/MENTION] pretty much nailed it.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Bedrockgames said:


> They get 1 third level spell at 5th. I think they are much more survivable at that level, but they still have to mind what they cast. But at 9th level you get stuff like teleport. Their powers keep increasing considerably. Sure they get good at 5th level. It is still quite nice being a fighter or thief at 5th too.



 By 5th, even in AD&D you were almost uniquivocally in the sweet spot, in which most characters were able to contribute and have some fun.  IMHO, it started at 3rd (2nd level spells were a landmark for both clerics - no Cure...Wounds at 2nd, you can actually use your own spells for your own purposes! XOMG! - and magic-users - you got quite meaningful combat spells like Web, and quite meaningful utility spells like Invisibility, and systematically exploitable ones like Continual Light), and, yeah, might end by 7th or 9th or 12th, depending on how you feel about the various break-points various classes hit...



> .... My point was simply that things are balanced more in terms of experience over a campaign. For instance, sometimes I'd choose a thief just because I wanted to advance faster.



 ... outside the sweet spot, that idea is, the classes that languish on one side do well on the other, yes.  In AD&D, fighters & non-/demi-humans do particularly well on the low-level side of the sweet spot, magic-user and humans shine brighter on the other side.  It theoretically balanced out if you were playing the whole campaign in each moment (picking a race & class taking into account what the character might be like past name level, for instance), and if the DM delivered on those expectations (as opposed to, oh, hey, the 2e DMG just came out, and that elf wizard that was going to be limited to 11th can now make it to 18th!).  Similarly, 5e is balanced over a 'day' (or two, if we worry about HD), of 6-8 encounters & 2-3 short rests - if you play the whole day in each moment of that day, and if the DM delivers that kind of day and that perfect mix of challenges consistently enough.

OTOH, I'm not so sure the Thief ever did much shining at any level - except when he tried to Hide in Shadows, of course.  ;P



pemerton said:


> I'm not sure who you are positing this as an ideal for - a designer? a game publisher? an individual table, or GM?



 Yes.



> I don't know the 4e-version of Gamma World very well, so I don't know whether it had any sort of lingering consequence mechanic



 It was, like, the 7th ed of GW, but, no, not much in the lingering-consequences department.  If you used ammo in an encounter or your omega tech burned out you didn't have it until you found some more. That was about it.  Alpha Mutations were encounter powers that randomly changed on you.  Hps re-set between encounters (no surges or anything required).  Powers from your Origins were either at-will or encounter.



> I think the issue of lingering consequences is different from the issue of _class mechanical balance on a per-encounter (short rest) or per-day (extended rest) basis_.



 They're similar in kind, in that they both aim to limit balance to only a sub-set of the potential range of play.  Balanced at X amount challenge in Y unit of time is simply _imbalanced everywhere else_.   The whole idea your or ovinomancer or whoever posited of a 'unit of balance' is a little off that way, I think.


----------



## Jeremy E Grenemyer

Aldarc said:


> This sounds nice and all, but sadly correlation does not equal causation.



 Ramming my head into a brick wall would have provided more value than reading the first sentence of your reply, Aldarc.

It's wise, I've found, to be mindful of the fact that people you're interacting with have their own gaming experiences--some of us going back 30 years or more--so when people say something to the effect of, "If the DM is having fun worldbuilding, it shows in the level of fun the players have at the gaming table," there may just be some truth to it. 

And that truth, however anecdotal it may be, isn't some sort of attempt to establish an all-encompassing gaming truth to which everyone else must agree. 

Turning every conversation into a binary, win/lose conversation is stupid. 



Aldarc said:


> Even then, I don't think that a GM's "fun" in worldbuilding necessarily correlates to the resultant fun for the players.



OK, why? I mean, there's no value to your statement if you don't include some kind of explanation of why you feel the way you do. 

But since I'm in a charitable mood, I'll do your work for you.

So, why doesn't worldbuilding correlate to fun for the players? Let's see...

Sometimes DMs get it wrong at the gaming table. E.g., what seemed like a good idea during the design phase turns out to be the opposite during play. 

Sometimes DMs fail on the execution side. E.g., good idea, but a failure at the gaming to run the adventure as planned. 

Sometimes players don't like the world the DM has built (whether she's using a published campaign world or one of her own devising), no matter the DM's level of enthusiasm and good intentions. 

Sometimes players are snots that ruin an otherwise fantastic campaign for the other players and the DM. 

And none of this changes the fact that, generally speaking, a DM that's having fun world building is going to provide a fun and enjoyable experience at the gaming table.


----------



## Lanefan

Jeremy E Grenemyer said:


> So, why doesn't worldbuilding correlate to fun for the players? Let's see...
> 
> Sometimes DMs get it wrong at the gaming table. E.g., what seemed like a good idea during the design phase turns out to be the opposite during play.



This is the one that trips me up every time and reduces my fun as DM running the game, never mind the players! 

One of these years I'll design a campaign world that six months or a year into the campaign doesn't leave me facepalming and asking myself "what in the name of sweet Cheetoes was I thinking?"....



> Sometimes players don't like the world the DM has built (whether she's using a published campaign world or one of her own devising), no matter the DM's level of enthusiasm and good intentions.



This one can come up if there's significant player turnover during the campaign's life - you design with the starting players in mind but by year 4 three of five of those are gone and you've picked up replacements, one of whom has already himself left and been replaced...  Yeah, been there, still doing that. 



> And none of this changes the fact that, generally speaking, a DM that's having fun world building is going to provide a fun and enjoyable experience at the gaming table.



"Going to"?  Not necessarily.

"Is more likely to"?  Absolutely.

Lanefan


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## Tony Vargas

Jeremy E Grenemyer said:


> And none of this changes the fact that, generally speaking, a DM that's having fun world building is going to provide a fun and enjoyable experience at the gaming table.



All too often a DM who gets a little too into building his world will provide an experience that is, at best, boring (sorry, the world's just not as interesting to anyone esle), and at worst consists of dragging you through his world to meet his NPCs & tour their locations, and /not be allowed to do anything that might disrupt their cystaline perfection/.  

I enjoy worldbuilding, for it's own sake, even, but I've seen it go horribly wrong, too....


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## Bedrockgames

Tony Vargas said:


> All too often a DM who gets a little too into building his world will provide an experience that is, at best, boring (sorry, the world's just not as interesting to anyone esle), and at worst consists of dragging you through his world to meet his NPCs & tour their locations, and /not be allowed to do anything that might disrupt their cystaline perfection/.
> 
> I enjoy worldbuilding, for it's own sake, even, but I've seen it go horribly wrong, too....




Anything can be taken too far and handled in a bad way. I just don't know that I understand what people are cautioning in this thread. Obviously if you are boring your players, you are doing something wrong. But just because some GMs have used world building in a way that is boring, that doesn't mean we should avoid world building. A lot of the worst gaming advice, and even game design, I've encountered is built around the worst edge cases in the hobby. On the whole, I get more fun when the GM engages in good world building than when the GM goes too light on world building. If it just amounts to "look at the interesting tavern I made", sure that is dull. But I don't usually see GMs world build to literally give people a tour. There are usually hooks, drama, conflict and adventure that result from the world building details.


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## Aldarc

Jeremy E Grenemyer said:


> Ramming my head into a brick wall would have provided more value than reading the first sentence of your reply, Aldarc.



If you are just going to unnecessarily insult me, Jeremy, and condescend to me about your 30+ years of gaming experiences, then it's clear that you only plan on offering the east wind for wisdom. I don't know who lobbed that cornfield up your rear, but you should have dislodged them before you decided to post your reply. But there are many other ways you could have gone about your reply before choosing to be a dick about it.


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## Sadras

Aldarc said:


> I don't know who lobbed that cornfield up your rear...(snip)




Too funny. 

Back on topic -  I tend to think worldbuilding is not the issue, if your DM is boring they are boring period. Worldbuilding has nothing to do with it.


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## Fitz Mac

Aenghus you still playing D&D in Cork ?


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## Fitz Mac

[MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION] you still playing D&D in Cork ?


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## Jeremy E Grenemyer

Tony Vargas said:


> All too often a DM who gets a little too into building his world will provide an experience that is, at best, boring (sorry, the world's just not as interesting to anyone esle), and at worst consists of dragging you through his world to meet his NPCs & tour their locations, and /not be allowed to do anything that might disrupt their cystaline perfection/.



"Crystaline perfection" is the perfect phrase for DMs that take it too far. 

This is something I've heard of, but never experienced at the gaming table. I would not want to wish it on any player. 

The closest I've come is a DM that was running a successful AD&D Realms campaign set in Undermountain. He'd just begun reading the Wheel of Time books and became hooked on the idea of the party traveling through a portal in Undermountain to the Savage North, but one that reflected the WoT series. 

He was cool about it; warned us up front of his intentions and everything. We said yes and off we went. 

That part of the campaign wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible either. Our DM tried mightily to turn us on to what he thought was cool about WoT, but to no avail.

Eventually our DM realized things were not going well, apologized and said our characters could keep their gained levels and magic items and we'd return to Undermountain with all that occurred handwaved away. 

I've also heard of Forgotten Realms DMs that are so enraptured with the idea of having their campaigns follow Realms canon that they spend way more time obsessing over how to justify the party's minor changes to the Realms timeline than they do stocking dungeons and planning encounters; instead of being a resource, the great grand weight of thousands of pages of Realmslore become an impediment to the DM. 

These are two lessons I take into account when I run my Realms D&D campaigns.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> I am not saying that "per encounter" balance is a sufficient condition of mechanical balance between classes. (How could it be?)
> 
> I'm saying that "per-encounter" balance is a necessary condition of a game allowing events to unfold in the way I describe, while also achieving mechanical balance across classes. Whereas "per day" balance is at odds with this, because in order to achieve that sort of balance across classes it requires the GM to treat the "future" of play as in some sense fixed or foretold (so as to generate the pressure and consequences that in turn will yield the balance).



And I was saying it's not.  A party of all wizards in 1e, for instance, uses daily recharge mechanics for all characters and is also balanced among characters.  5e does a pretty good job of class balance while using multiple ability recharge balance points.  It also has warts, but it's not a necessary condition that a game be encounter balance to have class balance.

Instead, your point seems to be 'to have encounter focused play your need to have encounter balanced abilities' which is pretty trivial on it's face -- you're almost stating a tautology.  Of course encounter balanced abilities lend themselves to encounter focused play.  The bit about class balance, on the other hand, seems tacked on and non sequitur.  



> Where did the word "failing", or any synonym, appear in the post of mine that you quoted? I identified a contrast that is, from my point of view, salient. Since when did identifying a salient contrast - which is not utterly at odds with a contrast you have been drawing for the past page or two - become a (purported) identification of a failing in a ruleset?



"Unrealized."  Unless you've invented a new definition for that word, of course, it means 'not achieved.'  IE, "failed" to achieve.  

However, I'm willing to concede I may be very wrong, as it occurs to me that I assumed you meant "character" archetype but you actually said "player" archetype.  It occurs to me that I'm not sure what player archetypes you're talking about (and, surely you're talking about players because you don't confuse the two terms) nor exactly how game mechanics would prevent a player from realizing his archetype.  Could you elaborate on this?

Semantic arguments can be quite surprisingly reversed, don't you find?  I assume that's why you're perfectly willing at accept other's definitions and phrasing of things and try so hard to avoid semantic arguments yourself.  I find your wisdom enlightening.


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## Tony Vargas

Bedrockgames said:


> Anything can be taken too far and handled in a bad way. I just don't know that I understand what people are cautioning in this thread. ... But I don't usually see GMs world build to literally give people a tour. There are usually hooks, drama, conflict and adventure that result from the world building details.



  Oh, I don't generally see the extreme that I label 'setting tourism,' either - but it can be so awful when you do encounter it (or worse, have that horrible moment when you realize you're doing it), that it's quite memorable.  

A thread this long can't easily have retained it's original point, but, I think it was part "you don't /need/ worldbuilding, try Story Now!" and part "ooh, a hornetss nest, think I'll poke it - again!" and, of course, the always hopeless "there're RPGs other than D&D y'know, here on the 'general' rpg board we sometimes talk about 'em... no, really..."


----------



## Ovinomancer

Aldarc said:


> For my own sake following here, how does this current discussion on encounter design/balance connect with the overarching discussion of what worldbuilding is for?
> 
> And though some of you are indeed doing this, it may also be helpful to look more broadly at how other game systems (other than iterations of D&D) have designed their encounter/day assumptions for characters.




Well, for me, it does follow.  Games that use many daily abilities encourage a more strategic form of play, and strategic play requires the ability to gain knowledge about future events so you can plan. This can also be served by knowledge of past events that can be used to predict future possibilities. That kind of knowledge is poorly served in games that use narrativist techniques, as the "now" is the focus, not the "later".  This means that games with more daily ability uses will tend to favor more worldbuilding as a feature rather than a bug.  Games more encounter based have much less need of worldbuilding because of the 'now' focus of play and lend themselves to narrativist techniques.

To me, analysis of action balance points does display some things about worldbuilding.

I'm going to pimp on Blades again to discuss a subset of this:  worldbuilding as a game mechanic.  In Blades, the mechanical order of play reinforces the worldbuilding - a dark, magical, corrupt city that will push you around and down.  It does this using the downtime cycle which first starts with a check to see what this dark world does to your gang.  I love this mechanic, as it pushes the game's theme and tropes through an unavoidable game mechanic.  It mechanically uses the worldbuilding of the setting to great effect in generating new conflicts.  But, it does this without engaging any player ability/resource mechanics -- its outside of that analysis.  

I bring this up to say that ability mechanics, while an interesting discussion point and a useful tool in evaluating game rules and their most applicable playstyles, is not the sum or best method of game analysis -- there are aspects that don't fit that paradigm.  So, while ability mechanics are useful, it's important to not become wedded to an analysis that depends solely upon them.  And this goes for GNS/forge theory -- it does not address the sum of game design, but instead a facet (a large facet, but a facet).  Using it uncritically leads to unwarranted overconfidence in your assessments.


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## Tony Vargas

Ovinomancer said:


> Games that use many daily abilities encourage a more strategic form of play, and strategic play requires the ability to gain knowledge about future events so you can plan. This can also be served by knowledge of past events that can be used to predict future possibilities. That kind of knowledge is poorly served in games that use narrativist techniques, as the "now" is the focus, not the "later".  This means that games with more daily ability uses will tend to favor more worldbuilding as a feature rather than a bug.  Games more encounter based have much less need of worldbuilding because of the 'now' focus of play and lend themselves to narrativist techniques.



I'm not seeing the strong coupling between daily-resource management games and 'strategic' play vs encounter-focus and 'narrative' play.  A game could use a longer-term player resource to license narrative changes, for instance, you have a limited number of plot-points to make, and you can use them strategically to develop the story.  A game with no regenerating resource (static or consumable, for instance) could still involve strategies to make best use of them. 

I mean, I do see /a/ correlation, having started with D&D and gone for the depth of Vancian casting, I certainly see it in that context, there was a strategy aspect to managing a caster back in the day, beyond just managing daily 'slots,' for that matter.  It's less pronounced in 5e, where casting has far fewer limitations, less strategic, more 'gonzo' I suppose.  ::shrug::

Or FATE, a poster boy for narrativism, no?   FATE progresses in scenes, but you have resources and complications that are persistent and need to be managed over the course of multiple scenes.  

IDK... the distinction, while a real difference in mechanical design, seems almost a red herring to balance or world-building or putative 'styles' or whatever.  I don't think 'unit of balance' sums it up, at all.  'Balance target' might do it better.  Games should try to be balanced, it's a desireable quality - but imbalance can be used to narrow the functional range of play intentionally as well as unintentionally.  

Pem made the point that a game which 'needed' so many encounters per day or whatever restricted the GM's options in running the campaign, and that's true.  I don't think it's often the point, but the same can be said of player options, and that can be part of the point, to put a lot of options on the table, but with the intent players learn to gravitate towards the most functional ones, which just happen to be the ones that support the game's intended theme/feel/genre/whatever...



Ovinomancer said:


> And I was saying it's not.  A party of all wizards in 1e, for instance, uses daily recharge mechanics for all characters and is also balanced among characters.  5e does a pretty good job of class balance while using multiple ability recharge balance points.  It also has warts, but it's not a necessary condition that a game be encounter balance to have class balance.



 Whether you balance an RPG just around The Encounter, or just around an assumed day length, or just around acquiring imaginary wealth, or whatever, you're choosing to balance only a fraction of the ways it might reasonably be played.  A game aimed to balance at 6-8 encounters/day is imbalanced at 1-3, if it also needs 2-3 short rests, it can be imbalanced at 7, too if there were 6 short rests or only 1.   A game balanced over a 'whole campaign' (as classic D&D arguably was meant to be) is imbalanced at every session in that campaign, but when you look back at having completed the whole campaign with all the same players & characters, maybe you see "oh yeah, it kinda all evened out, didn't it?"  
Or not.

I think that's part of the point.  Balance to a restrictive formula of workable play isn't really balance, it's just tip-toeing past imbalance.  

For instance, a game in which everyone's resource re-charge anew for each encounter (Like 7th ed Gamma World) might be balanced within the structure of an encounter, but it's either ignoring things that happen outside the encounter, or risking not being balanced in other contexts (like 'exploration,' traditionally a big part of GW, actually).

Either way, there's a lot of potential play that can't be realized without coping with balance issues in some other way.



> "Unrealized."  Unless you've invented a new definition for that word, of course, it means 'not achieved.'  IE, "failed" to achieve.



 Or 'unrealized' can refer to potential not yet developed.


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I think the issue of lingering consequences is different from the issue of class mechanical balance on a per-encounter (short rest) or per-day (extended rest) basis.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> They're similar in kind, in that they both aim to limit balance to only a sub-set of the potential range of play.  Balanced at X amount challenge in Y unit of time is simply _imbalanced everywhere else_.
Click to expand...


I don't follow what you're saying here. Lingering consequences don't, on their face, seem like they are aimed at limiting balance.



Tony Vargas said:


> FATE progresses in scenes, but you have resources and complications that are persistent and need to be managed over the course of multiple scenes.



Again, I don't see how these points about persistent resources/complications bear on a discussion about the way recovery schemes factor into cross-class balance.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> And I was saying it's not.  A party of all wizards in 1e, for instance, uses daily recharge mechanics for all characters and is also balanced among characters.



I don't see that an all-wizard party actually raises any issue of balance among classes!



Ovinomancer said:


> your point seems to be 'to have encounter focused play your need to have encounter balanced abilities' which is pretty trivial on it's face



That's not what I said, and it's not true. You can push a non-encounter based system into encounter-focused play if you want (I've done it with RM), but you have to be prepared to handle (among other things) resultant issues of class imbalance. 



Ovinomancer said:


> "Unrealized."  Unless you've invented a new definition for that word, of course, it means 'not achieved.'  IE, "failed" to achieve.



This is a different point in my post, and one on which I would expect a wide range of opinions.

Some people think the game is working well when a player has many resources (eg spells) unspent because s/he was saving them in the event of further challenges presented by the GM prior to a recovery period. I don't like this, as the player doesn't realise the archetype s/he set out to play. It's another reason I don't like the "adventuring day" approach to balance, which is independent of issues about the future being "fixed".

As far as I know, no one else on these boards - in all the threads I've read about managing encounter pacing and the "adventuring day" - has ever posted a similar concern, so I assume my preferences in this respect are strongly minority ones.


----------



## Maxperson

Tony Vargas said:


> OTOH, I'm not so sure the Thief ever did much shining at any level - except when he tried to Hide in Shadows, of course.  ;P




LOL  Speaking of thieves shining in the shadows.  I was once playing a human thief who walked ahead into a room full of pillars inside of the dungeon we were in.  I heard something coming my way and declared that I was hiding in the dark behind one of the pillars.  I rolled to hide and the DM was like, "You're still carrying an open bullseye lantern, right?"  Oops!  They still kid me about that.


----------



## Maxperson

Tony Vargas said:


> and at worst consists of dragging you through his world to meet his NPCs & tour their locations, and /not be allowed to do anything that might disrupt their cystaline perfection/.




This part is not a worldbuilding issue.  It's a DM issue.  I've seen setting light DMs also drag out DMNPCs to ruin the day for everyone else.  I've seen setting light DMs railroad players when they come up with ideas counter to what the DM expected to happen.  A DM getting into worldbuilding doesn't make that more or less likely to happen.  It's entirely dependent on the personality of the DM in question.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> ... when a player has many resources (eg spells) unspent because s/he was saving them in the event of further challenges presented by the GM prior to a recovery period. I don't like this, as the player doesn't realise the archetype s/he set out to play.
> ... I assume my preferences in this respect are strongly minority ones.



 Have you ever heard the "sounds like a first-world problem" joke?

Sounds like a Tier 1 problem.

Seriously, though, it sounds like a common complaint from a less common angle.  You're more likely to hear that the game/adventure/DM was 'too easy,' for instance.




> It's another reason I don't like the "adventuring day" approach to balance, which is independent of issues about the future being "fixed".



  Oh, the future probably needs to be fixed - all that advanced tech is totally OP and the future is expected to have overpopulation problems, too.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> I don't follow what you're saying here. Lingering consequences don't, on their face, seem like they are aimed at limiting balance.



 I miss-read you.  I was commenting on a similarity between daily & encounter 'balance'


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> I don't see that an all-wizard party actually raises any issue of balance among classes!



Selective quoting for the win!  Did you have any comment on the larger point that small bit was contained within?



> That's not what I said, and it's not true. You can push a non-encounter based system into encounter-focused play if you want (I've done it with RM), but you have to be prepared to handle (among other things) resultant issues of class imbalance.



How does that class imbalance arise, exactly?  You're asserting without evidence.



> This is a different point in my post, and one on which I would expect a wide range of opinions.



It was, in fact, exactly what I quoted just prior to the response that you went on the attack over my use of the word 'failure.'  How you could think I was discussing some other part of your remarkably short post, especially when you fixed the formatting error in my post when you quoted it, I'm very uncertain about.

Also, did you mean player archetype or character archetype? 



> Some people think the game is working well when a player has many resources (eg spells) unspent because s/he was saving them in the event of further challenges presented by the GM prior to a recovery period. I don't like this, as the player doesn't realise the archetype s/he set out to play. It's another reason I don't like the "adventuring day" approach to balance, which is independent of issues about the future being "fixed".



You have very special players if they have many spells available to them.  

How does the player not realize their archetype?  What are player archetypes?  I'm very confused. 



> As far as I know, no one else on these boards - in all the threads I've read about managing encounter pacing and the "adventuring day" - has ever posted a similar concern, so I assume my preferences in this respect are strongly minority ones.



Well, sure.  I don't think any of the rest of us play with people that have spells.  I'd hazard you're unique in that regard.


----------



## Maxperson

pemerton said:


> Some people think the game is working well when a player has many resources (eg spells) unspent because s/he was saving them in the event of further challenges presented by the GM prior to a recovery period. I don't like this, as the player doesn't realise the archetype s/he set out to play. It's another reason I don't like the "adventuring day" approach to balance, which is independent of issues about the future being "fixed".



This doesn't make sense to me.  How does not casting all of a wizard's spells just in case he needs them later cause a failure to realize the archetype the player set out to play?  If I were playing the cautious wizard or wizard strategist archetype, then going nova and using all my resources in the first encounter, then I would be failing to realize the archetype I set out to play.  I suppose it's possible to fail to realize something like a reckless wizard archetype by saving resources, but it's not a sure thing and since it's within the player's control whether or not he uses all of his resources, it's not a game/system issue.


----------



## pemerton

Maxperson said:


> This doesn't make sense to me.



Fair enough. I said I believed it to be a minority preference, given that I don't know of anyone else ever raising it, although I've read a lot of threads about balance/pacing/recharge periods.


----------



## pemerton

Ovinomancer said:


> pemerton said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ou can push a non-encounter based system into encounter-focused play if you want (I've done it with RM), but you have to be prepared to handle (among other things) resultant issues of class imbalance.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> How does that class imbalance arise, exactly? You're asserting without evidence.
Click to expand...


The class imbalance arises because (absent rules variants that aren't the default for the system) a RM caster who uses a day's worth of spell points in a single encounter, or even a couple of encounters, will probably be mechanically more effective than a non-caster in the same circumstances.

Solutions that I have adopted include not using adders and even moreso not using PP multipliers; reducing the power of utility spells; and allowing all combatants access to the martial arts multiple attack options.


----------



## Aldarc

pemerton said:


> Again, I don't see how these points about persistent resources/complications bear on a discussion about the way recovery schemes factor into cross-class balance.



It's not as if "cross-class balance" is even a concern in Fate anyway. 



pemerton said:


> This is a different point in my post, and one on which I would expect a wide range of opinions.
> 
> Some people think the game is working well when a player has many resources (eg spells) unspent because s/he was saving them in the event of further challenges presented by the GM prior to a recovery period. I don't like this, as the player doesn't realise the archetype s/he set out to play. It's another reason I don't like the "adventuring day" approach to balance, which is independent of issues about the future being "fixed".
> 
> As far as I know, no one else on these boards - in all the threads I've read about managing encounter pacing and the "adventuring day" - has ever posted a similar concern, so I assume my preferences in this respect are strongly minority ones.



I tend to agree here, and this is a concern that fellow players at my table have raised. It's entailed in "how often do I get to be cool?" That, and how leveling systems tend to gate when players can actually play their character concept. But there are systems out there that permit more out-of-the-box playing of player character concepts, no? Generally not D&D, but certainly Fate.


----------



## Sadras

For those that are more familiar with LotR, did Gandalf blow his load every single encounter, because if he didn't then he didn't realise his archetype.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Sadras said:


> For those that are more familiar with LotR, did Gandalf blow his load every single encounter, because if he didn't then he didn't realise his archetype.




I can understand the criticism. If a character is designed to be able to do Cool Thing A and Awesome Thing B, but then rarely does either because of the way the game is designed in relation to resource management, then I can see how the character’s potential isn’t being fully realized.

To use Gandalf as an example...do we know of any limits to what he can do and how often? Not really. His abilities are basically summarized in the word “wizard” and then beyond that are nebulously defined at best. So it’s not the best example.

But if we look at another example...let’s say Spider-Man...then it becomes clearer. We know pretty specifically what Spider-Man can do...he’s super strong and agile, he can climb on walls and spin webs, and he has a spider-sense that warns him of danger.

Now imagine a Spider-Man who never once spins a web in a game because he can only do it 3 times a day, and he wants to keep the option to do so available in the event of a more dangerous encounter. In this case, a core concept of the character has become far less prominent solely due to game balance.

I can absolutely understand this conceptually.

To put it back in D&D terms, it seems like the 4E resource management of AEDU or something similar would be a better fit for someone with this concern than would a daily vancian or spell point based system. Because the character is more free to do what it was designed to do.

And don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating for a specific style. Just that I can underatand the criticism. 

I said maybe 200 pages ago or so in this thread that these conversations become more about “sides” than about actually examining anything, and I think that’s really run rampant in the discussion. It seems like people aren’t even willing to allow themselves to understand what someone else is saying if they’re perceived to be on the “other side”. Neither “side” is innocent of this, and I’ve been plenty guilty of it myself, but wow it seems to have really ramped up lately.


----------



## Aldarc

Sadras said:


> For those that are more familiar with LotR, did Gandalf blow his load every single encounter, because if he didn't then he didn't realise his archetype.



LotR also more accurately likely has a magical fatigue system (or even a magical skills one) rather than a Vancian spells per day one, so I'm not sure if this satirical comparison is apt. If one sought to simulate magic in Middle Earth, D&D's magic system would probably be one of the last systems I would consider. 

That said, the issue of "blowing his load" likely depends on the cognitive disconnect between what the game system seeks to simulate and what the player seeks to emulate with their character. You can play a wizard in D&D, but if you come into D&D expecting to play a Harry Potter-style wizard, then you will be sorely disappointed.


----------



## Aldarc

hawkeyefan said:


> But if we look at another example...let’s say Spider-Man...then it becomes clearer. We know pretty specifically what Spider-Man can do...he’s super strong and agile, he can climb on walls and spin webs, and he has a spider-sense that warns him of danger.
> 
> Now imagine a Spider-Man who never once spins a web in a game because he can only do it 3 times a day, and he wants to keep the option to do so available in the event of a more dangerous encounter. In this case, a core concept of the character has become far less prominent solely due to game balance.
> 
> I can absolutely understand this conceptually.



My mind raced to how this would be done in Fate. There are multiple subsystems and rule variations available in Fate, but I could see that "Webslingers" may be its own aspect as part of a powers package (see Venture City), but with "All Out of Web" as a trouble, such that the GM could potentially compel the character to be "out" of webslinging fluid or needing to refill in order to heighten the danger in a situation.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Aldarc said:


> My mind raced to how this would be done in Fate. There are multiple subsystems and rule variations available in Fate, but I could see that "Webslingers" may be its own aspect as part of a powers package (see Venture City), but with "All Out of Web" as a trouble, such that the GM could potentially compel the character to be "out" of webslinging fluid or needing to refill in order to heighten the danger in a situation.




Sure. The game mechanics can be designed to try and emulate the character/ability/genre in question. I think most games attempt to do that at the most basic level, but then other games take that goal and carry it further into the game's design. 

In the case of Spider-Man, his supply of web fluid is never in question until there is a dramatic need for it to be so in the story. If a game is designed to replicate that moment of drama when he runs out of fluid, it's likely to play different where it's just a question of the player tracking the number of uses before the supply is exhausted. One is about the drama of the story, the other is about resource management of a game. 

Back to Gandalf, D&D took the idea of a wizard and gave the class the ability to cast spells. That's one level. But Gandalf doesn't "run out" of spells in the books. We don't really know how his ability to cast spells may work, or what limits may be set upon it. I don't even know if the things he does are ever actually described as being "spells" as we tend to think of them. So D&D's spell system was not designed with Gandalf in mind, but rather took its cue from Vance's books. This is another level.

So there are limitations on the wizard class that are implemented because of the goals of the game design. And in this case, they are indeed drawn from genre, but it's a very specific instance of genre that would not likely come to mind when most people think of what a wizard might be, and how one might function in a game. If you ask the average person what is a wizard, most of them are not going to site Vance's system of memorization of spells in their reply. 

All tangentially related to worldbuilding, I suppose, but I think how a game's mechanics deliver the genre or setting is a big part of the discussion.


----------



## Imaro

hawkeyefan said:


> Sure. The game mechanics can be designed to try and emulate the character/ability/genre in question. I think most games attempt to do that at the most basic level, but then other games take that goal and carry it further into the game's design.
> 
> In the case of Spider-Man, his supply of web fluid is never in question until there is a dramatic need for it to be so in the story. If a game is designed to replicate that moment of drama when he runs out of fluid, it's likely to play different where it's just a question of the player tracking the number of uses before the supply is exhausted. One is about the drama of the story, the other is about resource management of a game.
> 
> Back to Gandalf, D&D took the idea of a wizard and gave the class the ability to cast spells. That's one level. But Gandalf doesn't "run out" of spells in the books. We don't really know how his ability to cast spells may work, or what limits may be set upon it. I don't even know if the things he does are ever actually described as being "spells" as we tend to think of them. So D&D's spell system was not designed with Gandalf in mind, but rather took its cue from Vance's books. This is another level.
> 
> So there are limitations on the wizard class that are implemented because of the goals of the game design. And in this case, they are indeed drawn from genre, but it's a very specific instance of genre that would not likely come to mind when most people think of what a wizard might be, and how one might function in a game. If you ask the average person what is a wizard, most of them are not going to site Vance's system of memorization of spells in their reply.
> 
> All tangentially related to worldbuilding, I suppose, but I think how a game's mechanics deliver the genre or setting is a big part of the discussion.




I thin this gets into playstyle as well though.  Some people want to play Spiderman and some people want to play a Spiderman story.  the person who wants to play Spiderman wants to play this superhero but create his own stories with his own decisions and see how they play out.  

For example, Someone who wants to play Spiderman (or arguably play in Spiderman's world) but doesn't want to necessarily experience a Spiderman story could probably make a reasonable case for how incoherent the idea that Peter Parker has genius level intelligence but continues to forget to refill/account for the amount of web fluid he needs even after years of battling dangerously superpowered villains, or better yet why spider sense only seems to tingle right before you get hit.  While someone who wants to play a Spiderman story probably accepts and even wants both of these events to happen at a dramatically appropriate time.  But I'm not sure either allows the archetype to be more fully realized...  

I also think this is why FATE and similar games sometimes rub people the wrong way, many people play so they can have that moment where instead of choosing the dramatically appropriate response (often viewed by those watching the movie or reading the comic book as a bad choice) they can experience what they would have done in said situation.  games like FATE make getting that experience harder because they are set up to push for a certain type of story... a spiderman story where even a genius forgets to reload web fluid when going into battle with superpowerful and dangerous criminals and where spider sense always seems to kick in right before you get pounded on by a villain.  I'm not sure how much appeal experiencing a specific story as opposed to experiencing a specific world has to the average gamer... but it's an interesting question.


----------



## Umbran

Ovinomancer said:


> How does the player not realize their archetype?  What are player archetypes?  I'm very confused.




Are you confused, or are you snarkily and passive-aggressively pointing out that they should have said "character" rather than "player"?

And then, the following, rhetorical question: Are you sure your approach is a good use of anyone's time?


----------



## hawkeyefan

Imaro said:


> I thin this gets into playstyle as well though.  Some people want to play Spiderman and some people want to play a Spiderman story.  the person who wants to play Spiderman wants to play this superhero but create his own stories with his own decisions and see how they play out.
> 
> For example, Someone who wants to play Spiderman (or arguably play in Spiderman's world) but doesn't want to necessarily experience a Spiderman story could probably make a reasonable case for how incoherent the idea that Peter Parker has genius level intelligence but continues to forget to refill/account for the amount of web fluid he needs even after years of battling dangerously superpowered villains, or better yet why spider sense only seems to tingle right before you get hit.  While someone who wants to play a Spiderman story probably accepts and even wants both of these events to happen at a dramatically appropriate time.  But I'm not sure either allows the archetype to be more fully realized...
> 
> I also think this is why FATE and similar games sometimes rub people the wrong way, many people play so they can have that moment where instead of choosing the dramatically appropriate response (often viewed by those watching the movie or reading the comic book as a bad choice) they can experience what they would have done in said situation.  games like FATE make getting that experience harder because they are set up to push for a certain type of story... a spiderman story where even a genius forgets to reload web fluid when going into battle with superpowerful and dangerous criminals and where spider sense always seems to kick in right before you get pounded on by a villain.  I'm not sure how much appeal experiencing a specific story as opposed to experiencing a specific world has to the average gamer... but it's an interesting question.




Yeah, I agree. there are different ways to approach the subject matter. And there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that there is a game happening. It's why I'm unconcerned about the fact that D&D doesn't really deliver a Gandalf as we know him from the books.


----------



## Aldarc

Imaro said:


> I also think this is why FATE and similar games sometimes rub people the wrong way, many people play so they can have that moment where instead of choosing the dramatically appropriate response (often viewed by those watching the movie or reading the comic book as a bad choice) they can experience what they would have done in said situation.  games like FATE make getting that experience harder because they are set up to push for a certain type of story... a spiderman story where even a genius forgets to reload web fluid when going into battle with superpowerful and dangerous criminals and where spider sense always seems to kick in right before you get pounded on by a villain.  I'm not sure how much appeal experiencing a specific story as opposed to experiencing a specific world has to the average gamer... but it's an interesting question.



Not sure if I agree here. If you are having these sort of compels in Fate, then it's because you as a player have selected these troubles as things you want to experience for your character. Plus, you have Fate points that allow you to resist these compels. But Fate wants to create interesting stories and not stories where everyone knows everything, makes every dramatically appropriate response, and suffer no flaws through their "mastery" of gaming the system.


----------



## Imaro

Aldarc said:


> Not sure if I agree here. If you are having these sort of compels in Fate, then it's because you as a player have selected these troubles as things you want to experience for your character. Plus, you have Fate points that allow you to resist these compels. But Fate wants to create interesting stories and not stories where everyone knows everything, makes every dramatically appropriate response, and suffer no flaws through their "mastery" of gaming the system.




So what exactly don't you agree with?  If I played Spiderman in FATE he would have Spiderman flaws as compels right?  If I played him in say the old Marvel Superheroes game from TSR... no compels, right?  I'm unclear on what exactly you don't agree with.  In one instance the rules push/force me to playing through a Marvel Spiderman story while in the other I am playing Spiderman however I want to in the Marvel world.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Umbran said:


> Are you confused, or are you snarkily and passive-aggressively pointing out that they should have said "character" rather than "player"?
> 
> And then, the following, rhetorical question: Are you sure your approach is a good use of anyone's time?




I am confused.  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] had made it very clear that he separates the terms player and character precisely, and had held others to this standard.  He had the opportunity to correct if he was mistaken but continued without doing so, even doubling down on the usage.  Given his statements on usage, I'm trying to work with him.  I'm doing my level best to engage [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] as he's indicated he wants to be engaged.  

And rhetorical questions are rarely a good use of anyone's time.


----------



## Tony Vargas

So, now we've wandered into another tangent (If that) of world-building, and one, like pem I assume I must be in a tiny minority in caring about, because it never seems to be articulated or avowed - but, hey, it just was.

And that's the, I think very natural & nerdly, desire to "do it right."  For all those times you screamed at the screen or threw book 4 of a trilogy across the room, because some hapless victim of author force or poetic licence just did something irredeemably stupid for the sake of the narrative, you can sit down at a TTRPG and make your character do the right, counter-genre/un-heroic/anti-climactic, thing.


----------



## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> The class imbalance arises because (absent rules variants that aren't the default for the system) a RM caster who uses a day's worth of spell points in a single encounter, or even a couple of encounters, will probably be mechanically more effective than a non-caster in the same circumstances.
> 
> Solutions that I have adopted include not using adders and even moreso not using PP multipliers; reducing the power of utility spells; and allowing all combatants access to the martial arts multiple attack options.




So, no, no comment on the larger points I was making in my prior posts.  Shame.

For this, though, if this is your argument it's obvious and trivial -- if you cram all of daily refresh abilities into encounter refresh without doing any other work, it's obvious you will have balance issues period, much less between classes balanced on different paradigms.  If you have all wizards in 1e, for instance, and you just move spell refresh from daily to encounter, you're going to generate balance issues within that game as it's not geared to deal with such usages (encounters will require foes in the hundreds in short order when it previously required 10 or less).  This is aside from the issues of having a fighter in the party where you didn't smash his day's worth of attacks and damage into an encounter format.  IE, the problem you're discussing is really incoherent daily to encounter shifting, and not something inherent in class balance, although that could occur.  It's a point that's obvious, not profound.


----------



## Sadras

hawkeyefan said:


> To use Gandalf as an example...do we know of any limits to what he can do and how often? Not really. His abilities are basically summarized in the word “wizard” and then beyond that are nebulously defined at best. So it’s not the best example.




and



Aldarc said:


> LotR also more accurately likely has a magical fatigue system (or even a magical skills one) rather than a Vancian spells per day one, so I'm not sure if this satirical comparison is apt. If one sought to simulate magic in Middle Earth, D&D's magic system would probably be one of the last systems I would consider.




My point was we did see a little of what Gandalf could do, and he never brought that level of power everytime to every encounter. I still think his _class_ was realised. 

And [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] you make a good point regarding the Harry Potter/Gandalf comment.



> I said maybe 200 pages ago or so in this thread that these conversations become more about “sides” than about actually examining anything, and I think that’s really run rampant in the discussion. It seems like people aren’t even willing to allow themselves to understand what someone else is saying if they’re perceived to be on the “other side”. Neither “side” is innocent of this, and I’ve been plenty guilty of it myself, but wow it seems to have really ramped up lately.




Guilty.


----------



## Lanefan

Aldarc said:


> I tend to agree here, and this is a concern that fellow players at my table have raised. It's entailed in "how often do I get to be cool?" That, and how leveling systems tend to gate when players can actually play their character concept. But there are systems out there that permit more out-of-the-box playing of player character concepts, no?



This is only a problem if players insist on basing their character concepts and their definition of "cool" on the late-game or end-game result rather than on the process of getting there.

Sure, I can have a character concept of a heroic warrior married to the princess he rescued and to whom killing five frost giants is nothing more than a bracing before-breakfast workout; but much of the point - and fun - of play lies in the journey rather than the destination.


----------



## Umbran

Ovinomancer said:


> And rhetorical questions are rarely a good use of anyone's time.





Clearly.  Fine then, we'll make it simple - please stop with the snarkiness.  Thanks.


----------



## pemerton

Aldarc said:


> My mind raced to how this would be done in Fate. There are multiple subsystems and rule variations available in Fate, but I could see that "Webslingers" may be its own aspect as part of a powers package (see Venture City), but with "All Out of Web" as a trouble, such that the GM could potentially compel the character to be "out" of webslinging fluid or needing to refill in order to heighten the danger in a situation.



My Fate-fu is finite (unlike my alliteration-fu), but this reminds me of how Marvel Heroic handles it: there is a Webslinging power-set which includes swinging and grappling as features; and an Exhausted limit which the player can trigger for a buff or the GM can pay to trigger, shutting down the power-set.



Aldarc said:


> I tend to agree here, and this is a concern that fellow players at my table have raised. It's entailed in "how often do I get to be cool?"



That's a nice way of putting it.


----------



## Aldarc

Imaro said:


> So what exactly don't you agree with?  If I played Spiderman in FATE he would have Spiderman flaws as compels right?  If I played him in say the old Marvel Superheroes game from TSR... no compels, right?  I'm unclear on what exactly you don't agree with.  In one instance the rules push/force me to playing through a Marvel Spiderman story while in the other I am playing Spiderman however I want to in the Marvel world.



I do mostly agree with your summation. My point of contention is how the Troubles/Compels are being characterized as hurdles for play. Troubles are self-selected to engender the play experiences _the player wants_ for their character. So it seems unintuitive for how Fate works to say that Troubles are preventing a player from playing their character as they envision them. Why should a player be frustrated by Troubles they selected themselves? 

Also, it kinda sounds - and here I do exaggerate - like you are depicting the other side as "I want to play Spider-Man but suffer none of the flaws or consequences. It's just as Uncle Ben said, 'With great power comes great...' You know what? Screw that, and give me back that symbiote suit. I was ways more powerful that way. It's a clear upgrade on the stats, and I don't have to reload my webs. Score." 



Lanefan said:


> This is only a problem if players insist on basing their character concepts and their definition of "cool" on the late-game or end-game result rather than on the process of getting there.
> 
> Sure, I can have a character concept of a heroic warrior married to the princess he rescued and to whom killing five frost giants is nothing more than a bracing before-breakfast workout; but much of the point - and fun - of play lies in the journey rather than the destination.



I don't think that the late/end game character is necessarily what my players have in mind here. Since we have been talking about Spider-Man, let's stick with that and superheroes for a second. If we were playing a supers game, they would likely have a basic power set in mind for playing Spider-Man. But the issue would be akin to leveling three levels as a mundane Peter Parker high school dork before getting your Spider-Man of "spider-sense" and maybe wall-crawling, but then having to wait another four levels before you unlock your web-slinging, and then another set of levels before you get your super physique. Sure, superheroes power-up/level, but most heroes start out with their set of powers realized. And most people wanting to a Spider-Man-esque character - maybe an off-brand character called the "The Bug" - would want to jump into that character concept right away rather than slog through months of play before they can play the character concept they had in mind. For some of my players in D&D 5E, they may have to wait until level 3 or later - depending on archetype features or sufficient multiclassing - before they get what they consider the core of their character concept realized. The "process of getting there" can come across as a begrudging tax rather than an exciting feature, and I don't think that this makes them bad players for wanting to play what they actually have in mind for their character as soon as possible and being disappointed with that "process." In contrast, there are other games where players can jump right in at "level 0" with their realized character concepts and basic suite of features for that concept.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Not sure if I agree here. If you are having these sort of compels in Fate, then it's because you as a player have selected these troubles as things you want to experience for your character. Plus, you have Fate points that allow you to resist these compels. But Fate wants to create interesting stories and not stories where everyone knows everything, makes every dramatically appropriate response, and suffer no flaws through their "mastery" of gaming the system.




But presumably, he wouldn't be playing Spiderman in Fate, because it rubs him the wrong way and he can't have the experience he wants.  Your counter doesn't really counter his statement.  Instead it just means that most people who play Fate are of the type that prefers the dramatic story.


----------



## Maxperson

Tony Vargas said:


> And that's the, I think very natural & nerdly, desire to "do it right."  For all those times you screamed at the screen or threw book 4 of a trilogy across the room, because some hapless victim of author force or poetic licence just did something irredeemably stupid for the sake of the narrative, you can sit down at a TTRPG and make your character do the right, counter-genre/un-heroic/anti-climactic, thing.



There was a game I played a few times in the '90s called, It Came From the Late Late Late Show.  You basically played movie actors in a B movie.  You were given various skills to use, had a fame score that you could use to stalk off of the set(roll under it and the director has to cave to your demands), and more.  My favorite part of the game, though, was that you got extra points for being "appropriately stupid."  In a slasher story: "I heard something outside of the house!  You guys wait here, I'll go check it out!"


----------



## Maxperson

Sadras said:


> and
> 
> 
> 
> My point was we did see a little of what Gandalf could do, and he never brought that level of power everytime to every encounter. I still think his _class_ was realised.
> 
> And  [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] you make a good point regarding the Harry Potter/Gandalf comment.
> 
> 
> 
> Guilty.




Yes.  We know that Gandalf was amazingly powerful.  He single handedly killed a Balrog(Balor) in a fight that lasted days.  This Balrog came out and killed or forced an entire city of dwarves, armed with dwarven weapons and armor(better than any but the best elven smiths) to flee.  No 5th level PC in any edition of D&D is taking on a Balor for even 10 rounds(1-10 minutes depending on the system), let alone 2 days.  The length of the fight does mean that [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] is probably correct and Gandalf was on some sort of fatigue/spell point system.


----------



## Aldarc

Maxperson said:


> But presumably, he wouldn't be playing Spiderman in Fate, because it rubs him the wrong way and he can't have the experience he wants.  Your counter doesn't really counter his statement.  Instead it just means that most people who play Fate are of the type that prefers the dramatic story.



That is true enough, but my understanding of this hypothetical person in this scenario is that the reason that Fate rubs them the wrong way is because of how those troubles/compels run counter to the experiences they want for their character. But again that seems counterintuitive to how Fate works given how troubles are self-selected by the player for their character. In other words, we may ask, "Why did the player pick these troubles for their character at all if the player does not want their character to be troubled by them?" I suppose that is disconnect that I am having with Imaro's otherwise good summation.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Aldarc said:


> That is true enough, but my understanding of this hypothetical person in this scenario is that the reason that Fate rubs them the wrong way is because of how those troubles/compels run counter to the experiences they want for their character. But again that seems counterintuitive to how Fate works given how troubles are self-selected by the player for their character. In other words, we may ask, "Why did the player pick these troubles for their character at all if the player does not want their character to be troubled by them?" I suppose that is disconnect that I am having with Imaro's otherwise good summation.




I took the original comment to be more about the system/mechanic in general. Not about specific compels but just about them in general.

I think there is something to offer for both approaches; one that tries to deliver an experience that feels like the fiction it draws upon, and another that sheds some tropes to allow gamers to play however they want. 

To tie it back to worldbuilding...it seems pretty similar to me. I can see value in both approaches; one where the world is largely predetermined prior to the start of play, and another that largely builds the world through play. 

In either case, it would seem odd to take one approach and then expect it to deliver the result of the other approach. And I think that’s the cause of most of the tension throughout the discussion.


----------



## Aldarc

hawkeyefan said:


> I took the original comment to be more about the system/mechanic in general. Not about specific compels but just about them in general.



Thank you and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] for your own readings. That helps. 



> I think there is something to offer for both approaches; one that tries to deliver an experience that feels like the fiction it draws upon, and another that sheds some tropes to allow gamers to play *however they want.*



Though I understand your intent, at least presumably, I do take some issue with the bold, namely that it somewhat contradicts the rest of your statements. System and mechanics will inherently place limitations on how a player can play such that the idea that one system permits players to play their character "however they want" while the other doesn't seems iffy. 

But nice tie-ins with overarching topic.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Maxperson said:


> Yes.  We know that Gandalf was amazingly powerful.  He single handedly killed a Balrog(Balor) in a fight that lasted days.



 As we know, because he told us about it, what we saw was both of them apparently fall to their deaths....



> This Balrog came out and killed or forced an entire city of dwarves, armed with dwarven weapons and armor(better than any but the best elven smiths) to flee.



 According to the exposition provided by Gandalf...



> No 5th level PC in any edition of D&D is taking on a Balor for even 10 rounds(1-10 minutes depending on the system),



A 5th level magic-user who was freakishly lucky rolling for 1e psionics could demolish a Type VI demon, the main problem being that it'd be over very quickly, indeed, since pionic-on-psionic combat progressed in segments...

...or, after they fell off the bridge, the oddly wingless & non-teleporting Balrog could have plumetted to its death, while Gandalf cut the whip with Glamdring, then cast Feather Fall.  



> let alone 2 days.  The length of the fight does mean that [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] is probably correct and Gandalf was on some sort of fatigue/spell point system.



 Old-school D&D caught a lot of flack for using 1-min rounds, but it did mean the idea, even if not the feel, of a long battle was modeled to a greater extent than it's contemporaries, who, for the sake of 'realism' (today, we'd say 'verisimilitude,' 'immersions,' 'simulationism,' and 'associated' mechanics, of course ) went with 12, 6, even one-second rounds.


----------



## Imaro

Aldarc said:


> I do mostly agree with your summation. My point of contention is how the Troubles/Compels are being characterized as hurdles for play. Troubles are self-selected to engender the play experiences _the player wants_ for their character. So it seems unintuitive for how Fate works to say that Troubles are preventing a player from playing their character as they envision them. Why should a player be frustrated by Troubles they selected themselves?




Well as @_*Maxperson*_ and @_*Hawkeye*_ stated in earlier posts I was moreso talking at a high system level.  The thing is there are games where there are no mechanics to dictate or push your character's behavior and there are games (most being , at least IMHE, narrativist games that want to deliver "story") where your character's personality/behavior is pushed or even forced in certain directions.  For people who don't want the mechanics enforcing or pushing for particular behaviors on their characters...these games don't allow them to play the way they want to at a system level.

Now to address troubles and compels specifically in FATE and why I feel that even when self selected they can be a hurdle...
First let's look at FATE points...



			
				FATE SRD; said:
			
		

> _*Fate Points*
> You use tokens to represent how many fate points you have at any given time during play. Fate points are one of your most important resources in Fate—they’re a measure of how much influence you have to make the story go in your character’s favor.
> 
> You can spend fate points to invoke an aspect, to declare a story detail, or to *activate certain powerful stunts*.
> 
> You earn fate points by accepting a compel on one of your aspects.
> _




Emphasis mine... so FATE sets up a situation where FATE points are necessary to use your abilities... a vital meta-currency.  Contrast this with D&D 5e's inspiration where inspiration points give you advantage on an roll but aren't necessary to actually use a class ability.

Next up let's look at how one receives FATE points for compelling troubles...



			
				FATE SRD; said:
			
		

> _*Compels*
> Sometimes (in fact, probably often), you’ll find yourself in a situation where an aspect complicates your character’s life and creates unexpected drama. When that happens, the GM will suggest a potential complication that might arise. This is called a compel.
> 
> Sometimes, a compel means your character automatically fails at some goal, or your character’s choices are restricted, or simply that unintended consequences cloud whatever your character does. You might negotiate back and forth on the details a little, to arrive at what would be most appropriate and dramatic in the moment.
> 
> Once you’ve agreed to accept the complication, you get a fate point for your troubles. If you want, you can pay a fate point to prevent the complication from happening, but it is not recommended that you do that very often—you’ll probably need that fate point later, and getting compelled brings drama (and hence, fun) into your game’s story.
> 
> Players, you’re going to call for a compel when you want there to be a complication in a decision you’ve just made, if it’s related to one of your aspects. GMs, you’re going to call for a compel when you make the world respond to the characters in a complicated or dramatic way.
> 
> Anyone at the table is free to suggest when a compel might be appropriate for any character (including their own). GMs, you have the final word on whether or not a compel is valid. And speak up if you see that a compel happened naturally as a result of play, but no fate points were awarded.   _




So the GM or player suggests a compel and if you accept it you get a FATE point... simple enough and not all that different form D&D 5e's inspiration which is awarded by the GM (or the players themselves if using the variant in the DMG) after the player has played out his flaw.  Of course the big difference is if the player doesn't want to play out his flaw at the specific time the GM compels him.  In D&D 5e there is no adverse effect for choosing not to play out ones flaws you just don't get the advantage of inspiration on a roll (and if you have inspiration already there's no adverse effect whatsoever).  

However in FATE you have to pay a Fate point in order to decline the compel.  So not only are you not receiving a FATE point but you are also loosing one.  This is a pretty big incentive (and actually becomes force if you're out of FATE points) to align with the DM's created and directed expression of your troubles.  While in 5e how your flaws manifest and whether you choose to express them at any particular moment in the game is all under the control of the player with little to no force being exerted by the DM.  This is what I mean when I say some games allow you to play your character the way you want vs. some forcing your character to play out a certain way in the name of "story".

The FATE rules pretty much state upfront that this engineered story is a desired outcome of the game when discussing the FATE point economy... emphasis mine.



			
				FATE SRD; said:
			
		

> _*Fate Point Economy*
> For the most part, the use of aspects revolves around fate points. You indicate your supply of fate points by using tokens, such as poker chips, glass beads, or other markers.
> 
> *Ideally, you want a consistent ebb and flow of fate points going on throughout your sessions. Players spend them in order to be awesome in a crucial moment, and they get them back when their lives get dramatic and complicated. So if your fate points are flowing the way they’re supposed to, you’ll end up with these cycles of triumphs and setbacks that make for a fun and interesting story.*_







Aldarc said:


> Also, it kinda sounds - and here I do exaggerate - like you are depicting the other side as "I want to play Spider-Man but suffer none of the flaws or consequences. It's just as Uncle Ben said, 'With great power comes great...' You know what? Screw that, and give me back that symbiote suit. I was ways more powerful that way. It's a clear upgrade on the stats, and I don't have to reload my webs. Score."




No that's not what I am saying at all, what I am saying is that in some systems the players are encouraged to roleplay out their flaws but it's not a mechanism to create story and thus isn't enforced.  IMO this allows players in those games more power over how, when and why their flaws are expressed vs. in FATE where a vital meta-currency is tied to it and it is used as a mechanism to generate the ebb and flow of story. I'm not placing a value judgement on either as it's clearly boils down to what you are trying to get from your gaming experience.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Aldarc said:


> Thank you and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] for your own readings. That helps.
> 
> Though I understand your intent, at least presumably, I do take some issue with the bold, namely that it somewhat contradicts the rest of your statements. System and mechanics will inherently place limitations on how a player can play such that the idea that one system permits players to play their character "however they want" while the other doesn't seems iffy.
> 
> But nice tie-ins with overarching topic.




Sure, "however they want" is an overly broad statement. What I meant was perhaps better described as "in a way more to their liking then what is typically provided within the source material". So they are free to play Spider-Man as being less a "hard luck" hero, or whatever other change from the source that they may like, while still being bound by the game system in place. 

I hope that's clearer, and more in line with what you thought I may have meant.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Aldarc said:


> System and mechanics will inherently place limitations on how a player can play such that the idea that one system permits players to play their character "however they want" while the other doesn't seems iffy.



 Some are much more permissive than others, certainly.  FATE, for instance, and many other systems & sub-systems - even personal characteristics in 5e - put incentives on playing a character in other than optimal ways for the sake of portrayal/story.  Other systems, like 3.5/PF, notoriously, provide myriad option but only some of them represent the optimal, or even a viable, path for the character.

So like the old example of killing baby kobolds because 'they're not worth XP alive,' that's a system artifact being cited for a counter-genre action, but the action, itself, ruthless as it may be, is not entirely unlike playing the Batman clone who finally just kills his Joker analogue.  

There's a lot of "why don't they just..." moments you can revisit in an RPG, and sure, you can explore a cogent answer, but you can also legitimately enjoy doin' it right, for a change...


----------



## Tony Vargas

Maxperson said:


> , It Came From the Late Late Late Show. .  My favorite part of the game, though, was that you got extra points for being "appropriately stupid."  In a slasher story: "I heard something outside of the house!  You guys wait here, I'll go check it out!"



 Yep, I vaguely recall that one.  The idea behind mechanics like that seems to be that the only thing keeping players who really want to be genre-appropriately-stupid from doing things like that is the rules 'punishing' them for it, so give a reward for it, and they'll happily RP the stupid.  
Which is fun & goid genre emulation, sure.  My point was that the urge to not be stupid might not just be from wanting to master/win the game, mechanically, but from the impulse to chalkenge the genre-conformal stupidity, and play through the consequences.


----------



## Lanefan

Aldarc said:


> Also, it kinda sounds - and here I do exaggerate - like you are depicting the other side as "I want to play Spider-Man but suffer none of the flaws or consequences. It's just as Uncle Ben said, 'With great power comes great...' You know what? Screw that, and give me back that symbiote suit. I was ways more powerful that way. It's a clear upgrade on the stats, and I don't have to reload my webs. Score."



It's not always an exaggeration, based on a few players I've met over the years. 



> I don't think that the late/end game character is necessarily what my players have in mind here. Since we have been talking about Spider-Man, let's stick with that and superheroes for a second. If we were playing a supers game, they would likely have a basic power set in mind for playing Spider-Man. But the issue would be akin to leveling three levels as a mundane Peter Parker high school dork before getting your Spider-Man of "spider-sense" and maybe wall-crawling, but then having to wait another four levels before you unlock your web-slinging, and then another set of levels before you get your super physique. Sure, superheroes power-up/level, but most heroes start out with their set of powers realized. And most people wanting to a Spider-Man-esque character - maybe an off-brand character called the "The Bug" - would want to jump into that character concept right away rather than slog through months of play before they can play the character concept they had in mind. For some of my players in D&D 5E, they may have to wait until level 3 or later - depending on archetype features or sufficient multiclassing - before they get what they consider the core of their character concept realized. The "process of getting there" can come across as a begrudging tax rather than an exciting feature, and I don't think that this makes them bad players for wanting to play what they actually have in mind for their character as soon as possible and being disappointed with that "process." In contrast, there are other games where players can jump right in at "level 0" with their realized character concepts and basic suite of features for that concept.



Thing is, a supers game (i.e. a milieu where Spiderman would make sense) kind of expects you to have your superpowers - or most of them - right out of the gate.  Which is fine, as long as it's made clear that "mechanical" development and growth of the character over the campaign is likely to be near zero.  To me it'd be like starting a D&D game with 20th level characters, where the game system caps at 21st.

The only other real option is - and here Spidey is a good example - to start as Peter Parker and play out the origin story.  In this case there will certainly be "mechanical" growth to the character but it'll all kind of happen in one great big whack - you either have superpowers or you don't.  But it'd be tricky trying to play out the origin stories of a bunch of supers all together in one party, I guess.  In D&D terms you'd go from 1st level to 15th level in one fell swoop, skipping all the ones in between.

Maybe this is part of why supers games have never interested me in the slightest.  That, and superheroes just don't realistically fit into the world no matter how hard you try; I find this jarring in the Marvel movies sometimes as well.

A low or even mid-level D&D character, however - particularly a non-caster - *can* realistically fit in to its ordinary game world just fine; even more so in a system like 1e or 5e where the by-level power curve isn't as steep.  You can play an ordinary Joe who just happens to be really good at what he does (fighting, sneaking, tracking, persuading, whatevs) and take it from there, watching him develop both mechanically* and as a character.  And you also get to play through all the intervening steps rather than jump straight from 'nobody' to 'superhero'.

* - and even this isn't important beyond the very basics e.g. added hit points and baked-in class abilities.

So back to character concept: on the uncommon occasions where I put any thought into a character before rolling it up, I might have an end ideal for what that character could become at high level but I'm fully aware that a) in-game events can and likely will change that ideal significantly; b) the chances of the character surviving** long enough to reach that ideal state are low to zero; and c) what seems workable in my mind might not be at all workable once play begins.

** - including both in-game survival (the usual character death bit) and meta-survival (does playing this character cross my boredom threshold).

Lanefan


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> It's not always an exaggeration, based on a few players I've met over the years.
> 
> Thing is, a supers game (i.e. a milieu where Spiderman would make sense) kind of expects you to have your superpowers - or most of them - right out of the gate.  Which is fine, as long as it's made clear that "mechanical" development and growth of the character over the campaign is likely to be near zero.  To me it'd be like starting a D&D game with 20th level characters, where the game system caps at 21st.
> 
> The only other real option is - and here Spidey is a good example - to start as Peter Parker and play out the origin story.  In this case there will certainly be "mechanical" growth to the character but it'll all kind of happen in one great big whack - you either have superpowers or you don't.  But it'd be tricky trying to play out the origin stories of a bunch of supers all together in one party, I guess.  In D&D terms you'd go from 1st level to 15th level in one fell swoop, skipping all the ones in between.
> 
> Maybe this is part of why supers games have never interested me in the slightest.  That, and superheroes just don't realistically fit into the world no matter how hard you try; I find this jarring in the Marvel movies sometimes as well.
> 
> A low or even mid-level D&D character, however - particularly a non-caster - *can* realistically fit in to its ordinary game world just fine; even more so in a system like 1e or 5e where the by-level power curve isn't as steep.  You can play an ordinary Joe who just happens to be really good at what he does (fighting, sneaking, tracking, persuading, whatevs) and take it from there, watching him develop both mechanically* and as a character.  And you also get to play through all the intervening steps rather than jump straight from 'nobody' to 'superhero'.
> 
> * - and even this isn't important beyond the very basics e.g. added hit points and baked-in class abilities.
> 
> So back to character concept: on the uncommon occasions where I put any thought into a character before rolling it up, I might have an end ideal for what that character could become at high level but I'm fully aware that a) in-game events can and likely will change that ideal significantly; b) the chances of the character surviving** long enough to reach that ideal state are low to zero; and c) what seems workable in my mind might not be at all workable once play begins.
> 
> ** - including both in-game survival (the usual character death bit) and meta-survival (does playing this character cross my boredom threshold).
> 
> Lanefan




But there's nothing stopping a game from having a different approach than D&D. 

Couldn't a fantasy game allow a certain character class or type to have a variety of abilities from the very beginning of play, and then rather than gaining new abilities over time, the character can simply get better at them, or perhaps decide which ones to improve? 

This is of course assuming that there is any progression expected in the game. I don't see why a game can't just start with fully realized characters, with little to no advancement in mind for play. Sure, I think such a game would lack something, but there's no reason a game couldn't function that way.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> But there's nothing stopping a game from having a different approach than D&D.
> 
> Couldn't a fantasy game allow a certain character class or type to have a variety of abilities from the very beginning of play, and then rather than gaining new abilities over time, the character can simply get better in them, or perhaps choose which to focus on.
> 
> This is of course assuming that there is any progression expected in the game. I don't see why a game can't just start with fully realized characters, with little to no advancement in mind for play. Sure, I think such a game would lack something, but there's no reason a game couldn't function that way.



Sure it could function that way for a while, but I see it becoming somewhat self-limiting once the DM and-or players in effect run out of stories.  For a short one-adventure campaign or a one-off or anything else that doesn't go on very long - sure, this works just fine.  But for anything intended to have "legs" enough to last for any significant length of time I'd see it as unnecessarily limiting.

With an advancement-based system* one can introduce new and-or more robust foes and threats as the campaign goes along, giving a huge amount more design space for stories-adventures-whatever than would otherwise exist without having to start over.

* - even a very slow one, as I can personally attest. 

That, and there's also a large subset of players out there to whom the *ping* of a level bump is a (or the) primary reason for playing at all.  (I'd better note here that I'm not really one of these)

Lan-"*ping*"-efan


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> Sure it could function that way for a while, but I see it becoming somewhat self-limiting once the DM and-or players in effect run out of stories.  For a short one-adventure campaign or a one-off or anything else that doesn't go on very long - sure, this works just fine.  But for anything intended to have "legs" enough to last for any significant length of time I'd see it as unnecessarily limiting.
> 
> With an advancement-based system* one can introduce new and-or more robust foes and threats as the campaign goes along, giving a huge amount more design space for stories-adventures-whatever than would otherwise exist without having to start over.
> 
> * - even a very slow one, as I can personally attest.
> 
> That, and there's also a large subset of players out there to whom the *ping* of a level bump is a (or the) primary reason for playing at all.  (I'd better note here that I'm not really one of these)
> 
> Lan-"*ping*"-efan




Sure, but you're valuing long term play over short term, which is totally a preference. Nothing wrong with it, but others may not like that style of play and may prefer a game where they get to do cool things with their character right away. 

I personally like some kind of progression to take place, and my current 5E campaign has many aspects and characters dating back to AD&D...so I have no aversion to long term. But I think there's just as much value in and demand for games with a more immediate level of playability. 

I mean, even within the D&D world, haven't we all played in a game that started at a higher level than 1? So there's a demand or occasional need just in D&D, let alone other games.


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> I mean, even within the D&D world, haven't we all played in a game that started at a higher level than 1? So there's a demand or occasional need just in D&D, let alone other games.



Actually, other than con games and intentional one-offs, I have not.


----------



## hawkeyefan

Lanefan said:


> Actually, other than con games and intentional one-offs, I have not.




Soooo....other than the times you have, you haven’t?


----------



## Maxperson

hawkeyefan said:


> To tie it back to worldbuilding...it seems pretty similar to me. I can see value in both approaches; one where the world is largely predetermined prior to the start of play, and another that largely builds the world through play.
> 
> In either case, it would seem odd to take one approach and then expect it to deliver the result of the other approach. And I think that’s the cause of most of the tension throughout the discussion.




That's one of the reasons that I like D&D so much.  The system is so broadly built, that while it doesn't do any style amazingly well, with a bit of tweaking it can do most styles decently(or better) well.   You can get a bunch of different experiences out of it.


----------



## Maxperson

Lanefan said:


> Sure it could function that way for a while, but I see it becoming somewhat self-limiting once the DM and-or players in effect run out of stories.  For a short one-adventure campaign or a one-off or anything else that doesn't go on very long - sure, this works just fine.  But for anything intended to have "legs" enough to last for any significant length of time I'd see it as unnecessarily limiting.




Sure, but for most people a year or two is long term.  

It's pretty easy to do a year or two of stories under that sort of structure.


----------



## Aldarc

Imaro said:


> Now to address troubles and compels specifically in FATE and why I feel that even when self selected they can be a hurdle...
> First let's look at FATE points...



I'm already well familiar with Fate, [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION], so there is no need to lecture me on it. Maxperson and Hawkeye clarified your reading. 



> No that's not what I am saying at all, what I am saying is that in some systems the players are *encouraged to roleplay out their flaws* but it's not a mechanism to create story and thus isn't enforced.  *IMO this allows players in those games more power over how, when and why their flaws are expressed* vs. in FATE where a vital meta-currency is tied to it and it is used as a mechanism to generate the ebb and flow of story. I'm not placing a value judgement on either as it's clearly boils down to what you are trying to get from your gaming experience.



IME with those systems, "What flaws?"


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> Thing is, a supers game (i.e. a milieu where Spiderman would make sense) kind of expects you to have your superpowers - or most of them - right out of the gate.  Which is fine, as long as it's made clear that "mechanical" development and growth of the character over the campaign is likely to be near zero.  *To me it'd be like starting a D&D game with 20th level characters, where the game system caps at 21st.*



I don't know why you are so fixated on endgame power levels when I explicitly said that is not typically what most people IME have in mind when criticizing level gating of powers. I have not met a player who wanted their character to cast Wish right out of the gate. I would say that the players generally want moderate levels of competency such that they have sufficient tools to sufficiently play out their character concepts with sufficient frequency of coolness. 



> Maybe this is part of why supers games have never interested me in the slightest.  That, and superheroes just don't realistically fit into the world no matter how hard you try; I find this jarring in the Marvel movies sometimes as well.



D&D characters are essentially superheroes. Some are more the Avengers, some are more Heroes for Hire, others are the Fantastic Four, but they are superheroes all the same. 



> ** - including both in-game survival (the usual character death bit) and meta-survival *(does playing this character cross my boredom threshold)*.



And that's part of the problem in the slog to reach the desired character concept. 



Lanefan said:


> Sure it could function that way for a while, but I see it becoming somewhat self-limiting once the DM and-or players in effect run out of stories.  For a short one-adventure campaign or a one-off or anything else that doesn't go on very long - sure, this works just fine.  But for anything intended to have "legs" enough to last for any significant length of time I'd see it as unnecessarily limiting.
> 
> With an advancement-based system* one can introduce new and-or more robust foes and threats as the campaign goes along, giving a huge amount more design space for stories-adventures-whatever than would otherwise exist without having to start over.
> 
> That, and there's also a large subset of players out there to whom the *ping* of a level bump is a (or the) primary reason for playing at all.  (I'd better note here that I'm not really one of these)



These are not mutually exclusive, and you are not guaranteed to not exhaust story ideas in an advancement-based system. But here I would point out that Fate does have an advancement system, but it is often much easier to jump into the basic character concept at character creation.


----------



## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> Couldn't a fantasy game allow a certain character class or type to have a variety of abilities from the very beginning of play, and then rather than gaining new abilities over time, the character can simply get better at them, or perhaps decide which ones to improve?



Yes. BW can play that way. Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy largely does play that way (not surprising, given its roots in Marvel Heroic RP). There must be many other examples too, that I just happen to be ignorant of.


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## Imaro

Aldarc said:


> I'm already well familiar with Fate, [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION], so there is no need to lecture me on it. Maxperson and Hawkeye clarified your reading.




I was just trying to clarify my position and provide insight into the FATE system for others who might have been following the post and weren't aware of how FATE worked including yourself (which you have now clarified isn't the case)... sorry it came off as lecturing but that wasn't my intent. 



Aldarc said:


> IME with those systems, "What flaws?"




Well, why would the player choose the flaw if they didn't want to play it?  That seems more a disconnect with the character the player actually wanted vs. the the one they created.  My point of comparison was whether the player vs. the GM should be in control of determining when and where those flaws are expressed.


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## Aldarc

Imaro said:


> I was just trying to clarify my position and provide insight into the FATE system for others who might have been following the post and weren't aware of how FATE worked including yourself (which you have now clarified isn't the case)... sorry it came off as lecturing but that wasn't my intent.



Ah, I see (said the blind man). My apologies. 



> Well, why would the player choose the flaw if they didn't want to play it?  That seems more a disconnect with the character the player actually wanted vs. the the one they created.  My point of comparison was whether the player vs. the GM should be in control of determining when and where those flaws are expressed.



Oh, I meant that in unenforced or "flaws/troubles optional" systems, I often see players attempt to marginalize all potential weaknesses or ignore any flaws. So the roleplaying of flaws tends to be negligible and the "roleplayed" characters tend to be flat. One possible hypothesis may be rooted the system goals, rewards system, and incentives. D&D, for example, has its roots in wargaming, and so there is often an underlying sense in play of "winning the game" through appropriate adjudication of resources, minizing weaknesses, and maximizing strengths. It also explains why so many GMs here and elsewhere have bemoaned certain backstory tropes, such as the lone wolf with no parents or loved ones, because players often have a subliminal fear that their attachments will be weaponized against the player. No flaws, no losses. But perhaps you have your own experiences or explanations about this phenomenon. 

On your last sentence, players in Fate can propose to the GM story complications or roleplay with their Troubles for the sake of drama, Fate points, etc.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Ah, I see (said the blind man). My apologies.
> 
> Oh, I meant that in unenforced or "flaws/troubles optional" systems, I often see players attempt to marginalize all potential weaknesses or ignore any flaws. So the roleplaying of flaws tends to be negligible and the "roleplayed" characters tend to be flat. One possible hypothesis may be rooted the system goals, rewards system, and incentives. D&D, for example, has its roots in wargaming, and so there is often an underlying sense in play of "winning the game" through appropriate adjudication of resources, minizing weaknesses, and maximizing strengths. It also explains why so many GMs here and elsewhere have bemoaned certain backstory tropes, such as the lone wolf with no parents or loved ones, because players often have a subliminal fear that their attachments will be weaponized against the player. No flaws, no losses. But perhaps you have your own experiences or explanations about this phenomenon.
> 
> On your last sentence, players in Fate can propose to the GM story complications or roleplay with their Troubles for the sake of drama, Fate points, etc.




For my part, I incentivize roleplaying your character, flaws and all.  I hand out bonus exp when those flaws come up in game, especially if they come up at a time that could be detrimental to the PC.  For example, if the PC has a flaw of getting drunk in the evenings and gets invited(along with the rest of the party) to dinner with the local lord, I will give bonus exp if he gets drunk at the dinner party and makes a fool of himself.  Now, these flaws don't exist in isolation, so other roleplaying factors can also be brought into play.  There are a lot of variables.  For example, if said PC has an 18 wisdom and the player says to me, "I know that I usually get drunk in these situations, but I'm wise enough to know that if I take even a single sip of alcohol tonight I won't be able to stop, so I use my willpower to resist drinking.", that would also be roleplaying his character.  Now, if he had a 6 wisdom, was an alcoholic and didn't drink, basically having no reasonable justification for not roleplaying that flaw, I wouldn't award any of the bonus exp.


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## hawkeyefan

The ibcreased focus on flaws and bonds in game design has been great, I think. These are things I’ve tried to get my players to commit to over the years, and whenever they’ve done it, it’s enriched the game and the story we’re telling. I’m very glad that D&D has adopted this element from other games, and added a mechanical aspect to it. I think maybe a bit more could be done with the system than simple Inspiration, but I have no problem increasing the importance in my game.

These are the kinds of elements that really enhance the worldbuilding, in my opinion. Even in a game like D&D that tends to be played very traditionally (I mean, it pretty much defined the tradition), these bits can really serve to have the players contribute elements to the game world. For me, Ihave always loved when my players add things to the fiction, and appreciate their investment, and I do my best to reward that effort.


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## Aldarc

Note: This thread has some amazing people and some excellent game theory discussion. Party on, dudes.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Aldarc said:


> I do mostly agree with your summation. My point of contention is how the Troubles/Compels are being characterized as hurdles for play. Troubles are self-selected to engender the play experiences _the player wants_ for their character. So it seems unintuitive for how Fate works to say that Troubles are preventing a player from playing their character as they envision them. Why should a player be frustrated by Troubles they selected themselves?
> 
> Also, it kinda sounds - and here I do exaggerate - like you are depicting the other side as "I want to play Spider-Man but suffer none of the flaws or consequences. It's just as Uncle Ben said, 'With great power comes great...' You know what? Screw that, and give me back that symbiote suit. I was ways more powerful that way. It's a clear upgrade on the stats, and I don't have to reload my webs. Score."
> 
> I don't think that the late/end game character is necessarily what my players have in mind here. Since we have been talking about Spider-Man, let's stick with that and superheroes for a second. If we were playing a supers game, they would likely have a basic power set in mind for playing Spider-Man. But the issue would be akin to leveling three levels as a mundane Peter Parker high school dork before getting your Spider-Man of "spider-sense" and maybe wall-crawling, but then having to wait another four levels before you unlock your web-slinging, and then another set of levels before you get your super physique. Sure, superheroes power-up/level, but most heroes start out with their set of powers realized. And most people wanting to a Spider-Man-esque character - maybe an off-brand character called the "The Bug" - would want to jump into that character concept right away rather than slog through months of play before they can play the character concept they had in mind. For some of my players in D&D 5E, they may have to wait until level 3 or later - depending on archetype features or sufficient multiclassing - before they get what they consider the core of their character concept realized. The "process of getting there" can come across as a begrudging tax rather than an exciting feature, and I don't think that this makes them bad players for wanting to play what they actually have in mind for their character as soon as possible and being disappointed with that "process." In contrast, there are other games where players can jump right in at "level 0" with their realized character concepts and basic suite of features for that concept.




This is what I liked best about 4e (well, I say that about a lot of things, but so what?). It did a very good job of making you 'fully realized' at level 1. You were LIMITED, but in an essential way every class did its iconic thematic 'stuff' right out of the box. Later elements of design of this game were built around that concept too, like PP and ED, where you get ANOTHER set of thematic and iconic choices, as opposed to just finally fulfilling the original ones (AD&D for example makes the fighter go to level 9 before he gets his stronghold, but its still just the same thing every fighter gets, and thus part of the AD&D fighter archetype). 

In 4e something similar would be a PP, one of any number of choices you could make at that level to become a new sort of character. You could even steal the PP from a different class (some don't even care about what class you are). Maybe 'Stronghold Lord' is a PP that assumes a warlord by default, but a fighter or ranger (or even a wizard) could easily use a MC feat to access it, and be effective with it if the player was reasonably thoughtful about his other choices.


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## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> But there's nothing stopping a game from having a different approach than D&D.
> 
> Couldn't a fantasy game allow a certain character class or type to have a variety of abilities from the very beginning of play, and then rather than gaining new abilities over time, the character can simply get better at them, or perhaps decide which ones to improve?
> 
> This is of course assuming that there is any progression expected in the game. I don't see why a game can't just start with fully realized characters, with little to no advancement in mind for play. Sure, I think such a game would lack something, but there's no reason a game couldn't function that way.




Well, Traveler effectively DOES work that way. In the original Classic game there was literally no mechanism at all for character advancement, EXCEPT if you had psionics, which could only be acquired by training (they were considered to be highly prejudiced against and thus unavailable in normal play). I always thought of that system as basically tacked on though, sort of like D&D's, maybe even inspired by it in that sense.

The problems with Traveler were ones of game stagnation. Either there was great difficulty and peril involved in advancing your character's wealth, or it was relatively easy. Either way you either lingered in the poorhouse or quickly became rather boringly wealthy. Even social advancement was basically precluded as it was determined by a pre-generated stat. In Traveler society you literally CANNOT change your social standing! 

I found that campaigns tended to start drifting and peter out fairly predictably after 8 or 10 sessions.

Frankly I think D&D's great success is MOSTLY due to the steep power curve you can climb, and that it is pretty heavily regulated to produce a steady but lengthy advance during which new 'stuff' is (mostly) steadily acquired. Few other RPGs, maybe none really, have done this with the same consistency that D&D does. This was central genius of Arneson/Gygax design.

Yes, you could start fully-realized heroic/mythical/whatever characters. Many games do this. Its hard to get the same sort of player buy-in and difficult to sustain longer term story arcs and campaigns. I think D&D's steady replay value comes from this very fact, it draws you into a long-term commitment to play your character and develop it mechanically.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> In the original Classic game there was literally no mechanism at all for character advancement, EXCEPT if you had psionics



Not quite true. There are the rules for improving skills or stats in Book 2. Having recently used them, I can report that they're not much like D&D!


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## Aldarc

Since we are discussing character creation and worldbuilding, I will express one of the reasons my players and I have enjoyed Fate: character creation often explicitly builds the setting with player-made character/plot/setting hooks. 

When I say that "character creation builds the setting," I do not mean simply any implicit setting that results from the player choosing preexisting class, race, and background options. Instead, I mean that the players often can create setting or have ways to connect themselves explicitly into the world via their aspects. For example, a player could create the Trouble, "I won't let Baron Ziegermann foil me again!" This Trouble tells me that a "Baron Ziegermann" exists in the setting. It tells me that the PC has experienced difficulties with Baron Ziegermann in their past. And by having this as a trouble, it tells me that the player wants their character to encounter Baron Ziegermann in the story. 

Alternatively, a player could create for their character the high concept "Disgraced Ex-Bodyguard of Prince Alfric." This gives me, the GM so much information about the world and the stories that the players want to experience. Here in the latter example, I would have presumably worked with the player in developing this aspect: 
* Player: I want to play a disgraced bodyguard for a noble. 
* Me: Okay cool, but let's flesh that out more. What noble position did they hold? 
* Player: Maybe a prince.  
* Me: Sure, that works. I have a few more questions. 1) What is their name? 2) How did you fall from grace as a bodyguard? And 3) Is the prince still alive or did you fail to protect them? 
* Player: How about 'Alfric'? Hmmmm... how I fell from grace? I failed to protect Prince Alfric from being poisoned because I was "distracted" from my duties by a romantic fling with one of my fellow knights. How about "yes" the prince is still alive, but maybe the prince is now permanently crippled? 

Though the latter two questions are not explicitly part of the High Concept, they are questions that would likely need to be answered for the understanding of the high concept. This High Concept (and associated questions) gives me, the GM, "meatier" setting material than if I had created this NPC as part of some nebulous worldbuilding prep. How is this "meatier"? I did not have to pre-create this NPC and dangle them like shiny objects in front of the players. Instead, the creation of this High Concept entails and conveys player investment into the creation of the setting, the story expectations, and obviously the character. The aspect represents potential plot hooks that the player is offering the GM as part of the rules mechanics. 

This is not to disparage worldbuilding as a GM exercise, but I have found that _the collective group_ often gets more out of a setting when they themselves contribute to its shape and contours through their characters. I also want to be clear here that players contributing to setting creation is definitely possible in other games. From what I have read, and perhaps [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] can chime in here with his experience, but Blades in the Dark has a similar goal, but comes at it from a different tact. As part of character creation, the player selects a few listed NPCs who act as either allies and/or rivals. This is meant to help the GM generate character-tied NPCs in advance. IME, however, Fate empowers that process more consistently than I have experienced with D&D.


----------



## clearstream

Aldarc said:


> Since we are discussing character creation and worldbuilding, I will express one of the reasons my players and I have enjoyed Fate: character creation often explicitly builds the setting with player-made character/plot/setting hooks.
> 
> When I say that "character creation builds the setting," I do not mean simply any implicit setting that results from the player choosing preexisting class, race, and background options. Instead, I mean that the players often can create setting or have ways to connect themselves explicitly into the world via their aspects. For example, a player could create the Trouble, "I won't let Baron Ziegermann foil me again!" This Trouble tells me that a "Baron Ziegermann" exists in the setting. It tells me that the PC has experienced difficulties with Baron Ziegermann in their past. And by having this as a trouble, it tells me that the player wants their character to encounter Baron Ziegermann in the story.
> 
> Alternatively, a player could create for their character the high concept "Disgraced Ex-Bodyguard of Prince Alfric." This gives me, the GM so much information about the world and the stories that the players want to experience. Here in the latter example, I would have presumably worked with the player in developing this aspect:
> * Player: I want to play a disgraced bodyguard for a noble.
> * Me: Okay cool, but let's flesh that out more. What noble position did they hold?
> * Player: Maybe a prince.
> * Me: Sure, that works. I have a few more questions. 1) What is their name? 2) How did you fall from grace as a bodyguard? And 3) Is the prince still alive or did you fail to protect them?
> * Player: How about 'Alfric'? Hmmmm... how I fell from grace? I failed to protect Prince Alfric from being poisoned because I was "distracted" from my duties by a romantic fling with one of my fellow knights. How about "yes" the prince is still alive, but maybe the prince is now permanently crippled?
> 
> Though the latter two questions are not explicitly part of the High Concept, they are questions that would likely need to be answered for the understanding of the high concept. This High Concept (and associated questions) gives me, the GM, "meatier" setting material than if I had created this NPC as part of some nebulous worldbuilding prep. How is this "meatier"? I did not have to pre-create this NPC and dangle them like shiny objects in front of the players. Instead, the creation of this High Concept entails and conveys player investment into the creation of the setting, the story expectations, and obviously the character. The aspect represents potential plot hooks that the player is offering the GM as part of the rules mechanics.
> 
> This is not to disparage worldbuilding as a GM exercise, but I have found that _the collective group_ often gets more out of a setting when they themselves contribute to its shape and contours through their characters. I also want to be clear here that players contributing to setting creation is definitely possible in other games. From what I have read, and perhaps [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] can chime in here with his experience, but Blades in the Dark has a similar goal, but comes at it from a different tact. As part of character creation, the player selects a few listed NPCs who act as either allies and/or rivals. This is meant to help the GM generate character-tied NPCs in advance. IME, however, Fate empowers that process more consistently than I have experienced with D&D.




Are you essentially saying that world-building gains value for you as a group activity?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Not quite true. There are the rules for improving skills or stats in Book 2. Having recently used them, I can report that they're not much like D&D!




Oh, there's a sort of a not-even-really-a-rule kind of "you could let characters gain a skill point if they do X, or Y, or Z." Its hard to even call it a 'rule', and its, at best, entirely optional and even 'experimental' in nature. It also doesn't really work unless you are VERY stingy about allowing players to access it. Anyone with a modest fortune, say from selling an old scout or free trader, could otherwise just spend all their time jacking their skills sky-high instead of actually DOING anything. Simply have your character bail from his career at a fairly early age (say 2-3 enlistments) and then 'study' instead, you can get the skills you WANT and do it much faster than on a career path. In other words it isn't really something that should be counted as a standard part of the game.


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## pemerton

[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION], I think you're skipping right to the end of that section, which does have the sort of stuff you mention (eg paying for experimental neural implants to get a skill).

But the default rules are for improvement by training: you can attempt a 8+ training roll; if it fails you can't try again for a year, if it succeeds you boost two skills by 1; at the end of 4 years you lose the boost unless you make another training roll for the same skills, at which point the +1 becomes permanent and you get another temporary +1; etc. (There are some bells and whistles around combat vs non-combat skills, but I'll let you look them up yourself unless you want me to elaborate.)

Alternatively, you can make the training roll to maintain a regimen of physical exercise which boosts all physical stats by 1 for 4 years; or you can make a training roll and pay a fee for correspondence material to raise your EDU if it is lower than your INT.

Finally, there is a rule for taking a 4 year sabbatical, to gain a single skill at rank 2 for a CR 70,000 cost.

I can report that my players did not find these to be wildly generous PC-improvement rules!


----------



## Aldarc

clearstream said:


> Are you essentially saying that world-building gains value for you as a group activity?



Essentially yes, but I also regard the _how_ as an important part of that process.


----------



## Maxperson

Aldarc said:


> Since we are discussing character creation and worldbuilding, I will express one of the reasons my players and I have enjoyed Fate: character creation often explicitly builds the setting with player-made character/plot/setting hooks.
> 
> When I say that "character creation builds the setting," I do not mean simply any implicit setting that results from the player choosing preexisting class, race, and background options. Instead, I mean that the players often can create setting or have ways to connect themselves explicitly into the world via their aspects. For example, a player could create the Trouble, "I won't let Baron Ziegermann foil me again!" This Trouble tells me that a "Baron Ziegermann" exists in the setting. It tells me that the PC has experienced difficulties with Baron Ziegermann in their past. And by having this as a trouble, it tells me that the player wants their character to encounter Baron Ziegermann in the story.
> 
> Alternatively, a player could create for their character the high concept "Disgraced Ex-Bodyguard of Prince Alfric." This gives me, the GM so much information about the world and the stories that the players want to experience. Here in the latter example, I would have presumably worked with the player in developing this aspect:
> * Player: I want to play a disgraced bodyguard for a noble.
> * Me: Okay cool, but let's flesh that out more. What noble position did they hold?
> * Player: Maybe a prince.
> * Me: Sure, that works. I have a few more questions. 1) What is their name? 2) How did you fall from grace as a bodyguard? And 3) Is the prince still alive or did you fail to protect them?
> * Player: How about 'Alfric'? Hmmmm... how I fell from grace? I failed to protect Prince Alfric from being poisoned because I was "distracted" from my duties by a romantic fling with one of my fellow knights. How about "yes" the prince is still alive, but maybe the prince is now permanently crippled?
> 
> Though the latter two questions are not explicitly part of the High Concept, they are questions that would likely need to be answered for the understanding of the high concept. This High Concept (and associated questions) gives me, the GM, "meatier" setting material than if I had created this NPC as part of some nebulous worldbuilding prep. How is this "meatier"? I did not have to pre-create this NPC and dangle them like shiny objects in front of the players. Instead, the creation of this High Concept entails and conveys player investment into the creation of the setting, the story expectations, and obviously the character. The aspect represents potential plot hooks that the player is offering the GM as part of the rules mechanics.
> 
> This is not to disparage worldbuilding as a GM exercise, but I have found that _the collective group_ often gets more out of a setting when they themselves contribute to its shape and contours through their characters. I also want to be clear here that players contributing to setting creation is definitely possible in other games. From what I have read, and perhaps [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] can chime in here with his experience, but Blades in the Dark has a similar goal, but comes at it from a different tact. As part of character creation, the player selects a few listed NPCs who act as either allies and/or rivals. This is meant to help the GM generate character-tied NPCs in advance. IME, however, Fate empowers that process more consistently than I have experienced with D&D.




I don't require a background in my games, but it does help.  Not only does a background give me hooks to use by bring the PC background into game play, which players love, but it also affords them some worldbuilding.  I often give them free reign to write up the village/town they are from, name NPCs, and so on.  They also have the option of rolling up part of their background via the old Central Casting, which can result in good, bad and neutral events, some mechanical in nature, for their PCs.  If the book gives them a mentor that is noble, I'll let them pick a name, where the noble is from, gender, etc.  It's typically the only real worldbuilding that they do.


----------



## Imaro

Aldarc said:


> Since we are discussing character creation and worldbuilding, I will express one of the reasons my players and I have enjoyed Fate: character creation often explicitly builds the setting with player-made character/plot/setting hooks.
> 
> When I say that "character creation builds the setting," I do not mean simply any implicit setting that results from the player choosing preexisting class, race, and background options. Instead, I mean that the players often can create setting or have ways to connect themselves explicitly into the world via their aspects. For example, a player could create the Trouble, "I won't let Baron Ziegermann foil me again!" This Trouble tells me that a "Baron Ziegermann" exists in the setting. It tells me that the PC has experienced difficulties with Baron Ziegermann in their past. And by having this as a trouble, it tells me that the player wants their character to encounter Baron Ziegermann in the story.




I'm curious do you think that D&D 5e's ideals, bonds and flaws can accomplish the same thing?  If not... I have to ask, why not?



Aldarc said:


> Alternatively, a player could create for their character the high concept "Disgraced Ex-Bodyguard of Prince Alfric." This gives me, the GM so much information about the world and the stories that the players want to experience. Here in the latter example, I would have presumably worked with the player in developing this aspect:
> * Player: I want to play a disgraced bodyguard for a noble.
> * Me: Okay cool, but let's flesh that out more. What noble position did they hold?
> * Player: Maybe a prince.
> * Me: Sure, that works. I have a few more questions. 1) What is their name? 2) How did you fall from grace as a bodyguard? And 3) Is the prince still alive or did you fail to protect them?
> * Player: How about 'Alfric'? Hmmmm... how I fell from grace? I failed to protect Prince Alfric from being poisoned because I was "distracted" from my duties by a romantic fling with one of my fellow knights. How about "yes" the prince is still alive, but maybe the prince is now permanently crippled?
> 
> Though the latter two questions are not explicitly part of the High Concept, they are questions that would likely need to be answered for the understanding of the high concept. This High Concept (and associated questions) gives me, the GM, "meatier" setting material than if I had created this NPC as part of some nebulous worldbuilding prep. How is this "meatier"? I did not have to pre-create this NPC and dangle them like shiny objects in front of the players. Instead, the creation of this High Concept entails and conveys player investment into the creation of the setting, the story expectations, and obviously the character. The aspect represents potential plot hooks that the player is offering the GM as part of the rules mechanics.




Again I have to ask, how is this different from the GM and a player establishing and fleshing out character backstory (or more specifically an ideal bond or flaw) in D&D 5e?  




Aldarc said:


> This is not to disparage worldbuilding as a GM exercise, but I have found that _the collective group_ often gets more out of a setting when they themselves contribute to its shape and contours through their characters. I also want to be clear here that players contributing to setting creation is definitely possible in other games. From what I have read, and perhaps @_*Ovinomancer*_ can chime in here with his experience, but Blades in the Dark has a similar goal, but comes at it from a different tact. As part of character creation, the player selects a few listed NPCs who act as either allies and/or rivals. This is meant to help the GM generate character-tied NPCs in advance. IME, however, Fate empowers that process more consistently than I have experienced with D&D.




See my experience here is that not everyone enjoys this style.  There are players who really aren't interested in fleshing out the GM's world through their character's backstory and traits (they may not even be that interested in fleshing out their own character's traits and personality).  As someone who runs games (as opposed to playing them) near constantly I've been in this situation myself where I don't want to create a world... I want to play in someone else's world.  

I see 1 major difference in how FATE (aspects) approaches this vs. D&D's (ideals, flaws and bonds)... the degree to which it is mandated as part of the game.  In FATE aspects are mandatory and are a fundamental part of the game mechanics in play, which means there is no opting out of them and every player has to engage with them to the same degree (fully).  D&D on the other hand treats it as an optional system which players can buy into fully or choose to ignore as they see fit.  FATE is great if you have a group with total buy in and your method of setting building is great for players who want the experience of building the world (though I think it's a big mistake to assume that this is desired by all players or even a universally positive thing).  However for a group that doesn't want to go deep into characterization and has no desire to build the world their stories take place in (or even a group that is mixed on the idea) FATE is pretty limiting and something like 5e, IMO, is a better fit since players can choose to buy in or not as much as they want.

EDIT: Though this is purely conjecture, I think this is a major reason games like FATE don't have the widespread appeal of something like D&D or more traditional rpg's.  They require more from the players and IME, it's a requirement that makes it a less attractive option for some new players as well as casual players and even experienced players who don't necessarily fall into the Storytelling (and to a lesser extent the Actor) player types.


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## Imaro

Maxperson said:


> *I don't require a background in my games*, but it does help.  Not only does a background give me hooks to use by bring the PC background into game play, which players love, but it also affords them some worldbuilding.  I often give them free reign to write up the village/town they are from, name NPCs, and so on.  They also have the option of rolling up part of their background via the old Central Casting, which can result in good, bad and neutral events, some mechanical in nature, for their PCs.  If the book gives them a mentor that is noble, I'll let them pick a name, where the noble is from, gender, etc.  It's typically the only real worldbuilding that they do.




Emphasis mine... this IMO is key.  I don't want me or the game to force this type of stuff on players who aren't interested in it.


----------



## Aldarc

Imaro said:


> I'm curious do you think that D&D 5e's ideals, bonds and flaws can accomplish the same thing?  If not... I have to ask, why not?



Not really. D&D 5e's inspiration mechanic feels like a half-baked afterthought vomited last minute onto the game. As you say below, this is a fundamental mechanic of Fate's game play. It has bite. It is an integral part of the character. It is in the forefront and not an out-of-sight, out-of-mind background. 

In regards to "what about 5E inspiration?," you may enjoy reading Angry DM's article "11 Ways to Take the Suck Out of Inspiration in D&D." 



> Again I have to ask, how is this different from the GM and a player establishing and fleshing out character backstory (or more specifically an ideal bond or flaw) in D&D 5e?



I hope you do not mind me asking, but are you fishing for a particular answer here? I ask because you earlier seemed to demonstrate proficient awareness of Fate. But IMO this question reads as an "But D&D 5E does this too!" Yet if one was sufficiently familiar with Fate, then it seems like one would readily spot the differences in these approaches and thus the question comes across as insincere. If I am reading you incorrectly, then I apologize in advance but this questioning seems incongruent with your earlier remarks on Fate. Also, I am aware that this is something of a non-answer, but I'm confused about where you are coming from here. 

But [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION], I did address this issue implictly earlier in my post. 


Aldarc said:


> I also want to be clear here that players contributing to setting creation is definitely possible in other games... IME, however, Fate empowers that process more consistently than I have experienced with D&D.






> See my experience here is that not everyone enjoys this style.  *There are players who really aren't interested in fleshing out the GM's world through their character's backstory and traits* (they may not even be that interested in fleshing out their own character's traits and personality).  As someone who runs games (as opposed to playing them) near constantly I've been in this situation myself where I don't want to create a world... I want to play in someone else's world.



That's fine. I am speaking only about my own players, my own preferences, and my own experiences, which I made quite clear in my opening paragraph. 

Furthermore, I don't think that many players conscientiously set about to accomplish or even enjoy the point in bold. But most players IME are interested and invested in who their characters are, even non-actors/storytellers. Most players don't regard this as worldbuilding at all, but as simply character creation. The actual worldbuilding implications often escape them. Yet even if one does not want to "worldbuild" a setting as a player but simply play in a setting, one could connect their character to that "someone else's world," and Fate does that just as well. If I were using Fate to play Eberron, then I could easily create "Dragonmarked Bastard Scion of House Cannith" as a high concept which plugs me directly into Khorvaire. 



> I see 1 major difference in how FATE (aspects) approaches this vs. D&D's (ideals, flaws and bonds)... the degree to which it is mandated as part of the game.  In FATE aspects are mandatory and are a fundamental part of the game mechanics in play, which means there is no opting out of them and every player has to engage with them to the same degree (fully).  D&D on the other hand treats it as an optional system which players can buy into fully or choose to ignore as they see fit.  FATE is great if you have a group with total buy in and your method of setting building is great for players who want the experience of building the world (though I think it's a big mistake to assume that this is desired by all players or even a universally positive thing).  However for a group that doesn't want to go deep into characterization and has no desire to build the world their stories take place in (or even a group that is mixed on the idea) FATE is pretty limiting and something like 5e, IMO, is a better fit since players can choose to buy in or not as much as they want.
> 
> EDIT: Though this is purely conjecture, I think this is a major reason games like FATE don't have the widespread appeal of something like D&D or more traditional rpg's.  They require more from the players and IME, it's a requirement that makes it a less attractive option for some new players as well as casual players and even experienced players who don't necessarily fall into the Storytelling (and to a lesser extent the Actor) player types.



This sounds less like your conjecture and more like you wading into a pissing contest of why your dad can beat up my dad, so I don't find your "conjecture" in this regard particularly appropriate for this conversation. 

To reiterate: my goal was simply to communicate what _I_ appreciate about Fate as a system in regards to how character creation ties into worldbuilding.


----------



## Imaro

Aldarc said:


> Not really. D&D 5e's inspiration mechanic feels like a half-baked afterthought vomited last minute onto the game. As you say below, this is a fundamental mechanic of Fate's game play. It has bite. It is an integral part of the character. It is in the forefront and not an out-of-sight, out-of-mind background.
> 
> In regards to "what about 5E inspiration?," you may enjoy reading Angry DM's article "11 Ways to Take the Suck Out of Inspiration in D&D."




Ok you were describing how aspects in FATE helped you build setting so the question was could D&D's bonds, ideals and flaws be used to world build in the way you described... I get that you don't like them (more than ever after this answer) but I don't think you really answered my question...

 EDIT: Backgrounds are only out of sight out of mind if the player and GM choose to ignore them... which they could also do by never compelling them in FATE...



Aldarc said:


> I hope you do not mind me asking, but are you fishing for a particular answer here? I ask because you earlier seemed to demonstrate proficient awareness of Fate. But IMO this question reads as an "But D&D 5E does this too!" Yet if one was sufficiently familiar with Fate, then it seems like one would readily spot the differences in these approaches and thus the question comes across as insincere. If I am reading you incorrectly, then I apologize in advance but this questioning seems incongruent with your earlier remarks on Fate. Also, I am aware that this is something of a non-answer, but I'm confused about where you are coming from here.




No I'm not fishing for a particular answer... I'm not asking about the mechanics because nothing in FATE's mechanics force an Aspect to be linked to worldbuilding.  I was asking what do you think the negatives, if there are any, around using ideals, bonds and flaws in the same way you use aspects (extra questions, building the setting around the answer, etc.) to worldbuild. 



Aldarc said:


> But @_*Imaro*_, I did address this issue implictly earlier in my post.




Yes and I was hoping to get you to expound on why you believed that... 




Aldarc said:


> That's fine. I am speaking only about my own players, my own preferences, and my own experiences, which I made quite clear in my opening paragraph.




I never questioned whether you were making a general statement or not... but I assume in a discussion different experiences, thoughts, etc. around whatever is being discussed are fair game.  



Aldarc said:


> Furthermore, I don't think that many players conscientiously set about to accomplish or even enjoy the point in bold. But most players IME are interested and invested in who their characters are, even non-actors/storytellers. Most players don't regard this as worldbuilding at all, but as simply character creation. The actual worldbuilding implications often escape them. Yet even if one does not want to "worldbuild" a setting as a player but simply play in a setting, one could connect their character to that "someone else's world," and Fate does that just as well. If I were using Fate to play Eberron, then I could easily create "Dragonmarked Bastard Scion of House Cannith" as a high concept which plugs me directly into Khorvaire.




Yes and you could also do this by selecting the Dragonmarked feat for House Cannith and writing up backstory (or tie it into your ideals, flaws and bonds)... Given a GM and player who want this to be a part of the character and world equally in both systems...what, from a worldbuilding perspective, in FATE makes this "meatier" than other games where you say took the feat and tied it to one of your flaws, idelas or bonds?   



Aldarc said:


> This sounds less like your conjecture and more like you wading into a pissing contest of why your dad can beat up my dad, so I don't find your "conjecture" in this regard particularly appropriate for this conversation.
> 
> To reiterate: my goal was simply to communicate what _I_ appreciate about Fate as a system in regards to how character creation ties into worldbuilding.




I'm going to step back here as I feel like I posted in good faith with comments and thoughts around your post even asking for further comment from you around ideas you presented... and it was taken as some kind of attack on you.  I'm not sure how we discuss things if questioning and differing views are looked at in that way so I'll retract my questions at this point... though I will say when you claim a specific games mechanics create "meatier" worldbuilding (thus associating a value judgement with it) but don't really go into depth around why this is...you should expect people to question it, especially in what is supposed to be a discussion.


----------



## hawkeyefan

So the recent focus of the discussion has me thinking and I want to see what others may feel....

When it comes to Background Details such as Bonds or Connections and the like....whatever term may be used for a specific game...some games incorporate them into game mechanics, and others don't (or do so in a minimal way such as 5E's Inspiration). 

Now, I've been playing with the same group of people since we were kids, and we long ago all started creating background details and connections to NPCs or other PCs for our characters without any rule telling us to do so. I think this is why I found the initial premise of the thread to be so questionable....my players have been involved in worldbuilding pretty heavily since the 2e D&D days. And I and other GMs in our group have always taken these character details into consideration when running a game. 

It seems to me that there are three primary variations of how a game handles this. I'm sure that there are any number of slight variations on them, but the three i think seem to be the most prominent are:

1) The game leaves the determination of Background Details and how they impact play to the players and/or GM. (3E D&D)

2) The game includes these details in character generation, but the effect they have on play is nil or minimal. (5E D&D's inspiration)

3) The game includes these kinds of details in character generation, and then they can impact play in some mechanical way. (FATE)

What do you think the pros and cons of each approach might be? Which approach do you prefer? Are there other approaches to background details in addition to the three I've outlined above?


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> @_*AbdulAlhazred*_, I think you're skipping right to the end of that section, which does have the sort of stuff you mention (eg paying for experimental neural implants to get a skill).
> 
> But the default rules are for improvement by training: you can attempt a 8+ training roll; if it fails you can't try again for a year, if it succeeds you boost two skills by 1; at the end of 4 years you lose the boost unless you make another training roll for the same skills, at which point the +1 becomes permanent and you get another temporary +1; etc. (There are some bells and whistles around combat vs non-combat skills, but I'll let you look them up yourself unless you want me to elaborate.)
> 
> Alternatively, you can make the training roll to maintain a regimen of physical exercise which boosts all physical stats by 1 for 4 years; or you can make a training roll and pay a fee for correspondence material to raise your EDU if it is lower than your INT.
> 
> Finally, there is a rule for taking a 4 year sabbatical, to gain a single skill at rank 2 for a CR 70,000 cost.
> 
> I can report that my players did not find these to be wildly generous PC-improvement rules!




I don't recall anything about the 8+ rule, that's really in the original 1977 LBBs? That's the version I have, like printing #1 I'm pretty sure. hehe. I recall the sabbatical rule, and something about spending a fixed period of time practicing to get a +1, and then IIRC you had to successfully use the skill in play, something something something or lose the bonus after a year, something like that. Anyway, the 70k CR aside, the sabbatical rule is actually QUITE generous, as its very easy to get nothing or a single +1 to one skill in a 4 year enlistment (the later mercenary/high guard etc. year-by-year rules are more generous). The main limitation really is it has to be a NEW skill, you can't add +2 to an EXISTING skill. Still, level 2 in a skill makes you above average professional-grade competent, its nothing to sneeze at. 

Anyway, we agree on the main point, that the 'progression' in Traveler is pretty much non-existent. Even if you go by the semi-official later 'experience' rules that allow gaining 0.1 skill points after a successful skill use (IIRC you have to fail a basic check as well, so more skilled people get less experience, its been a while) progression is so slow as to be almost meaningless. Most importantly characters don't get tougher. Its possible to buy into things like powered armor and whatnot, but that just tends to get you in trouble with villains equipped with PGMP-15s....


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> I'm curious do you think that D&D 5e's ideals, bonds and flaws can accomplish the same thing?  If not... I have to ask, why not?






Imaro said:


> Again I have to ask, how is this different from the GM and a player  establishing and fleshing out character backstory (or more specifically  an ideal bond or flaw) in D&D 5e?



I think they lack the 'heft' of FATE character aspects, which are pretty much all-defining. Depending on the exact system you're playing they could be somewhat more or less important, but an aspect is powerful, the rules let you leverage it in various ways, its a major part of your character. 

5e's IBFs are, first of all, much more specific, being at least an entire sentence, which makes them closer to backstory. There's also no tie in to anything in the rules, particularly. I think they're meant to play into Inspiration, but that itself is a relatively weak narrativist mechanic. The rest of the system doesn't particularly envisage or support Story Now, though it doesn't actively prevent it either. 

Another consideration is that FATE is really intended to be played this way. It doesn't work without leveraging character's traits. 5e you can just plain ignore them, they're not inherently important at all.



> See my experience here is that not everyone enjoys this style.  There are players who really aren't interested in fleshing out the GM's world through their character's backstory and traits (they may not even be that interested in fleshing out their own character's traits and personality).  As someone who runs games (as opposed to playing them) near constantly I've been in this situation myself where I don't want to create a world... I want to play in someone else's world.
> 
> I see 1 major difference in how FATE (aspects) approaches this vs. D&D's (ideals, flaws and bonds)... the degree to which it is mandated as part of the game.  In FATE aspects are mandatory and are a fundamental part of the game mechanics in play, which means there is no opting out of them and every player has to engage with them to the same degree (fully).  D&D on the other hand treats it as an optional system which players can buy into fully or choose to ignore as they see fit.  FATE is great if you have a group with total buy in and your method of setting building is great for players who want the experience of building the world (though I think it's a big mistake to assume that this is desired by all players or even a universally positive thing).  However for a group that doesn't want to go deep into characterization and has no desire to build the world their stories take place in (or even a group that is mixed on the idea) FATE is pretty limiting and something like 5e, IMO, is a better fit since players can choose to buy in or not as much as they want.
> 
> EDIT: Though this is purely conjecture, I think this is a major reason games like FATE don't have the widespread appeal of something like D&D or more traditional rpg's.  They require more from the players and IME, it's a requirement that makes it a less attractive option for some new players as well as casual players and even experienced players who don't necessarily fall into the Storytelling (and to a lesser extent the Actor) player types.




I've found that players LOVE the kind of immersion that something like FATE can give them, because it creates a whole feeling of characterization that you have to know how to work at in games of the 5e type (which may actually punish it in some cases).


----------



## Lanefan

hawkeyefan said:


> It seems to me that there are three primary variations of how a game handles this. I'm sure that there are any number of slight variations on them, but the three i think seem to be the most prominent are:
> 
> 1) The game leaves the determination of Background Details and how they impact play to the players and/or GM. (3E D&D)
> 
> 2) The game includes these details in character generation, but the effect they have on play is nil or minimal. (5E D&D's inspiration)
> 
> 3) The game includes these kinds of details in character generation, and then they can impact play in some mechanical way. (FATE)
> 
> Are there other approaches to background details in addition to the three I've outlined above?



Yes, I think there is:

4) The game leaves determination of Background Details* to random roll, done either during char-gen or sometime later or never, and any impact on play is determined by the DM only if-when something significant is rolled.  The background roll(s) are merely to help provide ideas for the player if needed.

* - beyond the basics e.g. past non-adventuring profession(s), languages known, etc.

I see 4) as different from 1) in that 1) reads as if it's mandated by the game and therefore must be done for each PC via a method determined by each table, while 4) is entirely optional.

Lanefan


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> Ok you were describing how aspects in FATE helped you build setting so the question was could D&D's bonds, ideals and flaws be used to world build in the way you described... I get that you don't like them (more than ever after this answer) but I don't think you really answered my question...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes and you could also do this by selecting the Dragonmarked feat for House Cannith and writing up backstory (or tie it into your ideals, flaws and bonds)... Given a GM and player who want this to be a part of the character and world equally in both systems...what, from a worldbuilding perspective, in FATE makes this "meatier" than other games where you say took the feat and tied it to one of your flaws, idelas or bonds?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> In a game like 4e, you can of course do that, and as a feat it has more heft than as merely an IBF would in 5e. There is STILL not as much there as an aspect compulsion in FATE, and a 4e character will most likely have many other feats, though maybe not at level 1, depending on build. Either way, 4e PCs have powers, maybe a theme, a background, etc.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm going to step back here as I feel like I posted in good faith with comments and thoughts around your post even asking for further comment from you around ideas you presented... and it was taken as some kind of attack on you.  I'm not sure how we discuss things if questioning and differing views are looked at in that way so I'll retract my questions at this point... though I will say when you claim a specific games mechanics create "meatier" worldbuilding (thus associating a value judgement with it) but don't really go into depth around why this is...you should expect people to question it, especially in what is supposed to be a discussion.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> 
> Not to continue a 'fight' that obviously nobody was really interested in having, but I can understand why [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] asked the question about 'fishing' and how he probably felt when he made this comment. I've heard a lot about how certain people feel like [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is down on their styles of play. It OFTEN seems to those who might be on the 'other side' (loosely, not sure there is one) of this divide that we're being cast as 'those weirdos over there that like funny games', to put in terms we probably all identify with who started playing RPGs at a young age. Every time I hear about how my version of this is somehow a 'fringe' style of play, which seems to implicitly be a way of saying that its not really as good as the 'regular' way, I kind of cringe a little. I hear people say they don't intend that, but the same people come back after [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] when he basically says the same thing, that he isn't putting their kind of play down.
> 
> I mean, I have mixed feelings. I don't like to think its 'wrong' to discuss why maybe more people play one way than another, or whatever. It can be pretty hard to keep it from seeming like there's an unspoken agenda though! Even if there really isn't one.
Click to expand...


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> So the recent focus of the discussion has me thinking and I want to see what others may feel....
> 
> When it comes to Background Details such as Bonds or Connections and the like....whatever term may be used for a specific game...some games incorporate them into game mechanics, and others don't (or do so in a minimal way such as 5E's Inspiration).
> 
> Now, I've been playing with the same group of people since we were kids, and we long ago all started creating background details and connections to NPCs or other PCs for our characters without any rule telling us to do so. I think this is why I found the initial premise of the thread to be so questionable....my players have been involved in worldbuilding pretty heavily since the 2e D&D days. And I and other GMs in our group have always taken these character details into consideration when running a game.
> 
> It seems to me that there are three primary variations of how a game handles this. I'm sure that there are any number of slight variations on them, but the three i think seem to be the most prominent are:
> 
> 1) The game leaves the determination of Background Details and how they impact play to the players and/or GM. (3E D&D)
> 
> 2) The game includes these details in character generation, but the effect they have on play is nil or minimal. (5E D&D's inspiration)
> 
> 3) The game includes these kinds of details in character generation, and then they can impact play in some mechanical way. (FATE)
> 
> What do you think the pros and cons of each approach might be? Which approach do you prefer? Are there other approaches to background details in addition to the three I've outlined above?




4) These rules ARE the game. There are actually quite a few games in this category. One I have played extensively is PACE, which literally is NOTHING but 'aspects', it doesn't even have dice. I believe Amber has this kind of a structure as well, doesn't it? 

There are a few things you could say about this. One could say that type 1 games leave the player's free to characterize their characters as they see fit (though D&D's alignment and even class kind of go against this). Others could say that type 3/4 games provide stronger characterization and its still player choice. Obviously some would also prefer the 1 end of the axis as not requiring them to really RP at all. 

As I've long held, I think D&D compels play by its focus on advancement, which generates high replay value. It could incorporate type 3 mechanics as well (type 4 might be hard, but may be possible) but that would perhaps dilute the focus. It hasn't really been tried. I think for 20+ years people were afraid to 'clone D&D' for both legal and maybe gamer cultural reasons, so other game systems left that power advancement model alone. Once 'narrativist' designs were perfected and OGL provided a way to fuse those with d20 these sorts of games had already sort of mapped out their own conceptual space. Its only now that the two strands are finally starting to come together. Heck, I've done it myself HoML is a 'D&D' (there is 4e-like advancement, basically) as well as STRONG narrativist/Story Now design. I honestly don't know of another game that is in this space. Of course I am not that great a game designer and probably won't ever feel motivated to PUBLISH it, but I'm guessing someone will soon do the same thing.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I don't like to think its 'wrong' to discuss why maybe more people play one way than another, or whatever. It can be pretty hard to keep it from seeming like there's an unspoken agenda though! Even if there really isn't one.





AbdulAlhazred said:


> One could say that type 1 games leave the player's free to characterize their characters as they see fit (though D&D's alignment and even class kind of go against this). Others could say that type 3/4 games provide stronger characterization and its still player choice. Obviously some would also prefer the 1 end of the axis as not requiring them to really RP at all.



The range of activities that can count as "playing a RPG" is pretty wide. Playing essentially board-game style "Gygaxian" D&D is RPGing. So is playing Dogs in the Vineyard. So is playing Fate. But as far as the minutiae of gameplay is concerned, it's going to be pretty different. (Consider canasta and bridge - both card games, but quite different in the details of play.)

And then there is the player who just sits back, follows the narration, kicks in the odd in-character comment, and rolls the dice when a fight breaks out. In "Gygaxian" D&D, or even a contemporary module like (say) Lost Mines of Phandelver that person can rely on others to manage the mapping, to manage the "plot" (if there is one), and the like. But in Fate, that person is going to flounder if s/he is not engaging the aspects; just like in 4e that person is going to flounder if s/he doesn't understand his/her PC build.

It's not a coincidence, I think, given that I think that sort of player may be fairly common, that games which make room for him/her are more popular!


----------



## Aldarc

Imaro said:


> but I don't think you really answered my question...
> 
> I was asking what do you think the negatives, if there are any, around using ideals, bonds and flaws in the same way you use aspects (extra questions, building the setting around the answer, etc.) to worldbuild.
> 
> Yes and I was hoping to get you to expound on why you believed that...



One of the core problems, IMHO, is that even if you expanded the Inspiration Bonds system, it would still be a mostly secondary to the core game. As such, the amount of effort that you need to put in to making Inspiration Bonds work as a more critical player-facing world-building mechanic may not be worth the gains. 

You could definitely use Inspiration Bonds to world-build, and it may be worth looking into it for players to think more about their characters. However, this process in 5e is undoubtedly more detached from the core mechanics and character creation process than it is in Fate, where it is an explicit part of the Social Contract of its gameplay. Inspiration is not given much elucidation or support in 5e. It ties itself primarily to Background and so, in some regards, it is narrower in its scope and application. Furthermore, it's also an issue of how these player aspects in Fate empower _additional_ player-facing "world-building" in play, but I will get to that later. 



> EDIT: Backgrounds are only out of sight out of mind if the player and GM choose to ignore them... which they could also do by never compelling them in FATE...



My impression here is that the Inspiration Bond system is so haphazardly vestigial to 5E that it is often not a matter of whether "the player and GM choose to ignore them," but, rather, whether "the player and GM choose to include them." I think that this latter point is more often than not a better representation of how Inspiration-Bonds play out at most tables: a proportionately equal afterthought to playing the core game. 



> Yes and you could also do this by selecting the Dragonmarked feat for House Cannith and writing up backstory (or tie it into your ideals, flaws and bonds)... Given a GM and player who want this to be a part of the character and world equally in both systems...what, from a worldbuilding perspective, in FATE makes this "meatier" than other games where you say took the feat and tied it to one of your flaws, idelas or bonds?



You could agree upon nearly anything that you want for your character's backstory. This is equally true for both 5e D&D and Fate, so much that it borders on a tautology. Yet there are a few pretty big critical differences here between 5e and Fate. 

IME, I would say that Fate's comparative "meat" in this regards, however, comes from the 1) mechanical prominence, 2) degree of empowerment, and 3) play consistency and frequency of these systems. But these three dimensions are intricately tied, so I can speak of them together with some contrast with D&D 5e, since that seems to be our comparison point. 

As I said before, the Inspiration-Bond mechanic is more vestigial to character creation in 5e. In contrast, Aspects (e.g., High Concept, Trouble, etc.) _are character creation_ in Fate. Your aspects define who you are or, alternatively, how you define yourself. The core of your character concept are these aspects, particularly the High Concept and Trouble, which are primary pumps of your character concept's "heart" and the Fate point economy. The game book encourages you to build setting in your character concept as expressed in your aspects. From the Fate-SRD: 


> Lenny and Lily settled on the “guy and girl with sword” idea, and Ryan’s going with “guy without sword.” But those are just starting ideas. Now it’s time to turn them into proper high concepts.
> 
> Lenny latches onto the idea of tying his concept to an organization, and starts with “Disciple of…something.” He envisions a character who has trained in some mysterious martial art, and that involves rival schools and foes that want to learn those secrets. The group helps him come up with a suitably mysterious name: Disciple of the Ivory Shroud. (And now we’ve made a bit more setting: there’s an Ivory Shroud, mysterious martial arts, and all that implies.)




You cannot create a character in Fate without a High Concept and Trouble, but you could create characters in D&D 5e without Bonds. Arguably but uncontroversially, the primary focus in D&D is on Race/Class combination. What about Background in 5e? It's honestly a bit more secondary. It's primary perks are Two Bonus Skills > Two Bonus Language/Tool Proficiencies > Bonus Starting Goods. The Inspiration System is tacked onto Background. (_Why does my character flaw stem from being a Guild Artisan?_) Thus it is ironically relegated to the background of the Background system. 

In Fate, this is less about your "Background" and more about your "Foreground" of who you are playing. It's about establishing who you want to play and what you want to see in play. It is core to your character concept. It is your character pitch. You will be invoking aspects, and your aspects will be compelled. There is a consistent engagement in play with those aspects. This is more mechanical "meat" than Inspiration. When you use a Fate point (aka Fate's "inspiration" mechanic), then you will likely be invoking off one of those aspects for the bonus, re-roll, or the "other worldbuilding" thing that I alluded to earlier. That worldbuilding thing is "Declaring a Story Detail." A player can invoke one of their aspects  - though with the GM's right to reject it - to declare the existence of a story point that works in the advantage of the player/character. Here is the example that Fate uses: 


> Zird the Arcane gets captured with his friends by some tribesfolk from the Sagroth Wilds. The three heroes are unceremoniously dumped before the chieftain, and Amanda describes the chieftain addressing them in a strange, guttural tongue.
> 
> Ryan looks at his sheet and says, "Hey, I have _If I Haven’t Been There, I’ve Read About It_ on my sheet. Can I declare that I’ve studied this language at some point, so we can communicate?”
> 
> Amanda thinks that’s perfectly reasonable to assume. Ryan tosses over a fate point and describes Zird answering in the chieftain’s own speech, which turns all eyes in the village (including those of his friends) on him in a moment of surprise.
> 
> Ryan has Zird look at his friends and say, "Books. They’re good for you."



Similarly, we could turn to the point of our previous character, the Disgraced Ex-Bodyguard of Prince Alfric. The players may be trying to sneak into the manor of the prince. The players fail to find a suitable "conventional" entrance into the manor. The Player then turns to the GM with a Fate point and says, "So because I am the 'Disgraced Ex-Bodyguard of Prince Alfric,' I know that there is a secret tunnel that leads from the kitchen in the manor to the garden." That character's world-building aspect has just empowered the player to world-build some more amidst gameplay. It did not stop at character creation. This IMO "meatier" because the worldbuilding here is more substantial to the core player-facing mechanics. I seriously doubt that the Inspiration-Bond system would ever see play like this. 

An Aside: Point #2 (i.e., Degree of Empowerment) also gets into the point that I raised earlier about level-gating character concept. Feats limit this concept in 5e, but that is not the case in Fate. Unfortunately we don't know what a Dragonmarked feat system would like in 5e, and it is questionable that it would have one. After all, how to implement Dragonmarks is one of the big debate points when people talk of porting Eberron to 5e. If you make it a feat system in 5e, then this means that only humans can start at 1st level in their Dragonmark. And due to the Ability Score Improvement, you are forcing players to decide between Character Functionality and Character Concept. Often, IME, the former wins even though the latter is more desired. So let's instead operate on the principle that the 5e Inspiration Bond system applied to 3.5 Eberron. If I were in 3e, then my character concept is limited by the Dragonmarked feats available for my level, such that I can only take Lesser Mark of Making (?). But my desired starting point for my character may be at a more "advanced" point in my character's life when they already have the Greater Mark of Making. I could start my character in Fate with that as an aspect; however, D&D says "no" because it ties these things into power level and an increasing degree of mechanical advantages. In terms of worldbuilding as an aspect of character creation, this means that there is more inherent worldbuilding potential out of the gate mechanically with a Fate character than with a D&D 5e character. This is not a value judgment on D&D 5e. It's simply about recognizing the limitations, strengths and weaknesses, and benefits of different systems.

EDIT: For the sake of everyone else, please don't quote giant chunks of my wall of text. Please quote key ideas and snippets. Otherwise, this all becomes far more unpleasant to read.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> The range of activities that can count as "playing a RPG" is pretty wide. Playing essentially board-game style "Gygaxian" D&D is RPGing. So is playing Dogs in the Vineyard. So is playing Fate. But as far as the minutiae of gameplay is concerned, it's going to be pretty different. (Consider canasta and bridge - both card games, but quite different in the details of play.)
> 
> And then there is the player who just sits back, follows the narration, kicks in the odd in-character comment, and rolls the dice when a fight breaks out. In "Gygaxian" D&D, or even a contemporary module like (say) Lost Mines of Phandelver that person can rely on others to manage the mapping, to manage the "plot" (if there is one), and the like. But in Fate, that person is going to flounder if s/he is not engaging the aspects; just like in 4e that person is going to flounder if s/he doesn't understand his/her PC build.
> 
> It's not a coincidence, I think, given that I think that sort of player may be fairly common, that games which make room for him/her are more popular!




I think there are a variety of factors at work in terms of different game preferences and the relative popularity of various games. It is probably fruitless to make anything but guesses and any such exercise is likely to end up reeking of our various biases and whatnot. 

But yes, there are some 'just like to kick back' players. I haven't found that story focused games necessarily turn them off. Most of them are OK with BEING engaged, they're just not so into going to a lot of effort to make that happen on their own. They can often play a game like mine and have plenty of fun. Either they mostly ignore the big driving 'stuff' and take on a smaller role, or they tie their 'wagon' to another character that is run by a more proactive player. You can certainly encourage this sort of thing if it works for them.

I don't see this as much different from the guy who plays in a module and just hangs on the second ranks taking his turns and acquiring his treasure and XP split.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I don't see this as much different from the guy who plays in a module and just hangs on the second ranks taking his turns and acquiring his treasure and XP split.



It's hard to make interesting, context-independent generalisations here. I'll just compare a few systems.

In AD&D it is possible to be the player who does what I said - sits back, makes the odd comment, rolls the dice when a fight breaks out. I've played with these players! As MUs they're terrible, because they need someone else to help manage the spell load-out (both choosing, and casting). As clerics they're a bit better because the spell load-out can be focused on healing, and they're more viable in combat. But fighter is obviously the default AD&D class for such a player.

I've GMed for this sort of player in Rolemaster, and a fairly simple warrior-ish build is tolerable. Spells are a nightmare, though (for the same sort of reason that 4e is widely regarded as not that friendly to the "casual" player); and even as a warrior there will probably be quite a bit of stuff on the PC sheet - given the richness of the RM skill system - that doesn't really get used, or needs advice from another player/GM when it is used.

In Cortex+ Heroic I think this sort of player will find building the dice pool a bit of a headache, because there's no "generic" die you roll (d20, or d100), but a somewhat unique dice pool to put together every time (by combining various descriptors both from the PC sheet and the framed scene).

I think Burning Wheel will just tend to suck for this sort of player. If they are not managing and engaging their own PCs Beliefs and Instincts they won't earn artha (fate points and the like), and without arth it can be quite hard to succeed. This sort of player will also be hard for the GM, as they don't contribute the sort of focus and energy that BW looks to from a player to make the game go.

In 4e or a 4e variant, there is less need to engage Beliefs/Instincts/Aspects/Descriptors, which makes it friendlier for this sort of player. There's still the issue of managing the power list - even if the roll of the d20 is constant, the powers aren't - but some 4e-type builds obviously help with this (eg some Essentials-style builds).


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## Imaro

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think there are a variety of factors at work in terms of different game preferences and the relative popularity of various games. It is probably fruitless to make anything but guesses and any such exercise is likely to end up reeking of our various biases and whatnot.
> 
> But yes, there are some 'just like to kick back' players. I haven't found that story focused games necessarily turn them off. Most of them are OK with BEING engaged, they're just not so into going to a lot of effort to make that happen on their own. They can often play a game like mine and have plenty of fun. Either they mostly ignore the big driving 'stuff' and take on a smaller role, or they tie their 'wagon' to another character that is run by a more proactive player. You can certainly encourage this sort of thing if it works for them.
> 
> I don't see this as much different from the guy who plays in a module and just hangs on the second ranks taking his turns and acquiring his treasure and XP split.




First @_*pemerton*_ ... just wanted to say in your recent  posts you summed up what I was (trying to say??) saying earlier and apparently were able to avoid accusations of disingenuous behavior/posting.  Perhaps I'm not expressing my thoughts correctly but thanks for re-stating it (in a more clear manner??).

My biggest issue with players like this and games like FATE (which for the record I do play and enjoy) is that they don't want to do the lengthy character creation that is involved in creating a character for said game (especially the more involved older versions of FATE).  Either they haven't and don't enjoy thinking in that much depth about a character they haven't played yet or they just want to get to playing the game. And yes I know FATE can do the design a character during play method but IME, this becomes an exercise where I as the GM, often through prompting (Hey there's a locked door did you want to make one of your skills lockpicking?) am basically building their character for them. 

I think that it takes a particular (uncommon??) type of player to get a game like FATE or MHRP to play well... the group I have now, some of them would be really great in FATE and would really enjoy it but the other half would probably make the quality of the game drop...  When I see mechanics like D&D's Inspiration+ Ideals/Boons/Flaws I like it because it allows me to play to those things with my players who enjoy and are up for that type of roleplaying while ignoring it or only bringing it to bear rarely for those that aren't as invested.  I prefer it because both sides get what they want vs. half the group not playing or the game quality suffering.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> It's hard to make interesting, context-independent generalisations here. I'll just compare a few systems.
> 
> In AD&D it is possible to be the player who does what I said - sits back, makes the odd comment, rolls the dice when a fight breaks out. I've played with these players! As MUs they're terrible, because they need someone else to help manage the spell load-out (both choosing, and casting). As clerics they're a bit better because the spell load-out can be focused on healing, and they're more viable in combat. But fighter is obviously the default AD&D class for such a player.



OK, I've GMed for long enough to have 'seen everything'. So, yeah, once or twice in 40 years I saw a guy that hung out with the other players and nominally had a character, and actually kept coming back week after week. I had one guy that was SORT OF like that in a 4e campaign. He was actually pretty interested in playing, at times, but he ran a bow ranger and did pretty much just react to things. However, he also slacked off and finally just stopped showing up, although he kept SAYING he was 'coming this week' for a year! lol. My point is, when people are REALLY so disengaged that they aren't even into it enough to RP at all, they almost invariably don't stick around. I think its a corner-case, basically.

What is MUCH more likely is you have some people who, for various reasons, are not quite fully engaged. OFTEN IT IS BECAUSE A D&D STYLE GAME ACTUALLY DOESN'T INTEREST THEM! These are people that are prime candidates for something like a Story Now game! 


> I've GMed for this sort of player in Rolemaster, and a fairly simple warrior-ish build is tolerable. Spells are a nightmare, though (for the same sort of reason that 4e is widely regarded as not that friendly to the "casual" player); and even as a warrior there will probably be quite a bit of stuff on the PC sheet - given the richness of the RM skill system - that doesn't really get used, or needs advice from another player/GM when it is used.



Meh, 4e has bow rangers and, for the true slacker, the Slayer. We usually kept a 'guest character' slayer around that could be borrowed by visitors who wanted to do more than watch. Works well enough. 



> In Cortex+ Heroic I think this sort of player will find building the dice pool a bit of a headache, because there's no "generic" die you roll (d20, or d100), but a somewhat unique dice pool to put together every time (by combining various descriptors both from the PC sheet and the framed scene).
> 
> I think Burning Wheel will just tend to suck for this sort of player. If they are not managing and engaging their own PCs Beliefs and Instincts they won't earn artha (fate points and the like), and without arth it can be quite hard to succeed. This sort of player will also be hard for the GM, as they don't contribute the sort of focus and energy that BW looks to from a player to make the game go.
> 
> In 4e or a 4e variant, there is less need to engage Beliefs/Instincts/Aspects/Descriptors, which makes it friendlier for this sort of player. There's still the issue of managing the power list - even if the roll of the d20 is constant, the powers aren't - but some 4e-type builds obviously help with this (eg some Essentials-style builds).




I see the simple builds as being more 'introductory' than 'remedial'. Its quite possible to build one in my game as well, although it really hasn't come up.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> First @_*pemerton*_ ... just wanted to say in your recent  posts you summed up what I was (trying to say??) saying earlier and apparently were able to avoid accusations of disingenuous behavior/posting.  Perhaps I'm not expressing my thoughts correctly but thanks for re-stating it (in a more clear manner??).
> 
> My biggest issue with players like this and games like FATE (which for the record I do play and enjoy) is that they don't want to do the lengthy character creation that is involved in creating a character for said game (especially the more involved older versions of FATE).  Either they haven't and don't enjoy thinking in that much depth about a character they haven't played yet or they just want to get to playing the game. And yes I know FATE can do the design a character during play method but IME, this becomes an exercise where I as the GM, often through prompting (Hey there's a locked door did you want to make one of your skills lockpicking?) am basically building their character for them.
> 
> I think that it takes a particular (uncommon??) type of player to get a game like FATE or MHRP to play well... the group I have now, some of them would be really great in FATE and would really enjoy it but the other half would probably make the quality of the game drop...  When I see mechanics like D&D's Inspiration+ Ideals/Boons/Flaws I like it because it allows me to play to those things with my players who enjoy and are up for that type of roleplaying while ignoring it or only bringing it to bear rarely for those that aren't as invested.  I prefer it because both sides get what they want vs. half the group not playing or the game quality suffering.




I hear you guys, but FOR ME, the uncommon player type is the one who is actually this disengaged and is desiring to play strongly enough to keep coming back week after week. I find it hard to accept that this is some significant constituency within RPGing, or that it somehow accounts in any appreciable way for the continued existence and prevalence of D&D. 

Now, what I did with people who were really shaky on playing an RPG, but seemed to genuinely have enough potential interest to work with, is to play a very simple and highly narrative, story now sort of game. I generally use the PACE rules for this. https://www.evilhat.com/pace/ It takes about 1 minute to generate a character, is entirely genre agnostic, and takes about 2 minutes to learn to play (its a bit harder to learn to GM as it really just assumes you know how and gives you simple tools, but its really no more challenging than DW). 

If the player is really specifically into fantasy, which is kinda common, then DW might be an alternative choice. Its very simple to learn and easy enough to play. 

Both of these are pretty narrativist systems which lend themselves well to a zero myth kind of game. Someone who's got enough interest to keep playing will master them and have fun pretty quickly, and they really don't require mastery, as they're more about story than skilled play.


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## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, I've GMed for long enough to have 'seen everything'. So, yeah, once or twice in 40 years I saw a guy that hung out with the other players and nominally had a character, and actually kept coming back week after week.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> What is MUCH more likely is you have some people who, for various reasons, are not quite fully engaged. OFTEN IT IS BECAUSE A D&D STYLE GAME ACTUALLY DOESN'T INTEREST THEM! These are people that are prime candidates for something like a Story Now game!





AbdulAlhazred said:


> I hear you guys, but FOR ME, the uncommon player type is the one who is actually this disengaged and is desiring to play strongly enough to keep coming back week after week. I find it hard to accept that this is some significant constituency within RPGing, or that it somehow accounts in any appreciable way for the continued existence and prevalence of D&D.



My conjecture as to how common this sort of player is is based on a mix of observation (circa 20 years out of date now - I'm thinking of back when I use to hang out with the University RPG club) plus trying to make sense of posts I see on these boards.

For me, it's similar to people I knew (also back in those Uni days) who really seemed to want to play 500, but showed no interest in actually learning how to bid well, how to follow the play, etc.

Whether it's a virtue of a game to be amenable to such players is something I'll leave for others to debate - but I do think that D&D suits them in a way that some other systems don't (just as 500 allows a competent partner to carry them, whereas in bridge, if they won the bidding and so had to play the hand, they'd just be hosed).

Whether other styles of RPGing would suit them is also a question I don't have an answer for - I think it's possible, but I'm not sure a relatively intricate system like FATE or even 4e is where I'd go to for that.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Both of these [PACE, DW] are pretty narrativist systems which lend themselves well to a zero myth kind of game. Someone who's got enough interest to keep playing will master them and have fun pretty quickly, and they really don't require mastery, as they're more about story than skilled play.



I think the contrast (for me, at least - I can't speak for [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION]) is not between "setting/GM-driven" and "no myth", but the extent to which a player has to engage the system with any degree of sophistication. A pretty light system (eg Prince Valiant, or something even stripped back from that; or HeroQuest revised using only simple contest resolution) might well be fine for that sort of player, especially one-on-one or in a small group of friends.


----------



## Aldarc

Imaro said:


> First @_*pemerton*_ ... just wanted to say in your recent  posts you summed up what I was (trying to say??) saying earlier and apparently were able to avoid accusations of disingenuous behavior/posting.  Perhaps I'm not expressing my thoughts correctly but thanks for re-stating it (in a more clear manner??).



It's cool. I misread your tone. You clarified your position. And so I dropped that in the reply quotes. 



> My biggest issue with players like this and games like FATE (which for the record I do play and enjoy) is that they don't want to do the lengthy character creation that is involved in creating a character for said game (especially the more involved older versions of FATE).  Either they haven't and don't enjoy thinking in that much depth about a character they haven't played yet or they just want to get to playing the game. And yes I know FATE can do the design a character during play method but IME, this becomes an exercise where I as the GM, often through prompting (Hey there's a locked door did you want to make one of your skills lockpicking?) am basically building their character for them.



Here, I would agree. Fate is not really the ideal game for a reactive set of players, at least not without some proactive gamers to carry the group. It does assume that the protagonists are fairly proactive. Though here I do find that this sometimes requires mentoring players to learn proactive gaming because a lot of gaming/GMing styles seemed to foster a more reactive one. (Not necessarily in your games, but overall.) There is nothing wrong with reactive gaming. 



> When I see mechanics like D&D's Inspiration+ Ideals/Boons/Flaws I like it because it allows me to play to those things with my players who enjoy and are up for that type of roleplaying while ignoring it or only bringing it to bear rarely for those that aren't as invested.  I prefer it because both sides get what they want vs. half the group not playing or the game quality suffering.



I just wish that it had been better designed. Again, less Background-tied. It would not even need to be in the Foreground, as per Fate. Inspiration could just be Ground. Your race, class, and background could all have ideals/bonds/flaws. Maybe you pick one ideal, bond, flaw total from all available options, or maybe you pick one ideal from each grouping for three total ideals, etc. Perhaps you would start out with an Inspiration pool. There is far more that you could do with Inspiration. But as it is, it's kinda a dud for both Player Type Xs and Player Type Ys. 

I do agree with [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] that the disengaged players are a rarity in my games. But even then, I have found that many of said players are often engaged with who their characters are. Some have an amazing investment of character, but the group knows that the player just came home from a closing shift at a department store and dealt with stupid customers and coworkers the entire day and so their "disengagement" is not about the game but psychological recuperation. Some just want to play the fighter that hits things, and that's fine. I have also experienced a number of players, including some of my current ones, who are somewhat disengaged in play from D&D but suddenly come into their own when dropped into Fate or other game systems.


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## hawkeyefan

I think there is a difference between a player that’s not as invested in roleplaying deeply, and a disengaged player. I feel like [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] is speaking about the first, but others are taking it to mean the second.

I have players who have varying degrees of desire to really examine their character. Some are all about portrayjng their character. Others are more about the challenge of the game and its encounters. They make a character, give him some basic traits and a bit of history and then not a lot more than that. Most of my players are a healthy mix. 

I wouldn’t describe any of my players as disengaged. 

So I could be wrong.. [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] can correct me if so...but I don’t think he’s talking about the edge case scenario you guys are describing.


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## Maxperson

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, I've GMed for long enough to have 'seen everything'. So, yeah, once or twice in 40 years I saw a guy that hung out with the other players and nominally had a character, and actually kept coming back week after week. I had one guy that was SORT OF like that in a 4e campaign. He was actually pretty interested in playing, at times, but he ran a bow ranger and did pretty much just react to things. However, he also slacked off and finally just stopped showing up, although he kept SAYING he was 'coming this week' for a year! lol. My point is, when people are REALLY so disengaged that they aren't even into it enough to RP at all, they almost invariably don't stick around. I think its a corner-case, basically.




I've seen this a few times as well, but in my experience it's more due to shyness.  The player is enjoying the game and wants to say and do things, but lacks the confidence to engage.  The son of one of the players that I've been gaming with for the last 34 years joined our group some years ago.  He sat there and just rolled dice in combat, doing little else.  I could tell he was interested, but he didn't say or do anything.  I have a few players with strong personalities and sometimes they would tell him to do this or that, and he often would.  Other times they just did things as their PCs and my friend's son sat there.  

I didn't let that go on for long.  I would halt things and turn to my friend's son and ask him directly what he wanted to do.  Sometimes he would say something that the more experience players would cringe at, and more than once I had to step in and stop one of the other players from taking over in those instances and telling him what he should do.  When he did tell me what he wanted his PC to do, I ran with it and he had a good time.  Over time he would say more and more, answering me more quickly when I came to him, and eventually stepping in on his own to do things.  As his confidence grew, he created personalities and quirks for his PCs and now he's right at home with everyone else and is a proactive player.

His was not the first case I saw like that, either.  Out of the 4 or 5 I met over the years, I got 2 of them to open up and play their hearts out.  It doesn't work for everyone, but it's very rewarding when it does.


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> My conjecture as to how common this sort of player is is based on a mix of observation (circa 20 years out of date now - I'm thinking of back when I use to hang out with the University RPG club) plus trying to make sense of posts I see on these boards.



The most common case is the old proverbial 'gamer wife', or 'my best friend' or something like that, where the person is not REALLY inclined to play purely on their own steam, but comes and plays in an often fairly desultory way. They may well enjoy the game, but they aren't 'into' playing. They won't master complicated rules, and may play as almost an NPC sidekick type of character, or something like that. I find that usually you CAN engage them, and to those people it isn't really that important how the game works, they aren't picky or looking for some certain experience. Maybe some types of play are going to demand too much of them, I don't dismiss that idea, but generally if you play DW or PACE they'll do as well in that IME as with D&D. You might avoid FATE, BW, or Cortex+ Heroic, maybe, but you might be surprised. Every case is a little different anyway.



> For me, it's similar to people I knew (also back in those Uni days) who really seemed to want to play 500, but showed no interest in actually learning how to bid well, how to follow the play, etc.



Again though, my guess is their motive was probably hanging with their SO or something like that.



> Whether it's a virtue of a game to be amenable to such players is something I'll leave for others to debate - but I do think that D&D suits them in a way that some other systems don't (just as 500 allows a competent partner to carry them, whereas in bridge, if they won the bidding and so had to play the hand, they'd just be hosed).



I think they're more likely to be exposed to D&D. I'm far from convinced it is the best fit. Again, my spin on D&D is that it is by far the game with the greatest replay value. Gygax hit on a formula that was guaranteed to keep his players coming back week after week. He was a smart guy. D&D is VERY gamist, particularly in Dave/Gary's formulation of it. Even 5e, heck even 4e, still stick PRETTY CLOSE to that formula, and its HARD to find another game which does (aside from in more recent times games which are effectively D&D clones like PF and 13a). 



> Whether other styles of RPGing would suit them is also a question I don't have an answer for - I think it's possible, but I'm not sure a relatively intricate system like FATE or even 4e is where I'd go to for that.
> 
> I think the contrast (for me, at least - I can't speak for @_*Imaro*_) is not between "setting/GM-driven" and "no myth", but the extent to which a player has to engage the system with any degree of sophistication. A pretty light system (eg Prince Valiant, or something even stripped back from that; or HeroQuest revised using only simple contest resolution) might well be fine for that sort of player, especially one-on-one or in a small group of friends.




Right, that's why I brought up PACE (which if you read it is about a 5 page game, total), or Dungeon World, which is QUITE feasible for players to play with essentially full mastery of the game after reading 3 pages of character sheet and moves (and they can just wing it and learn the moves by playing, its really a very simple game to play).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

hawkeyefan said:


> I think there is a difference between a player that’s not as invested in roleplaying deeply, and a disengaged player. I feel like @_*Imaro*_ is speaking about the first, but others are taking it to mean the second.
> 
> I have players who have varying degrees of desire to really examine their character. Some are all about portrayjng their character. Others are more about the challenge of the game and its encounters. They make a character, give him some basic traits and a bit of history and then not a lot more than that. Most of my players are a healthy mix.
> 
> I wouldn’t describe any of my players as disengaged.
> 
> So I could be wrong.. @_*Imaro*_ can correct me if so...but I don’t think he’s talking about the edge case scenario you guys are describing.




Yeah, I think it is possible to be a 'gamer' and not so much an RPer. Often those are people who ARE actually quite engaged, they play around with the rules and whatnot, and may be quite into aspects of the game like combat or whatnot, but just don't have a real desire to develop or examine their character's motives much. 

I'm not entirely convinced this class of player is entirely ill-suited to narrative focused games though. I think if you can get them committed to a fairly simple and straightforward character concept, then they don't have to work hard at tying it to the story. "I was the only survivor of my clan, and wandered alone in the wilderness for 5 years. Everything is scary and out to get me. I fight first and ask questions later!" That's a perfectly viable, if potentially shallow, sort of character concept for a narrative type of game. You can invoke your character's 'traits' or whatever the given system has, and just whack things! The GM might challenge your belief, for sure, but you can always just double down and stick to your guns if you don't really want to dig into it.


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## pemerton

hawkeyefan said:


> I have players who have varying degrees of desire to really examine their character. Some are all about portrayjng their character. Others are more about the challenge of the game and its encounters. They make a character, give him some basic traits and a bit of history and then not a lot more than that.





AbdulAlhazred said:


> Yeah, I think it is possible to be a 'gamer' and not so much an RPer. Often those are people who ARE actually quite engaged, they play around with the rules and whatnot, and may be quite into aspects of the game like combat or whatnot, but just don't have a real desire to develop or examine their character's motives much.



Well, yeah, if someone likes the wargaming aspect of D&D (or some similar system), it stands to reason that they may be less into non-wargaming systems!


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> Well, yeah, if someone likes the wargaming aspect of D&D (or some similar system), it stands to reason that they may be less into non-wargaming systems!




I like both wargaming AND RPing/Storytelling, so I had to invent a game for that


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## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I like both wargaming AND RPing/Storytelling, so I had to invent a game for that



I'm a bad wargamer but I do like a fair bit of system - hence RM, 4e, BW, etc!


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## AbdulAlhazred

pemerton said:


> I'm a bad wargamer but I do like a fair bit of system - hence RM, 4e, BW, etc!




Sigh, some people are just strange. Why do you have to defy my easy classifications? Life is so much simpler when you can reduce things to a few pigeon holes! Just look at our American Politics (oops, verbotten topic!).


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## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Sigh, some people are just strange. Why do you have to defy my easy classifications? Life is so much simpler when you can reduce things to a few pigeon holes! Just look at our American Politics (oops, verbotten topic!).



I'll skip the verboten and say - I would like to be a good wargamer, but lack the patience. My favourite boardgame is backgammon: I can do the maths in my head pretty easily, it plays quickly, and isn't too taxing!

But wargaming requires the patience to build up a position, act without recklessness, etc. I suck at that!


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## Ovinomancer

pemerton said:


> I'll skip the verboten and say - I would like to be a good wargamer, but lack the patience. My favourite boardgame is backgammon: I can do the maths in my head pretty easily, it plays quickly, and isn't too taxing!
> 
> But wargaming requires the patience to build up a position, act without recklessness, etc. I suck at that!




You have strange ideas on what wargaming requires.


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## pemerton

I posted a report of a short In a Wicked Age session I GMed on Sunday. It seems relevant to this thread.


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## Manbearcat

@_*pemerton*_ , I'll check out your thread at some point in the future and post some comments.  I haven't played In a Wicked Age, so that is very interesting (and obviously VB is my favorite designer).

I just logged on briefly because I had a thought and this seemed like a decent enough repository for a game premise.

In a Points of Light sort of world where humanoidkind (I guess that would be the word?) is pressed on all sides by an encroaching darkness (a la 4e or Beyond the Wall or Torchbearer or Blades in the Dark), a despotic power-broker and apex predator of the magnitude of an Elder/Ancient Dragons demanding monthly tribute (or something not too overwhelmingly punitive) becomes a stabilizing force for a region.  It is by no means "the perfect good", but its "good enough" in light of the alternative.

Its slaying (by adventurers perhaps) or disappearance (perhaps a pilgrimage, perhaps ascendance) creates a vacuum of power and profound destabilization to the local ecosystem.  The disorderly, insidious darkness begins its encroach anew.

Blades in the Dark PCs depends upon this paradigm (because you're looking to climb the ladder and destabilization is inevitable collateral...and mostly good).  Meanwhile, PCs in other games may (for the sake of the greatest good), prefer for the status quo to persist.

I guess I was just thinking that a Points of Light game like default 4e, Torchbearer, and Beyond the Wall depends on this "local stabilization through protection racket by overwhelmingly powerful agent" paradigm being untenable.


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## pemerton

Manbearcat said:


> I guess I was just thinking that a Points of Light game like default 4e, Torchbearer, and Beyond the Wall depends on this "local stabilization through protection racket by overwhelmingly powerful agent" paradigm being untenable.



My take would be that, for default (heroic) 4e, the "good enough" idea is suspect. So heroic overthrow of said protection racket isn't _destabilising_, it's _liberating_ and allows a better form of life to emerge.

As far as the practicalities of play are concerned, there is a lot of room for the GM to punish the players in terms of that outcome if care isn't taken. In my own 4e game, where both the drow and the duergar have been liberated, it's mostly been a background thing, but I am mindful of the need to preserve this as a victory for the PCs (especially the case of the drow).


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## AbdulAlhazred

Manbearcat said:


> @_*pemerton*_ , I'll check out your thread at some point in the future and post some comments.  I haven't played In a Wicked Age, so that is very interesting (and obviously VB is my favorite designer).
> 
> I just logged on briefly because I had a thought and this seemed like a decent enough repository for a game premise.
> 
> In a Points of Light sort of world where humanoidkind (I guess that would be the word?) is pressed on all sides by an encroaching darkness (a la 4e or Beyond the Wall or Torchbearer or Blades in the Dark), a despotic power-broker and apex predator of the magnitude of an Elder/Ancient Dragons demanding monthly tribute (or something not too overwhelmingly punitive) becomes a stabilizing force for a region.  It is by no means "the perfect good", but its "good enough" in light of the alternative.
> 
> Its slaying (by adventurers perhaps) or disappearance (perhaps a pilgrimage, perhaps ascendance) creates a vacuum of power and profound destabilization to the local ecosystem.  The disorderly, insidious darkness begins its encroach anew.
> 
> Blades in the Dark PCs depends upon this paradigm (because you're looking to climb the ladder and destabilization is inevitable collateral...and mostly good).  Meanwhile, PCs in other games may (for the sake of the greatest good), prefer for the status quo to persist.
> 
> I guess I was just thinking that a Points of Light game like default 4e, Torchbearer, and Beyond the Wall depends on this "local stabilization through protection racket by overwhelmingly powerful agent" paradigm being untenable.




I don't follow your final point there. It wouldn't seem like 4e (I only know the two OSR games by repute) should have this limitation. It would be easy to see how the remnants of "The Empire of Nerath" could be ruled by, say, the Red Dragon Infernus (a survivor of Arkhosia who reverted to his evil chaotic nature). The ancient wyrm crawls out of the darkness, carbonizing gnolls to the left and right, and then taking up residence in what was once the provincial Temple of Erathis! Oops, we have a new overlord. Nobody really wants to mess with that. One village defies him, and he simply withdraws his protection from it... bye bye.

This one would certainly put the PCs in a tricky situation. They could of course simply be brutal lieutenants, but even THEN its easy to imagine putting them in a difficult spot pretty easily. If they have an ounce of integrity, or serious ambitions of their own, then things are going to get sticky before too long. 

And of course, its likely to be an unstable arrangement over time. Pretty much all brutal absolutist states are pretty unstable, but it could still last for human generations.


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## Imaro

hawkeyefan said:


> I think there is a difference between a player that’s not as invested in roleplaying deeply, and a disengaged player. I feel like [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] is speaking about the first, but others are taking it to mean the second.
> 
> I have players who have varying degrees of desire to really examine their character. Some are all about portrayjng their character. Others are more about the challenge of the game and its encounters. They make a character, give him some basic traits and a bit of history and then not a lot more than that. Most of my players are a healthy mix.
> 
> I wouldn’t describe any of my players as disengaged.
> 
> So I could be wrong.. [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] can correct me if so...but I don’t think he’s talking about the edge case scenario you guys are describing.




Hey sorry it took so long for me to reply but I was away from the interwebs for the holiday weekend here.  

To answer your question I eventually ended up talking about both.  You are correct in that originally I was speaking about players that are just not invested in roleplaying and/or story to the degree that games such as FATE require one to be (Where require means to get the most out of it).  In the 5e DMG they list 7 areas in the game that can  engage players (and yes I realize there may be other areas but that's kind of tangential to my overall point)... Acting, exploring, instigating, fighting, optimizing, problem solving & storytelling.  Games like FATE, MHRP, etc. seem to prioritize storytelling and to a lesser extent acting as primary experiences to the extent that many of these other areas are only mildly catered to or not catered to at all.  For me and my group I'd rather have a game that doesn't necessarily push one of these aspects (even if it does that by not strongly supporting any one particular experience) than to have a game that does.  My players have a wide variety of what they enjoy and honestly.  This is where I tend to differ with those people who feel a game has to have a defined and precise playstyle in order to be a good game.  Sometimes a game that doesn't necessarily focus on or push a playstyle is a better fit for a group with diverse likes and expectations for fun than a game with a narrower focus or more defined playstyle.  

To bring this back around to new/casual players...  I have a casual player in my group, he plays a champion fighter most of the time, loves combat and really isn't down to act except in the most cursory sense and is more about adventure than creating a "story".  FATE would not be a good fit for him because it pushes and focuses in on the experiences he findsa the least enjoyable in rpg's... but we enjoy playing with him, and with D&D those who want deep characterization can do so by stressing and engaging their ideals, flaws and bonds... while he plays his grim and gruff warrior with a mysterious (mostly blank...lol) history and neither really affects the fun of the other.


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## Manbearcat

[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] , let me wander around my head aloud for a minute.  This is kind of where my brain was going:

*  I was thinking about the parallels of Blades in the Dark and the Mexican Drug Wars particularly in the states of Sinaloa and Durango (which has also spread plenty elsewhere).  I was thinking about how when a vacuum of power emerges (where a cartel which has dominated the drug trade without rival in a particular area suddenly has the head of its snake cut off or is defaced/defanged), the place goes from a (very) relative order and placidity to an eruption of sustained barbarism, violence, and destabilization.  The locals are besieged emotionally, physically, and economically due to the cartel warfare.  That is how you end up with the extreme transformation of Ciudad Juarez in only a few short years.

* I was thinking of parallels in Blades in the Dark where Bluecoats, Council-members, and Magistrates can be bought off in order to (a) get in on the action and (b) "keep the peace (status quo)" by ensuring that the dominance hierarchy of a certain place remains intact (and the eruption of violence/destabilization via a power vacuum doesn't emerge).

Blades in the Dark's premise, thematic and machanicaly machinery depends on these tropes.

So here is what I meant by the below:



> I guess I was just thinking that a Points of Light game like default 4e, Torchbearer, and Beyond the Wall depends on this "local stabilization through protection racket by overwhelmingly powerful agent" paradigm being untenable.




Conversely, 4e's thematic impetus depends on the above paradigm being flat untenable.

The Dragon's (or whatever stand-in) protection racket compared to the encroaching darkness (due to the vacuum of power) MUSTN'T yield the citizenry or the heroes doing the math and coming up with "its better this way."  The fallout of the Dragon's despotism must be punitive enough (when compared to the alternative bad) that it emboldens rebellion.  Otherwise, the entire impetus for the sort of romantic heroism that 4e pushes toward becomes less charged (or it loses its charge completely).

With Torchbearer and Beyond the Wall, the desperation and related impetus for moving beyond the sanctity of the city's walls into the foreboding, deep, dark wilds in becomes rather (but not fully) muted because the Dragon (as happens with overwhelming apex predators/power-brokers) will have driven out that encroaching darkness, thereby artificially expanding the local (and solely relevant) "Point of Light."  The important themes of desperation and claustrophobia become subdued.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Manbearcat said:


> [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] , let me wander around my head aloud for a minute.  This is kind of where my brain was going:
> 
> *  I was thinking about the parallels of Blades in the Dark and the Mexican Drug Wars particularly in the states of Sinaloa and Durango (which has also spread plenty elsewhere).  I was thinking about how when a vacuum of power emerges (where a cartel which has dominated the drug trade without rival in a particular area suddenly has the head of its snake cut off or is defaced/defanged), the place goes from a (very) relative order and placidity to an eruption of sustained barbarism, violence, and destabilization.  The locals are besieged emotionally, physically, and economically due to the cartel warfare.  That is how you end up with the extreme transformation of Ciudad Juarez in only a few short years.
> 
> * I was thinking of parallels in Blades in the Dark where Bluecoats, Council-members, and Magistrates can be bought off in order to (a) get in on the action and (b) "keep the peace (status quo)" by ensuring that the dominance hierarchy of a certain place remains intact (and the eruption of violence/destabilization via a power vacuum doesn't emerge).
> 
> Blades in the Dark's premise, thematic and machanicaly machinery depends on these tropes.
> 
> So here is what I meant by the below:
> 
> 
> 
> Conversely, 4e's thematic impetus depends on the above paradigm being flat untenable.
> 
> The Dragon's (or whatever stand-in) protection racket compared to the encroaching darkness (due to the vacuum of power) MUSTN'T yield the citizenry or the heroes doing the math and coming up with "its better this way."  The fallout of the Dragon's despotism must be punitive enough (when compared to the alternative bad) that it emboldens rebellion.  Otherwise, the entire impetus for the sort of romantic heroism that 4e pushes toward becomes less charged (or it loses its charge completely).
> 
> With Torchbearer and Beyond the Wall, the desperation and related impetus for moving beyond the sanctity of the city's walls into the foreboding, deep, dark wilds in becomes rather (but not fully) muted because the Dragon (as happens with overwhelming apex predators/power-brokers) will have driven out that encroaching darkness, thereby artificially expanding the local (and solely relevant) "Point of Light."  The important themes of desperation and claustrophobia become subdued.




OK.

I'm not sure I concur with your analysis, but these are possibilities. I think, particularly in a narrative focused play of 4e, you could easily be the rebels. Yeah, the Dragon is strong and maybe he protects everyone even while he extracts his price. Is that price REALLY worth paying? Is it possible for people to stand on their own behind real heroes, good guys? If not is there any point in making a distinction between the 'point of light' and the darkness outside? There are a ton of questions like this which can be dredged up out of this scenario virtually effortlessly and used to drive that story. 

Now, I understand that you see 4e as pretty much a "you're a hero" sort of black and white kind of a game that doesn't do much gray. I think its reasonable to take that position. The game makes little provision for questionable characters, but it does make SOME provision. I think its at least possible. 

I'm not sure I can really address the other two games, although I think a similar analysis might be possible. The very impetus to go 'outside the wall' might be BECAUSE you need to find a way to fix what is INSIDE. Its a bit different spin from what I suspect is intended, but games are flexible...


----------



## Ovinomancer

Manbearcat said:


> [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and  [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] , let me wander around my head aloud for a minute.  This is kind of where my brain was going:
> 
> *  I was thinking about the parallels of Blades in the Dark and the Mexican Drug Wars particularly in the states of Sinaloa and Durango (which has also spread plenty elsewhere).  I was thinking about how when a vacuum of power emerges (where a cartel which has dominated the drug trade without rival in a particular area suddenly has the head of its snake cut off or is defaced/defanged), the place goes from a (very) relative order and placidity to an eruption of sustained barbarism, violence, and destabilization.  The locals are besieged emotionally, physically, and economically due to the cartel warfare.  That is how you end up with the extreme transformation of Ciudad Juarez in only a few short years.
> 
> * I was thinking of parallels in Blades in the Dark where Bluecoats, Council-members, and Magistrates can be bought off in order to (a) get in on the action and (b) "keep the peace (status quo)" by ensuring that the dominance hierarchy of a certain place remains intact (and the eruption of violence/destabilization via a power vacuum doesn't emerge).
> 
> Blades in the Dark's premise, thematic and machanicaly machinery depends on these tropes.
> 
> So here is what I meant by the below:
> 
> 
> 
> Conversely, 4e's thematic impetus depends on the above paradigm being flat untenable.
> 
> The Dragon's (or whatever stand-in) protection racket compared to the encroaching darkness (due to the vacuum of power) MUSTN'T yield the citizenry or the heroes doing the math and coming up with "its better this way."  The fallout of the Dragon's despotism must be punitive enough (when compared to the alternative bad) that it emboldens rebellion.  Otherwise, the entire impetus for the sort of romantic heroism that 4e pushes toward becomes less charged (or it loses its charge completely).
> 
> With Torchbearer and Beyond the Wall, the desperation and related impetus for moving beyond the sanctity of the city's walls into the foreboding, deep, dark wilds in becomes rather (but not fully) muted because the Dragon (as happens with overwhelming apex predators/power-brokers) will have driven out that encroaching darkness, thereby artificially expanding the local (and solely relevant) "Point of Light."  The important themes of desperation and claustrophobia become subdued.




I think all of this ties very well into the thread's premise -- worldbuilding of this kind directly and openly affects play, but isn't developed in play.  I also think that few would really be interested in dealing with such political truths -- the fun is in killing the evil overlord dragon, not in dealing with the repercussions of the power vacuum created.  That said, I think that this kind of consideration goes directly to the kind of game that will be played.  Blades, for one, has a clear method of dealing with power vacuums, and it would be nearly impossible to actually disrupt the power structure in blades without having the holes filled nearly immediately through the gameplay.  Or, you could, but you'd be ignoring a cornerstone of the built setting to do so.

I will say these are the kinds of things I think about in worldbuilding.  My last 'built' world had stable nationstates that had mostly pacified their held areas, so there was a lot of travel to border areas or beyond for adventure.  However, the adversary in that game was a force that was manifesting everywhere, so there were plenty of interacting in civilized areas.  In fact, the destabilization of nations was a part of the game.


----------



## Lanefan

Ovinomancer said:


> I think all of this ties very well into the thread's premise -- worldbuilding of this kind directly and openly affects play, but isn't developed in play.  I also think that few would really be interested in dealing with such political truths -- the fun is in killing the evil overlord dragon, not in dealing with the repercussions of the power vacuum created.



Oddly enough, this is almost exactly what's happened in one branch of my current campaign over the long run: the PCs took down the long-time Emperor (a lich) of a nasty realm, and then spent the next year or so involving themselves in the resulting civil war as various warlords (mostly the main slave lords from A-3) tried to take power.  They then got stuck in what's become an extended side trek to fulfill a quest, and left the area.

The civil war is still ongoing in the background and it'll no doubt become relevant again someday.

This ties into worldbuilding in that when I set up that realm it was with the specific intent of a party someday taking out the Emperor, but both the lead-up series of adventures and the way the takedown came about played out vastly differently to anything I had in mind ahead of time.

Lanefan


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## Aldarc

Ovinomancer said:


> I also think that few would really be interested in dealing with such political truths -- the fun is in killing the evil overlord dragon, not in dealing with the repercussions of the power vacuum created.



And I always wanted to run a D&D campaign dealing with the repercussions of a tarrasque cross-country rampage that ended with the honorable deaths of the previous generation of heroes (and villains). Homes destroyed, both human and "monster." Lives lost. Countries are rebuilding. Countries are scheming for advantage. People and monsters are migrating. Ruins were uncovered by the rampage. Sure, killing the evil overlord dragon offers a more tangible psychological reward, but I do think that there is a lot of potential in dealing with the power vacuum in the wake of a big bad.


----------



## Lanefan

Aldarc said:


> And I always wanted to run a D&D campaign dealing with the repercussions of a tarrasque cross-country rampage that ended with the honorable deaths of the previous generation of heroes (and villains). Homes destroyed, both human and "monster." Lives lost. Countries are rebuilding. Countries are scheming for advantage. People and monsters are migrating. Ruins were uncovered by the rampage. Sure, killing the evil overlord dragon offers a more tangible psychological reward, but I do think that there is a lot of potential in dealing with the power vacuum in the wake of a big bad.



Yeah, I could get behind this; though I'd probably break things even further such that there really aren't any (or many) organized countries or empires left and it's every petty warlord for him/herself.

And with most forms of order having been somewhat shattered, it'd be the fantasy version of the wild west.  The perfect situation for a marauding bunch of murderhobos! 

Lanefan


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## Aenghus

Particularly in my D&D I prefer fairly conventional action adventure where the PCs are sufficiently "good" to be the good guy protagonists. I see it as a problem in functional world-building to design a world where this seems reasonable and isn't irritating, at least for those players willing to go half-way on the issue. As a referee or player I try to be very clear that I like white hats to be viable and if they aren't I want to know in advance so I can consider walking away.

In the action adventure genre as I understand it, the problems of the PCs can be solved by action-focused plans, the planning may be anywhere from non-existent to complex, and where there might be temporary setbacks or even ultimate defeat, the players get an understanding that they aren't wasting their time, they get to have a positive effect on the setting with no mean-minded clawbacks. Heroism is possible and not futile or counterproductive.

YMMV. I understand there are loads of people who prefer greyer, dark or gritty games or who might appreciate no win scenarios, or complex problems with no PC-available solution and more power to them. I, for one, don't, most of the time.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Aenghus said:


> Particularly in my D&D I prefer fairly conventional action adventure where the PCs are sufficiently "good" to be the good guy protagonists. I see it as a problem in functional world-building to design a world where this seems reasonable and isn't irritating, at least for those players willing to go half-way on the issue. As a referee or player I try to be very clear that I like white hats to be viable and if they aren't I want to know in advance so I can consider walking away.
> 
> In the action adventure genre as I understand it, the problems of the PCs can be solved by action-focused plans, the planning may be anywhere from non-existent to complex, and where there might be temporary setbacks or even ultimate defeat, the players get an understanding that they aren't wasting their time, they get to have a positive effect on the setting with no mean-minded clawbacks. Heroism is possible and not futile or counterproductive.
> 
> YMMV. I understand there are loads of people who prefer greyer, dark or gritty games or who might appreciate no win scenarios, or complex problems with no PC-available solution and more power to them. I, for one, don't, most of the time.




I think both types of game have their interesting points, actually. In fact I have found that the best stories come when the players have some commitment to one or another. Either they are really into the whole convoluted and nuanced shades-of-grey or they're really into their gung-ho I'm a big shiny hero (or villian). Its the times when the group cannot find a way to commit to any vision of play that are in danger of failing to gel.


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## Fitz Mac

[MENTION=2656]Aenghus[/MENTION] I play with a group in Cork as well( 6 PC's ) , we are playing 5E D&D, always on the look out for more PC's. Thats why I asked.Plus I'm with a group that plays bi-weekly , over 50 PC's at 9-10 tables. So we are always up for more D&D players or DM's(Gm's) to join.


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think both types of game have their interesting points, actually. In fact I have found that the best stories come when the players have some commitment to one or another. Either they are really into the whole convoluted and nuanced shades-of-grey or they're really into their gung-ho I'm a big shiny hero (or villian). Its the times when the group cannot find a way to commit to any vision of play that are in danger of failing to gel.



Though this is usually true, I've seen (and DMed!) parties whose very inability to gel was itself a large part of the ongoing story - and fun - for quite some time.

Lan-"chaos for the win!"-efan


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> Yeah, I could get behind this; though I'd probably break things even further such that there really aren't any (or many) organized countries or empires left and it's every petty warlord for him/herself.
> 
> And with most forms of order having been somewhat shattered, it'd be the fantasy version of the wild west.  The perfect situation for a marauding bunch of murderhobos!



That would be the general idea. You are selling the horrors of what the tarrasque "means" as a monster not through saying/threatening what would happen should the players stop its awakening but through showing the actual disaster, calamity, and chaos that followed in the wake of its defeat. 

IMHO, this would make a great startup for a setting, much like the wake of the Last War acts as the presumed starting point for Eberron. There is a lot of (campaign, sandbox, or story now) adventure potential in the aftermath of disaster. Though I would maybe go less Wild West and more rampaging monster shatters the Off-Brand Roman Empire. Remnants of the prior order on the fringe of the fractured empire. "Barbarian" hordes of humanoids looking for new homes after their old ones were destroyed in the lands where the tarrasque first trampled under foot. Opportunistic warlords itching for a chance to make a kingdom for themselves and preying upon weakened lands. New religious movements making sudden inroads. Rebellions sparking like wildfire from long-brewing tensions. Is the apocalypse nigh? Ancient, forgotten, primordial evils could return, but what could possibly be worse than the tarrasque? Is anyone even paying the risk of these evils any mind?


----------



## Lanefan

Aldarc said:


> That would be the general idea. You are selling the horrors of what the tarrasque "means" as a monster not through saying/threatening what would happen should the players stop its awakening but through showing the actual disaster, calamity, and chaos that followed in the wake of its defeat.



Assuming, of course, that it really weas defeated and not just driven off... 



> IMHO, this would make a great startup for a setting, much like the wake of the Last War acts as the presumed starting point for Eberron. There is a lot of (campaign, sandbox, or story now) adventure potential in the aftermath of disaster. Though I would maybe go less Wild West and more rampaging monster shatters the Off-Brand Roman Empire. Remnants of the prior order on the fringe of the fractured empire. "Barbarian" hordes of humanoids looking for new homes after their old ones were destroyed in the lands where the tarrasque first trampled under foot. Opportunistic warlords itching for a chance to make a kingdom for themselves and preying upon weakened lands. New religious movements making sudden inroads. Rebellions sparking like wildfire from long-brewing tensions. Is the apocalypse nigh? Ancient, forgotten, primordial evils could return, but what could possibly be worse than the tarrasque? Is anyone even paying the risk of these evils any mind?



And after that campaign's kinda run its course and needs to end you pull the tarrasque out from where it's been recovering from its wounds (as it wasn't really defeated last time) and let it TPK the party.

Then you start over.  Same setting, same situation, new characters, 5 years later...lather rinse repeat for a lifetime of fun gaming!


----------



## Aldarc

Lanefan said:


> Assuming, of course, that it really weas defeated and not just driven off...
> 
> And after that campaign's kinda run its course and needs to end you pull the tarrasque out from where it's been recovering from its wounds (as it wasn't really defeated last time) and let it TPK the party.
> 
> Then you start over.  Same setting, same situation, new characters, 5 years later...lather rinse repeat for a lifetime of fun gaming!



I would probably go with defeat or the usual slumber for another millennium once it was sated. The tarrasque is more of a plot device than actual foe.


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## pemerton

Aldarc said:


> The tarrasque is more of a plot device than actual foe.



I don't think I agree with this.


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## Aldarc

pemerton said:


> I don't think I agree with this.



...in the case of this campaign setting premise.


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## Campbell

Imaro said:


> Hey sorry it took so long for me to reply but I was away from the interwebs for the holiday weekend here.
> 
> To answer your question I eventually ended up talking about both.  You are correct in that originally I was speaking about players that are just not invested in roleplaying and/or story to the degree that games such as FATE require one to be (Where require means to get the most out of it).  In the 5e DMG they list 7 areas in the game that can  engage players (and yes I realize there may be other areas but that's kind of tangential to my overall point)... Acting, exploring, instigating, fighting, optimizing, problem solving & storytelling.  Games like FATE, MHRP, etc. seem to prioritize storytelling and to a lesser extent acting as primary experiences to the extent that many of these other areas are only mildly catered to or not catered to at all.  For me and my group I'd rather have a game that doesn't necessarily push one of these aspects (even if it does that by not strongly supporting any one particular experience) than to have a game that does.  My players have a wide variety of what they enjoy and honestly.  This is where I tend to differ with those people who feel a game has to have a defined and precise playstyle in order to be a good game.  Sometimes a game that doesn't necessarily focus on or push a playstyle is a better fit for a group with diverse likes and expectations for fun than a game with a narrower focus or more defined playstyle.
> 
> To bring this back around to new/casual players...  I have a casual player in my group, he plays a champion fighter most of the time, loves combat and really isn't down to act except in the most cursory sense and is more about adventure than creating a "story".  FATE would not be a good fit for him because it pushes and focuses in on the experiences he findsa the least enjoyable in rpg's... but we enjoy playing with him, and with D&D those who want deep characterization can do so by stressing and engaging their ideals, flaws and bonds... while he plays his grim and gruff warrior with a mysterious (mostly blank...lol) history and neither really affects the fun of the other.




I feel you vastly overestimate the narrowness of the designs you see outside of the mainstream and grant mainstream designs a flexibility that I have not experienced in the real world. I think you assume that the things that make Apocalypse World, Burning Wheel, Dogs in the Vineyard, Masks, Moldvay B/X, Stars Without Number, Blades in the Dark, Sorcerer and even Fate great games are things you can meaningfully experience in the mainstream culture of play in a meaningful way. I think you are way off in that assumption because I have never had the same sort of fun that Sorcerer provides in a mainstream game for any significant measure of time.

I'll have more on this later. Probably in its own thread.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Campbell said:


> I feel you vastly overestimate the narrowness of the designs you see outside of the mainstream and grant mainstream designs a flexibility that I have not experienced in the real world.



 'Mainstream' just sounds funny in the context of our hobby.  Sure, D&D - I assume that's the 'mainstream RPG' in this context - has mainstream name recognition, but actually playing it, not so mainstream at all.  

Anyway, the way we've all played D&D over the last 40 years or so /has/ been extremely varied, so there's been a great deal of flexibility forced upon it, in spite of how little innate flexibility it may actually have, by virtue of the 70s technology of it's system.  Or, to put it another way, we have exercised a great deal of flexibility in playing D&D, that we have not with other systems, not because the systems aren't more flexible, but because we've played or been aware of them little, if at all.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Tony Vargas said:


> 'Mainstream' just sounds funny in the context of our hobby.  Sure, D&D - I assume that's the 'mainstream RPG' in this context - has mainstream name recognition, but actually playing it, not so mainstream at all.
> 
> Anyway, the way we've all played D&D over the last 40 years or so /has/ been extremely varied, so there's been a great deal of flexibility forced upon it, in spite of how little innate flexibility it may actually have, by virtue of the 70s technology of it's system.  Or, to put it another way, we have exercised a great deal of flexibility in playing D&D, that we have not with other systems, not because the systems aren't more flexible, but because we've played or been aware of them little, if at all.




I think its easier to explain than that. There's value in playing D&D, due to its network effect. Everyone kinda knows the game, and even if you play this or that variant they can pick it up and they'll know what you mean when you say "lets play D&D." So there's incentive to bend it and stretch it. There's no such incentive with other games. If you want to play Traveller it is because you want to play that exact game, not Star Wars, not Stars Without Number, etc. If you want to play some other flavor of sci-fi, there's a game for that too, but there wouldn't be much point in hacking Traveller to become that other game. The 'brand' of Traveller is just not that strong, nobody cares which sci-fi game they are playing.

Now, there are other games which have acquired some level of brand identity within their niches, and ones that are RPG licensees of big IP like Star Wars and Star Trek, but the very niche nature of all these games still means people only want to play them for the specific experience of playing Star Wars/Trek (or whatever). So very few other games have really evolved much. WoD, and to some extent RQ, are borderline exceptions.


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## Bedrockgames

Tony Vargas said:


> 'Mainstream' just sounds funny in the context of our hobby.  Sure, D&D - I assume that's the 'mainstream RPG' in this context - has mainstream name recognition, but actually playing it, not so mainstream at all.
> 
> Anyway, the way we've all played D&D over the last 40 years or so /has/ been extremely varied, so there's been a great deal of flexibility forced upon it, in spite of how little innate flexibility it may actually have, by virtue of the 70s technology of it's system.  Or, to put it another way, we have exercised a great deal of flexibility in playing D&D, that we have not with other systems, not because the systems aren't more flexible, but because we've played or been aware of them little, if at all.




D&D has the broadest audience, and you often end up with lots of different kinds of campaigns and styles being played with it as a result. Again, this is why 4E was such an atomic bomb for many fans when it came out (it either really heightened play for a narrow band of players, or it disrupted play for people whose play styles felt left out). With niche games, you don't have to worry about satisfying everyone. In my experience, 4E was a lot harder than other editions to adjust to play style. So I don't think it is simply a matter of all games being equally suited for adjustment. You can adjust any game you want. But you will fight more with some systems than with others.


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## Tony Vargas

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think its easier to explain than that. There's value in playing D&D, due to its network effect.



 That's a good way if putting it.



> . WoD, and to some extent RQ, are borderline exceptions.



 Storyteller was pretty much the headspace leader in the hobby in the 90s, as TSR was imploding, sure, and RQ was one of the first/strongest 'core systems' (BRP), and was essentially adapted into other games and genres the way d20 was 20 years later, just by a single company, rather than 3pps.



> So very few other games have really evolved much



 D&D has barely evolved, at all, and, while relatively few other systems go through multiple editions, those that do can evolve quite a bit - Hero went from an amateurish typewriter-font superhero game, to a Universal System the likes of GURPS, in 4 editions, for instance.
But, while so many other games just get published and never get a 2nd ed in which to incrementally change, in aggregate they've constituted a lot of evolution (with the kinds of indie games referenced by Campbell, above being 'more evolved' examples), which D&D has generally eschewed.

That's the downside of the network effect:  to keep it going, the game can't afford to change much, even in a more flexible, 'evolved,' or more inclusive direction.  So D&D, today, is not really all that different from the fad years, when we were brute-force adapting it to even the most wildly unsuited uses.  

That's not just good for maintaining the legacy network and the decades of experience built into it, it's great for returning players, as well, still recognizably D&D, even if you've been away 20 or 30 years.  But it does mean that the flexibility D&D does have (and that is confusing to Campbell, having experienced flexibility actually delivered by a system), is entirely delivered by the DMs constantly re-tooling it in spite of it's innate mechanical inflexibility.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Tony Vargas said:


> That's a good way if putting it.
> 
> Storyteller was pretty much the headspace leader in the hobby in the 90s, as TSR was imploding, sure, and RQ was one of the first/strongest 'core systems' (BRP), and was essentially adapted into other games and genres the way d20 was 20 years later, just by a single company, rather than 3pps.
> 
> D&D has barely evolved, at all, and, while relatively few other systems go through multiple editions, those that do can evolve quite a bit - Hero went from an amateurish typewriter-font superhero game, to a Universal System the likes of GURPS, in 4 editions, for instance.
> But, while so many other games just get published and never get a 2nd ed in which to incrementally change, in aggregate they've constituted a lot of evolution (with the kinds of indie games referenced by Campbell, above being 'more evolved' examples), which D&D has generally eschewed.
> 
> That's the downside of the network effect:  to keep it going, the game can't afford to change much, even in a more flexible, 'evolved,' or more inclusive direction.  So D&D, today, is not really all that different from the fad years, when we were brute-force adapting it to even the most wildly unsuited uses.
> 
> That's not just good for maintaining the legacy network and the decades of experience built into it, it's great for returning players, as well, still recognizably D&D, even if you've been away 20 or 30 years.  But it does mean that the flexibility D&D does have (and that is confusing to Campbell, having experienced flexibility actually delivered by a system), is entirely delivered by the DMs constantly re-tooling it in spite of it's innate mechanical inflexibility.




I think D&D HAS evolved more than MOST games though. A lot has indeed stayed roughly the same, but over time the game has diffused and branched into various flavors, all within an overall genre. As you say, mostly niche games have simply come and gone and been replaced by more polished or different games, vs evolving in and of themselves. That's kind of what I was talking about. There's not a huge amount of point in evolving niche RPG #12 when you can just write niche RPG #13 and steal as much from #12 as you care to, within reason.


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## Imaro

Campbell said:


> I feel you vastly overestimate the narrowness of the designs you see outside of the mainstream and grant mainstream designs a flexibility that I have not experienced in the real world. I think you assume that the things that make Apocalypse World, Burning Wheel, Dogs in the Vineyard, Masks, Moldvay B/X, Stars Without Number, Blades in the Dark, Sorcerer and even Fate great games are things you can meaningfully experience in the mainstream culture of play in a meaningful way. I think you are way off in that assumption because I have never had the same sort of fun that Sorcerer provides in a mainstream game for any significant measure of time.
> 
> I'll have more on this later. Probably in its own thread.




Did you ever follow up on this?  Just curious... since I don't think the fact that you haven't experienced something personally to be anywhere near ample evidence to discount its possibility.

EDIT: To further clarify where I am coming from... what is the "fun" that Sorcerer provides and have you ever been in a mainstream game where the GM/Dm was actually trying to provide this experience?   From what I can remember Sorcerer is a game about bartering away one's humanity to attain power.  Why would a game centered around this theme not be possible in D&D?  I'm not claiming it is, but at first glance it certainly seems possible.  What about D&D makes it impossible to explore this theme?  Also what type of gameplay besides this theme of humanity for power does Sorcerer support?


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## Imaro

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think D&D HAS evolved more than MOST games though. A lot has indeed stayed roughly the same, but over time the game has diffused and branched into various flavors, all within an overall genre. As you say, mostly niche games have simply come and gone and been replaced by more polished or different games, vs evolving in and of themselves. That's kind of what I was talking about. There's not a huge amount of point in evolving niche RPG #12 when you can just write niche RPG #13 and steal as much from #12 as you care to, within reason.




I always find it interesting when the argument that D&D hasn't evolved is made... I look at OD&D and IMO it's nothing like 5e in play or in much of it's design.  Usually I find this argument to mean D&D hasn't evolved in the way I would like it to have done... or specific editions are used to  create a "road" that supports this assertion are cited while those that don't are conveniently forgotten, and even then the argument doesn't seem to hold much water.


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## pemerton

Imaro said:


> what is the "fun" that Sorcerer provides and have you ever been in a mainstream game where the GM/Dm was actually trying to provide this experience?   From what I can remember Sorcerer is a game about bartering away one's humanity to attain power.  Why would a game centered around this theme not be possible in D&D?  I'm not claiming it is, but at first glance it certainly seems possible.  What about D&D makes it impossible to explore this theme?



I'm not [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION], but here's my take: he's not just talking about theme (colour, flavour); he's talking about actual game play.

As soon as the experience depends on _the GM trying to provide this experience_ - eg by making certain choices within much broader (or even non-existent) constraints around world-building, encounter design, establishing scenes, and resolving action declaraions - then the play of the game takes on a different character. I don't know how Campbell would describe it; for me it is a certain type of insipdness, because the GM is not him-/herself playing full-tilt within the parameters established by the game, but rather making the rules at the same time that s/he purports to follow them.


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## Imaro

pemerton said:


> I'm not @_*Campbell*_, but here's my take: he's not just talking about theme (colour, flavour); he's talking about actual game play.
> 
> As soon as the experience depends on _the GM trying to provide this experience_ - eg by making certain choices within much broader (or even non-existent) constraints around world-building, encounter design, establishing scenes, and resolving action declaraions - then the play of the game takes on a different character. I don't know how Campbell would describe it; for me it is a certain type of insipdness, because the GM is not him-/herself playing full-tilt within the parameters established by the game, but rather making the rules at the same time that s/he purports to follow them.




Can we get more concrete here?  Using Sorcerer as an example what is the actual gameplay that can't be provided by a mainstream game?

EDIT: I don't know if you've actually played Sorcerer but much of the game relies on the GM and players shaping it (such as defining the nebulous Humanity in the game) towards it's intended gameplay... I don't see how this is different from what I am stating.  In fact I fail to see how a DM or GM who makes choices to provide a specific experience in a much broader game must, by default, provide an "insipid" experience.  There's quite a few assumptions in what you are stating above and I'd like to explore them in a more concrete manner as opposed to in the abstract. I also am not so sure a GM has to make up rules in order to do this as opposed to re-purposing or using rules that are already provided...


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## Aldarc

Imaro said:


> Did you ever follow up on this?  Just curious... since I don't think the fact that you haven't experienced something personally to be anywhere near ample evidence to discount its possibility.



I too would enjoy a follow-up from [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION]. I suspect there is an interesting conversation topic there waiting to erupt. 



> what is the "fun" that Sorcerer provides and have you ever been in a mainstream game where the GM/Dm was actually trying to provide this experience?   From what I can remember Sorcerer is a game about bartering away one's humanity to attain power.  Why would a game centered around this theme not be possible in D&D?  I'm not claiming it is, but at first glance it certainly seems possible.  What about D&D makes it impossible to explore this theme?  Also what type of gameplay besides this theme of humanity for power does Sorcerer support?



Your post here seems focused heavily on the matter of "what," but I think that the underlying nature of Campbell's post was about a "how" issue. You could have multiple board games be about sorcerer player-characters "winning" by acquiring the most amount of power at the end of the game's turns, but these board games will play out very differently in terms of how they approach that premise through their rules and the sort of play experiences those rules engender. Can't you run a pirate game in D&D? Sure. But the "fun" of that pirate game will play differently if I am using D&D, 7th Sea, Savage Worlds, Burning Wheel, Powered by the Apocalypse, or GURPS.


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## Imaro

Aldarc said:


> I too would enjoy a follow-up from [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION]. I suspect there is an interesting conversation topic there waiting to erupt.
> 
> Your post here seems focused heavily on the matter of "what," but I think that the underlying nature of Campbell's post was about a "how" issue. You could have multiple board games be about sorcerer player-characters "winning" by acquiring the most amount of power at the end of the game's turns, but these board games will play out very differently in terms of how they approach that premise through their rules and the sort of play experiences those rules engender. Can't you run a pirate game in D&D? Sure. But the "fun" of that pirate game will play differently if I am using D&D, 7th Sea, Savage Worlds, Burning Wheel, Powered by the Apocalypse, or GURPS.




Honestly I'm concerned with both but I feel like right now we are in the realm of ill-defined feel or preference (and I admit I could just be reading this wrong) as opposed to...
1.  Actually taking a concrete example and looking at what the mechanics are trying to accomplish
2.  After defining the what then looking at how the what is accomplished in the different games


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## Lanefan

Assuming the "concrete example" is on a whole-rules-system level (e.g. D&D 1e, or 13th Age) rather than a subsystem (e.g. combat rules within D&D 1e), then:


Imaro said:


> Honestly I'm concerned with both but I feel like right now we are in the realm of ill-defined feel or preference (and I admit I could just be reading this wrong) as opposed to...
> 1.  Actually taking a concrete example and looking at what the mechanics are trying to accomplish
> 2.  After defining the what then looking at how the what is accomplished in the different games



And then:

3. Determining whether those mechanics in fact more-or-less accomplish what they were intended to without too much persuasion by the DM and-or players
4. Determining whether D&D, as the mainstream game, is capable of achieving something close to the same result

For my own part, I think D&D (in one version or another) is or can be made flexible enough to achieve just about any result this side of pure diceless and-or pass-the-conch storytelling.

Lan-"if it doesn't fit, make it fit"-efan


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## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> 3. Determining whether those mechanics in fact more-or-less accomplish what they were intended to without too much persuasion by the DM and-or players
> 4. Determining whether D&D, as the mainstream game, is capable of achieving something close to the same result



 Is (4) also "without too much 'persuasion' by the DM and/or players?"  Or is the first hypothetical game held to RAW, while D&D is let off the leash?




pemerton said:


> As soon as the experience depends on _the GM trying to provide this experience_ - eg by making certain choices within much broader (or even non-existent) constraints around world-building, encounter design, establishing scenes, and resolving action declaraions - then the play of the game takes on a different character. I don't know how Campbell would describe it; for me it is a certain type of insipdness, because the GM is not him-/herself playing full-tilt within the parameters established by the game, but rather making the rules at the same time that s/he purports to follow them.



I'd describe it as Illusionsim, or committing Freestyle RP under color of authority, or Improvisational GMing, or 'DM Empowerment...'  ;P


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## Aldarc

Imaro said:


> Honestly I'm concerned with both but I feel like right now we are in the realm of ill-defined feel or preference (and I admit I could just be reading this wrong)



What I perhaps unfairly hear in your questions to Campbell essentially amounts to an unnecessarily defensive "More 'fun' in Sorcerer with this theme than D&D? Outrageous. How is this possible? You should be able to do this in D&D too" and therefore "Why bother with other systems when we already have D&D that could do that?" in the subtext. ("D&D is mother. D&D is father. D&D, über alles.") And this sort of sentiment does come out quite explicitly with the Lanefan post you liked, so I don't think that my reading of the subtext of your question is that off the mark.


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## Lanefan

Aldarc said:


> ... "Why bother with other systems when we already have D&D that could do that?" in the subtext.



For me this isn't the subtext, it's the main text.

It's easier, simpler, and all around more intuitive to tweak or kitbash an existing system to suit your tastes than to design a whole new one...assuming, of course, that said existing system is flexible enough to withstand said tweaking, which 0-1-2-5e D&D certainly are.  Some think 3e and 4e can handle it too, though I'm not so sure on this.

That way the DM doesn't have to buy and learn a new system as she already knows it inside out, having just rebuilt some of it based on materials she already has.  And the players don't have to learn (and-or buy!) a whole new system, they need only brush up on the bits that have been changed from what they already know (based on D&D being the most common entry product).

Lanefan


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## Imaro

Aldarc said:


> What I perhaps unfairly hear in your questions to Campbell essentially amounts to an unnecessarily defensive "More 'fun' in Sorcerer with this theme than D&D? Outrageous. How is this possible? You should be able to do this in D&D too" and therefore "Why bother with other systems when we already have D&D that could do that?" in the subtext. ("D&D is mother. D&D is father. D&D, über alles.") And this sort of sentiment does come out quite explicitly with the Lanefan post you liked, so I don't think that my reading of the subtext of your question is that off the mark.




I think you're reading more than my question entails but let me be clear, because @_*Campbell*_ didn't just claim he could have more fun with said themes playing it out in Sorcerer he instead made the general claim that I was.._vastly overestimating the narrowness of the designs of games outside of the mainstream and granting mainstream designs a flexibility that he had never experienced in the real world._ whne you make a statement like that... yes I expect you to be able to expound on and explain those broad statements  with more than... because I had more fun in Sorcerer.  I have no problem with a preference but the statement @_*Campbell*_ made in the previous post isn't just about preference.  Maybe I am wrong and he's right... maybe not but what's wrong with actually looking at the games and trying to determine if the flexibility of mainstream games is being overstated or if the narrowness I attribute to many/most indie games is mistaken (though I've often seemed them praised by fans for exactly this)...

EDIT: On another note didn't we go through this earlier or in another thread?  I'm starting to think you're purposefully reading my posts in a negative light... especially since I get called out for challenging Campbell's statement with "unnecessary defensiveness" but you didn't do the same when he challenged my viewpoint.  If it wasn't you this happened with before then I apologize but this seems eerily familiar.


----------



## Aldarc

Trimming your post a bit. 


Imaro said:


> @_*Campbell*_... instead made the general claim that I was.._vastly overestimating the narrowness of the designs of games outside of the mainstream_



I would agree with that claim, at least based on your post that Campbell quoted and some of your comments before that. 



> _and granting mainstream designs a flexibility that he had never experienced in the real world._ whne you make a statement like that... yes I expect you to be able to expound on and explain those broad statements  with more than... because I had more fun in Sorcerer.



You have also left out another key point of Campbell's quote in this section: "I have never had the same sort of fun that Sorcerer provides in a mainstream game *for any significant measure of time*." And I do think that persistence and consistency are important factors at play here. Yes, one could do this in D&D, but a game like Sorcerer can likely reproduce the particular fun he had more consistently and persistently over the long term than D&D or even other games. Sure, I could make Monopoly into a game that explores the themes of Settlers of Catan or I could just play Settlers of Catan, and I can rely upon Settlers to persistently replicate the sort of fun I have playing the game. 

We could even play with this idea within the context of D&D's own editions. Why should I try to make 5E D&D into 1E D&D to recreate a type of consistent fun I had with 1E when I could just play 1E D&D? I would think that 1E could support certain styles of "D&D gameplay" better than either 3e, 4e, or 5e could. And if system did not matter for the sort of "fun" you could have or that the system supported, then why should h4ters get upset with 4e? 



> Maybe I am wrong and he's right... maybe not *but what's wrong with* actually looking at the games and trying to determine if the flexibility of mainstream games is being overstated or if the narrowness I attribute to many/most indie games is mistaken (though I've often seemed them praised by fans for exactly this)...



How you phrase or go about it? 



> I'm starting to think you're purposefully reading my posts in a negative light...



Then that you would be your reading of my character whereas I was talking about my reading of your post, particularly the subtext. 



> I get called out for challenging Campbell's statement with "unnecessary defensiveness" but you didn't do the same when he challenged my viewpoint.



Probably because Campbell had good reason IMO to challenge your viewpoint earlier, at least from my position. Sorry, but I do not think that all challenges of viewpoint are of equal worth or merit, nor should they be treated as such. 



Lanefan said:


> For me this isn't the subtext, it's the main text.



Oh that was quite clear.  



> It's easier, simpler, and all around more intuitive to tweak or kitbash an existing system to suit your tastes than to design a whole new one...assuming, of course, that *said existing system is flexible enough to withstand said tweaking, which 0-1-2-5e D&D certainly are.*  Some think 3e and 4e can handle it too, though I'm not so sure on this.



This part perplexes me though, as this conclusion seems to jump the gun of what a system can or cannot handle, and it seemingly presumes that most of D&D can handle anything or be the appropriate system. But "tweaking," IMHO, has a purpose, a direction. You are tweaking or kitbashing towards something. But the presumed thing here appears to be tweaking D&D-style fantasy to be D&D-style fantasy. Am I reading this wrong?


----------



## Imaro

Aldarc said:


> Trimming your post a bit.
> I would agree with that claim, at least based on your post that Campbell quoted and some of your comments before that.




And that's fine since we can all have our opinions... Of course if you didn't agree with what I posted it might have been better to just address my argument and why you disagree with it as opposed to ascribing motivation, tone, emotional state, etc to my post which given the medium is probably hard to ascertain from words alone and more importantly since we've gone down this road before and you had to be corrected probably wrong... but since you put a qualifier at the beginning of your assumptions I guess that makes it all ok... especially since I've corrected you  again on your mistaken reading of subtext in my posts again.



Aldarc said:


> You have also left out another key point of Campbell's quote in this section: "I have never had the same sort of fun that Sorcerer provides in a mainstream game *for any significant measure of time*." And I do think that persistence and consistency are important factors at play here. Yes, one could do this in D&D, but a game like Sorcerer can likely reproduce the particular fun he had more consistently and persistently over the long term than D&D or even other games. Sure, I could make Monopoly into a game that explores the themes of Settlers of Catan or I could just play Settlers of Catan, and I can rely upon Settlers to persistently replicate the sort of fun I have playing the game.




Because that wasn't the part I was addressing.  I'm not going to argue that Campbell didn't have more fun with Sorcerer for a significant amount of time ... that's a purely subjective realm that only he knows the answer to... so I have no reason to think he's being dishonest or disingenuous when he makes said claim.  I'm interested in the statements I quoted however because, as I said in my previous post, they are outside the realm of personal preference and thus can be discussed from numerous points of view. 

To address the second part of your statement... My argument to begin with was that D&D could reproduce this experience... how well or how consistently are not things I've commented on yet because the fundamental idea that D&D could reproduce said experience (the what in my list of questions) was still in question so again that is what I have been addressing.  Now if you agree that it can in fact produce said experience we can move on to the how and I can relate my thoughts om it... but has the "what" and whether D&D can produce it been satisfactorily established?



Aldarc said:


> We could even play with this idea within the context of D&D's own editions. Why should I try to make 5E D&D into 1E D&D to recreate a type of consistent fun I had with 1E when I could just play 1E D&D? I would think that 1E could support certain styles of "D&D gameplay" better than either 3e, 4e, or 5e could. And if system did not matter for the sort of "fun" you could have or that the system supported, then why should h4ters get upset with 4e?




Because it was a more narrow design than what they had before?  The reaction could happen if in fact 4e lost some/much of the flexibility of accommodating play styles that it's previous edition had (and let's be real with the OGL and the numerous products based on 3.x it was a very flexible game... especially if one was open to exploring variants).  But again this is jumping the gun we haven't established the what or the how and now we're discussing  @_*Lanefan*_ 's #4 question.  



Aldarc said:


> How you phrase or go about it?




And how exactly is that?  I haven't insulted anyone, I haven't ascribed anything to a poster... I've stated my thoughts and suggested a way to go about discussing it.  This seems more based in the fact that you don't agreee with my thoughts then any actual "way" I've phrased or went about posting.  But please if I have done any of these things show me an example...



Aldarc said:


> Then that you would be your reading of my character whereas I was talking about my reading of your post, particularly the subtext.




 Nope not reading your character asking about a pattern in your posting.  I don't know you well enough to read your character but I know we've run into the issue of you mis-reading my "subtext" before and here we are again... at a certain point rather than write a long parargraph about what you thing I'm trying to say it might be better for you top take my posts at face value or actually ask me before posting what you think the "hidden" meaning of my words are.



Aldarc said:


> Probably because Campbell had good reason IMO to challenge your viewpoint earlier, at least from my position. Sorry, but I do not think that all challenges of viewpoint are of equal worth or merit, nor should they be treated as such.




I thought this might be the case...So you don't agree with my thoughts but instead of addressing them directly in discussion you instead are ascribing subtext to my posts (something you've done before with incorrectly)... I guess that's a way to show your disdain for my viewpoint, but if that's the case why not just choose not to engage on a viewpoint you see no merit in?  Me personally I'm open to seeing that I may be wrong in my assumptions but from this statement you're basically saying there's nothing worth discussing in my viewpoint for you... that's cool, to each their own but then why even engage on this topic with me?


----------



## Aldarc

Imaro said:


> Of course if you didn't agree with what I posted it might have been better to just address my argument and why you disagree with it as opposed to ascribing motivation, tone, emotional state, etc to my post which given the medium is probably hard to ascertain from words alone and more importantly since we've gone down this road before and you had to be corrected probably wrong... but since you put a qualifier at the beginning of your assumptions I guess that makes it all ok... especially since I've corrected you  again on your mistaken reading of subtext in my posts again.





> And how exactly is that?  I haven't insulted anyone, I haven't ascribed anything to a poster... I've stated my thoughts and suggested a way to go about discussing it.  This seems more based in the fact that you don't agreee with my thoughts then any actual "way" I've phrased or went about posting. But please if I have done any of these things show me an example...





> Nope not reading your character asking about a pattern in your posting.  I don't know you well enough to read your character but I know we've run into the issue of you mis-reading my "subtext" before and here we are again... at a certain point rather than write a long parargraph about what you thing I'm trying to say it might be better for you top take my posts at face value or actually ask me before posting what you think the "hidden" meaning of my words are.





> I thought this might be the case...So you don't agree with my thoughts but instead of addressing them directly in discussion you instead are ascribing subtext to my posts (something you've done before with incorrectly)... I guess that's a way to show your disdain for my viewpoint,



Over half of your wall-of-text is just snide, passive aggressive bickering. These aren't the sort of "arguments" that one should even respond to. It's not helping anything. Please chill down. 

So, [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION], in meatbag communication I have found it extraordinarily helpful to let people know _how_ the message of their speech come across, _whether intentionally or not_. Most people will say, "Oh, sorry about that. That is not my intention. Let me rephrase that." or "I guess that I am just frustrated by X / feeling Y." This is not about looking to purposefully misread anyone. It's about what I was hearing in your statement. This is even why I began what I wrote with "What I perhaps unfairly hear in your questions..." Sometimes the subtext is the real "content" of the post rather than the text, and sometimes people don't realize how they are coming across, myself included. I have been instructed before that one should not simply listen to what is said at face value, but also what is unsaid or may be the "impulse" behind the words. You took this "mis-reading" as an attack, but it's not. And based on the "likes" I received to my subtextual "reading," I suspect that I was not the only person who walked away from your post with a similar impression. 



> but if that's the case why not just choose not to engage on a viewpoint you see no merit in?... that's cool, to each their own but then why even engage on this topic with me?



You know why I didn't "just address my argument and why you disagree with it"? Honestly, it's because I did not want to. I wanted to see how Campbell answered because I myself was curious, and I even said as much when I quoted you a page ago. I did not see it as my place to wade too deeply into this conversation between you and Campbell. I was content to stand and watch in the shallows by the shore. But I foolishly thought that I could just dip my toe into the water without being dragged down to the deepest depths of discussion. And now I know that my silence would have been a wiser course of action but instead my decision to speak made fools of us both. 



> To address the second part of your statement... *My argument to begin with was that D&D could reproduce this experience*... how well or how consistently are not things I've commented on yet because the fundamental idea that D&D could reproduce said experience (the what in my list of questions) was still in question so again that is what I have been addressing.



I am somewhat confused here. I thought that you initially were inquiring whether D&D could reproduce this experience, yet here you appear to have already landed at the conclusion that it can. 



> Now if you agree that it can in fact produce said experience we can move on to the how and I can relate my thoughts om it... but has the "what" and whether D&D can produce it been satisfactorily established?



I cannot answer about whether Sorcerer could be emulated in D&D, nor do I dare speak about Campbell's experience here. This lies outside of my ken. What sort of concrete "whats" are you looking for from Campbell? You say that you are looking for some concrete things but you are casting a fairly nebulous net here. If you have experience with both Sorcerer and D&D, then perhaps you could provide some concrete examples of your own to facilitate discussion?


----------



## Imaro

Aldarc said:


> Over half of your wall-of-text is just snide, passive aggressive bickering. These aren't the sort of "arguments" that one should even respond to. It's not helping anything. Please chill down.




And again you are mis-reading... I'm not angry and I'm not being passive aggressive honestly this isn't serious enough for me to feel anger about... it's make believe games.  I am stating how I saw your reply, nothing passive aggressive or bickering about it.  




Aldarc said:


> So, [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION], in meatbag communication I have found it extraordinarily helpful to let people know _how_ the message of their speech come across, _whether intentionally or not_. Most people will say, "Oh, sorry about that. That is not my intention. Let me rephrase that." or "I guess that I am just frustrated by X / feeling Y." This is not about looking to purposefully misread anyone. It's about what I was hearing in your statement. This is even why I began what I wrote with "What I perhaps unfairly hear in your questions..." Sometimes the subtext is the real "content" of the post rather than the text, and sometimes people don't realize how they are coming across, myself included. I have been instructed before that one should not simply listen to what is said at face value, but also what is unsaid or may be the "impulse" behind the words. You took this "mis-reading" as an attack, but it's not. And based on the "likes" I received to my subtextual "reading," I suspect that I was not the only person who walked away from your post with a similar impression.




The thing is you were only liked by 2 people who regularly disagree with my stance on indie games and one poster who has me on ignore yet passive aggressively comments on my posts through other people as well as the like and laugh buttons... so I don't really consider that evidence but ok stepping back, I'll ask... what exactly in my phrasing is causing the subtext you attributed to my posts to come across as such?  Not being snarky, not being passive aggressive... asking for perspective.



Aldarc said:


> You know why I didn't "just address my argument and why you disagree with it"? Honestly, it's because I did not want to. I wanted to see how Campbell answered because I myself was curious, and I even said as much when I quoted you a page ago. I did not see it as my place to wade too deeply into this conversation between you and Campbell. I was content to stand and watch in the shallows by the shore. But I foolishly thought that I could just dip my toe into the water without being dragged down to the deepest depths of discussion. And now I know that my silence would have been a wiser course of action but instead my decision to speak made fools of us both.




Yes but instead you attributed a stance or set of feelings to me... D&D is superior, D&D is mother and father, etc. when that is not what I said at all.  Believing that D&D is flexible enough to offer an experience similar or in line with Sorcerer is not claiming it's superior or better in any way... and I've never claimed such in my posts.



Aldarc said:


> I am somewhat confused here. I thought that you initially were inquiring whether D&D could reproduce this experience, yet here you appear to have already landed at the conclusion that it can.




No I've been pretty clear with my earlier posts that I think traditional games (D&D included) can often be used to replicate the experience found in more narrow games .  Tying this back to my original line of thought we were speaking to player types and I commented  that more narrow designed games like FATE put an emphasis on the fun of say a player who enjoys storytelling but not a player whose into tactical combat while a game like D&D has the tools to accommodate both in the same game.  This wasn't claiming one was superior just stating my observations.   



Aldarc said:


> I cannot answer about whether Sorcerer could be emulated in D&D, nor do I dare speak about Campbell's experience here. This lies outside of my ken. What sort of concrete "whats" are you looking for from Campbell? You say that you are looking for some concrete things but you are casting a fairly nebulous net here. If you have experience with both Sorcerer and D&D, then perhaps you could provide some concrete examples of your own to facilitate discussion?




Well if the claim is made that it can't emulate the play of Sorcerer (which was not made by myself) then i am looking for what can't be emulated.  I am familiar with Sorcerer in passing, I have read it and ran a game years ago with it but from my recollections it was a pretty standard dice pool system whose real innovation was the GM advice, non-mechanical aspects of character creation and suggestions around gameplay as opposed to anything hardcoded in the actual rules... but as I admitted earlier in the thread i could be mistaken.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> For me this isn't the subtext, it's the main text.



 Thanks for your honesty!  



> It's easier, simpler, and all around more intuitive to tweak or kitbash an existing system to suit your tastes than to design a whole new one...assuming, of course, that said existing system is flexible enough to withstand said tweaking, which 0-1-2-5e D&D certainly are.  Some think 3e and 4e can handle it too, though I'm not so sure on this.



 Some systems require more adjustment to get a different experience or handle a different genre than others, of course.  Games like FUDGE/Fate, Fuzion (or Hero), or GURPS are designed to readily be used in multiple genres or for different purposes.  GURPS, for instance, has world books that address a property or genre and go to town with it, you don't even have to do the tweaking yourself, and it's all still the same underlying system.   d20 - like BRP, Interlock, d6, and many others from the 80s and 90s - is essentially a 'core system' that can be fleshed out and adapted to build different games, and it leverages the decades that amateurs like ourselves spent kitbashing D&D without benefit of any such considerations in its initial design.  

D&D, itself, though, as a ruleset has a pretty limited range, and while a lot of us have modded it a whole heck of a lot, and, arguably, you have to tweak it some just get it running, some of what limits that range is pretty problematic...



> That way the DM doesn't have to buy and learn a new system as she already knows it inside out, having just rebuilt some of it based on materials she already has.  And the players don't have to learn (and-or buy!) a whole new system, they need only brush up on the bits that have been changed from what they already know (based on D&D being the most common entry product).



Yep, and that makes up for a multitude of sins.  Once you know a system well, once you have kitbashed it from a fantasy game to science fiction game and back again, say, you can prettymuch make it do tricks.  You could probably all but write your own system - that's where 'Fantasy Heartbreakers' come from!

And, since most of us come to the hobby from D&D, far more often than not, that system that we mastered to that degree was, of course, D&D.  So it has a rep for being adapted to many uses that does not actually correspond it's suitability for such adaption.  Campbell may have noticed that.  ;(


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> Did you ever follow up on this?  Just curious... since I don't think the fact that you haven't experienced something personally to be anywhere near ample evidence to discount its possibility.
> 
> EDIT: To further clarify where I am coming from... what is the "fun" that Sorcerer provides and have you ever been in a mainstream game where the GM/Dm was actually trying to provide this experience?   From what I can remember Sorcerer is a game about bartering away one's humanity to attain power.  Why would a game centered around this theme not be possible in D&D?  I'm not claiming it is, but at first glance it certainly seems possible.  What about D&D makes it impossible to explore this theme?  Also what type of gameplay besides this theme of humanity for power does Sorcerer support?




D&D focuses on exploring exotic locales in search of treasure and the gaining of experience which advances characters on a power curve, giving access to ever greater supernatural reserves of durability, magic, etc. 

It isn't so much that you couldn't graft some sort of 'humanity' concept onto the core of D&D. Its that you'd have to also ditch many of the elements that make D&D what it is. XP would have to go for sure, and the whole idea of gathering loot and magic items would be secondary at best, and mostly a distraction from the main theme. The paradigms of dungeon exploration would be meaningless in a game focused on 'humanity', and the utter lack of mechanics to support things outside of, basically, combat and exploration, would weigh large.

In effect, by the time you were done, you would have to create humanity rules and everything associated with them, mechanics for relating to other people in 'humane' and 'inhumane' ways, a whole new character class (because you wouldn't have D&D's 'big 4' paradigm to regulate who gets what functions, and you wouldn't really need non-casters). The whole spell list would probably not work for this game, though some specific spells might. You'd probably want an entirely different set of magic rules in fact. 

This wouldn't even be remotely D&D anymore. It would be a whole new game, which Sorcerer in point of fact is! So, why would you want to force D&D to be the vehicle for this? I guess you could use the 'GURPS argument' that somehow having all games be built on one chassis has some sort of systematic advantage, but that argument hasn't worked at all well for GURPS, which is now pretty much an obscure system that attracts almost no attention and is barely even supported by SJG anymore (probably because they realize it doesn't offer much in the marketplace). 

Thus the argument is cogent IMHO. D&D provides a certain 'mainstream' RPG experience. It isn't well-adapted to anything else.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> I always find it interesting when the argument that D&D hasn't evolved is made... I look at OD&D and IMO it's nothing like 5e in play or in much of it's design.  Usually I find this argument to mean D&D hasn't evolved in the way I would like it to have done... or specific editions are used to  create a "road" that supports this assertion are cited while those that don't are conveniently forgotten, and even then the argument doesn't seem to hold much water.




At the risk of sounding like I'm reversing what I said before, there IS a fundamental sense in which, 4e aside, D&D has stuck to its original premise rather closely. The GM generates a world as a sort of 'challenge' or 'puzzle' to the players, who have NO input into its particulars (at least formally). The players assume persona and direct them based entirely on in-game knowledge and without any recourse to the exterior logic of the game system itself (again formally and ideally). NOTHING has changed one iota in this formula since 1974. 

Nor has the essential 'formula' of the game varied (here even 4e is pretty much in line with the rest of D&D editions). Characters explore exotic locales, which act as challenging situations for them to overcome, receiving loot and XP as a reward for survival and overcoming said challenges. XP accumulates, driving the characters to advance on a steep power curve, where they then face proportionately more powerful creatures and situations, wash, rinse, repeat. 

There are significant variations in some of the thematics, and obvious differences in mechanics, but the 'core' really is fairly stable. You can quite easily and straightforwardly translate any 1970's vintage TSR module into 5e and run practically unchanged, simply substituting the modern stat blocks and maybe exchanging a monster or two where for some reason their power levels have been altered somewhat. Again, 4e is the exception, and that is the game we talk about when we talk about narrative focus of play in D&D, for a reason!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> For me this isn't the subtext, it's the main text.
> 
> It's easier, simpler, and all around more intuitive to tweak or kitbash an existing system to suit your tastes than to design a whole new one...assuming, of course, that said existing system is flexible enough to withstand said tweaking, which 0-1-2-5e D&D certainly are.  Some think 3e and 4e can handle it too, though I'm not so sure on this.
> 
> That way the DM doesn't have to buy and learn a new system as she already knows it inside out, having just rebuilt some of it based on materials she already has.  And the players don't have to learn (and-or buy!) a whole new system, they need only brush up on the bits that have been changed from what they already know (based on D&D being the most common entry product).
> 
> Lanefan




At the risk of sounding like I'm accusing you of lacking a deep understanding of games, which I don't really intend this to convey...

I once thought as you do. At that time, back in the early 80's and even up into the days of 2e's release, I just thought that the magic was to crack the nut of producing a truly good universal system. None of us really appreciated the limitations of the paradigm in which we were judging game designs. Deeper analysis, particularly after using 4e, shows me that there are a lot more dimensions to RPG design and that no one system will ever be adequate.

So, I fundamentally disagree that D&D can 'do it all', it cannot, and it shouldn't be attempted, and it won't be attempted! Furthermore if you try to play 'Sorcerer' with any flavor of D&D, you will, AT BEST, have to do much more work for a second-rate experience vs actually just running the real thing.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> No I've been pretty clear with my earlier posts that I think traditional games (D&D included) can often be used to replicate the experience found in more narrow games .  Tying this back to my original line of thought we were speaking to player types and I commented  that more narrow designed games like FATE put an emphasis on the fun of say a player who enjoys storytelling but not a player whose into tactical combat while a game like D&D has the tools to accommodate both in the same game.  This wasn't claiming one was superior just stating my observations.



OK, this is a concrete claim. How would you address the sorts of styles of play which are typically addressed by the signature mechanics of FATE? (I would take these to be character aspects primarily, and how they are tied into the mechanics, I know this varies to some extent between incarnations of FATE-based games).

For my part I see nothing in D&D which provides anything like the dynamics of compelling an aspect in FATE, or the mechanics of scene framing which it expects. 'classic' D&D is entirely bereft of anything here. I will note certain exceptions which help to prove this assertion:


D&D in general has classes, which are pretty good at defining characters, but they are very generic and offer no mechanics or framework for leveraging them. At best DMs might do things like take account of a character's class in determining how NPCs interact with them (IE offering an army command to a fighter, and an advisor role to a wizard).
Fighters specifically have 'domain mechanics' at high level which DO verge on something close to an 'aspect' in a sense. However, they are generic to all fighters and don't provide any mechanism to compel, nor any direct tie into structuring the plot. At best they act as guides to DMs and players, at worst as a simple resource system (a class feature).
Ability scores, particularly in early D&D, could be seen as largely something akin to aspects. Again, there's little to tie them to plot, though they COULD govern character's options in play (but there are few formal rules for this, only scattered subsystems like BBLG).
Paladins have specific restrictions. These are pretty strong, and enforced with a big stick, so they do produce some results, but not in a way very similar to FATE!
Alignment, depending on how the DM interprets it, might perform some of this work.
Race could be sort of an aspect, but this is similar to the case with class, very generic and lacking any sort of ties to mechanics that would shape the plot.

Specific editions sometimes have other little tidbits. 2e's XP rules are a bit of a way for the DM to compel certain things from the PLAYERS, but nothing works the other way at all. 5e has the optional Inspiration rule and associated 'character traits', but they are really kind of just tacked-on to the existing game paradigm.


----------



## Imaro

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, this is a concrete claim. How would you address the sorts of styles of play which are typically addressed by the signature mechanics of FATE? (I would take these to be character aspects primarily, and how they are tied into the mechanics, I know this varies to some extent between incarnations of FATE-based games).
> 
> For my part I see nothing in D&D which provides anything like the dynamics of compelling an aspect in FATE, or the mechanics of scene framing which it expects. 'classic' D&D is entirely bereft of anything here. I will note certain exceptions which help to prove this assertion:
> 
> 
> D&D in general has classes, which are pretty good at defining characters, but they are very generic and offer no mechanics or framework for leveraging them. At best DMs might do things like take account of a character's class in determining how NPCs interact with them (IE offering an army command to a fighter, and an advisor role to a wizard).
> Fighters specifically have 'domain mechanics' at high level which DO verge on something close to an 'aspect' in a sense. However, they are generic to all fighters and don't provide any mechanism to compel, nor any direct tie into structuring the plot. At best they act as guides to DMs and players, at worst as a simple resource system (a class feature).
> Ability scores, particularly in early D&D, could be seen as largely something akin to aspects. Again, there's little to tie them to plot, though they COULD govern character's options in play (but there are few formal rules for this, only scattered subsystems like BBLG).
> Paladins have specific restrictions. These are pretty strong, and enforced with a big stick, so they do produce some results, but not in a way very similar to FATE!
> Alignment, depending on how the DM interprets it, might perform some of this work.
> Race could be sort of an aspect, but this is similar to the case with class, very generic and lacking any sort of ties to mechanics that would shape the plot.
> 
> Specific editions sometimes have other little tidbits. 2e's XP rules are a bit of a way for the DM to compel certain things from the PLAYERS, but nothing works the other way at all. 5e has the optional Inspiration rule and associated 'character traits', but they are really kind of just tacked-on to the existing game paradigm.




I think I already addressed this with 5e and inspiration.  Compelling an aspect at it's most basic form is being rewarded with mechanical effectiveness for bringing into play the traits of your character... either through a bonus to/reroll of... your roll or through the awarding of a FATE point for a complication.  5e's inspiration mechanic works in the same way... especially if one uses the optional rules from the DMG to flesh it out more.  Now I'm not sure how it being optional in any way changes the fact that it does perform the function of aspect compels since it only strengthens my argument that while not necessary (I don't have nay players who like that playstyle) it is there for those who do want to engage with it.  

Now as far as scene framing goes... what exactly are the mechanics for that in FATE?  I'm a little confused by this statement as I don't remember there being any specific mechanics around scene framing or maybe I'm not understanding what you mean by mechanics in this instance... so I'll refrain from answering that until I get a clearer understanding if you are willing to expound...


----------



## Imaro

AbdulAlhazred said:


> At the risk of sounding like I'm reversing what I said before, there IS a fundamental sense in which, 4e aside, D&D has stuck to its original premise rather closely. The GM generates a world as a sort of 'challenge' or 'puzzle' to the players, who have NO input into its particulars (at least formally). The players assume persona and direct them based entirely on in-game knowledge and without any recourse to the exterior logic of the game system itself (again formally and ideally). NOTHING has changed one iota in this formula since 1974.
> 
> Nor has the essential 'formula' of the game varied (here even 4e is pretty much in line with the rest of D&D editions). Characters explore exotic locales, which act as challenging situations for them to overcome, receiving loot and XP as a reward for survival and overcoming said challenges. XP accumulates, driving the characters to advance on a steep power curve, where they then face proportionately more powerful creatures and situations, wash, rinse, repeat.
> 
> There are significant variations in some of the thematics, and obvious differences in mechanics, but the 'core' really is fairly stable. You can quite easily and straightforwardly translate any 1970's vintage TSR module into 5e and run practically unchanged, simply substituting the modern stat blocks and maybe exchanging a monster or two where for some reason their power levels have been altered somewhat. Again, 4e is the exception, and that is the game we talk about when we talk about narrative focus of play in D&D, for a reason!




Yes but are we talking about evolving or becoming a different game?


----------



## Tony Vargas

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Specific editions sometimes have other little tidbits. 2e's XP rules are a bit of a way for the DM to compel certain things from the PLAYERS, but nothing works the other way at all.



 Spells can compel the DM, after a fashion.
I've certainly felt compelled to add teleport barriers, anti-magic fields, magic-resistant monsters, and Mordenkainen's Disjunction casting arch-mages/liches/arcanadaemons to my dungeons back in the day...



> 5e has the optional Inspiration rule and associated 'character traits', but they are really kind of just tacked-on to the existing game paradigm.



 Its pretty limited in scope compared to Aspects.

BTW,  I feel I should soften my 'D&D has not evolved' stance... after all, what is the alternative theory to evolution?

_Intelligent Design_


----------



## Lanefan

Missed this one earlier...


Tony Vargas said:


> Is (4) also "without too much 'persuasion' by the DM and/or players?"  Or is the first hypothetical game held to RAW, while D&D is let off the leash?



No, (4) can use as much persuasion as required in order to make the first hypothetical game system redundant.

Designing the first hypothetical game (FHG) and then kitbashing that instead seems like a complete waste of effort; I'm assuming the FHG's RAW already achieve what you want and so yes, it's held to RAW.


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, this is a concrete claim. How would you address the sorts of styles of play which are typically addressed by the signature mechanics of FATE? (I would take these to be character aspects primarily, and how they are tied into the mechanics, I know this varies to some extent between incarnations of FATE-based games).
> 
> For my part I see nothing in D&D which provides anything like the dynamics of compelling an aspect in FATE, or the mechanics of scene framing which it expects. 'classic' D&D is entirely bereft of anything here. I will note certain exceptions which help to prove this assertion:
> 
> 
> D&D in general has classes, which are pretty good at defining characters, but they are very generic and offer no mechanics or framework for leveraging them. At best DMs might do things like take account of a character's class in determining how NPCs interact with them (IE offering an army command to a fighter, and an advisor role to a wizard).
> Fighters specifically have 'domain mechanics' at high level which DO verge on something close to an 'aspect' in a sense. However, they are generic to all fighters and don't provide any mechanism to compel, nor any direct tie into structuring the plot. At best they act as guides to DMs and players, at worst as a simple resource system (a class feature).
> Ability scores, particularly in early D&D, could be seen as largely something akin to aspects. Again, there's little to tie them to plot, though they COULD govern character's options in play (but there are few formal rules for this, only scattered subsystems like BBLG).
> Paladins have specific restrictions. These are pretty strong, and enforced with a big stick, so they do produce some results, but not in a way very similar to FATE!
> Alignment, depending on how the DM interprets it, might perform some of this work.
> Race could be sort of an aspect, but this is similar to the case with class, very generic and lacking any sort of ties to mechanics that would shape the plot.
> 
> Specific editions sometimes have other little tidbits. 2e's XP rules are a bit of a way for the DM to compel certain things from the PLAYERS, but nothing works the other way at all. 5e has the optional Inspiration rule and associated 'character traits', but they are really kind of just tacked-on to the existing game paradigm.




I think that this is missing the mark.  The question isn't "Can system X ape the mechanics of system Y" but rather "can system X provide the same playgoal/outcome as system Y".  The idea is to look at whether a given system can evoke a desired feel, not whether it does that evocation the same way.  For instance, no one plays Fate to evoke the Fate's mechanics.  They play Fate because it lets them evoke the kind of experience they players want.  Instead of evaluating whether or not D&D can do the mechanical end of what aspects in Fate do, we should be looking to see what aspects actually do, and then if D&D can do that.

My answer is that aspects evoke meaningful character choices in game by using those character choices to allow success or add complication to play.

That said, D&D can do this.  I do this regularly in my D&D 5e game by taking what players have given me as important about their characters in backgrounds and traits and letting those improve or hinder action declarations in play.  Frex, I had a player that had caravaner as a background, who's story was that she grew up on the trail with her father's caravan, trading around the realm.  For this, whenever a question of where a given settlement or landmark was or the best way to get there from here, her character knew, and had advantage on navigation checks between settlements.  In Fate terms, she had an aspect along the lines of "I always know the way" or somesuch.

Now, if you want to talk about which system does this better, then Fate does, hands down.  It's built around this kind of evocation as the centerpiece of play.  No arguments.  But I don't think comparing whether or not D&D has aspect-like mechanics really gets to the question asked.  I think you can mostly do most play goals in most systems, but they're better served in systems that place those play goals front and center rather than systems that pay lip service to them or mostly ignore them.  D&D does what it does, and I think it's a broad platform that can accommodate a wide range of play goals, but none super duper well.  It's generalist and somewhat malleable.  Other games, especially ones that focus on a theme or playgoal (or both) will do that better than D&D, oftentimes much better, but it's going to be hard to not find at least some space for that goal in the broad tent of D&D.

Now, all that said, D&D does fantasy.  It doesn't do non-fantasy settings well.  Other games (like Fate) are very much setting agnostic, so that's a strong point in their favor.  If my goal is 'I want to play cyberpunk' D&D is of no help whatsoever, but I could play that in Fate.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> Missed this one earlier...
> No, (4) can use as much persuasion as required in order to make the first hypothetical game system redundant....t; I'm assuming the FHG's RAW already achieve what you want and so yes, it's held to RAW.



 So, with any game in either position, all you have to do is kitbash the second game into a functional clone of the first.
That says litterally nothing about the second game, which is just a placeholder in the exercise.

Hold both games to RaW and the comparison might mean something.


----------



## Aldarc

Ovinomancer said:


> That said, *D&D can do this.*  I do this regularly in my D&D 5e game by taking what players have given me as important about their characters in backgrounds and traits and letting those improve or hinder action declarations in play.



I'm not so sure about that, at least not without some caveats. It sounds less like "D&D can do this" and more like "the GM can do this." Your answer seems less about what the system can do and more about the capabilities of the GM, an agent independent of the system. And your second sentence kinda underscores this point; _you_ do this, but the system does not inherently facilitate these sort of things nor is it built to do so. So it seems somewhat disingenuous to say that this is something that the system does or can do. It reminds me of my first car. Can I play CDs in my car? Sure, once I installed a CD player, but it did not come equipped with it, nor it does not say anything about what my model of car can actually do, since this required me to build in additional features. 



> Now, if you want to talk about which system does this better, then Fate does, hands down.  It's built around this kind of evocation as the centerpiece of play.  No arguments.  But I don't think comparing whether or not D&D has aspect-like mechanics really gets to the question asked.  I think you can mostly do most play goals in most systems, but they're better served in systems that place those play goals front and center rather than systems that pay lip service to them or mostly ignore them.  D&D does what it does, and I think it's a broad platform that can accommodate a wide range of play goals, but none super duper well.  It's generalist and somewhat malleable.  Other games, especially ones that focus on a theme or playgoal (or both) will do that better than D&D, oftentimes much better, but it's going to be hard to not find at least some space for that goal in the broad tent of D&D.
> 
> Now, all that said, D&D does fantasy.  It doesn't do non-fantasy settings well.  Other games (like Fate) are very much setting agnostic, so that's a strong point in their favor.  If my goal is 'I want to play cyberpunk' D&D is of no help whatsoever, but I could play that in Fate.



And here I agree with you hands down. 

There are lots of games that do fantasy, and yet we walk away from these different game systems with different experiences, fun utility, and or perceived replay value. A D&D game does not run like a Dungeon World game. A Dungeon World game does not run like a Tiny Dungeon game. A Tiny Dungeon game does not run like a Shadows of the Demon Lord game. A Shadows of the Demon Lord game does not run like a Genesys game. They could all run the same story. They could all take "what players have given [the GM] as important about their characters in backgrounds and traits and letting those improve or hinder action declarations in play," but that seems less about system mechanics and more about GM. In which case, we may ask what can D&D as a system of game mechanics do well that isn't the GM "installing a CD player"?


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## Tony Vargas

Aldarc said:


> I'm not so sure about that, at least not without some caveats. It sounds less like "D&D can do this" and more like "the GM can do this."



 In 5e, as in the hallowed classic game, The DM /is/ D&D.  

Like "The King is The Land."

It one of the Gygaxian Mysteries.




> we may ask what can D&D as a system of game mechanics do well that isn't the GM "installing a CD player"?



  Reward System Mastery?


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## Aldarc

Tony Vargas said:


> In 5e, as in the hallowed classic game, The DM /is/ D&D.



As is also the case in nearly every other system out there so I don't think it really says anything about what a system can do.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> I think I already addressed this with 5e and inspiration.  Compelling an aspect at it's most basic form is being rewarded with mechanical effectiveness for bringing into play the traits of your character... either through a bonus to/reroll of... your roll or through the awarding of a FATE point for a complication.  5e's inspiration mechanic works in the same way... especially if one uses the optional rules from the DMG to flesh it out more.  Now I'm not sure how it being optional in any way changes the fact that it does perform the function of aspect compels since it only strengthens my argument that while not necessary (I don't have nay players who like that playstyle) it is there for those who do want to engage with it.
> 
> Now as far as scene framing goes... what exactly are the mechanics for that in FATE?  I'm a little confused by this statement as I don't remember there being any specific mechanics around scene framing or maybe I'm not understanding what you mean by mechanics in this instance... so I'll refrain from answering that until I get a clearer understanding if you are willing to expound...




OK, what optional tells me is that the game already has a set paradigm on which it works, independently of some sort of narrative mechanics (Inspiration and etc). So any such rules are going to be a secondary consideration, something added onto existing mechanics to tweak an existing system. OTOH the mechanics in FATE *are* the game, they're central to how it works and everything else is built up around that concept. Thus I don't agree that 5e Inspiration achieves the same thing, or leads to the same sort of play that exists in FATE. 

Scene framing simply IS the process with FATE, every scene in the game exists in relation to the needs/goals/aspects of the PCs. Now, FATE itself is a sort of boilerplate, not a system that you just play. You have to 'flesh it out' and part of that process would involve certain types of decisions. That would include whether or not your game is a zero myth, story now sort of game, or if it focuses more on some predetermined elements. So it isn't possible to be completely definitive in terms of what that process is in FATE. 

In general the process is simply that the players define what they want to do in some fashion, via backstory, build choices, aspects (mainly in FATE), and maybe other things. The GM then frames a scene in terms which directly challenge the beliefs/goals/interests of the characters in terms of what they decided those were. FATE, IIRC then allows players to use FATE points to add or change some of the elements introduced by the GM. Play proceeds with the dice determining whether or not character's achieve their objects in the scene or not, and at some point the scene ends (IIRC there are some rules about when this happens) and the GM frames a new scene, or play proceeds in a purely narrative fashion so as to set up the next conflict. 

Honestly I'm not a FATE guru either. I'm sure there are other people who can get down into the detailed specifics on that system more than I can.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Aldarc said:


> I'm not so sure about that, at least not without some caveats. It sounds less like "D&D can do this" and more like "the GM can do this." Your answer seems less about what the system can do and more about the capabilities of the GM, an agent independent of the system. And your second sentence kinda underscores this point; _you_ do this, but the system does not inherently facilitate these sort of things nor is it built to do so. So it seems somewhat disingenuous to say that this is something that the system does or can do. It reminds me of my first car. Can I play CDs in my car? Sure, once I installed a CD player, but it did not come equipped with it, nor it does not say anything about what my model of car can actually do, since this required me to build in additional features.
> 
> And here I agree with you hands down.
> 
> There are lots of games that do fantasy, and yet we walk away from these different game systems with different experiences, fun utility, and or perceived replay value. A D&D game does not run like a Dungeon World game. A Dungeon World game does not run like a Tiny Dungeon game. A Tiny Dungeon game does not run like a Shadows of the Demon Lord game. A Shadows of the Demon Lord game does not run like a Genesys game. They could all run the same story. They could all take "what players have given [the GM] as important about their characters in backgrounds and traits and letting those improve or hinder action declarations in play," but that seems less about system mechanics and more about GM. In which case, we may ask what can D&D as a system of game mechanics do well that isn't the GM "installing a CD player"?




Right, what I would say is that [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] is shifting the goal posts. The question was about what the SYSTEM does, and he is trying to talk about what the GM can do, independent of system. 

BUT I would go further and say that systems like 5e ACTIVELY WORK AGAINST the sorts of play that you would see in a game like FATE. The way characters are designed in 5e vests all their abilities in their character features and abilities, and these are NOT gated by any situational mechanic, except Inspiration, which is a pretty superficial mechanism. AT BEST what this means is that a player interested in a specific sort of game experience has to trust entirely in the ability and interest of the GM in producing what he wants, BY KITBASHING 5e (or just relying on ad hoc 'rulings'). Clearly, as a player interested in something like a story now game, or even a more traditional but narratively focused game, it is in my better interests, more sure to produce what I want, if I play in a game that uses FATE instead of 5e. To get the full experience with 5e, we really have to alter that game, and that's been proven time and time again to be a process fraught with the risk of missing the boat.

Remember, the original point made where was a claim that some universal system, such as 5e, can simply be kitbashed into anything and it will serve to replace any other arbitrary game. I think we've sufficiently dismissed that claim as far fetched. Certainly to make 5e into 'FATE for fantasy' would require a degree of kitbashing so large that it wouldn't qualify as being 5e anymore in most people's book.


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## Tony Vargas

AbdulAlhazred said:


> . The question was about what the SYSTEM does, and he is trying to talk about what the GM can do, independent of system.



 Arguably, in D&D, 5e especially & intentionally, the system us not independent if the DM, so you can't talk about what the system can do without bringing the DM into it...


> Remember, the original point made where was a claim that some universal system, such as 5e, can simply be kitbashed into anything and it will serve to replace any other arbitrary game.



5e is in no way a universal system.  At best, d20 is a core system, like BRP or d6 or Interlock or many others have been  since the 80s.  GURPS tried to be a Universal System (it's what the 'U' is for), but eventually copped to multi-genre, instead.  Hero went universal in it's 4th ed, not sure what shape it's in now, but you could not only do any character in any genre, but could model system artifacts, as well, if it amused you (and you had enough points)...

FATE, itself, thanks to its FUDGE DNA is closer to being a Universal System than d20.



> Certainly to make 5e into 'FATE for fantasy' would require a degree of kitbashing so large that it wouldn't qualify as being 5e anymore in most people's book.



 It doesn't take much to render D&D not D&D anymore. ;P



Aldarc said:


> As is also the case in nearly every other system out there so I don't think it really says anything about what a system can do.




Not nearly so much as you might think from the unavoidable fact that the GM chooses the system and may thus choose to change it as much as he likes.  In the 90s, RPGs were thier settings - we still blythly refer to the Storyteller system as 'WoD,' for instance, and 2e was heavily focused on setting.
Until 5e, the D&D of the WotC era was very much the underlying system, the RAW.  The community was dismissive of house rules, and System Matery dominated.

GMs can always overwrite the system, even the zietgeist, of the game they're nominally running, of course, but in 1e, and, very intentionally, 5e's DM Empowerment, they are expected, arguably even required to do so.


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## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Right, what I would say is that [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] is shifting the goal posts. The question was about what the SYSTEM does, and he is trying to talk about what the GM can do, independent of system.
> 
> BUT I would go further and say that systems like 5e ACTIVELY WORK AGAINST the sorts of play that you would see in a game like FATE. The way characters are designed in 5e vests all their abilities in their character features and abilities, and these are NOT gated by any situational mechanic, except Inspiration, which is a pretty superficial mechanism. AT BEST what this means is that a player interested in a specific sort of game experience has to trust entirely in the ability and interest of the GM in producing what he wants, BY KITBASHING 5e (or just relying on ad hoc 'rulings'). Clearly, as a player interested in something like a story now game, or even a more traditional but narratively focused game, it is in my better interests, more sure to produce what I want, if I play in a game that uses FATE instead of 5e. To get the full experience with 5e, we really have to alter that game, and that's been proven time and time again to be a process fraught with the risk of missing the boat.
> 
> Remember, the original point made where was a claim that some universal system, such as 5e, can simply be kitbashed into anything and it will serve to replace any other arbitrary game. I think we've sufficiently dismissed that claim as far fetched. Certainly to make 5e into 'FATE for fantasy' would require a degree of kitbashing so large that it wouldn't qualify as being 5e anymore in most people's book.




I don't see how I shifted the goalposts -- my example was referencing the background part of 5e specifically and within the available direction of the DMG (middle path) method of adjudication.  My example and argument are directly within the core system.  No alteration necessary.

Does thus mean 5e is as good as Fate for playing by aspects?  No, if course not, but there's room built into the system for aspect-like play without an ounce of kitbashing.  You just have to use the elements provided.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Tony Vargas said:


> Arguably, in D&D, 5e especially & intentionally, the system us not independent if the DM, so you can't talk about what the system can do without bringing the DM into it...



I will just be blunt because I'm tired of MM's hogwash, its hogwash, pure and simple. Dismissed out of hand. The game is the game, and even if different GMs can play a given game differently that doesn't change the fact of the game itself having certain characteristics.



> 5e is in no way a universal system.  At best, d20 is a core system, like BRP or d6 or Interlock or many others have been  since the 80s.  GURPS tried to be a Universal System (it's what the 'U' is for), but eventually copped to multi-genre, instead.  Hero went universal in it's 4th ed, not sure what shape it's in now, but you could not only do any character in any genre, but could model system artifacts, as well, if it amused you (and you had enough points)...
> 
> FATE, itself, thanks to its FUDGE DNA is closer to being a Universal System than d20.



All I mean when I call 5e 'universal' is that the argument was effectively that it can be used as such, albeit with kitbashing (whereas GURPS required extensions for each genre, which is effectively the same thing, just supplied by the publisher and more cleanly organized as such). Frankly I think GURPS fails for the same reason that 5e can't be kitbashed into an equivalent of FATE (at least not in any reasonable way such that there is still some semblance of 5e there). And yes, FATE/FUDGE is a pretty universal STORY NOW genre independent system. It cannot do 5e any better than 5e can do it though. 



> It doesn't take much to render D&D not D&D anymore. ;P



This is of course what TSR QUICKLY discovered! Metamorphosis Alpha/Gamma World was modestly successful. They didn't even TRY to do Wild West etc. as D&D clones (I think Boot Hill was developed VERY early on, it may actually be essentially a parallel development to D&D in some sense, so maybe that shouldn't count here).  Note how Top Secret, Marvel, Star Frontiers, etc. all assiduously avoided any resemblance to D&D mechanics! In fact, after Gamma World 1e TSR never again released a game with anything like D&D mechanics, except D&D. In fact they tended to use the Marvel system, or a hack of it, as something like a generic system.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> I don't see how I shifted the goalposts -- my example was referencing the background part of 5e specifically and within the available direction of the DMG (middle path) method of adjudication.  My example and argument are directly within the core system.  No alteration necessary.
> 
> Does thus mean 5e is as good as Fate for playing by aspects?  No, if course not, but there's room built into the system for aspect-like play without an ounce of kitbashing.  You just have to use the elements provided.




I mean, you shifted the discussion from systems to what DMs could do, which is simply a wide-open and thus meaningless arena. Any random GM can hack on any edition of D&D until it becomes a clone of any other arbitrary RPG. This is just as true as it is that a guy with a blowtorch and sufficient know-how can turn a porsche into a dumptruck. Its sort of just trivially true, and altering the terms of the discussion in that way rendered your conclusion a tautology.

And, to your current point, sure, 5e can do something that slightly resembles what FATE does as its main thing. My porsche dumptruck can haul 250 lbs of crushed rock. It faintly resembles a Mack.


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## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I mean, you shifted the discussion from systems to what DMs could do, which is simply a wide-open and thus meaningless arena. Any random GM can hack on any edition of D&D until it becomes a clone of any other arbitrary RPG. This is just as true as it is that a guy with a blowtorch and sufficient know-how can turn a porsche into a dumptruck. Its sort of just trivially true, and altering the terms of the discussion in that way rendered your conclusion a tautology.
> 
> And, to your current point, sure, 5e can do something that slightly resembles what FATE does as its main thing. My porsche dumptruck can haul 250 lbs of crushed rock. It faintly resembles a Mack.




Your snark aside, the actual question that started this side-topic wasn't comparing mechanics but asking what aesthetics of play could be accomplished, at least to some degree.  To that end, using only rules and guidance in 5e core, I provided an example.  You've yet to do other than label that kitbashing. It's not (Again, backgrounds and the "middle path" guidance in the DMG).

Trying to be fair to what I think is your point, yes, this is a mechanic that relies on GM ruling and isn't as hard coded as Fate mechanics are, and I understand your dislike of games that rely heavily on GM ruling (like almost every version of D&D does).  But, if we're at the point of dismissing out of hand those things specifically outlined in the rules because it uses GM ruling, we're going to have to toss pretty much all of D&D.  That's not tenable.

I rather thought honestly pointing out how D&D can do something Fate-like within its established rules and guidance while also pointing out that whatever that is Fate _still does it way better_ wouldn't be as controversial as it is.  Apparently, D&D can't even be much less good at something, it must be unable at all or some purity line gets crossed.  Which, again, has me questioning whether or not the goal here is honest analysis or winning points.  I didn't say D&D does everything, I said it can do this thing in a so-so way while Fate excels at it.  I didn't say that because I have some need to defend D&D, I said it because I play that way, and I haven't kitbashed it in to do so.  As I said, D&D is pretty broad, but it's also shallow -- there's lots of things it cam do within the core ruleset, but it doesn't excel at any of them.  Pick a play aesthetic or goal and there's another system that does it better.  The best thing D&D does is be D&D.


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## Tony Vargas

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I will just be blunt because I'm tired of MM's hogwash, its hogwash, pure and simple. Dismissed out of hand. The game is the game, and even if different GMs can play a given game differently that doesn't change the fact of the game itself having certain characteristics.



 The system steps back 10yds and punts to the DM, _as part of its core resolution mechanic_.  Its written in 'natural language,' so is ambiguous enough to require constant interpretation & rulings, from the DM.  It simply doesn't exist without one.

Is that hogwash? Maybe, but since MM washed the 5e hog, it's been immunized from criticism.  



> All I mean when I call 5e 'universal' is that the argument was effectively that it can be used as such, albeit with kitbashing (whereas GURPS required extensions for each genre, which is effectively the same thing, just supplied by the publisher and more cleanly organized as such).



 I know from another thread that you've moved past the idea that the ideal RPG would be universal, but I still find it compelling.  I classify systems as dedicated, core, multi-genre, or universal.  

Dedicated is one game, one system, designed from the ground up, for that system.  Obviously, the first RPGs were designed more or less that way, even if it was by degrees.

But, if you go to do a second game, and figure, why re-invent Oldowan Tools, you can strip away whatever doesn't work and build from there.  Publish the stripped down version, and you've articulated a 'core system,' that you can use to build many games.  AFAIK, Chaosium was the first to do that with Basic Role Playing in the early 80s.

Take that a little further, make each game built from your system mechanically compatible, and you have a multi-genre system.  Like GURPS finally settled for being.  

Get to the point that putting out a new genre book doesn't require new mechanics, and you've arrived at a Universal System.  Maybe that even really was the Holy Grail of game design, though, it's sure not the Holy Grail of sales, your fans buy one weighty tome, and they're done until the next edition. ;P

So, 5e's sure not universal. Its got an SRD, so it's a d20 game. d20, itself, of course is a core system, and an open source one, which was an innovation - when FUDGE did it.  



> Frankly I think GURPS fails for the same reason that 5e can't be kitbashed into an equivalent of FATE (at least not in any reasonable way such that there is still some semblance of 5e there). And yes, FATE/FUDGE is a pretty universal STORY NOW genre independent system. It cannot do 5e any better than 5e can do it though.



 I feel inclined to credit FATE as multi-genre, but I'm not sure various FATE games are all as cross-compatible as GURPS.

In any case, the idea of 'doing 5e' or 'doing FATE' is going pretty far down a rabbit hole, IMHO.  Its not about doing a character in a genre having adventures in a setting, it's about apeing system artifacts.  In FATE, Aspects describe all sorts of things about your character, in 5e, traits are tightly limited, but Background, Class, &c touch on some of the same things as Aspects, also - it is, I suppose ironically, a more complicated system, that way - 'doing Aspects in 5e' is like 'doing classes in FATE,' it's kitbashing to fake how the other system does something the native system already does, just with different mechanics.  
Ironically, a Universal System could do that cold, without kitbashing... there's just no good reason to do so.



> This is of course what TSR QUICKLY discovered! Metamorphosis Alpha/Gamma World was modestly successful. They didn't even TRY to do Wild West etc. as D&D clonesNote how Top Secret, Marvel, Star Frontiers, etc.



 Boot Hill & Top Secret used similar systems, FASE-RIP was used in a few games, too, but they were never articulated as core systems.


> all assiduously avoided any resemblance to D&D mechanics!  In fact, after Gamma World 1e TSR never again released a game with anything like D&D mechanics, except D&D. In fact they tended to use the Marvel system, or a hack of it, as something like a generic system.



 The 2nd and 4th eds of GW were also both D&D-like.

TSR also produced the Amazing Engine multi-genre system and used it for Metamorphosis Alpha,  and, of course, Alternity, which afflicted the 5th ed of GW. Both to little success.


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## Imaro

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, what optional tells me is that the game already has a set paradigm on which it works, independently of some sort of narrative mechanics (Inspiration and etc). So any such rules are going to be a secondary consideration, something added onto existing mechanics to tweak an existing system.




I'm not sure I would agree when using optional in the way 5e uses it... feats, multi-classing, etc. are all technically optional.  That said I'm not sure a rules being called out as optional necessarily leads to your conclusion that... it was a secondary consideration, there are other reasons to make a rule optional. 



AbdulAlhazred said:


> OTOH the mechanics in FATE *are* the game, they're central to how it works and everything else is built up around that concept. Thus I don't agree that 5e Inspiration achieves the same thing, or leads to the same sort of play that exists in FATE.




This is an interesting assertion seeing as mechanically, at it's core, FATE is a pretty generic system based around skills (D&D has these) that are rolled against a GM set difficulty that must be beat for success... and stunts (D&D has a similar mechanic in feats).  Outside of this we have Aspects, which as much as it seems to be ruffling some feathers are at their most basic level character descriptors (around beliefs, relationships, problems, etc.) which D&D 5e also contains in the form of Ideals, Bonds, Flaws etc.  that the player or GM can draw on for roleplay in order to get a bonus fo some type to a roll (Compel in FATE/Inspiration in 5e).    



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Scene framing simply IS the process with FATE, every scene in the game exists in relation to the needs/goals/aspects of the PCs. Now, FATE itself is a sort of boilerplate, not a system that you just play. You have to 'flesh it out' and part of that process would involve certain types of decisions. That would include whether or not your game is a zero myth, story now sort of game, or if it focuses more on some predetermined elements. So it isn't possible to be completely definitive in terms of what that process is in FATE.




Correct me if I'm wrong but this isn't an actual mechanic it's GM'ing procedures which, at least going by some of [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s posts can be used in nearly any system if that;s how the GM enjoys running his game.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> In general the process is simply that the players define what they want to do in some fashion, via backstory, build choices, aspects (mainly in FATE), and maybe other things. The GM then frames a scene in terms which directly challenge the beliefs/goals/interests of the characters in terms of what they decided those were. FATE, IIRC then allows players to use FATE points to add or change some of the elements introduced by the GM. Play proceeds with the dice determining whether or not character's achieve their objects in the scene or not, and at some point the scene ends (IIRC there are some rules about when this happens) and the GM frames a new scene, or play proceeds in a purely narrative fashion so as to set up the next conflict.




So is it that you feel the advice for running a game like this is lacking in D&D because none of what you've described above is determined by actual mechanics...



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Honestly I'm not a FATE guru either. I'm sure there are other people who can get down into the detailed specifics on that system more than I can.




Ok well I'm moderately familiar with FATE and I'm not seeing how 5e can't approximate (note I didn't and have never claimed it could replicate in exacting detail) the same experience FATE does with Aspects using the Inspiration mechanics and the descriptors in the game for those players at the table who are interested in this type of play.  Also I would note Inspiration isn't an optional rule,  at least no more optional than anything else in the D&D 5e PHB... the optional rules are the different ways you could use it that are in the DMG,  While unnecessary to get the baseline experience for a D&D player wanting a more narrative feel to their game... I do think these optional rules push the mechanic in a direction that can give gamers looking for a deeper experience more depth or nuance in how inspiration is used.


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## Imaro

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Remember, the original point made where was a claim that some universal system, such as 5e, can simply be kitbashed into anything and it will serve to replace any other arbitrary game. I think we've sufficiently dismissed that claim as far fetched. Certainly to make 5e into 'FATE for fantasy' would require a degree of kitbashing so large that it wouldn't qualify as being 5e anymore in most people's book.




Who made this as the original point...and where?


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## AbdulAlhazred

Ovinomancer said:


> Your snark aside, the actual question that started this side-topic wasn't comparing mechanics but asking what aesthetics of play could be accomplished, at least to some degree.  To that end, using only rules and guidance in 5e core, I provided an example.  You've yet to do other than label that kitbashing. It's not (Again, backgrounds and the "middle path" guidance in the DMG).



Its not a snark! It may be an amusing analogy, but nothing about it is snarky. I didn't label it 'kitbashing', the statement was made that you could just kitbash 5e and it would whatever you wanted, so why are you complaining? Then you came back with this statement you're now claiming was the original point, but that wasn't how I interpreted the discussion at all! The genesis of this was the question about why people weren't just using 5e. We answered it. 

So lets reset and answer the question AGAIN! We aren't using 5e because your milquetoast 5e version of compelling aspects is not even close to providing the kind of experience that you would get with FATE. Its that simple. I don't know how else to put it. The mechanics of 5e do not support what the mechanics of FATE support. Yes, 5e has some minor bolt-on that can do 10% of what FATE's core mechanics are. That may be fine for some people. 



> Trying to be fair to what I think is your point, yes, this is a mechanic that relies on GM ruling and isn't as hard coded as Fate mechanics are, and I understand your dislike of games that rely heavily on GM ruling (like almost every version of D&D does).  But, if we're at the point of dismissing out of hand those things specifically outlined in the rules because it uses GM ruling, we're going to have to toss pretty much all of D&D.  That's not tenable.
> 
> I rather thought honestly pointing out how D&D can do something Fate-like within its established rules and guidance while also pointing out that whatever that is Fate _still does it way better_ wouldn't be as controversial as it is.  Apparently, D&D can't even be much less good at something, it must be unable at all or some purity line gets crossed.  Which, again, has me questioning whether or not the goal here is honest analysis or winning points.  I didn't say D&D does everything, I said it can do this thing in a so-so way while Fate excels at it.  I didn't say that because I have some need to defend D&D, I said it because I play that way, and I haven't kitbashed it in to do so.  As I said, D&D is pretty broad, but it's also shallow -- there's lots of things it cam do within the core ruleset, but it doesn't excel at any of them.  Pick a play aesthetic or goal and there's another system that does it better.  The best thing D&D does is be D&D.




I'm not trying to thwart honest discussion. It just seemed like the answer to "we need a game to do what we want" was "well, D&D can do just do it!" and there was one post, which I'm sure we all read, which the gist of it was pretty much that we should all stop complaining and just slap some rule into D&D and nothing could be better. Not that I thought you were advocating that viewpoint, but I hope you can see how absurd the response was! 

Our position is, afaik, that doing something FATE-like in 5e as it stands now, that would require a LOT of changes. Nobody is disputing that Inspiration exists, just that the whole structure of 5e is not really designed to support that sort of thing, and thus it wouldn't satisfy most people's needs for that type of game. This isn't a criticism of 5e either, its simply reality, it wasn't made to be that sort of game. Nobody is going to dispute your conclusion, D&D is D&D and it does D&D well. Likewise FATE is FATE and does FATE well. That's what I meant when I said you changed the terms of the discussion. We have now come full circle!


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## Imaro

Deleted...dbl post


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## Imaro

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Its not a snark! It may be an amusing analogy, but nothing about it is snarky. I didn't label it 'kitbashing', the statement was made that you could just kitbash 5e and it would whatever you wanted, so why are you complaining? Then you came back with this statement you're now claiming was the original point, but that wasn't how I interpreted the discussion at all! The genesis of this was the question about why people weren't just using 5e. We answered it.




Actually... I think you're mistaken about the original point and how this line of conversation began... 



AbdulAlhazred said:


> So lets reset and answer the question AGAIN! We aren't using 5e because your milquetoast 5e version of compelling aspects is not even close to providing the kind of experience that you would get with FATE. Its that simple. I don't know how else to put it. The mechanics of 5e do not support what the mechanics of FATE support. Yes, 5e has some minor bolt-on that can do 10% of what FATE's core mechanics are. That may be fine for some people.




Can you give specifics as to what the mechanics for Aspects are in FATE are and what it is they provide 5e can't with Inspiration and Bonds/Flaws/Ideals.  I'm not saying you're wrong but I'm also not sure I agree with you.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Our position is, afaik, that doing something FATE-like in 5e as it stands now, that would require a LOT of changes. Nobody is disputing that Inspiration exists, just that the whole structure of 5e is not really designed to support that sort of thing, and thus it wouldn't satisfy most people's needs for that type of game. This isn't a criticism of 5e either, its simply reality, it wasn't made to be that sort of game. Nobody is going to dispute your conclusion, D&D is D&D and it does D&D well. Likewise FATE is FATE and does FATE well. That's what I meant when I said you changed the terms of the discussion. We have now come full circle!




I think your position is understood... it's just that some of us are interested in digging into the What and Why of this but it seems incredibly hard to do since no concrete examples are being laid out.  For example what do Aspects mechanically offer that Inspiration and the Bond/Flaw/Ideal system don't?  I've stated from a mechanical perspective how I see the two and why I think they are similar but I've yet to see that done from the other perspective... that's what i'm interested in hearing.


----------



## Aldarc

Imaro said:


> This is an interesting assertion seeing as mechanically, at it's core, FATE is a pretty generic system based around skills (D&D has these) that are rolled against a GM set difficulty that must be beat for success... and stunts (D&D has a similar mechanic in feats).  Outside of this we have Aspects, which as much as it seems to be ruffling some feathers are at their most basic level character descriptors (around beliefs, relationships, problems, etc.) which D&D 5e also contains in the form of Ideals, Bonds, Flaws etc.  that the player or GM can draw on for roleplay in order to get a bonus fo some type to a roll (Compel in FATE/Inspiration in 5e).



And house cats can be ridden like horses because they too are mammals with tails that walk around on all fours. I'm sorry, but this is an incredibly shallow reading of Fate's mechanics, which anyone "moderately familiar with FATE" should know. There is a lot more to Aspects, Fate points, and the mechanics of Fate than this. 



> Ok well I'm moderately familiar with FATE and *I'm not seeing how 5e can't approximate (note I didn't and have never claimed it could replicate in exacting detail) the same experience FATE does with Aspects using the Inspiration mechanics* and the descriptors in the game for those players at the table who are interested in this type of play.



We definitely had this debate already, and I definitely disagreed then with your assertion just as I do now. You have done little to show that it could reasonably approximate the experience in Fate. The 5E Bonds system is a stinking piece of garbage slapped haphazardly onto 5E. You take it away from 5E, and not a single player or GM would shed a single tear, much less notice its absence. It's vestigial. If you push the Inspiration mechanic and it would still be such a pale echo. The Inspiration System may have been some of WotC's laziest writing for the entirety of 5E. 



Tony Vargas said:


> Not nearly so much as you might think from the unavoidable fact that the GM chooses the system and may thus choose to change it as much as he likes.  In the 90s, RPGs were thier settings - we still blythly refer to the Storyteller system as 'WoD,' for instance, and 2e was heavily focused on setting.



Maybe not, but it's still more then you think. And screw gaming in the '90s, Tony, we are talking about games now. 



> Until 5e, the D&D of the WotC era was very much the underlying system, the RAW.  The community was dismissive of house rules, and System Matery dominated.
> 
> GMs can always overwrite the system, even the zietgeist, of the game they're nominally running, of course, but in 1e, and, very intentionally, 5e's DM Empowerment, they are expected, arguably even required to do so.



I don't know what to say apart from "Are you familiar with modern game design?" What I have described regarding GM empowerment is far more common than you think, and this is hardly D&D only or D&D primary. Most of the indie games that have been thrown around have a heavy GM fiat component: Dungeon World, Blades in the Dark, Fate, Cypher System, etc.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Aldarc said:


> I don't know what to say apart from "Are you familiar with modern game design?"



 Modern? I thought we were talking about D&D?  



> Most of the indie games that have been thrown around have a heavy GM fiat component: Dungeon World, Blades in the Dark, Fate, Cypher System, etc.



 Fair 'nuff.  BitD & Fate seem to give a lot of latitude to players, as well, though.


----------



## Aldarc

Imaro said:


> Can you give specifics as to what the mechanics for Aspects are in FATE are and what it is they provide 5e can't with Inspiration and Bonds/Flaws/Ideals.  I'm not saying you're wrong but I'm also not sure I agree with you.
> 
> For example what do Aspects mechanically offer that Inspiration and the Bond/Flaw/Ideal system don't?  I've stated from a mechanical perspective how I see the two and why I think they are similar but I've yet to see that done from the other perspective... that's what i'm interested in hearing.



Looking at what Evil Hat wrote,... 


> In Fate, aspects do two major things: they tell you what’s important about the game, and they help you decide when to use the mechanics.



Aspects in Fate are your character. They are your race, class, specialization, subclass, background, bonds/flaws/ideals, etc. They are kinda your everything. They are whatever you deem most important about your character. Aspects are unquestionably more flexible and offer the players greater latitude of freedom than D&D 5E classes/races. Aspects are also always true, and they grant narrative permissions. These narrative permissions could be anything, including flight. They also are meant to alert the GM to what the player wants their character to experience, because Aspects that do not receive regular play, especially Troubles, can ruin the Fate point economy of the game. 

Aspects and Fate points are intricately tied together. Three out of the four uses of Fate points pertain to your character Aspects: invoke an aspect, refuse a Compel of your Trouble, and declaring a story detail. (The fourth is for powering stunts.) And you earn Fate points primarily by having your Aspects invoked against you and accepting a Compel. 

When you spend a Fate point to invoke one of your character aspects, you can do one of four things: 
* Take a +2 to the result after you roll. 
* Reroll all your dice. 
* Pass a +2 benefit to another player/character's roll (if reasonable) 
* Add a +2 to passive opposition that makes things more difficult for others 
You can even invoke multiple aspects, if you have the Fate points and the aspects are relevant, such that you can get multiple stacking bonuses. 

But here is the kicker, I have been describing thus far Aspects as they pertain to your character, but the truth is that in Fate, aspects are everywhere in the scene. This may be a situation aspect "Rotting Rope Ladder" or "Flames Ablaze." Organizations can have aspects. Buildings can have aspects. Your vehicles can have aspects. So the very nature of Aspects in Fate extends beyond simply the character but also into the world. The player can also Create an Advantage by attempting to create an aspect in-play: e.g., "Blinded by Pocketsand!" or "Have a Nice Trip!" You are often discovering new aspects, attempting to get boost and free invokes, and spending fate points. 

So Aspects and Fate points are cohesive and ingrained in the system. This is a totality of the game experience that D&D 5E can't really touch. 



Tony Vargas said:


> Fair 'nuff.  BitD & Fate seem to give a lot of latitude to players, as well, though.



They do. There is a lot of GM fiat, but also a lot of player consent and input. A lot of indie games have shifted the social contract around so there is more equality between the GM and players while still promoting "GM empowerment." Fate has a mechanical checks-and-balance system. But a lot of GM rulings are dictated by "fiction first" and then selecting most appropriate mechanics for the situation.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Aldarc said:


> They do. There is a lot of GM fiat, but also a lot of player consent and input. A lot of indie games have shifted the social contract around so there is more equality between the GM and players while still promoting "GM empowerment."



 Call me cynical (it's unnecessary, we all know I am, but go ahead if you feel like it), but D&D-style DM Empowerment is not about just empowering the DM, but also assiduously avoiding 'player entitlement' (ie, empowering players) as a polar opposite.  It's a pendulum thing.  3.x/PF/4e were very player-empowering (albeit in different ways), and 5e has been a reaction to that, a return to the game's roots.  


> Fate has a mechanical checks-and-balance system. But a lot of GM rulings are dictated by "fiction first" and then selecting most appropriate mechanics for the situation.



 Maybe 6e will have a synthesis of Player & DM empowerment like that?  Or maybe, (if I'm being uncharacteristically less-cynical) 5e will even grow into it...


----------



## Manbearcat

@_*Aldarc*_ and  @_*Tony Vargas*_

Just read the last page or so right quick (anymore my reading of EnWorld is extremely sporadic, quick, and bouncing around) and I just wanted to add something to clarify your discussion.

I'm not a big fan of the term "fiat" to describe GMing in games like BitD, DW, etc.  When we deploy the term "fiat" with respect to GMing in RPGs, we're typically talking about a game that affords a GM basically (or nearly) a full mandate, extraordinary latitude to make decisions about the mechanics and the fiction under the auspices of some very zoomed-out agenda like "whatever (the GM thinks) provides the most fun/tells the best story."  So these decisions can either be somewhat arbitrary (under scrutiny) or feel arbitrary in the moment.

Contrast this with games like the aforementioned BitD and DW where GMing is extremely (transparent and explicit) principle-and-premise-constrained.   GMs who enjoy the former latitude will often struggle under the enforced discipline and directives of the latter (until they either toggle their mental framework or get used to it).   As such, I don't think "fiat" is a particularly good descriptor here.  I think people who aren't familiar with these games (and what running them is like) will be confused and unable to distinguish the significant difference because they associate the word "fiat" with a very particular GMing paradigm.

So I don't use that term when I describe what you're doing when running those games.  I think even using the language "principled and disciplined fiat" is fraught because folks are still going to focus on the word "fiat" and let that guide their understanding.  I typically just describe it with terms like "principles" and "discipline" and depict those constraints.

Anyway, carry on!


----------



## Imaro

Aldarc said:


> And house cats can be ridden like horses because they too are mammals with tails that walk around on all fours. I'm sorry, but this is an incredibly shallow reading of Fate's mechanics, which anyone "moderately familiar with FATE" should know. There is a lot more to Aspects, Fate points, and the mechanics of Fate than this.




I actually gave a summary of the rules in the thread... and no, there really isn't much more to it.  Again cite some mechanics not descriptions or advice but what the actual mechanics are... what do Aspects and FATE points allow you to do mechanically?  They give you bonuses to rolls just like inspiration does.  You receive them for roleplaying your character... just like inspiration.  And as for aspects in scenes.... it's no different than terrain, hazards, etc. in D&D (Yes the mechanical implementation is different because they are different games... but they serve the same purpose).   At it's core FATE is a pretty traditional game with... wait for it... Aspects/FATE points tacked on.

In fact I'd go so far as to say if you removed FATE points and aspects from the game you would still have a perfectly playable albeit highly generic system called FUDGE.  It is literally, exactly what you accuse D&D 5e of being... a pre-existing system with narrative elements slapped on it.



Aldarc said:


> We definitely had this debate already, and I definitely disagreed then with your assertion just as I do now. You have done little to show that it could reasonably approximate the experience in Fate. The 5E Bonds system is a stinking piece of garbage slapped haphazardly onto 5E. You take it away from 5E, and not a single player or GM would shed a single tear, much less notice its absence. It's vestigial. If you push the Inspiration mechanic and it would still be such a pale echo. The Inspiration System may have been some of WotC's laziest writing for the entirety of 5E.




Uhm ok... let's just say it serves me and my group well enough... so I guess one man's garbage is another man treasure.  Honestly when we reach the point where you argument boils down to a rant of "it's garbage"... we probably have reached a point where actual discussion and analysis isn't going to happen so I'll gladly step away from this particular tangent for now.  FATE serves you well and D&D 5e does the same for me. Deuces!!


----------



## Tony Vargas

Manbearcat said:


> I think even using the language "principled and disciplined fiat" is fraught because folks are still going to focus on the word "fiat" and let that guide their understanding



 Plus, qualifying it that way implies that it would otherwise be unprincipled & undisciplined. 

How about 'judgement' rather than 'fiat.'


----------



## pemerton

I GMed a session of Classic Traveller a bit over a week ago.

The action included:

* An untethered space walk to force open an external hatch into a ship's engineering section - in mechanical terms, this tested Vacc-Suit and Mechanical skill;

* Coordinating two assault teams within the spaceship, one coming upthrough the engineering section and the other through the main elevator - in mechanical terms, this tested Communications, Tactics, and Leadership;

* Assaulting a base using an ATV driven out of a starship hold - in mechanical terms, this tested Wheeled Vehicle skill, plus various weapon attacks, Engineering skill to modulate power to the ship's weaponry and Gunnery to use said weaponry to blow up the base;

* Rescuing data from a computer system as the base blew up - this tested Computer skill.​
That's just the events, before we get to anything like "feel". I don't see how D&D, or a D&D variant, could even approximate to that. Skills are not a big enough part of PC build or action resolution. And then there is the bundling of abilities in terms of classes - the PC who made the Computer check is also a big bruiser with a two-handed sword and INT 2. Traveller PC generation allows for those sorts of combos; D&D's class-based system not so much.

Even thinking about recent Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy sessions, they're not replicable by D&D. For instance, D&D has no analogue to mental and emotional stress, and so no system that fits with the standard action economy and resolution procedures for persuading an opponent _in the course of a fight_ that they are bested, and hence should do the PCs' bidding. (4e comes closest with some example skill challenges and options with psychic damage in modules like Heathen or Cairn of the Winter King, but still falls well short of Cortex+ Heroic.)

It's bizarre to me that this is even a discussion.


----------



## Manbearcat

Tony Vargas said:


> Plus, qualifying it that way implies that it would otherwise be unprincipled & undisciplined.




I don't agree.  Consider the following analogy (those work).

You have a baseball pitcher and a coach.

In one instance, the coach simply says to the pitcher "get those guys out the best you can."

In another instance, the coach says to the pitcher all of the following:

1)  "Pitch count kid.  You've got 100 pitches and absolutely no more, so pound the strike zone, get ahead in the count, and pitch to contact when you can.  Don't get seduced by the Strikeout and waste a bunch of pitches if you're up in the count.  Remember, you've got a lot of guys behind you that can field it with the best of them.  Let them work."

2)  "Don't show them your Changeup the first time through the order; just Fastball > Slider.  Second time through the order you can lead with the Changeup."

3)  "Their 3-hole hitter is a lefty who can't deal with fastballs in around his hands.  But he mashes, so know if you get behind that kid and we've got runners in scoring position with first base open, you're spending 4 of your 100 max pitch count to put him on 1st base (Intentional Walk)."

4)  "Top of the order are all first-ball, Fastball hitters, so don't get careless with fat 4 seamers (typical Fastballs) in the middle of the strike zone with any of those guys."

5)  "We've got <so-and-so> available for 4 innings today, so if you don't show command in the first few innings, I'm gonna get you out of there so we have you for <game 2 days later>."

The first guy can't be "unprincipled and/or undisciplined" because he has no constraining guidance.  

The second guy can due to the constraining guidance.



> How about 'judgement' rather than 'fiat.'




"Judgement" carries even less information than "fiat" I'm afraid.  Principles and discipline are fundamental components of the sort of indie games that were being discussed.  You have principles that guide and constrain and you need to be disciplined in following them (even if, actually especially if, you feel like you "know better" in an instance of play).


----------



## Ovinomancer

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Its not a snark! It may be an amusing analogy, but nothing about it is snarky. I didn't label it 'kitbashing', the statement was made that you could just kitbash 5e and it would whatever you wanted, so why are you complaining? Then you came back with this statement you're now claiming was the original point, but that wasn't how I interpreted the discussion at all! The genesis of this was the question about why people weren't just using 5e. We answered it.



Um, no.  We have a very different interpretation of the post that stated this side discussion.  [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] brought up kitbashing, but neither AImaro or myself have, like, at all.  You're smearing different lines of argument from different posters together to discredit everything.



> So lets reset and answer the question AGAIN! We aren't using 5e because your milquetoast 5e version of compelling aspects is not even close to providing the kind of experience that you would get with FATE. Its that simple. I don't know how else to put it. The mechanics of 5e do not support what the mechanics of FATE support. Yes, 5e has some minor bolt-on that can do 10% of what FATE's core mechanics are. That may be fine for some people.



It is close, for a bit, but, yes, then it's gone because the 5e system doesn't cater to it as well or as often as Fate does.  Was I not clear about that?  I thought I was clear about that.  I did say that FATE does it better, right -- yes, yes, I think I did say that, more than once in more than one response _to you_.  Instead, you seem to have replaced what I actually said with some pastiche of Lanefan's comments and your own imaginings.





> I'm not trying to thwart honest discussion. It just seemed like the answer to "we need a game to do what we want" was "well, D&D can do just do it!" and there was one post, which I'm sure we all read, which the gist of it was pretty much that we should all stop complaining and just slap some rule into D&D and nothing could be better. Not that I thought you were advocating that viewpoint, but I hope you can see how absurd the response was!



That wasn't the question.  The question was 'what do other systems do that 5e doesn't at least touch on?'  And I answered that in two ways:  

1) compelling aspects from FATE is in the 5e core with backgrounds, middle path adjudication, and various, in system uses of inspiration and traits, bonds, and flaws.  However, 5e's version is much less robust than FATE's and if what you want is the compelling aspects part of FATE, you really should play FATE because it does this much, much better than 5e.  That said, if what we're considering is play aesthetics, it pays to be fair all around -- FATE is better at this, but 5e does evoke a much weaker version of it, at least occasionally.

2) 5e SUCKS at any setting other than fantasy (and, arguably, not even all fantasy).  It can't do cyberpunk, like, at all.  It's iffy at best for horror (largely because all of it's mechanics cut against horror tropes).  In this case, there's a clear play aesthetic that 5e just plain doesn't do that other systems can do.  And not even systems tailored to other settings -- FATE, as I said, is setting agnostic.  You can do cyberpunk, fantasy, urban magicians, even Star Wars with FATE just fine.  It's a very robust element of that system of play.





> Our position is, afaik, that doing something FATE-like in 5e as it stands now, that would require a LOT of changes. Nobody is disputing that Inspiration exists, just that the whole structure of 5e is not really designed to support that sort of thing, and thus it wouldn't satisfy most people's needs for that type of game. This isn't a criticism of 5e either, its simply reality, it wasn't made to be that sort of game. Nobody is going to dispute your conclusion, D&D is D&D and it does D&D well. Likewise FATE is FATE and does FATE well. That's what I meant when I said you changed the terms of the discussion. We have now come full circle!



You're back to mechanical engines instead of play aesthetics.  Of course you can't play FATE with 5e -- the rules are different.  But you can grab some of those things FATE does aesthetically and do them in 5e without contorting the system or kitbashing.  I know this because _I do it._  I gave an example.  Is it as good at evoking aspects as FATE is?  No, which I also said.  But, it does it, and I do it because it adds to my games.  Having a player leverage a trait or background in an action declaration is awesome, and I like having that done.  When I tempt a player with a flaw, that's great, too.  However, at the end of the day, I still like D&D because we use a more tactical combat system to kill the orcs than FATE does, and that's what we play D&D for.  I like being able to use the rules to evoke aspects of the players, but it's not the focus.  When we want that as the focus, we'll play FATE. Just as you do because that's what you want.  

I'm not saying 5e is the uber-system, it's not, at all, but it can do a few things you're not giving credit for.  And that credit isn't acknowledgement that 5e is bestest, just that it has some built in features that do some things you're not acknowledging.  FATE is still the boss at aspect leveraging, but 5e dabbles.  What I am saying is that 5e is a broad and shallow system -- it does many things, but few (almost none) well, and certainly in any given focus there's a system out there than does it better (you don't even have to look far, quite often).  But, 5e is often surprising flexible, if not very strong.  The best thing that D&D does is be D&D.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Manbearcat said:


> @_*Aldarc*_ and  @_*Tony Vargas*_
> 
> Just read the last page or so right quick (anymore my reading of EnWorld is extremely sporadic, quick, and bouncing around) and I just wanted to add something to clarify your discussion.
> 
> I'm not a big fan of the term "fiat" to describe GMing in games like BitD, DW, etc.  When we deploy the term "fiat" with respect to GMing in RPGs, we're typically talking about a game that affords a GM basically (or nearly) a full mandate, extraordinary latitude to make decisions about the mechanics and the fiction under the auspices of some very zoomed-out agenda like "whatever (the GM thinks) provides the most fun/tells the best story."  So these decisions can either be somewhat arbitrary (under scrutiny) or feel arbitrary in the moment.
> 
> Contrast this with games like the aforementioned BitD and DW where GMing is extremely (transparent and explicit) principle-and-premise-constrained.   GMs who enjoy the former latitude will often struggle under the enforced discipline and directives of the latter (until they either toggle their mental framework or get used to it).   As such, I don't think "fiat" is a particularly good descriptor here.  I think people who aren't familiar with these games (and what running them is like) will be confused and unable to distinguish the significant difference because they associate the word "fiat" with a very particular GMing paradigm.
> 
> So I don't use that term when I describe what you're doing when running those games.  I think even using the language "principled and disciplined fiat" is fraught because folks are still going to focus on the word "fiat" and let that guide their understanding.  I typically just describe it with terms like "principles" and "discipline" and depict those constraints.
> 
> Anyway, carry on!




Hmm.  When a player declares an action and picks a skill in BitD, as GM I have full authority to set the position and effect.  Yes, I should follow the fiction, but I find that constraint present in any game I run.  The rub is, though, that I, as GM, have the fiat to declare the position and effect of an action.  I don't find the constraints to be a compelling argument for that not being fiat, because they're not actual constraints rather than advice.  Much like your pitcher example in your other reply above, the coach's advice isn't a constraint on the pitcher so much as good advice.  I find good advice exists regardless of system.

However, I do see strong merit in finding some way to differentiate systems where the GM has full authorial control vice systems that mechanically share out some authorial controls and limit GM authorities, but I'm not sure 'fiat' is the hill to die on there.  I can live with it if you insist, though.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Manbearcat said:


> I don't agree.  Consider the following analogy (those work).



 Considered.  It has no bearing at all on the connotations of 'principled' or 'disciplined,' that I can see.  



> "Judgement" carries even less information than "fiat" I'm afraid.



 It carries different information, fiat implies arbitrary and without regard to anyone or anything.  Judgement implies consideration of other factors  - not excepting principles, though also implying some flexibility, perhaps more so than discipline.

But I'd consider it as an alternative to fiat, specifically.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Tony Vargas said:


> The system steps back 10yds and punts to the DM, _as part of its core resolution mechanic_.  Its written in 'natural language,' so is ambiguous enough to require constant interpretation & rulings, from the DM.  It simply doesn't exist without one.
> 
> Is that hogwash? Maybe, but since MM washed the 5e hog, it's been immunized from criticism.



Nothing is immune from me  nor sacred in my book. 



> I know from another thread that you've moved past the idea that the ideal RPG would be universal, but I still find it compelling.  I classify systems as dedicated, core, multi-genre, or universal.
> 
> Dedicated is one game, one system, designed from the ground up, for that system.  Obviously, the first RPGs were designed more or less that way, even if it was by degrees.
> 
> But, if you go to do a second game, and figure, why re-invent Oldowan Tools, you can strip away whatever doesn't work and build from there.  Publish the stripped down version, and you've articulated a 'core system,' that you can use to build many games.  AFAIK, Chaosium was the first to do that with Basic Role Playing in the early 80s.
> 
> Take that a little further, make each game built from your system mechanically compatible, and you have a multi-genre system.  Like GURPS finally settled for being.



I'm not sure why you say 'take it a little further'. BRP is every bit as much a 'universal system' as GURPS (which from day one was designed as such, there was no 'settled for being', it was the concept from day 1).



> Get to the point that putting out a new genre book doesn't require new mechanics, and you've arrived at a Universal System.  Maybe that even really was the Holy Grail of game design, though, it's sure not the Holy Grail of sales, your fans buy one weighty tome, and they're done until the next edition. ;P



It was a holy grail, based on the VERY limited understanding of RPGs and conceptual frameworks available to articulate how they would work which existed in the late 1970's when BRP and GURPS were first conceived. I think, for the most part, designers have turned away from this model. Lets say that they have become more discriminating. There are certainly still generic core systems out there FUDGE, FATE, Cortex, Story Time, PbtA, etc. 



> So, 5e's sure not universal. Its got an SRD, so it's a d20 game. d20, itself, of course is a core system, and an open source one, which was an innovation - when FUDGE did it.
> 
> I feel inclined to credit FATE as multi-genre, but I'm not sure various FATE games are all as cross-compatible as GURPS.



Eh, GURPS is pretty cross-compatible. The main inssue there is they issued some source books during 2.x, some during 3.x, and some during 4.x, but a good many never got redone for each system. d6 is another similar system, but it is a bit more in the FATE category, the list of abilities and skills is genre-dependent, so d6 Fantasy character won't translate perfectly to d6 Space, though the conversion is likely to be straightforward.



> In any case, the idea of 'doing 5e' or 'doing FATE' is going pretty far down a rabbit hole, IMHO.  Its not about doing a character in a genre having adventures in a setting, it's about apeing system artifacts.  In FATE, Aspects describe all sorts of things about your character, in 5e, traits are tightly limited, but Background, Class, &c touch on some of the same things as Aspects, also - it is, I suppose ironically, a more complicated system, that way - 'doing Aspects in 5e' is like 'doing classes in FATE,' it's kitbashing to fake how the other system does something the native system already does, just with different mechanics.
> Ironically, a Universal System could do that cold, without kitbashing... there's just no good reason to do so.



The problem with the universal system concept is you have to make the decisions up front about how the major systems in the game fit together, and that means deciding a LOT of how it will work and what it is good for. A system which allows characters to be highly resistant to dying (or even virtually rules it out, like Cortex+ does) is one type of system, and it is very different, in every mechanical respect, from a system where characters are treated in a realistic "death is just one bad second away" kind of fashion. Those two systems aren't going to do the same sorts of games and you really cannot realistically make a system that covers both extremes. It would be SO generalized as to be basically nothing but some generic rules suggestions.



> Boot Hill & Top Secret used similar systems, FASE-RIP was used in a few games, too, but they were never articulated as core systems.
> The 2nd and 4th eds of GW were also both D&D-like.



Boot Hill and TS are sort of superficially similar, yes. They both cover genre where sudden death by means of a bullet is a substantial part of the milieu. Several other TSR games used vaguely similar percentile-based systems. They each have relatively little in common.

FASE-RIP WAS used in MSRP, one edition of GW, and IIRC one other game, Conan.

TSR DID produce one other game based on 2e, Buck Rogers in the XXVc. AFAIK it had very little traction as an RPG.



> TSR also produced the Amazing Engine multi-genre system and used it for Metamorphosis Alpha,  and, of course, Alternity, which afflicted the 5th ed of GW. Both to little success.




Right, that was their dying gasp attempt to do something 'revolutionary' in RPGs. Sadly their idea of a revolution was largely early-to-mid-80's era design. Alternity though is actually NOT an AE game, though its rules set was intended to replace AE (which was universally ignored in the market and got its butt kicked by Storyteller based games, leading to its cancellation in 1994). Slavicsek and Baker were the designers on Alternity BTW. 

TSR had a number of good games, but the point is, AE/Alternity aside, they really were pretty much avowed practitioners of the 'system for each game' concept.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> Classic Traveller ...I don't see how D&D, or a D&D variant, could even approximate to that. Skills are not a big enough part of PC build or action resolution.



 Traveller's just basic pass/fail skill checks, apart from the technological gulf changing the names and emphasis of skills, and D&Ds pronounced discomfort with acknowledging leadership or tactical acumen as character, rather than player traits, I see no major impediments... of course, it'd really be d20, not D&D...



> For instance, D&D has no analogue to mental and emotional stress, and so no system that fits with the standard action economy and resolution procedures for persuading an opponent _in the course of a fight_ that they are bested, and hence should do the PCs' bidding. (4e comes closest with some example skill challenges



 Well, if you want 4e,  forcing bloodied enemies to surrender via intimidation. 



> It's bizarre to me that this is even a discussion.



 As I opined, up-thread, 40 years of pounding the baroque D&D peg into holes of every description, with however large a hammer it might take, can leave one convinced of its maleability.


----------



## Tony Vargas

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I'm not sure why you say 'take it a little further'. BRP is every bit as much a 'universal system' as GURPS (which from day one was designed as such, there was no 'settled for being', it was the concept from day 1).



 Obviously, GURPS was going for universal, thus the U, but it didn't make it.  In the final analysis you needed a worldbook before you could play in another setting or genre, even though it didn't constitute a new game  Thus SJG finally went with the multi-genre label.
BRP, OTOH, was the core of a system, built up into other games.



> It was a holy grail, based on the VERY limited understanding of RPGs and conceptual frameworks available to articulate how they would work which existed in the late 1970's when BRP and GURPS were first conceived. I think, for the most part, designers have turned away from this model.



 IDK, having watched MM share his design process, I'm dubious that there's been any /greater/ understanding achieved.

I hope you're not referring to Forge theories. ;(



> The problem with the universal system concept is you have to make the decisions up front about how the major systems in the game fit together, and that means deciding a LOT of how it will work and what it is good for. A system which allows characters to be highly resistant to dying (or even virtually rules it out, like Cortex+ does) is one type of system, and it is very different, in every mechanical respect, from a system where characters are treated in a realistic "death is just one bad second away" kind of fashion. Those two systems aren't going to do the same sorts of games and you really cannot realistically make a system that covers both extremes.



 Depending on the powers allowed and offensive vs defensive RoX,  Fusion could handle either extreme - and characters from each could still interact under the same system (wouldn't go well for the 1 bad second types if it were combat).

For a more extreme example an old Champions! GM, before it became Hero Systems and acquired pretensions of Universal-ness, built some Saturday Morning baddies called 'Crystal Warriors' - they were robots (so you could kill em with a clear conscience), with high CV, powerful attacks, 1 BOD, no defenses, and 3d Susceptibility to being hit, with anything.

Yep, they were minions, c1985...

...using off the shelf build rules from a system known for making it very hard to die.



> Right, that was their dying gasp attempt to do something 'revolutionary' in RPGs. Sadly their idea of a revolution was largely early-to-mid-80's era design. Alternity though is actually NOT an AE game, though its rules set was intended to replace AE (which was universally ignored in the market and got its butt kicked by Storyteller based games, leading to its cancellation in 1994).



 Yeah, comma instead of period there, I meant to present Alternity as another system, not another AE game.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> Actually... I think you're mistaken about the original point and how this line of conversation began...
> 
> 
> 
> Can you give specifics as to what the mechanics for Aspects are in FATE are and what it is they provide 5e can't with Inspiration and Bonds/Flaws/Ideals.  I'm not saying you're wrong but I'm also not sure I agree with you.
> 
> 
> 
> I think your position is understood... it's just that some of us are interested in digging into the What and Why of this but it seems incredibly hard to do since no concrete examples are being laid out.  For example what do Aspects mechanically offer that Inspiration and the Bond/Flaw/Ideal system don't?  I've stated from a mechanical perspective how I see the two and why I think they are similar but I've yet to see that done from the other perspective... that's what i'm interested in hearing.




OK, first thing:



> The _central character attributes_ in FATE are called *aspects*.  Aspects cover a wide range of elements and define what makes your  character unique—basically, they describe the core of your character's  identity. (By contrast, skills and stunts could be said to paint a  similar picture of what your character can _do_, rather than who he _is_.)




Note how this is stated, central character attributes. 5e's central attributes are ability scores, class, and race, and I'll throw in alignment as being pretty 'core' as well, at least by tradition. Background can be added to this in 5e. These are still a fairly restricted set of things. Character traits/goals are purely secondary in 5e, embellishing the existing picture told by your class, stats, etc. 

As for uses of of aspects:


> Invocation: Spend a fate point, describe how one of your character's  aspects is beneficial to him, and get either a +2 bonus or a reroll to a  skill roll.
> 
> Invocation for effect: Spend a fate point and describe how one of your character's aspects allows you to make a *declaration* of fact about something in the game.
> 
> Compel: Either receive a fate point when one of your character's aspects  works to his disadvantage, or spend a fate point to avoid that  disadvantage.
> 
> Tag: On any aspect you create or discover in a scene, get the first  invocation for free (as in, without spending any fate points).




5e has a sort of an 'invocation', but it is NOT constrained by any character trait, you can spend inspiration for anything at all in 5e, but it only mechanically grants advantage, nothing else. 

Invocation for effect doesn't exist in 5e at all. This is really the most core piece of FATE for Story Now.

Compel does not exist per se in 5e either. You get inspiration for 'cool stuff', but it isn't related to disadvantages, nor limited to only compelling an 'aspect' of your character. 

Tag is entirely missing in 5e.

So we see that 5e actually lacks most of FATE's aspect-related mechanics and what it does have is less tied to specifics of the character.



> At the start of a game, you'll place aspects on your character as  part of the process of character creation. These aspects are effectively  permanent, though they can change over the course of time.
> 
> 
> In addition, during the setting creation process you will also place  aspects on the setting in which the game takes place—these work just  like character aspects do, defining the most important features and  elements that make the setting unique.
> 
> 
> You will also encounter temporary aspects during the course of play.  These aspects might be placed on your character to describe momentary  changes of condition or circumstance
> 
> 
> (Off-Balance, Broken Nose), or they might be placed on an environment to highlight elements that might come into play during a scene (Gas Main, On Fire, Uneven Terrain). Typically, you will use your skills to create or discover these aspects during play.




Note how players can SET ASPECTS ON THE GAME WORLD which is completely outside of anything suggested in even optional 5e rules or discussion AFAIK. It is a significant element of FATE, again particularly as you move to hard Story Now play.

Aspects are, as seen above, also a generalized system mechanic, not something specifically tacked onto PCs uniquely. This allows the mechanic to play a much wider role in the game, particularly in genre-specific or thematic ways.

Other things:

Players can invoke ANY aspect, those on their own character, another character, the environment, etc. as long as it can be explained how it is relevant. Again, 5e just doesn't go here at all in several ways. Players can also invoke more than one aspect at a time for greater effect, given that they possess sufficient FATE points.

Compelling is a very flexible part of FATE and pretty much drives the game:


[h=3]







> GM-Driven Compels[/h]  Some compels are used to directly drive the story in one way or  another and, as such, are really the province of the GM. A good GM will  want to use the aspects of the PCs to create adventures and provide the  basis for scenes.
> 
> 
> This means that sometimes an aspect may add a complication  "offscreen," such as when the GM decides to use a character's personal  nemesis as the villain for a session or to give the character an  unpleasant responsibility or assignment. She might also use a  character's aspect to justify a particular "hook" for a future scene.  When this happens, it counts as a compel.
> 
> 
> GMs should not rely on a player's _particular_ response to this kind of compel to drive a plot—remember, _the purpose of a compel is to create drama, not force people into things_.  Keep in mind that a player can always negotiate the terms of a  compel—he might have an even better idea for a dramatic way to start a  scene or move the story along.
> 
> 
> Say Yes, Roll the Dice, or Compel




Are you beginning to see how central to FATE this mechanic is? Contrary to what has been stated in previous posts, FATE is NOT "a skill based game with an Insight-like mechanic tacked on." The mechanics of Invocation and Compulsion *are the game*. 

There are in fact a bunch MORE points that could be made about aspects and other elements of FATE related to them, there are Assessments, Declarations, a whole bunch of stuff related to Tagging and setups, etc. This is not just some isolated subsystem, it is an all-pervasive mechanical framework which creates a game system.

I hope I have hereby answered some of your questions. If you are interested you can check out the aspects page of the online FATE "SRD" at http://www.faterpg.com/dl/df/aspects.html It is interesting reading.


----------



## Tony Vargas

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, first thing:
> Note how this is stated, central character attributes. 5e's central attributes are ability scores, class, and race, and I'll throw in alignment as being pretty 'core' as well, at least by tradition. Background can be added to this in 5e.



 Backgrounds are actually in the basic pdf, they're about as optional as race & class - a significant change from their introduction in 4e.



> These are still a fairly restricted set of things. Character traits/goals are purely secondary in 5e, embellishing the existing picture told by your class, stats, etc.



 Taken together, that is a great deal more complexity, and, considering the structure of classes, a great deal less flexibility, than FATE Aspects.



> FATE is NOT "a skill based game with an Insight-like mechanic tacked on." The mechanics of Invocation and Compulsion *are the game*.



 There's a lot to Fate that is about Playing A Certain Way, it's clearly spelled out and consistently supported and encouraged, if not outright forced.  You could play that certain way in a lot of systems, but you wouldn't have the confidence that anyone playing at the same table who played a different way would be hosed.

5e is also, more cryptically, about Playing A Certain Way, it's a weight of tradition impressed into most of the game, where it's less so - inspiration, for instance - the sub-systems feels 'tacked on.'  Perhaps ironically, a big part of that is affirmation of the DMs prerogative to make the game his own...
...and if a player doesn't go along with that (among other things), he's hosed.  Similarly, you could play that certain way in many other systems, you just wouldn't receive the customary rewards for it.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Tony Vargas said:


> Backgrounds are actually in the basic pdf, they're about as optional as race & class - a significant change from their introduction in 4e.
> 
> Taken together, that is a great deal more complexity, and, considering the structure of classes, a great deal less flexibility, than FATE Aspects.
> 
> There's a lot to Fate that is about Playing A Certain Way, it's clearly spelled out and consistently supported and encouraged, if not outright forced.  You could play that certain way in a lot of systems, but you wouldn't have the confidence that anyone playing at the same table who played a different way would be hosed.
> 
> 5e is also, more cryptically, about Playing A Certain Way, it's a weight of tradition impressed into most of the game, where it's less so - inspiration, for instance - the sub-systems feels 'tacked on.'  Perhaps ironically, a big part of that is affirmation of the DMs prerogative to make the game his own...
> ...and if a player doesn't go along with that (among other things), he's hosed.  Similarly, you could play that certain way in many other systems, you just wouldn't receive the customary rewards for it.




If you read the link I provided to the Aspect part of the FATE SRD, yes, I think it is fair to say that a lot of what it states is in some sense 'advisory'. It would be impossible for it to be otherwise really, as its all heavily tied to narrative and thus to interpretations of what various aspects MEAN in a fictional sense (IE can you compel a specific aspect in a certain way, would a PC taking a certain action be a 'self compel', etc.). Still, its quite clear what is intended, and it is heavily supported by the logic of the FATE point economy. As noted by someone else above, if you fail to use Compels and Invocations 'correctly' then the economy of FATE points falls apart. So the game WILL mechanically tell you when you are 'doing it wrong'. Anyway, you simply cannot play 5e, or most traditional style RPGs like FATE, they simply lack the mechanical framework to make it happen. 5e Inspiration and 'bonds' really are not the same thing at all. Those who conflate them are in error.

Speaking for myself, I would say that most RPGs don't work well when you attempt to force them to work with a set of assumptions and principles that are at odds with the way the designer envisaged the game working (though there are games where there are 'alternate paths', like 4e probably).


----------



## Aldarc

Imaro said:


> I actually gave a summary of the rules in the thread... and no, there really isn't much more to it.  Again cite some mechanics not descriptions or advice but what the actual mechanics are... what do Aspects and FATE points allow you to do mechanically?  They give you bonuses to rolls just like inspiration does.  You receive them for roleplaying your character... just like inspiration.  And as for aspects in scenes.... it's no different than terrain, hazards, etc. in D&D (Yes the mechanical implementation is different because they are different games... but they serve the same purpose).   At it's core FATE is a pretty traditional game with... wait for it... Aspects/FATE points tacked on.



This is an incredibly superficial reading of both Fate and 5E Inspiration. You're just repeating your "a cat is a horse because they share X features" syllogisms. I have cited mechanics. I have described what they do. If you honestly can't see the difference, then I certainly question your grasp of both Fate and 5E D&D mechanics. If you would like me to do your work and show you how Inspiration mechanics are different in their implementation, I can do that as well. I have linked before to Angry GM also detailing the mechanical deficiencies of 5e Inspiration, and I would recommend that you look that up again. 

Inspiration is supposedly gained via roleplaying your Bonds/Flaws/Ideals (BFI) or "just because." Though these Bonds/Flaws/Ideals come from your Background, the rules do provide latitude to create your own or not even bothering. 

What does Inspiration do? It grants advantage on a chosen roll - i.e., roll 2d20 and take the higher roll result - and that is it. Inspiration can be used on any player roll. Though Inspiration is generated from BFI, it is not spent in regards to BFI. It will often be spent on some random attack, skill, or saving throw roll that is disconnected from a character's BFI. And all they are getting is taking the highest result from 2d20. 

In Fate, fate points represent a mostly closed loop of player engagement with character concepts. (Again excepting the occasional stunt or power powered by fate points.) A character gains fate points by primarily roleplaying their Trouble Aspect and accepting GM Compels based on them. They spend Fate points by invoking their Aspects. So this economy circles back to Aspects, with the Player constantly reinforcing their character concept in play by spending and gaining Fate points. 

When Batman invokes his aspect "World's Greatest Detective," it's because he has seen the dice roll result and he wants that +2 bonus because he knows that if he pushes himself a little further, he will either succeed or succeed with style in his investigation of the crime scene and then he will be one step closer to solving the case. 



> In fact I'd go so far as to say if you removed FATE points and aspects from the game you would still have a perfectly playable albeit highly generic system called FUDGE.  It is literally, exactly what you accuse D&D 5e of being... a pre-existing system with narrative elements slapped on it.



If you would in fact go that far, then you would be making a horribly fallacious argument so I would respectfully advise you against that now so that you don't make the mistake of going that far. Because if you did what you described, you would not have Fate, which is the point. Fate is built on FUDGE - Fudge dice rolled against a ladder* - but Fate has definitely become more than simply FUDGE. Because if you removed Aspects from the game, you are left with only rolling Fudge dice against a ladder.** You have no High Concept, Trouble, or Character Aspects. You lose the Create an Advantage action. You lose almost the entirety of player engagement of the mechanics with those character concepts via Fate point interaction with aspects. You lose the narrative permissions. You lose the ability to declare story details. You lose the interaction in the scene with situation aspects. You have lost boosts. You have lost the Consequences system. You have stripped a lot of the heart and soul of Fate's play. So no,  [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION], this is not the same as what I accuse 5e as being. Could I play Fate without once touching the Aspect/Fate point mechanic? Now, could I play D&D 5E without ever once touching the Inspiration mechanic. Nowhere even remotely close to being equivalent cases. 

* This is as much of a system as "roll over target number with a d20". 

** The skill system is not really that important for Fate. Fate Accelerated uses approaches that are about how and not what. Other Fate games such as Jadepunk, use a modified version that combines skills into Professions that you can rank. Some games of Fate forgo skills and just have you rank your aspects with a numerical value, and that is what you add to your roll. So the Aspects are clearly more crucial for running Fate than the skills. 



Tony Vargas said:


> Maybe 6e will have a synthesis of Player & DM empowerment like that?  Or maybe, (if I'm being uncharacteristically less-cynical) 5e will even grow into it...



I suspect so. Mearls and Crawford are not unaware fools when it comes to the current gaming scene. Mearls has made reference, for example, to mechanics that he would like to see in D&D from Shadows of the Demon Lord. And there is a lot of engagement of different D&D-oriented fan streams online that seem aware of the trends and paradigm shifts emergent in a lot of indie games (e.g., BitD, DW, Fate, Cypher, Tiny Dungeon, etc.). 



Ovinomancer said:


> It is close, for a bit, but, yes, then it's gone because the 5e system doesn't cater to it as well or as often as Fate does.  Was I not clear about that?  I thought I was clear about that.  I did say that FATE does it better, right -- yes, yes, I think I did say that, more than once in more than one response _to you_.



For the record, I thought that you were clear with this point. 



> You're back to mechanical engines instead of play aesthetics.  Of course you can't play FATE with 5e -- the rules are different.  But you can grab some of those things FATE does aesthetically and do them in 5e without contorting the system or kitbashing.  I know this because _I do it._  I gave an example.



Honestly, for D&D I would probably prefer incorporating Dungeon World bonds over Fate's Troubles/Aspects system. If I wanted the latter, then I will just play Fate. Dungeon World at least exists as some measure of a PbtA emulation of D&D style adventures.


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> Traveller's just basic pass/fail skill checks, apart from the technological gulf changing the names and emphasis of skills, and D&Ds pronounced discomfort with acknowledging leadership or tactical acumen as character, rather than player traits, I see no major impediments... of course, it'd really be d20, not D&D



In the episode of play I referenced, skill checks (or abilities gated by skills, like driving a speeding ATV out of a starship hold to assault a base) were at the core of the action. But D&D doesn't give you PCs who are centrally defined by skills. The closest it gets to this is the classic Thief class, but that itself is a pre-determined bundle of skills. So D&D simply doesn't permit an INT 2 bruiser who also happens to have Computer-2. Even if the fighter has "cross class skills", it's the nature of D&D that skill checks are not the main way of addressing the challenges posed by the game - they're simply not that big a part of PC build. (Even in 4e, and even in a skill challenge, skill checks are supplemented by healing surges, action points, power use, etc.)

Is it possible to have a version of D&D that is all skills? D20 Cthulhu comes closest, perhaps, but it still has combat mechanics hived off, feats, hit points, etc. It does not have the mechanical play or feel of Traveller.

And then we get to the fact that Tactics and Leadership were crucial in the episode I referred to - they factored into the action both in the starship (with the two fireteams - the PCs got surprise, in part because of the boost from those skills, and so dominated the situation) and assaulting the base.

I didn't make much of the close range and hand-to-hand combat which was an element of the session. This didn't feel remotely like D&D, as the Traveller rules produce a large amount of "dropped to zero but not dead", which is pretty much the opposite of D&D, and results in short anti-climactic combats rather than dramatic ones. (This may or may not be a good thing, but it's clearly different.)



Tony Vargas said:


> Well, if you want 4e,  forcing bloodied enemies to surrender via intimidation.



Which completely bypasses the general combat resolution system. It doesn't play at all like emotional or mental stress, or similar complications, in Cortex+ Heroic.



Tony Vargas said:


> As I opined, up-thread, 40 years of pounding the baroque D&D peg into holes of every description, with however large a hammer it might take, can leave one convinced of its maleability.



As far as I know [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has not played any RPGs but D&D, and has not read many others either. So I'm not just going to take his word as to how flexible D&D is, and how much it can emulate other systems!


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Right, what I would say is that [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] is shifting the goal posts. The question was about what the SYSTEM does, and he is trying to talk about what the GM can do, independent of system.



Partly right.

The question is what the GM can do TO the system to make it better reflect the feel she wants her game to have; and whether a given system can withstand it.


----------



## Imaro

At this point it seems like I'm being attributed with a stance (D&D 5e can do everything FATE can do, in the exact same way as FATE with FATE-like mechanics) which I haven't taken.  Not sure why this is happening but I never claimed D&D could do exactly what FATE could do in the same way FATE could do it.  I claimed that Bonds/Flaws/Ideals/ and Inspiration could at a high level accomplish what FATE does with aspects for players in a D&D camapign... I also cited that them being less focues, less intricately tied to the play of the game, etc. was a benefit.  

Apparently there was push back that 5e couldn't even accomplish the same thing at a high level and my questioning of that assertion as well as wanting to do some analysis into the what and how of FATE's Aspects and FATE points vs. Inspiration/Bonds/Flaws/Ideals was somehow morphed by other posters who wanrted to defend FATE into me making a claim D&D could do everything FATE could do and it was better than FATE (which again, I never stated) I think [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION] may have been the only one who actually read my stance before jumping to the defense of FATE, and he even tried to let some of the more ardent proponents for FATE know they were mistaken in the argument they were attributing to both him and me but it was for the most part ignored ...  

For reference here is the actual post where I both question the claim that 5e through the use of Bonds/Flaws/Ideals and Inspiration at a high level can't replicate what FATE does with Aspects and my thoughts on the differences in the two systems... I am literally arguing the same thing most of you all are claiming I am arguing against... mainly the degree to which Aspects are ingrained in the system.  At this point I'm not sure what [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] or [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] are arguing with me about.  Because it sure isn't addressing what I've been speaking on.  My argument in similarity has always been from a high level view and I've never stated one was better than the other except in how it relates to different goals for different playstyles with different groups.



Imaro said:


> I'm curious do you think that D&D 5e's ideals, bonds and flaws can accomplish the same thingn't?  If not... I have to ask, why not?
> 
> 
> 
> Again I have to ask, how is this different from the GM and a player establishing and fleshing out character backstory (or more specifically an ideal bond or flaw) in D&D 5e?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> See my experience here is that not everyone enjoys this style.  There are players who really aren't interested in fleshing out the GM's world through their character's backstory and traits (they may not even be that interested in fleshing out their own character's traits and personality).  As someone who runs games (as opposed to playing them) near constantly I've been in this situation myself where I don't want to create a world... I want to play in someone else's world.
> 
> I see 1 major difference in how FATE (aspects) approaches this vs. D&D's (ideals, flaws and bonds)... the degree to which it is mandated as part of the game.  In FATE aspects are mandatory and are a fundamental part of the game mechanics in play, which means there is no opting out of them and every player has to engage with them to the same degree (fully).  D&D on the other hand treats it as an optional system which players can buy into fully or choose to ignore as they see fit.  FATE is great if you have a group with total buy in and your method of setting building is great for players who want the experience of building the world (though I think it's a big mistake to assume that this is desired by all players or even a universally positive thing).  However for a group that doesn't want to go deep into characterization and has no desire to build the world their stories take place in (or even a group that is mixed on the idea) FATE is pretty limiting and something like 5e, IMO, is a better fit since players can choose to buy in or not as much as they want.
> 
> EDIT: Though this is purely conjecture, I think this is a major reason games like FATE don't have the widespread appeal of something like D&D or more traditional rpg's.  They require more from the players and IME, it's a requirement that makes it a less attractive option for some new players as well as casual players and even experienced players who don't necessarily fall into the Storytelling (and to a lesser extent the Actor) player types.


----------



## Aldarc

Imaro said:


> I claimed that Bonds/Flaws/Ideals/ and Inspiration could at a high level accomplish what FATE does with aspects for players in a D&D camapign... I also cited that them being less focues, less intricately tied to the play of the game, etc. was a benefit.



And we have pushed back on both of your arguments here. 



> I am literally arguing the same thing most of you all are claiming I am arguing against...mainly the degree to which Aspects are ingrained in the system.  At this point I'm not sure what [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] or  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] are arguing with me about.



Mainly your demand for concrete examples regarding your own prompt. Your shallow reading of Fate and Inspiration mechanics, particularly baseless, unsupportable arguments like these: 


Imaro said:


> I actually gave a summary of the rules in the thread... and no, there really isn't much more to it.  Again cite some mechanics not descriptions or advice but what the actual mechanics are... what do Aspects and FATE points allow you to do mechanically?  They give you bonuses to rolls just like inspiration does.  You receive them for roleplaying your character... just like inspiration.  And as for aspects in scenes.... it's no different than terrain, hazards, etc. in D&D (Yes the mechanical implementation is different because they are different games... but they serve the same purpose). At it's core FATE is a pretty traditional game with... wait for it... Aspects/FATE points tacked on.
> 
> In fact I'd go so far as to say if you removed FATE points and aspects from the game you would still have a perfectly playable albeit highly generic system called FUDGE.  It is literally, exactly what you accuse D&D 5e of being... a pre-existing system with narrative elements slapped on it.



And you can even see within the above post, evidence to the contrary you "claim D&D could do everything FATE could do" as it relates to aspects and fate points. Wondering why others may be arguing against you? Or for what reason? Try your above comments for starters. Your "high level view" of Fate is shallow reductionism and does not offer quality criticism of the system. That is worth challenging, so don't act surprised when people do. Not clear what I am arguing against with you? Let's be clear now. As of now, I am arguing with you about this post and your "moderately familiar" view of Fate. 

As for the rest? You asked: 


> For example what do Aspects mechanically offer that Inspiration and the Bond/Flaw/Ideal system don't? I've stated from a mechanical perspective how I see the two and why I think they are similar but I've yet to see that done from the other perspective... that's what i'm interested in hearing.



And that has now been answered by several people, and now that people have answered, you have done nothing with it. You stopped engaging and retreated to this post while also treating [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] and me as being senseless people who have no idea what we are arguing. Do you want examples or not? Do you want people to have a conversation with you on these points or not? We met your demands. How am I supposed to believe that you are discussing this in good faith when you do this? You asked for something, and so we answered your inquiries. Then you pretend like you have no idea what we are discussing? What gives? 



> Because it sure isn't addressing what I've been speaking on.  My argument in similarity has always been from a high level view and I've never stated one was better than the other except in how it relates to different goals for different playstyles with different groups.



Which brings us back to Campbell's post about you underestimating the flexibility of indie games, does it not? Then we can go back to your post about Sorcerer and D&D, no? And then that would bring us back here again, a topic regarding Fate and Inspiration that has already been discussued before in this thread at your insistence.


----------



## Imaro

Aldarc said:


> And we have pushed back on both of your arguments here.




So you are claiming that at a high level and in a general sense D&D 5e Bonds/Flaws/Ideals and Inspiration can't serve the same purpose as Aspects... Yeah we are just going to have to agree to disagree.  While it is up to the group to push those mechanics to the forefront in D&D it is also up to the group in a FATE game to engage with aspects and the FATE economy as opposed to skills, stunts, etc.  So no I've seen no valid push back on this only when it comes to details and whether they can perfectly mimic the FATE mechanics as opposed to the general purpose... which again I'll state I never claimed.  I also fail to see where the push back against the looser rules for idelas/bonds/etc. being an advantage in D&D (for a group of players with more diverse tastes) has been countered or pushed back on...



Aldarc said:


> Mainly your demand for concrete examples regarding your own prompt. Your shallow reading of Fate and Inspiration mechanics, particularly baseless, unsupportable arguments like these:
> And you can even see within the above post, evidence to the contrary you "claim D&D could do everything FATE could do" as it relates to aspects and fate points. Wondering why others may be arguing against you? Or for what reason? Try your above comments for starters. Your "high level view" of Fate is shallow reductionism and does not offer quality criticism of the system. That is worth challenging, so don't act surprised when people do. Not clear what I am arguing against with you? Let's be clear now. As of now, I am arguing with you about this post and your "moderately familiar" view of Fate.




Again I started from and have been talking at a high level... I have claimed that 5e inspiration along with bonds/ideals and flaws can do the same "what" as FATE's aspects and FATE points for players in a D&D game, not that the "How" is the same, that's what I wanted to discuss the differences around.  To claim D&D 5e could do everything the mechanics of FATE do in the same way they do it is a silly argument since they are different systems.  There's no way this could be possible.   I asked for details because I thought it would be interesting to compare the how in each game... remember my list of questions... but instead of taking it as a prompt for discussion and analysis you and @_*ABDULa*_hzared took it as some type of attack on FATE or indie games or I don't know exactly... and even here you've decided my argument for me byt stating I am saying D&D 5e can do everything FATE can do... that's not what I posted and it's never been my argument that's your takeaway after getting offended and extrapolating from my post.  I guess if you attribute it to me enough times it'll stick. 




Aldarc said:


> As for the rest? You asked:
> And that has now been answered by several people, and now that people have answered, you have done nothing with it. You stopped engaging and retreated to this post while also treating @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ and me as being senseless people who have no idea what we are arguing. Do you want examples or not? Do you want people to have a conversation with you on these points or not? We met your demands. How am I supposed to believe that you are discussing this in good faith when you do this? You asked for something, and so we answered your inquiries. Then you pretend like you have no idea what we are discussing? What gives?




Because at this point I wanted to clarify my actual argument so YOU understood my position (which as I stated before you seem to be making a habit of misconstruing).  If my position is unclear how are we going to have an actual discussion about it.  You will always view and approach my posts as if I am trying to one up or prove something I'm not and that will most definitely color the conversation (as it already has since the past couple of posts I've gotten from you have been filled with that snark you felt so keen to lecture me on earlier.).

I'm willing to discuss but it has to be in good faith and without viewpoints and arguments being ascribed that were never made and honestly you don't seem like that's the place you want to approach this from right now.  But please if you really would like some discussion and an exchange of viewpoints then let me know and I'd be more than happy to engage you. 



Aldarc said:


> Which brings us back to Campbell's post about you underestimating the flexibility of indie games, does it not? Then we can go back to your post about Sorcerer and D&D, no? And then that would bring us back here again, a topic regarding Fate and Inspiration that has already been discussued before in this thread at your insistence.




No it doesn't you've shown that FATE 's mechanics are very focused on a particular experience how does this speak to flexibility.  Can FATE provide a tactical experience if one player in the group wants that?  Do it's mechanics support the type of customization and build choices that a powergamer would enjoy? Can you play casually without fully engaging with FATE's mechanics and the game not suffer?  Can a player focus purely on combat if he is a butt-kicker type?  I think this is a totally separate conversation that hasn't been addressed up till now and I was hoping @_*Campbell*_ would go int more depth about why he saw them as flexible.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Lanefan said:


> The question is what the GM can do TO the system to make it better reflect the feel she wants her game to have; and whether a given system can withstand it.



 Any given system can 'withstand' modding, if the modding is done skillfully - or be wrecked by it, if not.   
Ironically, the closer a system is to broken, the more amenable it is to modding - in fact, if a system is broken to begin with, you might as well mod it to suit, while you're fixing it!  



pemerton said:


> In the episode of play I referenced, skill checks (or abilities gated by skills, like driving a speeding ATV out of a starship hold to assault a base) were at the core of the action. But D&D doesn't give you PCs who are centrally defined by skills. The closest it gets to this is the classic Thief class, but that itself is a pre-determined bundle of skills. So D&D simply doesn't permit an INT 2 bruiser who also happens to have Computer-2.



 I suspect you don't mean in the sense of INT starting at 3 and Computer not being a skill?  Certainly an INT 8 'Strong Hero' in d20 modern could invest a few ranks in a computer skill.  Check his email, and so forth.  



> Even if the fighter has "cross class skills", it's the nature of D&D that skill checks are not the main way of addressing the challenges posed by the game - they're simply not that big a part of PC build. (Even in 4e, and even in a skill challenge, skill checks are supplemented by healing surges, action points, power use, etc.)



 Since 3.0, if not 2e S&P, skill checks have been the main mechanical way of addressing non-combat challenges.  They're often avoided, because they haven't always worked great, or because players realize they can couch actions to get success without checking the character's skill, but they do exist, FWIW.



> And then we get to the fact that Tactics and Leadership were crucial in the episode I referred to - they factored into the action both in the starship (with the two fireteams - the PCs got surprise, in part because of the boost from those skills, and so dominated the situation) and assaulting the base.



 There's certainly feats & abilities in various editions of D&D that'd deliver an initiative boost.  


> Which completely bypasses the general combat resolution system. It doesn't play at all like emotional or mental stress, or similar complications, in Cortex+ Heroic.



 Except for the 'bloodied enemy' part.



> As far as I know [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] has not played any RPGs but D&D, and has not read many others either. So I'm not just going to take his word as to how flexible D&D is, and how much it can emulate other systems!



Mostly 1e D&D, IIRC, so he has certainly had ample time & experience to acquire the skills to /make/ D&D flexible.

(And, as I've opined, 'emulating other /systems/' is a rabbit-hole.  RPGs have enough trouble emulating a genre, let alone a range of genres, let alone doing impressions of eachother at the same time!)


----------



## Aldarc

Imaro said:


> So you are claiming that at a high level and in a general sense D&D 5e Bonds/Flaws/Ideals and Inspiration can't serve the same purpose as Aspects... Yeah we are just going to have to agree to disagree.  While it is up to the group to push those mechanics to the forefront in D&D it is also up to the group in a FATE game to engage with aspects and the FATE economy as opposed to skills, stunts, etc.  So no I've seen no valid push back on this only when it comes to details and whether they can perfectly mimic the FATE mechanics as opposed to the general purpose... which again I'll state I never claimed.



You can feel free to agree to disagree all you want, but that does not make your assertions true. "At a high level and in a general sense" appears to mean to you "at an overly broad and an incredibly superficial sense devoid of any actual meaning or substance for the sake of false equivalence." I don't think that Inspiration can serve the same purpose as Aspects because Aspects are simply far too encompassing in the gameplay for Inspiration to keep pace, whether at a high level, a medium level, or a low level. 



> Inspiration is a rule the game master can use to *reward you for playing your character in a way that's true to his or her personality traits, ideal, bond, and flaw.* By using inspiration, you can draw on your personality trait of compassion for the downtrodden to give you an edge in negotiating with the Beggar Prince. Or inspiration can let you call on your bond to the defense of your home village to push past the effect of a spell that has been laid on you.



At a high level, Inspiration exists as a reward for roleplaying. The problem with Inspiration as written is that it is mechanically dissociated from its own description above after the bold. Once you have Inspiration - regardless of how you got it - it can be used on anything outside of your BFI and only on attack rolls, skill checks, and saving throws. And only with advantage. You either have it or you don't. There are no Inspiration pools. 

Contrast this with Fate: 


> You use tokens to represent how many fate points you have at any given time during play. Fate points are one of your most important resources in Fate—*they’re a measure of how much influence you have to make the story go in your character’s favor.*
> 
> You can spend fate points to invoke an aspect, to declare a story detail, or to activate certain powerful stunts.
> 
> You earn fate points by accepting a compel on one of your aspects.



And that is the high level meaning and general purpose of fate points in Fate. It is not about "good roleplaying," but a character's story influence.



> Players spend them in order to be awesome in a crucial moment, and they get them back when their lives get dramatic and complicated. So if your fate points are flowing the way they’re supposed to, you’ll end up with these cycles of triumphs and setbacks that make for a fun and interesting story.



At a high level, Fate points exist to fluctuate the narrative drama of play. Fate points do not exist as a reward for roleplaying. They exist as an incentive for accepting story complications that apply to your character: compels, invokes against you, and conceding a conflict. 



> Again I started from and have been talking at a high level... I have claimed that 5e inspiration along with bonds/ideals and flaws can do the same "what" as FATE's aspects and FATE points for players in a D&D game, not that the "How" is the same, that's what I wanted to discuss the differences around.



Is that the same "what" though? Isn't that a positive assertion that requires you to provide evidence and not us to prove that it's different? 

In Sum at a High Level: 
* D&D 5E: Inspiration exists as a reward for roleplaying to gain advantage on a given attack roll, saving throw, or ability check. They are a carrot for roleplaying. 
* Fate: Fate points exist as a way for the player character to influence the story. They are a stick players can use on the story. 

IMHO, these are two distinct general purposes. 



> I asked for details because I thought it would be interesting to compare the how in each game... remember my list of questions... but instead of taking it as a prompt for discussion and analysis you and ABDULahzared took it as some type of attack on FATE or indie games or I don't know exactly... and even here you've decided my argument for me byt stating I am saying D&D 5e can do everything FATE can do... that's not what I posted and it's never been my argument that's your takeaway after getting offended and extrapolating from my post.



So what deeper argument am I supposed to take away from your post where you say: 


> They give you bonuses to rolls just like inspiration does. You receive them for roleplaying your character... just like inspiration. And as for aspects in scenes.... it's no different than terrain, hazards, etc. in D&D (Yes the mechanical implementation is different because they are different games... but they serve the same purpose).
> 
> In fact I'd go so far as to say if you removed FATE points and aspects from the game you would still have a perfectly playable albeit highly generic system called FUDGE. It is literally, exactly what you accuse D&D 5e of being... a pre-existing system with narrative elements slapped on it.



Do you really not expect any backlash when you describe Fate, much less any game, with this shallow of a reading? Do you not expect any backlash when you implicitly accuse me of being a hypocrite? 



> I guess if you attribute it to me enough times it'll stick.





> Because at this point I wanted to clarify my actual argument so YOU understood my position (which as I stated before *you seem to be making a habit of misconstruing*).If my position is unclear how are we going to have an actual discussion about it.  You will always view and approach my posts as if I am trying to one up or prove something I'm not and that will most definitely color the conversation (as it already has since the past couple of posts I've gotten from *you have been filled with that snark you felt so keen to lecture me on earlier*.).
> 
> I'm willing to discuss but it has to be in good faith and without viewpoints and arguments being ascribed that were never made and honestly *you don't seem like that's the place you want to approach this from right now.*  But please if you really would like some discussion and an exchange of viewpoints then let me know and I'd be more than happy to engage you



You want a discussion in good faith? Then stop trying to dig your claws back into people like you are doing above with your double-speak, because that's just dispelling any notion of your good faith right there. If you can cut this sort of stuff out, then we can proceed. 



> No it doesn't *you've shown* that FATE 's mechanics are very focused on a particular experience how does this speak to flexibility.



When did I do that? I have discussed Aspects and Fate points and how they are comparable to 5E Inspiration, which is what I was asked to detail. 



> Can FATE provide a tactical experience if one player in the group wants that?



War of Ashes. Also, the Create an Advantage action is what my D&D tactical players drool over. 



> Do it's mechanics support the type of customization and build choices that a powergamer would enjoy?



Venture City, Atomic Robo, Jadepunk, Fate Freeport, Dresden Files Accelerated, Mindjammer, Eclipse Phase, Wearing the Cape, etc. Base customization is fairly free reign, especially when it comes to Aspects and Stunts, which are mostly build-them-yourself with examples.



> Can you play casually without fully engaging with FATE's mechanics and the game not suffer?



Can you play D&D without fully engaging with D&D's core mechanics (e.g., classes, races, spells, combat, skill checks, etc.) and the game not suffer? But yes, you can certainly casually play Fate. 



> Can a player focus purely on combat if he is a butt-kicker type?



Yes, why couldn't he in Fate? But can a player focus purely on non-combat in D&D without being saddled with combat viability via classes?


----------



## Imaro

Aldarc said:


> You can feel free to agree to disagree all you want, but that does not make your assertions true.




I'll decide if I'm going to follow up with the rest of your post later but just wanted to highlight this right here...

 I say we should agree to disagree and somehow you've misconstrued my statement into something along the lines of "My assertions are objectively true"... which again I didn't say.  Agree to disagree means we're probably at an impasse here and you haven't convinced me (or some others in this thread) and I apparently haven't convinced you (or some others in this thread).  This is what I mean about you taking what I post and then misrepresenting it.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Aldarc said:


> The problem with Inspiration as written is that it is *mechanically dissociated* from its own description



 Foul!  



> Once you have Inspiration - regardless of how you got it - it can be used on anything outside of your BFI and only on attack rolls, skill checks, and saving throws. And only with advantage. You either have it or you don't.



 The description only said that you /could/ draw on your inspiration in those thematically appropriate way.  You could instead draw on the compassion you RP'd when negotiating with the beggar king to assassinate him later that evening, sure, but that doesn't make you dissociative (_mechanically_)...



> There are no Inspiration pools.



 You know if there were some players'd just horde it until they drowned in one.



> Fate points do not exist as a reward for roleplaying. They exist as an incentive for accepting story complications that apply to your character: compels, invokes against you, and conceding a conflict.



 Wouldn't that be 'good RP' in the absence of any incentive?  



> Can you play D&D without fully engaging with D&D's core mechanics (e.g., classes, races, spells, combat, skill checks, etc.) and the game not suffer? But yes, you can certainly casually play Fate.



 Neither the current ed of D&D nor Fate really lend themselves to casual play.  Fate Accelerated, maybe, but FATE, with it's session 0 story-braiding (I don't know if that's fair, but it's hard to describe succinctly, and harder to do casually/quickly), requires a fairly high up-front buy-in.  It seems like a 'serious gamers' product.  D&D (basic pdf, perhaps), also maybe, if you do pre-gens, and pre-pick spells or just eschew casters, entirely.



> Yes, why couldn't he in Fate?



 Because Roll v Role, I guess.  RP & tactical combat are incompatible, except when they aren't, then they are again.  
Seriously, though, all you'd need to play a combat specialist in FATE is a character concept - 'story' - that screams combat specialist, like IDK, Casca the Eternal Mercenary or just about anyone ever played by Arnold Schwarzenegger...



> But can a player focus purely on non-combat in D&D without being saddled with combat viability via classes?



 IDK if 'saddles' is fair, but, while you'll get hps and proficiency bonuses like everyone else, you could dump CON, go about unarmed & unarmored, and choose all support & utility spells, and still be a contributing party member and a 'non-combatant' - only because you /choose/ never to prepare Spirit Guardians or Flame Strike or what-have-you, but, still, you could do it.  Pacifist Cleric was a thing in both 3.5 (variety of pacifist builds, but cleric was the most practical) & 4e (which could also do a 'lazy warlord' who was great to have in combat, but, y'know, not actually doin' it himself).


----------



## pemerton

[MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION], if you really think that skills in 3E/PF are capable of carrying the same heft in play as they do in Classic Traveller (where they are the whole of the PC sheet) then I guess there's no arguing it with you!

To me it seems obvious that, in 3E/PF, the main way of resolving out-of-combat challenges is not the skill system but the magic system, with the skill system acting as something of a secondary framework. This is why I made the point that an INT 2 bruiser was also the one who was able to save the data: in Traveller it is quite feasible to have a INT 2 ex-nayy guy like this one who, as a result of the lifepath rolls, happens to have Computer-2 (in the backstory: he was passably competent in the Engineering section, but when transferred to bridge duties his limitatins became clear and he was mustered out). In D&D that role would be played by a spell-user, or (perhaps) a thief, but not by a fighter or barbarian.

I'm not very familiar with D20 modern, but my understanding is that it is based on "talent trees" that are associated with classes, so (I assume) the real computer skill would be associated with a Smart Hero, not a Strong one. 

Turning from the range of PC expertise to other aspects of system: Traveller checks are rolled on 2d6 (occasionally 3d6), which means that even when skill is acting as a 1:1 bonus it behaves quite differently from d20, with skill levels above 1 generating rather reliable degrees of competence. For some checks (eg basic vacc suit checks) the ratio is better than 1:1 (eg in the vacc suit case it is +4 per rank) which further affects the probailities on chekcs. Of course you could calculate all this and replicate it on d20, but (i) I don't think it's guaranteed that the maths will work out (I haven't checked, but it's not obvious that there is a way of parsing d20 skill bonuses that will mean that you can get the same chance of success on a basic vacc suit check and a subsequent vacc suit saving roll, which in Traveller are at +4 per rank and +1 per rank respectively) and (ii) this would require a type of approach to determining skill bonuses and setting DCs which is (as far as I know) not part of any actual d20 system.

4e skill challenges use a range of devices to help "flatten" the variability of the maths - mutiple checks, use of rituals and action points and powers and "advantages" (per the Rules Compendium) - but these (i) tend to drift expertise back to a class orientation, and (ii) give the game its own feel which I will testify from experience is not very closee to Classic Traveller.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> if you really think that skills in 3E/PF are capable of carrying the same heft in play as they do in Classic Traveller (where they are the whole of the PC sheet) then I guess there's no arguing it with you!



 I may be thinking more of Traveler as in the 'Characters & Combat' booklet, back in the day, vs /some/ d20 game.

But, no, I'm not impressed by long or open-ended lists of skills, quite the opposite:  I think they can undermine play by 'creating incompetence.'  (and, for the record, the 3e/PF skill list is too long)



> To me it seems obvious that, in 3E/PF, the main way of resolving out-of-combat challenges is not the skill system but the magic system, with the skill system acting as something of a secondary framework.



 Remove "out-of-combat" and I'd agree with that sentence.  ;P  Seriously, though, if you had a build designed to optimize a skill or something, then it could be every bit as effective as magic in it's area of specialty.



> This is why I made the point that an INT 2 bruiser was also the one who was able to save the data: in Traveller it is quite feasible to have a INT 2 ex-nayy guy like this one who, as a result of the lifepath rolls, happens to have Computer-2 (in the backstory: he was passably competent in the Engineering section, but when transferred to bridge duties his limitatins became clear and he was mustered out). In D&D that role would be played by a spell-user, or (perhaps) a thief, but not by a fighter or barbarian.



 Because in-class, and because stat + skill, right?  Ranks could pretty easily be the most significant portion of a skill bonus, and, yeah, I know 2 is pretty good in Traveler (at least it was, 1 was perfectly competent, IIRC), and the scale is completely different thanks to d20's proclivities... 



> I'm not very familiar with D20 modern, but my understanding is that it is based on "talent trees" that are associated with classes, so (I assume) the real computer skill would be associated with a Smart Hero, not a Strong one.



 I haven't played it in over 10 years (and never played it much, the "Stat Hero" classes in place of archetypes did not appeal) and can't say I recall details, but I'd be mildly surprised if there was no way to do some equivalent of cross-classing to get a slightly against-type skill or other trick.  



> 4e skill challenges use a range of devices to help "flatten" the variability of the maths - mutiple checks, use of rituals and action points and powers and "advantages" (per the Rules Compendium) - but these (i) tend to drift expertise back to a class orientation, and (ii) give the game its own feel which I will testify from experience is not very closee to Classic Traveller.



 I know the topic drifted to aping other games feelz and system-artifacts and whatnot, but I don't put much stock in it, as I've said it's a rabbit-hole with little bearing on anything.  
Can you do the same characters, in the same genre, in the same situations, and tell the same story?  

In this case, though, I was thinking more of just the structure of the challenges.  Can you have a scenario involving the elements in question, and resolve it, depending on edition, with as much interest & agency as I ever got out of Traveler (and I did play it more than a bit in the 80s - I'll laugh if 'Classic' Traveler is nothing like it was then, though I suppose I won't be too suprised).


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> In this case, though, I was thinking more of just the structure of the challenges.  Can you have a scenario involving the elements in question, and resolve it, depending on edition, with as much interest & agency as I ever got out of Traveler



Probably. You could probably also do the same with the Fighting Fantasy system (three stats: Skill, Stamina and Luck), in so far as you can frame the challenge, make checks to resolve them, and find out what happens.

I don't think this shows that the play experience of Fighting Fantasy closely resembles Traveller (or D&D).



Tony Vargas said:


> and I did play it more than a bit in the 80s - I'll laugh if 'Classic' Traveler is nothing like it was then, though I suppose I won't be too suprised



I'm running the 1977 edition with some MegaTraveller inspired mods to the lifepath tables, and a skill list influenced by Citizens of the Imperium, Mercenary, High Guard and Scouts.


----------



## Manbearcat

Tony Vargas said:


> Considered.  It has no bearing at all on the connotations of 'principled' or 'disciplined,' that I can see.
> 
> It carries different information, fiat implies arbitrary and without regard to anyone or anything.  Judgement implies consideration of other factors  - not excepting principles, though also implying some flexibility, perhaps more so than discipline.
> 
> But I'd consider it as an alternative to fiat, specifically.






Ovinomancer said:


> Hmm.  When a player declares an action and picks a skill in BitD, as GM I have full authority to set the position and effect.  Yes, I should follow the fiction, but I find that constraint present in any game I run.  The rub is, though, that I, as GM, have the fiat to declare the position and effect of an action.  I don't find the constraints to be a compelling argument for that not being fiat, because they're not actual constraints rather than advice.  Much like your pitcher example in your other reply above, the coach's advice isn't a constraint on the pitcher so much as good advice.  I find good advice exists regardless of system.
> 
> However, I do see strong merit in finding some way to differentiate systems where the GM has full authorial control vice systems that mechanically share out some authorial controls and limit GM authorities, but I'm not sure 'fiat' is the hill to die on there.  I can live with it if you insist, though.




Definitely not interested in dying on the "principled and disciplined GMing" hill if it isn't useful as a term to delineate it from classic "GMing by fiat."  "System-constrained GMing?"  That just rolls off the tongue.  Should catch like wildfire.

Let me rewrite the analogy to an even crappier one so we can focus on the crappiness of my analogies!

*On crappy analogies that serve only to distract the conversation:*

Instead of the pitcher and the coach, here is one; an artist and a show curator.

In the first instance, the curator says "create something that is moving."

In the second instance, the curator gives constraints:

1)  Oil on canvas

2)  Grays and muted greens w/ a single bright color

3)  Convey the metamorphosis of profound loss

*On Blades GMing*:  I'm thinking broadly here (as in informing to one degree, even if slightly, each moment of play).  I'm thinking of the aspects of the GMing ethos which will guide and constrain which differentiate it from other games' GMing ethos (and therefore the experience in play for both the GM and the players).  Some of these are extremely controversial (as they have been brought up many time in various forms).  For instance:

At the apex, we have

*Play to find out what happens* (and all the suite of actions, principles, and "don't do's" that play exactly into this...of which there are tons...not going to name them all as there are too many)

Below that, but related we have things like 

*Ask Questions* (and use the answers)
*
Telegraph trouble before it strikes* (but *follow through*)

*Be aware of potential fiction vs. established fiction *(also a part of play to find out what happens, but I wanted to put this separately)

*Keep the meta channel open*

*Don't block*

*Don't hold back on what they earn*

*Don't say no* (go with no Effect and let them bargain the Effect up and/or Offer a Devil's Bargain)

There is a lot of other stuff including things that a lot of GMs on here (who are exclusively used to trad games) would say is "over"empowering (such as "Cut to the Action" or "Don't Get Caught Up In Minutae" - D&D 4e certainly got killed for its iteration of this indie axiom - "Skip the gate guards and get to the fun!"), but those above are the kinds of things I have in mind that are constraints or "constraining guidance."  Having those subtly or significantly inform each moment of play is a (given the current representation on ENWorld...unwelcome) paradigm shift for GMs who are used to the (more-or-less) all-encompassing authority/latitude (in discretion on the nature/trajectory of the fiction, on rulings, and their hefty role in action resolution) that is afforded to them in various trad games.

Given that last sentence alone, I feel like constraint vs latitude/authority has to be the axis where we differentiate GMing in games like Blades vs a game like (say) D&D 5e.

Yes?  No?  Another axis?


Just an amusing aside as an ironic thought came to me.  Despite the above (disempowering or constraining aspects of Blades GMing), the game is _*significantly more lethal/"good guys" don't win-ey (in bad ways) *_than any D&D that has ever been conceived.  And we often see player empowerment/GM "disempowerment" as an "EZMode" epithet.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Lanefan said:


> Partly right.
> 
> The question is what the GM can do TO the system to make it better reflect the feel she wants her game to have; and whether a given system can withstand it.




I'm not sure what 'withstand' means. I think that the gist of what you're saying is about if a workable 'hack' can be constructed. I wouldn't presuppose that any given person couldn't make a workable hack, as a general proposition. I think it is best to talk in the most concrete and detailed terms in this sort of case.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> So you are claiming that at a high level and in a general sense D&D 5e Bonds/Flaws/Ideals and Inspiration can't serve the same purpose as Aspects... Yeah we are just going to have to agree to disagree.  While it is up to the group to push those mechanics to the forefront in D&D it is also up to the group in a FATE game to engage with aspects and the FATE economy as opposed to skills, stunts, etc.  So no I've seen no valid push back on this only when it comes to details and whether they can perfectly mimic the FATE mechanics as opposed to the general purpose... which again I'll state I never claimed.  I also fail to see where the push back against the looser rules for idelas/bonds/etc. being an advantage in D&D (for a group of players with more diverse tastes) has been countered or pushed back on...



Well, arguing about 'tastes' is a fruitless endeavor. I have never mentioned 'taste' at all...

I think, as I just told [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], we need to be explicit and concrete and talk details. I don't know what 'at a high level' means. I know specific situations at tables and categories of similar situations at tables as their generalization. So, I would say, in general, when a player wants to do something like have his character's 'aspect' (generally a qualitative thing) be reflected concretely in the game situation, that is to have some real mechanical and procedural heft, then FATE is more likely to be able to meet that need. This is kind of general though. We cannot say that there is NEVER a case where 5e's Inspiration/Bonds system will deliver this. It could, but since Inspiration isn't actually tied explicitly to PIBFs, which have no defined mechanical impact AFAIK. There's a vague "the GM might give you inspiration if you play in a way that reflects your traits" but it doesn't even say if it is positively or negatively! (IE you would GAIN inspiration for taking actions beneficial to your character if they happen to align with his PIBFs). 



> Again I started from and have been talking at a high level... I have claimed that 5e inspiration along with bonds/ideals and flaws can do the same "what" as FATE's aspects and FATE points for players in a D&D game, not that the "How" is the same, that's what I wanted to discuss the differences around.  To claim D&D 5e could do everything the mechanics of FATE do in the same way they do it is a silly argument since they are different systems.  There's no way this could be possible.   I asked for details because I thought it would be interesting to compare the how in each game... remember my list of questions... but instead of taking it as a prompt for discussion and analysis you and @_*ABDULa*_hzared took it as some type of attack on FATE or indie games or I don't know exactly... and even here you've decided my argument for me byt stating I am saying D&D 5e can do everything FATE can do... that's not what I posted and it's never been my argument that's your takeaway after getting offended and extrapolating from my post.  I guess if you attribute it to me enough times it'll stick.



Again though, I don't really understand what is meant by "at a high level". If you mean sort of in a hand-wavy kind of way that both games have some sort of mechanics that include character traits and some sort of mechanics that can give bonuses to checks, then I guess 5e and FATE are close cousins! I think that's so vague however that it misses the entire essence of what each game is really about.

What I'm saying is that I think the two systems are so qualitatively different that 'what' they accomplish is only 'the same' in an extremely superficial way. I've never said 5e can do everything FATE can do or that you seriously argued that, although [MENTION=2486]Al[/MENTION]drac DID quote where you made statements which are EXCEEDINGLY like that statement! You very certainly did attempt to minimize the central nature of aspects/compulsion/invocation in FATE. I didn't set out to prove that you were 'wrong that 5e can do all that FATE can do', I set out to prove that your assertion that FATE is just "FUDGE with a few narrative elements slapped on it". This assertion was, frankly, completely wrong! It gave the whole discussion a character that produced inaccurate conclusions. I simply corrected it, perhaps with zest, but it was simply a correction.




> Because at this point I wanted to clarify my actual argument so YOU understood my position (which as I stated before you seem to be making a habit of misconstruing).  If my position is unclear how are we going to have an actual discussion about it.  You will always view and approach my posts as if I am trying to one up or prove something I'm not and that will most definitely color the conversation (as it already has since the past couple of posts I've gotten from you have been filled with that snark you felt so keen to lecture me on earlier.).



You have been somewhat inconsistent, as [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] accurately pointed out in his response to your last post before this one. I am happy to take it that you have clarified your position here. FATE is not simply a skill-based system with some traits tacked on. If this is an accurate assessment of your current position, then we can proceed from there and need not beat expired equines anymore. 



> I'm willing to discuss but it has to be in good faith and without viewpoints and arguments being ascribed that were never made and honestly you don't seem like that's the place you want to approach this from right now.  But please if you really would like some discussion and an exchange of viewpoints then let me know and I'd be more than happy to engage you.



Its not necessary for me to recapitulate what I stated above, so I won't. My position is as it has been. 5e has some fairly superficial and minor 'trait' attributes which loosely couple to an Inspiration mechanism. FATE OTOH is a system which is entirely driven by aspects as its universal mechanical underpinning. While FATE does have (potentially at least) skills as well, they are mostly useful to set the success/fail threshold for the various checks, which are then subject to the aspect rules. Skills are not totally unimportant, but it is telling that FATE core doesn't even have a suggested list of them that I can recall, they are entirely setting-specific. 



> No it doesn't you've shown that FATE 's mechanics are very focused on a particular experience how does this speak to flexibility.  Can FATE provide a tactical experience if one player in the group wants that?  Do it's mechanics support the type of customization and build choices that a powergamer would enjoy? Can you play casually without fully engaging with FATE's mechanics and the game not suffer?  Can a player focus purely on combat if he is a butt-kicker type?  I think this is a totally separate conversation that hasn't been addressed up till now and I was hoping @_*Campbell*_ would go int more depth about why he saw them as flexible.




I think that FATE is going to likely tend to be more abstract in terms of tactics. That is to say, your character might have an aspect or a skill that bears on his tactical prowess. You would assert your tactical chops by leveraging that aspect in some sort of 'I apply tactics to this situation' check instead of practicing tactical principles yourself as a player. Now, I think it could be possible to make a FATE-based game that WAS tactical in 4e-esque kind of way. I'd have to think carefully about how that would work if I wanted to design it.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Tony Vargas said:


> Since 3.0, if not 2e S&P, skill checks have been the main mechanical way of addressing non-combat challenges.  They're often avoided, because they haven't always worked great, or because players realize they can couch actions to get success without checking the character's skill, but they do exist, FWIW.




I think it is very trivially easy to see how 'skills', when implemented at all, in 'classic' D&D were of little significance, even in 2e where NWPs were at least presented as a possibility in the core books.

1. They were NEVER used to represent anything like a class or race ability, even when they obviously could have been (IE thieves, rangers, elves, etc.). 

2. They were always optional systems (2e NWPs, 1e Secondary Skills, etc.). The one marginal exception was OA, where they ALMOST became a significant subsystem.

3. No implementation in classic D&D was actually mechanically viable in any sensible way. DSG, WSG, OA, and 2e PHB (etc.) implementations were mechanically unworkable in significant ways. I was always dubious that they had ever really been playtested, and they almost seemed like a way of simply discouraging players from doing 'other stuff' vs actually something you would use in practice.

4. The implementation in 3e is PROFOUNDLY different. 3e skills have serious bugs, but they are actually mechanically usable and fairly successfully implement core parts of the game like thief skills and such.

I disagree that, pre 3.x, they were used for anything except color in RP. A clever DM in OA (for example) would probably allow a character with 'Tea Ceremony' or whatever to simply do his thing and ignore the actual mechanic of it, but in a mechanical sense they weren't something you could ever depend on.

I think they were mostly avoided because they didn't really fill a needed spot in classic D&D. You had ability score for raw capability, and class provides everything specific, with all else being relegated to PC omnicompetence or being a test of player skill. 

It is informative to see how Gygax used thief skills in OD&D. They were explicitly described as a tool by which the thief character could 'do the impossible'. They weren't skills in the post-2e sense at all, they were magical class features, which allow thieves to climb sheer walls, move silently across fields of broken glass, disarm diabolic magical traps, read incomprehensible writing, etc. Simply hiding in a good safe hiding place, climbing a cliff using a rope, walking quietly on a clean stone floor, or plugging up the spout of a flaming oil dispenser, etc. don't require checks of any kind in OD&D.

Admittedly, even Gygax became a lot less clear about this distinction in AD&D, where he seemed to want to back off from the more fantastical aspects of it. I'd assume he spent a lot of time rejecting crazy player shenanigans and wanted to put the kibosh on all of it. In any case, he had no need for a skill system.


----------



## Tony Vargas

AbdulAlhazred said:


> 4. The implementation in 3e is PROFOUNDLY different. 3e skills have serious bugs, but they are actually mechanically usable and fairly successfully implement core parts of the game like thief skills and such.



 I tossed in the 2e S&P reference, just in case, since I barely glanced at it, having given up on 2e bloat by then. 3.0 was the main point.


----------



## pemerton

Manbearcat said:


> "System-constrained GMing?"
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Just an amusing aside as an ironic thought came to me.  Despite the above (disempowering or constraining aspects of Blades GMing), the game is _*significantly more lethal/"good guys" don't win-ey (in bad ways) *_than any D&D that has ever been conceived.  And we often see player empowerment/GM "disempowerment" as an "EZMode" epithet.



Burning Wheel has stated GM's principles, and also duties that govern "the sacred and most holy role of the players".

From the rulebook (Revised p 268; Gold p 551 - the text is the same in both editions):

In Burning Wheel, it is the GM's job to interpret all of the various intents of the players' actions and mesh them into a cohesive whole that fits within the context of the game. He's got to make sure that all the player wackiness abides by the rules. When it doesn't, he must guide the wayward players gently back into the fold. Often this requires negotiating an action or intent until both player and GM are satisfied that it fits both the concept and the mood of the game.

Also, the GM is in a unique position. He can see the big picture - what the players are doing, as well as what the opposition is up to and plans to do. His perspective grants the power to hold off one action, while another player moves forward so that the two pieces intersect dramatically at the table. More than any other player, the GM controls the flow and pacing of the game. He has the power to begin and end scenes, to present challenges and instigate conflicts. It's a heady responsibility, but utterly worthwhile.

Most important, the GM is response for introducing complications to the story and consequences to the players' choices. Burning Wheel is all about choices - from the minute you start creating a character, you are making hard choices. Once play begins, as players choose their path, it is the GM's job to meaningfully inject resonant ramifications into play. A character murders a guard. No big deal, right? Well, that's up to the GM to decide. Sure there's justice and revenge to consider - that's the obvious stuff - but there's also the bigger picture elements to consider: whole provinces have risen in revolt due to one errant murder.​
The next page of both rulebooks goes on to discuss "the sacred and most holy role of the players", who "have a number of duties", to:

[O]ffer hooks to their GM and the other players in the form of Beliefs, Instincts and Traits . . .

[L]et the character develop as play advances . . . don't write a [PC] history in which all the adventure has already happened . . .

se their character to drive the story forward - to resolve conflicts and create new ones . . . to push and risk their characters, so they grow and change in surprising ways . . .

Use the mechanics . . .

Participate. Help enhance your friends' scenes and step forward and make the most of your own. . . . If the story doesn't interest you, it's your job to create interesting situations and involve yourself. . . .

Above all, have fun. . . . Listen to the other players, riff off of them; take their leads and run with them. Expand on their madness, but also rein them in whey they get out of hand. Remember that you're playing in a group, and everyone has to have fun.​

The players are in some sense "empowered" - they have a duty to offer hooks, to use the mechanics, to drive the story forward - and the GM is constrained by the rules (and has the duty "to make sure that all the player wackiness abides by the rules". But it's not an "EZmode" game. It's pretty brutal.


----------



## Aldarc

Tony Vargas said:


> Foul!
> 
> The description only said that you /could/ draw on your inspiration in those thematically appropriate way.  You could instead draw on the compassion you RP'd when negotiating with the beggar king to assassinate him later that evening, sure, but that doesn't make you dissociative (_mechanically_)...



That's my point. The source of inspiration is dissasociated from how that Inspiration is spent. This is discussed in Angry DM's article "11 Ways to Take the Suck Out of Inspiration in D&D."  In particular check out the part Where the System Falls Apart: 


> *Where the System Falls Apart*
> 
> Now, there is this implicit connection between Inspiration, Personal Characteristics, and Background. They are presented together and sequentially and Backgrounds offer examples of each Personal Characteristic. Moreover, on PHB 125, it explicitly says that the DM typically awards Inspiration for portraying your Personal Characteristics. It also lists other ways the DM might award Inspiration, but it’s pretty strongly implied that’s what it’s for.
> 
> And honestly, if it were, that would be pretty cool. If my Ideal is “I always try to help those in need, no matter what the cost,” it stands to reason that when I take a big risk to help someone in need, my action might get a little boost. There’s a drive behind it. At the same time, a handy bribe is useful to give me (the player) a nudge toward giving in to a characteristic that might hurt me or my friends. If “I am suspicious of strangers and expect the worst of them,” and a helpful ranger guide appears to lead my friends and out of the wasteland before we starve, that’s a dangerous Flaw to give in to. So, a little bribe makes me think about not making the best choice, but rather making the choice my character would make.
> 
> Unfortunately, that is absolutely NOT what Inspiration does.
> 
> See, the biggest problem with Inspiration is that the bonus that you receive is not tied to the choice you made in accordance with your Characteristics. When you act like your character, you get to bank a bonus that you can use whenever you want. The Inspiration isn’t tied to the choice you made. It’s earned by the choice, but it can be used on anything. And that’s a little backwards. You’d think that the Inspiration bonus for “helping those in need” would apply directly to the risky action I’m taking to help those in need, connecting motivation, choice, and action.
> 
> This gets worse when you consider the ability to pass Inspiration to someone else for whatever reason you want. Not only is the bonus disconnected from the choice that ostensibly earned it, it is now disconnected from the character who made the choice. It literally stops being about choice, action, and personality and becomes a coupon for one free Advantage useable anytime.
> 
> Meanwhile, the Flaw thing falls apart. See, I can earn Inspiration by acting in accordance with ANY Characteristic on my sheet. So, instead of choosing the Flaw that is going to get me into trouble as a way to earn Inspiration, I could just as easily choose a positive trait and never endanger myself or the party. Thus, Flaws are the least likely to see use. After all, I can decide my character might distrust the ranger and assume the ranger has ulterior motives, but in the end, he doesn’t act on that assumption because he’s willing to endanger himself (risking the ranger’s betrayal) to help his friends in need (by accepting the ranger’s help). I get Inspiration either way. But one of those things was more costly than the other.
> 
> But let’s not stop there. Because there’s another weakness in the system. And that weakness is the DM. The thing is, the DM is encouraged to give Inspiration about once per character per session (DMG 240). And the DM is given a whole list of good reasons to reward Inspiration. In fact, Personal Characteristics are a very small part of that advice even though the PHB suggests it’s a large part of Inspiration. So, in the end, Inspiration actually comes across more as a DM finding an excuse to give everyone one action point per session they can use to gain advantage on any one roll. Or using it to bribe players to play the game right.
> 
> And, look, I’m not down on that. I’m all about using incentives to drive the themes of the game. But when you look at it from that perspective, it’s pretty bland. It’s sort of dull. Un-in-… you know. Especially because the connection between Inspiration and Personal Characteristics is pretty damned powerful if you use it right. That’s when it becomes a role-playing tool.
> 
> On top of that, what I’ve found is Inspiration is one of the most easily overlooked bits of game in all of 5E. I’ve played and run numerous 5E games, one shots and short campaigns, with friends and with strangers, and Inspiration is almost always forgotten. First of all, it’s very easy for the DM to forget to give it out. Why? Well, first of all, because the DM has a LOT to keep track of. That’s DMing. But second of all, when you consider that you have four to five people at the table and each one has five different Characteristics, that’s 20 to 25 things to be on the look out for. And you never know when they are going to come up. Or which ones will come up.
> 
> So the DMs who DO use Inspiration tend to give it out for whatever weird, random reasons they have decided to reward the players. Being funny. Being heroic. Being moronic. Bringing snacks. Good penmanship. Good “role-playing” (by which I mean being able to come up with overwrought prose to describe how to swing an axe on a moment’s notice). Whatever. Which, again, weakens the power of Inspiration. It’s just the “here, have an action point for reasons.”
> 
> Meanwhile, I’ve noticed that players tend to forget about Inspiration. I’ve seen a lot of players end sessions with Inspiration they never thought to spend and didn’t even remember they had. So you end up with this bowl of poker chips in the middle of the table just to remind everyone that Inspiration is even a thing.
> 
> And that, to me, is the perfect metaphor for the Inspiration system in D&D.
> 
> It’s just this thing that’s easy to forget and sits in the game not really doing anything. It feels tacked on. Vestigial. An afterthought. It certainly doesn’t seem to have a clear purpose, as evidenced by the fact that the DM and the players get different advice about it and how it is weirdly disconnected from the mechanics that it seems to be connected to. It seems thrown in. “People like Bonds in Dungeon World and Aspects in Fate, we should probably slap something like that in there.”
> 
> I hate to say it like that, but that’s how it FEELs.



Angry DM even uses some of the language that I have used to describe the Inspiration in this thread, particularly in this last paragraph: e.g., vestigial, tacked on, afterthought, etc. Naturally, I don't exactly disagree with his assessment here. 



> You know if there were some players'd just horde it until they drowned in one.



And yet we don't see this in Fate? So are you suggesting that D&D players are just stingy? 



> Wouldn't that be 'good RP' in the absence of any incentive?



Not necessarily. 



> Neither the current ed of D&D nor Fate really lend themselves to casual play.  Fate Accelerated, maybe, but FATE, with it's session 0 story-braiding (I don't know if that's fair, but it's hard to describe succinctly, and harder to do casually/quickly), requires a fairly high up-front buy-in.  It seems like a 'serious gamers' product.  D&D (basic pdf, perhaps), also maybe, if you do pre-gens, and pre-pick spells or just eschew casters, entirely.



I don't think it's that serious. I have seen first hand a lot of players who are "casual-in-play" who find this Sessions 0 fairly engaging process. I even did this with complete RP noobs, much to their own surprise and satisfaction. Though I think that this also was about the expectations and norms of RP and the depictions of the Game Master as "God" of the world and fiction. 



> IDK if 'saddles' is fair, but, while you'll get hps and proficiency bonuses like everyone else, you could dump CON, go about unarmed & unarmored, and choose all support & utility spells, and still be a contributing party member and a 'non-combatant' - only because you /choose/ never to prepare Spirit Guardians or Flame Strike or what-have-you, but, still, you could do it.  Pacifist Cleric was a thing in both 3.5 (variety of pacifist builds, but cleric was the most practical) & 4e (which could also do a 'lazy warlord' who was great to have in combat, but, y'know, not actually doin' it himself).



Make me a mundane merchant who is not proficient in martial weapons, medium or heavy armor, spells, or sneak attack.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Its not necessary for me to recapitulate what I stated above, so I won't. My position is as it has been. 5e has some fairly superficial and minor 'trait' attributes which loosely couple to an Inspiration mechanism. FATE OTOH is a system which is entirely driven by aspects as its universal mechanical underpinning. While FATE does have (potentially at least) skills as well, they are mostly useful to set the success/fail threshold for the various checks, which are then subject to the aspect rules. Skills are not totally unimportant, but it is telling that FATE core doesn't even have a suggested list of them that I can recall, they are entirely setting-specific.



Fate Core does have a skill list, but it is expected that GMs are free to do whatever they want with them. Combine them. Replace them. Toss them out entirely. Use Approaches, Aspects, Professions instead. A lot of official publications from Evil Hat show the different things that other settings/campaigns do with the skill system. 

Fate may have started out as a custom mod of Fudge, then that is no longer the case as of 2015. As you say, it is now an Aspect-driven system that uses some Fudge mechanics. Reading the Fudge rules reads like a completely separate beast than the Fate Core Rulebook or Fate Accelerated Rulebook.


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think it is very trivially easy to see how 'skills', when implemented at all, in 'classic' D&D were of little significance, even in 2e where NWPs were at least presented as a possibility in the core books.
> 
> 1. They were NEVER used to represent anything like a class or race ability, even when they obviously could have been (IE thieves, rangers, elves, etc.).
> 
> 2. They were always optional systems (2e NWPs, 1e Secondary Skills, etc.). The one marginal exception was OA, where they ALMOST became a significant subsystem.
> 
> 3. No implementation in classic D&D was actually mechanically viable in any sensible way. DSG, WSG, OA, and 2e PHB (etc.) implementations were mechanically unworkable in significant ways. I was always dubious that they had ever really been playtested, and they almost seemed like a way of simply discouraging players from doing 'other stuff' vs actually something you would use in practice.
> 
> 4. The implementation in 3e is PROFOUNDLY different. 3e skills have serious bugs, but they are actually mechanically usable and fairly successfully implement core parts of the game like thief skills and such.
> 
> I disagree that, pre 3.x, they were used for anything except color in RP. A clever DM in OA (for example) would probably allow a character with 'Tea Ceremony' or whatever to simply do his thing and ignore the actual mechanic of it, but in a mechanical sense they weren't something you could ever depend on.
> .




I think if you feel this way, you should at least give NWPs a try again and see how they play. Folks should draw their own conclusions as well, rather than take anyone's word for it. I went back to 2E around 2007-2008 for a while and in all honesty, expected to laugh at many of the mechanics in action. To my surprise things like NWPs worked a heck of a lot better for my style of play, than the skills in 3E every did. In fact, my campaigns noticeably changed after I adopted 3E, and I always figured it was more me getting older and some of the magic fading. But it turned out, the skill system was a large part of the change. Once I went back to 2E, things played much more like I remembered them. The feel at the table was totally different. 

It has been a few years since I played 2E, so I am rusty and not here to defend NWPs point by point. But I think they had a few things working in their favor. One they were tied to abilities, so they were generally a lot easier to use in practice than skills in 3E (where the expanding DCs could make many tasks nearly impossible unless you were very high level). I liked things being weighted more toward success based on your ability score (and because it was roll under, rather than a bonus against a DC, your ability score result mattered a heck of a lot more at a granular level). Also, NWPs generally, at least in the first PHB (latter options for them moved more in a 3E direction), were largely intended not to interfere with players roleplaying or interacting with the environment and exploring. Etiquette for instance, was effectively a knowledge skill. You didn't roll etiquette to talk to the duke, you rolled to see if you knew what was appropriate to do and say before the duke. 

I had a similar experience with many of the mechanics in 2nd edition. 

Again, this stuff is totally subjective. But definitely try a game on its own terms if you haven't before rendering a judgment (not suggesting you are doing this AA, just see a lot of people form judgments based on what other posters say rather than their own experience in play).


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> I had a similar experience with many of the mechanics in 2nd edition.
> 
> Again, this stuff is totally subjective. But definitely try a game on its own terms if you haven't before rendering a judgment (not suggesting you are doing this AA, just see a lot of people form judgments based on what other posters say rather than their own experience in play).



Neat. From someone who came to D&D at the outset of 3E, this was an interesting read. How does this compare with other games? Are there skill systems or such that you enjoy or prefer?


----------



## Campbell

Sorry for disappearing. Been in the middle of a career transition while ramping up my training regimen.  

*Here is my basic contention:* The different expectations, culture of play, and specific play techniques in utilized in game like Sorcerer provides an experience that does not easily arise when playing modern Dungeons and Dragons. The same is true for Moldvay B/X. although modern D&D can come closer there. I am also contending that mainstream games have a highly specific culture of play, expectations, and set of play techniques that most of do not normally look at with a critical lens because they represent the default of what most of us consider a role playing game to be. This is even seen in when [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] criticizes indie games from the prism of that culture. It's all about the experience the GM *provides* and satisfying individual kicks as seen through the prism of Robin Laws' Player Types. Story as seen as something the GM *provides*.

Here's why I find this analysis flawed: It is done with zero reference to basic features of the culture of play that makes Sorcerer the game that it is. When I play Sorcerer I am not looking to the GM to provide me with an experience or a story. We are all exploring these characters together. I am not just invested in my character. I am also invested in what everyone else brings to the table, the definition of Humanity we worked on together, and finding out how human our characters are. I would be very interested in going into more detail about this culture of play if there is real interest.  

Note: I never meant to imply that mainstream games were less fun than OSR and Indie games. I only meant to convey that they are not somehow contained within and represent a narrowing of the basic experience of playing a role playing game. Difference of kind. Not a narrowing of experience.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> Neat. From someone who came to D&D at the outset of 3E, this was an interesting read. How does this compare with other games? Are there skill systems or such that you enjoy or prefer?




Mostly I play my own system now (and it does have skills, though I use them somewhat different than most people). I think I just like lighter skill systems and I find I prefer skill systems that interfere the least with RP or environmental interaction. That said, skills are popular with most players I game with, and I've learned to adapt how I use them to get the best result for my campaigns. Generally, since a large number of systems do have things that could potentially be used as buttons or interfere with RP/exploration, I use them as a fail safe. I ask for rolls when it is unclear to me what the outcome of something would be. If a player says "I pull the rock out and look behind it" I don't ask for a Detect roll, for example. If they have high ranks in something like Command, and say something that would make a new recruit quake in his boots, I don't ask for a roll. I usually ask for rolls when the results are hard to gauge, when I think a highly aware person should get a passive roll to see/sense something, or when there is a disparity between what the player wants to do, and what their character is realistically capable of doing. 

Also I've just taken to ignoring skills more as a requirement to do something. I am a lot more interested in what the character should be able to do. If a player character has been tending horses for the past six months, I don't care if he or she doesn't have a relevant skill rank, I'll let them use the next most appropriate skill in the list, or just simply let them do what they are trying to do if it sounds reasonable. 

Ultimately what I want to avoid is skills feeling like 'buttons' in play. If players are investigating a murder, I much prefer that they experience the solving of the crime directly, not that their skills simulate them solving the crime. So it is a lot more important to me that the player feels like they are there, finding the clues, asking the questions, and putting the evidence together, than rolling skills in a way that removes them from the direct experience of the investigation.


----------



## Aldarc

Bedrockgames said:


> Mostly I play my own system now (and it does have skills, though I use them somewhat different than most people).



Here is your moment to plug and self-promote: is there a particular game or setting of yours that best demonstrates this skill system in action? 



> I think I just like lighter skill systems and I find I prefer skill systems that interfere the least with RP or environmental interaction.



Are you familiar with Index Card RPG? It is essentially a stripped down basic version of d20 D&D. It forgoes a skill system, but instead just uses your attribute bonus for ability checks. Some tasks essentially have Hit Points, rated in Hearts (1 Heart = 10 HP) that you are trying to overcome through your effort. 

So for example, your party encounters an arcane script on a dungeon wall that you want to decipher. It has 1 Heart and a difficulty "to hit" of 15. You're a pretty smart mage, and you have a 2 Intelligence. So you make an Intelligence check with a +2 (Intelligence) to decipher the script. You succeed with an adjusted 17. But then you roll your Effort die, maybe in this case 1d4 + 1. You roll and get a 2 on the die. So after your first round of trying to decipher the script, you have 7 more "HP" to go before you can fully decipher it. But you need to hurry because the room is quickly filling up with poisonous gas. 



> Also I've just taken to ignoring skills more as a requirement to do something. I am a lot more interested in what the character should be able to do.



Much the same, and I think that there is a current trend in games with a similar attitude.



> Ultimately what I want to avoid is skills feeling like 'buttons' in play.



From what I have seen with myself and others coming from D&D 3-5e to other games, this can be a hard habit to unlearn.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Manbearcat said:


> Definitely not interested in dying on the "principled and disciplined GMing" hill if it isn't useful as a term to delineate it from classic "GMing by fiat."  "System-constrained GMing?"  That just rolls off the tongue.  Should catch like wildfire.
> 
> Let me rewrite the analogy to an even crappier one so we can focus on the crappiness of my analogies!
> 
> *On crappy analogies that serve only to distract the conversation:*
> 
> Instead of the pitcher and the coach, here is one; an artist and a show curator.
> 
> In the first instance, the curator says "create something that is moving."
> 
> In the second instance, the curator gives constraints:
> 
> 1)  Oil on canvas
> 
> 2)  Grays and muted greens w/ a single bright color
> 
> 3)  Convey the metamorphosis of profound loss
> 
> *On Blades GMing*:  I'm thinking broadly here (as in informing to one degree, even if slightly, each moment of play).  I'm thinking of the aspects of the GMing ethos which will guide and constrain which differentiate it from other games' GMing ethos (and therefore the experience in play for both the GM and the players).  Some of these are extremely controversial (as they have been brought up many time in various forms).  For instance:
> 
> At the apex, we have
> 
> *Play to find out what happens* (and all the suite of actions, principles, and "don't do's" that play exactly into this...of which there are tons...not going to name them all as there are too many)
> 
> Below that, but related we have things like
> 
> *Ask Questions* (and use the answers)
> *
> Telegraph trouble before it strikes* (but *follow through*)
> 
> *Be aware of potential fiction vs. established fiction *(also a part of play to find out what happens, but I wanted to put this separately)
> 
> *Keep the meta channel open*
> 
> *Don't block*
> 
> *Don't hold back on what they earn*
> 
> *Don't say no* (go with no Effect and let them bargain the Effect up and/or Offer a Devil's Bargain)
> 
> There is a lot of other stuff including things that a lot of GMs on here (who are exclusively used to trad games) would say is "over"empowering (such as "Cut to the Action" or "Don't Get Caught Up In Minutae" - D&D 4e certainly got killed for its iteration of this indie axiom - "Skip the gate guards and get to the fun!"), but those above are the kinds of things I have in mind that are constraints or "constraining guidance."  Having those subtly or significantly inform each moment of play is a (given the current representation on ENWorld...unwelcome) paradigm shift for GMs who are used to the (more-or-less) all-encompassing authority/latitude (in discretion on the nature/trajectory of the fiction, on rulings, and their hefty role in action resolution) that is afforded to them in various trad games.
> 
> Given that last sentence alone, I feel like constraint vs latitude/authority has to be the axis where we differentiate GMing in games like Blades vs a game like (say) D&D 5e.
> 
> Yes?  No?  Another axis?



I agree with this last point, that the GMing necessary to achieve the system goals is different, and that Blades certainly constrains mechanically the GM's role vs 5e.  I, however, don't agree that the term 'principled and disciplined GMing' applies MORE to Blades than 5e.  If you define 'principled and disciplined' as 'follows the advice and constrains within the game' then there's tons' of 5e GMs that fit that bill, but that really doesn't seem to hit the mark you're trying to set.  I think, instead, that the mark you're hitting is 'constrained GMing'.  Now, to be perfectly clear, I think this is great.  I love Blades, and I follow the advice, because it does work to serve up what it says on the tin.  But, I also follow some openly presented and core guiding principles when I run 5e, which also act to serve up the experience I'm going for.  I find it distressing that my GMing in Blades would be referred to as 'principled and disciplined' but my GMing in D&D would be called 'fiat' by your preferred lexicon.  Especially since, as I look at it, I use fiat in Blades quite a bit, and I use discipline and principle when I run 5e.

That's the issue I have -- the setting of terms in ways that privileges some games in positive terms and disadvantages others in negative terms when the actual terms are present in both.

I do not disagree, at all, that there are very different GMing ethoses present between 5e and Blades (or many other games) and that those ethoses result in very different responsibilities and authorities in those games, some mechanically enforced, some just guidelines for play.  And, I think it's important to stress the impacts those kinds of constraints can have on play.  I'm not denying the impact or difference these ethoses have -- it's really very different and creates a different feel altogether.  I also enjoy discussing those differences.  I don't like when the terms become loaded to the point of 'my game features principled and disciplined GMing and yours doesn't because it has too much GM fiat'.  I find that antagonistic, not helpful.  And I play both sides of the fence, so it's not knee-jerk defensiveness of D&D.  If you ask me, the lack of GM ethos in D&D results in wildly divergent experiences from table to table.  I've had good luck (or rather, active curation), but I see bad games as often discussed here all the time.  I get the desire to play in a game where the player has mechanically enforced power to direct the game and the DM is limited in how they can interact with player provided direction.  I do get it.  I even like those games.  But, that limitation doesn't, in my book, adhere to the GM suddenly becoming more principled or disciplined so much as the system specifically limits the GM's ability to do anything outside of their narrow responsibilities.  The GM advice in Blades, as a point of interest, can be applied as guidance for players with very little changing needed.  And that's because the GM is really just another player in Blades with a different set of responsibilities to the players.  The players have a ton of responsibility in Blades as well.




> Just an amusing aside as an ironic thought came to me.  Despite the above (disempowering or constraining aspects of Blades GMing), the game is _*significantly more lethal/"good guys" don't win-ey (in bad ways) *_than any D&D that has ever been conceived.  And we often see player empowerment/GM "disempowerment" as an "EZMode" epithet.




Oh, I strongly disagree on this.  Strongly.  Blades isn't more lethal, as a system, at all.  It can be as lethal or more lethal, but that's so individual game dependent that it's useless to draw a general statement.  I've certainly played in D&D where it was astoundingly, brutally, casually more lethal than my Blades game, where I've hurt the PCs and hurt them, but none have died yet.

Now, if you mean 'PCs are punished harshly but not killed' then, yeah, my Blades game definitely does that more than I've seen in most D&D.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> Here is your moment to plug and self-promote: is there a particular game or setting of yours that best demonstrates this skill system in action?




I still use a full list of skills, but it is more in how I approach them, than in the skills themselves. The most recent version of my game is Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate. Most of what I talk about is in the advice on using skills section. For me the key is not having skills feel like buttons in play. But the game is skill-based, so there are skills in it. I've also been experimenting with lighter versions lately.


----------



## Bedrockgames

Aldarc said:


> Are you familiar with Index Card RPG? It is essentially a stripped down basic version of d20 D&D. It forgoes a skill system, but instead just uses your attribute bonus for ability checks. Some tasks essentially have Hit Points, rated in Hearts (1 Heart = 10 HP) that you are trying to overcome through your effort.





I haven't played it, but will make a point of checking it out.


----------



## Manbearcat

[MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]

Going to work backwards. 

1) I’m talking about the play default. 

2) I’m talking about players skilled in the system.

3) What I’m saying with respect to Blades vs D&D is probably more perceived “loss condition”, “actual loss condition”, and the general brutality of play.

With respect to the combination of 1 and 2 above, skilled D&D players are going to overwhelm the default adventuring day and/or encounter budget and/or dungeon delve paradigm, regardless of system. Skilled play produces characters, teamwork, a developed knowledge base, and rote power plays (be it combat, exploration/divination/investigation, or social) that will overwhelm the systems defsult parameters/expectations.

As such, the ability to avoid loss conditions, punitive character fallout, or punitive story fallout becomes extreme. So nobs are turned, buttons are pushed, levers are pulled, stops are pulled out to recalibrate.

With Blades, even skilled players are almost surely to be dealing with at least 1 Trauma level after maybe 4 Scores (sometimes less) at the systrm’s default. Forget Harm (which they very likely may be dealing with a Harm 1 or 2, maybe a couple 1s at that point), forget relationship fallout, forget Incarceration and an ass whooping . You tell your average D&D player that they have this permanent, negative (but helpful and harmful simultaneously system-wise, so both positive and negative feedback) behavioral trait and that is a “loss condition” for a lot of players. Couple that with all the other bad stuff that is invariably going to happen to your character (both in the fiction and mechanically), that singular characters get retired (not just killed, but retired or walked away from due to damage accrued) at a rate that your average D&D player would blanch at.

So that is what I was going for (I think perhaps you agree given your last paragraph?).

As to the stuff at the top:

I’m perfectly fine with “(system-)constrained GMing.” I would include system in there because I’m not sure that is implied to your average RPG conversant (first question may be “by what?”).

As for “fiat GMing”, I’m absolutely fine with an alternative. I just find that folks on ENWorld typically connote “unconstrained authority” over the gamestate and over the disposition of play (with caveats of distasteful behavior and abject malfeasance of course) as SOP for the discipline of GMing.  And there is plenty of support for that position with various iterations of Rule 0, “lead storyteller”, “sole arbiter/referee”, “GM’s game/setting”, and the other aspects of system which require heavy GM mediation (and authorize it).

Tony uses “empowered GMing.” I’m not sure that carries any sort of differentiating accuracy (in fact, I personally feel less empowered as a system piles mental overhead and increased resolution mechanics mediation upon me). So what is a descriptor that differentiates upon the spectrum of authority/latitude/constraint? “Apex latitude GMing.” That sounds so terrible that it just_might_work... (not really).


----------



## Ovinomancer

Manbearcat said:


> [MENTION=16814]Ovinomancer[/MENTION]
> 
> Going to work backwards.
> 
> 1) I’m talking about the play default.
> 
> 2) I’m talking about players skilled in the system.
> 
> 3) What I’m saying with respect to Blades vs D&D is probably more perceived “loss condition”, “actual loss condition”, and the general brutality of play.
> 
> With respect to the combination of 1 and 2 above, skilled D&D players are going to overwhelm the default adventuring day and/or encounter budget and/or dungeon delve paradigm, regardless of system. Skilled play produces characters, teamwork, a developed knowledge base, and rote power plays (be it combat, exploration/divination/investigation, or social) that will overwhelm the systems defsult parameters/expectations.
> 
> As such, the ability to avoid loss conditions, punitive character fallout, or punitive story fallout becomes extreme. So nobs are turned, buttons are pushed, levers are pulled, stops are pulled out to recalibrate.
> 
> With Blades, even skilled players are almost surely to be dealing with at least 1 Trauma level after maybe 4 Scores (sometimes less) at the systrm’s default. Forget Harm (which they very likely may be dealing with a Harm 1 or 2, maybe a couple 1s at that point), forget relationship fallout, forget Incarceration and an ass whooping . You tell your average D&D player that they have this permanent, negative (but helpful and harmful simultaneously system-wise, so both positive and negative feedback) behavioral trait and that is a “loss condition” for a lot of players. Couple that with all the other bad stuff that is invariably going to happen to your character (both in the fiction and mechanically), that singular characters get retired (not just killed, but retired or walked away from due to damage accrued) at a rate that your average D&D player would blanch at.
> 
> So that is what I was going for (I think perhaps you agree given your last paragraph?).



I was.  Painful outcomes in Blades is more common than in D&D.  I think this is because death is the default painful outcome in most D&D.  It doesn't have to be, but that involves coloring in the blank areas of the game system.



> As to the stuff at the top:
> 
> I’m perfectly fine with “(system-)constrained GMing.” I would include system in there because I’m not sure that is implied to your average RPG conversant (first question may be “by what?”).
> 
> As for “fiat GMing”, I’m absolutely fine with an alternative. I just find that folks on ENWorld typically connote “unconstrained authority” over the gamestate and over the disposition of play (with caveats of distasteful behavior and abject malfeasance of course) as SOP for the discipline of GMing.  And there is plenty of support for that position with various iterations of Rule 0, “lead storyteller”, “sole arbiter/referee”, “GM’s game/setting”, and the other aspects of system which require heavy GM mediation (and authorize it).
> 
> Tony uses “empowered GMing.” I’m not sure that carries any sort of differentiating accuracy (in fact, I personally feel less empowered as a system piles mental overhead and increased resolution mechanics mediation upon me). So what is a descriptor that differentiates upon the spectrum of authority/latitude/constraint? “Apex latitude GMing.” That sounds so terrible that it just_might_work... (not really).



Yes, I can agree that there's not a good, shortform word for the GM authority in D&D.  To that end, and as I said above, I'm really not that adverse to GM fiat as a descriptor.  I just think it's occasionally worthwhile to look at how our labels may be influencing our opinions.  I worry too much, I think.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Campbell said:


> I am also contending that mainstream games have a highly specific culture of play, expectations, and set of play techniques that most of do not normally look at with a critical lens because they represent the default of what most of us consider a role playing game to be.



 I'm not trying to brow-beat you into changing your choice of wording, but I'm going to have to work may way through this, every time, because I can't imagine I'll ever be comfortable calling RPGs 'mainstream,' in any sense or context.

What you're talking about is D&D, and I suppose d20, and related/similar games, when they are Played A Certain Way, that being some variation on the ways that folks traditionally settled on to get D&D working for them back in the day.  That said Way Of Playing is relatively monolithic, and used by such a large majority that it's relatively un-examined, from within.  And, that this de-facto majority constitutes an 'in group,' with indie games - really, any game not D&Dish-enough - on the outside.  From which outsider perspective, you are looking in.  
A "there's two kinds of gamers..." proposition.

I don't really quite agree with that way of looking at it.  Rather, I see the community as having a lot of D&D-only to D&D-primary participants who mostly may, indeed, have the sort of in-group perspective you're positing, and then various much smaller demographics who mostly have also or even do still play D&D, but have much greater exposure to one or more other significantly different games, including some who are very cosmopolitan in that regard (like, I'm guessing, you, pemerton, & manbearcat, just for instances).  The D&D-only/primary crowd is by far the largest, since D&D is the only RPG with significant mainstream name recognition (in the actual mainstream of society), so where the majority of would-be gamers start - if they can't stand it, they may not ever find out there's a lot of alternatives, and that's it, they never really join the hobby; if they like it (or learn to live with it, at least), they join the D&D/d20-centric majority ('mainstream' in your terminology, I'd almost have to say cult, since we're talking the core of a fringe-sub-culture that has endured decades of relative obscurity prior to the current come-back), if not, they go looking for other games and fall into admiration of one or a few of them settling into a 'niche,' or eventually become more cosmopolitan.  



> *Here is my basic contention:* The different expectations, culture of play, and specific play techniques in utilized in game like Sorcerer provides an experience that does not easily arise when playing modern Dungeons and Dragons. The same is true for Moldvay B/X. although modern D&D can come closer there.  This is even seen in when Imaro criticizes indie games from the prism of that culture. It's all about the experience the GM *provides* and satisfying individual kicks as seen through the prism of Robin Laws' Player Types. Story as seen as something the GM *provides*.



 Well, The *DM* Provides.   

I don't much care for the Forge conclusion that games have to somehow force everyone who uses them to Play A Certain Way or else the game is 'incoherent,' nor that a game that a game having chosen an agenda to 'support' must do so by blocking or punishing others.   
Frankly, I think a game could do well to be fairly open to being played in a variety of different ways, and that a well-designed game that's robustly balanced will naturally tend that way...  



> Here's why I find this analysis flawed: It is done with zero reference to basic features of the culture of play that makes Sorcerer the game that it is. When I play Sorcerer I am not looking to the GM to provide me with an experience or a story. We are all exploring these characters together. I am not just invested in my character. I am also invested in what everyone else brings to the table, the definition of Humanity we worked on together, and finding out how human our characters are. I would be very interested in going into more detail about this culture of play if there is real interest.
> 
> Note: I never meant to imply that mainstream games were less fun than OSR and Indie games.



 I think most of us would have less fun with mainstream games - like monopoly, for instance.  ;P

Though, seriously, you don't need to mean to imply it in a comparison like that, the implication is going to be seen by & antagonize anyone even a little defensive about their place (of 'privilege' even) in the hobby's dominant segment.



> I only meant to convey that they are not somehow contained within and represent a narrowing of the basic experience of playing a role playing game. Difference of kind. Not a narrowing of experience.



If we're drawing set diagrams, there's a 'universe' of people and an itty-bitty circle for the set of people who actually play TTRPGs.  It's heavily overlapped by larger circles - science fiction fans, people you read comic books, fans of My Little Pony, MMO gamers, CCG Gamers, etc.  It's entirely contained in the broader 'Gamer' set, even though there are some aberrant individuals who play TTRPGs without ever touching a video game, let alone play poker for money....

While the actual mainstream largely thinks "D&D" is the whole hobby, we know that TTRPGs are a whole category with many quite different games.  I think it's more important that any two given RPGs (even if one of them will almost always be D&D), are both TTRPGs, and overlap in the experience they provide, than that they're different in what they provide or how.  Though there's certainly value to people realizing there's more out there in the rest of the hobby than they may have yet had personal experience with.



Manbearcat said:


> As to the stuff at the top:
> I’m perfectly fine with “(system-)constrained GMing.” I would include system in there because I’m not sure that is implied to your average RPG conversant (first question may be “by what?”).
> As for “fiat GMing”, I’m absolutely fine with an alternative.



 How 'bout "DMing" and you can have "GMing"



> I just find that folks on ENWorld typically connote “unconstrained authority” over the gamestate and over the disposition of play (with caveats of distasteful behavior and abject malfeasance of course) as SOP for the discipline of GMing.  And there is plenty of support for that position with various iterations of Rule 0, “lead storyteller”, “sole arbiter/referee”, “GM’s game/setting”, and the other aspects of system which require heavy GM mediation (and authorize it). Tony uses “empowered GMing.” I’m not sure that carries any sort of differentiating accuracy



 It's just what the current ed of D&D is calling the 'Golden Rule'/'Rule 0'/Illusionism/the-Killer-to-Monty-Haul spectrum of DM Disorders/Variants/House-Rules/Improv/Covert-Freestyle-RP/etc.  "DM Empowerment."  

And I'm consciously using DM rather than GM, because there's plenty of games that don't count on the reality that the GM can do whatever he wants, but actually try to present workable systems, even if they might not always be used.



> (in fact, I personally feel less empowered as a system piles mental overhead and increased resolution mechanics mediation upon me). So what is a descriptor that differentiates upon the spectrum of authority/latitude/constraint? “Apex latitude GMing.” That sounds so terrible that it just_might_work... (not really).



 Just as the 5e Fighter's "Best at fighting" is 'best' in the Advertising Claim sense of "no alternative has been conclusively proven to be strictly better," DM 'Empowerment' is 'Empowering' in the management-fad sense, of giving you more responsibility, maybe a snazzier title, but no additional authority or pay.  ;P


----------



## pemerton

Campbell said:


> Story as seen as something the GM *provides*.



This goes right back to the OP!



Campbell said:


> mainstream games have a highly specific culture of play, expectations, and set of play techniques
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I never meant to imply that mainstream games were less fun than OSR and Indie games. I only meant to convey that they are not somehow contained within and represent a narrowing of the basic experience of playing a role playing game. Difference of kind. Not a narrowing of experience.



Absolutely. I don't get this idea that "different" = "narrower", or that "GM curated experience" = "caters to/generates a wide range of experiences".

For instance: if player X wants to play Fate, and player Y wants to play Moldvay Basic, a game in which the GM curates Ideals/Bonds/Flaws for X, while rolling wandering monsters for Y, isn't giving either of them the experience they wanted.

Perhaps it will still be fun, but it won't play much like Fate if the rest of the table is not doing the "aspect" thing; and the Moldvay Basic aspects will be tanked if most of the table is not playing with an eye to skilled dungeoneering. (In practice, I suspect that this game will turn into fairly traditional mid-to-late 80s D&D play, but perhaps that's just me!)


EDIT: [MENTION=996]Tony Vargas[/MENTION]: [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION]'s "mainstream" is not just that mid-to-late 80s D&D; it would also include most GURPS and HERO play, I reckon, and - judging from when I used to hang out on the ICE boards - most RM/MERP/HARP play as well.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Tony Vargas said:


> Foul!
> 
> The description only said that you /could/ draw on your inspiration in those thematically appropriate way.  You could instead draw on the compassion you RP'd when negotiating with the beggar king to assassinate him later that evening, sure, but that doesn't make you dissociative (_mechanically_)...



Sure it does. It is everything that 4e powers were accused of. The mechanical effects of the rule are divorced (dissociated) from narrative logic! Nothing could clearer.



> You know if there were some players'd just horde it until they drowned in one.



So what?



> Wouldn't that be 'good RP' in the absence of any incentive?



How would it be accomplished? The incentive is simply one side of a mechanical economy. It isn't about the player getting ahead, so it is hard to even call it an incentive. 



> Neither the current ed of D&D nor Fate really lend themselves to casual play.  Fate Accelerated, maybe, but FATE, with it's session 0 story-braiding (I don't know if that's fair, but it's hard to describe succinctly, and harder to do casually/quickly), requires a fairly high up-front buy-in.  It seems like a 'serious gamers' product.  D&D (basic pdf, perhaps), also maybe, if you do pre-gens, and pre-pick spells or just eschew casters, entirely.



Not sure why you couldn't do pre-gens and casual FATE. I'd think you could basically make a party game out of it. Each player takes up one of the stock roles and you play through a one-shot murder mystery or something. I'd probably provide some evocative color for the mechanics to give players who weren't experienced with RPGs a quick leg up on what to do. Maybe use cards to represent FATE points, or something along those lines.



> Because Roll v Role, I guess.  RP & tactical combat are incompatible, except when they aren't, then they are again.
> Seriously, though, all you'd need to play a combat specialist in FATE is a character concept - 'story' - that screams combat specialist, like IDK, Casca the Eternal Mercenary or just about anyone ever played by Arnold Schwarzenegger...



Right! However, this sort of IS why I am using 4e as a base for a Story Now game. You can play a FIGHTER, and have specific moves, then you can invoke your 'aspects' to drive those. 



> IDK if 'saddles' is fair, but, while you'll get hps and proficiency bonuses like everyone else, you could dump CON, go about unarmed & unarmored, and choose all support & utility spells, and still be a contributing party member and a 'non-combatant' - only because you /choose/ never to prepare Spirit Guardians or Flame Strike or what-have-you, but, still, you could do it.  Pacifist Cleric was a thing in both 3.5 (variety of pacifist builds, but cleric was the most practical) & 4e (which could also do a 'lazy warlord' who was great to have in combat, but, y'know, not actually doin' it himself).




Right, but what about fighters and such in classic D&D? I mean rangers, barbarians, and paladins have SOME stuff they can do, but its fairly thin in most editions. pre-2e or unless you play with one of the various supplements for 1e that gives NWPs, you get NOTHING as a fighter.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Tony Vargas said:


> I tossed in the 2e S&P reference, just in case, since I barely glanced at it, having given up on 2e bloat by then. 3.0 was the main point.




Ah, OK. I stopped buying 2e products a while before S&P showed up. The newest ones I have are various 'complete' books and the nonhumans book, etc. Everyone I played with considered the stuff coming after that to be basically crap.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Aldarc said:


> That's my point. The source of inspiration is dissasociated from how that Inspiration is spent. This is discussed in Angry DM's article "11 Ways to Take the Suck Out of Inspiration in D&D."  In particular check out the part Where the System Falls Apart:
> 
> Angry DM even uses some of the language that I have used to describe the Inspiration in this thread, particularly in this last paragraph: e.g., vestigial, tacked on, afterthought, etc. Naturally, I don't exactly disagree with his assessment here.



HoML's implementation of Inspiration is virtually stolen from this article, though I think I changed one or two minor things (its been a good while since I read it, so I'm not sure). It works rather well.



> And yet we don't see this in Fate? So are you suggesting that D&D players are just stingy?



Of course what they are is simply not driven to engage with a system that is entirely secondary to the main thrust of play. I played in a fairly long 5e campaign. Nobody ever used their inspiration. I actually remember one PC died and then the next week someone pointed out that she could have at least burned her inspiration point to get advantage on the check she failed. Nobody even thought about it. I think once or twice in the whole campaign after that someone burned their inspiration. It is just so secondary to the whole process of 5e play that nobody seemed to bother with it. It was a forgettable mechanic. 



> Fate Core does have a skill list, but it is expected that GMs are free to do whatever they want with them. Combine them. Replace them. Toss them out entirely. Use Approaches, Aspects, Professions instead. A lot of official publications from Evil Hat show the different things that other settings/campaigns do with the skill system.
> 
> Fate may have started out as a custom mod of Fudge, then that is no longer the case as of 2015. As you say, it is now an Aspect-driven system that uses some Fudge mechanics. Reading the Fudge rules reads like a completely separate beast than the Fate Core Rulebook or Fate Accelerated Rulebook.




I don't recall that FATE was ever 'just' 'Fudge with aspects' though. I didn't recall the core game having a real skill list. I know FUDGE has some EXAMPLE skill lists, and I think FATE 2.0 book probably had some too. In any case they aren't necessarily a core part of the game. FATE is a toolkit, so its impossible to be unequivocal about that however unless you talk about specific games or derived systems like SotC.


----------



## pemerton

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I don't recall that FATE was ever 'just' 'Fudge with aspects' though. I didn't recall the core game having a real skill list.



I don't know much aboug FUDGE, but I can report that Fate Core (at least the version I have - blue cover with a superhero/cyborg ape and (I think) someone in a white/grey overcoat) does have a skill list. It's a pretty generic one.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> I think if you feel this way, you should at least give NWPs a try again and see how they play. Folks should draw their own conclusions as well, rather than take anyone's word for it. I went back to 2E around 2007-2008 for a while and in all honesty, expected to laugh at many of the mechanics in action. To my surprise things like NWPs worked a heck of a lot better for my style of play, than the skills in 3E every did. In fact, my campaigns noticeably changed after I adopted 3E, and I always figured it was more me getting older and some of the magic fading. But it turned out, the skill system was a large part of the change. Once I went back to 2E, things played much more like I remembered them. The feel at the table was totally different.



I dunno. I played 1e and 2e for their entire runs, pretty extensively. While we did USE NWPs they only really played any significant role in one OA based campaign, which was a system where they were first introduced and intended to fill a significant role in a game that was supposed to be more social and political and focused more on the character's relationship with society.

Even then the mechanics were poor. The success rate for using them was terrible. Even if you simply ignored the idea of making a check in most situations, the dangerous situations where they might be somewhat defining, were exactly where you'd only use an NWP in uttermost desperation, since the chance of success was rarely 40% and usually much worse! I never understood what was the concept behind this. It was literally as if the design was intended to make you NOT want to use them!



> It has been a few years since I played 2E, so I am rusty and not here to defend NWPs point by point. But I think they had a few things working in their favor. One they were tied to abilities, so they were generally a lot easier to use in practice than skills in 3E (where the expanding DCs could make many tasks nearly impossible unless you were very high level). I liked things being weighted more toward success based on your ability score (and because it was roll under, rather than a bonus against a DC, your ability score result mattered a heck of a lot more at a granular level). Also, NWPs generally, at least in the first PHB (latter options for them moved more in a 3E direction), were largely intended not to interfere with players roleplaying or interacting with the environment and exploring. Etiquette for instance, was effectively a knowledge skill. You didn't roll etiquette to talk to the duke, you rolled to see if you knew what was appropriate to do and say before the duke.



Which is why I don't understand the whole fascination with checks. They should have simply been things you DID, or knew, not things you had to make a roll for. 



> I had a similar experience with many of the mechanics in 2nd edition.
> 
> Again, this stuff is totally subjective. But definitely try a game on its own terms if you haven't before rendering a judgment (not suggesting you are doing this AA, just see a lot of people form judgments based on what other posters say rather than their own experience in play).




As I said, I have a LOT of experience with 2e, and 1e as well. My experience was that the skill systems in these games were marginal at best, and designed to be so deliberately. I think a lot of the problem was that, even in 1989, there wasn't a very coherent idea of what RPGs really SHOULD be doing. I guess by then we thought we knew a lot, but by today's standards it was actually very little.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> Mostly I play my own system now (and it does have skills, though I use them somewhat different than most people). I think I just like lighter skill systems and I find I prefer skill systems that interfere the least with RP or environmental interaction. That said, skills are popular with most players I game with, and I've learned to adapt how I use them to get the best result for my campaigns. Generally, since a large number of systems do have things that could potentially be used as buttons or interfere with RP/exploration, I use them as a fail safe. I ask for rolls when it is unclear to me what the outcome of something would be. If a player says "I pull the rock out and look behind it" I don't ask for a Detect roll, for example. If they have high ranks in something like Command, and say something that would make a new recruit quake in his boots, I don't ask for a roll. I usually ask for rolls when the results are hard to gauge, when I think a highly aware person should get a passive roll to see/sense something, or when there is a disparity between what the player wants to do, and what their character is realistically capable of doing.
> 
> Also I've just taken to ignoring skills more as a requirement to do something. I am a lot more interested in what the character should be able to do. If a player character has been tending horses for the past six months, I don't care if he or she doesn't have a relevant skill rank, I'll let them use the next most appropriate skill in the list, or just simply let them do what they are trying to do if it sounds reasonable.
> 
> Ultimately what I want to avoid is skills feeling like 'buttons' in play. If players are investigating a murder, I much prefer that they experience the solving of the crime directly, not that their skills simulate them solving the crime. So it is a lot more important to me that the player feels like they are there, finding the clues, asking the questions, and putting the evidence together, than rolling skills in a way that removes them from the direct experience of the investigation.




Now, see, in some sense I think you would LIKE my homebrew game! Skills there are more like 'knacks' or 'propensities'. You have ability scores which define what you CAN do in raw terms, and skills which define how you like to operate. The two are usually related, but not entirely the same. 

Also, knowledge can exist in specific areas, if you want to create a descriptor for a character, then a 'minor boon' would exist, and boons are tied totally to the character's narrative history. So if he took care of horses for 6 months then he DOES HAVE a skill which reflects that, or at least he will be rateable as a horseman. 

So the rules work WITH you here. Also, if there's no conflict, or no interesting consequence for failure (IE you can just keep trying), then there's no roll needed. So you really only make checks for stuff that matters. You can simply say "yes, I know how to cook, and I have proficiency in Nature, I gather what is needed for a healthy stew!" and it happens, assuming narrative coherence is sufficient that nobody objects.


----------



## Tony Vargas

pemerton said:


> This goes right back to the OP!
> 
> Absolutely. I don't get this idea that "different" = "narrower",



 I get being accustomed to one paradigm, and having trouble acknowledging the things another does better or that yours doesn't do at all, while being hyper-aware of the things the other doesn't do.  

That'd make you perceive the other as 'narrower.'



> or that "GM curated experience" = "caters to/generates a wide range of experiences".



 Similarly, if you're used to expecting DM + system to deliver/define the experience, and the system half of that is very limited and constraining, then it's natural to conclude that it's the GM that makes the game, and puting more on the DM and less on the system can only make the experience better.



> For instance: if player X wants to play Fate, and player Y wants to play Moldvay Basic, a game in which the GM curates Ideals/Bonds/Flaws for X, while rolling wandering monsters for Y, isn't giving either of them the experience they wanted.



 And that sounds like focusing on system artifacts, again, rather on what they deliver.



> ]Campbell]'s "mainstream" is not just that mid-to-late 80s D&D; it would also include most GURPS and HERO play, I reckon, and - judging from when I used to hang out on the ICE boards - most RM/MERP/HARP play as well.



I can't see any grouping, other than TTRPGs, that all those would fit in, and would have any value or meaning.


----------



## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> I can't see any grouping, other than TTRPGs, that all those would fit in, and would have any value or meaning.



They all tend to define the character in terms of mechanically-rated abilities to perform certain tasks. They all tend to approach resolution in a fairly granular, "Did my attempt to do that work?" fashion. (D&D hp-attrition combat is an exception, but (i) it tends not to be generalised by D&D players to other spheres of action, except in 4e - skill challenges - which seem to have been rather controversial, and (ii) every time some change is made or new thing added on to that system, it drifts it towards granularity and task-orientations - eg grapple rules, disarm rules, rules for facing and movement/positionin in combat, etc.)

None makes *the scene* the unit of resolution (4e is an exception: see above for its controversy). And all assume that the GM is the principal deliverer of content for the fiction. (There are hints to the contrary in HERO - eg the Hunted disadvantage and similar stuff - but that stuff tends to be marginal rather than core, and is treated as a disadvantage for the GM to use against the player, rather than a player-side resource to be leveraged as an opportunity to shape the content of the fiction.)

A D&D player who comes to a HERO or RM table will have to learn how to read and apply the numbers on the sheet, and will have to learn some new resolution mechanics, but probably isn't going to have to relearn what it means to be a RPG player. Whereas if that player comes to the games [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] is referring to, it's not just about learning which dice to roll to make an attack and whether spells are on a "slot" system or a spell point system.


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## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Right, but what about fighters and such in classic D&D? I mean rangers, barbarians, and paladins have SOME stuff they can do, but its fairly thin in most editions. pre-2e or unless you play with one of the various supplements for 1e that gives NWPs, you get NOTHING as a fighter.



So what?

A 1e Fighter can still think, plan, talk, negotiate, explore, and do all sorts of other fun stuff; and it can have a memorable personality, goals, ideals, flaws, a background and history - and oh yeah, it can bend your nose into your face all night long.  What more do you need?

The main thing is that the player of a 1e Fighter has to come up with ideas as to what it's going to (try to) do outside of combat and then just (try to) do it, as opposed to all the other classes that have some of those ideas baked into the class (e.g. Rangers tracking, Thieves picking pockets, etc.).

Lanefan


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## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> .
> 
> Even then the mechanics were poor. The success rate for using them was terrible. Even if you simply ignored the idea of making a check in most situations, the dangerous situations where they might be somewhat defining, were exactly where you'd only use an NWP in uttermost desperation, since the chance of success was rarely 40% and usually much worse! I never understood what was the concept behind this. It was literally as if the design was intended to make you NOT want to use them!
> 
> .




This is so dependent on which NWPs you choose to take though. Obviously if your taking a NWP tied to an ability score of 9 or something, your chances will be poor. In my experience, players tended to take NWPs that connected well with their abilities. And you can still increase your ranks in them. If you have a NWP for a skill that is 13 or higher for example, your chances are not that bad. Also, if the baseline is too low, I think it is reasonable to pad them with a couple of extra ranks or something. But why I liked them better than 3E skills was they were far less intrusive and they were so much more grounded. There wasn't this massive upward progression of scaling. It was just a roll against the ability score itself with some minor improvement in your rank over time.  

Not trying to convince anyone if they don't work in practice for them. All I am saying is, my experience was I used to laugh at NWPs as 'obviously bad'. But after years of playing 3E, when I went back to 2E, it was so much better. In actual play I just about preferred everything about them, and I discovered something that always irked me a bit about 3E, was immediately gone. So I just always tell everyone, give them a try for a bit before knocking them (I realize this might not apply to you, but again, so many people form their opinions on systems based on second hand reports from posters on forums like this). 

Also, worth pointing out, NWPs are purely an optional mechanics. There are a couple of different options presented in the 2E PHB (at least in the first one----the one from the mid-90s might have changed things).


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> As I said, I have a LOT of experience with 2e, and 1e as well. My experience was that the skill systems in these games were marginal at best, and designed to be so deliberately. I think a lot of the problem was that, even in 1989, there wasn't a very coherent idea of what RPGs really SHOULD be doing. I guess by then we thought we knew a lot, but by today's standards it was actually very little.




Honestly, this is part of the appeal I think. They are not central to the game. This is why I keep describing the 3E skills as intrusive. Things like NWPs only bothered us as much as we allowed them to. It was a lot harder not to be bothered by Skills in 3E you didn't like. I think we just have a fundamental disagreement on what RPGs are about and for. I am not particularly interested in an RPG being coherent. Especially one like D&D.


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Which is why I don't understand the whole fascination with checks. They should have simply been things you DID, or knew, not things you had to make a roll for.




I tended to use them as last resort measures. Here is what I noticed when I shifted back to 2E, instantly. I should say, I had also recently re-read the 1E DMG, so that might have been an influence. I was asking for rolls that much as players interacted with the world. Because there wasn't a big list of buttons on the character sheet, they just said what they wanted to do, and I usually allowed it unless it was something really odd or seemed like it required a die roll. So we just fell back to naturally exploring and interacting more directly with the setting and adventure, and this was the thing that had been missing from my 3E Ravenloft campaigns, that immediately came back in my 2E sessions. 

That said, I have nothing against big skill lists. I use them myself, and there are plenty of skill based games I adore. But I do think there is something to be said for the approach that 2E took. At least at my table, it made a massive difference when running my favorite setting.


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## Tony Vargas

Bedrockgames said:


> I. Here is what I noticed when I shifted back to 2E, instantly.



 At first glance I read that last word as 'insanity.'



pemerton said:


> They all tend to define the character in terms of mechanically-rated abilities to perform certain tasks. They all tend to approach resolution in a fairly granular, "Did my attempt to do that work?" fashion.
> ...(D&D hp-attrition combat is an exception...
> ...except in 4e - skill challenges -
> None makes *the scene* the unit of resolution
> (4e is an exception...



 Heh.  Can't even stick D&D, itself, in the box once that wilely 4e comes into it.  ;P



> And all assume that the GM is the principal deliverer of content for the fiction. (There are hints to the contrary in HERO - eg the Hunted disadvantage and similar stuff - but that stuff tends to be marginal rather than core, and is treated as a disadvantage for the GM to use against the player, rather than a player-side resource to be leveraged as an opportunity to shape the content of the fiction.)



 D&D had been slowly inching toward players having more input into "the fiction"  In, 2e they started getting some 'build' options, 3e more options & they got to re-skin their characters' appearnce & gear, 4e more options & could re-skin just about everything about their character.  Of course, that was by 2008.  In 1981 Champions! was already letting players define virtually everything about their character, including things like, yes Hunteds, that tied them back into, or even /added to/ the world.  Really, each 'special effect' on a power that wasn't just lifted from some example essentially added to the fictional backdrop of the world.  And, Hero powers didn't just accomplish tasks, they had effects, that could represent, in fiction, quite different things from the obivious implied task resolution.  For instance, your Batman clone could pull his 'vanishing when you turn your back' trick ("I hate when he does that") without resolving discrete Stealth tasks all the time, 'just' buy a Teleport (not through solid objects - or maybe through them, for preternatural Escape Artist), the special effect is preternatural stealth & timing - heck, as part of it, his decision to Teleport could "make" you turn your back for a moment.



> A D&D player who comes to a HERO or RM table will have to learn how to read and apply the numbers on the sheet, and will have to learn some new resolution mechanics, but probably isn't going to have to relearn what it means to be a RPG player. Whereas if that player comes to the games [MENTION=16586]Campbell[/MENTION] is referring to, it's not just about learning which dice to roll to make an attack and whether spells are on a "slot" system or a spell point system.



 If a game asks you to "re-learn what it means to be an RPG player," it's strongly implying that it's not an RPG - or that every RPG before it wasn't.  Neither seems like a politik sort of implication.




pemerton said:


> A D&D player who comes to a HERO or RM table will have to learn how to read and apply the numbers on the sheet, and will have to learn some new resolution mechanics, but probably isn't going to have to relearn what it means to be a RPG player.



 Oh, there'll be some re-learning whatever you emerge from D&D into (obviously, other than Arduin, PF, OSR, Fantasy Heartbreakers, &c).  Even in the 70s, going from D&D to Traveler, for instance, you're not treasure hunting,  leveling up, and having your character fundamentally changed by arbitrary run-ins with curses, wishes, magic items, etc...  you're just getting older.
Going to Hero you'll be re-learning all that, and getting used to the idea that the number (power/limitation/advantage) on your sheet only represents what you can accomplish, in game terms, not what/how you do it, that's night & day compared to D&D.



> Whereas if that player comes to the games Campbell is referring to, it's not just about learning which dice to roll to make an attack and whether spells are on a "slot" system or a spell point system.



 I feel like there's a lot more to this thought...
"...not just about..."  
...but also:

?


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> This is so dependent on which NWPs you choose to take though. Obviously if your taking a NWP tied to an ability score of 9 or something, your chances will be poor. In my experience, players tended to take NWPs that connected well with their abilities.



 [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] was talking about OA non-weapon proficiencies, which are not based on stats but ratherhave proficiency-specific success numbers. And as AbdulAlhazred said, the success numbers are high (eg for Horse Riding, it's 18+ on a d20).


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] was talking about OA non-weapon proficiencies, which are not based on stats but ratherhave proficiency-specific success numbers. And as AbdulAlhazred said, the success numbers are high (eg for Horse Riding, it's 18+ on a d20).




Well, I wasn’t talking about OA NWPs. I was talking about the ones from the first 2E players handbook. The OA NWPs are a whole other conversation.


----------



## pemerton

Bedrockgames said:


> Well, I wasn’t talking about OA NWPs.



But  [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] was, in two posts that you replied to:



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think it is very trivially easy to see how 'skills', when implemented at all, in 'classic' D&D were of little significance, even in 2e where NWPs were at least presented as a possibility in the core books.
> 
> 1. They were NEVER used to represent anything like a class or race ability, even when they obviously could have been (IE thieves, rangers, elves, etc.).
> 
> 2. They were always optional systems (2e NWPs, 1e Secondary Skills, etc.). The one marginal exception was OA, where they ALMOST became a significant subsystem.
> 
> 3. No implementation in classic D&D was actually mechanically viable in any sensible way. DSG, WSG, OA, and 2e PHB (etc.) implementations were mechanically unworkable in significant ways. I was always dubious that they had ever really been playtested, and they almost seemed like a way of simply discouraging players from doing 'other stuff' vs actually something you would use in practice.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> A clever DM in OA (for example) would probably allow a character with 'Tea Ceremony' or whatever to simply do his thing and ignore the actual mechanic of it, but in a mechanical sense they weren't something you could ever depend on.





AbdulAlhazred said:


> I played 1e and 2e for their entire runs, pretty extensively. While we did USE NWPs they only really played any significant role in one OA based campaign, which was a system where they were first introduced and intended to fill a significant role in a game that was supposed to be more social and political and focused more on the character's relationship with society.
> 
> Even then the mechanics were poor. The success rate for using them was terrible. Even if you simply ignored the idea of making a check in most situations, the dangerous situations where they might be somewhat defining, were exactly where you'd only use an NWP in uttermost desperation, since the chance of success was rarely 40% and usually much worse! I never understood what was the concept behind this. It was literally as if the design was intended to make you NOT want to use them!



You quored the last para of each of the above posts in your replies. And those paragraphs are clearly about OA.

And [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] is correct that the success chances for NWPs in that book were very low.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> But  @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ was, in two posts that you replied to:
> 
> 
> You quored the last para of each of the above posts in your replies. And those paragraphs are clearly about OA.
> 
> And @_*AbdulAlhazred*_ is correct that the success chances for NWPs in that book were very low.




I don't know what you want me to say Pemerton. I didn't realize he was talking about NWPs that function differently. And I don't see why they would be relevant to the point I was making. That was a response to me saying 2E NWPs worked well in my campaign. When I responded to his quote, I assumed he brought up OA NWPs because they functioned the same (it has been ages since I've even read the OA NWPs section). If the discussion we are having is around 2E NWPs, I am just saying what is relevant are the 2E NWPs rules. We can fight about this point all day if you want. I don't see the value (and I don't think AA does either, as it felt to me like he and I were having a productive back and forth). I am not trying to point score here or prove who knows more about what system. I am just saying, 2E NWPs worked much better for me in practice when I went back to them, than I expected they would. And I think they have value if people give them a chance.


----------



## Imaro

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, arguing about 'tastes' is a fruitless endeavor. I have never mentioned 'taste' at all...




Definitely agree.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think, as I just told [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION], we need to be explicit and concrete and talk details. I don't know what 'at a high level' means. I know specific situations at tables and categories of similar situations at tables as their generalization. So, I would say, in general, when a player wants to do something like have his character's 'aspect' (generally a qualitative thing) be reflected concretely in the game situation, that is to have some real mechanical and procedural heft, then FATE is more likely to be able to meet that need. This is kind of general though. We cannot say that there is NEVER a case where 5e's Inspiration/Bonds system will deliver this. It could, but since Inspiration isn't actually tied explicitly to PIBFs, which have no defined mechanical impact AFAIK. There's a vague "the GM might give you inspiration if you play in a way that reflects your traits" but it doesn't even say if it is positively or negatively! (IE you would GAIN inspiration for taking actions beneficial to your character if they happen to align with his PIBFs).




Ok two things...

1. Let's remember the context of this side discussion... it was not if one player wants to play FATE and another wants to play OD&D then they can both get what they want by using a mainstream game like 5e... that's too specific and was never my argument.  I assume if you are knowledgeable enough and focused enough and nothing matters more than getting the exact experience of FATE... well then you'l be playing FATE with a group of like-minded individuals... personally I don't think the specific rules and experience are that important to the majority of gamers and so my argument was based on players with particular leanings and preferences vs. a desire to play an exact system. 

2. Let's step back for a moment and look at the definition of FATE's aspects as I think this will help us examine it at a high level (and perhaps shed clarity on what I mean by that...

_ -Defining Aspects
An aspect is a phrase that describes something unique or noteworthy about whatever it’s attached to. They’re the primary way you spend and gain fate points, and they influence the story by providing an opportunity for a character to get a bonus, complicating a character’s life, or adding to another character’s roll or passive opposition.

Defining FATE Points
GMs and players, you both have a pool of points called fate points you can use to influence the game. You represent these with tokens, as we mentioned in The Basics. Players, you start with a certain number of points every scenario, equal to your character’s refresh. You’ll also reset to your refresh rate if you ended a mid-scenario session with fewer fate points than your rate. GMs, you get a budget of fate points to spend in every scene.

When your aspects come into play, you will usually spend or gain a fate point.
_

Aspects...
So it's a phrase that describes something unique or noteworthy about whatever it's attached to.  I would say creating Bonds, Flaws and Ideals do the same (thought admittedly they are more categorically limited than aspects...).

They're a primary (though not the only) way you spend and gain FATE points... so I would say that kind of debunks the tight coupling of FATE point expenditure and aspects, FATE points (which are the actual currency can be spent on bonuses related to aspects... but don't have to be.  In turn inspiration could be spent on an action relevant to the Bond Flaw or Ideal... but don't have to be.

They influence the story in one of 3 ways...provide an opportunity to get a bonus/complicate characters life/add to another character's roll... These are all things the Bond/Flaw/Ideal system coupled with Inspiration cover...   


FATE Points...

They influence the game... Inspiration does the same.

Now here is where I see the major differences at a high level... The DM doesn't get Inspiration to spend and There is no starting/refreshed Inspiration each game.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Again though, I don't really understand what is meant by "at a high level". If you mean sort of in a hand-wavy kind of way that both games have some sort of mechanics that include character traits and some sort of mechanics that can give bonuses to checks, then I guess 5e and FATE are close cousins! I think that's so vague however that it misses the entire essence of what each game is really about.




Well I've tried to clarify it above but I am starting to think that many proponents of FATE see admitting  similar their high level functions are in each game.  Do I believe they are the exact same or that the mechanics of 5e can replicate FATE exactly... no, but I never made that argument. 



AbdulAlhazred said:


> What I'm saying is that I think the two systems are so qualitatively different that 'what' they accomplish is only 'the same' in an extremely superficial way. I've never said 5e can do everything FATE can do or that you seriously argued that, although [MENTION=2486]Al[/MENTION]drac DID quote where you made statements which are EXCEEDINGLY like that statement! You very certainly did attempt to minimize the central nature of aspects/compulsion/invocation in FATE. I didn't set out to prove that you were 'wrong that 5e can do all that FATE can do', I set out to prove that your assertion that FATE is just "FUDGE with a few narrative elements slapped on it". This assertion was, frankly, completely wrong! It gave the whole discussion a character that produced inaccurate conclusions. I simply corrected it, perhaps with zest, but it was simply a correction.
> 
> You have been somewhat inconsistent, as @Aldarc accurately pointed out in his response to your last post before this one. I am happy to take it that you have clarified your position here. FATE is not simply a skill-based system with some traits tacked on. If this is an accurate assessment of your current position, then we can proceed from there and need not beat expired equines anymore..




Well to be fair that was a very recent statement on my part and not really part of my initial argument... Also, FATE started as a variant of FUDGE... so not sure I'm willing to totally backtrack on that statement however I think it's only tangentially related to my main point so I'm also not ready to spend a ton of word count on disputing the matter.  I'll just leave this tidbit from wikipedia and let everyone draw their own conclusions. 

From Wikipedia...
_System

Probability of results in the Fate system
*Fate is based on the FUDGE system, and uses FUDGE's verbal scale and Fudge dice*, but most versions of Fate eschew the use of mandatory traits such as Strength and Intelligence. Instead, it uses a long list of skills and assumes that every character is "mediocre" in all skills except those that the character is explicitly defined as being good at. Skills may perform one or more of the four actions: attacking, defending, overcoming obstacles (a catch-all for solving problems) or creating an advantage (see below). Exceptional abilities are defined through the use of Stunts and Aspects_.




AbdulAlhazred said:


> Its not necessary for me to recapitulate what I stated above, so I won't. My position is as it has been. 5e has some fairly superficial and minor 'trait' attributes which loosely couple to an Inspiration mechanism. FATE OTOH is a system which is entirely driven by aspects as its universal mechanical underpinning. While FATE does have (potentially at least) skills as well, they are mostly useful to set the success/fail threshold for the various checks, which are then subject to the aspect rules. Skills are not totally unimportant, but it is telling that FATE core doesn't even have a suggested list of them that I can recall, they are entirely setting-specific.




Hmmm... I disagree with how you view skills in FATE...I haven't seen anywhere in the rules where skills are totally optional.  Can they be tweaked for your particular game, yes but they are assumed to be part of a FATE game, at least according to the FATE rules.  Skills are how you perform any action in FATE not Aspects.  If there are nothing but Aspects... what exactly are they being tagged to give a bonus too?  Also FATE Core does have a list of default skills and suggestions on tweaking said list for different genres... Personally, I see Aspects as a modifier to the basic competencies of your characters represented by skills and stunts (these are the rolls being modified by FATE points which are in turn gained through Aspects.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think that FATE is going to likely tend to be more abstract in terms of tactics. That is to say, your character might have an aspect or a skill that bears on his tactical prowess. You would assert your tactical chops by leveraging that aspect in some sort of 'I apply tactics to this situation' check instead of practicing tactical principles yourself as a player. Now, I think it could be possible to make a FATE-based game that WAS tactical in 4e-esque kind of way. I'd have to think carefully about how that would work if I wanted to design it.




Well I assume we are talking about FATE Core, if not then we have to make allowances for all the variations of the d20 engine as well. 

In FATE Core there are 3 actions...

Attack, Defend and Create Advantage.    I think Attack and Defend are pretty self explanatory while Create Advatage allows you to invoke an aspect which in turn allows you to do one of 4 things...

Take a +2 on your current skill roll after you’ve rolled the dice.
Reroll all your dice.
Pass a +2 benefit to another character’s roll, if it’s reasonable that the aspect you’re invoking would be able to help.
Add +2 to any source of passive opposition, if it’s reasonable that the aspect you’re invoking could contribute to making things more difficult. You can also use this to create passive opposition at Fair (+2) if there wasn’t going to be any.

So it's the same thing you can do with an aspect.  I'm sorry but in core FATE I'm just not seeing how someone who enjoys tactical play is going to find this satisfactory much less someone who's primary enjoyment is derived from it.


----------



## Imaro

Campbell said:


> Sorry for disappearing. Been in the middle of a career transition while ramping up my training regimen.




No worries, I'm glad you found time to reply.   



Campbell said:


> *Here is my basic contention:* The different expectations, culture of play, and specific play techniques in utilized in game like Sorcerer provides an experience that does not easily arise when playing modern Dungeons and Dragons. The same is true for Moldvay B/X. although modern D&D can come closer there. I am also contending that mainstream games have a highly specific culture of play, expectations, and set of play techniques that most of do not normally look at with a critical lens because they represent the default of what most of us consider a role playing game to be. This is even seen in when [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] criticizes indie games from the prism of that culture. It's all about the experience the GM *provides* and satisfying individual kicks as seen through the prism of Robin Laws' Player Types. Story as seen as something the GM [/B]provides[/B].




Let me ask if someone used the play techniques from sorcerer in a mainstream game could the experience be replicated?  I guess that's how I see things that aren't based in the mechanics... IMO something that is rule agnostic can be transferred from one game to another.  As an example look at scene framing... why can't scene framing take place in 5e?  Or procedural play what would be the obstacles to implementing it in 5e?  And ultimately even in a game like FATE or Sorcerer the GM is tasked with running a certain way in order to produce a specific experience in game.  Though honestly if there is a reason these same techniques can't be applied to more mainstream  games I'd love to discuss and/or hear your perspective on why.



Campbell said:


> Here's why I find this analysis flawed: It is done with zero reference to basic features of the culture of play that makes Sorcerer the game that it is. When I play Sorcerer I am not looking to the GM to provide me with an experience or a story. We are all exploring these characters together. I am not just invested in my character. I am also invested in what everyone else brings to the table, the definition of Humanity we worked on together, and finding out how human our characters are. I would be very interested in going into more detail about this culture of play if there is real interest.




I'm a little confused by this... is a GM in Sorcerer not, through techniques, advice, etc. tasked with facilitating a certain experience in the game?  Can the GM run a bad Sorcerer game by disregarding or going against these techniques?  If so I feel the GM is, at least in part, responsible for providing a certain experience to his or her players? 



Campbell said:


> Note: I never meant to imply that mainstream games were less fun than OSR and Indie games. I only meant to convey that they are not somehow contained within and represent a narrowing of the basic experience of playing a role playing game. Difference of kind. Not a narrowing of experience.




I still think it's a more specific and more narrow (as in restrained by the techniques, advice, etc. you cite above) way of running a roleplaying game that gives a deeper but more narrow experience.


----------



## Aldarc

Imaro said:


> 2. Let's step back for a moment and *look at the definition of FATE's aspects* as I think this will help us examine it at a high level (and perhaps shed clarity on what I mean by that...



I already did this. So from what I gather from the clarity you shed below, it means "you must be high for this argument to work..." 



> Aspects...
> So it's a phrase that describes something unique or noteworthy about whatever it's attached to.  I would say creating Bonds, Flaws and Ideals do the same (thought admittedly they are more categorically limited than aspects...).



I would say creating Bonds, Flaws, and Ideals do not do the same. Let's go back to something that I quoted earlier that talks "at a high level" what aspects do: 


> In Fate, aspects do two major things: they tell you what’s important about the game, and they help you decide when to use the mechanics.



Maybe BFIs touch lightly on the first if one is generous here, but they do nothing in regards to the second. 



> They're a primary *(though not the only)* way you spend and gain FATE points... so I would say that kind of debunks the tight coupling of FATE point expenditure and aspects,



I'm not asking you to read my posts at a high level, but I would appreciate if you read them on some level. If you did, then you would have seen where I established this point. So I am not sure what position you have debunked. But aspects do constitute three-quarters of uses, with powering stunts being the other. I would estimate that players engage with the aspects/fate economy 95 percent of the time, because we are talking about a rare special case of powerful stunts. 



> FATE points (which are the actual currency can be spent on bonuses related to aspects... but don't have to be.  In turn inspiration could be spent on an action relevant to the Bond Flaw or Ideal... but don't have to be.



Yeah, and I think this is the wrong way to read this at a high level. I don't think that the "can/could" leads to meaningful statements here, and such formulations open the floodgates for some absurd" high level" comparisons. (E.g., a brick can be used to strike repeated blows on nails to drive them into a surface; ergo, bricks serve a similar function as a hammer.) Here is how I would see the "what" differently here, and this leans on your first formulation which erred closer to the mark: 


> Fate: Character aspects are the primary way you gain Fate points, and you primarily spend Fate points when your aspects may help you.
> 
> D&D 5E: Character BFIs are the primary way you gain Inspiration, but you primarily spend Inspiration whenever you want on things other than your Character BFIs.






> *They influence the story in one of 3 ways...*provide an opportunity to get a bonus/complicate characters life/add to another character's roll... These are all things the Bond/Flaw/Ideal system coupled with Inspiration cover...



Wrong again, but I have already explained how before, and I don't think that it would be polite for you to expect me to explain it again when it's available for you to read. 



> FATE Points...
> 
> They influence the game... Inspiration does the same.



This again is an incredibly superficial reading of both, and it's difficult to see much value in "high level" interpretations if these are the results of such analyses. Much like with "can" before, "influence the game" is applied to liberally that it is virtually meaningless. Is this really how "high level" analyses work for you? Render something to the point of insipid meaninglessness so as to make false equivalent statements? 

Fate points influence the game. Spells do the same. Fate points influence the game. Attack rolls do the same. Fate points influence the game. As it turns out, mechanics and agents influence the game. 



> Well I've tried to clarify it above but I am starting to think that many proponents of FATE see admitting  similar their high level functions are in each game.



I don't think that you have. You have made broad, generic statements and applied superficial analyses. You have not demonstrated or articulated the function of these game mechanics in their respective systems apart from saying that they are the same or similar. 



> I'll just leave this tidbit from wikipedia and let everyone draw their own conclusions.



Love how the bold stops right before the BUT. 



> Hmmm... I disagree with how you view skills in FATE...I haven't seen anywhere in the rules where skills are totally optional.  Can they be tweaked for your particular game, yes but they are assumed to be part of a FATE game, at least according to the FATE rules.  Skills are how you perform any action in FATE not Aspects.  If there are nothing but Aspects... what exactly are they being tagged to give a bonus too?  Also FATE Core does have a list of default skills and suggestions on tweaking said list for different genres... Personally, I see Aspects as a modifier to the basic competencies of your characters represented by skills and stunts (these are the rolls being modified by FATE points which are in turn gained through Aspects.



Several points here. I would argue that skills are not about how you perform any action, but instead reflect the nature of the action, the what. The contextual mode for "how" occurs in the four possible actions: overcome, attack, defend, and create an advantage. Because you can use, for example, the Provoke skill to Overcome an obstacle, make a mental Attack, or to Create an Advantage. It depends on the circumstances of the fiction. 

Two, Fate Accelerated kinda throws a huge wrench into this argument as well because it uses Approaches rather than Skills. Skills are about "what," whereas Approaches are about "how." 

Three, if you read the Fate System Toolkit - also available to read for free on the Fate SRD - then it provides alternative skill systems including, Aspects only. You will still associate the Aspects with a numerical bonus, but that still is removing a skill list. See Three Rocketeers for one version of this. I vaguely recall that Shadowcraft may be another skill-less Fate game. 



> In FATE Core there are 3 actions...



There are _*four*_ actions. You even quoted the Fate SRD above where it says that there are four actions, and it even lists them: Attack, Defend, _Overcome,_ and Create an Advantage. 



> So it's the same thing you can do with an aspect.  I'm sorry but in core FATE I'm just not seeing how someone who enjoys tactical play is going to find this satisfactory much less someone who's primary enjoyment is derived from it.



I must not exist then. IMHO, you are missing a HUGE element of the game: the primacy of the fiction. _Aspects are always true_ and they are a tangible piece of that fiction that the PCs and NPCs can interact with. When you use Create an Advantage to create and invoke the aspect "knocked prone," then the enemy is knocked prone. And they have to spend an action to clear that aspect, equivalent to attempting to stand. You can use Create an Advantage to set up your attacks and defense so that you get a bonus to your attack (and damage) on the foe who is knocked prone. Create an Advantage "I have the high ground, Anakin." Create an Advantage "Stunned Against the Wall." You can do this using different skills depending upon the situation. And so on. You could take nearly every single detailed rule from the 3.X PHB that confers tactical fun and now condense that into "Create an Advantage." But without the, "I darn, I only have a 10 Int so I can't pick up the Expertise feat and then get the Trip feat." 

I often find myself playing tactically in my D&D groups, so take it from me when I say that I absolutely love how empowered I find myself when using this system for my own tactical-minded play.  But I have seen other super tactical players from D&D who need rules telling them what they can do find themselves tactically stumped by Fate, and I have seen non-tactical D&D players - once the grasp Create an Advantage - suddenly take off the gloves and become fierce tactical beasts. But the tactical play of Fate is rooted in the _fiction first_ use of the mechanics.


----------



## Imaro

Aldarc said:


> SNIP... Because if I engage with you at this point I'd probably get a mod warning or worse




Dude all the snark (and  again mis-representing what I said) in this post was unnecessary and on top of it I wasn't even addressing you.  I'd ask in the future if you want to engage with me loose the serious chip on your shoulder you seem to have developed for me.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Aldarc said:


> You could take nearly every single detailed rule from the 3.X PHB that confers tactical fun and now condense that into "Create an Advantage." But without the, "I darn, I only have a 10 Int so I can't pick up the Expertise feat and then get the Trip feat."



 Like 5e did with Advantage and the Help action that, well, 'creates Advantage' for a buddy?


----------



## Aldarc

Tony Vargas said:


> Like 5e did with Advantage and the Help action that, well, 'creates Advantage' for a buddy?



I was speaking more along the lines here of tactical combat. 5E Advantage/Disadvantage has undoubtedly been an effective mechanic for streamlining certain subsystems of play between 3E and 5E. It's also something fairly easy for GMs to apply as a general rule of thumb or eyeball gauge for when it applies as well as for new players to grasp. Advantage does, however,  get kinda dull or rote when it becomes too ubiquitous in practice. 

I should look up again a fun example in "the Book of Hanz" of the Fate mechanics used by a roguish character for getting the drop on two guards because it highlights a lot of Fate's fiction first mindset and how it variously uses mechanics to emulate the desired fiction of the scene.


----------



## Tony Vargas

Aldarc said:


> I was speaking more along the lines here of tactical combat.



 Yeah, I just found it amusing that an off-the-rack 5e Action happend to 'Create' an 'Advantage.' 







> 5E Advantage/Disadvantage has undoubtedly been an effective mechanic for streamlining certain subsystems of play between 3E and 5E.  It's also something fairly easy for GMs to apply as a general rule of thumb or eyeball gauge for when it applies as well as for new players to grasp. Advantage does, however,  get kinda dull or rote when it becomes too ubiquitous in practice.



 There's a whole thread about that last bit.

I honestly didn't even remember "Create an Advantage" from the times I've played FATE.  But, then I barely remembered there were 'actions' at all, and, looking them up, it's probably because they're all pretty improvisational in nature, anyway, and improv is something I'm pretty used to.


...and, as always, anytime I start re-reading a little of the FATE system, I find myself thinking "I should try to find a game again sometime..."


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> This is so dependent on which NWPs you choose to take though. Obviously if your taking a NWP tied to an ability score of 9 or something, your chances will be poor. In my experience, players tended to take NWPs that connected well with their abilities. And you can still increase your ranks in them. If you have a NWP for a skill that is 13 or higher for example, your chances are not that bad. Also, if the baseline is too low, I think it is reasonable to pad them with a couple of extra ranks or something. But why I liked them better than 3E skills was they were far less intrusive and they were so much more grounded. There wasn't this massive upward progression of scaling. It was just a roll against the ability score itself with some minor improvement in your rank over time.



2e's version is the MOST generous in terms of chances of success, but its still not THAT good, as the average stat is still a 13 or 14, which gives you somewhere as low as a 50/50 success rate, depending on the exact NWP (and lord knows what the logic for the check modifiers is, except most things that would be really useful in a tight situation are -2). Yes, you can, in 2e, sometimes have a certain NWP that has 95% success (20 always fails) if you have a VERY high stat. All of the earlier versions are MUCH less generous, the OA implementation is a flat DC that is often 17 or higher to succeed!!! 'Padding with a few levels' is not really an option for most PCs, particularly as the better NWPs all take 2 slots (and thus 2 per added +1 as well, ouch). 

I think it is clear that by 2e the designers were starting to think maybe the rest of the industry was onto something, but it doesn't seem like they REALLY thought much of the idea. They clearly are biased against any real good coming of NWPs. The ones that would be good in a tight spot are double price and have significant penalties on them. It really is like they don't want you to get anything like an advantage of any sort out of NWPs. This is part of a sort of relict Gygaxian mentality that permeates 2e. The players are a sort of 'enemy team' that shouldn't be granted much leeway. 



> Not trying to convince anyone if they don't work in practice for them. All I am saying is, my experience was I used to laugh at NWPs as 'obviously bad'. But after years of playing 3E, when I went back to 2E, it was so much better. In actual play I just about preferred everything about them, and I discovered something that always irked me a bit about 3E, was immediately gone. So I just always tell everyone, give them a try for a bit before knocking them (I realize this might not apply to you, but again, so many people form their opinions on systems based on second hand reports from posters on forums like this).
> 
> Also, worth pointing out, NWPs are purely an optional mechanics. There are a couple of different options presented in the 2E PHB (at least in the first one----the one from the mid-90s might have changed things).




I have a PDF, and haven't gotten out my hardbacks in a few years. So I don't remember for sure if the PHB had Secondary Skills in it when it came out or not, but the later versions probably did, as the PDF text seems to be taken from them. 

I guess I'm not sure in what sense the 2e NWPs are 'better'. I actually LIKE the way DCs scale with the level of the task. It provides the GM with a whole extra dimension, higher level skill-based challenges! The mere whippersnapper level 1 fighter has no hope of climbing the ice cliffs of the mountains of death, but my 20th level guy who stared Orcus in the eye and then stuck his sword through it, he can! 2e has no answer for that, except 'hit them with enough damage to gank anything lesser'. 

4e's skill system is even better. Lush even. There's a short list, so no implied incompetence, nor much ambiguity about which skill to use. It just works.


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> 2e's version is the MOST generous in terms of chances of success, but its still not THAT good, as the average stat is still a 13 or 14, which gives you somewhere as low as a 50/50 success rate, depending on the exact NWP (and lord knows what the logic for the check modifiers is, except most things that would be really useful in a tight situation are -2). Yes, you can, in 2e, sometimes have a certain NWP that has 95% success (20 always fails) if you have a VERY high stat. All of the earlier versions are MUCH less generous, the OA implementation is a flat DC that is often 17 or higher to succeed!!! 'Padding with a few levels' is not really an option for most PCs, particularly as the better NWPs all take 2 slots (and thus 2 per added +1 as well, ouch).
> 
> I think it is clear that by 2e the designers were starting to think maybe the rest of the industry was onto something, but it doesn't seem like they REALLY thought much of the idea. They clearly are biased against any real good coming of NWPs. The ones that would be good in a tight spot are double price and have significant penalties on them. It really is like they don't want you to get anything like an advantage of any sort out of NWPs. This is part of a sort of relict Gygaxian mentality that permeates 2e. The players are a sort of 'enemy team' that shouldn't be granted much leeway.
> 
> 
> 
> I have a PDF, and haven't gotten out my hardbacks in a few years. So I don't remember for sure if the PHB had Secondary Skills in it when it came out or not, but the later versions probably did, as the PDF text seems to be taken from them.
> 
> I guess I'm not sure in what sense the 2e NWPs are 'better'. I actually LIKE the way DCs scale with the level of the task. It provides the GM with a whole extra dimension, higher level skill-based challenges! The mere whippersnapper level 1 fighter has no hope of climbing the ice cliffs of the mountains of death, but my 20th level guy who stared Orcus in the eye and then stuck his sword through it, he can! 2e has no answer for that, except 'hit them with enough damage to gank anything lesser'.
> 
> 4e's skill system is even better. Lush even. There's a short list, so no implied incompetence, nor much ambiguity about which skill to use. It just works.




The reason I like that 2E NWPS don't scale up like 3E skills is that chances roughly stay consistent. In 3E you end up with tasks that are impossible unless you have an enormous bonus. That scale can really make things thorny in my view. Whereas with NWPs, the chance doesn't have this wide range of probability. 

I don't think most of them break down to 50/50. I haven't crunched the numbers though, but that seems on the low side. Some of the NWPs do have a -2 check modifier, but not all of them. Most, if I recall fell between 0 to -1. With cropping up on some of them. But you can also take ranks in them. But if the probabilities are off, this is a pretty easy fix. What I like about it is the consistency, the lack of 3E style scaling, the fact that they don't interfere with aspects of role-play, investigation and exploration that I enjoy, and that are a simple roll under die roll. 

Again though, my point was they worked well for me in practice at the table. There was a night and day difference for the better when I shifted back to 2E for Ravenloft and much of it boiled down to how skills worked (though there were certainly other things). If you don't get that experience from NWPs, I am not here to convince you that you should. I just think people should play with these mechanics themselves and see how they feel in practice, rather than rely on discussions like these where you have two people trying to score points for their positions. Worst case scenario, they try them, and you're right, they suck. Best case, they discover value in a mechanic they may have otherwise dismissed. 

I think we just largely disagree on the Gygaxian approach. That is a whole other conversation. I don't think it is worth getting into here.


----------



## Bedrockgames

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I guess I'm not sure in what sense the 2e NWPs are 'better'. I actually LIKE the way DCs scale with the level of the task. It provides the GM with a whole extra dimension, higher level skill-based challenges! The mere whippersnapper level 1 fighter has no hope of climbing the ice cliffs of the mountains of death, but my 20th level guy who stared Orcus in the eye and then stuck his sword through it, he can! 2e has no answer for that, except 'hit them with enough damage to gank anything lesser'.
> 
> .




It is an entirely subjective thing, and frankly I am not 100% sure why I preferred NWPs (I am just trying to offer the best explanation I can think of). But I know they worked better for the game I wanted to run. I found this to be the case with a lot of 2E, and I think much of it had to do with the approach to play and the assumptions behind many fo the rules. You frame that somewhat negatively (as Gygaxian antagonism or something). Whatever was behind it (and I think antagonism is pretty reductive, because Gygax was all over the map if you read him, and he was pretty well excised from the 2E material), it made for a better Ravenloft campaign in my view. I struggled with Ravenloft during 3E. As soon as I switched editions, it just never felt the same. Something about the NWPs and other features, helped me get the feel that had originally drawn me to Ravenloft. Beyond that, we're just going to be going over the same series of points and rebuttals I think. 

With 3E I never liked the scaling of the system in general. I was also never a big fan of everything being oriented around challenge ratings and encounter levels. At least not for D&D. Don't get me wrong, I played the system for years. I mastered the system because I had to in order to keep my players happy. However there was a lot of frustration getting there, and in the end I just realized it wasn't the system for me. It was one that I fell out of love with the longer I played it. I ended up using it soley for wuxia campaigns after a while (because there I found the scaling, multi classing and feats worked pretty well for the style). 

With 4E, I think the reduced skill list was good. But I just never clicked with Skill Challenges or the general 4E approach to things. Again, whole other conversation. I get that the game works for lots of people. I just never connected with the game (even under great GMs).


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Tony Vargas said:


> If a game asks you to "re-learn what it means to be an RPG player," it's strongly implying that it's not an RPG - or that every RPG before it wasn't.  Neither seems like a politik sort of implication.



I've taken you for more sophisticated and less parochial than this. There are a lot of different RP paradigms. FATE and D&D (as examples) rely on different roles for players and GMs. Anyone who goes from playing GMing D&D (any edition really) to playing or GMing a FATE-derived game WILL have to relearn some things. They will have to learn some new things, forget some old things, and relearn some things that are just different. We all know this to be true of RPGs. 

To imply that any game which isn't mostly like D&D in some way is 'not an RPG' is FAR FAR FAR less 'politik'. Anyway, I take it you really mean that you think the EXACT PHRASE is unfortunate, OK, whatever. I would take it non-literally myself. 



> Oh, there'll be some re-learning whatever you emerge from D&D into (obviously, other than Arduin, PF, OSR, Fantasy Heartbreakers, &c).  Even in the 70s, going from D&D to Traveler, for instance, you're not treasure hunting,  leveling up, and having your character fundamentally changed by arbitrary run-ins with curses, wishes, magic items, etc...  you're just getting older.
> Going to Hero you'll be re-learning all that, and getting used to the idea that the number (power/limitation/advantage) on your sheet only represents what you can accomplish, in game terms, not what/how you do it, that's night & day compared to D&D.
> 
> I feel like there's a lot more to this thought...
> "...not just about..."
> ...but also:
> 
> ?




I think that the point we're trying to make is that there are different sorts of variations in games. They follow 'paradigms' (I am eschewing certain sets of terminology which shall remain nameless here, as they are misleading). D&D has a paradigm in which the DM is central arbiter, deciding all that is in the fiction without exception, and players restrict themselves entirely to acting and reacting in character. Ideally in D&D everyone spends all their time 'in character' and there is no meta-game. This is generally also true of Traveler and pretty much all other 70's RPGs (there are actually a few VERY obscure exceptions, but trust me, you didn't play them). In fact nobody had yet conceived of any other paradigm at that time.

FATE and other similar 'story telling' games (and other non-similar ones too) work on different paradigms. In FATE the role of the GM is to present fiction, but as a response to prompts of the players in the form of aspects/troubles/high concepts. This takes a dynamic where the players spend FATE points to invoke/compel themselves to a high point, and then accumulate them again as the GM ruthlessly narrates them back into the pits of despair. 

You have to learn each type of game. This is no different from how you have to learn bridge and pinochle, even though they are both card games, and even have somewhat similar rules.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> Definitely agree.
> 
> 
> 
> Ok two things...
> 
> 1. Let's remember the context of this side discussion... it was not if one player wants to play FATE and another wants to play OD&D then they can both get what they want by using a mainstream game like 5e... that's too specific and was never my argument.  I assume if you are knowledgeable enough and focused enough and nothing matters more than getting the exact experience of FATE... well then you'l be playing FATE with a group of like-minded individuals... personally I don't think the specific rules and experience are that important to the majority of gamers and so my argument was based on players with particular leanings and preferences vs. a desire to play an exact system.
> 
> 2. Let's step back for a moment and look at the definition of FATE's aspects as I think this will help us examine it at a high level (and perhaps shed clarity on what I mean by that...
> 
> _ -Defining Aspects
> An aspect is a phrase that describes something unique or noteworthy about whatever it’s attached to. They’re the primary way you spend and gain fate points, and they influence the story by providing an opportunity for a character to get a bonus, complicating a character’s life, or adding to another character’s roll or passive opposition.
> 
> Defining FATE Points
> GMs and players, you both have a pool of points called fate points you can use to influence the game. You represent these with tokens, as we mentioned in The Basics. Players, you start with a certain number of points every scenario, equal to your character’s refresh. You’ll also reset to your refresh rate if you ended a mid-scenario session with fewer fate points than your rate. GMs, you get a budget of fate points to spend in every scene.
> 
> When your aspects come into play, you will usually spend or gain a fate point.
> _
> Aspects...
> So it's a phrase that describes something unique or noteworthy about whatever it's attached to.  I would say creating Bonds, Flaws and Ideals do the same (thought admittedly they are more categorically limited than aspects...).



OK, so I don't have any real issue with this so far...


> They're a primary (though not the only) way you spend and gain FATE points... so I would say that kind of debunks the tight coupling of FATE point expenditure and aspects, FATE points (which are the actual currency can be spent on bonuses related to aspects... but don't have to be.  In turn inspiration could be spent on an action relevant to the Bond Flaw or Ideal... but don't have to be.



I don't understand what rules you are referring to here. FATE points are spent to either Invoke an aspect, to Compel an aspect, or to avoid the compulsion of an aspect. I know of no other general use of FATE points. In all cases they involve aspects (and these may be aspects of any part of the game world fiction, not just of your character). 



> They influence the story in one of 3 ways...provide an opportunity to get a bonus/complicate characters life/add to another character's roll... These are all things the Bond/Flaw/Ideal system coupled with Inspiration cover...



I agree that they GENERALLY relate to similar things. I think however that it isn't exactly the same. Its like you have bridge and pinochle, and you are discussing bidding and rules of play in each game. They ARE similar in SOME respects. Bidding in each game serves some analogous purposes, but one is still a quite different game from the other. 



> FATE Points...
> 
> They influence the game... Inspiration does the same.
> 
> Now here is where I see the major differences at a high level... The DM doesn't get Inspiration to spend and There is no starting/refreshed Inspiration each game.



This is A difference, there are many others. I do see similarity, and I have never denied that there was ANY similarity, just that they're different in ways that make it difficult to talk about in any non-trivial way without getting into. Just like you cannot talk about bridge and pinochle without some reference to the fact that they use different decks. 



> Well I've tried to clarify it above but I am starting to think that many proponents of FATE see admitting  similar their high level functions are in each game.  Do I believe they are the exact same or that the mechanics of 5e can replicate FATE exactly... no, but I never made that argument.



I think this is as simple as, having played D&D and FATE I can say that the results, even with 5e's added mechanisms is VERY different. They are profoundly different games, both in terms of how they play and in terms of the goals of play. There are also similarities, and we can logically classify them both as RPGs. At a core level they're both games with a GM and players who each take on the persona of a single character (usually at least). Chess and checkers move pieces on an identical board too...



> Well to be fair that was a very recent statement on my part and not really part of my initial argument... Also, FATE started as a variant of FUDGE... so not sure I'm willing to totally backtrack on that statement however I think it's only tangentially related to my main point so I'm also not ready to spend a ton of word count on disputing the matter.  I'll just leave this tidbit from wikipedia and let everyone draw their own conclusions.



Well, yes, FATE is based on FUDGE, but the mechanics it inherits from FUDGE (if they are used at all, some FATE implementations replace them) are used in a very different way. FUDGE is fundamentally more like D&D than it is like FATE. 



> From Wikipedia...
> _System
> 
> Probability of results in the Fate system
> *Fate is based on the FUDGE system, and uses FUDGE's verbal scale and Fudge dice*, but most versions of Fate eschew the use of mandatory traits such as Strength and Intelligence. Instead, it uses a long list of skills and assumes that every character is "mediocre" in all skills except those that the character is explicitly defined as being good at. Skills may perform one or more of the four actions: attacking, defending, overcoming obstacles (a catch-all for solving problems) or creating an advantage (see below). Exceptional abilities are defined through the use of Stunts and Aspects_.



FUDGE is entirely lacking the point economy which drives FATE. Yes, in FATE you can use a skill, as you could in FUDGE, to attempt to accomplish a task. This is a necessary underpinning which sets up the engagement of Aspects. So, a character needs to accomplish something, so a check is made with FUDGE dice against a skill. Aspects can then be compelled or invoked to produce bonuses and penalties to the check result. In FUDGE a character is COMPLETELY defined by these skills (and a set of underlying attributes which contribute to them). FUDGE is literally just a mathematical variation of Traveler in essence, they are both pure skill-based games. FATE is very different, even if it uses some of the same mechanics.



> Hmmm... I disagree with how you view skills in FATE...I haven't seen anywhere in the rules where skills are totally optional.  Can they be tweaked for your particular game, yes but they are assumed to be part of a FATE game, at least according to the FATE rules.  Skills are how you perform any action in FATE not Aspects.  If there are nothing but Aspects... what exactly are they being tagged to give a bonus too?  Also FATE Core does have a list of default skills and suggestions on tweaking said list for different genres... Personally, I see Aspects as a modifier to the basic competencies of your characters represented by skills and stunts (these are the rolls being modified by FATE points which are in turn gained through Aspects.



You cannot say a given mechanic is or is not optional in FATE, because FATE isn't a complete system, it is a toolbox. Not all FATE-based games have skills! Also, FATE points cannot simply be spent to alter ANY arbitrary check, you MUST describe how you are invoking an aspect to get either a +2 or a reroll. ALL bonuses/rerolls are thus rooted in aspects, completely. You don't NEED skills for this to work either! You can simply assume everyone is equally good at all tasks, and modify checks via invoke/compel as needed. Aspects also allow tagging, which produces greater and more interesting effects, and there is invocation for effect, where you get to create a new piece of fiction by referencing one of your aspects. This alone is huge and unrelated to skills or anything from FUDGE mechanics.

NOW, possibly in some FATE-based systems skills, stunts, or other attributes (FUDGE also has other categories) COULD be highly important, and might be written so as to contribute more than aspects, or to temper them, etc. Its a flexible system! However, by default, aspects are pretty much the most important thing in the game, and the other things that are up there would be high concepts, troubles, etc. 



> Well I assume we are talking about FATE Core, if not then we have to make allowances for all the variations of the d20 engine as well.



Well, this is OK to a point, but FATE is not a stand-alone game. D&D is...



> In FATE Core there are 3 actions...
> 
> Attack, Defend and Create Advantage.    I think Attack and Defend are pretty self explanatory while Create Advatage allows you to invoke an aspect which in turn allows you to do one of 4 things...
> 
> Take a +2 on your current skill roll after you’ve rolled the dice.
> Reroll all your dice.
> Pass a +2 benefit to another character’s roll, if it’s reasonable that the aspect you’re invoking would be able to help.
> Add +2 to any source of passive opposition, if it’s reasonable that the aspect you’re invoking could contribute to making things more difficult. You can also use this to create passive opposition at Fair (+2) if there wasn’t going to be any.
> 
> So it's the same thing you can do with an aspect.  I'm sorry but in core FATE I'm just not seeing how someone who enjoys tactical play is going to find this satisfactory much less someone who's primary enjoyment is derived from it.




Again though, this would be like talking about 4e and only looking at the RC. Yes, it has all the rules in it, but you need other books to tell you what all the actual classes, powers, etc. ARE. You can only talk hypotheticals here. FATE barely has a combat system in core! However, if you look at Dresden Files, or SotC, or other actual games, they have various types of rules relating to specific genre elements. Characters in actual games can have all sorts of attributes. 

I think it is fair to say that 4e would be more tactical than FATE, as a general thing, but this is still hypothetical. 5e, is 5e really tactical either? I mean, its OK to say a game simply does or does not emphasize something. However we were contrasting things...


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> Let me ask if someone used the play techniques from sorcerer in a mainstream game could the experience be replicated?  I guess that's how I see things that aren't based in the mechanics... IMO something that is rule agnostic can be transferred from one game to another.  As an example look at scene framing... why can't scene framing take place in 5e?  Or procedural play what would be the obstacles to implementing it in 5e?  And ultimately even in a game like FATE or Sorcerer the GM is tasked with running a certain way in order to produce a specific experience in game.  Though honestly if there is a reason these same techniques can't be applied to more mainstream  games I'd love to discuss and/or hear your perspective on why.




I think this ignores the very significant ways in which a game can INHIBIT a certain type of play. You yourself referred to this by asking about FATE not being able to handle tactical wargamish play (like 4e provides I assume). There are MANY ways in which games block or discourage a certain type of play. Honestly I think this is usually a MORE important factor than things a game does to facilitate play. Another dimension of this is 'focus'. By emphasizing one thing, then something else will be diminished. 

This is why the experience provided by a certain game is not simply a matter of concatenating some list of mechanics together which implement X, Y, and Z. The whole game has to 'hang together' by encouraging, emphasizing, discouraging, deemphasizing, and mechanically supporting specific things. The overall structure of play (roles and organization of activities at the table) is critical too, as well as presentation of the material. Creating an RPG, at least a quality one, is a multidimensional undertaking.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> The reason I like that 2E NWPS don't scale up like 3E skills is that chances roughly stay consistent. In 3E you end up with tasks that are impossible unless you have an enormous bonus. That scale can really make things thorny in my view. Whereas with NWPs, the chance doesn't have this wide range of probability.



Well, here we can agree! That is, 3e is borked up in many ways, and the actual PROGRESSION of bonuses is dumb. 4e doesn't have any of these problems.



> I don't think most of them break down to 50/50. I haven't crunched the numbers though, but that seems on the low side. Some of the NWPs do have a -2 check modifier, but not all of them. Most, if I recall fell between 0 to -1. With cropping up on some of them. But you can also take ranks in them. But if the probabilities are off, this is a pretty easy fix. What I like about it is the consistency, the lack of 3E style scaling, the fact that they don't interfere with aspects of role-play, investigation and exploration that I enjoy, and that are a simple roll under die roll.



I think they're just not reliable enough to BECOME a significant part of play, and I don't understand, personally, the idea of insignificance of a mechanical subsystem being a benefit. I eschew complexity. If I put something into my game there was a reason for it. NWPs have no compelling reason to be there, as written. IMHO



> Again though, my point was they worked well for me in practice at the table. There was a night and day difference for the better when I shifted back to 2E for Ravenloft and much of it boiled down to how skills worked (though there were certainly other things). If you don't get that experience from NWPs, I am not here to convince you that you should. I just think people should play with these mechanics themselves and see how they feel in practice, rather than rely on discussions like these where you have two people trying to score points for their positions. Worst case scenario, they try them, and you're right, they suck. Best case, they discover value in a mechanic they may have otherwise dismissed.
> 
> I think we just largely disagree on the Gygaxian approach. That is a whole other conversation. I don't think it is worth getting into here.




Well, I'm not going back to 2e to test my reaction to NWPs. I mean, I'd be the last person to insist that something I have not tried MUST be a certain way. I am of the opinion I wouldn't find anything really new there. Now, perhaps if I was going back from the train wreck of 3e, that might be different, but I moved on to 4e and my own thing long ago....


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Bedrockgames said:


> It is an entirely subjective thing, and frankly I am not 100% sure why I preferred NWPs (I am just trying to offer the best explanation I can think of). But I know they worked better for the game I wanted to run. I found this to be the case with a lot of 2E, and I think much of it had to do with the approach to play and the assumptions behind many fo the rules. You frame that somewhat negatively (as Gygaxian antagonism or something). Whatever was behind it (and I think antagonism is pretty reductive, because Gygax was all over the map if you read him, and he was pretty well excised from the 2E material), it made for a better Ravenloft campaign in my view. I struggled with Ravenloft during 3E. As soon as I switched editions, it just never felt the same. Something about the NWPs and other features, helped me get the feel that had originally drawn me to Ravenloft. Beyond that, we're just going to be going over the same series of points and rebuttals I think.



Sure, I'm not trying to argue your experience either. Frankly Ravenloft never REALLY worked for me in D&D that well. They did reasonably well trying, but even in 2e it didn't really feel like gothic horror to me.



> With 4E, I think the reduced skill list was good. But I just never clicked with Skill Challenges or the general 4E approach to things. Again, whole other conversation. I get that the game works for lots of people. I just never connected with the game (even under great GMs).




Yeah, that's cool. Honestly, I liked AD&D pretty well, back in its heyday. It was fun, and I still like a lot of the sort of genre elements that it incorporates. I just got frustrated by the system itself. It lacks the ability to do certain things.


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## pemerton

Tony Vargas said:


> If a game asks you to "re-learn what it means to be an RPG player," it's strongly implying that it's not an RPG - or that every RPG before it wasn't.  Neither seems like a politik sort of implication.



That's a weird thing to say. If you've only ever played auction-and-trick card games (bridge, 500, etc) and then play blackjack, you skill at remembering played cards might still help you but you're going to have to learn a lot of new stuff.

The skills a player gets from playing Caves of Chaos and Tomb of Horrors and White Plume Mountain are going to be of pretty modest use in a game of In a Wicked Age.


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## pemerton

I've played plenty of D&D using 2nd ed AD&D NWPs (the same mechanic is also found in the DSG/WSG, and I've used those too).

I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. They're fairly weak descriptors, with a poor relationship to PC build rules, masquerading as a resolution mechanic.


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## Aldarc

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I don't understand what rules you are referring to here. FATE points are spent to either Invoke an aspect, to Compel an aspect, or to avoid the compulsion of an aspect. I know of no other general use of FATE points. In all cases they involve aspects (and these may be aspects of any part of the game world fiction, not just of your character).



In Imaro's defense here: in Fate fate points can also be used to power powerful stunts. So you are correct that if you are spending fate points for the +2/reroll or declaring a story detail, then you are invoking aspects. But there is another channel for fate points in the form of stunts. These sort of stunts are rare and up and by far not the primary mode of spending fate points, but they do exist. 



Tony Vargas said:


> I honestly didn't even remember "Create an Advantage" from the times I've played FATE.  But, then I barely remembered there were 'actions' at all, and, looking them up, it's probably because they're all pretty improvisational in nature, anyway, and improv is something I'm pretty used to.



I think this is a common problem for people running or playing Fate. Create an Advantage is slightly more unconventional than the other three actions. It's less of "roll, okay, you did the thing," and more "roll, okay, you create the fictional element (i.e., a situation aspect) that is now on the table for use." It is easily the most forgettable action, but it's also one of the most critical ones. 

As promised, from The Book of Hanz: 


> "Fiction, not Physics". I find myself quoting this a lot, and it's really become key to how I understand Fate. When I first heard it, I assumed it meant "we're not concerned with realism, here!" And that's part of it, but certainly not the whole thing, and probably not even the most important thing (after all, you can have realistic fiction).
> 
> What I've come to understand this phrase as meaning is that Fate sets out to model how stories flow in actual story media - movies, novels, etc.
> 
> Here's an example: Let's say that our spy hero needs to get past a door, guarded by a couple of mooks in a movie. We see him slip into the shadows where the mooks can't see him. He then climbs into the pipes above the guards, and once above them drops down, taking them both out with his weight. He hauls the guards off behind some boxes and proceeds…
> 
> Okay, so in a more traditional RPG, this would be a stealth roll, probably some more notice checks, probably a roll to get up on the pipes, and then an attack roll with some bonuses.
> 
> Now, sure, you could do something similar with Fate, after all it does have elements like skill rolls and whatnot. But, really, it's better to map actions to periods of "camera time", just like in the movie. So in the first shot of the scene, we see our spy slip into the shadows… That's a Create Advantage roll, opposed by the mooks' Notice.
> 
> Then, our hero climbs up on the pipes. Again, this is Create Advantage, but against a static difficulty this time (the danger of failing is more from the inherent danger, and less from being noticed - we've already established that our character is out of view.)
> 
> With these aspects now in place (the scene is now ABOUT our hero being "In the Shadows" and "On the Pipes Above the Door"), and our free tags on them, it's a pretty easy Fighting roll to do enough stress to knock out the two mooks.



I what I found eye-opening about these examples is how Create an Advantage rather than Overcome is the integral Action. A Stealth _Overcome_ roll opposed by Perception (whether passive or active) would be the standard "are you stealthed: yay or nay?" Likewise, it would be a simple Overcome roll for "did you climb this: yay or nay?" These may confer various advantages in different systems. In D&D 5E, you would possibly have advantage on the attack roll - but no double advantage - but that does not really affect the damage for a weapon attack. 

But here, they are two Create an Advantage rolls that set the spy up with two aspects that they now have available to invoke (+2, +2) to take out the two guards with a Fighting roll. The GM could decide here that the mooks will gain an opposed defense roll or the GM may simply decide to give a static DC depending upon the fiction. "Damage," though really Stress here, is the difference between a Fighting Attack roll and either the Defense roll or the static ladder DC. The GM may say, "Okay, together these guards have three stress boxes. And I will make this a simple +2 on the ladder." The spy rolls their Fudge dice and gets a 0, but then add their +2 from their Fighting skill, and +4 from their two invokes for a total of +6. 6 minus 2 is 4, which is enough Stress to take out the two guards. But there are different ways to play this scene out depending upon what the GM and player may think best emulates the fiction being presented.


----------



## pemerton

In Cortex+ Heroic the action is not called "create an advantage" but rather "create an Asset". Otherwise it works very similarly to what  [MENTION=5142]Aldarc[/MENTION] describes, with two exceptions: (i) only one Asset can be used at a time; (ii) an Asset doesn't adjust the result but rather adds a die to the pool.

As well as Asset's there are stunts (bonus dice triggered by spending points) and resources (bonus dice triggered by spending points which are more constrained than stunts in when you can generate them, and may be rated differently, but last for longer).

Here's an example from our viking game:



pemerton said:


> Meanwhile (I can't quite remember the action order) the scout has climbed up onto the top of the pallisade, gaining an Overview of the Steading asset, and the troll has remembered tales of Loge the giant chieftain, gaining a Knowledge of Loge asset. And the berserker - who has the Deeds, Not Words milestone which grants 1 XP when he acts on impulse - charged through the open gate at the giant, inflicting d12 physical stress.
> 
> But the swordthane - who was hoping to learn more about his quest - used his Defender SFX to take the physical stress onto himself (in the fiction, stepping between giant and berserker and grabbing hold of the latter's axe mid-chop). And the berserker - whose player was happily taking 3 XP for being rebuked by an ally for his violence - calmed down.
> 
> The next action cycle took place in the main hall of the steading, into which the PCs were led by the giant at the gate. I drew heavily on the G1 thematic here - all but one of the players was familiar with it. And I got to add in my third scene distinction - Great Wolves under the trestle tables and gnawing on bones at the sides of the hall.
> 
> I'm not going to remember all the details of this one, but highlights included: the swordthane opening up negotations with Loge, the giant chief, including - in response to a demand for tribute - offering up the steed as a gift; the scout, after successfully parlaying his Overview of the Steading asset into a Giant Ox in the Barn asset, leading the ox into the hall and trying to trade it for the return of the horse, and failing (despite the giant chief's Slow distinction counting as a d4), and subsequently avoiding being eaten (a stepped-up Put in Mouth complication, as per the Giant datafile in the Guide) only by wedging the giant's mouth open with his knife (a heavily PP-pumped reaction roll); and the swordthane successfully opening a d6 Social resource (based on his Social Expertise) in the form of a giant shaman in the hall, who agreed that the troubles plaguing the human lands were afflicting the giants too, and so they should help one another.



(In this example, as well as the ones called out, the horse was a resource - most naturally used to add to a physical endeavour pool, but here - as a gift - used to boost a social pool. The Scene Distinctions are similar to situation/location aspects in Fate, while complications are similar to aspects/consequences placed on a particular character.)

In Cortex+, victory can be by way of attrition, but need not be. Basically, a character (PC or NPC) is out if Stress or a Complication reaches d12+. If a condition is already rated at DX, then imposing it again at DX or less steps it up; imposing it at DY where Y > X substitutes. So if a NPC has d8 Emotional stress, dealing d4, d6 or d8 Emotional Stress will step that up to d10; while d10, d12 or d12+ will just override the existing Stress.

This means that (unlike can often feel like it is the case in D&D), spending an action to create an asset which then boosts a pool making it easier to get a big Effect Die on your first go can be just as rational as going straight for the attack. The player of the scout (in the quote above) was the first in our group to really work this out. But recently the idea has been spreading!

4e combat can emulate some features of this because of its complex and synergistic power system; and in a skill challenge, there are secondary checks to create bonuses. But it doesn't loom as large as it does in Cortex+. And I don't see how any other form of D&D can emulate this sort of play.


----------



## Bedrockgames

pemerton said:


> I've played plenty of D&D using 2nd ed AD&D NWPs (the same mechanic is also found in the DSG/WSG, and I've used those too).
> 
> I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. They're fairly weak descriptors, with a poor relationship to PC build rules, masquerading as a resolution mechanic.




based on your posts, I would definitely say posters who share your preferences probably won't find much value in NWPs. On the other hand, if you found skills in 3E a bit frustrating, if skill challenges are not your thing, NWPs and Secondary Skills, might be worth checking out. What you regard as weak descriptors, I regard as non-intrusive. They are more flavoring than build. And they don't feel like buttons (which is probably why they don't pass for some as resolution mechanics). They can add color to the game. They are quite easy to use in practice, and you don't have the scaling issues of 3E skills or the mini-gameness of skill challenges. What I found they did well, was not disturb the sense of immersion I wanted in play. Now that just may be me. But I found it to be solidly the case. So just from my own experience, assuming others out there exists who share my way of playing and approaching the game, I would recommend trying NWPs, trying 2E or trying 1E. You might even find you don't need the NWPs. Much of what makes these editions work for me in this respect is the lack of clear mechanics for certain things. I find you tend to default more to just saying what you want your character to do, and the GM figuring out how or if that is going to happen. 

Definitely can see it isn't for everyone. But I also don't think any of this is one size fits all. I suspect there are plenty of folks who will have encountered the same frustrations I have. I found it very helpful to go back to the editions I had stopped playing to see if babies had been thrown out with the bathwater. Worst thing that happens to you, is you encounter mechanics you don't like. But I would definitely add, don't take my word for it. Don't take Pemerton's word for it. Try for yourself, Test it and see how you feel if you are curious about the rules.


----------



## Imaro

AbdulAlhazred said:


> I don't understand what rules you are referring to here. FATE points are spent to either Invoke an aspect, to Compel an aspect, or to avoid the compulsion of an aspect. I know of no other general use of FATE points. In all cases they involve aspects (and these may be aspects of any part of the game world fiction, not just of your character).




There's the stunts which can cost FATE points to use but also the expenditure of FATE points to modify story details which also don't have to be tied to an in-game Aspect...



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I agree that they GENERALLY relate to similar things. I think however that it isn't exactly the same. Its like you have bridge and pinochle, and you are discussing bidding and rules of play in each game. They ARE similar in SOME respects. Bidding in each game serves some analogous purposes, but one is still a quite different game from the other.




Well again my original contention was not that 5e can replicate FATE but that a player who enjoys storytelling/narrative elements in play can be served by this part of the D&D 5e rules.  This was with the later caveat that they aren't trying to replicate a specific system (since again I would expect them to play said system) but in the situation where it is a group of players with differing desires/draws for their rpg fun trying to each find their enjoyment in a single system.  It was my contention that this is a strength of more mainstream games.   




AbdulAlhazred said:


> This is A difference, there are many others. I do see similarity, and I have never denied that there was ANY similarity, just that they're different in ways that make it difficult to talk about in any non-trivial way without getting into. Just like you cannot talk about bridge and pinochle without some reference to the fact that they use different decks.



''

I think we are in general agreement here, I think the matter may be getting blurred because others do seem to be arguing there is no similarity which I actually don't agree with.  But taken in the context of my intital premise around a mixed group would you say that the Bonds/Ideals and Flaws along with Inspiration can give a storyteller/narrative leaning player some of what he is looking for?  




AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think this is as simple as, having played D&D and FATE I can say that the results, even with 5e's added mechanisms is VERY different. They are profoundly different games, both in terms of how they play and in terms of the goals of play. There are also similarities, and we can logically classify them both as RPGs. At a core level they're both games with a GM and players who each take on the persona of a single character (usually at least). Chess and checkers move pieces on an identical board too...




But my argument was never that they were the same game... to me this seems self-evident and that is perhaps why I didn't clarify it early since I thought my original presentation of the group of mixed players was the context in which the discussion was taking place. 




AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, yes, FATE is based on FUDGE, but the mechanics it inherits from FUDGE (if they are used at all, some FATE implementations replace them) are used in a very different way. FUDGE is fundamentally more like D&D than it is like FATE.




Well I am speaking to FATE core and it's defaults... if not do we then consider all variations of the d20 game engine as well?  The default for FATE core is skills, stunts, aspects, etc...



AbdulAlhazred said:


> FUDGE is entirely lacking the point economy which drives FATE. Yes, in FATE you can use a skill, as you could in FUDGE, to attempt to accomplish a task. This is a necessary underpinning which sets up the engagement of Aspects. So, a character needs to accomplish something, so a check is made with FUDGE dice against a skill. Aspects can then be compelled or invoked to produce bonuses and penalties to the check result. In FUDGE a character is COMPLETELY defined by these skills (and a set of underlying attributes which contribute to them). FUDGE is literally just a mathematical variation of Traveler in essence, they are both pure skill-based games. FATE is very different, even if it uses some of the same mechanics.




Can you also understand how, even from this description of FATE, someone could see skills as the main drivers and aspects simply the add-ons that modify their usage... 




AbdulAlhazred said:


> You cannot say a given mechanic is or is not optional in FATE, because FATE isn't a complete system, it is a toolbox.




Yes but FATE has defaults which are assumed...and FATE Core with said defaults is a perfectly playable system.  You have to create a campaign world (same as D&D) but other than that it's a complete system.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Not all FATE-based games have skills! Also, FATE points cannot simply be spent to alter ANY arbitrary check, you MUST describe how you are invoking an aspect to get either a +2 or a reroll. ALL bonuses/rerolls are thus rooted in aspects, completely. You don't NEED skills for this to work either! You can simply assume everyone is equally good at all tasks, and modify checks via invoke/compel as needed. Aspects also allow tagging, which produces greater and more interesting effects, and there is invocation for effect, where you get to create a new piece of fiction by referencing one of your aspects. This alone is huge and unrelated to skills or anything from FUDGE mechanics.




I feel like this is treading in the same water as a DM kitbashing D&D... What if any do you see as the fundamental difference?



AbdulAlhazred said:


> NOW, possibly in some FATE-based systems skills, stunts, or other attributes (FUDGE also has other categories) COULD be highly important, and might be written so as to contribute more than aspects, or to temper them, etc. Its a flexible system! However, by default, aspects are pretty much the most important thing in the game, and the other things that are up there would be high concepts, troubles, etc.




I'll agree to disagree here since in FATE core I see the skills as more important at a practical level... but I can also see your viewpoint.  That said, I just don't think I'm convinced of your viewpoint when I see an actual game of FATE being run by one of it's designers and skills are being leveraged as much if not more than aspects in play... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOFXtAHg7vU




AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, this is OK to a point, but FATE is not a stand-alone game. D&D is...




Again I disagree.  Now I'll admit it's a more universal game than D&D but I don't think FATE Core is incomplete or that one would be incapable of running a game using just FATE core.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Again though, this would be like talking about 4e and only looking at the RC. Yes, it has all the rules in it, but you need other books to tell you what all the actual classes, powers, etc. ARE. You can only talk hypotheticals here. FATE barely has a combat system in core! However, if you look at Dresden Files, or SotC, or other actual games, they have various types of rules relating to specific genre elements. Characters in actual games can have all sorts of attributes.




These are variants though, FATE core is a playable game from the FATE rulebook.   



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I think it is fair to say that 4e would be more tactical than FATE, as a general thing, but this is still hypothetical. 5e, is 5e really tactical either? I mean, its OK to say a game simply does or does not emphasize something. However we were contrasting things...




I think 5e through it's different combat actions, different effects, more precise movement, various spells class and racial abilities for combat, etc. is by default a more tactical game than FATE where the tactical decisions seem to boil down to create an advantage (which is the same set of possible effects irregardless of what advantage is created), overcome (yes I missed this one last time) attack or defend.


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## Tony Vargas

Aldarc said:


> I think this is a common problem for people running or playing Fate. Create an Advantage is slightly more unconventional than the other three actions.



 My problem was merely in remembering that it had been broken out from the general "make stuff up" vibe that permeates the game (and is not exactly foreign to RPGs in general, of course), categorized as an 'Action' (and that Fate had any formal 'action' at all, for that matter) and given a name.  



> These may confer various advantages in different systems. In D&D 5E, you would possibly have advantage on the attack roll - but no double advantage - but that does not really affect the damage for a weapon attack.



 In 5e D&D creating the advantage of Advantage by stealthing up on your victim most certainly affects the damage for a weapon attack - if you're a Rogue.  Symptomatic of a class-based system, that.  
And it's utterly conventional.



Bedrockgames said:


> Much of what makes these editions work for me in this respect is the lack of clear mechanics for certain things. I find you tend to default more to just saying what you want your character to do, and the GM figuring out how or if that is going to happen.



 In the 90s, one of the wolfies (um, guys who worked for WWGS keeping up WoD's book-a-month production pace) summed this up as something along the lines of "Bad rules make games good!"  

Ironically, what Aldarc is selling, above, is the same kind of 'good game,' just forced on the player with a functional system that requires creativity to use, rather than a dysfunctional one, that requires creativity to avoid.



> I would recommend trying NWPs, trying 2E or trying 1E.



 It's very nearly a given that anyone who was introduced to RPGs in the 20th centuries (excepting those sneaking in via LARPS in the later 90s) /did/ try NWPs at some point, because they probably started with D&D, and probably tried 2e at some point - they may have put them out of their minds, or been exposed to a version in OA or the Survival Guides first.  There's little need to plead for an open mind and giving the game a chance on behalf of the industry's 500-lb gorilla.  I'd urge you to check out some games developed in the current milinium, with an open mind... 

... you may find that it's not so bad having a functional system that lets you just back up and make stuff up, either.




pemerton said:


> This means that (unlike can often feel like it is the case in D&D), spending an action to create an asset which then boosts a pool making it easier to get a big Effect Die on your first go can be just as rational as going straight for the attack. The player of the scout (in the quote above) was the first in our group to really work this out. But recently the idea has been spreading!
> 
> 4e combat can emulate some features of this because of its complex and synergistic power system; and in a skill challenge, there are secondary checks to create bonuses. But it doesn't loom as large as it does in Cortex+. And I don't see how any other form of D&D can emulate this sort of play.



 Other editions of D&D certainly had mechanics that made it not only viable, but desireable, to use your action to set up future actions that would be much more effective.  They're generally spells, of course, but, again, as with the Rogue's Sneak Attack, above, that's just D&D being class-based.  They could even quite often be 'being clever'/smart-play/CaW improvisation no different in kind from tagging an aspect or whatever in Fate, but for having no mechanisms or guidance from the system to do so in a consistent manner.


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## Bedrockgames

Tony Vargas said:


> It's very nearly a given that anyone who started gaming prior to about 1995 /did/ try NWPs at some point, because they probably started with D&D, and probably tried 2e at some point - they may have put them out of their minds, or been exposed to a version in OA or the Survival Guides first.  There's little need to plead for an open mind and giving the game a chance on behalf of the industry's 500-lb gorilla.  I'd urge you to check out some games developed in the current milinium, with an open mind...
> 
> .




I realize this. I started playing in the 80s, so I've seen things develop over time. But even I forgot how NWPs felt in practice. When I went back to them, I was half doing so intending to do it as a laugh. But more importantly, a lot of people didn't start playing until recently (1995 was over 20 years ago). And plenty of people haven't tried 1E, let alone 2E. 

By the way, I play lots of modern games. I played several sessions of Hillfolk just a couple months ago, and have played games like Gum Shoe and continue to play Savage Worlds. But people are after different things in games. You see 2e as broken or poorly designed. I get that. I am just saying I don't share that view, and it is through the playing fo the game that I reached that conclusion. I think people should try it on their own before rendering a judgment. By the same token, I'd hope people would give the games you are advocating for a fair shake as well. I think one of the worst habits people have in gaming is forming an opinion based on the experience of posters in forums who make good arguments but might miss the essence of things.


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## Tony Vargas

Bedrockgames said:


> I realize this. I started playing in the 80s, so I've seen things develop over time. But even I forgot how NWPs felt in practice. When I went back to them, I was half doing so intending to do it as a laugh. But more importantly, a lot of people didn't start playing until recently (1995 was over 20 years ago). And plenty of people haven't tried 1E, let alone 2E.



 ...and it's not like trying it, now, would repell them from the hobby, and it would give them perspective, sure.  But, as a fellow grognard who also started in the 80s, and later came back to D&D, I think your experience with going bck to 1e or 2e, is very much related to the fact it's going /back/.  



> By the same token, I'd hope people would give the games you are advocating for a fair shake as well



 Well, that Aldarc & Pemerton & Manbearcat are advocating for.  I was mainly just pointing out that those games are very much underdogs to D&D's traditional dominance as gatekeeper to the hobby.  Underdogs need people pleading for others to give them a chance.  On behalf of the top dog, it's just ironic.


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## Bedrockgames

Tony Vargas said:


> ...and it's not like trying it, now, would repell them from the hobby, and it would give them perspective, sure.  But, as a fellow grognard who also started in the 80s, and later came back to D&D, I think your experience with going bck to 1e or 2e, is very much related to the fact it's going /back/.
> 
> Well, that Aldarc & Pemerton & Manbearcat are advocating for.  I was mainly just pointing out that those games are very much underdogs to D&D's traditional dominance as gatekeeper to the hobby.  Underdogs need people pleading for others to give them a chance.  On behalf of the top dog, it's just ironic.




The present form of D&D is essentially pathfinder and 5E. AD&D is played in the OSR but the OSR isn’t dominating the market. For me it isn’t about underdogs or any of that. My feeling is what matters is people finding games that resonate with them and work for them in practice. I wouldn’t say for me it is about going backwards. I think innovation is great. It is about realizing sometimes we throw out the baby with the bath water and occasionally returning to the earlier games yields insight as a result. But I don’t play 2E all the time. I tend to play more recent games that are open minded about the past. Again, these are just game. At the end of the day it is about having fun. I was very struck how a return to earlier editions helped enhance my fun at the table. I think it is worth sharing. And it isn’t just D&D. There are benefits to exploring many other older games. I quite like the old HARN material for examples. Plenty of folk are exploring old traveler and other games. Many continue to play new games, sometimes bringing in charts, approaches to adjudication or mechanics they like from the old.


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## Bedrockgames

Tony Vargas said:


> ...and it's not like trying it, now, would repell them from the hobby, and it would give them perspective, sure.  But, as a fellow grognard who also started in the 80s, and later came back to D&D, I think your experience with going bck to 1e or 2e, is very much related to the fact it's going /back/.
> .




I would say let people find out for themselves. I don't think my experience was related to 'going back'. It was because there was a specific feel of play that I wanted and couldn't get in my 3E and 4E sessions. That feel was quite clear when I used 2E. I've tried very hard to replicate that feel when I run my own games. Much of it has to do with how I approach skills. And I've seen new players respond strongly to it. Now I probably could swing it in 3E with the right group. But it would involve some tweaking. I am all for people trying other systems (old and new). I think that is helpful and healthy. Even discovering what you really don't like can be handy. But it is much better to form your own opinion about mechanics than to rely on posts.


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## Tony Vargas

Bedrockgames said:


> The present form of D&D is essentially pathfinder and 5E. AD&D is played in the OSR but the OSR isn’t dominating the market.



 5e has thoroughly beaten PF from the moment it came back to the market.  (Not that PF & OSR are inconsequencial, but 2nd is a long way behind 1st at this point.  And they're both still D&D, OSR still embracing the DM-mediated improv we're talking about.  PF, admittedly, is player-entitling and optimization prone, in contrast.)  
So, yeah, top dog.  And, 5e evokes a lot of what you're talking about, from 1e with vague rules that don't neatly cover many situations, it just does so up-front, with the presentation of it's shading of the core d20 mechanic.  It puts the DM determining ('narrating') succes or failure /before/ any dice rolls or skill selections.  From 3.x/PF back to 1e might've been a bit of a revelation for someone who started with e'm (if you drew a DM good who could handle the challenge) or re-revelation for someone away from the classic game for a while.  But, IMHO, 5e offers the same epiphany (and calls it DM Empowerment).



> And it isn’t just D&D. There are benefits to exploring many other older games. I quite like the old HARN material for examples. Plenty of folk are exploring old traveler and other games. Many continue to play new games, sometimes bringing in charts, approaches to adjudication or mechanics they like from the old.



We are in the grip of a long overdue come-back of the 80s fad, yes.  D&D is back on top in a big way, and strongly reflective of the fad years.  Other games from the 80s and even 90s are getting re-booted on kickstarter to at least some fanfare, too.


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## Bedrockgames

Tony Vargas said:


> 5e has thoroughly beaten PF from the moment it came back to the market.  (Not that PF & OSR are inconsequencial, but 2nd is a long way behind 1st at this point.  And they're both still D&D, OSR still embracing the DM-mediated improv we're talking about.  PF, admittedly, is player-entitling and optimization prone, in contrast.)
> So, yeah, top dog.  And, 5e evokes a lot of what you're talking about, from 1e with vague rules that don't neatly cover many situations, it just does so up-front, with the presentation of it's shading of the core d20 mechanic.  It puts the DM determining ('narrating') succes or failure /before/ any dice rolls or skill selections.  From 3.x/PF back to 1e might've been a bit of a revelation for someone who started with e'm (if you drew a DM good who could handle the challenge) or re-revelation for someone away from the classic game for a while.  But, IMHO, 5e offers the same epiphany (and calls it DM Empowerment).




We are kind of going in circles here. I am not knocking 5E, nor am I knocking newer games that give different experiences. And I am glad they incorporated a lot of these classic ideas into the new edition. But I think people are much better off judging for themselves where older editions stand in all this and whether or not 5E offers the same epiphanies. My advice is anyone reading is to read the 1E DMG for yourself, try out period editions at the table, and see how they feel. I am not asking anyone to swallow bleach. I am just saying, if you are curious about it, check it out directly yourself. Maybe Tony Vargas is right, maybe not. Maybe you'll find something neither of us noticed about the old games. Not only is it good practice for players, I think it is good practice for anyone interested in design. I know I've seen 5E players (people who have only played 5E) express some surprise when I explain the content of older editions to them. Some of that is because, yes 5E took inspiration from old school versions of the game, but it still expresses that in its own particular way. Everyone kind of resurrects these things with a different focus or different way of explaining them. Going back for yourself is, I think, the best approach. Of course, only if people want to. There is nothing wrong with not having an interest. But I would like to encourage any curious people to read the 1E DMG in its entirety and to take a look at things like the 2E NWP, some of the old basic D&D boxed sets, and original D&D.


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## Tony Vargas

Bedrockgames said:


> We are kind of going in circles here. I am not knocking 5E, nor am I knocking newer games that give different experiences. And I am glad they incorporated a lot of these classic ideas into the new edition. But I think people are much better off judging for themselves where older editions stand in all this and whether or not 5E offers the same epiphanies.



 I think you're advising people who have tried trendy kale and reached a conclusion about it to also try good old-fashioned collard greens, because they're totally different.  ;P
My contrary advice to those who have already tried D&D (in any form, but especially 5e), and are still willing to give the hobby a chance, to go to newer games (if they can even find them), rather than some other version of D&D, or some other revivified game from the 20th century.  
...if you do want the historical perspective, you can get it from watching grognards like us argue on the internet.  





_
(Edit:  It occurs to me that no one who might concievably benefit from either that advice or that perspective would sitll be reading a thread like this.)
_


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## AbdulAlhazred

Aldarc said:


> In Imaro's defense here: in Fate fate points can also be used to power powerful stunts. So you are correct that if you are spending fate points for the +2/reroll or declaring a story detail, then you are invoking aspects. But there is another channel for fate points in the form of stunts. These sort of stunts are rare and up and by far not the primary mode of spending fate points, but they do exist.



OK, maybe I have never played a FATE-based game that really used that idea. I'm understanding from what I read that these are specific 'feats' which a player has to choose when building a character (and thus generally subject to the FUDGE-derived 'you can only have so much stuff' restrictions). So maybe your Samurai dude can spend a fate point to invoke 'great kaiai' and get some cool effect. This seems like a pretty small 'hole', and depending on how the character is implemented and what the player does with it, then it is likely to be as supportive of characterization as most anything else.



> I think this is a common problem for people running or playing Fate. Create an Advantage is slightly more unconventional than the other three actions. It's less of "roll, okay, you did the thing," and more "roll, okay, you create the fictional element (i.e., a situation aspect) that is now on the table for use." It is easily the most forgettable action, but it's also one of the most critical ones.



Right, because it helps with "here's how I like to solve problems", which actually makes it, in a weird way, most similar to 4e skill checks! Or for those GMs which are willing to entertain it, SC situations where the player introduces some twist in the plot to explain how he used skill X to do something (4e sadly hasn't a way to regulate this, though GMs can certainly figure something out, HoML fixed that). 



> As promised, from The Book of Hanz:
> I what I found eye-opening about these examples is how Create an Advantage rather than Overcome is the integral Action. A Stealth _Overcome_ roll opposed by Perception (whether passive or active) would be the standard "are you stealthed: yay or nay?" Likewise, it would be a simple Overcome roll for "did you climb this: yay or nay?" These may confer various advantages in different systems. In D&D 5E, you would possibly have advantage on the attack roll - but no double advantage - but that does not really affect the damage for a weapon attack.
> 
> But here, they are two Create an Advantage rolls that set the spy up with two aspects that they now have available to invoke (+2, +2) to take out the two guards with a Fighting roll. The GM could decide here that the mooks will gain an opposed defense roll or the GM may simply decide to give a static DC depending upon the fiction. "Damage," though really Stress here, is the difference between a Fighting Attack roll and either the Defense roll or the static ladder DC. The GM may say, "Okay, together these guards have three stress boxes. And I will make this a simple +2 on the ladder." The spy rolls their Fudge dice and gets a 0, but then add their +2 from their Fighting skill, and +4 from their two invokes for a total of +6. 6 minus 2 is 4, which is enough Stress to take out the two guards. But there are different ways to play this scene out depending upon what the GM and player may think best emulates the fiction being presented.




Right.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> There's the stunts which can cost FATE points to use but also the expenditure of FATE points to modify story details which also don't have to be tied to an in-game Aspect...



My reading of FATE Core is that modifying story details DOES require an Aspect. This can be against your own characters aspects, or against an aspect of another character (NPC or PC) or an aspect of the scene, including one introduced in play. Stunts I'm not so familiar with, but given that the build process heavily restricts their availability I'd consider them to be intermediate between an aspect (a rather narrow one) and something like a 4e power.



> Well again my original contention was not that 5e can replicate FATE but that a player who enjoys storytelling/narrative elements in play can be served by this part of the D&D 5e rules.  This was with the later caveat that they aren't trying to replicate a specific system (since again I would expect them to play said system) but in the situation where it is a group of players with differing desires/draws for their rpg fun trying to each find their enjoyment in a single system.  It was my contention that this is a strength of more mainstream games.



and my counterpoint is that this would be true only if a player has a very casual interest in that sort of thing and isn't interested in it being an important part of play. I'm not contradicting you, I'm simply pointing out that its a very limited thing and thus it will only satisfy few of the people would would want to play that way, and is a pretty limited/poor introduction to the whole concept for others.



> I think we are in general agreement here, I think the matter may be getting blurred because others do seem to be arguing there is no similarity which I actually don't agree with.  But taken in the context of my intital premise around a mixed group would you say that the Bonds/Ideals and Flaws along with Inspiration can give a storyteller/narrative leaning player some of what he is looking for?



As I say, some. A limited amount. I didn't find them very satisfactory in my play of 5e. I had PIBFs on my main character, and a background. I certainly used them as a rough guide to play. We really didn't mess with alignment but it was roughly similar in impact to what alignment would be, but a little more specific. I did hanker for more, and at the same time the lack of attention on that system kind of made it fade from mind and we didn't really engage with Inspiration at all.



> But my argument was never that they were the same game... to me this seems self-evident and that is perhaps why I didn't clarify it early since I thought my original presentation of the group of mixed players was the context in which the discussion was taking place.



Well, I am pushing against the point where you made a case for there being a strong similarity, with each game being basically a skill-based system with some story-focused mechanics added on. I know you have backed off a bit from that position. Anyway, I think we're on the same page. 



> Well I am speaking to FATE core and it's defaults... if not do we then consider all variations of the d20 game engine as well?  The default for FATE core is skills, stunts, aspects, etc...



OK, you want to use d20 as your comparison? It has nothing in the way of story telling mechanics that I'm aware of (but I'm pretty ignorant of the details of d20). Obviously you can probably find ANYTHING somewhere in d20, but I would point out that such rules are CORE in FATE, so they pretty much always exist in all of FATE, just with variations. And my point stands, what FATE inherits from FUDGE (which includes skills, and stunts) it uses very differently. So really a good comparison would have to be a core system derived FROM d20 which adds in FATE-like mechanics and then uses variations on d20 plus that core for different genres. That also may exist, I don't know....



> Can you also understand how, even from this description of FATE, someone could see skills as the main drivers and aspects simply the add-ons that modify their usage...



Well, not if they really played a FATE-based game much. They would almost immediately understand how it is the story-telling FATE point economy part of the game which drives things. If you played D&D for 10 years and then read FATE Core you might think of Aspects et al as just some minor subsystem, despite it taking up a good part of the rules, but you'd learn different after 1 day of playing SotC! 



> Yes but FATE has defaults which are assumed...and FATE Core with said defaults is a perfectly playable system.  You have to create a campaign world (same as D&D) but other than that it's a complete system.



I would consider it to be similar to the BRP or GURPS core rules. A GM could make a bunch of decisions about which options to use, what elements to exclude, etc. and make a sort of vanilla skill-based game of genre X using BRP (for example). I would not call it a complete game on that basis alone. Its close, and might have the elements you need for a specific one-shot or something, but you WILL need genre-related rules and some thematic elements (think of CoC's sanity rules for example) to make it really work. Likewise with FATE Core. Its a bit looser system, but you will still need to make a bunch of decisions and add some elements to really make a decent game. 



> I feel like this is treading in the same water as a DM kitbashing D&D... What if any do you see as the fundamental difference?



Would you rather discuss one specific FATE-based system? There are 100's and I'm not sure which ones we would both be familiar with. I merely discussed FATE because it does have highly developed story-based mechanics and it provides at least a general sort of basis of other subsystems a game needs. 



> I'll agree to disagree here since in FATE core I see the skills as more important at a practical level... but I can also see your viewpoint.  That said, I just don't think I'm convinced of your viewpoint when I see an actual game of FATE being run by one of it's designers and skills are being leveraged as much if not more than aspects in play... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOFXtAHg7vU



I don't know what to tell you really. When I've been in some of these games we were constantly playing off of aspects. I mean, skills (etc.) provided a part of the game, but it was the aspects that decided what you WANTED and thus what you would 'go for'. If you weren't engaging some sort of aspect in some fashion, usually one of your own, then all you had was basic checks with fixed skill bonuses. It gives you a 'how did I succeed on this' but not a WHY, or a 'what do I want to do' either. The game is also a scene-framed game in essence, so it can only move forward into engagement with Aspects, high concepts, troubles, etc. Skills come into play, but rarely, if ever IME, outside of the context of an aspect.



> Again I disagree.  Now I'll admit it's a more universal game than D&D but I don't think FATE Core is incomplete or that one would be incapable of running a game using just FATE core.



Could you run a game, in the sense of "I can use the subsystems to adjudicate things which happen", yes. But you lack all but the most rudimentary trappings. 



> These are variants though, FATE core is a playable game from the FATE rulebook.



Actually I went back through my FATE 2.0 Core book and I have to say, it is a LOT more generic and less "playable off the shelf" than even I remembered. First of all it isn't ANY more specific than FUDGE, and uses basically just about the same mechanics. This means you don't have any definitive list of skills. Instead you have 3 possible types of skill system, broad, general, or specific, which you can flesh out. There are lists of skill names, as examples, for each of these three within categories. Before you could pick skills you would have to decide which of the three systems you were using, and make an actual definitive list of skills. Then you would have to describe them all (because there are no descriptions of what they cover in FATE 2.0). 

Likewise you have aspects and extras. Aspects are generally assumed to be open-ended, but this is not strictly required. Still, you could assume so and play a game. Extras could be ignored, but otherwise they will have to be devised, and they're often the genre-defining parts of the game. They are not detailed except for a few examples.

Other subsystems are mentioned as possibilities, generally in chapter 9 under "magic". This could be reflavored to most anything though (psionics, tech, etc.). However there are simply many options provided, each of which would have to be fleshed out to be playable.

Now, maybe later versions of FATE are different. 'FATE 3' IS SotC, which is a complete game, but is a bit different, though it is essentially similar to FATE 2.0 from what I can see, except restricted to the pulp genre. The '4th Edition' Fate Core I haven't read, maybe it is more fleshed out. Looking at the SRD for that I guess it really depends on which things you consider to be part of 'Core', since the SRD encompasses 7 entire RPGs! If FATE 2.0 is marginally playable with some assumptions, then I guess you could say Fate Core plus the toolkits and SRD versions of the various RPGs is a lot more fully playable. Core by itself still seems to require some fleshing out though. 

I think 5e through it's different combat actions, different effects, more precise movement, various spells class and racial abilities for combat, etc. is by default a more tactical game than FATE where the tactical decisions seem to boil down to create an advantage (which is the same set of possible effects irregardless of what advantage is created), overcome (yes I missed this one last time) attack or defend.[/QUOTE]


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Tony Vargas said:


> Other editions of D&D certainly had mechanics that made it not only viable, but desireable, to use your action to set up future actions that would be much more effective.  They're generally spells, of course, but, again, as with the Rogue's Sneak Attack, above, that's just D&D being class-based.  They could even quite often be 'being clever'/smart-play/CaW improvisation no different in kind from tagging an aspect or whatever in Fate, but for having no mechanisms or guidance from the system to do so in a consistent manner.




IMHO, putting on my AD&D player's cap for a minute, it is rarely a good idea to waste time in a combat situation 'setting up' anything. There's a great deal of value in doing that AHEAD of combat, but once you're in combat the business should be to follow the cardinal rule of Musashi, who said "Every movement of the sword should be a killing blow."


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## Aldarc

AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, maybe I have never played a FATE-based game that really used that idea. I'm understanding from what I read that these are specific 'feats' which a player has to choose when building a character (and thus generally subject to the FUDGE-derived 'you can only have so much stuff' restrictions). So maybe your Samurai dude can spend a fate point to invoke 'great kaiai' and get some cool effect. This seems like a pretty small 'hole', and depending on how the character is implemented and what the player does with it, then it is likely to be as supportive of characterization as most anything else.



Stunts are mostly built around three ideas (though there are more): 

(1) Add a New Action to a Skill: Use skill A instead of skill B under certain circumstances. e.g., "Backstab. You can use Stealth to make physical attacks, provided your target isn’t already aware of your presence." 

(2) Add a Bonus to an Action: Usually a +2 bonus to skill action in certain circumstances (e.g., "Gain a +2 bonus to create an advantage using Lore, whenever the situation has specifically to do with the supernatural or occult.")

(3) Create a Rules Exception: You can "break" the rules. (e.g., Riposte. If you succeed with style on a Fight defense, you can choose to inflict a 2-shift hit rather than take a boost.) 

Fate Point-powered stunts are rare. (Not even sure if they include an example in the book.) So almost the entirety of your fate points are spent engaging your aspects. 



> Right, because it helps with "here's how I like to solve problems", which actually makes it, in a weird way, most similar to 4e skill checks! Or for those GMs which are willing to entertain it, SC situations where the player introduces some twist in the plot to explain how he used skill X to do something (4e sadly hasn't a way to regulate this, though GMs can certainly figure something out, HoML fixed that).



As an aside: I find it fascinating that 4E was criticized for just being a tactical miniatures game without any real roleplaying, but it seems that on this forum that many of the people who extol the virtues of 4E the most are story now roleplayers. 



AbdulAlhazred said:


> My reading of FATE Core is that modifying story details DOES require an Aspect. This can be against your own characters aspects, or against an aspect of another character (NPC or PC) or an aspect of the scene, including one introduced in play.



Correct. 



> So really a good comparison would have to be a core system derived FROM d20 which adds in FATE-like mechanics and then uses variations on d20 plus that core for different genres. That also may exist, I don't know....



Possibly Aspects of Fantasy. It claims to offer... 


> * A streamlined version of the D20 system
> * Rules for using aspects and fate points with characters, equipment, adventuring parties, and creatures
> * Quick character creation rules with 8 races, 8 classes and a number of backgrounds and traits
> * Rules for using fate points as a commodity to power traits and maneuvers
> * Critical and fumble rules along with an easy to use skill system
> * A D20 magic system that better integrates with aspects and fate points along with over 150+ spells
> * Conversion information for using Aspects of Fantasy with your Pathfinder and D20 products, along with a dozen sample creatures to get you started



...but I have not looked into it in depth. 



> Well, not if they really played a FATE-based game much. They would almost immediately understand how it is the story-telling FATE point economy part of the game which drives things. If you played D&D for 10 years and then read FATE Core you might think of Aspects et al as just some minor subsystem, despite it taking up a good part of the rules, but you'd learn different after 1 day of playing SotC!



This has been my experience running Fate games. 

Incidentally, Fred Hicks of Evil Hat Games re-posted an old blog post on Twitter. A wee bit: 


> Since we released Fate Acclerated, or FAE, I’ve seen the game really divide opinions. Some folks love it to pieces, others are really put off by it, and a few people get confused about whether or not it’s Fate Core or its own thing (as evidenced by the occasional “Fate Core versus Fate Accelerated” threads I’ve seen, as if that’s actually something that should be versus).
> 
> For the record (again), FAE is Fate Core. It’s got the dials cranked in deliberately different directions than Core’s given defaults (which are suited for the Hearts of Steel sample campaign used throughout Core’s examples). Those deliberately different directions are all about speed and supporting broad flexibility across multiple, sometimes disparate, sometimes super-similar, character types. It leaves off some of the more fiddly options for Core in the interests of brevity, and it does a bit more hand-holding as far as stunt construction goes, again with the focus on speed and ease. This gives us a very slim chassis that we can use as basis for a variety of stand-alone Fate products, at around 10k-12k words instead of Core’s 80-90k. All very intentional, and by themselves, I don’t think they’re much of a departure from Core. (That’s not to say they’re departure-free, just that the deviations are minor.)



But the rest discusses the use of Approaches rather than a typical skill list.


----------



## Tony Vargas

AbdulAlhazred said:


> IMHO, putting on my AD&D player's cap for a minute, it is rarely a good idea to waste time in a combat situation 'setting up' anything. There's a great deal of value in doing that AHEAD of combat, but once you're in combat the business should be to follow the cardinal rule of Musashi, who said "Every movement of the sword should be a killing blow."



 Musashi sounds like a powergamer.  Seriously, though, the race to zero hps can factor in a wasted action of prep when pre-casting is not an option, as long as the result is likely to be dropping enemies faster/sooner, net of that action:  so, when a single round nova is certain to result in no fatalities, mainly.

Besides, pre-combat prep counts:  that's what was going on in the sneaking-through-the-pipes example - the character took Create an Advantage twice before initiating combat.



Aldarc said:


> As an aside: I find it fascinating that 4E was criticized for just being a tactical miniatures game without any real roleplaying, but it seems that on this forum that many of the people who extol the virtues of 4E the most are story now roleplayers.



 It wasn't just here.  When 4e came out, I was in a GM's 'club' that ran various games at local conventions, with the aim of putting a greater variety of systems out there for people to try.  The core members were very much of the storytelling Role-not-Roll persuasion, for them D&D was the poster boy for both RP-stultifying "Roll Playing" and for the lack of diversity they were struggling against. They played Storyteller games, and an obscure indie game, Storyboard.  By the end of the 3.5 run, I'd talked them into letting me run a D&D game under their banner, that resulted in at least one other DM joining.  4e came out, and a while later, I'm invited to a playtest, it's my fellow DM running 4e with the core group, it was solid, the high point being a chase scene - something RPGs rarely do well - that was very successful.  
But not only were these hardcore Role-not-Roll Players playing D&D, and enjoying it, rather than intellectually tolerating it for the sake of diversity as they had with my 3.5 playest a few years earlier, they were also talking about the regular 4e campaigns they had been playing, themselves.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Aldarc said:


> Stunts are mostly built around three ideas (though there are more):
> 
> (1) Add a New Action to a Skill: Use skill A instead of skill B under certain circumstances. e.g., "Backstab. You can use Stealth to make physical attacks, provided your target isn’t already aware of your presence."
> 
> (2) Add a Bonus to an Action: Usually a +2 bonus to skill action in certain circumstances (e.g., "Gain a +2 bonus to create an advantage using Lore, whenever the situation has specifically to do with the supernatural or occult.")
> 
> (3) Create a Rules Exception: You can "break" the rules. (e.g., Riposte. If you succeed with style on a Fight defense, you can choose to inflict a 2-shift hit rather than take a boost.)
> 
> Fate Point-powered stunts are rare. (Not even sure if they include an example in the book.) So almost the entirety of your fate points are spent engaging your aspects.



OK, yeah, I had no recollection of ever seeing that kind of use of fate points in any game I ever played in. I can see how that might be a way to create some sort of a super power which is tied to a character's very nature or something, but it doesn't seem like it would make a lot of sense as a general mechanic in fate. 

As an aside: this is one reason that I didn't just follow the FATE model closely in my own game. I wanted to emphasize the 'connectedness to the universal sources of power' which made characters 'Mythic'. Its story-driven, but it doesn't rely on an economy of plot coupons. They exist, and they're important, but mostly you use vitality to perform what fate would call stunts, so there's a separate Inspiration mechanism for when you want to do something like spend a plot coupon to add something to the narrative.



> As an aside: I find it fascinating that 4E was criticized for just being a tactical miniatures game without any real roleplaying, but it seems that on this forum that many of the people who extol the virtues of 4E the most are story now roleplayers.



The analysis and commentary of the general D&D community of 4e was laughably bad to be generous. What it taught me was that largely even frequent posters with lots of play experience have very little concept of how the games they run actually 'tick'. 



> Possibly Aspects of Fantasy. It claims to offer...
> ...but I have not looked into it in depth.



Oh, now you may have given me a new reading assignment. When will I get to finish my game design work?!


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Tony Vargas said:


> Musashi sounds like a powergamer.  Seriously, though, the race to zero hps can factor in a wasted action of prep when pre-casting is not an option, as long as the result is likely to be dropping enemies faster/sooner, net of that action:  so, when a single round nova is certain to result in no fatalities, mainly.
> 
> Besides, pre-combat prep counts:  that's what was going on in the sneaking-through-the-pipes example - the character took Create an Advantage twice before initiating combat.




Sure, IN THEORY. The problem is that 'real' situations aren't cut and dried. So when you start down that path you better be darn sure your assumptions are correct, because you're taking at least 2x more risk (expending 2 actions to achieve a result instead of one). Its very easy for the DM to pull a fast one or things to simply not be what you expect, or just the foo of a bad die roll that torpedoes your wonderful plan. The other issue is that AD&D encounter resolution can be FAST. It is, particularly at levels where this kind of cleverness might be feasible, quite common for round one to be the last real round of the fight. Most M.U. spells can easily gank opposing spell casters, and casters are what really matters in most cases. Even missile fire can usually gank a party's mage, so you often have just one shot, there is no round 2 for your plan to come off in because by the end of round one the critical questions at hand have all been answered. One side or the other has achieved spell-casting dominance and/or imposed crippling effects on the other, and its all downhill from there.

This was my speciality as a wizard player in AD&D, ending all doubt! Usually accomplished on round one and the art was more to do it with the appropriately valuable resource so you wouldn't be depleted before the end of the day's work. Thus "oh, its some orcs, yeah, Sleep!", "oh, its some ogres, lightning bolt!", "oh, its the evil high priest, Time Stop!"


----------



## Tony Vargas

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Sure, IN THEORY. The problem is that 'real' situations aren't cut and dried. So when you start down that path you better be darn sure your assumptions are correct, because you're taking at least 2x more risk (expending 2 actions to achieve a result instead of one).



 Sure, though that goes both ways, as your attempt to one-shot may fail miserably, and the combat go longer. ::shrug::

Either way, the spells existed that could be used - on-label or 'creatively' - to Create an Advantage for yourself/allies, be it in combat, or leading up to it.

For that matter, 'skilled play' was often about setting things up to your advantage  - without benefit of any actions or points for that purpose.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Tony Vargas said:


> Sure, though that goes both ways, as your attempt to one-shot may fail miserably, and the combat go longer. ::shrug::
> 
> Either way, the spells existed that could be used - on-label or 'creatively' - to Create an Advantage for yourself/allies, be it in combat, or leading up to it.
> 
> For that matter, 'skilled play' was often about setting things up to your advantage  - without benefit of any actions or points for that purpose.




Well, there are certain 'pathways' in the spell system to getting a good result. Haste for instance is one of the perennially strongest spells because it DOES work as a buff, even if cast after combat starts (because the one lost action is replaced instantly by several other characters getting multiple actions). This is kind of the 'exception which proves the rule' power. 

The other pathways involve either strong control or 'indirect damage' tricks. Spells like Rock to Mud and Wall of Iron are classic examples which can cause lethal results but avoid both saving throws and magic resistance because TECHNICALLY they aren't attacks. Spells like Web, for a low level example, are milder forms of the same thing. One of the nice things about Lightning Bolt is how it can be used 'dual purpose' to either cause direct damage OR indirect damage (IE by blasting some structure which then collapses on the target). Druids tend to have a bunch of this kind of stuff, although it has built-in limitations that make them a little inferior to a wizard in AD&D. 

This is also why some of the less exceptional seeming spells are actually VERY useful in some situations. The Monster Summoning series falls into this category. The creatures you summon are quite weak and often barely relevant in combat, BUT they get attacks which aren't subject to saves, and they can keep hacking until someone squishes them (bonus to action economy there). Plus they have open-ended non-combat uses, which is always a big plus.

My big nasty wizard's main spell selection strategy was actually NOT to use spell slots for direct attack spells (I did carry one or two of them for backup purposes). Instead I had items for doing the blasty stuff (Staff of Power, I love you). Slots were for all this kind of indirect/dual use/marginal utility stuff. The really oddball stuff you might use once in your career I copied onto scrolls. 

Anyway, the definite rule was to act on round 1 to cast the 'finisher' for that battle and not to wait! Some tactics depend on the DM and how he interpreted certain rules though.


----------



## Lanefan

AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, there are certain 'pathways' in the spell system to getting a good result. Haste for instance is one of the perennially strongest spells because it DOES work as a buff, even if cast after combat starts (because the one lost action is replaced instantly by several other characters getting multiple actions). This is kind of the 'exception which proves the rule' power.



As long as your fellow party members don't mind getting older in a hurry...

Of course - typical Gygax - while the Haste spell write-up in the 1e PH notes that it ages the recipient, neither it nor the DMG specify by how much.  The potion of haste, however, does specify aging of 1 year per use, so we took that to imply the spell does likewise.



> This is also why some of the less exceptional seeming spells are actually VERY useful in some situations. The Monster Summoning series falls into this category. The creatures you summon are quite weak and often barely relevant in combat, BUT they get attacks which aren't subject to saves, and they can keep hacking until someone squishes them (bonus to action economy there). Plus they have open-ended non-combat uses, which is always a big plus.



My guess is that these days about 90-95% of the times I see a magic-user cast any Monster Summoning spell it's for a non-combat reason - usually glyph removal (by setting it off) or trap detection/removal (by setting them off) or some other similar situation where sacrificial schlubs can come in handy.



> My big nasty wizard's main spell selection strategy was actually NOT to use spell slots for direct attack spells (I did carry one or two of them for backup purposes). Instead I had items for doing the blasty stuff (Staff of Power, I love you). Slots were for all this kind of indirect/dual use/marginal utility stuff. The really oddball stuff you might use once in your career I copied onto scrolls.



Hmmm...my MUs seem to often end up going the other way: the spells are for blasting and the devices are for the other stuff.

I try to avoid scrolls most of the time, as they're too easily dispelled or burnt or soaked or otherwise ruined.

Lanefan


----------



## Imaro

AbdulAlhazred said:


> My reading of FATE Core is that modifying story details DOES require an Aspect. This can be against your own characters aspects, or against an aspect of another character (NPC or PC) or an aspect of the scene, including one introduced in play. Stunts I'm not so familiar with, but given that the build process heavily restricts their availability I'd consider them to be intermediate between an aspect (a rather narrow one) and something like a 4e power.




Ah, you are correct, my bad.




AbdulAlhazred said:


> and my counterpoint is that this would be true only if a player has a very casual interest in that sort of thing and isn't interested in it being an important part of play. I'm not contradicting you, I'm simply pointing out that its a very limited thing and thus it will only satisfy few of the people would would want to play that way, and is a pretty limited/poor introduction to the whole concept for others.




I'll agree that this particular use of personality traits is limited in depth insofar as it's effects mechanically on the game go (and I think this would be a positive in the situation I presented where it is a single player in a group who enjoys this type of experience vs. the entire group)... but 5e gives other options that tie a character's personality traits as well as their ideal/flaw and bonds into the game with more mechanical heft.  If a player and DM are looking for more heft then I would point them to the Personality Trait Proficiency optional rules which ties there proficiency bonus to their personality traits & their ideals, bonds and flaws.  This would be more in line with a group whose main focus is on this type of game. 




AbdulAlhazred said:


> As I say, some. A limited amount. I didn't find them very satisfactory in my play of 5e. I had PIBFs on my main character, and a background. I certainly used them as a rough guide to play. We really didn't mess with alignment but it was roughly similar in impact to what alignment would be, but a little more specific. I did hanker for more, and at the same time the lack of attention on that system kind of made it fade from mind and we didn't really engage with Inspiration at all.




But if you wanted more why didn't you engage with it more?  Did you need the game to force you to engage with something you were looking for?  OAN I would suggest you try out the optional rules above, they may give you more focus and mechanical heft when it comes to these.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> OK, you want to use d20 as your comparison? It has nothing in the way of story telling mechanics that I'm aware of (but I'm pretty ignorant of the details of d20). Obviously you can probably find ANYTHING somewhere in d20, but I would point out that such rules are CORE in FATE, so they pretty much always exist in all of FATE, just with variations. And my point stands, what FATE inherits from FUDGE (which includes skills, and stunts) it uses very differently. So really a good comparison would have to be a core system derived FROM d20 which adds in FATE-like mechanics and then uses variations on d20 plus that core for different genres. That also may exist, I don't know....




Well I actually think it's possible to get a close and similar experience with just the rules in the DMG... but I'm also getting the feel that if something is optional in 5e (though we are discussing numerous FATE options)  it's auto-discarded by some of the posters in this discussion... irregardless of it's actual merits because... well... optional... 



AbdulAlhazred said:


> Well, not if they really played a FATE-based game much. They would almost immediately understand how it is the story-telling FATE point economy part of the game which drives things. If you played D&D for 10 years and then read FATE Core you might think of Aspects et al as just some minor subsystem, despite it taking up a good part of the rules, but you'd learn different after 1 day of playing SotC!




But I posted a game run by the co creator of the game... I wouldn't say this is an apt description of how that game went.  Do you believe he was running FATE incorrectly?  Me personally I'm not so sure.  I ran FATE Kerberos club and it was pretty similar to how his game played out.  Yes we used Aspects but we used our skills, stunts and superpowers more.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I would consider it to be similar to the BRP or GURPS core rules. A GM could make a bunch of decisions about which options to use, what elements to exclude, etc. and make a sort of vanilla skill-based game of genre X using BRP (for example). I would not call it a complete game on that basis alone. Its close, and might have the elements you need for a specific one-shot or something, but you WILL need genre-related rules and some thematic elements (think of CoC's sanity rules for example) to make it really work. Likewise with FATE Core. Its a bit looser system, but you will still need to make a bunch of decisions and add some elements to really make a decent game.




Well the video I posted was run using just FATE core... 




AbdulAlhazred said:


> Would you rather discuss one specific FATE-based system? There are 100's and I'm not sure which ones we would both be familiar with. I merely discussed FATE because it does have highly developed story-based mechanics and it provides at least a general sort of basis of other subsystems a game needs.




No I think FATE Core is fine since we all have access to the SRD online.



AbdulAlhazred said:


> I don't know what to tell you really. When I've been in some of these games we were constantly playing off of aspects. I mean, skills (etc.) provided a part of the game, but it was the aspects that decided what you WANTED and thus what you would 'go for'. If you weren't engaging some sort of aspect in some fashion, usually one of your own, then all you had was basic checks with fixed skill bonuses. It gives you a 'how did I succeed on this' but not a WHY, or a 'what do I want to do' either. The game is also a scene-framed game in essence, so it can only move forward into engagement with Aspects, high concepts, troubles, etc. Skills come into play, but rarely, if ever IME, outside of the context of an aspect.




So we have an actual play... run by one of the designers which leans heavily on skills and less often on aspects...  My takeaway from that is it shows that Aspects don't have to be as integral (though I do agree they are important) to the play of the game as they might seem to some... 

My other takeaway is that a particular group can choose to make Aspects the focal point of play in the same way that a group playing 5e could make personality traits, ideals/flaws/bonds the focus of play. 




AbdulAlhazred said:


> Could you run a game, in the sense of "I can use the subsystems to adjudicate things which happen", yes. But you lack all but the most rudimentary trappings.
> 
> 
> Actually I went back through my FATE 2.0 Core book and I have to say, it is a LOT more generic and less "playable off the shelf" than even I remembered. First of all it isn't ANY more specific than FUDGE, and uses basically just about the same mechanics. This means you don't have any definitive list of skills. Instead you have 3 possible types of skill system, broad, general, or specific, which you can flesh out. There are lists of skill names, as examples, for each of these three within categories. Before you could pick skills you would have to decide which of the three systems you were using, and make an actual definitive list of skills. Then you would have to describe them all (because there are no descriptions of what they cover in FATE 2.0).
> 
> Likewise you have aspects and extras. Aspects are generally assumed to be open-ended, but this is not strictly required. Still, you could assume so and play a game. Extras could be ignored, but otherwise they will have to be devised, and they're often the genre-defining parts of the game. They are not detailed except for a few examples.
> 
> Other subsystems are mentioned as possibilities, generally in chapter 9 under "magic". This could be reflavored to most anything though (psionics, tech, etc.). However there are simply many options provided, each of which would have to be fleshed out to be playable.
> 
> Now, maybe later versions of FATE are different. 'FATE 3' IS SotC, which is a complete game, but is a bit different, though it is essentially similar to FATE 2.0 from what I can see, except restricted to the pulp genre. The '4th Edition' Fate Core I haven't read, maybe it is more fleshed out. Looking at the SRD for that I guess it really depends on which things you consider to be part of 'Core', since the SRD encompasses 7 entire RPGs! If FATE 2.0 is marginally playable with some assumptions, then I guess you could say Fate Core plus the toolkits and SRD versions of the various RPGs is a lot more fully playable. Core by itself still seems to require some fleshing out though.




I'm still failing to see how FATE doesn't provide you with a complete game.  Yes you have to make decisions around the rules and game setting...the same way a GM has to decide if Feats are available, multiclassing is allowed and if you're playing in the Forgotten Realms or somewhere else in D&D.


----------



## Ovinomancer

Imaro said:


> Ah, you are correct, my bad.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'll agree that this particular use of personality traits is limited in depth insofar as it's effects mechanically on the game go (and I think this would be a positive in the situation I presented where it is a single player in a group who enjoys this type of experience vs. the entire group)... but 5e gives other options that tie a character's personality traits as well as their ideal/flaw and bonds into the game with more mechanical heft.  If a player and DM are looking for more heft then I would point them to the Personality Trait Proficiency optional rules which ties there proficiency bonus to their personality traits & their ideals, bonds and flaws.  This would be more in line with a group whose main focus is on this type of game.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> But if you wanted more why didn't you engage with it more?  Did you need the game to force you to engage with something you were looking for?  OAN I would suggest you try out the optional rules above, they may give you more focus and mechanical heft when it comes to these.
> 
> 
> 
> Well I actually think it's possible to get a close and similar experience with just the rules in the DMG... but I'm also getting the feel that if something is optional in 5e (though we are discussing numerous FATE options)  it's auto-discarded by some of the posters in this discussion... irregardless of it's actual merits because... well... optional...
> 
> 
> 
> But I posted a game run by the co creator of the game... I wouldn't say this is an apt description of how that game went.  Do you believe he was running FATE incorrectly?  Me personally I'm not so sure.  I ran FATE Kerberos club and it was pretty similar to how his game played out.  Yes we used Aspects but we used our skills, stunts and superpowers more.
> 
> 
> 
> Well the video I posted was run using just FATE core...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> No I think FATE Core is fine since we all have access to the SRD online.
> 
> 
> 
> So we have an actual play... run by one of the designers which leans heavily on skills and less often on aspects...  My takeaway from that is it shows that Aspects don't have to be as integral (though I do agree they are important) to the play of the game as they might seem to some...
> 
> My other takeaway is that a particular group can choose to make Aspects the focal point of play in the same way that a group playing 5e could make personality traits, ideals/flaws/bonds the focus of play.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm still failing to see how FATE doesn't provide you with a complete game.  Yes you have to make decisions around the rules and game setting...the same way a GM has to decide if Feats are available, multiclassing is allowed and if you're playing in the Forgotten Realms or somewhere else in D&D.



Gotta disagree a bit.  You can skew 5e towards the play aesthetics Fate puts front arms center, but you can't get there (or really _that_ close).  Mechanics matter.  The best you have is a 5e game that has a stronger focus on character cues, but nothing like Fate does.


----------



## Imaro

Ovinomancer said:


> Gotta disagree a bit.  You can skew 5e towards the play aesthetics Fate puts front arms center, but you can't get there (or really _that_ close).  Mechanics matter.  The best you have is a 5e game that has a stronger focus on character cues, but nothing like Fate does.




Have you looked at the Personality Trait proficiency rules in the DMG?  If so what do you think of them in contrast to FATE 's Aspect rules?  Again I don't see it as exactly the same but it feels pretty close to me (from the player side, I'll readily admit 5e isn't built for something like aspects to define things outside of characters)... thought I wonder if keywords are similar in function...

EDIT: I'd also be interested in hearing your thoughts on the actual play video I linked too...


----------



## Ovinomancer

Imaro said:


> Have you looked at the Personality Trait proficiency rules in the DMG?  If so what do you think of them in contrast to FATE 's Aspect rules?  Again I don't see it as exactly the same but it feels pretty close to me (from the player side, I'll readily admit 5e isn't built for something like aspects to define things outside of characters)... thought I wonder if keywords are similar in function...
> 
> EDIT: I'd also be interested in hearing your thoughts on the actual play video I linked too...




Yes.  They are much weaker. It's not close on the player side, although it is closer.  I'm not much interested in watching others play on youtube.  I am familiar with how FATE operates, and I have no serious beef with your description of the video -- you can play FATE that way very easily.  However, the difference in systems becomes readily apparent in the resolution mechanics of the scenes -- in 5e, you have to color in the blank spaces of the system to get something that hacks closer to FATE but can't really get there, and if you start a combat, it skews heavily away as 5e drops in tactical, non-skill based resolutions and so immediately moves far away from even a Trait based proficiency.  FATE never does.

I had originally thought your aim was to point out how 5e is a broad but shallow system -- it can, indeed, ape a number of aesthetics, but in a limited fashion.  Now, however, it really seems like you're trying to make a strong case that 5e can do the same things FATE does regarding FATE's core, much narrower focus (FATE is narrow(er) but deep(er)).  I cannot agree in the slightest.  Other systems are designed to hit other notes, and 5e's broad range but lackluster voice doesn't it as well.  Not really even close.  I could, for an example I'm much more familiar with, run a heist game with 5e, but it's clunky and I'll have to work around the system quite often.  5e just doesn't offer the toolset necessary to do heists well outside of the extensive planning and (nearly) perfect execution runs.  Blades in the Dark, however, does heists like is built for it (which it is) and has a very deep 'out of heist' mechanical drive to increase buy-in and story that 5e just doesn't have.  Blades puts the heist front and center and builds an extensive set of interlocking and reinforcing mechanics to keep it there.  5e completely lacks these kinds of interlocking and reinforcing mechanics.


----------



## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> I'll agree that this particular use of personality traits is limited in depth insofar as it's effects mechanically on the game go (and I think this would be a positive in the situation I presented where it is a single player in a group who enjoys this type of experience vs. the entire group)... but 5e gives other options that tie a character's personality traits as well as their ideal/flaw and bonds into the game with more mechanical heft.  If a player and DM are looking for more heft then I would point them to the Personality Trait Proficiency optional rules which ties there proficiency bonus to their personality traits & their ideals, bonds and flaws.  This would be more in line with a group whose main focus is on this type of game.
> 
> But if you wanted more why didn't you engage with it more?  Did you need the game to force you to engage with something you were looking for?  OAN I would suggest you try out the optional rules above, they may give you more focus and mechanical heft when it comes to these.
> 
> Well I actually think it's possible to get a close and similar experience with just the rules in the DMG... but I'm also getting the feel that if something is optional in 5e (though we are discussing numerous FATE options)  it's auto-discarded by some of the posters in this discussion... irregardless of it's actual merits because... well... optional...




I think, for me at least, when I play a game I want a game that puts the elements I'm interested in front-and-center. 5e has a subsystem that lets you do a sort of narrativist 'coupon' and its tied weakly to character traits. I think if I had a 1-10 scale, I'd put it at 3. The fact that it is optional isn't important to me in the sense that I 'forget about' optional things, it is important in the sense that it tells me the game was designed without that in mind and it is thus not central to how the game plays. FATE, on the same scale is a 9, and Aspects/FATE points are TOTALLY at the center of the game. You will engage this mechanic, all the time, in play. It creates a very different overall dynamic. 

Obviously it is true that for some sensibilities there's likely something that is 'too much' and something else that is 'just enough', and 5e's PIBFs/Inspiration undoubtedly falls in that range for some set of people. I'm not really criticizing 5e at all, or minimizing this feature. It is what it is and that's fine. Tastes just vary, obviously. As long as its understood that FATE and 5e are on different parts of a continuum and serve somewhat different needs, that's cool.



> But I posted a game run by the co creator of the game... I wouldn't say this is an apt description of how that game went.  Do you believe he was running FATE incorrectly?  Me personally I'm not so sure.  I ran FATE Kerberos club and it was pretty similar to how his game played out.  Yes we used Aspects but we used our skills, stunts and superpowers more.
> 
> Well the video I posted was run using just FATE core...
> 
> So we have an actual play... run by one of the designers which leans heavily on skills and less often on aspects...  My takeaway from that is it shows that Aspects don't have to be as integral (though I do agree they are important) to the play of the game as they might seem to some...
> 
> My other takeaway is that a particular group can choose to make Aspects the focal point of play in the same way that a group playing 5e could make personality traits, ideals/flaws/bonds the focus of play.



I don't know what to say. I'd have to study it and figure out exactly what they're doing and which rules it engages. My experience/reading of FATE is that stunts which allow spending FATE points are very rare (there are none actually shown as examples in FATE Core itself) though it is stated this is a possibility. Failing that, then Aspects must be being engaged in order to spend FATE points. So, is it possible everyone could simply ignore the FATE point mechanics and just play FUDGE? Yeah, I guess.... I don't understand what the point of that would be! 

IME the whole dynamic of FATE is the players are constantly looking for Aspects to Tag so they can get free invokes, which is a major incentive to pull in aspects. The GM is pushing you constantly into conflicts, which means leveraging your aspects, and almost certainly compelling them, which forces the players to spend FATE points, and then drives them to accept their own compels in order to acquire more. When things really get critical they will absolutely pull out all the stops and toss their points in to create new aspects to use for advantage (often by tagging them) and/or invoking aspects themselves. 

One interesting variation we created was one where the FATE points are a closed system. Each time the GM or a player spends one, it goes into the pool of whomever the compel/invoke was aimed at (or to the GM in some cases, there's possible edge cases to deal with). That creates an even more dynamic type of setup and makes it so points can't really 'run down', which could happen in the classic version (though usually that just means the PCs suddenly get in hot water and then they're stocked up again!). 



> I'm still failing to see how FATE doesn't provide you with a complete game.  Yes you have to make decisions around the rules and game setting...the same way a GM has to decide if Feats are available, multiclassing is allowed and if you're playing in the Forgotten Realms or somewhere else in D&D.



It depends on if you count core, or also the attached System Toolkit, Adversary Toolkit, and the games Atomic Robo, Frontier Spirit, Gods and Monsters, Sails Full of Stars, Three Rocketeers, Venture City, and War of Ashes. These are all now attached to the FATE Core SRD.


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## AbdulAlhazred

Imaro said:


> Have you looked at the Personality Trait proficiency rules in the DMG?  If so what do you think of them in contrast to FATE 's Aspect rules?  Again I don't see it as exactly the same but it feels pretty close to me (from the player side, I'll readily admit 5e isn't built for something like aspects to define things outside of characters)... thought I wonder if keywords are similar in function...



I tried to find this, but I wasn't able to come up with anything in the DMG such as you were asking about, do you have a page number reference? 

I think keywords are usually considered to be suited for categorizing things. As such there is usually a fairly limited and bounded set of keywords. They certainly DO define things, and it isn't impossible those definitions could have significance in terms of role play. In 4e it is common to use them to key off of when trying out improvisations and such. I would think, however, that aspects should be more various than keywords, and more specific. A keyword might be something like 'enchantment' or 'fey', which is pretty general. An Aspect might be 'magical fey charm'. I think in this example case its close, but how about 'stylishly designed' or 'written in the style of Lambauge the Ugly'? 

I think both are useful, in their own ways.


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